How to create duplicate pair of keyboard media keys for use with iTunes and streaming websites I've recently installed the Google Chrome extension Streamkeys which allows the user to use keyboard commands to perform common playback actions on popular streaming sites (Youtube, Soundcloud, and many major sites).

For macOS, Streamkeys default setting is to use the global Mac media keys (⏪ ▶/❚❚ ⏩).

Due to Chrome design, global keys cannot be rebound to use modifier keys like SHIFT + ▶/❚❚.

I like the idea of using the media keys for global Soundcloud/Youtube control, so what I'd like to do is to rebind the keyboard so that iTunes instead uses modifier keys like SHIFT + ▶/❚❚. That way, I can have the best of two worlds.

Question: How can I "duplicate" these three keys to a new location and use them to control iTunes, while still letting Chrome think that they are in their old location? In other words, I would effectively like two pairs of the same keys, only that one pair controls iTunes and one pair controls Chrome Streamkeys.

Is this even possible, and am I thinking about it the right way, when assuming that I would need "duplicates"? Just rebinding the keys would probably not work, since Chrome would still find the keys and "take them" for Streamkeys?

Note again: this is about global control. It is not the same as in-tab in Chrome or in-app in iTunes.

Install Karabiner

Which can be found there: Karabiner: a keyboard customizer for OS X

Analyse which keys are involved

Within Karabiner menu select Launch EventViewer... and type on
the music control key you would like to program.
Here is the output you should get:

Make a private.xml

Read the Karabiner documentation on the topic: private.xml Reference Manual

Create the ${HOME}/Library/Application Support/Karabiner/private.xml
with the following content:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>Shift standard music control keys</name>
    <identifier>Shift standard music control keys</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ ConsumerKeyCode::MUSIC_PREV, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L, ConsumerKeyCode::MUSIC_PREV</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ ConsumerKeyCode::MUSIC_PLAY, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L, ConsumerKeyCode::MUSIC_PLAY</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ ConsumerKeyCode::MUSIC_NEXT, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L, ConsumerKeyCode::MUSIC_NEXT</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

Depending of your taste, use vi, emacs or TextEdit
(of course not Word).

If you want to be clean, I would suggest you to proceed as I did.

Create a source with the above content in:

${HOME}/Documents/src/Karabiner/music.xml

and then install it within the Karabiner directory:

cp ${HOME}/Documents/src/Karabiner/music.xml "${HOME}/Library/Application Support/Karabiner/private.xml"

( The "…" use is necessary because of the space within Application Support. ).

Load your private.xml

Tell Karabiner you will use a custom setting:

and load it:

Test it

Check that this let you achieve the mapping you want to get with Chrome.

I didn't check this part of your request, and I am not sure I understood
it fully.

Report success or failure, since this may help some other users .


Restoring User Folders to Different Volume Okay, so I need to restore a machine from a Time Machine backup, but before it failed it had two separate volumes; one for the OS, apps and the administrator account, and one for all other user accounts. However, both volumes were lost, and will need to be recreated from my backup.

What I want to know in advance is whether it is possible to restore the user accounts to the new users volume using the Migration Assistant, or will it try to restore them onto the system volume? If the latter, is there another way I can seamlessly restore the user accounts?

I've restored files using other means in the past, but that was a long manual process targeting specific things, and usually as part of a clean install for a new OS version, to avoid restoring leftovers etc. However this time I'm restoring due to hardware failure, so I'm not changing the OS, and I'm hoping to restore as much as possible as-is, albeit in stages (as some user accounts are very large, probably needing to be left overnight).

Basically I want to be able to setup my replacement hardware, restore the OS, apps and admin on one volume, and restore the other users one at a time, such that each can just log-in like nothing happened.

Okay so I went ahead with the update anyway and it turns out that Migration Assistant is clever enough to recognise relocated user accounts.

In my particular case it recognised them, but provided no option to restore their contents (just the account itself), possibly because my users volume hadn't been recreated at this point.

However, after restoration was complete, and I'd recreated my users volume, all I needed to do was pop into Time Machine and restore the user folders from there, with the added advantage of the system still being usable throughout via my admin account.

For anyone in a similar situation, here are the basic steps that I followed:

Reinstall OS X as normal, at the restoring content stage select to restore from Time Machine, and restore as much as little as you like. Relocated user accounts at this point show up as 19kb with a note that they were relocated; select them to restore the accounts. You'll need at least one account on the system volume to login, so if you don't have any to restore then I recommend creating an administrator account; this has the added benefit that you can downgrade your other users to standard for security.
Disable Time Machine in System Preferences to prevent a premature backup.
Once you're happy the basic OS is set-up (updates applied etc.) you can now recreate the user-accounts volume. Make sure that Time Machine is disabled throughout.
Now locate your computer's old backup folder; do this by opening your backup volume in the Finder and opening Backups.backupdb, and it'll be one of the folders inside (usually just one for a single-machine backup drive).
If Time Machine didn't ask to inherit your backup drive, you'll want to make sure you inherit it manually (or it might see all files as new). To do this, open Terminal and enter sudo tmutil inheritbackup now take your machine's old backup folder and drag it onto the Terminal window to add its path. Your command should look like: sudo tmutil inheritbackup /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb/Haravikk\'s\ Mac, you'll be asked for your password to run the command (must be run by an administrator).
Next you'll want to make sure you've associated the new volumes with their backed up counterparts (since newly created volumes will have a new unique ID). To do this open your machine's backup folder, and inside it open up the folder named "Latest", here you should see an entry for each volume that Time Machine was backing up. In Terminal, enter the following command: sudo tmutil associatedisk and drag the appropriate folder onto the Terminal window, then drag the corresponding volume on as well, your command will look like: sudo tmutil associatedisk /Volumes/Backup/Backups.backupdb/Haravikk\'s\ Mac/Latest/Users /Volumes/Users, hit enter to run the command.
Now when you open up your Users volume in the Finder, you can use Enter Time Machine from the Time Machine menu and use it to go back to see your old user folders, simply select each one you want and click Restore. You can do this several time if (like me) some user accounts are bigger than others.

Once you've restored all the user accounts, you should be safe to re-enable Time Machine backups, and the accounts should now work just as they did before (though some passwords may need to be re-entered).


Running out of hard drive space, yet Disk Inventory shows only 190GB used vs. 480 GB used in HD Get Info? How is that possible? I'm down to 20GB on a 500GB hard drive and would like to know what's eating up the disk space, so I can clear out any large things I no longer need.

2 screen shots are showing me Disk Inventory results and my Storage report in "About This MAC"

The MAC HD is showing 347GB "OTHER" space being used, whereas DISK INVENTORY is showing only 190GB Total used.  What am I missing or don't understand about what Disk Inventory is doing/showing, and how can I find significant files eating up the 347GB that isn't videos, photos?

Time Machine local backups

If you use Time Machine, my guess is that the discrepancy is from local backups. If so, you can free up that space by connecting your Time Machine drive and running letting Time Machine complete a backup.

Once you have done that, you might want to disable local backups by issuing this command in Terminal.app:

sudo tmutil disablelocal

but keep in mind that the local backups are meant to provide a safety net for those times when your Time Machine drive is not attached.

If the cause is not Time Machine, try OmniDiskSweeper

If that is not it, I recommend using OmniDiskSweeper to check your drive space.

ODS is a free app, and works very simply. When you launch ODS, it will show you a "Drive List" showing all of the available drives. Choose your main hard drive and then it will start searching.

The results are shown in a very simple column format, similar to the Finder. The largest folders will bubble to the top, and will let you see exactly where your disk space has gone.

Using OmniDiskSweeper as root

ODS will only calculate the sizes of the folders that you can read. 99% of the time, that should show you the problem.

However, if you want to be sure that you are seeing everything you can launch the app as root using this command:

sudo /Applications/OmniDiskSweeper.app/Contents/MacOS/OmniDiskSweeper

BUT BE VERY VERY CAREFUL WHEN DOING THIS, since ODS will allow you to delete files.


How to add files to the Spotlight index? For some reason, find returns more results than mdfind.
How can I make sure these files are added to the Spotlight index?
$ find ~/Library -iname "*org.virtualbox.app.VirtualBox*" -prune 2>&1 | grep -av "Permission denied"
/Users/sunknudsen/Library/Saved Application State/org.virtualbox.app.VirtualBox.savedState
/Users/sunknudsen/Library/Saved Application State/org.virtualbox.app.VirtualBoxVM.savedState
/Users/sunknudsen/Library/Preferences/org.virtualbox.app.VirtualBoxVM.plist
/Users/sunknudsen/Library/Preferences/org.virtualbox.app.VirtualBox.plist

$ mdfind -onlyin ~/Library 'kMDItemFSName == "*org.virtualbox.app.VirtualBox*"'

Spotlight only processes files it has an importer for the file type and aren't hidden by rule. This folder is excluded by code in Mojave as far as I can tell. In older OS, the Exclusion list was editable in a preference file named VolumeConfiguration.plist and before that, _rules.plist so it was easier for someone technical enough to use the command line to modify an exclusion and make that folder included. I don't think we get this control via the same mechanism now. Apple still lets us exclude arbitrary folders / files, but relaxing their exclusion list to be more inclusive, may not be possible.
If you want to poke at this - the relevant folder is /System/Volumes/Data/.Spotlight-V100
I would use a tool like ag (easily installed with https://brew.sh) to search by name or content rather than using find in the mean time.

If you check mdls for the affected files, you can see the various file types these are and possibly find an app that will claim "indexing" for them.
Here's me reproducing that with a Microsoft preference file:
me@Mac-Pro ~ % mdls ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.autoupdate2.plist
kMDItemFSContentChangeDate = 2020-09-19 20:33:07 +0000
kMDItemFSCreationDate      = 2020-09-19 20:33:07 +0000
kMDItemFSCreatorCode       = ""
kMDItemFSFinderFlags       = 0
kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon     = 0
kMDItemFSInvisible         = 0
kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden = 0
kMDItemFSIsStationery      = 0
kMDItemFSLabel             = 0
kMDItemFSName              = "com.microsoft.autoupdate2.plist"
kMDItemFSNodeCount         = 965
kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID      = 20
kMDItemFSOwnerUserID       = 501
kMDItemFSSize              = 965
kMDItemFSTypeCode          = ""
me@Mac-Pro ~ % mdfind 'kMDItemFSName == "com.microsoft.autoupdate2.plist"'
me@Mac-Pro ~ % cp -p ~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.autoupdate2.plist ~/Desktop
me@Mac-Pro ~ % mdfind 'kMDItemFSName == "com.microsoft.autoupdate2.plist"'
/Users/me/Desktop/com.microsoft.autoupdate2.plist

It's clear Apple has restricted indexing in this directory which is why you can't find preference files in the user Library folder and they show up immediately when copied to your Desktop.


