Can I get system sound along with QuickTime Player screen recording? In Lion, Quicktime can do screen recordings. Is there a way to capture system audio also and then sync the two tracks into a movie with both system video out (The screen) and system audio out? I own WireTap Studio, which I just upgraded to work with Lion, if that helps. I'm fine using any of the tools that ship with the system and any software I already own (like WireTap) but would rather not go out and buy more software.

If you're OK with recording your mic audio and system audio pre-mixed, you could download the free utilities Soundflower and LineIn. Soundflower appears as both an input and output device, and echoes whatever it hears when you send it output to its input. This means that you can set your system output to Soundflower, as well as use LineIn to echo audio from your microphone to Soundflower, and use Soundflower as the audio input to your Quicktime recording.

There is one disadvantage to doing this though: because of latency, you don't want to hear yourself on a short delay as you're talking, which means that since you're piping both your computer's audio and your own audio into the same Soundflower device, you're not going to want to monitor it. Which, in turn, means you won't be able to hear the sounds your computer's making (but they will be recorded).

If you don't want them premixed, you can use the same setup minus the LineIn to record system audio on the QuickTime screen recording, and use a separate app like Audacity to record the audio from your microphone. You'll have to start the recordings separately and align them by hand in iMovie or whatever you're using to edit. If you're doing this and if you want to hear your system audio, open up SoundflowerBed and from the menu bar drop down select the audio device you want to send the Soundflower audio to.


Organizing bookmarks in Safari for Windows (Please tell me which site to post this on if this is the wrong one.)

My internet safety software is failing spectacularly with Chrome at the moment, and I have to uninstall it.  So I thought I'd try Safari, since that is supposedly compatible with the safety software.

I installed Safari 5.34.57.2 downloaded from File Hippo.  I exported my bookmarks from Chrome and imported them to Safari.  I would like the layout of bookmarks and bookmark folders to look approximately like it did in Chrome.

Chrome bookmarks bar:

Safari for Windows bookmarks bar:

I would like to get my bookmarks up there next to "Google Maps".  Ideally I would like a simple method involving highlighting and dragging groups of items, so I don't have to move things one at a time.  However, I would be reasonably happy if I could drag things individually.  Right now, I can't even do that.

I would also like to get rid of the awful black rectangle shown when I view all the bookmarks.  I was able to resize it slightly but it still takes up a lot of space.

If you go into preferences, you should be able to tell safari which bookmarks folder to use for the Favorites Bar.
I don't have a PC, but on Mac this setting is under General in Safari.
After going to each website, the black boxes should go away, and be replaced by screenshots of the website.

Go into Safari Settings.
There is an item called Favorites Bar.
You should be able to change the Fav Bar folder to the on you imported from Chrome.


where can I see prodcast downloads? I am new with this prodcast application.can anyone please tell me where can I see my downloaded prodcast?Can't I see it in default music app of iPhone?

When you open the podcasts app, you should see all the podcasts you have downloaded. See the image below.


How mount vhd on mac? I have some vhd files that are fixed size.

Does anyone know how to mount a fixed-size vhd on Macos?

On a Mac, to mount a vhd , it is safer to be of fixed size, using "/usr/bin/hdiutil" according to

"/usr/bin/hdiutil attach -imagekey diskimage-class=CRawDiskImage  /path_to_your_vhd"


Game Center in Mountain Lion won't let me log in I'm trying to log in to Game Center using my Apple ID but it just won't let me do it. Actually, nothing happens: no error messages, just nothing.

I think there is an issue, because I also get a pop-up window where I suppose a new registration could be done within the same program, but it's blank (Annulla means Cancel):

Apart from what is being suggested in this question about Chess over Game Center, why isn't the simple log in working? I could use the workaround but I want the standard way to work anyways.

I had a similar problem. For me, there was a verification screen that popped up behind the login screen. I could not see it at all! Not sure why I thought of it, but dragging the frontmost window out of the way showed me the verification screen, I did what needed to be done there, and on I went to Game Center to be underwhelmed.


Is it possible to use a "Westmere" Mac Pro to run virual machines with FreeNAS? I'm looking at a 2009 upgraded Mac Pro with 2 x 3.46 MHz "Westmere" processors with the intent to fill the drive bays (all six) with SATA drives and run FreeBSD-based FreeNAS.

