How to uninstall "Munki Managed Software Center.app"? How to properly uninstall

mymac:~ meself$ brew doctor
Please note that these warnings are just used to help the Homebrew maintainers
with debugging if you file an issue. If everything you use Homebrew for is
working fine: please don't worry and just ignore them. Thanks!

Warning: "config" scripts exist outside your system or Homebrew directories.
`./configure` scripts often look for *-config scripts to determine if
software packages are installed, and what additional flags to use when
compiling and linking.

Having additional scripts in your path can confuse software installed via
Homebrew if the config script overrides a system or Homebrew provided
script of the same name. We found the following "config" scripts:

  /usr/local/munki/munkiwebadmin-config
mymac:~ meself$ locate munki
/Applications/Managed Software Center.app/Contents/Resources/MunkiStatus.app/Contents/Resources/munki.py
/Applications/Managed Software Center.app/Contents/Resources/MunkiStatus.app/Contents/Resources/munki.pyc
/Applications/Managed Software Center.app/Contents/Resources/munki.py
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.googlecode.munki.ManagedSoftwareCenter.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.googlecode.munki.MunkiStatus.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.googlecode.munki.managedsoftwareupdate-loginwindow.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.googlecode.munki.logouthelper.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.googlecode.munki.managedsoftwareupdate-check.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.googlecode.munki.managedsoftwareupdate-install.plist
/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.googlecode.munki.managedsoftwareupdate-manualcheck.plist
/private/etc/paths.d/munki
/private/var/db/BootCaches/85073A52-7A3F-4A63-B0B6-C992C2CAFBC6/app.com.googlecode.munki.ManagedSoftwareCenter.playlist
/private/var/db/receipts/com.googlecode.munki.admin.bom
/private/var/db/receipts/com.googlecode.munki.admin.plist
/private/var/db/receipts/com.googlecode.munki.app.bom
/private/var/db/receipts/com.googlecode.munki.app.plist
/private/var/db/receipts/com.googlecode.munki.core.bom
/private/var/db/receipts/com.googlecode.munki.core.plist
/private/var/db/receipts/com.googlecode.munki.launchd.bom
/private/var/db/receipts/com.googlecode.munki.launchd.plist
/private/var/db/receipts/com.googlecode.munki.munkiwebadmin-scripts.bom
/private/var/db/receipts/com.googlecode.munki.munkiwebadmin-scripts.plist
/usr/local/munki
/usr/local/munki/launchapp
/usr/local/munki/logouthelper
/usr/local/munki/makecatalogs
/usr/local/munki/makepkginfo
/usr/local/munki/managedsoftwareupdate
/usr/local/munki/manifestutil
/usr/local/munki/munkiimport
/usr/local/munki/munkilib
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/FoundationPlist.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/FoundationPlist.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/__init__.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/__init__.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/adobeutils.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/adobeutils.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/appleupdates.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/appleupdates.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/fetch.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/fetch.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/gurl.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/gurl.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/iconutils.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/installer.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/installer.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/keychain.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/keychain.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/launchd.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/launchd.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/munkicommon.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/munkicommon.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/munkistatus.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/munkistatus.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/removepackages.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/removepackages.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/updatecheck.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/updatecheck.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/utils.py
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/utils.pyc
/usr/local/munki/munkilib/version.plist
/usr/local/munki/munkiwebadmin-config
/usr/local/munki/postflight
/usr/local/munki/preflight
/usr/local/munki/ptyexec
/usr/local/munki/report_broken_client
/usr/local/munki/supervisor
mymac:~ meself$

The reason to uninstall it is that it is incompatible with Homebrew.

From: Removing Munki

Removing the client tools:

sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.googlecode.munki.*

sudo rm -rf "/Applications/Utilities/Managed Software Update.app"
#Munki 2 only:
sudo rm -rf "/Applications/Managed Software Center.app"

sudo rm -f /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.googlecode.munki.*
sudo rm -f /Library/LaunchAgents/com.googlecode.munki.*
sudo rm -rf "/Library/Managed Installs"
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/munki
sudo rm /etc/paths.d/munki

sudo pkgutil --forget com.googlecode.munki.admin
sudo pkgutil --forget com.googlecode.munki.app
sudo pkgutil --forget com.googlecode.munki.core
sudo pkgutil --forget com.googlecode.munki.launchd

# reset App Store to pull updates from default Apple servers
sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate CatalogURL

BTW This gets done in a Terminal.


High Sierra Airplay Problems I've been using a Mac running Sierra with an Airplay 2 capable Denon home cinemas amp for several months without any major problems.

After upgrading to High Sierra I've run into two VERY annoying issues:

Whenever I switch audio output from internal speaker to the Airplay amp and then hit play in a Youtube video or other video player iTunes starts instead of the video playing!  I have to quit iTunes and hit play again before it actually starts playing
Whenever playback starts all open network connections drop.

Does anybody know how to stop iTunes autostarting when I switch to Airplay as the output device, and how to stop the connections from dropping?  Neither of these things happened in Sierra.

EDIT: I tried getting a list of audio devices and AirPlay doesn't show up at all.

  system_profiler SPAudioDataType Audio:

Devices:

    Built-in Output:

      Default Output Device: Yes
      Default System Output Device: Yes
      Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
      Output Channels: 2
      Current SampleRate: 44100
      Transport: Built-in
      Output Source: Internal Speakers

    iShowU Audio Capture:

      Default Input Device: Yes
      Input Channels: 2
      Manufacturer: shinywhitebox ltd.
      Output Channels: 2
      Current SampleRate: 44100
      Transport: Unknown
      Input Source: Default
      Output Source: Default

    Stream/Record:

      Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
      Output Channels: 2
      Current SampleRate: 44100
      Transport: Unknown
      Output Source: Default

However "Denon AVR-6400H" shows up as an available output device in the audio prefs pane and in the icon menu options.

That's probably because High Sierra introduced AirPlay2 (before, you were running AirPlay). With AirPlay2, it's no more a system wide output that's being redirected to your remote player, but instead a per-application output. Technically speaking, it's now a userspace library that application must implement.

Since only iTunes supports AirPlay2 for now, I guess this is the reason why it's being launched.

As to how to disable this, please check if your player can disable its AirPlay2 announce or use iTunes...


Calendar Mac/iPhone timezone support question I am having trouble trying to understand Apple's Timezone Support features.

Taking the following scenario, can anyone explain to me what I can expect to happen with my calendar and alerts:

Timezone support is turned On and set to Central Time for iOS/iCloud.
iPhone > Settings > General > Date & Time > Set Automatically is On
Create an event on my iPhone for 6pm Eastern Time with a 1 Hour Before alert
Travel from Central Time to Eastern Time

What I expect to happen is that, while I am in Central Time, the event will be listed as 5pm, and then automatically change to 6pm when I travel to Eastern Time, alerting me at 5pm.

I am asking this because I have read a lot of articles which make it seem like turning on Timezone Support actually keeps your events listed at the Timezone for which support is set to (i.e. my 6pm Eastern Time event will always show up as 5pm not matter what timezone I travel to because my Timezone support is set to Central Time).

This is all very confusing and I have never fully understood Apple's design intentions with this feature. If anyone can explain to me what's going to happen with my calendar events I would really appreciate it.

Time Zone support allows you to view and set events in a time zone other than the one in which you are currently located.   The time in which you are viewing events can be set in the time-zone support preference.

Events created whilst time-zone support is off default to the native time-zone of the calendar which was set when it was created and turning time-zone support off lets the iPhone automatically shift the times of appointments to the local time.

A good explanation from apple of the time-zone support can be found here and here.

As for the design rationale, I believe that the confusing naming originates from the development of the feature in iCal.   When the feature was built into iCal iCal displayed events in the time-zone of the computer clock which was set manually.   Enabling time-zone support permitted "power users" to set the iCal time-zone independently of the computer clock.

If you want your events to act in the way you describe you must disable time-zone support and remember to enter the event times in the local time of the location in which you set it.   Alternatively you must enable time-zone support, change to Eastern Time, enter the time of the event and alert in Eastern time, then disable time-zone support.

One thing to note is that time zone support can be simultaniously enabled on your computer and disabled on your phone.   If your calendars are synced with iCal this allows you to use the computer to enter the event into the calendar and have it behave as you expect on your phone without mucking around in the settings all the time.


USB HDD can’t be opened because the original item can’t be found When I try to access my 2Tb Transcend StoreJet External Hard Drive in Finder, I always get the following error:

However, 16Gb USB Flash Drive can be accessed without any problems.

I cannot also see any obvious reasons for that looking at disk info:

Running First Aid with Disk Utility and restarting Finder didn't solve the issue.
masOS version is High Sierra 10.13.2. Also there is no problem to access this HDD_2Tb drive on Windows OS.

Here is the output from Terminal:

# ls -lt /Volumes/
total 320
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root      wheel          1 Dec 13 19:21 Macintosh HD -> /
drwxr-xr-x+ 3 root      wheel         96 Oct 23 22:40 Preboot
drwxrwxrwx  1 _unknown  _unknown  131072 Jan  1  1980 HDD_2Tb
drwxrwxrwx  1 _unknown  _unknown   32768 Jan  1  1980 USB_16Gb

Any suggestions are welcome.

Just go to Apple menu then go to force quit then relaunch the Finder. It worked for me.


Is it possible to use Time Machine with Airport Express + USB External Drive? I'm wondering if it's possible to connect an external USB drive to my Airport Express and then run Time Machine backups onto that? A bit like a makeshift Time Capsule.

No - airport express doesn't share drives, just printers.


Does turning off 'sync from iPhoto' remove my photos? If I've downloaded my photos onto iPhoto and turn off 'sync from iPhoto' on iTunes, will I loose any photos on iPhoto?

Turning off Sync iPhoto will remove any iPhoto images you put into your Photos Library on your phone, but will keep the images on your Mac.


Can I use my Mac's Bluetooth as a Personal Network? I'm writing this question on my iMac. It's connected to the internet via WiFi as my modem/router is in another room. My iMac has bluetooth running for my magic mouse and apple keyboard.

I've also got a PC here at home, running Windows 8 (I'm an MSDN subscriber) and it has a Bluetooth adapter and an ethernet port.

Currently, I can't connect the ethernet adapter because we're waiting for the wiring to be connected up.