Can't complete OS X 10.10.5 software update in App Store I'm trying to update my iMac to OS X 10.10.5, but there seems to be an error when updating.

When I press the update button a message appears to download and restart. When I press it the update starts to install. After some time it get blocked or a message 'show details' is shown, but even after pressing it nothing happens. The update still remains in the App Store.

How can I complete the update?

Assuming you are already on 10.10.something just get the Combo Updater directly from Apple, rather than from the App Store.

Direct link: Download OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 Combo Update


I can't download El Capitan from App Store I think the title is pretty selfdescribing, but ok :)

I go to App Store, I click on download button on OS X El Capitan (it is listed under Utilities), and nothing happens and the El Capitan is not downloaded, nor does it change the status to "Downloading". I don't think it is downloading. I also tried to log in as root to the mac and now the App Store won't work - it keeps spinning the spinner sign and nothing happens, I can't even type the letters "El Capitan" in the search box. Anyone has any other link, URL for downloading of El Capitan, other than the one on App Store? Losing my faith in Apple slowly......
I am on Macbook 7.1 (Mid-2010).

I restarted the computer, and tried again, solved the problem.


Activity process does not terminate? I am using a Mac and I use Macvim for programming. If my program happens to go into an infinite loop and I have to quit Macvim and restart it due to this the program will restart but the program process keeps running. I realized this when I opened up my activity monitor and see "program foo" is still running at about 99% cpu usage! I can easily shut down the process from activity monitor but is there a way to prevent this? Thanks in advance for any suggestions. Test is the file the loop went into. I created it to show an example.

MacVim forks (spawns a new process) to launch external processes, but it waits for the external process to return before resuming execution. Thus, killing MacVim simply detaches the child process (your program) from MacVim and attaches it to the main process running, in essence, OS X on the whole.

You have to quit, or Force Quit, your program explicitly in order to kill it.

It's also very likely that if you kill your program, and NOT MacVim, you can continue using MacVim without issue.


Stuck on "Preparing iPhone for software update" I'm trying to update my 8+ while connecting to I-tunes.
And now it is  Stuck on "Preparing iPhone for software update" for 2hours.
What sould I do?
Thanx

iTunes is often stuck for no reason. Usually, I would restart iTunes and it works. If that doesn't work, you should reinstall iTunes.


What happens if I have switched the Time Machine off? Im using the MacBook Pro Retina and currently using an external hard drive to store many datas using the Time Machine, i.e: songs, images, movies, docs and so on. I was wondering what will happen if I switched TIME MACHINE off? I have backed up everything to my external hard drive though and currently my storage in the macbook is showing 29.01gb BACKUP, I was thinking if by switching the Time Machine could it allow more space on my disk?

These are local snapshots. They should be on your external hard drive if it has been connected. Switched Time Machine off will remove them, but new backups will be created, unless you disable them.

The following answer contains links which explain this very clearly https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/178718/19086


OS X Application for Scraping HTML of a Set of Tweets I recently went to a Tweetup event and want to scrape from my Twitter account all the tweets made during that either by selecting a date/time range or by matching to a hash tag.

Is there an app to pull all these tweets out (hopefully with links intact) and all so I can "archive" them on my own web site?

Storify.com is a pretty cool way to curate something like the Tweetup you mention.  It lets you search for tweets (or other social media) and stream it into a list of points to make up your story.

I first noticed Jason Kottke using it a couple of days ago to make a story out of the tweets from Gavin Purcell about production of that night's Jimmy Fallon show.   I have been fascinated by it ever since.


How to move photos from an old eMac to an iPad? I need to move about 550 photos from iPhoto on an old eMac to a new iPad Air. The eMac won't be used anymore after everything is transferred. I already tried the following approaches, but they didn’t quite have the expected result:

Sync photos from iPhoto to iPad using iTunes (because the eMac is too old to run the required version of iTunes for the iPad, I used another Mac as an intermediate on which I set up iPhoto). This creates an album like “Pictures from Mac” that can't be removed, any of these photos must be duplicated before they can be edited.
This is not really what's wanted: the idea is to “move” the photos permanently to the iPad, not “make them available on the iPad for viewing”, which is what iTunes sync really seems to do.
Used the app GoodReader to get the files from the eMac via AFP, then added them from GoodReader to the Photos app. This does what's wanted: the pictures can be edited on the iPad without having to be duplicated (and they can be deleted as well).
But all the photos appeared as if they were taken today, rather than on their original date (even though the export from iPhoto to the folder which I accessed through AFP preserved the timestamp of the photos in the “modification timestamp” of the files)

How can I “move” (not “sync”) the photos to the iPad, while preserving the timestamp of the photos?

Some technical info: the eMac is a 1GHz PowerPC G4 one, running OS X 10.5.8 with iTunes 10.6.3 and iPhoto 5.0.4. Software Update reports everything is up-to-date.

I wound up giving PhotoSync a try. This had better (compared to GoodReader), if not entirely satisfying, results: I was able to transfer the photos (after exporting the photos from iPhoto on the eMac and copying them to an intermediate, newer Mac), and found that most had the correct date. But about 150 did not, these appeared as if taken today. I deleted them again for now. I suspect these failed because they don't have any EXIF dates set.

Next time I meet up with the eMac/iPad owner, I will try transferring the remaining 150 photos again after forcibly setting their EXIF date to the same date as the file's modification date. There's an answer on the Photography SE which details how to do that using the command line utility “exiftool”. I'll try to remember to report back here on whether this works. I’d still appreciate any answer explaining a more straightforward approach.

Edit: transferring the remaining 150 photos after forcing their EXIF dates was succesful. I'll summarize my approach for anyone wanting to follow it:

On the iPad, get PhotoSync from the App Store.
On an intermediate Mac, get the PhotoSync companion app from the Mac App Store.
On the intermediate Mac, install “exiftool” (I used MacPorts to do this).
In iPhoto on the eMac, use the “Export” option in the menu. Make sure to set the options to “Original”. Transfer the exported files to the intermediate Mac. Make sure to use a means of transfer that preserves the file modification dates.
Use the following Terminal command on the intermediate Mac to fix files without any EXIF dates by setting the EXIF “ModifyDate” to the file modification date:

exiftool -overwrite_original_in_place -preserve '-FileModifyDate>ModifyDate' -if 'not $DateTimeOriginal' -if 'not $ModifyDate' -if 'not $CreateDate' *
Open PhotoSync on the iPad, and use the PhotoSync companion app on the intermediate Mac to transfer the files using the “Send” command in the menu.

Note that a drawback of this approach is that it doesn't preserve the organization of the photos into albums that was done on the eMac, but that was not an issue in my case.

Instead of PhotoSync, you may be able to use AirDrop to transfer the files, but I was not able to try this as I didn’t have access to a Mac which supports AirDrop to iOS devices.

Before fixing any files with exiftool, you may want to move the ones that need fixing to a separate subdirectory: exiftool -Directory=needs_fixing -if 'not $DateTimeOriginal' -if 'not $ModifyDate' -if 'not $CreateDate' *


Does AirPlay online stream to Apple TV still go through the iPad? When we AirPlay the online stream on iPad to Apple TV, does the iPad remain in the chain (online stream to iPad and then iPad to Apple TV) or does the Apple TV virtually get and play that stream (online stream to Apple TV)?

If you stream a video from the internet, and then AirPlay is to a suitable receiver like an Apple TV, then all the devices in the chain still take part.  The Apple TV doesn't simply get the stream location and other data like playback location, then stream it by itself, it get's a secondary copy that the iPad is essentially repeating onwards.

You can easily test this by streaming something, then airplaying it to the AppleTV, then turning airplane mode on the iPad - the Apple TV stream should fail.


Is there any keyboard shortcut for entering El Capitan’s split view? El Capitan’s new split view is an interesting feature. At last, OS X users have a feature at their disposal that has long been available on various Linuxes or on Windows. However, I have not yet found any way to enter it with the keyboard alone, without any mouse or trackpad interaction.

Yes, I am a keyboard junky and I think the ⊞ Win + ← or → keyboard shortcuts that are available on Windows or on many Linuxes are very handy. I would appreciate anything similar – a setting, a menu entry, or even an extra app or script.

The BetterTouchTool allows for setting keyboad shortcuts for Maximize Window Left and Maximize Window Right. However, that is not quite the same, since it does not make use of the proper split view.

So, is there a way to enter the split view with a keyboard shortcut?

BetterTouchTool (starting with version 1.22, currently available as alpha version) let's you assign gestures or keyboard shortcuts to trigger the native split screen.


How to migrate my Mac OS X application and data from MacBook Pro to Mac Mini? At my job I have just switched from Windows to a Mac. I already have a MacBook Pro with all the tools for software development set up.

I would like to skip the painful setup process at my work computer and just somehow "clone" my MacBook Pro installation to my new Mac Mini that I got at work - all the apps, settings, files etc.

Is it possible? What tool should I use?

As @Globalnomad says using the Migration Assistant is the easiest way as per the Apple reference . However you do not need the extra disk but connect them with a firewire cable see Apple knowledge base for firewire booting
The steps are given in the first reference in he section "Migrating using FireWire or ThunderBolt "

or if no Firewire cable - connect via Ethernet and use the section "Wireless (Wi-Fi) or Ethernet migration"  I suspect Wi-Fi might be a bit slow.


ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed In university I normally SSH into the computer sciences server. However today I keep getting the following error: ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host. SSHing with -v flags gives me the following.