Version 11 of FreeNAS has the ability to run virtual machines on-top of the NAS server. However, according to this thread on their forum, I might have difficulty doing this based on the requirement for these CPU attributes:

EPT
VT-x with unrestricted guest
32nm processors

Based on my research, it appears I should be OK but I wanted to confirm my findings.

Has anyone been able to get FreeNAS 11 running VMs or any other VMs to run on a Mac Pro with this CPU configuration (I'm not sure if being able to run Parallels is any indication of the ability to run VMs on FreeNAS).

If not, can anyone confirm that 3.46 MHz "Westmere" processors that are usually found in these Macs have these attributes?

In response to your question:

  Has anyone been able to get FreeNAS 11 running VMs or any other VMs to
  run on a Mac Pro with this CPU configuration (I'm not sure if being
  able to run Parallels is any indication of the ability to run VMs on
  FreeNAS).

I don't know why anyone would want to deploy a NAS solution for the purpose of creating a host to run VM but the ability of a machine to be able to host VMs is essentially dependent on two factors:

CPU capabilities
OS Support

CPU Support

As for the Westmere processors - they are fully capable of supporting Virtualization technology.1  From their webpage:

Advanced Technologies

  Intel® Turbo Boost Technology                                  1.0
  Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology                              Yes
  Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x)                        Yes
  Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d)       Yes
  Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT)                    Yes

O/S Support

FreeNAS is based on the FreeBSD operating system which uses the BSD-licensed bhyve Hypervisor.2  So, because it's supported in FreeBSD, FreeNAS which is based on FreeBSD supports virtualization.

TL;DR

Yes, FreeNAS 11 on your Westmere processors supports virtualization though I don't think you will find very many folks who have deployed FreeNAS for the purpose of virtualization as it primarily a storage centric product.

If your main goal here is to built a virtualization platform, find a OS and Hypervisor that fits your needs.  If you just want a good (free) OS that supports Virtualization go for FreeBSD.

1 Intel® Xeon® Processor E5620

2 FreeBSD as a Host with bhyve


Scheduled reminders question? Are scheduled reminders supposed to show up in Calendar.app if both are using icloud?

PS: iOS 7.0.4, OSX Mavericks

Calendar.app and Reminders.app are distincts apps. They do not share their data even when stored on the cloud.

So no, Calendar won't show you reminders.


Placing Day O in exact place of where default calendar is placed in Menu bar I am using Day-O in place of Mac's default clock in the menu bar. But now Day-O is placed in the left as shown below:-

Is there a way I can drag Day-O to the same location as default Mac Clock in Menu bar as shown below:-

I am using Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6

Holding down the ⌘ command key you can drag items on your menu bar in order to reposition them.


How to convert an exiting partition to RAID on OS X? I just replaced my optic drive from MacBook Pro with another 500gb HDD and I want to speedup one of the partitions.

The first drive has two partitions, named 106 and 107 and I want to convert one of them to use the second drive.

The problem is that disk utility does not let me add any of the partitions from the first disk to a RAID set.

What should I do? I don't want to reinstall everything.

Here is what I would like to obtain from my 2 500gb HDD:

one striped partition of 2*300GB, this would be used for speed (compilation)
rest of the free space other partitions,
still be able to have a partition with Windows on it, a real partition.

Enabling a RAID is destructive to the existing data using disk utility and native OS X tools.

You will need to have a temporary copy of the data to re-load it onto the new RAID volume.

I know several people that always set up their externals to be in a RAID so they can always mirror up existing drives after the fact to duplicate, snapshot or extend/stripe them after they have data on them.

Never been worth the hassle for me to set things up that way, but it works long term for many.


Only show local media files in iTunes in El Capitan I finally upgraded to El Capitan and now iTunes is a jumbled mess. I took a long time organizing my music library and I had iTunes to only show media stored on my Macbook.

Now every purchase I've ever made with my account is just thrown in with my carefully curated libraries creating duplicates and some weird cases triplicates. I don't know why I can't find this option anymore and I honestly don't want to deal with iCloud Music Library. All I want is just to show music/movies/tv shows that are only on my device.

Can someone please help me or is this another option Apple has so graciously decided for us?

You have to turn off Apple Music in the General settings of the iTunes app. Press Command , and uncheck the box.