Can the Windows PC share the Mac's WiFi internet connection via Bluetooth?

In System Preferences > Sharing, click "Internet Sharing" on the left. In the "Share your connection from" menu, choose "Wi-Fi," and then in the "To computers using" list, choose "Bluetooth PAN." Then check the box next to "Internet Sharing" in the list on the left to enable it.

(The options in the screenshot are only greyed out because you can't change them once Internet Sharing is on).


Catalina is in Turkish but some apps are in Russian I have a MBA and the language is in Turkish. However, some apps are in Russian. The only Russian-related thing on my system is a keyboard layout. Aside from that, env in terminal shows nothing Russian related. The latest app I came across having Russian in Aegisub. How can I stop this behaviour?

If your app includes an English localization, you can get this to display by going to System Preferences > Language and Region and making sure that English is the second item on the list of Preferred Languages, right after Turkish.  Input Sources preferences are irrelevant for your problem.


Can using a non Apple USB cable damage an iPhone? If I use a generic/aftermarket iPhone USB cable instead of the official Apple product, can it damage the iPhone?  A vendor at the mall said that high quality iPhone USB cables have a chip that regulates the charging current so it won't damage the device.  He said the cheaper cables don't have that capability. Doesn't sound very credible, so I wanted to double check.

They are generally safe to use.  And they don't have a chip (at least the ones I've used).

The charger itself may regulate the current, but the cable itself doesn't.  I've used a multitude of cables from a multitude of vendors over the years and I've never had a problem with damaging devices.   Build quality is a different matter.  Too cheap, and the cables inside can break.   Rare but does/can happen.


What is this blue arrow and how do I get rid of it? On macOS this arrow just appears, and overlays on top of any window.

How can I get rid of it?

The floating arrow can appear whilst using the Help menu to point out menu items in Finder, and in other apps. The example below is from Finder, but I tried this in Pages and Keynote and the function/appearance is the same.

In this screenshot, the arrow is white, not blue. The arrow is animated and moves around a bit to give a visual hint it is active. Does the blue arrow move around a little when it is visible?

I searched for the single letter 'k' at random, and it found three menu items with 'k' in the title. I chose 'Sort By > Kind' and it opened the View menu and popped up the arrow to point at the Kind menu item.

Looking at Activity Monitor when the arrow appears shows that the WindowServer process CPU% increases, and decreases when the arrow disappears.

As to why this is happening to you, I have no idea, but at least this may be a clue to find out what is happening.

(My 2019 MBA is running Mojave 10.14.6)


Power on and start a terminal automatically at a specified directory I can open another terminal from a terminal with this command:

open -a terminal

Also, I can start a terminal at a specified directory

open -a terminal ~/Desktop

I intend to make the computer do it automatically after I power on the machine. How do I accomplish this?

I would do this in two steps:

Open terminal on log-in
To do this, go to Apple menu > System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items and add terminal there.

Run a specific command when terminal is launched
Open Terminal, go to Settings > Profile > Shell and in the first box write the command that you want terminal to run. In your case something like cd ~/Desktop.


Encrypted sparsebundle password appears to be cached I use this command to mount an encrypted volume:

hdiutil mount ~/Documents/secret.sparsebundle/

On first use I'm prompted for a password. I then close it either by clicking 'eject' in finder or the matching hdiutil unmount command.

If I try and re-open it using the original command, I'm sometimes granted access without the password challenge. This appears to occur across terminal sessions and (overnight) screen locks.

Is this expected behaviour or a bug? How do I ensure that the passwords are not cached?

From the hdiutil man page:

unmount volume [-force]
            unmount a mounted volume without detaching any associated
            image.  Volume is a /dev entry or mountpoint.  NOTE: unmount
            does NOT detach any disk image associated with the volume.
            Images are attached and detached; volumes are mounted and
            unmounted.  hdiutil mountvol (or diskutil mount) will remount
            a volume that has been unmounted by hdiutil unmount.

The image encryption key isn't discarded until the image is detached, so after hdiutil unmount you'll be able to remount it without supplying the password. Solution: use hdiutil detach (or the eject button in Finder) instead.


What is the difference between OneDrive from AppStore and standalone installer Right now there two options for installing OneDrive:

Install from the AppStore
Download and install a standalone installer

What is the difference between the two if any? (but then why there are two options to install it?)

I could not find any explanation on Microsoft website.

The difference between the two is that the App Store version is "sandboxed" where as the standalone version is not.

"Sandboxing" means that the application is limited in what kind of resources on your computer it can access. This is the reason that when using the App Store version for the first time, you have to confirm the location of your OneDrive on your computer. This makes that folder available through the sandbox for OneDrive.

Sandboxing means that some features won't work on the App Store version - i.e. they're not available. However, Microsoft really isn't documenting or emphasising anywhere what those features might be. "Ordinary" home user usage of OneDrive is fully supported, but if you want to use other features, you might have to check that they work in the App Store version. For example take a look at this Microsoft guide:

https://support.office.com/da-dk/article/synkroniser-filer-med-onedrive-synkroniseringsklienten-på-mac-os-x-d11b9f29-00bb-4172-be39-997da46f913f

It explains how you can set up OneDrive to synchronize files with an enterprise Sharepoint installation. As the first step it tells you to uninstall the App Store version of OneDrive, and install the standalone version.

In short: If you want all features, use the standalone installer. If you want an easy, familiar installation process - use the App Store version.

Only Microsoft can say why they decided to have two different installation options. In general however, the most common reasons for doing that is supporting enterprise automated installations, and for supplying "familiar" and "easy to use" installation for home users.


iPhone was unable to locate for nearly five hours on find My Iphone app on a synced device. How can I find out when my Iphone was turned off, and it's location during the time it was turned off?

You can't.

The device reports its location to Find My iPhone when requested, not constantly.
The device can't send its location if its off.


HFS+ invalid number of allocation blocks Okay so a few days ago I wanted to install Ubuntu GNOME over regular Ubuntu and it gave me the option to automatically overwrite my Ubuntu installation (that I had on a separate partition from my OS X Yosemite). After I installed GNOME this way though, it appeared that the installer also removed my OS X partition.

Since then I've tried various things to recover my Mac partition, I've used TestDisk to find the sectors and gdisk to recreate the partition table (and partitions). The problem is that I can't mount these new partitions. I've tried fsck.hfsplus to repair the partition but it gives me the following error (booted from GNOME trial USB):

ubuntu-gnome@ubuntu-gnome:~$ sudo fsck.hfsplus /dev/sda2
** /dev/sda2
** Checking HFS Plus volume.
   Invalid number of allocation blocks
(4294967295, 0)
** Volume check failed.

Here are my testdisk results:

Here are the partitions I made in gdisk:

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              34          409633   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          411648      1164570455   555.1 GiB   AF00  Apple HFS/HFS+
   3      1165256704      1166528119   620.8 MiB   AF00  Apple HFS/HFS+
   4      1166528512      1182543855   7.6 GiB     8200  Linux swap
   5      1182543872      1465147391   134.8 GiB   8300  Linux filesystem

Here are the different outputs after booting to Internet Recovery Mode:

diskutil list:

-bash-3.2# diskutil list /dev/disk0
   #:                        TYPE NAME                    SIZE        IDENTIFIER
   0:       GUID_partition_scheme                         *750.2 GB   disk0
   1:                         EFI                          209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                   Apple_HFS                          596.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                   Apple_HFS                          651.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Linux Swap                          8.2 GB     disk0s4
   5: 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4                 144.7 GB   disk0s5
/dev/disk1
   #:                        TYPE NAME                    SIZE        IDENTIFIER
   0:      Apple_partition_scheme                         *1.2 GB     disk1
   1:         Apple_partition_map                          30.7 KB    disk1s1
   2:                   Apple_HFS Mac OS X Base System     1.2 GB     disk1s2

/dev/disk2-disk12 are part of the recovery system and irrelevant here

diskutil cs list:

No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk0:

-bash-3.2# gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: mediasize=750156374016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1465149168
gpt show: /dev/disk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Sec GPT at sector 1465149167
       start        size index contents
           0           1       PMBR
           1           1       Pri GPT header
           2          32       Pri GPT table
          34      409600     1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409634        2014
      411648  1164158808     2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  1164570456      686248
  1165256704     1271416     3 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  1166528120         392
  1166528512    16015344     4 GPT part - 0657FD6D-A4AB-43C4-84E5-0933C84B4F4F
  1182543856          16
  1182543872   282603520     5 GPT part - 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4
  1465147392        1743
  1465149135          32       Sec GPT table
  1465149167           1       Sec GPT header

In my opinion "TestDisk" hosed your GPT.

Please compare the TestDisk result with my disks. The disks in my example are equally sized, disk0 contains a CoreStorage partition and disk2 an old-style JHFS+ partition. I'm using two separate disks because it's unknown (at least to me) which formatting type (CS or JHFS+) was used originally.

The PMBR/GPT and the first three partitions (EFI/Macintosh HD/Recovery HD) should look like this, if you had a CoreStorage partition previously:

    root# gpt -r -vv show disk0
gpt show: disk0: mediasize=68719476736; sectorsize=512; blocks=134217728
gpt show: disk0: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 134217727
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  132538512      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  132948152    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

or like this, if you had a classical JHFS+ volume previously:

root# gpt -r -vv show disk2
gpt show: disk2: mediasize=68719476736; sectorsize=512; blocks=134217728
gpt show: disk2: PMBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk2: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk2: Sec GPT at sector 134217727
      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  132538512      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  132948152    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC

(Please consider that the mediasize, the blocks, the sector of the secondary GPT, the size of the 2nd volume and the start block of the 3rd volume are different to yours, because i use smaller example disks here.)

Your problem should be solved by rewriting the GPT once more.

Preparation:

Install a full vanilla system (Mavericks or Yosemite should work) on a thumb drive (or an external drive). A recovery system will not work. Boot to the thumb drive, download and install wxHexEditor. Enable the root user and log-in as root.

Hint: While working with wxHexEditor don't use copy and paste. Enter everything manually! You might accidentally write directly to your disk.

JHFS+ or CoreStorage partition?

First you have to determine, if you had a JHFS+ or CoreStorage partition at index number 2.