OpenSSH_5.9p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8r 8 Feb 2011
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 20: Applying options for *
debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to ... [...] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug3: Incorrect RSA1 identifier
debug3: Could not load "~/.ssh/id_rsa" as a RSA1 public key
debug1: identity file ~/.ssh/id_rsa type 1
debug1: identity file ~/.ssh/id_rsa-cert type -1
debug1: identity file ~/.ssh/id_dsa type -1
debug1: identity file ~/.ssh/id_dsa-cert type -1
ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host

I've tried editing the hosts files but that won't help. Any suggestions?

I ran into this same exact issue. My system log reflected:

/var/empty must be owned by root and not group or world-writable

Going to Disk Utility > Macintosh HD > Repair Disk Permissions reset the permissions of /var/empty and solved the problem for me.


What does Terminal.app store in iCloud? I just noticed this. What does Terminal.app store in iCloud?

Terminal.app stores your preference options on iCloud (basically things like the font and background colours)

Specifically its a copy of
preference file "com.Apple.Terminal.plist" in Users/<yourusername>/Library/Preferences


Can't start Octave 3.8.0 in GUI mode I installed Octave 3.8.0 using homebrew. The Octave official FAQ says I can use --force-gui option to start octave with the GUI.

But when I use octave --force-gui command in the terminal, nothing happens differently. That is, Octave is still started in command-line interface.

How can I fix that?

I had a similar problem with Octave 4.0.0, when I installed it as hadi suggested I got this message:

The graphical user interface is disabled by default since it is still buggy on
OS X; use brew with the option --with-gui to enable it.

Octave was compiled with gnuplot; enable it via graphics_toolkit('gnuplot').
All graphics terminals can be used by setting the environment variable GNUTERM
in ~/.octaverc, and building gnuplot with the corresponding options.

setenv('GNUTERM','qt')    # Requiers QT; install gnuplot --with-qt
setenv('GNUTERM','x11')   # Requires XQuartz; install gnuplot --with-x11
setenv('GNUTERM','wxt')   # Requires wxmac; install gnuplot --with-wxmac
setenv('GNUTERM','aqua')  # Requires AquaTerm; install gnuplot --with-aquaterm

You may also set this variable from within Octave. For printing the cairo backend
is recommended, i.e., install gnuplot with --with-cairo, and use

print -dpdfcairo figure.pdf

When using the the qt or fltk toolkits then invisible figures do not work because
osmesa does currently not work with the Mac's OpenGL implementation. The usage of
gnuplot is recommened.

What worked for me was adding the --with-gui:

brew install octave --with-qt --with-fltk --with-gui

Or reinstalling:

brew reinstall octave --with-qt --with-fltk --with-gui


What does "Remove Alerts / Attachments / Reminders" mean in iCal? I'm subscribing to a Google calendar using the new, lovely, Corinthian leather iCal on Lion, and it's asking me if I want to remove alerts, attachments, and reminders:

What do these options mean?

Attachment removal should be obvious to most - but I have no good explanation for why Alerts and Reminders are called out distinctly when to iCal they are one and the same concept.

Removing attachments means you won't download any files attached to the event and have them stored locally within iCal (and on the file system). I suppose you could be safer, too if a calendar contained a malicious or malformed attachment.

Removing alerts / reminders means your mac won't interrupt you if warnings are set for a specific event (in relation to the start time). Leaving these enabled gives me great unease since reminders are very powerful on Mac OS X.

You can open arbitrary files (including presumably an attachment assuming you can guess my short name or if wildcards are not sanitized in the process of accepting an event), applications, schedule an email to be sent by your mac without user intervention. If the person who makes an event added an email reminder to a specific event, imagine a case where 30 people accept that meeting to their personal calendar. At the designated time, the email address that was supposed to get a mail from the initial event would instead get one email each from every machine that was running as the alarm moment passes.

I imagine several Apple engineers have thought this through to ensure that I can't start a file sharing service on someone else's machine though a calendar reminder. On the surface, you are allowing someone else to operate any file, script that is already on your mac as well as let them send their canned email on your behalf should you leave your mac running.


How do I stay logged in on Safari 12? Since upgrading to Safari 12, many sites that I could remain logged into for extended periods of time now aggressively log me out, often several times a day. Sometimes it even becomes difficult to successfully log back in again.

Sites where I have this issue include Amazon (both the store and AWS), SE sites, G Suite, Facebook, GitHub, and many other major sites. Typically logging in again requires reentering two-factor authentication, even if this has been disabled for Safari (with "don't ask again", or "trust"). Other sites (e.g., Wikipedia, The Guardian) have no trouble keeping me logged in, even with ad blockers fully enabled.

My Safari privacy settings are:

How do I stay logged in on Safari 12? What's changed or what do I need to change to get the old behavior back?

Update: macOS Catalina has resolved the issue for me.

The only workaround as of now is to use Safari Technology Preview. If you delete all Safari folders from your home directory, you can stay logged in to the first few websites you visit. After this initial period, it starts deleting cookies for all future websites.


How stop Macbook White to try to find a CD I have a very annoying problem. My old Mac Book White with OS X Lion try to find if there is a CD/DVD every X minutes.

The problem is because it cause a noise. If I put a CD/DVD inside it, from time to time it start to read the disk.

Maybe it happens because I share the CD/DVD device with network. This is annoying. I only want to check the disk when I try to read it.

How can I stop it?

One solution is unplug the ethernet cable. It worked now. But... There is another solution?

If you disable the Spotlight indexing (search) for the DVD it should stop pestering you with the message.


Need help using Homebrew 'Services' command I installed MongoDB using homebrew recently. A few articles on the web advise to start mongo using the following command,

brew services start mongo

But when I use this command, I get the following message,

Error: Unknown command: services

I tried searching about this problem online. But no luck so far. What could be the problem here? I installed homebrew as it was specified on their website. Why is this feature not working for me?

And the man page has no information regarding the 'services' command.

services was a "hidden" command in Homebrew. There were a bunch of them that weren't present in the brew help output. It has, as undocumented commands are wont to do, gone away in the official repository and has become an "external command" maintained in another add-on repository (in this case a gist as it is so simple).

You can install it in your Homebrew setup by running:

> curl -o /usr/local/bin/brew-services.rb https://gist.githubusercontent.com/lwe/766293/raw/75a7907004bbff0eb3b072d1d951be2cfe7e5020/brew-services.rb
> chmod +x /usr/local/bin/brew-services.rb
> brew services help
usage: [sudo] brew services [--help] <command> [<formula>]

Small wrapper around `launchctl` for supported formulas, commands available:
   cleanup Get rid of stale services and unused plists
   list    List all services managed by `brew services`
   restart Gracefully restart selected service
   start   Start selected service
   stop    Stop selected service

Options, sudo and paths:

  sudo   When run as root, operates on /Library/LaunchDaemons (run at boot!)
  Run at boot:  /Library/LaunchDaemons
  Run at login: /Users/ian/Library/LaunchAgents

Alternatively you can skip services and just make a plist file for it. For example, create ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.mongodb.mongod.plist with:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>org.mongodb.mongod</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/2.6.4/bin/mongod</string>
    <string>run</string>
    <string>--config</string>
    <string>/usr/local/Cellar/mongodb/2.6.4/mongod.conf</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>
  <false/>
  <key>UserName</key>
  <string>{your_username}</string>
  <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
  <string>/usr/local</string>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  <string>/usr/local/var/log/mongodb/output.log</string>
  <key>StandardOutPath</key>
  <string>/usr/local/var/log/mongodb/output.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Just change {your_username} to your actual username then run:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.mongodb.mongod.plist

to register the plist with launchd. You can now start and stop MongoDB with:

launchctl start org.mongodb.mongod
launchctl stop org.mongodb.mongod

Note, the above plist solution was taken from this excellent Stack Overflow answer.


Solder new RAM in a 2015 Retina MacBook Pro I know that the new rMBPs have no "user-serviceable" RAM. But is it possible to solder a new RAM chip onto a 2015 rMBP? Given that the technician doing this is able to install the new chip without damaging anything, would it work?

The short answer is yes (anything is possible), but is it feasible?

There's a ton of responses out there whether you can/cannot re-solder memory chips to Apple logic boards in an attempt to upgrade RAM.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation out there.  Basically, they all revolve around one of the following three themes:

It's extremely difficult/impossible
No idea how much memory can be addressed
Physical space to "add more chips"

Impossible and/or extremely difficult

Replacing a chip is actually quite an easy process if you have a BGA rework station and a little bit of practice.1 You actually don't need a significant amount of "electronic engineering" skill to remove a chip and replace it with another.   It doesn't need to go back to the factory as doing BGA rework doesn't damage the board.

Are you going to do this with a soldering iron/gun that you get from Radio Shack or your local electronics supply store?  No.

However, obtaining a BGA rework station is not out of the realm of possibility either.  A quick search on Amazon yields both infrared and hot air rework stations that vary in price from $150 to $6,000 depending on the the bells and whistles you want.  The key here is how accurately the rework station can deliver the heat necessary to flow the solder.

Because the heated air or infrared light is focused directly to the work piece, heat damage to the remainder of the board is mitigated

As for my personal experience, I have had GPU's replaced in Apple logic boards that weren't covered by Apple's GPU replacement program using this exact method and not only got a year's warranty on the work, but the logic boards lasted for years after.

So, can this work be done?  Yes.  Quite easily.

How much memory can be addressed?

There has been a lot of speculation as to how much memory a computer can address.  There has even been conjecture on the "additional (physical) space" required for the new chips.

First and foremost, the memory limit is primarily determined by the CPU. For example, on an original i7-920 CPU, the maximum amount of memory that can be addressed is 24GB of RAM.

If you notice, Intel states that it's determined by the "type of memory."  This is where the logic board comes into play. Depending on the type, the logic board and the memory modules available at the time may impose a limit less than what the CPU can address.

Haven't you ever noticed that everymac.com has tested higher configurations that what was technically specified by Apple?

This is because what was available at the time the product was released, higher density memory chips weren't generally available.  When they become available,  you can upgrade your Mac past the specified limit.

To see what your particular CPU can address, obtain the CPU identifier from your machine and get the specs from http://www.intel.com

Space to add more...

In the pre-soldered RAM days, when you wanted to upgrade your Mac with more RAM, were you stopped because there wasn't any more "real estate" on your logic board?  No.  You replaced the module(s) with larger ones.