Does "gpt remove" command delete files along with partition? Trying to recover a Mac OS partition Vol Type FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF I have a Macbook Pro with Big Sur on it, and I installed Linux Mint.  I then resized the encrypted Mac OS APFS partition in order to grant Linux more space.  After that I created another smaller Linux partition out of that new, smaller partition.
But now I've lost my "Macintosh HD" boot option in Boot Camp and can no longer boot into Mac OS, only Linux.  And my Mac OS APFS partition now says it has a Startup Volume Type of "FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF" (instead of the proper GUID).
My situation is almost identical to this question:

macOS partition startup Volume type FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF

I followed the instructions provided in that answer, but when I got to the step to run the "gpt remove" command (gpt remove -i 2 disk0), I stopped, worried that it might delete my files on that Mac OS APFS partition along with the partition.
Some of the posts I've read with similar solutions (the link above, as well as https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251412540 and OS volume shows as type 'FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFF' after attempting to delete some Linux partitions—cannot log in and How to fix broken GPT, GUID and unmountable, no type volumes?) all seem to suggest that they got their files back, but I just want to confirm that my files won't be deleted when I run the "gpt remove..." command.
Is this the case?  Will gpt remove -i 2 disk0 delete my files when it removes that partition, or is it doing something slightly different (ie. removing partition info / header / metadata, etc)?
Hopefully this makes sense.  I hope to be able to retain access to file files on that Mac OS APFS partition since it isn't backed up.
Please help!

The man page for the gpt clearly states the gpt remove command  does the following.

Partitions are removed by clearing the partition type.  No other information is changed.

In other words, the partition type is change to 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000.
Although, a change in a partition type will also cause the 3 CRC32 values to change in 4 places in the GPT.
The “gpt remove” command does not delete files along with partition. In other words, the volume stored in the partition remains unchanged by the the command.  Therefore, your files will not be deleted when your run the "gpt remove..." command. Entering gpt remove -i 2 disk0 will not delete your files when it removes that partition. The command does not removing any partition info / header / metadata, etc.
How the GPT Uses CRC32 Values
A 32 bit cyclic redundancy check (CRC32) computation is done by passing data through an algorithm that produces a 32 bit integer. The algorithm is designed to have a high probability of detecting any corruption that may exist in the data. This is accomplished by computing and storing the CRC32 value when the data can be assumed to be free of corruption. Later, if the data is run through the same algorithm and returns the same value, then the data is assumed to be error free.
The algorithm to compute CRC32 values for the GPT is the same as used by the command cksum -o 3. More information on this algorithm can be found in the man page for cksum. The man page can be viewed by entering the command given below.
man cksum

The GUID Partition Table (GPT) scheme consists of a header and table stored at the beginning and end of a drive. Each header contains offsets indicating where the other header resides. Therefore, both headers can not contain exactly the same values. On the other hand, the table stored at the beginning is exactly the same as the table stored at the end. After any desired changes are made to the GPT, new CRC32 values need to be computed for the tables and headers. Since the tables are identical, a new CRC32 value only needs to be computed for one table, however this value is stored in both headers. Since the headers are different, a new CRC32 value needs to be computed and stored for each header. Here, each header has a location to store its own CRC32 value. Therefore, 3 new CRC32 values are computed and used to update 2 places in each header for a total of 4 places.
References
GUID Partition Table
man gpt
man cksum


Is there a good reason for Photos to export TIFF? iPad offers two formats for photos, HEIC and JPEG.  If we import into Photos and export from there, the format (HEIC or JPEG) is preserved.  But if we "Edit in GraphicConverter," GraphicConverter gets TIFF.

Why?

HEIC and JPEG are both lossy formats. Which means, each time you change anything and save the file, the image looses in quality.

Photos and your iDevice usually avoid this by adding all edits as a separate file and leaving the original untouched. However, third party software would not understand this additional information (especially as it's an internal format and can change with any update of Photos or iOS). So Photos reverts to the old fashioned approach to avoid image quality losses with every edit: saving the file (with all the edits you did on the phone or in Photos) in a lossless format, TIFF. This can be edited as much as you like, and will not deteriorate each time you save it. At the cost of being more bulky.

Once you are finished editing, I suggest making a JPEG or HEIC copy and keeping the TIFF file only on your backup disk or such.


iCloud Storage - No photos or videos but still shows as full I have iPhone 6....and standard iCloud storage of 5GB. Please see pictures - I have absolutely no pictures and videos on my iPhone but still the iCloud storage says I have more than 1 GB of photos on my iCloud. When I log into my iCloud storage via PC, it shows there are no photos or videos (Moments and Albums are all blanks).iPhone Screenshot

I keep getting annoying messages that my iCloud storage is full....when I go to delete the pictures and videos, there are no such files. EXTREMELY ANNOYING. Please please help how to delete the "non-existent" photos and videos from the iCloud.