Open the Calculator. Open wxHexEditor. Check that you work in read-only mode ("Options" -> "File mode" -> "Read only"). In the menubar go to "Devices" -> "Open disk device" -> choose the appropriate diskNumber. Probably it's disk0. The disk should have further partitions (disk0s1 - disk0s5). Please try to arrange the wxHexEditor window like in the examples below with straight red lines.

Then hit the "Go to offset"-button (marked with the green circle) and enter 409640 exactly like in the picture below. Sometimes you have do that twice to jump to the correct sector. Re-check the correct sector by entering the offset (marked red) in the Calculator and divide it through 512.

The first 3 sectors of a CoreStorage partition look like this:

The first 3 sectors of a JHFS+ look like this:

If you get a fundamentally different picture stop here.

Where does the EFI partition start?

Hit the "Go to offset"-button and enter 40 exactly like in the picture below:

If you see the same entries like in the picture above (XEBSD  4.4...EFI...FAT32) this is the start sector of your EFI-Partition. If there are only zeros this could be valid too.

Where does the Recovery HD partition start?

That's probably the most difficult part because you have to find a string which is not very specific.
Jump almost to the end of your 2nd partition (in your case ~400 MB/781250 sectors less than 1164570456 = 1163789206)

Then enter "HFSJ" like in the picture below, search for this string two times and make notes of the different offsets:

You may have two really different results depending on the partition type:

Calculate the sector number of the first finding. In my example (see picture above) it's 68069452800/512=132948150.
Continue searching and calculate the sector of the second finding. In my case it was 68069454848/512=132948154 (no picture).
The difference between the two finding is 4 blocks (=2 KB).

This is typical for the boundary between a JHFS+ partition and the Recovery HD.
The Recovery HD starts then at the sector of the second finding - 2 (in my example 132948154-2=132948152).
Calculate the sector number of the first finding. In my example it was 67733904384/512=132292782 (no picture).
Continue searching and calculate the sector of the second finding. In my case it was 68069454848/512=132948154 (no picture).
The difference between the two findings is 655372 (~336 MB)

This is typical for the boundary between a CoreStorage partition and the Recovery HD.
The Recovery HD starts then at the sector of the second finding - 2 (in my example 132948154-2=132948152).

With those results you should be able to restore your GPT properly. Quit wxHexEditor. If you are asked to save changes don't save them!.

Rebuild a proper GPT

Here i assume the identifier of your main disk is disk0.
First you have to unmount your main disk:

diskutil umountDisk disk0

Check the partition layout then remove the first three partitions:

gpt -r -vv show /dev/disk0

gpt remove -i 3 disk0
gpt remove -i 2 disk0
gpt remove -i 1 disk0

Since the EFI and the Recovery HD usually have fixed sizes we can calculate the start and end block of your main volume.

First we rebuild the EFI with:

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

Then we calculate the size of the main volume: the start block is 409640.
The end block has been found in the section "Where does the Recovery HD partition start?": 1 less than the start block of the Recovery HD.
The size is then StartBlockOfRecoveryHD-409640.

If you've found a classical JHFS+ earlier the following command should fix partition 2:

gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s StartBlockOfRecoveryHD-409640 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

If you've found a CoreStorage partition earlier the following command should fix partition 2:

gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s StartBlockOfRecoveryHD-409640 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

To rebuild the Recovery HD enter:

gpt add -b StartBlockOfRecoveryHD -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk0

Remount disk0 with:

diskutil mountDisk disk0

Quit Terminal, start Disk Utility and check your main volume (probably Macintosh HD) for errors and try to repair them if necessary.
If you've found a CoreStorage partition earlier, you might have to reboot to your thumb drive before repairing the volumes with Disk Utility, because the CoreStorage logical volume might not be recognized/mounted properly. In your setup - 1 main disk and the thumb drive - the logical volume should be disk2.

I hope this solves your problems.

If you run into problems (e.g you can't find the proper starting sector of your Recovery HD), have doubts or questions immediately stop and contact me with a comment @klanomath!


multiple terminal launchers on the dock? I have a terminal shortcut on my dock which I use every day. Depending on my monitor setup (extra, 2 extra, etc.) to my Macbook Pro, I like to have a different launching scheme (either 4 windows or 5 windows).

Is there a way to have 2 (or more) terminal launchers on the dock, one which launches the "4 windows" setup and one which launches the "5 windows" setup?

Here's how you can switch Terminal's startup window group automatically:

defaults write com.apple.Terminal 'Startup Window Group' 'four-windows'
defaults write com.apple.Terminal 'Startup Window Group' 'five-windows'

(four-windows and five-windows should be replaced with the Terminal window group names.)

You can use AppleScript or Automator to make an app that does that then launches Terminal:

-- AppleScript version
do shell script "defaults write com.apple.Terminal 'Startup Window Group' 'four-windows'"
tell app "Terminal" to activate

Or you can use my linkapp script to make a new app bundle that will do the same thing, and the icon will stay there.

python linkapp.py /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app ./term-layout-4.app

Then when it gives you the wrapper script, edit it and add the defaults write line above the "$executable".

#!/usr/bin/env bash
executable="$(dirname "$0")/Terminal"

defaults write com.apple.Terminal 'Startup Window Group' 'four-windows'

"$executable"

You can then do the same with your other window group. One caveat with linkapp.py is that you can't run them both at the same time, because it will try to restore your windows.

If you want you can change the icon too (but if you don't use linkapp.py, the normal Terminal icon will be what shows up in your Dock and Command+Tab when it's running).


Obtain AppleTV system logs I have an Apple TV (4th generation). Since this is a true iOS device, I suppose it has system log like every Apple device. The device has some issues with waking up and I want to know the reason why it does. I hope this can be found in the logs.

My question is: is there any way to watch the log files? I know, that I can see the output in Xcode when I connect the Mac via USB and run Xcode, but this goes only for what's happening right now, and there is no way to scroll back to the time before I connected it. (I obviously need that.)

Open Xcode -> Window -> Devices and Simulators. Next, on your Apple TV, go to the Settings app, then Remote App and Devices. Your Apple TV should then automatically appear as an option in Xcode.


Can the Mac Mini Support a 4K Monitor? I'm assembling my workplace and I'm looking into Mac Mini MD387LL along with some 4k monitor like this one, Samsung 28-inch UHD.

Problem is that I'm not sure if the Mac Mini will support this humongous 4k resolution. Does anyone has rock solid information on that?

I can confirm 100% that you CAN in fact get 3840x2160 @30Hz 4K from a Late 2012 mini running 10.10.5 using only one MDP to DP cable. I'm writing this using a 2012 Mac mini (Intel HD4000 internal graphics card + 8G ram) with Dell P2815Q 4K monitor. How I achieved this: 1) Used Mini Displayport to Displayport cable that came with the monitor - MDP/thunderbolt from Mac Mini to DP on display. 2) Ran the Mac Pixel Clock Patch for Yosemite: https://code.google.com/p/mac-pixel-clock-patch/source/clones  3) Downloaded and configured SwitchResX, set the resolution, saved and rebooted. Hope the info helps. Enjoy!


Keynote Remote Broken on OS X 10.10.3 Update: I found a workaround. See below.

I have an iPhone 6 running iOS 8.3 and a rMBP running OS X 10.10.3.

Both machines have the latest version of Apple's Keynote app installed.

In the past, (i.e. on Mavericks) I could create an ad-hoc wireless network from my mac, connect to it using my iPhone, and control the presentation using Apple's Keynote app.

Unfortunately, with the advent of Yosemite, I find that the iOS Keynote app is now ridiculously flaky at connecting to Keynote through an ad-hoc network.

Any suggestions/fixes to this problem?

Thank you ahead of time!

If you think it's a discoveryd issue and 10.10.4 can't come too soon, might as well make it come now! Go to this Apple link and sign up for the public beta program, where you'll be given a link to download a piece of software that'll get the App Store to pick up beta updates. Take a backup of everything, install Beta Access Utility, and then install and enjoy a discoveryd-free Yosemite!


Why are some backups grey and others purple in Time Machine in Lion? I started Time Machine for the first time in Lion (you know, to make sure everything was working properly), and I noticed something odd – on the timeline on the right side of the screen, some backups were purple and others were grey. There wasn't an apparent difference between the purples and greys to me, but I feel like I'm missing something obvious.

I just recently noticed this, too, and discovered this Apple KB article: OS X Lion: About Time Machine's "local snapshots" on portable Macs

  When you enter the Time Machine browser (used to restore data), local
  snapshots will appear on the timeline along with regular backups
  distinguished by different colors. Gray tick marks represent local
  snapshots and pink tick marks represent backups stored on your
  external backup disk or Time Capsule. Note: Pink tick marks will be
  dimmed if your portable computer is not connected to your external
  backup disk or Time Capsule.

Emphasis mine.


iMac WiFi Hotspot not Working I have a late 2009 iMac running 10.12.5 that I am attempting to set up as a wifi hotspot. My current internet connection is DSL (ethernet).

I finally found a guide online how to actually do this and I follow all the instructions, including setting up a password at the end for security purposes. That went great and both my iPhones (5s and 7) recognized the network. However, when I tried to connect to the network, it said I either needed to restart my modem, router or contact my ISP. I have had this same issue previously when I have tried to make my iMac a hotspot (I had a computer exactly like this one before and had the same issue with it, the other one was running El Capitan though).

My question here is, what am I missing? Why isn't my iMac becoming a hotspot after I have gone through the set up process? Here is the link I used for the instructions to set the hotspot up.

You might have been sharing your connection from a wrong connection. For example, if you are connected via ethernet, and share it over wifi, you have to select the right ethernet port (some computers have more than one with USB or thunderbolt adapters).
Your network has some type of VPN set up, it prevents sharing. OR your ISP simply deployed hotspot request filtering technology. You either have to turn it off, hack it if you know how (looks like you don't), or just move on and not share your connection.
You hardware is broken. Nothing you can do there.
You encounter kext error. Need a full power down and restart.


The location of plist file with defaults How to know the location of plist that defaults read reads. For example, defaults read com.google.Keystone.Agent returns the information.

{
    ActivesInfo =     {
        "com.google.Chrome" =         {
            LastActiveDate = "2015-10-11 00:45:56 +0000";
            LastActivePingDate = "2015-10-11 07:00:00 +0000";
            LastRollCallPingDate = "2015-10-23 06:59:59 +0000";
        };
        "com.goo

Is there a way to know from what file the information is read?