Memory modules (of a particular family)2 only differ in density.  As for physical layout, pin out configuration, voltages, etc., they are identical.  So, using the example I linked with DigiKey, you could have 8 modules of 16M for 128M or 8 modules of 512M for 4G.  Same real estate, same configuration.

So, can you get "bigger" memory chips?  Yes.

Is all of this feasible?

Again, in the pre-soldered RAM days of Apple it was quite easy to upgrade your memory.  Now, unless you are willing to invest in a rework machine and put in some practice reworking a BGA chip you are going to have to send this out to be done by someone with experience.

I have sent many clients damaged logic boards to a firm in NYC that specializes in this type of work.  It usually costs between $350 and $500 depending on the severity and what parts are needed. Estimating that replacement memory chips would be around $200 and the work would be on the high end given that there are multiple chips to replace (say $450), you are looking at $650 to upgrade your memory.

A quick look on Apple's website tells me that to upgrade a MacBook Pro from 8GB to 16GB is only $200.

Bottom line:  Is this feasible?

Keep in mind, if you undertake this type of modification, you will void any warranty on your MacBook, if there is one still in effect.

So, we are left with a cost comparison:

(Est) $650 to upgrade your memory & void your warranty
$200 to get it from Apple and keep warranty in full effect.

No this is not feasible.  Period.

1 I actually did this work about 4 times a year, at the end of every fiscal quarter, when our company would go "all hands on deck" to the manufacturing and shipping departments to get as much product out the door as possible.  Normally, I worked in product management as a go between marketing and development.  However, for about a week every 3 months I was in the QA department re-flowing chips using a hot air rework station like the one referenced.  They gave me this job so the actual tech could spend time diagnosing the problem rather than spend time doing the mundane work of re-flowing a BGA.  I had about an hour or two of training and became quite proficient at it.

2 The memory shown here is for illustration purposes only.  It's not intended to be the specification for memory used in any Apple or other manufacturers' product.


Garbage when printing pdf exported from Pages I have an issue when printing pdf documents exported from Pages. The pdf looks fine in Preview but when printing, the printer (Xerox 3260 with latest drivers) just spits out almost empty pages with some garbage characters in the top. Printing directly from Pages works fine as well as printing pdf documents from other sources. Bug?

macOS Big Sur (11.1)
Pages 10.3.9
Printing over AirPrint

Printing out loads of blank pages (along with some random chars) usually means that the printer is taking in the incoming print job as raw data, rather than as a PostScript file to be interpreted.
Check the printer's manual for the name of the print queue to which the job should be sent (usually one of AUTO, PS, PCL or RAW -- so choose PS), or make sure it's configured to use PostScript as a higher priority than raw data.


What is the best way to sync iCloud with other syncing services? I have recently purchased an Windows Phone 7 (Nokia Lumia 900). I would like to use it alongside with all of my other Apple products. I have an iPhone 4S (I need 2 different phones for work), an iPad 3,an  iMac, and a Macbook Air. All the Apple Device are using iCloud to sync Mail, Contacts, and my Calendar.

I understand that the Windows 7 Phone doesn't sync with iCloud. I need to use other sync services like Google, Yahoo or Windows Live. I am alright with using those services, but I don't want to give up using iCloud either since all my other device are using it and it works perfectly for me. I want to find the best way to sync my iCloud content with any other sync services that are available for my Windows phone, so I can get all of my contacts and calendars into my Windows Phone, while not changing any sync options for my other Apple Devices.

Syncing iCloud Calendar and Google Calendar

You can sync your iCloud calendar to Google Calendar using https://icaltogcal.com. However, there are some limitations, most importantly:

This is a one way sync, meaning that it goes from iCloud to Google Calendar, but not the other way around.
Google Calendar only updates these 'subscribed' calendars 'even few hours' so you can't have them always instantly up to date everywhere.

n.b. I wrote a bit more about this here but this covers the highlights.

I am not aware of any services which allow you to do true two-way sync between iCloud and Google Calendar.

But before you do that, unless there is a specific reason that you have to use iCloud for calendars, you could very easily: export your iCloud calendars to .ics files {and then stop using iCloud… in fact, I would delete them from iCloud once you have the ics files backed up so you don't forget and start to put stuff in the wrong place}, import the .ics files to Google Calendar, and then access Google Calendar from your Macs, iOS devices, and Windows 7.

That seems like a much easier and better option than trying to sync calendars between iCloud and Google Calendar, which, quite frankly, isn't likely to happen.

Syncing iCloud Contacts and Google Contacts

It is possible to sync iCloud and Google Contacts. There are apps to do this available for the iPhone and Mac. However, to do this automatically requires that you have a Mac which is always on and connected to the Internet and to iCloud. (Perhaps your iMac would work?)

Once you have that, you can install Contacts Sync for Google Gmail (US$4) which will let you sync your contacts, and will keep them in sync for you.

Note that this is two-way sync between iCloud and Google Contacts, meaning that you can make changes anywhere and have them reflected in both services.

Disclaimer: while I do own this app, I haven't used it myself recently, so I can't vouch for it personally, but it seems to be well-supported and well-regarded. Make backups of your iCloud and Google Contacts before you use it, and I would recommend frequent checks to make sure that you are not getting a lot of duplicates, etc.

If you are going to do this, I recommend:

1) Download all of your Google Contacts to your iMac from Google.com

2) Download all of your iCloud Contacts to iMac from iCloud.com

3) Make backups of those contact files from iCloud and Google (email them to someone, put them on Dropbox, copy them to a USB drive, whatever… just make sure you have more than one copy).

4) Once you are sure that you have good backups of the contact files from Google and iCloud, delete all of your contacts from iCloud and from Google. Then sync all of your devices so that all of your devices have ZERO contacts on them.

5) Turn off iCloud syncing of contacts on your iMac (after it’s empty).

6) Merge your Google Contacts and your iCloud Contacts on your iMac.

7) Make a backup of your contacts (post-merge, pre-de-duplicating)

8) Run Contacts Cleaner ($5) which will alert you to duplicates and also to problems that you might face when syncing to Google*. I suggest running this weekly at first, and then at least monthly once you get it running and are confident with it.

(* = for example: Google Contacts only has one "name" field, and iCloud has a "First Name" and a "Last Name" field. Normally that works OK until you run into contacts with three (or more) names. In my experience, that almost never works well, even when iCloud is just syncing to iCloud, so I tend to put a "~" between two of the names. For example, if I had a contact "Jo Beth Williams" I would list her as "Jo~Beth Williams." You can use whatever punctuation that you like, but I like ~ because it’s unusual enough that if someone asks about it I can say "Sorry, I have to do that because computers are dumb, otherwise I end up with your name in my contacts as something like Jo Beth Beth Williams." I assume people with such names are used to this happening for most of their lives.)

9) Keep running Contacts Cleaner until it doesn't find any more problems.

10) Back a backup of your contacts (post-merge, post-de-duplicating).

11) Run Contacts Sync for Google Gmail and make sure it is syncing OK.

12) Once Google sync is running OK, turn iCloud syncing back on

But before you do that,, unless there is a specific reason that you have to use iCloud for contacts, there's an easier way: just use Google Contacts and don't use iCloud contacts. You can set this up on your Mac and iOS devices very easily now, as Google themselves describes here. If you decide to do that, I would recommend steps 1-10 as described above, but then:

11) Select all of your contacts (in the Contacts.app on Mac OS X) and export them to a vCard.

12) Upload those contacts to Google Contacts.

13) Delete them from your iMac's Contacts app.

14) Follow Google's instructions for setting this up on your Mac (essentially: go to Contacts.app » Preferences » Accounts and add your Google Account). Then do the same thing for your iOS devices.

The Moral of the Story is this...

If you insist on using iCloud and Google, you're entering a world of pain. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

iCloud isn't likely to work on Android or Windows [desktop or mobile] any time soon. Google's contacts and calendar work on Android, Windows, iOS, and Mac today. So rather than try to patch together some solution to sync two different systems together, you'd be much better off to just use one everywhere, and the one that you can use everywhere today is Google.

If you're not convinced by me, perhaps Lex Friedman's recent Macworld article will convince you: Can't trust this: Inconsistencies shake faith in Apple


How to reorganize Icon view After I delete and/or add files to a folder, the icon view is screwed up (see screenshot). How do I  reorganize it?

In Finder, you can just Control - click (hold down Control on the keyboard, then click the mouse / trackpad), and from the menu that pops up, select Cleanup By -> Name, or however you'd like to sort the items.


Is there a web browser for iOS that will allow me to change the user agent? I am using iOS 5 on an iPad and I'd like to be able to change the user agent. Is there a web browser that allows me to do this?

A list of iOS browsers which allow user agent switching:

iCab Mobile ($1.99)
Sleipnir Mobile (Free)
Web Captain ($2.99)
Lunascape (Free)


switch back to clang after installing gcc through Macports on Mavericks After I installed Macports (and after that I have installed several versions of gcc through Macports), whenever I type gcc, one of those gcc installed through Macports will be invoked.

Before I installed Macports, whenever I type gcc, clang that comes with XCode will be invoked. (not sure this is true)

Now I need to compile a 3rd-party package with clang, but I don't know how I should do.

My question is: now that Macports (w gcc48) has been installed, what should I do to switch back to the setting where gcc is linked to clang that comes with XCode?

If you want to avoid uninstalling or changing your PATH. Just run:

sudo port select --set gcc none

…and to re-enable it you run:

sudo port select --set gcc gcc5


How can I automatically tether on Macbook when I don't have wifi? Is there a way that I can detect that my mac does not have a wifi connection and automatically use my iPhone tethering without I have to go a select it from the menu?

The priority given by your Mac to the various connections are determined by the order of services listed in your Network settings. To view this:

Go to System Preferences > Network:

So the best way to achieve what you want is to use a USB connection for your iPhone tethering and then change the order as follows:

Click on the Cog/Gear icon (on the right of the minus '-' sign at bottom left)
Select Set Service Order...
In the Service Order window that appears, click and drag the Wi-Fi connection so it is at the top and then move your iPhone USB connection so that it’s second)
Click OK
Exit System Preferences

Now, if your Mac has no Wi-Fi connection it’ll go to the next one in your Service order to see if that’s available and so on.