[pc screenshot

Go into the iCloud Photo Library submenu (from screenshot above) and select "Disable and Delete" to turn off iCloud Photo Library. Delete everything in your Photos app - don't forget to check shared photos and all albums. Then re-enable iCloud Photo Library.

iMessages also takes up space - clear out/delete old messages (the attachment images may be counted toward your photo allotment). May help, may not, but worth a shot.


Mounting Samba shares under /Volumes without GUI fluff I know I can mount Samba share using either mount or open command from the terminal shell. See this related question: How can I mount an SMB share from the command line?. I prefer using open because it mounts the shared folder under /Volumes which seems kind of OS X standard, the expected thing. Namely this happens by typing

open "smb://guest:@${host}/${path_component}"

(where ${host} is the host name or IP address of the Samba share and ${path_component} is the path or "name" of the Samba share).
The result and the main thing is that I can access the stuff from /Volumes/${path_component}.
This is very nice indeed. Just there are two problems or nuisance doing this from within scripts. The first is that this will open a superfluous progress indicator and then Finder window. The second, lesser one as there are scriptable work-arounds, is that the command returns immediately without waiting for the mount to be really available.

Is there a way to (synchronously) mount Samba shares under /Volumes without extraneous windows popping up?

(I am using the latest OS X (Sierra).)

The following is what I use to mount Samba shares via launchd:

/usr/bin/osascript -e "try" -e "mount volume \"smb://guest@${host}\"" -e "end try"

Using osascript's mount means any keychain access needed is done "automagically", there's no progress indicator or Finder window, and the command waits for the mount to be available before proceeding (try it with && echo -n "Done."; mount appended to the end of the above command to test this).


How to get calendar notifications when my phone is on silent I am frequently missing meetings because my company moved over to gsuite and the meeting invites are silent notifications on my computer.

I want my calendar notifications to cause my phone to make noises but I want text, phone calls, and everything else to remain silent so that my phone isn’t going off the wall during meetings all day.

Is there a way to make calendar notifications the only thing that isn’t silent?  Is there an Apple Watch app that can do this for me?

You can manually set all non-calendar sounds to "None" or "Vibrate only", from iOS Settings --> Sounds & Haptics

This has consequence outside of work hours, though.  You may be able to work around that with a Siri Shortcut, if that becomes a problem for you.


How do I zip a folder using the command line while maintaining its file structure? For example, if I want to zip /Users/admin/Downloads/Backup, and I am at /Users/admin/, I could:

zip -r downloads.zip /Users/admin/Downloads/Backup

and if I unzip downloads.zip I would get a Users folder and have a Users => admin => Downloads => Backup structure.

This is particularly undesirable behavior if I want to create an installation zip file for TWRP.

So instead I will have to:

cd /Users/admin/Downloads/Backup; zip -r /Users/admin/downloads.zip .; cd /Users/admin/

This doesn’t feel like what a pro would do.

What can I do to zip a folder while maintaining its file structure?

A "pro" would first read the manual. Now, the zip manual is full of cruft but long into the read you'll find- " zip will store the full path (relative to the current directory).". Further into the read you will find an option to remove all paths in your zip archive but that is not a great idea, since you can create a "bomb" archive that will pollute the directory in which it is extracted. It's best to contain your archive within its own directory.

cd /Users/admin/Downloads
zip -r downloads Backup
mv -- downloads.zip some/other/location
cd -

First we change directory to /Users/admin/Downloads
We name the archive (downloads) and .zip will be added to the archive name
We recurse through the Backup directory adding all files including the parent directory to the archive
move the zip archive to another location
Finally, we call the environment variable OLDPWD to get back to the original directory- cd -


Incorrect name keeps appearing in Mail.app account info I changed my name in iCloud a while ago, and then reverted that change. iCloud.com, the iCloud System Preference pane, and the info that appears in the Internet Accounts entry for the iCloud account are all correct. In Mail.app, it keeps sending emails as the previous name.

In ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Accounts.plist it shows the old name in Root -> MailAccounts -> Item 3 -> FullUserName, as well as both the EmailAlias entries. I can change these to the correct name in the plist and start Mail.app again, and it will revert these values back again.

I can't find anywhere where my previous name is specified.

From http://kb.mit.edu/confluence/display/mitcontrib/Apple+Mail+shows+incorrect+name+for+email+address:

  Question(s)

  How come Apple Mail shows the wrong name when I type my email address in the To or CC field?