I found that all the preferences are recorded in ~/Library/Preferences/ directory, and com.google.Keystone.Agent matches the plist file in the directory.


How to define a shortcut for OS X terminal using Shift-PageUp? Using the system settings, I tried to re-map the keyboard shortcut for previous and next page from Cmd-Pageup/Dn to Shift-Pageup/Dn. However, the system settings dialog for shortcuts does not seem to recognize the PageUp key or the combination of Shift-PageUp/Dn. Can I fix this?
Running on El Capitan, if that matters.

I think this may be a task for Karabiner, because you cannot natively create shortcuts using the Page Up/Down/Home/End Keys


Anyone with experience in hacking the codesigning on OS X? Apparently Mavericks doesn't allow any property list/configuration file to be used when it's been changed since release from Apple.(This opposed to previous versions of OS X, where you could do some editing and still run the app)

For those who don't have a clue what I'm talking about:

There is a file called "CodeResources" which holds hashes/code signatures of each and every file in an app's folder. Now there's this one trick I want to do, which involves editing the Info.plist in Boot Camp(utility to run Windows on another partition) so I can install Windows 8 from USB (I downloaded the iso via our college's site for free and I don't want to burn it to DVD, because I'm cheap/stubborn like that).

Once I modify /Applications/Utilities/Boot Camp Assistant.app/Contents
/Info.plist, Is it possible to codesign the app myself or otherwise get it to run?

Before OS X 10.10, you can run sudo codesign -fs - /Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app to re-sign the app with an ad-hoc signature.

In order to re-sign it in 10.10, you need to additionally specify the --deep command to re-sign bootcamp:

sudo codesign -fs - /Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app --deep

  '--deep' When signing a bundle, specifies that nested code content such as helpers, frameworks, and plug-ins, should be recursively signed
               in turn. Beware that all signing options you specify will apply, in turn, to such nested content.
               When verifying a bundle, specifies that any nested code content will be recursively verified as to its full content. By default,
               verification of nested content is limited to a shallow investigation that may not detect changes to the nested code.
               When displaying a signature, specifies that a list of directly nested code should be written to the display output. This lists only
               code directly nested within the subject; anything nested indirectly will require recursive application of the codesign command.


This Mac can't connect to iCloud because of a problem with myEmail popup I just restarted my mac. The internet here is spotty. I saw the popup below. I really could not care less if I can connect to iCloud at the moment of a particular startup or not. I just don't want popups. Is there any way I can get rid of it, permanently? Hopefully not by disabling iCloud; I'm sure there was a reason I enabled it; likely to get rid of some other popup somewhere.

Chris Haertel's answer to a different question also works here, as evidenced by an Apple Discussions thread:

In your user folder, go to ~/Library/Keychains/ (hold down the option key when clicking in the Go menu in Finder to show the Library folder).
In that folder, there are the regular keychains, plus some folders with monstrously long names like F2555809-AAC0-5CFA-BEF6-57BB56345BIUR or some such.
I deleted those folders only.

After restarting, you may need to log into iCloud again, but the persistent popup and "An unknown error occurred" messages should be gone for good.


Dimming chase on Applescript I would like to create an automated brightness/dimming chase on my Mac OS Yosemite 10.10.5 using Applescript,

I found this script>>

Dimmer: tell application "System Events"
        key code 107
    end tell

Brighter: tell application "System Events"
        key code 113
    end tell

What I would like to do now is to repeat that action and control the speed/timeframe of the dimming,

Any Applescript expert able to help on that?

Thanks!!!

Only because you asked... The code below is an example of using a repeat statement and delay commands with your code.

That said, I do not believe it is going to give you the desired results because while the events will trigger in code nonetheless they'll probably not be processed at the hardware level. (It doesn't on my system.)

You can change the numeric value in the repeat statement to suite your needs. The value is an integer, as in repeat integer [times].

The delay command shown in decimal seconds as in delay number being the number of seconds to delay. The number may be fractional, such as 0.5 to delay half a second.

repeat 3 times
    repeat 10 times
        tell application "System Events"
            key code 107
        end tell
        delay (0.1)
    end repeat
    repeat 10 times
        tell application "System Events"
            key code 113
        end tell
        delay (0.1)
    end repeat
end repeat


How to make a bootable, *usable* macOS USB key (NOT an installer)? 2011 iMac running Sierra
I would like to have a copy of macOS that I can actually boot from and use on a USB key, so that I can run Carbon Copy Cloner from it to make backups of any volume on the machine at any time.  I previously had a dedicated small partition on one of my drives for this purpose, but that drive died and going forward I would rather have this on a USB stick.
To be clear, I don't want a "bootable installer".  I want a fully functional bootable macOS on the stick, i.e. it boots into Finder, etc.  All the answers I've found related to this, are about creating bootable installers.
Can this be done and if so, how?

Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! can to clone to an external USB drive and it be bootable. (At the present moment they do not work on macOS Big Sur to make bootable clones.)
For versions of macOS prior to macOS Mojave, other options include:

Booting with a macOS USB Installer and then use Disk Utility to image the drive to another USB flash drive.

Creating a macOS USB Installer on one USB flash drive and actually installing macOS to another USB flash drive.

 (This option actually can be used on macOS Mojave and later.)


Debugging "The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail."? While trying to install a PKG installer package, I've run into an issue where it refuses to finish installing.
The PKG almost finishes, but ends with the following error, and does not finish installing.

The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.

The macOS version is the latest and a fresh install, and it is the latest version of the software, but I'm not particularly interested in my specific case, as I already chanced upon a workaround. I'm mostly interested in debugging why it fails to install.
Is there any way to debug a failed Installer package to find out anything about why it failed?
I tried checking Console, but didn't find anything. I also tried running Installer.app by the command line in the hopes it would give me something to go on.
/System/Library/CoreServices/Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/Installer

Unfortunately, it just repeated the message in Terminal.
2017-03-10 14:02:45.426 Installer[654:7354] The Installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail. Contact the software manufacturer for assistance.

I was hoping to be able to find out something more about why it is failing. Just telling a manufacture, "it just doesn't finish installing on my machine" really doesn't seem very productive if there is no way to figure out why.

Aha! It turns out the log for the installer can be found in the application menu.

Window -> Installer Log (⌘ + L)

You may need to set the log window to Show All Logs to see all the relevant information:


USB to serial Adapter not working after upgrade to El Capitan I have been using a TRENDnet TU-S9 USB to serial adapter for a couple years.

When I upgraded OSX from 10.10 Yosemite to 10.11 El Capitan, it stopped working.

I've tried reinstalling the driver, but that did not fix it.

I ran ioreg -p IOUSB and could still see the device, which is a good sign.

...
+-o USB-Serial Controller D@14200000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000533, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (6 ms), retain 11>
...

Unfortunately /dev does not contain tty.usbserial when my adapter is connected.

How do I get OSX to create /dev/tty.usbserial when I connect my adapter?

Prolific has a new driver out that works with El Cap: http://www.prolific.com.tw/US/ShowProduct.aspx?p_id=229&pcid=41


Why is there a generic folder icon for Library in the "Go" menu? Usually, when in the Go menu in Finder, there are icons for each item, for example

However, when I hold the option key and Library shows up, it has a generic folder icon instead of a court-like icon:

I have since upgraded to El Capitan, but it has been that way since Yosemite. The only thing I can think of that may have caused this is setting the ~/Library folder to nohidden using chflags, but setting it back to hidden does not fix the issue.

Is this new behavior(I doubt it), or a glitch on my part? How could I fix it?

Unfortunately, there is no Sidebar icon for the Library folder in Yosemite and El Capitan. The sidebar icons are used for the Go menu items as well.

The icon that was used in the past in the  (Mavericks and before), was (to my knowledge) ToolbarLibraryFolderIcon.icns, which does not exist anymore.

You can view the Sidebar icons that do exist in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources. They are named in the format Sidebar<FOLDERNAME>Folder.icns.

Interestingly, the Library folder icon (for the folder itself in Finder) does still exist, as LibraryFolderIcon.icns


Typing >console in username box—nothing shows up until cancelled When I type >console into the username box on the login screen, the computer seems to freeze for a very long time. Then I press ^C^C^C^C^D^C^D^D^D^C^D and eventually the computer unfreezes—but first, it flashes the session contents (showing the login console prompt, in what appears to be the same font as single user mode).

This is a fresh (or close enough) Mavericks install with

no third-party kernel extensions
no extra apps but the Yosemite installer (It is the same on Yosemite but I'm not allowed to ask about that :P)

on a Macbook Air, 2012, 10.9.3.

It appears that I'm having a problem very similar to the one in this question … but the console actually shows up for me, as soon as I exit.

Also, I am using the user list then selecting a name and pressing option ⌥+return ↩ but that doesn't seem to matter.

I was able to take a photo of what is going on:

Darwin/BSD (Hostname.local) (console)

login: █username>
Password:**** [IOBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport][SuspendDevice] -- Suspend -- suspendDeviceCallResult = 0x0000 (kIOReturnSuccess) -- 0xf400 ****

Password:
Password:
Login incorrect
login: █D ––that is a control-d

The block characters are cursors.

A session that I could actually log in to (but still not see my typing):

Darwin/BSD (Hostname.local) (console)

login: <username>
Password:
Last login: Tue Jun 24 08:06:36 on console
$ echo hello
hello
$
$
$ **** [IOBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport][SuspendDevice] -- Suspend -- suspendDeviceCallResult = 0x0000 (kIOReturnSuccess) -- 0xf400 ****

$
$ logout
█

This account is reserved for the graphical log in screen to shutter you to the command line environment / minimal text terminal. It’s not an actual account you can use to log in to the OS, just a signal to switch from one set of processes and interface to another.

That being said, I wonder if something is up and you have an actual account you are loggin in as, and not typing terminal a second time. Can you reproduce this on a clean install on an external USB drive? You might just need to reinstall the OS or examine the system log for errors at the time you try to log in.


Calculating a custom total for a column on iPad mini and Numbers How do I make a formula to total (sum) a column using Numbers on iOS, but exclude negative numbers?  (Only sum positive numbers)

Example:

+-------+
| LIST  |
+-------+
|      1|
|      2|
|      3|
|      0|
|     -1|
|     -2|
|     -3|
+-------+
|Total 6|
+-------+

Basically, how can I calculate a total but ignoring negative numbers in the column?