Note: You don’t have to use a USB connection for your iPhone tethering, however I recommend this as it has the extra benefits of keeping your iPhone charged and ensures a stable connection.


Removing public beta failing Information:

Model Identifier: MacBookPro11,4
System Version: macOS 10.13.5 (17F77)
iOS 12

Read the first: How to remove iOS 12.0 Public Beta from iPhone 8 in order to restore archived iOS 11.4 backup?

I followed the instructions under "Problem Solved", but to no avail. I put my phone into recovery mode  > given the option to restore, which I did.

Unlike with other posts (e.g., https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/iosapps/downgrade-ios-12-beta-3522302/ - I originally followed this one), I was not given the option to chose a backup or completely restore. Instead, it just booted up into 12 and asked me again if I wanted to install an update to connect to my computer. I don't even have the option to restore my phone to a clean backup.

Other thoughts:

I deleted the beta profile
I might not have backups from before 12, but then I still should be
able to just get rid of it.

you can get a recovery iOS on the development page:

https://developer.apple.com/download/

just sign in with your appleID download the recovery image and follow this introductions:

https://wccftech.com/downgrade-ios-114-to-ios-113/

the tutorial is for iOS 11 but it's the same for iOS 12.

Please make a backup before doing this!

Edit:

at https://developer.apple.com/download/ please log in with your appleID. after that you'll see a download list:

click on see all at the entry iOS Restore Images.
You'll see another list:

Download the restore Image for your iPhone.


MacBook Air 2015 MagSafe charger is too hot to touch In the last couple of weeks, I've noticed my charger connector (the part which connects to Mac) is too hot to touch and also there are some pins a bit burnt (it is happening slowly but getting visibly worse). Charging ability is unchanged but I really like this machine, otherwise, it is working fine.
I have tried to clean the patches. It is extremely hot only when not fully charged when fully charged it is normal. What could I do? I guess it is not exactly harmless for the machine.

Those are definitely the “high voltage” pins, if you consider 18V DC “high voltage.”
I would recommend getting a new charger to minimize damage and/or down time.
There’s a small IC in that adapter that communicates with the Mac to identify it as having whatever wattage your charger is rated at. When components get hot, it’s because something failed and now too much current is flowing through something.
As bad as this sounds, your potential damage is limited.

charger may fail meaning you can no longer charge and you have to buy a new one. This is moot because you should be getting a new one anyway
may blow the DC-In board. The good news is these vintage Macs has a separate board that interfaced with the MagSafe before sending power to the logic board. If the charger happens to burn this board up, it’s a cheap and easy fix to replace it

Both of these are more inconvenient than expensive. To be completely thorough, I must say it could damage your logic board, but that’s highly, highly unlikely. But, either way, you need to get a new adapter
And as adapters go, get the one with the highest wattage as you can always use a charger with wattage greater than or equal to what the device requires but not the other way around. So, since that’s a MagSafe 2 adapter, get the 85W charger.  If you happen to add another MagSafe Mac to your “stable” this charger will work regardless of the power requirements.


How can I modify a DVD image (ISO) and then burn a new DVD? I have a (legit) copy of Star Wars Battlefront 1 for the Play Station 2 (PS2). There are game mods available (different character skins etc) that I'd like to try. Apparently this can be done but I'm tearing my hair out now...

I can make an image of the original DVD using Disk Utility. It creates a CDR file. When I burn that to a DVD-R (again, using Disk Utility), I can get the PS2 to load the game (using Swap Magic to load the DVD-R, this PS2 is not modded -- Swap Magic "soft mods" it to load burned DVDs).

$ file SWBF1.iso
SWBF1.iso:                      UDF filesystem data (version 1.5) '1_01                           '
$

So having this much work all looks good but what I want to do now is modify some of the files before burning the DVD-R.

OSX won't let me edit the ISO (CDR) image. Apparently this is because ISO9660 is not really designed to allow modifications, so even using command line utilities (hdiutil) with -readwrite option won't allow me to modify the image.

So I suspect I need to extract the files onto the file system, add/modify the game data files for the game mod, then create a new ISO image and burn that? But this is not working -- I'm just creating coasters now. (The Mac can read the burned DVD but the PS2 doesn't recognise the disk as being valid). This for example, fails to give the desired result:

$ cd /path-to-extracted-files
$ hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name 1_01 -o SWBF1_mod.iso .
$ hdiutil burn SWBF1_mod.iso
$ file ../*.iso
../SWBF1.iso:                      UDF filesystem data (version 1.5) '1_01                           '
../SWBF1_mod.iso:                  data

How can I modify files on a DVD ISO image to make this work?

Thanks

[Edit: I originally mentioned PS2 in the title but that's a red herring really. This problem seems to exist for anyone wanting to modify an ISO image on OS X. See for example this old discussion of the same problem.]

I know of two techniques to modify readonly disk images - using either a sparse image or a shadow file.  Here is what to do using a shadow file:

Create an image of your cdr (which you have already done)- I will call this xxx.cdr.

Use hdiutil attach xxx.cdr -shadow which mounts the read-only xxx.cdr image along with a shadow file where all changes will kept.  So it behaves like a mounted read/write image.

Make your changes.

Unmount the disk - you will now have xxx.cdr and xxx.cdr.shadow

Now run:

hdiutil convert -format UDTO -o newxxx.cdr xxx.cdr -shadow

Then burn the newxxx.cdr to `DVD-R.

This is the method I have used to create a Snow Leopard image for use by Parallels or VMware. My posting in a MacRumors Thread is just part of a long discussion.

You may need to vary the above to suit your particular needs - I have no direct experience of working with PS2 images.


How to prevent Mail.app to update address book on its own? Now that the iCloud works (almost) flawlessly on both my MacBook Pro and iPhone I get annoyed by Mail.app on my Mac which seems to update contacts in my address book on its own, without my request or approval. I can't seem to find any setting to switch this behaviour off.

As clever as it may be (and it seems to be, as it does update correct contacts with valid information), I don't want it. Here's why... I prefer to keep some contacts in my address book with nicknames only. Since address book doesn't consider nickname as a name when sorting, contacts with no first/last name end up and the end of the address book as unnamed. What I do is I put the nickname as the first name. And that works flawlessly. But whenever I reply to an email from a person that exists in my address book as a first-name-is-nickname it updates the contact information with the last name based on the From/Reply-To header in the email.

How do I prevent this?

-- edit --

No solutions here so far so I've posted the same question on Apple Communities.

I believe the solution to the problem is to prevent Mail.app from tracking Previous Recipients. To permanently disable this feature you have to use this terminal command:

defaults write com.apple.mail SuppressAddressHistory -bool true

Once you've done that, make sure you delete your Previous Recipients history. To do this, in Mail.app, open up Previous Recipients window (Windows > Previous Recipients), select all existing records present there and hit "Remove From List".

From now on, your Address Book will not get updated by Mail.app.

Note, that this will change the way address autocompletion works in Mail.app. From now on only addresses present in your Address Book (and optionally in LDAP if configured) will be auto-completed. Previous Recipients which are not present in your Address Book will not be auto-completed.

The whole problem seems to be quite unusual for Apple standards. A hidden and undocumented sync feature, with no obvious way to disable.


If my monitor has no MacOS driver available, do I have any other options for adjusting overscan? | macbook 2017 I have a 2017 13" MacBook Pro -- I just setup my monitors, connected via two usb-c to hdmi dongles. One of my monitors works fine (ViewSonic VS2450), but the other extends the desktop beyond the edges of the monitor (HP 2509m).

I checked the HP site for my monitor, and there are only Windows drivers available. I didn't have to install any drivers for the ViewSonic monitor to work.

Do I have any other options to correct the overscan?

On the 2509m there is a button that says "Auto" and immediately underneath it says "OK".  When you press this button the display will throw up a text boxy that says "Auto-Adjustment in Progress" and that should correct your overscan issue.  I just discovered that by accident. :)


iOS 7 Hide Quoted Messages in a Mail Thread Sometimes we have very long email discussions at work and thus email threads grow -- email clients automatically append all previous replies in the thread to your newly created message. (Gmail web app does that for sure, and that is what most people at my workplace use.)

The problem is, when I open such a thread in the Mail app on my iPhone it shrinks the text so that it can only be read without squinting if I turn the phone into the landscape mode. That happens because the app tries to fit everything -- including all the quote levels -- onto the screen.

Can I somehow make the app zoom and reflow text or better hide those quoted emails? Gmail web app does that by default and offers you to click an ellipsis button ("...") to expand or collapse the quotes. I haven't find anything like in the Settings but maybe I'm just missing something. Anyway, I'd like to hear the opinions of the people who had encountered the same issue.

Well, I guess the best way would be perhaps to change settings so that quote level isn't increased automatically on each reply -- I've already done that on my iPhone but I would have a hard time convincing everyone to do so. Also I probably could install
Gmail app for iOS but I would like to stick with the standard iOS app for it suits me in all other ways and I don't want to clutter my system with several apps that do the same thing.

As of iOS 10, the default behavior is for quotes at the end to be hidden under a "See More" button.


How can I pad a file to make it a specific size? Is it possible to modify file size attribute in Terminal? seems my dash cam only recognizes video files with the exact size of 419,430,400 bytes. My video file is much smaller than this, but in order to play it on dashcam I have to make it match this number!

I have tried this:

xattr -w kMDItemFSSize "419430400" LOCA0122.avi

but didn't work.

An easy way is to open Terminal.app and use the following command:

dd if=/dev/zero bs=1 count=NUMBER >> yourfile

Here "yourfile" should be changed to the name of your file, including the full path to the file. "NUMBER" should be changed to the number of bytes, you want to add to the file.

So if you need the exact size to be 419,430,400 bytes and your file is 110,000,000 bytes, you would replace NUMBER with 309430400.


Why can't I download certain tracks I purchased in iTunes? Some months ago, I purchased a couple of tracks from iTunes. I purchased them on my iPad. Now I would like to transfer them to my desktop computer so I can then transfer them to an mp3 player. I signed in to iTunes on my desktop and went to all my Purchased music. Most of the tracks have the Cloud icon to download them. However those other two tracks don't have it, ie the Cloud icon is just not there. I'm assuming they won't be downloaded even if I click "Download All."