  Context

  AppleMail
  Apple Mail
  Mail.app
  Address Book

  The name that shows up in the TO: or CC: field when typing an email address is incorrect.
  (Ex. Joe User  instead of Joseph User )

  Solution

  Apple Mail pulls the name information from cards in the address book. If there is a card with the email address typed, it will try to use the name on that card. This can be changed by:

  Open the address book
  Search for the email address
  Click Edit
  Click the name in the card to change it.
  Click Edit again to stop editing

  Test by trying to create a new message to the email address in question.


Catalina Upgrade Cannot Delete Relocated Items After upgrading to MacOS Catalina, I have a Relocated Items folder on my Desktop. Inside this folder is a PDF explaining what these items are.

Inside the folder are two sub-folders - Configuration and Security. These folders contain items that were in locations which are no longer compatible with the new macOS configuration. You are advised to review the items in these directories and take appropriate action.

The problem is that within the Security/usr folder is a symbolic link called X11 pointing to /opt/X11. The /opt/X11 directory does not exist and I cannot remove the X11 link with either unlink or rm (as sudo and have tried after sudo su to get a root shell). When I try to remove the file, I get "Operation not permitted". I can move the link to the Trash, but when I do, trying to empty Trash results in an error saying it cannot be emptied because X11 is a file required by macOS. So, how do I get rid of this link?

Update: I also noted that xattr shows nothing.

As this questi9on has had over 1k views, it seems it is a common issue. Therefore, I thought I would outline what I did to get it resolved in case others find it useful.

When I first tried to remove the link, I was told the operation was not permitted. Looking at the link, I could see it was owned by 'root' and in the 'wheel' group. I therefore then tried to remove it with sudo i.e.

sudo unlink X11

This failed with the same error. I also tried

sudo rm -rf X11

but this also failed with the same error. I then posted here asking for help and @Danijel-JamesW added a comment with a link to a useful article which provided some background on the new security features initially introduced in the previous version of macOS, but extended in Catalina. One of the things this article highlights is that some applications, like terminals and editors (in my case Emacs), need to have the full disk access privilege. Without this privilege, you will often get operation not permitted errors in unexpected locations/situations. Unfortunately, this was not the issue in my case. My terminal app (iTerm2.app) had the necessary permissions. However, the article did indicate that you could also get around the operation not permitted error by disabling SIP (System Integrity Protection). This was going to be my next move. However, in the end it was not necessary.

Thanks to a comment from @user3439694 I found out that you can boot into recovery mode and use the terminal to delete the file. THis is what I did

Boot holding down commmand + R
Click on Utilities and select Terminal from the top menu
Enter rm -rf /path/to/file/to/remove
Reboot

This solved my issue. One important thing to note is that working in the recovery terminal is powerful and potentially dangerous. You need to make sure you are deleting what you mean to delete. To be extra safe, instead of immediately issue the rm command, you can use ls -l to make sure you have the correct file or directory and then hit the up arrow to bring back the command from the history, move to the beginning of the line, remove the ls -l and type rm -rf, leaving the path unmodified following the rm -rf. Note also that the -r means recursive and -f means force - very powerful and dangerous. It will essentially remove everything from the point specified in the path downwards i.e. all sub directories and files. So, if you get that path wrong, you may end up deleting much more than you expected to.  In my case, the path I needed was

/Volumes/Macintosh\ HD\ -\ Data/Users/tim/Desktop/Relocated\ Items

my login account is 'tim'. the '\ ' are needed to escape the spaces in the path. Most systems will have the path starting with /Volume, but the drive name may differ (i.e. Macintosh HD). the '- Data' is fairly standard.

Anyway, this fixed the issue and those irritating files are now gone and my Desktop folder is clean (for now!).


AirPods not showing the sub BlueTooth menu I have an issue...my airpods behave weird...they won’t show me the sub bluetooth menu...help please.I’m on IOS 12.14.I have an Iphone 8 plus.i’ve tried resetting the airpods and removing the connection with my aipods...to no Avail

If you haven't already, perform a full restart (Settings - General - Shut Down - Power Off slider). Turn on, then goto  Settings - Bluetooth menu.

With my AirPods in the charging case with lid closed, it says disconnected. I open the case, and tap the Airpods to get them to connect. Mine says Connected (for you "Connecté" or similar).