Summing a column with conditions can be done with the SUMIF() or SUMIFS functions.

  The SUMIF function is a worksheet function that adds all numbers in a range of cells based on one criteria (for example, is equal to 2000). To add numbers in a range based on multiple criteria, try the SUMIFS function.

For example:

=SUMIFS(A2:A10, A2:A10, “>0”)

Looks at all values greater than 0 and totals them up.

To use formulas and functions in Numbers for iOS:

Select the cell in which you wish to have the calculation.  (In the attached example, for instance, cell A11)
Type the equals sign character = or select circled equals sign icon.
Start typing the name of the function you wish to use, or tap the fx at the top left of the virtual keyboard to see a list of functions to choose from.

For more detailed information on how to use formulas and functions in Numbers for iOS, please see the official documentation here from Apple.


How can I use aliases in the Go to Folder dialog? Can I somewhere define aliases that I can use in the Go to Folder dialog?

More specifically, can I somehow setup Finder such that when I type Pictures it goes to the ~/Pictures directory?

There's no nice way to set up an alias in the Finder like you can in the Terminal, but you can set up text-expansion abbreviations in the Keyboard System Prefs' Text tab.

I prefer Typinator myself, as it is much more flexible and full-featured than the system prefs.

You could also roll-your-own utility using a script-runner utility and Applescript.


How to sync mail between PC and Mac I have both a Mac and a PC. On the PC I use Outlook.

My question is, how do I sync mail between the PC and Mac? Previously I was keeping the .pst file from the PC on an external HD so I could see it on all my PCs, but now with a Mac, I'm at loss as to what to do. I still plan to use both Mac and PC.

My first instinct is to suggest using IMAP and just keeping all your mail etc on the server. Then it is as simple as using Thunderbird or another Mac compatible mail client up to date with your email accounts.

However, I am assuming you have a reason to not go this route. An alternative would be to use Outlook for Mac if you're familiar with Outlook and wish to keep using it (and are okay with shelling out a little bit of money for it). I would like to believe that Microsoft kept compatibility with pst files alive in the transition.


What does resetting the PMU do? I am considering resetting the PMU on my Mac, but I'm am unsure what it exactly does. I know it resets date/time, but what other settings does it wipe?

This Apple support article has a link that explains what happens when the PMU is reset. Three things are reset:

Speaker volume
Screen resolution
Startup disk selection

After resetting NVRAM or PRAM you may need to reconfigure your settings for speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information.

and this list (may not apply to all Macs):

Status of AppleTalk
Serial Port Configuration and Port definition
Alarm clock setting
Application font
Serial printer location
Autokey rate
Autokey delay
Speaker volume
Attention (beep) sound
Double-click time
Caret blink time (insertion point rate)
Mouse scaling (mouse speed)
Startup disk
Menu blink count
Monitor depth
32-bit addressing
Virtual memory
RAM disk
Disk cache

Another support article provides additional information:

Some information stored in PRAM includes:

Display and video settings such as refresh rate, screen resolution, number of colors

Startup volume choice

Speaker volume

Recent kernel panic information, if any

DVD region setting
Note: Mac OS X stores your preselected DVD region choice in PRAM for easy access. Resetting PRAM does not allow you to change the DVD
region.


Contact Phone Numbers in Iphone 5s My contact list does not display the entire phone number. It displays (xxx)XX... or if the contact has been named, it will show part of the person's name and then ... How do I set the phone to show the entire number? I would like to easily see the number. Thank you.

You might want to reduce the font size. Go to Settings -> Display & Brightness -> Text Size and drag the slider to the left.

Unfortunately, this will change the font size in all apps that support dynamic font sizes but as far as I know, there’s no other option that would solve your problem.


Is it safe to quit kernel_task? I recently quit kernel_task because it was taking a lot of cpu time, when I was about to force quit it it says you will be logged out but I did not care but then after I force quit it I thought does it disrupt the system?

PS. Is quitting the kernel_task same as logging out?

Killing kernel_task is "killing" your entire system.

It's not the same as logging out; it's asking you to log out because everything will be going down.

From What Is kernel_task, and Why Is It Running on My Mac?

  A “kernel,” if you didn’t know, is at the core of any operating
  system, sitting between your CPU, memory, and other hardware and the
  software that you run. When your turn on your Mac, the kernel is the
  first thing that starts, and basically everything you do on your
  computer flows through the kernel at some point. Activity Monitor puts
  all of this varied activity under one banner: kernel_task.


What's this little white circle on my Mac's screen? Can anyone help me identify this little circle on the screen of my Mac?

The best way to catch the culprit is to quit running apps (both in Dock and Menu bar) one by one until the circle goes away.

As identified by OP by following the above mentioned approach, the circle is created by an app called MacID which along with along with it's companion iOS app Unlox lets one unlock their Mac using their iOS device.


How to take 9:41 am screenshots on an iOS Simulator and Device? I know that it's possible to record the screen on Yosemite and take screenshots that have 9:41 am.  Is this same functionality possible with the Simulator?

Starting with Xcode 11 beta 4, you can use the xcrun simctl command to set the time and battery in the Simulator.

xcrun simctl status_bar <device> override --time "9:41" \
    --batteryState charged --batteryLevel 100

Example of usage:

xcrun simctl status_bar "iPhone 11 Pro Max" override --time "9:41" \
    --batteryState charged --batteryLevel 100

The simulator needs to be run before executing the command.

See https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode_release_notes/xcode_11_beta_4_release_notes for more details.


Problem using F12 to get specific info on the screen I hope I will be able to properly give my question as I am not a native English speaker and I might be running into difficulty. But I am posting an image to make my problem straight forward.

I’m new to Mac. Had my Mac Book Pro for roughly 1 month. I ran into a specific problem that I just could not solve.

I’ll start out with how I solved the problem in Windows. And my question is how I should have done it in OSX Mavericks.

I had specific instructions from someone to visit a website and prepare a print screen.
So I went up on the website with Safari and wanted to start print screening as per my instructions. In order to make my print screen more legitimate - according to my instructions - I had to press F12 and on the lower part of the monitor I should have gotten a window where I could choose from different options. I had specific instructions what to look for in the window that popped up with the F12 key.

I looked through many websites but couldn’t find a solution to my problem as my F12 key didn’t function as it should have in Mac. I tried altering the function keys in the keyboard settings but that didn’t work either. So in the end I took out my old Windows laptop and solved the problem with that. Mind you the correct window that I needed for my specific purpose did not pop up in Firefox or Internet Explorer. I needed to download Google Chrome. (The window that popped up in Firefox and Explorer with the use of F12 did not give me the options I needed).

I hope someone has the patience to read through the above. Also please take a look at the attachment I provide. I would need to reach the same result on my Mac Book Pro as I did in Windows. I do not know what the pop up window is called. But I’m sure someone who is more computer literate than I am will definitely know.

In the attachment provided I am looking to get the window which is on the lower one third of the picture that has “Elements, Network, Sources, Timeline, Profiles” etc.

Thank you for your help.
Gabi

In Chrome, right-click anywhere on the page and select Inspect element. This will bring up that window on both Mac or Windows.

Alternatively,

For Windows:
Click on the menu (the little button on the top-right, with 3 orange horizontal lines in your screenshot). Click on Tools > Developer tools.
or
Click Ctrl+Shift+I

For Mac:
Click on View > Developer > Developer tools
or
Click command+option/alt+I

If you want the F keys to work more like Windows, follow these steps:

NOTE: After following these steps, I was still unable to bring up the Developer Tools using F12 on my Macbook.

Go to System Preferences. Click Keyboard. On the Keyboard tab, check Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys. You will now have to press the fn key to make the F keys do what they show in their pictures. For example, you will have to press fn+F11 and fn+F12 to turn up and down your speaker volume (or at least thats where the volume controls are on my Macbook).

In the same window, click on the Shortcuts tab. Uncheck any shortcuts that use F keys.

Your function keys should now behave more like Windows function keys, though not always exactly the same.


Upgrade to El Capitan? I'm on Yosemite at the moment I want to upgrade but I fear it will break my applications. I have a MacBook Pro (Late 2011) 15''. The last time I updated my Logic Pro 8 broke and I was forced to pay $200 for Logic Pro X (it is my theory that Apple did that on purpose) but either way, what is your suggestion on the Operating System nonsense?

I haven’t heard of any apps that work in 10.10 and don’t work in 10.11. Certainly not mainstream apps. Roaringapps.com shows no applications with a “doesn’t work” for 10.11


iPhone messaging problems Whenever I send my daughter a text, her replies back to me never appear by sound or notification that she has responded. The only way that I ever notice a reply is if I physically check my old messages, where I will find two of the same reply, the first one noted as coming from her phone, and the second, exact same reply noted as coming from my own phone number. We had tried deleting and resetting contact info but nothing seems to work. I don't seem to have a problem receiving texts from anyone else but her phone. She has an iphone 5s, I have an iphone 5c.  Any advice?

This happens when I send a message to myself (iMessage to the same Apple ID).

Are you logged into separate Apple IDs? Check by going to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive. Check both phones to see if they have the same Apple ID.

If they Do, here are instructions on fixing it:

You'll need to log out of iCloud and iMessage on one device
On this device, go to iCloud and create a new iCloud ID.
This keeps the ability to share purchases in iTunes & App Store, while changing the iCloud and iMessage IDs.


2FA codes not received on Messages in macOS I use Messages on macOS (both Catalina and now Big Sur) with iCloud syncing on.
I can receive and send messages from/on macOS. Except for 2FA (two-factor authentication) codes. These codes, from any service I've used, only arrive on my iPhone, and not on any of the Mac computers I'm logged in with iCloud.
I haven't figured out a way to fix this issue. 2FA codes used to work a while ago (I used the auto-completion feature when login into Twitter or GitHub from Safari on macOS), but at some point they stopped coming in.

Sounds like you are receiving/sending iMessages on your Mac, but not SMS (used for 2FA).
In your iPhone settings, go to “Messages”, and setup “Text Message Forwarding” to your Mac.
More info on Apple Support.


iTunes Match: download on mobile device I am considering buying and using iTunes Match. Is it possible to configure which songs will be available as a cached download on my mobile devices? It so, how? As a smart playlist or via "download me" clicks on the songs?

I use my iPhone to play songs while I commute and I do not want to waste gigabytes of mobile traffic on streaming songs.