What can I do? I just want to transfer these two tracks to an mp3 player and I'm not sure how to do that from my iPad where the two tracks were originally downloaded. I was able to do so with most of the other tracks, but these two won't work.

Generally the iCloud symbol in your library means the file has yet to be downloaded, therefore it's absence also generally means that the file has been downloaded and is locally present. Try downloading the ones with iCloud symbols then doing your transfer.

If I am misinterpreting this and you can't transfer the files at all, whilst your iPad is connected there is a "Transfer Purchases" button under File > Devices in iTunes's menu bar to transfer files directly.


Questions about how Internet Sharing works A simple checkbox and a menu allow you to share your internet connection (no matter which interface you get it on) with any other interface (theoretically).
But, the guts of this is a little confusing. This page
http://www.manpagez.com/man/8/InternetSharing/
describes InternetSharing, a process which reads the property list com.apple.nat.plist stored in the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration.

First question:
Why is the AirPort singled out with its own special entry in the plist? I understand the entries for primary interface (the source) and the sharing devices (the targets) But who cares if AirPort is enabled in this plist if you are setting up a NAT between Ethernet and Bluetooth, for example?

Second question:
Why does it allow sharing of Ethernet connection with Ethernet connection and then give you a warning that your ISP will hate you? (It also allows Firewire with Firewire) It doesn't allow Bluetooth to Bluetooth or AirPort to AirPort; the menu entries for self-reference disappear.

Third question:
How do you change the default network when you share the Ethernet through your AirPort? InternetSharing configures the IP addresses for non-AirPort interfaces starting at 192.168.2.1 and the SharingNetworkNumberStart property allows you to change that. The AirPort interface by default is assigned 10.0.2.1. How to change?

Fourth question:
If you only have one Ethernet jack on a MacBook how could you possibly have more than one interface? InternetSharing configures the IP addresses for non-AirPort interfaces starting at 192.168.2.1, walking up by one class C network (subnet mask 255.255.255.0) for each subsequent interface, i.e. 192.168.3.1, 192.168.4.1, 192.168.5.1, and so on. Is this to address the possibility of a Mac Pro or an Xserve with multiple NICs?

[SOLVED]
1) the airport is not like the other interfaces
2) the hard connections are less likely to connect to themselves-you actually have to WIRE them and nobody would do that
3)edit the bootpd.plist
4) usb adapters
tnx. i solved the problem. even tho i turned off the firewall in the gui, ipfw was still running. sudo ipfw list gave the same list of rules regardless whether i had firewall on or off. dont know how i managed to achieve that!

I looked to noobproof and turned off the rule for blocking port 80. Now it works, at least for web surfing.

As @bmike said, Internet Sharing hides a lot of complexity behind a very simple interface, and some of your questions can't be answered authoritatively without interviewing some of the Apple engineers behind it.  But that won't stop me from taking a stab at it...

1) AirPort is different from the other interface types because in order to share over AirPort, your Mac has to actually create the wireless network (as opposed to just providing service over an existing ethernet, FireWire, etc connection).  This means that InternetSharing needs to have a bunch of info about how to create the wireless network: network name (SSID), channel, security, etc.

2) Resharing over the same ethernet interface is useful under some circumstances.  For example, on my home network my ISP provides limited number of static IP addresses for my use.  I run a Mac doing the equivalent of Internet Sharing (actually, I set up the daemons manually as @Spiff recommended) to reshare over the same ethernet.  Result: if I put a computer on my home ethernet and config it via DHCP, I get a private (behind-the-firewall) IP address from my virtually unlimited internal pool.  If I manually config the computer with one of the public IPs, I get full unfitered internet access, but use up one of my limited public IP pool.  Because they're both on the same network, "moving" a computer behind or in front of the firewall is just a simple configuration switch.

On the other hand, if you did this same trick on an ethernet network that already had a DHCP server, computers attaching to the network would randomly get configuration from one server or the other, leading to unpredictability, confusion, and hair-pulling.  It's definitely a use-only-if-you-know-what-you're-doing feature.  Fortunately, Internet Sharing is smart: if it detects another DHCP server on "its" private network, it shuts itself off to avoid trouble.

3) I don't know of a way to change the private IP range on an IS-created wireless network.  On the other hand, it shouldn't really matter, since the network is being created by Internet Sharing, and therefore it doesn't have to worry about conflicts with any existing network numbering.

4) You can add interfaces with Apple's USB Ethernet Adapter. Get some USB hubs, and pile them on!


How do I get readable system information at the command line? I'm using High Sierra. I often have to copy & paste system information in a email or in a forum message. For this reason, I'd like a simple and easy way to get info on my operating system and my hardware at the command line. Currently I use

$ system_profiler > foo.txt

and then I search into foo.txt for the information I need. However, the process is incredibly slow, and not very automatic. Is there a better way? I only need OS, SDD/RAM & chipset info - I couldn't care less about sound or Firewalls, for example.

You can check data types by listing them with system_profiler -listDataTypes and then use them to get specific info. For example to get info about chipset & RAM run system_profiler SPHardwareDataType.


From the command-line, how can I set all accounts to Available in all Messages.app Is there a scriptable way from the terminal I can tell Messages.app to take all my accounts online?

Executing this applescript all your account will be in available status:

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Messages"
        tell menu bar 1
            tell menu bar item "Messages"
                tell menu "Messages"
                    tell menu item "My Status"
                        tell menu "My Status"
                            click menu item "Available"
                        end tell
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

You can save it as ~/turn_available.scpt and execute in the terminal with this command:

osascript ~/turn_available.scpt


Where does OS X store my Adobe product keys? I know that Keychain holds my WiFi and other passwords, but I'm curious to know where my Adobe and Microsoft product keys for things like CS6 and Office live. I'm using OS X Mavericks.

There's no generic OS X place for storing product keys. It is up to each individual software supplier to decide where they want to store the products. Usually it is done in ordinary files stored in the file system.

For Microsoft they reside in /Library/Preferences/ under a name such as com.microsoft.office.licensing.plist.

Similarly for Adobe I think they are in /Library/Application Support/Adobe/<product>/<product> Registration

As a user you don't really need to know where it is stored as the programs handle product key management themselves.


How to remove specific local symbols using `strip` on macOS? Using Linux, I can remove specific local symbols using strip -N SYM.

However, using strip on macOS, I can only see options -X and -x that respectively, remove all local symbols that begin with L and ALL local symbols.

When it comes to global symbols, I can use the -R filename option to remove the global symbols in filename.

Why can't I remove a specific subset of local symbols only?

You can't remove a subset of local symbols only because the strip program doesn't support it. The reasoning behind is out of scope for AskDifferent, but I would assume that it is simply because the need to do haven't come up for Apple Engineers or third party software developers often enough.

If you still want to do this, it is relatively simple to enhance strip to work like the Linux version, where you can strip a single, named, local symbol. Download the code for strip here:

https://github.com/opensource-apple/cctools/blob/master/misc/strip.c

Then take a look at the code for the -X option, and make your own option that strips the symbol you want instead of the ones beginning with L.

Others have in past created more capable versions of strip. For example the "striptease" program here:

https://github.com/mackyle/striptease

You can find inspiration there for possible enhancements.


How to disable Chrome/Safari notifications on multiple devices I have a macbook, iPad and two iPhones (one is mine, second - my wife's). All of them are connected to the same iCloud/apple account. Now, after last updates (starting from iOS 9), once my wife open some page at Chrome/Safari on her iPhone, I receive notifications at my macbook (some app icon at the left side of Dock menu). Moreover, after installing 9.0.3 on iPhone, once I open some page at Chrome/Safari on my macbook, she receives the notification at her iPhone..

The question is - how can I disable it? Is there some option that disables only this feature without disconnecting the whole device from apple/iCloud account?

This sounds like Handoff. Handoff lets you continue an action you start on one device on a different one (e.g. browsing a webpage).

If not already, you have to disable it on every device.

On OS X:

Go to System Preferences > General
Deselect Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices

On iOS:

Go to Settings > General > Handoff & Suggested Apps
Turn off Handoff.


Find out if account is locked using terminal I need to detect if a user has locked their account on Catalina ( for example by typing an incorrect password x times). Any ideas how can I do this?

You can use pwpolicy getaccountpolicies -u usershortname - if the account is disabled it will return "Error: Credential verification failed because account is disabled."

For example:

[root@macOS] / #pwpolicy disableuser -u admin
Disabling account for user <admin>
[root@macOS] / #pwpolicy getaccountpolicies -u admin
Getting account policies for user <admin>
Error: Credential verification failed because account is disabled.
[root@macOS] / #pwpolicy enableuser -u admin
Enabling account for user <admin>
[root@macOS] / #pwpolicy getaccountpolicies -u admin
Getting account policies for user <admin>
[root@macOS] / #


iCloud data storage deletion Is there a way to permanently erase all the data on iCloud or some category, or once stored is the data always available on iCloud, with no option to delete permanently?

On iOS

You can go to Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage. You can then select an app that you wish to remove iCloud data for, tap Edit, then delete the data that you no longer need on iCloud.
(Some apps only have a Documents & Data section - this means that it will remove all data from iCloud, without any option of selecting individual files.)

On Mac

You can go to ~/Library/Mobile Documents and delete individual apps/files there.


Updating to macOS Sierra from OS X 10.6.8 My OS is 10.6.8.  Yosemite is no longer available in US.  But Sierra needs 10.7 to download. Help! I'm stuck in a loop!

And cannot install my new printer until this is resolved. :/

You can install El Capitan from the App Store (even on 10.6.8) for free, and then update to Sierra after completion.


Rsync mishap .. OS hdd is now full I attempted to use the command:

sudo rsync -vaE --progress /Volumes/1-mate /Volumes/Hired-Hand

.. to move the contents of one connected drive to another. This was going great until my boot drive filled all the way up (150mb free now).

The problem is that I mistyped the name of the destination.. should have been "HiredHand" NOT "Hired-Hand".

I am clueless where the copied files were placed and need to delete them so that I can use my computer again. Please help!

I am using macOS. Cannot locate any threads anywhere that deal with this issue.. other than someone 3 years ago on stack exchange saying "they found the files" and all is well now for them.

Thank you.

There is nothing inherently magically going on within /Volumes. So if you use rsync or something else to copy data into that folder, it will just do as told. If there is no folder with the target name already it will just create a new one on your main drive.