I then see the Airpods information pop-up box with charging levels. I can click the information (i) button next to the AirPods to get to the sub-menu.

After performing these steps, do you see the sub-menu? If not, you may want to make an appointment at the Apple Store.

This link may be helpful as well:
https://www.imore.com/how-to-troubleshoot-reset-airpods

Hope this helps.


Whats the value for DNS when you leave blank DNS in static IP? When you set a static IP in iOS and you don't specify a in IP address for DNS, which IP does iOS use to resolve hostnames?

It doesn't have nor does it assign one.  However, it may have have host names/addresses cached so you may still be able to access sites you previously visited.  However, once that cache clears, you  will only be able to  browse by using raw IPs.


Has anyone found a download for a Mountain Lion resembling Dock theme? Mountain Lion has a SWEET new Dock look that I'd love to replicate into my Lion install. Has anyone found a download link for any kind of fan art resembling it accurately, yet?

It's not quite right, but this can be installed with Dock Library and is off by a mere few pixels.

http://cl.ly/0B271a1g3Y302E0t0w41


Unable to access xampp files because of user permissions problem I've installed xampp on my MacBook with macOS 10.12, Sierra. Everything works fine, but I created php app with slim framework witch creates cache files.

The problem is that I have no permissions to these files, I can not delete them because this files belongs to user daemon.

I've tried to change user in xampp https.conf but when I change user to my username apache will not start:

ERROR: Failed to restart "apache": cannot stop service: AH00543: httpd: bad user name

Anybody know how to deal with this problem?

UPDATE:

folder path is nfs://192.168.64.2/opt/lampp/htdocs/2017/cache

I try this command when I am in 2017 folder:

sudo chmod -R +a "staff allow list,add_file,search,add_subdirectory,delete_child,readattr,writeattr,readextattr,writeextattr,readsecurity,file_inherit,directory_inherit" cache

And i get

chmod: Failed to set ACL on file 'cache': Operation not supported

chmod: Failed to set ACL on file '5d': Operation not supported

chmod: Failed to set ACL on file 'dc': Operation not supported

chmod: Failed to set ACL on file '5ddcda0f8a5b896924f37eaa7d4701bffab1d462': Operation not supported

sudo chmod -R 777 cache

chmod: Unable to change file mode on cache/5d: Operation not permitted

chmod: Unable to change file mode on cache/5d/dc: Operation not permitted

chmod: Unable to change file mode on cache/5d/dc/5ddcda0f8a5b896924f37eaa7d4701bffab1d462: Operation not permitted

UPDATE

Problem solved by install older version of xampp witch files are not in network shared folder but in /Applications/Xampp

There is no problem with virtual hosts and folders permissions

Network Drive Limitation

You likely can not change the permissions of using the network shared drive, nfs, path. Instead use the approach below on the Mac involved, using the local paths.

Changing Permissions

You can grant yourself access to the daemon's files using the Finder's Get Info panel.

Within the Finder, select the folder you want access to;
Select File (menu) > Get Info;
Within Sharing & Permissions click the + and add your user account;
Within Sharing & Permissions click the cog and select Apply to enclosed items.

You may need to unlock the permissions settings using the Lock on the lower-right of the panel.

Command line approach

Alternatively, you can use the command line to change permissions, see Permissions for new files in shared directory. The command line approach is more capable and allows sudo to ensure you have permissions to make the change.

Locked files and chmod errors

See Why does chown report “Operation not permitted” on OS X?


What is Visual Studio Code? Is it an efficient tool for Swift Development? Scrolling to the #Linkedin feeds I have come across the term #VSCode. Please, anybody, explain the pure purpose of the tool or it's really trending in development

  Visual Studio Code combines the simplicity of a source code editor with powerful developer tooling, like IntelliSense code completion and debugging.

I have a doubt it's a code once and export to multiple platforms like a tool.

Visual Studio Code is a multi-language IDE and text editor, much like Atom.

Among it's strenghts there's it being highly modular, with plenty of plug-ins so you can build the best IDE for your specific needs.

It has gained quite a lot of traction within the StackExchange community, based on the latest survey.

While it's true that there are plenty of Swift plugins for VSCode, I have never used it for this purpose so far, although I enjoy working on it on other languages and as my generally go-to text editor.


Are there other options for reducing glare on a MacBook Pro? I'm discouraged that for those of us wanting matte displays, we have to get a pretty crummy looking white-gray border around the screen rather than the sleek black edge that normal MacBook Pros come with:

Is there a way to get a matte display without having to get the terrible-looking edge? Could I buy a regular MacBook and use some commercial screen overlay which would give the same effect without compromising the black edge?