One tap on a download icon will download an entire playlist of songs onto the local storage of the device. It doesn't matter if the playlist is a normal one or a smart playlist or a genius mix that you assemble on the go. You can also download albums, individual songs, everything by one artist, etc...

Furthermore, You can easily toggle between showing all songs and just the downloaded songs to check before a trip if you want to grab more songs for offline play. The toggle is also nice when you want cellular data on, but want to avoid accidentally streaming more music from the cloud.

I see no reason why worrying about data caps or cost would hold you back from getting match.


How to recover Mail, Calendar and Contact after Mavericks to Mountain Lion downgrade? I want to downgrade from Mavericks to ML. If I do this, how can I recover my emails, calendar and contacts after the downgrade?

Mail isn't stored on your Mac but on a server of your provider and will backup automatically after sining in again in Mail-App on ML

Export all your contacts by selecting all -> file -> export -> vCard
import the vCard on ML in Contacts file -> import

For Calender, you can select single colored event-collections and export them
file -> export-> export

After that copy all files you now made to an USB/external drive and use them again on ML

Usually all these things should also be stored in the cloud, so they won't be lost when downgrading, best check this before downgrading on iCloud.com


Switch between windows by name on OSX Is there a way to switch between windows by typing a portion of the target window's name? (like doing Spotlight search but for windows)

I frequently have many windows open, and CMD-Tab & friends, and graphical utilities like Witch really don't cut it.

I am looking for something analogous to the Emacs iswitch.

https://github.com/nate-parrott/Flashlight apparently used to do this (and much more) in prior versions of OSX.

I tried grgarside's solution but his link timed out for me.

Ended up on Packal and found Swift Window Switcher

It only requires you to use it w name instead of window name and it also populates with Safari tabs. It, too, requires Accessibility permissions.

Still requires Alfred, which is paid, but it seems like the best solution I could find.


OSX Mavericks: AppStore wring out my credit card number, but I haven't got any My problem is that I can't even update my system or download a free app from AppStore, because it demand my payment information. There isn't any None payment info statement, so looks like it's obligatory.

Question: How can I skip entering that info?

Apple has a support document describing this: How to create an Apple ID without credit card.


Can I schedule startup and shutdown with different settings for weekdays and weekends? Everyday, I usually start my Mac Mini at 16:00 and shutdown it at 2:00 using the Energy Saver schedule settings.

I would like to be able to set a different behavior on the Weekends starting Mac Mini at 9:00 for example. Do you know any way to achieve that (third party software, cron job, superuser trick)?

You don't need 3rd party software. The OS X utility pmset allows you to schedule sleep/wake taking day of week into effect. I haven't tested it, but it appears you cannot schedule multiple repeating events on different times. You'll need to use cron to complete this task.

from man pmset

Schedules the system to automatically wake from sleep on
July 4, 2009, at 8PM.

pmset schedule wake "07/04/09 20:00:00"

Schedules a repeating shutdown to occur each day, Tuesday through
Saturday, at 11AM.

pmset repeat shutdown TWRFS 11:00:00


How to determine what macport (if any) containing an specific file? For some reason looking for an macport package what containing an specific file, in this case looking for the file:

sapi/embed/php_embed.h (probably should be somewhere in the `/opt/local/include/...`)

and some php package should contains it.

I have installed the php55 macport but it doesn't contains the above file.

Unfortunately the port contents portname show only the content of already installed packages.

Is possible to show (or find somewhere) what files containing some macport packages without installing them - e.g. how to find what package i need to install to get the sapi/embed/php_embed.h file?

Answer from Stackoverflow:

  Unfortunately MacPorts currently (2.3.1) only supports that if you have the port installed, i.e. if you want to find out which port installed a file on your system. In this case, you can use port provides .

The answer also suggests to use a Linux distribution (e.g. Debian) to search for the file and choose a similar Macports port with the found Debian package name:

Here is a search engine for Debian: search package content

Example:
Result for ".../sapi/embed/php_embed.h":

File                                        Packages
/usr/include/php5/sapi/embed/php_embed.h    php5-dev


Leaving macbook plugged in and on 100% all the time So for the past few years, I've been under the impression that with any modern macbook (e.g., 2015 and later), it's better for the battery health to leave it plugged in as often as you can since the battery deteriorates based on cycle count, so if you leave it plugged in, it's not using the battery and thus not increasing the cycle count. Then I saw this article from last summer https://www.macworld.com/article/3564563/dont-keep-your-mac-laptop-charged-to-100-percent-all-the-time-heres-why.html that seems to contradict what I've seen suggested the past few years, which is recommending that your unplug your laptop daily and let it drop to 30-40%.
So I am confused on what advice to follow. Each dichotomous suggestion seems to have a basis, but which one is valid?

The Macworld article reflects best practice.  The battery is designed to be used.
I wouldn't be too concerned about dropping the charge to 30% every day.  Even dropping to 80% will help.  For a long healthy life the battery should be used.
Of course, if you keep it plugged in all the time you don't have to be worried about keeping the battery healthy!
Just to say it again: The battery is designed to be used.


How can I disable color management on OS X? I'm not sure if it's possible but I'd like to disable color management on OS X, or at least when working with Photoshop and Illustrator. The problem is that no matter what I do in both application when trying to set a color mode, a color profile or the Proof Color options, both apps are showing different colors for the same image.

Here is a screenshot with how it looks when I have both application windows with one part over the built-in monitor and the other over an external monitor.

Also, when I was tracking down the issue, I discovered that when dragging the windows from one monitor to the other, the colors look like if the window is still on the first monitor, but then change to how they look in the second monitor after I stop dragging the window. This makes me thing that is not a color calibration issue, but rather something with the way the app manage the color profile for that monitor.

So, is there a way to solve this problem? maybe disabling color management at all for the whole system, or only for some applications?

There are two problems.

Firstly: color management is an integral part of MacOS's graphics engine.

  "Active color management is a dynamic process, applied to every pixel
  in real time on every frame. For each pixel, a color match is performed
  from the source content's profile space to the destination space,
  possibly with an intermediate space or working space (requiring an
  additional color match) in between."

It cannot be turned off: every color value exists within a color profile space.

To complicate matters further, Adobe applications such as Photoshop and Illustrator have their own color management 'on top' of MacOS. They can define their own source profile spaces, and specify how color is handled from documents using the same or different working spaces.

It used to be possible to turn off Adobe's Color management in old versions, but this has not been the case for some time.

Using Creative Suite 6, I can save an RGB .psd file from Photoshop (with profile embedded) and open it in Illustrator, and the colors will be identical (both to my eye and using Digital Color Meter.app).

It's possible you may want to try trashing the pref files for these apps, and see if that helps.

However, if you are just getting different colors when viewing the same document on different displays, then you just need to calibrate the displays to be more similar.


atd stopped working on OS X 10.10.3 I'm using OS X Yosemite, just updated to 10.10.3 and the at command and related (atq, atrm etc) have stopped working. Has atd been disabled in the latest 10.10.3? If so how do I investigate and reenable the required permissions?

~$ atq
atq: cannot regain privs: Operation not permitted

As background, I have a job that runs daily (using launchd) and submits a list of jobs to atd. The list of jobs are related to events occurring that day so they change times daily. So I use atd to run these jobs based on the daily event times.

It has been working fine up until the recent upgrade to 10.10.3.

/usr/libexec/atrun is enabled and running fine, according to launchd.

That message suggests that you don't have the correct privileges to run atq. Try running it with sudo from the command line to see if that helps i.e.:

> atq
atq: cannot regain privs: Operation not permitted
> sudo atq
Password:
>


Weird searching results in Safari 8.0.2 I kept having some bizarre search results return, and I just noticed when I type something into the Safari omnibar, it's trying to search on the register.co.uk.

My default search engine is set to Google:

However, those results seem to be down below.

My first round of results are being sent to The Register.

I've been all through my settings and my preferences, I can't see anything which says to also search on The Register.

Is anyone else running into this issue?

This is the quick website search feature. You can disable it or remove the website: Link


Kernel panic recurring I keep getting the following kernel panic. Can anyone help me, please? As a test I have just change HDD to SSD and update memory from 2 GB to 8 GB. All said to be compatible with Mac. Upgraded OS X to Mountain Lion. Clean install from USB stick. Still the kernel panic happens a lot. What seems to be wrong?

Interval Since Last Panic Report:  1537 sec
Panics Since Last Report:          1

Tue May 21 21:49:37 2013
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff801d0b7e95): Kernel trap at 0xffffff80f8b8be80, type 14=page fault, registers:
CR0: 0x000000008001003b, CR2: 0xffffff80f8b8be80, CR3: 0x000000001fd46000, CR4: 0x0000000000000660
RAX: 0x0000000000b672b1, RBX: 0x0000011445eda085, RCX: 0xffffff802f6c2000, RDX: 0xffffff802f6ce800
RSP: 0xffffff80f8b8bdd8, RBP: 0x0000000000000000, RSI: 0x0000000000b672b1, RDI: 0x0000000000000000
R8:  0xffffff801d601ef0, R9:  0x7ffffffffffffffe, R10: 0x0000000000008611, R11: 0x00000000ffffff80
R12: 0x7fffffffffffffff, R13: 0x000003b8e5dab7ad, R14: 0xffffff80f8b5c148, R15: 0x0000000000000005
RFL: 0x0000000000010096, RIP: 0xffffff80f8b8be80, CS:  0x0000000000000008, SS:  0x0000000000000010
Fault CR2: 0xffffff80f8b8be80, Error code: 0x0000000000000011, Fault CPU: 0x0 Kernel NX fault

Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff80f8b8ba70 : 0xffffff801d01d626
Model: MacBookPro5,5, BootROM MBP55.00AC.B03, 2 processors, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.26 GHz, 8 GB, SMC 1.47f2
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, PCI, 256 MB
Memory Module: BANK 0/DIMM0, 4 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x859B, 0x435434473353313036374D2E4D3136464400
Memory Module: BANK 1/DIMM0, 4 GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz, 0x859B, 0x435434473353313036374D2E4D3136464400
AirPort: spairport_wireless_card_type_airport_extreme (0x14E4, 0x8D), Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.100.16)
Bluetooth: Version 4.1.3f3 11349, 2 service, 11 devices, 1 incoming serial ports
Network Service: Wi-Fi, AirPort, en1
Serial ATA Device: KINGSTON SH103S3120G, 120,03 GB
Serial ATA Device: HL-DT-ST DVDRW  GS23N
USB Device: Built-in iSight, apple_vendor_id, 0x8507, 0x24400000 / 2
USB Device: Internal Memory Card Reader, apple_vendor_id, 0x8403, 0x26500000 / 2
USB Device: Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad, apple_vendor_id, 0x0237, 0x04600000 / 3
USB Device: IR Receiver, apple_vendor_id, 0x8242, 0x04500000 / 2
USB Device: BRCM2046 Hub, 0x0a5c  (Broadcom Corp.), 0x4500, 0x06100000 / 2
USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller, apple_vendor_id, 0x8213, 0x06110000 / 3

Apple Support has a page on Kernel Panics, including troubleshooting repeated KPs.