So

sudo rm -rf /Volumes/Hired-Hand

should remove the files/folders created by rsync. Just make sure you get the name right (and maybe eject the HiredHand drive first).


Visual bug in Dock after macOS Mojave installation After installing the macOS Mojave update, I get a strange visual bug in the Dock from time to time. It disappears when I click on something in the Dock or if I try to make a screenshot (that's why I had to capture the screenshot using camera instead of screenshots).

There is a horizontal line between the Mail and Calendar app icons and one in the middle of the Notes icon:

There is a horizontal line in the middle of the ForkLift icon:

Note: When installing the macOS Mojave update, my Mac got stuck on the analytics screen (like described here: Mojave install froze on "analytics", successful force reboot- but did it miss anything?) and I had to restart it manually. Maybe that has corrupted my installation?
I'm using macOS Mojave 10.14 on a 2014 MacBook Pro.
Does anyone know how I can fix this?
Edit:
It looks like that this bug isn't linked to specific icons on the Dock. It appears randomly and disappears when I click on the dock. It looks a bit like it only appears next to active apps most of the time. It's still present after several restarts of my MacBook.

Edit 2:
I was able to reproduce this bug. I appears every time I minimize a window. You can see it here:

You have to look closely to the Postman icon (the 6th from the left), the Mail icon (10th) and the Notes icon (12th) after I minimize Chrome. You can see the bright square until I click on the Chrome icon again.
Edit 3:
I updated my Mac to 10.14.2 and the bug still appears.

I have this exact problem while connected on an external monitor using a Macbook Pro 2017. The problem is the window animation, I experience this problem using the Scale Effect animation but it disappears as soon as I am using the Genie Effect. That's an acceptable workaround, still I wonder how this is not fixed on Apple's side.


After updating to MacOS Catalina MAMP doesn't work anymore with root on a network mount I have a network mount on /var/www (original on /Volumes/internet, connected to afp://nasbox/). This is the document root for my MAMP server (5.5). After upgrading to MacOS Catalina I get the following error:

  [Wed Oct 09 03:56:05 2019] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] (1)Operation not
  permitted: Can't open directory for index: /Volumes/internet/

I can connect to the network folder, I can see it's content if I check with a terminal, but MAMP doesn't seem to be able to read from it after the update. How can I make things work again?

*EDIT: I changed the DocumentRoot to a 'real' local folder (/Applications/MAMP/htdocs) and everything seems to be running as expected, which leads me to belief the mapping to the NAS is the problem. ls -l showed me I had all permissions on this drive (drwxrwxrwx)

you need to update mkcert on your system.

brew install mkcert --HEAD
mkcert -install

https://github.com/FiloSottile/mkcert/issues/174


Can the DocSets installed by Xcode be moved to an external disk? While attempting to clean up my Air's SSD, the estimable DaisyDisk showed me that 4 GB is being eaten up by Xcode DocSets. I like keeping my friends close and my SDK documentation closer, so I'd be happiest if I could maintain a copy of these DocSets on an external disk, so they're available offline but not cluttering my SSD.

The DocSets currently exist at ~/Library/Developer/Shared/Documentation/DocSets. Is it possible to move the .docset files themselves to a different location (perhaps symlinking to them) without breaking Xcode's doc viewer?

In Terminal, run

mv ~/Library/Developer/Shared/Documentation/DocSets /Volumes/HDNAME
ln -s /Volumes/HDNAME/DocSets ~/Library/Developer/Shared/Documentation/DocSets

This may take a few minutes to complete.


Finding (older?) applications for an iPod Touch 4G device (IOS 6.1.6) As a 4th generation iPod Touch user, I'm growing increasingly frustrated with the App Store; searching for applications turns up (thousands?) of results -- nearly all of which do not seem to support iOS 6.

Is there some trick to limiting search results to that which supports my hardware? Can I find older versions of applications that WOULD have worked on my iPod, back in 2012?

I did a search in the App Store using the search criteria "iOS 6" and a bunch of apps came up. I checked a few, and the ones I checked all said they were compatible with iOS 6.0 and later. If there is a certain type of app you're looking for, I would imagine using the search criteria "iOS 6 music," for example, may bring up music apps compatible with iOS 6.0.


Instaling app without AppStore, Jailbreak or any warranty void itp.? I have a question. I'm developing an app for iOS. I don't have a subscription of Apple Developer Account(I'm thinking about buying that but I'm hesitating because I don't know whether my app will work or/and be published).

Are there any reliable and legal ways for my friend to install it on his iPhone without jailbreak, AppStore or any warranty void itp.? Is Cydia Impactor safe under above conditions? Is Apple going to make trouble when they detect that an app was installed with this tool?

A person can deploy apps to their own iOS devices using Xcode without a developer account, and without breaking/modifying the OS.  All one needs is an Apple ID, and a Mac running a recent version of Xcode (7.3.1 or later).  This is an Apple approved method of installing apps (designed for educational purposes).  Xcode will generate the needed personal provisioning profiles automatically.

You can search for instructions online (here are a few examples: Xcode 7 develop for iOS without developer account and http://blog.ionicframework.com/deploying-to-a-device-without-an-apple-developer-account/ )

Apps installed using personal provisioning will be time limited (expire in somewhere around one week to one month).


How can I fix things when Catalina will not connect to smb shares? Based on proposed solutions at:
What causes some Network Drives using SMB no longer connect to macOS Catalina?

I have edited the /etc/nsmb.conf which worked for about seven (7) days, and now nothing.  I verified that the edited lines are intact after a system update from apple.

I am using Samba version 4.7.6.

On server side I set the smb.conf file in GLOBAL settings to include the line:

min protocol = SMB2
(I have also tried, min protocol = SMB3) different server, same result (no connection).

somewhat at wit's end.  May have to roll back from Catalina.

I can access the servers from android devices and Windows 10

SOLVED:   Kept working on this and deleted the existing servers from the list on the "Connect to Server" (FINDER, GO, CONNECT TO SERVER) list.  Then browsed for servers and VOILA, CONNECTED!!!!


MacBook Pro (13 inch, early 2015) crashing after use of Dual External Monitor recently I have had a rather odd issue concerning the MacBook Pro 13 inch (early 2015) where it would crash after being unused for periods of 60-80 min when connected with a DisplayPort Cable to an external 4K display. It was plugged in every instance where it would crash. Additionally, when I disconnected the DisplayPort Cable and opened up the MacBook to use its normal display, it showed a black screen. However, the trackpad appeared the show functionality, but using the screen and keyboard brightness buttons yielded no responses.

Any ideas as to why?

I am having similar issue on iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015), see: Displays randomly remain blank when waking up

An engineer was assigned to my case in Apple Support. I recommend getting support from Apple too.


Long time for resetting procedure in iPhone 6 I am resetting my iPhone 6 (Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings) and it is taking a very long time.

I have tried holding the middle button and on & off button but it just results in going back to the white screen with the black apple and the loading bar. The loading bar is loading a milimeter across and has not moved for over an hour!

What should I do?

Try holding down the Home Button and Power button for at least 10 seconds, once you see the Apple Logo (after the 10 seconds) let go.
If this doesn't work you might have to restore in DFU mode, otherwise try contacting Apple Support (if possible, to try to save you the trouble of a restore). If not, I can give instructions on Restoring in DFU mode.


MacBook freezes with three beeps My Feb-2011 MacBook Pro hangs with three beeps.

I noted the first strange thing a few days ago. The MacBook was in standby (as always) but very hot (not usual). I thought some process must have stopped the mac from switching to stand by and kept the processor busy, so no big deal.

Switched off, booted up normally. After a while the screen freezes and I hear three loud beaps (they repeat). This happend three or four times, every time it boots up as if nothing happened.

Than it happend at a boot. The grey start up screen is interspersed with terminal messages repeatedly sagin "8debugger called: ", three loud beeps. Turn off, turn on, everything normal again.

I googled the issue and found out that three beeps signal a RAM issue. However most sources agree on the fact that system diagnostics are only run at startup - so this should not happen in other modes of operation. Also I'm puzzled since it did not always hang with three beeps (I got a “regular“ kernel panic most recently, with that black PNG in the middle of the screen, telling me to reboot).

Also I did a memtest, which reported no errors. It may be worth noting that every time the problem occurred I was playing some flash video. system.log and kernel.log do not contain any error messages (at least none relating to a kernel panic).

What may be the cause of this problem? Is it possible that the RAM is damaged (without memtest reporting an error?) or simply loose somehow? In some forum I read it may be the logic board. Do you think that may cause the issue? What should I do next to identify the problem or better: solve it?

You might try removing part of your ram and booting up; then trying with the full amount or first one then the other. As for acting up/freezing during operation, I recall having this same behavior with a loose RAM stick once so IMO it would also be worth reseating them.
MEMTEST is not perfect BTW.


Is grounding important? Is the grounding wire forwarded to the Magsafe connector? There are these 2/3 pin adapters and it's so much easier to convert a 2 prong connector while travelling than the bulky three prong ones. I do know the dangers of not grounding an equipment that needs grounding but -- does the Macbook Pro need it?

The short answer is no.

If you remove the cable or "duck head" from your AC adapter, you'll see that there are only two prongs that actually make contact with the power cable. The ground wire doesn't make it to the adapter. You're safe to convert the cable to two prongs.


Mac Pro, Yosemite 10.10.2 Can't rename LV (Logical Volume) Name:

I cannot change LV Name neither in Finder or via Terminal. The name looks strange, thanks to my 2.5 years daughter. I have no idea how she changed the name, but it happened. If I try to rename simply in Finder, the message is that I should use either smaller number of symbols or avoid using commas et cetera. This message appears even if I try to use a single symbol like 'd' as a new name.

Try to rename it issuing this command on the terminal as a privileged user:

diskutil CoreStorage rename (uuid of the logical volume) NewName


How do I verify the checksum or hash of a downloaded file on the command line? If I have downloaded a file from the internet, and the source website has provided a checksum or hash (eg. SHA-256), how do I verify that the hash of the downloaded file matches the hash reported on the site?