I once saw someone using a sort of matte finish film on their MacBook display which seemed pretty effective.

It was something like the item in this review

Looks like you'd have to be very careful when applying it.


Problem with getting attachments on apple mail I occasionally have an issue that if I open up an email on my iphone or ipad that has an attachment, when I open it up on my macbook in mail the message will appear but without the attachment.  How can I fix this?  If I forward myself the message it will appear with the attachment but I'm getting tired of doing that.

I had this behavior often when View > Mail> As pure text was selected.

Selecting Best alternative did show the attachments.


import file view on Mac El Capitan Not there Not sure what this view is called but when importing a file from computer to the internet I no longer have this type of viewing option (see photo), is there way to have it appear this way?

Apple has removed Cover Flow view from Open file dialog.

As a workaround use a separate Finder window with Cover Flow view to locate your file in and then drag&drop the file into an open Open file dialog in your browser. The Open file dialog will then switch to the folder containing the file you dropped and highlight it.


How do I answer a phone call and use car speakers with Ford SYNC under iOS 5? I want to talk/listen through the SYNC/car speaker system to stay hands free while driving like I did with iOS 4.

In iOS 5, when I make a call I get a pop up to connect thru SYNC. But, when a call comes in, SYNC goes into Privacy mode and I have to hold and talk thru the iPhone. I don't have any options to tell it to go thru SYNC.

How can I answer calls and use the car's microphone and speakers?

I had this same issue. Here is what I did to fix it.

Remove the bluetooth device from the Ford Sync. Dont just turn it off, actually delete the device from the car

Remove the Sync device from your iPhone. Again, delete the entry from your phone.

REBOOT THE iPHONE (don't forget to do this).

Resync your phone with your car


Xcode 4 post installation problem I have successfully installed Xcode 4.1 from Mac AppStore on Lion, and restarted the machine to be sure that everything will run correctly, everything is ok up to this point. however, when I open Applications (and also when I open LaunchPad too), there is no XCode there, there is an icon named: "install XCode" (its size = XCode size = 3.5 GB, and contains a lot of packages inside it). I can run XCode without problems using either its icon on the dock or from spotlight.
my questions are:

1) where is the real XCode Icon located ?

2) what is the correct way to remove "install XCode" package icon that exists in Applications?

3) can I put the "install XCode" package on a USB stick and install it on another machine (running Lion of course) without problems?

thank you so much in advance.

I know it's a bit confusing, but you didn't actually install Xcode 4. What you did was installing the Xcode 4 installer. So what you got to do is:

Open the Install Xcode-app located in your launchpad.
Make sure iTunes is closed, this is necessary, and the installer won't check for this.
Finalize the setup (well, Lion will do this for you, just press the buttons).
Optionally, restart your Mac.
Optionally, remove the Install Xcode-app.

It'll probably prompt you that it's moving your existing Developer-folder to Developer Old so it can install Xcode 4.1 to /Developer/.


What are the risks of connecting an iPhone to an unsecured wireless network? This is a similar question to this one, but since I can't tell how well that translates to the iPhone, I'm asking it again.

I've recently been abroad on holiday, and with very expensive data roaming charges, it's very tempting to use an open wifi, for example for downloading app updates. I expect that communication with the App Store goes over HTTPS, so it should be safe entering my iTunes password there, right?

I know the risks of using HTTP over an unencrypted wifi, but I have no idea what protocols other apps besides Safari use. Anything I need to be aware of?

Will using a VPN client to connect to my university's network effectively make my connection secure?

The iTunes Store uses HTTPS for most of it (if not all), at least that's how it was when I checked.

Regarding your specific question, you have to consider the iPhone is another regular device, albeit full of limitations in the tweaking department, it still runs a OS X variant, with derived UNIX parts, etc. So for the sake of this question, let's say your iPhone is a computer running some form of Unix Operating System; with that in mind, all the security risks that affect a computer are valid. Should the iPhone (and iOS) have a remote vulnerability, you would be exposed, just like your Macbook or your Windows computer or even your Linux Box.

Using 'open' Wi-Fi means anyone can log in and inspect the traffic. Anyone trying to do malicious stuff will be eavesdropping and listing for traffic in the network.

If you send an email, it will likely be unencrypted and visible. If you use IM (MSN, Yahoo, iChat/AIM, Jabber, etc.) you are likely not encrypted either (nor using a secure channel by default).