In my experience, they most often have to do with hardware changes / external mounting and unmounting, but of course YMMV.


How can I open terminal windows in different desktops? I recently switched from Ubuntu to macOS, and I'm in the initial learning curve for adapting my workflow in Mac. In Ubuntu (and other Linux distributions) I can simply switch to any workspace (similar to mac mission control/multiple desktops) I want and I can open a new terminal instance in that workspace. In Ubuntu Unity, there is a nice way to see the terminal instances open in the current workspace only.

Is there a way for me to open terminal instances in specific desktops like 1 & 3 etc in macOS?

You can go to the new Space and right on the Terminal icon in Dock, then select New Window option there.

On macOS when you left click on an icon it activates the app and automatically switches to the Space where the app is opened.


Can I increase the minimum font size of text when reading html messages in Mail.app (in Mavericks and later)? I went searching for this answer myself today after upgrading from Lion to Yosemite. In earlier versions of Apple Mail, one could use an undocumented preference to set a minimum font size for reading messages:

defaults write com.apple.mail MinimumHTMLFontSize 12

I found several references lamenting that it no longer had any effect in Mavericks or Yosemite, and that it was no longer possible to affect font sizes when reading HTML messages.

Not satisfied, I dug into the mail.app bundle and found a (partial) solution myself and will post it below. If anyone has a better solution though, I'm all ears!

This is not exactly the same as the minimum font size setting that was previously available, but it can rectify the issue in most irritating cases. (Namely, email from outlook users)

Mail.app has a CSS resource file that it loads in the Webkit view used to render  messages. You can find it in the Mail.app bundle here:

/Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Resources/Message.css

You can add a simple CSS rule to improve your reading experience. (You could go crazy affecting styles in here too if you were so inclined...)

The biggest offender for tiny message text I've seen comes from using the size attribute on font tags. Adding this rule resolves that issue without being too opinionated about font sizes otherwise:

font[size="1"],
font[size="2"],
font[size="3"],
[style*="font-size:5px"],
[style*="font-size: 5px"],
[style*="font-size:6px"],
[style*="font-size: 6px"],
[style*="font-size:7px"],
[style*="font-size: 7px"],
[style*="font-size:8px"],
[style*="font-size: 8px"],
[style*="font-size:9px"],
[style*="font-size: 9px"],
[style*="font-size:10px"],
[style*="font-size: 10px"],
[style*="font-size:11px"],
[style*="font-size: 11px"],
[style*="font-size:small"],
[style*="font-size: small"],
[style*="font-size:x-small"],
[style*="font-size: x-small"],
[style*="font-size:xx-small"],
[style*="font-size: xx-small"] {
    font-size: inherit !important;
}

You need root privileges to edit this file. Open it in TextWrangler/BBEdit or another text editor that allows you to save with an admin password, or edit in the shell with sudo:

sudo echo -e "\nfont[size="1"],\nfont[size="2"],\nfont[size="3"] {\n    font-size: inherit !important;\n}" >> /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Resources/Message.css

If I come across further patterns to target, I'll update this answer to include them.

EDIT: I added attribute selectors to target font-size declarations, per @danw's suggestion. I expended his selectors to cover spaces in the style attribute's string, and to cover explicit pixel sizes below 12px.


Finder: why is a *.wmv movie a "document" and not a movie? Howto correct? See screen shot of my Finder settings

all folders and movies (flv, divx, mkv and mov) are correct categorized, only *.wmv file is a document. Should be movie.

Howto correct that?

> ls -l@ *.wmv
-rw-r--r--@ 1 john  staff  224665155 Jun 12 17:35 sweet-cat-imgur.wmv
        com.apple.quarantine           26

I tried to do this answer myself to make it easier to explain to you but that answer is over complex, I bet it is something really small.. But here it is:

https://superuser.com/a/371939

If this worked for you, let us know what you did, in a better way please! :)


Downloading old version of any app in iPhone 8? I want to download the old version of Musically app on my iPhone 8. Please let us know the steps to download the old version of the app. I can only download the latest version of apps from the app store. Can we download the older version in the new phone?

Once a new version of an app is released on the App Store, there is no way to access the older version. You may choose to not update to the newly released version, but once upgraded there is no going back.

This is true for any app on the App Store. A major purpose of releasing an update is to provide improved functionalities and fix issues with the previous version.


iTunes Backup security code not working I have a backup of my iPhone 5 on my computer and I had a security code that I know I used but as I just got a new iPhone 6S, the backup is not working as it is stating the security number I am putting in is wrong so is there a way around this or a way to reset the code of the backup that I no longer have the phone? I need this backup and I can't get into it....help! Thanks.

Unfortunately there is no way to access a password protected backup without having the correct password (passwords are there for a reason). You can check if you have an iCloud backup available from your iPhone 5, but as far as the iTunes backup you won't be able to access it until you enter the correct password.

Apple specifically mentions that "There is no way to recover your information or turn off Encrypt Backup if you lose or forget the password", so you just might be out of luck on this one.

This page might help, good luck.


Bluetooth device still paired after clean install I'm facing some issue with Bluetooth device(s) still paired to my Mac after a clean install.

I'm currently using a 2013 Macbook Pro on Sierra, which was previously used by one of my co-worker for the last year. He switched to another computer and after doing a clean install (internet recovery) he then gave it to me. (Mavericks was installed then I installed Sierra).

So, here it is: he has an iPhone which he had previously paired to the Macbook, along with a magic mouse which he gave to me.

To my big surprise, the other day I saw that in the bluetooth icon has changed, and that his iPhone and the mouse (which I had not used yet) was already paired to the Macbook (mark as connected) without asking anything !
I was even able to browse the files on his own phone...

I'm starting to think I'm facing some serious security issue, or we missed something in the clean install procedure but I did not see anything like that on any site nor anyone talking about this ( except maybe this unsolved old thread explaining a similar problem but the devices were not connected for this one...)

I just want to say that I already tried to:

delete the device from the bluetooth menu (holding Option key > [device name] > Delete but then it connected itself automatically some minutes later)
Shift + Option bluetooth menu > Debug > Reset bluetooth module (same result)
Cmd + Shift + P + R to reset NVRAM at boot (this seemed to work for several days, but then it connected automatically again today, still without asking anything!)

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Just to clarify, have you tried either of the following:

On the MacBook Pro go to System Preferences > Bluetooth and right-click on the device (his iPhone) and select Remove
On his iPhone, go to Settings > Bluetooth and tap on the 'info' icon on the right of your MacBook Pro  and then tap the Forget This Device option

Doing this should solve your issue. For good measure, I would do both.

If the above steps don't work, try resetting the iPhone settings. Your co-worker can do this on his iPhone by going to Settings > General > Reset > Reset All Settings. However, make sure he has his passcode and Wi-Fi passwords handy.

Finally, if you happen to not be using any Bluetooth devices with the MacBook, you can also turn it off totally from System Preferences > Bluetooth.


When I decompress a zip file on my Mac, the folder is nowhere to be found. Help! Normally when I open a zip file, the contents immediately open up in the form of a decompressed folder. For some reason, the unzipping process appears to be happening but then nothing opens. Any experience with this?
also - around the same time, I've started noticing that if I save something to my desktop, it's nowhere to be found.

Try relaunching Finder by

System Preferences -> Force Quit

Scroll down till you see Finder.

Click Relaunch


What does Holding Home Button on Power Off Screen do? When you hold the home button on the power off screen of an iDevice on the lockscreen or Springboard, what is it supposed to do?

If you continue to hold, you get Siri [iPhone 4S & up]; even from the power-down screen…

…otherwise, you trigger fingerprint security, which requires you to touch but not press the home button from the lock screen to unlock the device [iPhone 5S & up].


I lost 2.3 GB after unjailbreak my iPhone 4s I just unjailbreak my iPhone 4s to the original 5.1.1 version.
I notice the devise is now SUPER slow and also I noticed that the storqage capacity lost 2.3 GB !!

I have 16 GB iPhone 4s and iTune showing [Capacity 13.62 (.31 other) (13.4 free)]

The way I jaibreaked my iPhone is by
- downloading 5.1.1 from iTune
- enter the DFU mode, (power button and home button for 10 sec then only home button for 8 sec)
- click restore

How can I unjailbreak my devise in the correct way? (if I did it wrongly)
What is the reason for losing the storage?

Whether you're JailBroken or not, and regardless of if you've ever been, you'll never actually see the full 16GB on your iPhone. Part of that 0.31GB of "Other" that iTunes reports are the remnants of the JailBreak. Restore iOS again, and then "Set up as a new phone" when going through the activation process. You'll never gain back that 2.3GB, because that's what iOS is using to store the operating system. To be more detailed, the 13.62GB of capacity is only the capacity of the User's partition on /var/mobile/. The other 2.3GB is given to / (the System partition).


Does any macOS email client besides Outlook allow use of public shared folders in Exchange? I like some other email clients better than Outlook but none seems to be able to access the public shared folders in our Exchange server.
Apple Mail can not access Exchange public folders. There is no way to subscribe that I am aware of.

A quick web search throws up eM Client and its web page includes "Work with your emails (including Shared folders, Public folders, etc.)"
I expect there are others.


Mac OS X Version 10.6.8 I am trying to set up my printer HP ENVY 4520 to my computer and I am using a USB cord.
I have tried everything and I don't know where to go from here.  Is it possible for you to go step by step on how to hook up my printer to my computer?  I am not that familiar with computers but my friend owns a computer business and he is even stumped.  Is there an easy way to set it up.  PLEASE HELP!!!