For example, I’ve downloaded a file, and the website states that the SHA-256 hash for it is:

d9cd63f187db2daea1371289508c63a7a24c46316f15ac61f030a7d6ea423915

I do know how to create an SHA-256 hash of the downloaded file using:

shasum -a 256 /path/to/downloaded.pkg

However, I don’t want to do a manual, a.k.a. eyeball, check of the hash. Instead I want to compare the two hashes using a command like diff, preferably by executing a single command-line.

When you first calculate the sum of a file, it produces an output consisting of the sum, two spaces, and the name of the file that produced that sum. If you redirect that output to a file, you can later use the "-c" (for "check") option to automatically check every file listed, to see if the sum still matches.

So, create a text file called "checksum.txt" with one line:

d9cd63f187db2daea1371289508c63a7a24c46316f15ac61f030a7d6ea423915  downloaded.pkg

Then run the command:

shasum -a 256 -c checksum.txt

The command will calculate the sha-256 checksum of the file "downloaded.pkg", compare the result with the precomputed value, and tell you if it matched or not.

You might not even have to create the sum file yourself; most of the time, websites that provide checksums will let you download a text file that's already in the proper format.


Have touchbar show vol up, vol down, brightness up, brightness down buttons by default How can I make my touch bar ALWAYS show the Volume Down, Volume Up, Brightness Down, Brightness Up buttons?

I absolutely hate having to touch the button, look down at the slider, and try to drag it into the right position.

Is it possible for me just to show these controls by default (basically the old keyboard layout)?

Yes, you can go into System Preferences and set the default view for the Touch bar.

Open the System Preferences app.
Select the Keyboard option (third row, sixth item)
On the first tab (also called Keyboard), locate the dropdown for "Touch Bar shows" and choose "Expanded Control Strip".


What happens after OS X Internet Recovery without erasing disk I want to reinstall OS X Yosemite in my MacBook Pro 2015 without erasing the disk. What will I need to reinstall after the process is done? What files are not removed from my hard drive? What files ARE removed from disk?

Almost nothing is actually removed. What happens is the installer downloads a fresh and complete set of system files - basically the things that came with the Mac out of the factory minus some iLife apps like Garageband for instance.

The installer doesn't delete any user settings, user files and doesn't even delete apps you installed.

The process is designed to make the system work whether or not you have large or small changes to the system.


Copy extended attributes to new file (ffmpeg) I'm currently trying to decode some video files with ffmpeg on my computer but am not able to make ffmpeg copy the tags from the source file to the destination file. I read through the man page but there seems to be no way to extract the file tags from the source file or am I missing something?

I was able to extract the information via mdls but this isn't getting me anywhere. Also, I found about xattr and tried to apply extended attributes this way but the option -x seems to be removed and applying the attribute without that option doesn't work either.

I needed this too—also after running FFmpeg!—so I wrote a shell script to do it. It’s not very quick, and it won’t work if any individual attribute contains more than about 128 KB of data. (Behind the scenes, it’s encoding each attribute value in hexadecimal to make sure that binary data is copied correctly.) It worked fine for my needs, though.

Save this to a file called copy_xattrs:

#!/usr/bin/env zsh

if [[ $# -ne 2 ]]; then
    print >&2 "usage: copy_xattrs SOURCE_FILE TARGET_FILE"
    exit 1
fi

set -e

IFS=$'\n' attr_names=($(xattr "$1"))
for attr in $attr_names; do
    value=$(xattr -p -x "$attr" "$1" | tr -d " \n")
    xattr -w -x "$attr" "$value" "$2"
done

Then run chmod u+x copy_xattrs to make it executable. Now you can run copy_xattrs source target to copy all of the extended attributes from the file source to the file target.


Enable keyboard tweaks on apps which run as root I am using exKey and KeyShorcut Pro tweaks for customization of my iOS keyboard, on a jailbroken iPhone. I wanted to duplicate my Facebook app and used duplicatorstore.com to duplicate Facebook as it supports iOS 9.0.2. I installed 'Facebook 2' from this site.

When I try to use 'Facebook 2' app, the iOS keyboard is shown like Cydia, iFile (exKey and KeyShorcut Pro features are not shown) and I must write my Facebook password every time I open the duplicate Facebook app. I want to use KeyShorcut Pro tweak with this duplicate Facebook app because I don't want to always write my long Facebook password and want to set it to a key shortcut.

How can enable keyboard tweak features on a iOS app which runs as root?

Its not possible. Cydia Enable tweak already doing this. Just a problem. Not updated for 1.1.26 of Cydia version.


What is this field at the bottom of the app closing screen on my iPhone? I am using an iPhone X with iOS11.3.1 and today I wondered what this little field at the bottom of the app closing screen means. The English translation of the content would be "Arrival at work". If I touch it, Whatsapp opens.
Can you guys tell me how this functionality is called and also the purpose of it?

This is a Siri feature, part of Siri's proactive abilities to suggest apps. This will suggest apps you may wish to use right now based on factors, one of which can be location. Siri has determined that you are likely to want to use this app in your current location, so it is suggested on the recent apps list at the bottom in your screenshot.


Time Capsule. Drive is ok, cannot connect through wifi I am having a problem with my 2TB (I think Gen 2) TC.

It was connected directly to a cable modem and was working fine for over a year. A few days ago, I started to get connection errors (no IP) on both the Ethernet and wifi ports. The wired computers are connected to the TC through a hub.

I changed the connection to link to the net through a spare router, and changed the TC to "Bridge Mode".

All the connected (Ethernet) ports work ok. I have no WiFi mode though (from the TC).

I can see the TC and even do a Time Machine backup to it.

Before I plonk $300 on a new device, I would appreciate any troubleshooting tips..

Are you running the latest firmware and have you already tried resetting the TC to factory defaults?


Possible to run scripts on sleep and wake? MacBook Pro 2010 running OS X Lion.

Is it possible to run scripts on sleep and wake events?

My specific application is that I've got Dropbox-synced Truecrypt volumes that  I regularly use on both my MacBook and iMac. I rarely shut down my MBP since closing the lid is much faster and easier, but this means that I have to remember to dismount my Truecrypt volumes and let them sync back up before closing my MBP. It's trivial enough to script mounting/dismounting of them, but I'd like to go a step further and have these scripts run automatically.

SleepWatcher may be of use.

From the description: It can be used to execute a Unix command when the Mac or the display of the Mac goes to sleep mode or wakes up, after a given time without user interaction or when the user resumes activity after a break or when the power supply of a Mac notebook is attached or detached. It also can send the Mac to sleep mode or retrieve the time since last user activity.

It's working fine for me on 10.6.8. Various versions are available to support 10.1(!) thru 10.7


Is there a way to stop MS Word from automatically opening previously opened documents? I know there's probably a setting in preferences, but I need to be able to do it without Word being open.

The problem is one of my docx has become corrupt, so every time Word opens it immediately stops responding and I can't access preferences.

Is there a way to clear a cache or something somewhere so Word forgets about these files at startup?

From the macrumors forums you can hold shift when you launch a program to launch it without the resume previous window functionality.

  Alternatively, for those who want some resume functionality and don't
  want to globally disable it, you can hold Shift when you launch an
  application to bypass resume and start that app fresh.

If that doesnt work you can turn off the function globally by going to System Preferences -> General and unticking "Restore windows when quitting and reopening apps"

(you can also disable the function on a per-app basis using the instructions here)


Funcionality of macmini applications I just recently bought a mac-mini server and love it. It currently is being used in a small work environment for communication purposes and storage/backup use. However I have noticed that there is a wiki page application residing on the server and available for use. Are there any user guides out there for this application, Im not very familiar with it and want to learn how to use it more in depth.

Also, can this application serve more purpose than just displaying information in a wikipedia format? I'm basically looking for more functionality such as template creation and modification.

please see Apple documentation here: http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/wiki-server.html

and here: http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/resources/documentation.html

That should get you started.

Enjoy!


Is there someway to get a list of all missing photos from the photo library? I get the following error in Photos app on my Mac.

Missing File
Photos with unavailable original files cannot be opened.
The original photo “IMG_3076.JPG” is either offline or cannot be found. Click “Find Original” to reconnect.

I want to follow the instructions from how to avoid getting missing file error in photos, so my question now is, Is there some way to get all missing files from Photos library? It is going to be impossible to double click every photo to find out if it is missing. I need just the directories, i can place them back one by one and consolidate.

Short answer: you can use the script in this GitHub repo.

Long answer:
I had the same question, and it turns out that the photo library is backed by a SQLite database under the covers. On your machine, you can find the database file at <photo library root>/database/photos.db. There's a table called RKMaster, with a row for every photo, and a fileIsReference column that tells you whether the photo is "external" or not.

The script I linked to simply dumps the list of all external files, and then iterates through to check that each one exists on disk.

Note that the table also includes an isMissing column, but this is not good enough by itself.  It only tells you about the files that Photos "knows" are missing, because you tried to double-click them, or use them in some way.  If you simply delete a file from disk, but don't try to access it in Photos, the isMissing column will be false.


How to merge lecture notes from the web into a single PDF file I have some lecture notes which are located at:

www.mywebsite.com/Lecture1.pdf

www.mywebsite.com/Lecture2.pdf

etc

In Automator I currently have done the following:

Get specified URLs
Download URLs
Combine PDF pages
Open Finder Items

This works, however, I have to manually type in all the URLs in step 1. Is there a simple way to automate all of this (maybe using AppleScript?)? I want something like

$list = 0
for $i = 1; $i <= 25; $i++
add "www.mywebsite.com/Lecture" + (toString)$i + ".pdf" to $list
end for
return $list

Edit: I managed to write this code:

on run {input, parameters}
    set i to 1
    set myList to {}
    repeat while i is not 26
        set ur to "http://www.website.com/Lecture" & {i as text} & ".pdf"
        set myList to myList & ur
        set i to i + 1
    end repeat
    return myList
end run

But for some reason the lecture notes are not merged in the correct order. What I get is Lecture 1, Lecture 3, Lecture 2, Lecture 4 etc. I also removed Step 1 from above.

Edit2: It seems I had to put a sort between Step 2 and 3. Now it works!

Easiest Way:

Put all PDFs in one folder.

Select All and Open.

Make sure View -> Thumbnails is checked, so you can make sure everything is in correct order.

Click File -> Print.

In Print Window, click PDF -> Save as PDF.