First, please edit your post to reflect the question (Setting up HP 4520, or some such) rather than the version of macOS you have.

HP has downloadable drivers for your printer here. With HP printers just Google the make and model of the printer along with "driver" or "download" to find what you need.

There is a problem though as the earliest macOS version supported is 10.8. You might be able to hack the installer to run and install on your version of macOS but I would bet that you still wouldn't be able to print.

You may be out of luck with this printer and your current version of macOS.


Problem developing App using Xcode I am currently developing an application in Mac OS X Yosemite. The Ipad which is being used to run the application runs on iOS 9.3 which requires Xcode 7.3 which can only be installed in OS X EI Capitan. Is there any way to resolve this issue with out upgrading it to Capitan?

OS X Yosemite is not supporting XCode 7.3

Also is it recommended to downgrade ipad to 9.2.1
?? Will it work properly again?
Thank you.

In short, Apple want you to play their game - if you're going to participate, you have to play by their current rules, not last season's.
So, no, if you want the latest Xcode you need the OS that supports it.

Your workaround would be to set up a dual boot or VM.

Your second question has a similar answer, well covered here - Can I install any iOS version I wish by picking and choosing which firmware to restore?

You might have a week or so to downgrade before it's blocked, though you'll have to set up as new & lose any backup.


Can't unhide filename extensions I have a folder containing a bunch of jpeg files and currently all of the filename extensions (.jpg) are hidden.  How can I unhide all the extensions in this folder?

When I do a "Get Info" on any individual file, I can see that the "Hide extension" checkbox is checked but it's grayed out (i.e. disabled) so I can't change it.  I've gone to Finder's Advanced Preferences and checked "Show all filename extensions" but that hasn't made a difference.  Also, I do have read and write privileges on the files. How do I do this?

After doing some research I found the answer.  You have to run this command:

SetFile -a e <filename>

In effect, this says "Set the file extension attribute (-a e) so that the extension is not hidden.  If the extension were not hidden and you wanted to hide it, you would substitute "E" for "e".

To see all of a file's attributes, run this command:

GetFileInfo <filename>

A description of all the attributes can be found here.


Showing SENT messages in VIP mailbox Is there any way to modify the VIPs box to show all messages both TO and FROM a particular contact?

The VIP mailbox contains From e-mail only. I haven't found an official link from Apple stating this though.


iOS dictation duplicated My wife and I both run into a problem with some regularity on our iOS phones where the dictation (via the microphone button off stock iOS keyboard) will get duplicated. Often we dictate 10-25 words and suddenly it has inserted them all twice, as if we repeated what we had said a second time. Really annoying and have seen this for at least a year. We have seen it with both emails and texts. Appreciate any suggestions or a link to a public Radar ticket we can up-vote.

iOS version 12.4.1 currently, but has happened on earlier versions.

(There was a laughable suggestion on Apple support community that sounded like a Windows support call from 2002: "reboot phone, then reinstall iOS, and see if that fixes it.")

Surprisingly, I just figured it out!  I am using iPhone X 13.1.3 however, I think this would work on all iPhones and ios versions.
~ Go to settings
~Scroll down to Accessibility
~Scroll down to Voice Control and change it to OFF

I also had a microphone showing on my lock screen in the top left hand corner and this went away, as well as the duplicates when talking to text.  I tested it by switching it on and off to see if it fixed the problem and it did. Woohoo!  It was quite annoying.  I hope this helps :)


iOS 8 Safari in Iphone, appending to autocompleted url In iOS 8 Safari, when it autocompletes a url one begins to type, it would be useful if we could move the cursor to the end of the autocompleted url so we can append more path and file info.

Is it possible to append an autocompleted URL in Safari for iPhone ?

Backspace will return you to the point you were last typing.

Tap/hold will turn the autocomplete into 'real' text you can then edit - but you can't fill from halfway down the potential URL, it becomes a new full text string that you need to work with, as though you'd already typed it all.

So, for instance, typing app will turn into apple.com Tap/hold will 'freeze' that allowing you to then complete apple.com by typing /knowledgebase but if you wanted apple.net you would first have to delete the com before continuing.


Show menu bar on multiple screens without separate spaces I have two screens. I want:

Windows to be able to span multiple screens
A menu bar on both screens

Is that too much to ask? There is an option that affects both of these: "Displays have separate Spaces". With it on you get two menu bars but windows cannot span multiple screens. With it off you they can but you only get one menu bar. Is there a solution to this madness?

In short, no.

The menu either belongs to your primary screen, or if you have 'Displays have separate Spaces' on, then to the one currently active.

If you have different Spaces on different screens, there is no logic to control any window being able to span the two. What would happen if you changed Space on only one of them?

There is no third option, as far as I'm aware, even with 3rd party software.


New internal hard drive not spinning on MacBook Pro A1278 13", Mid-2012 The Hitachi 5K750-500 initially installed in the MacBook A1278 13", Mid-2012 failed. I bought a new hard drive (Seagate ST500LT012) but it was not detected by the Disk Utility.

I found that the hard drive is not spinning when installed in the MacBook. When I plug this same drive on a PC it works well and I can hear the disk rotation. I tried two other hard drives on the MacBook and I can hear the disk rotation.

Do you have an idea what's going on and what I can do?

Edit: I tried two more hard drives. Here's a summary:

Seagate ST500LT012 (SATA 3): Not even spinning a second.
Western Digital WD5000LPVX (SATA 3): Spinning for a minute then stops. Not detected in Disk Utility.
Seagate ST9750420AS (SATA 2): Spinning, detected.
Original Drive Hitachi 5K750-500 (SATA 2): Was working before being faulty.

Is this SATA 2 / SATA 3 related?

Edit 2 : Fixed by replacing the "always faulty on the Mid-2012 MacBook" SATA cable.

Surely not all those hard drives are faulty, so I'd look at the SATA controller or cable. Seems you may already have figured that out though.


Cannot change movement number or name of a classical piece in iTunes I just imported a classical CD into iTunes, and am trying to correct the information from Gracenote.  But when I select "use work and movement" it will only let me enter the work name.  "Movement _ of _ named ______" fields are all blank and will not accept focus or typing.

This seems to be a bug in 12.7.1.14—it apparently worked as expected in 12.5.  But maybe it's something I can fix? (instead of submit a report and get a stream of excuses from Apple).

Amadeus and exiftool will allow me to set tags without iTunes running, and iTunes will show the changes when launched.  Are there specific tags for these three fields that I can set?

Discovered that I can edit those fields in my library, but not in the import window.  And I can't get access to the file from the import window to change tags.  That is, “show in finder” is not on the context menu in that window.

Thus, I can make them correct in my library, but I can't send the corrections to Gracenote.

While fiddling with this I also discovered that if I select a track in the import window and change tags, the changes do not “stick” if the import of that track has already completed.  For example, select all of them and fix a typo in the album name: I end up with two albums, one with the wrong name and the first few tracks, and my correction on the other tracks.


Macbook Pro (mid-2012) battery not identified (shows X) after SSD install I recently upgraded my MacBook Pro (mid-2012) HDD to SSD.
Once SSD install was complete, my macbook did not start, however when plugged into power, it started booting, and worked normally.

The battery was in decent condition, and was always lasting 3+ hours.

I tried SMC reset, and PRAM reset few times in last few days, however no change in status. On removing the power adapter, it goes to sleep mode.

Very annoying that now onwards, I always have to plug in the power for doing any work.

Any potential hints ...

Based on what you’ve described, it sounds like you may have accidentally damaged something internal during your upgrade. Since Apple Hardware Test didn’t turn up anything, ordering a replacement battery is a reasonable next step. If that doesn’t work, then there must be damage to the logic board. You can get tested replacement boards for around $200 or so on eBay.


Microsoft keyboard requiring double capslock press after Sierra update I installed Sierra last night and my Microsoft Wireless Comfort keyboard suddenly started requiring me to press CapsLock two times in order for it to activate caps lock.

I plugged in an Apple keyboard to test, and that still works as intended.

Is there a setting that I'm missing?

Installing IntelliType for your Mircosoft Confort Keyboard Ergo 4000 on macOS X 10.11 (El Capitan) or later will not work. Microsoft didn't update their driver in a while (since 10.7) and didn't sign the extension as they should have done for it to work with the latest versions of macOS.

You could eventually deactivate the security features, but I don't think it worth taking this risk for a keyboard driver. The keyboard works fine without driver, only missing the "Favorites" buttons.

If you really want to customize the "Favorites" shortcut buttons, ControllerMate seems to be a great driver with a great mapping that makes them easily customizable. It is up-to-date and compatible with macOS 10.14 Mojave.


Finder says I have 20GB free. Why does Bootcamp say I don't have 10GB free? I'm trying to partition my Macbook Air's SSD for dual-boot with Boot Camp (which I've done several times before)... however, it's not seeing 10GB free, yet I have 20.56GB free as per Finder, and Disk Utility sees 10.9GB unused space.

What's going on?  How can I force this to work?  Can I use disk utility and image to an external drive and restore?  Would vastly prefer an easier method of course

You may be just reading the wrong figure in Disk Utility, have a look at the quote below from the apple discussion forums

  Disk Utility will show two different
  "free" readings, depending on where
  you look.

  Sounds odd, but they're for different
  purposes. The larger figure, which the
  Finder and other things will use, is
  the total free space available.

  The second is the amount of free space
  available for a new partition. It's
  shown when you select the top line for
  the drive, click the Partition tab,
  then select a partition, the
  "Available" amount may be smaller.

  This is because partitions, unlike
  folders, must occupy contiguous space
  on a disk. The data on your OSX
  partition is scattered over it, not
  all nicely packed together. That's
  normal, as you add, update, and delete
  files, not every nook and cranny is
  used again immediately.

  But whether there's 7 GB free or 18,
  that probably isn't enough to be
  adding a partition; it's probably too
  little for OSX to operate well.
  There's no "hard and fast" rule, but
  you should always have at least 10 GB
  or 10% of your OSX drive free; many
  folks say 15% or more.

  You could back up your drive (on two
  different HDs, to be safe), reformat
  it to 2 parttions, then restore the
  backup. But it's going to be very
  tight, and you'll likely have
  performance problems because of it.

  Try to delete anything you don't need,
  and/or offload stuff you don't use
  often and delete it.