When using Safari, anything that doesn't go though some form of HTTPS is visible. Cookies and Data, with all the associated risks.

So as you can see, and excluding particular OS vulnerabilities, we're very exposed when using open networks. Most people doesn't really care or know but the risks are there (and so are the malicious users) :)

Connecting through a VPN will help with your traffic, but I have never used a VPN on an iPhone and thus I don't know what the capabilities of that are.


How can I avoid Time Machine starts to back up files right after the Mac is restarted? Sometimes I have to restart my Mac Mini because an application blocks it.
When I restart it, Time Machine starts to back up files right after 10 seconds I restarted the Mac, and it makes it slowly (I have 4 applications/tools that are opened at login).

Is there a way to avoid Time Machine starts to back up files, if not after X minutes I restarted the Mac (X could be a value between 10-30 minutes)?

I've found two TimeMachine schedulers softwares: TimeMachineEditor and TimeMachineScheduler.

Both are useful to set the backup interval of Time Machine but none of them enable user to define a time limit (after mac startup) before which Time Machine can't be launched.

However, TimeMachineScheduler has an interesting option to skip backup during a user defined time slot. That may be a decent workaround if you're able to define the time slot -during which you may be "doing something urgent"- that requires Time Machine to be off.


Spotlight Search on Yosemite indexes and shows iTunesLibrary.h and other files with ".h" extension I am running Yosemite on My MacBook Air.

Spotlight settings are as below:

Even though I have not selected any option, it still shows ".h" files in result. Check below image for reference.

As seen in above image, there is iTunesLibrary.h file in search results.

How to stop Spotlight from indexing those ".h" files? and how to remove those ".h" files from search results?

Did you have Xcode installed at some point? Generally those files (which are related to software development) are only indexed if Xcode is installed and the corresponding "Developer" item in Spotlight preferences is enabled.

In any event, since Developer does not appear in your Spotlight preferences, you can try doing it the manual way, based on steps found here:

Open Terminal (Applications/Utilities folder)
Enter the following command and press Return. You will be prompted for an administrator password. Enter the password and press Return.

sudo plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Spotlight.plist -o ~/Desktop/com.apple.Spotlight.plist

Open TextEdit.
Press Command-, to open the Preferences window.
At the top, under "Format", select "Plain text".
Drag com.apple.Spotlight.plist from your desktop onto the TextEdit icon on your Dock.
Press Command-F to search and type in SOURCE (in all uppercase like that). Press Return to search.
If it finds something that looks like this:

        <dict>
            <key>enabled</key>
            <true/>
            <key>name</key>
            <string>SOURCE</string>
        </dict>

Then change <true/> to <false/>. Save and close the document, quit TextEdit and skip to step 12.
If it did not find anything like that, copy that whole block (from <dict> to </dict>).
Search the document again for <key>orderedItems</key>. On the next line after that, it should say <array>. Scroll down until you find </array>.
Click to place your cursor at the beginning of that line and paste. If it now looks like </dict>   </array>, click to place your cursor right after </dict> and press Return to put </array> on its own line. Save and close the document and quit TextEdit.
Back in Terminal, enter the following command and press Return. You may be prompted for an administrator password. If so, enter the password and press Return.

sudo plutil -convert binary1 ~/Desktop/com.apple.Spotlight.plist -o ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Spotlight.plist

Press and hold Option-Command and right-click on the Finder icon on your Dock. Select Relaunch from the menu.


Macbook Pro gets warm while running Android virtual device I am trying to develop a Flutter application and for that purpose I created an Android Virutal Device.
However, when I run the app, macbook gets really warm.

Does this happen to anyone of you? What could be the problem?

As long as your fans shut off soon after you close the application, there is no problem. When your computer is working hard it will turn on the fans to cool it self off. It would be more concerning if the fans didn't turn on as that could result in permanent damage.

Virtual machine will often work a computer because its running two virtual devices on one physical device.

Just know your fans are

Keeping your mac's internals safe
Allowing your Mac to perform at its best
Not an indication of a problem (unless they are on all the time)


MBP: would 4k external display work as retina when resolution scaled to 1080p? I'm looking to buy an external display but can’t wrap my head around one thing: does 4k monitor behaves like retina (in other fonts looks sharper, etc.) if scaled to smaller resolution e.g. 1080p?

Or would it just work like a regular 1080p display?

Sorry if that sounds awkward. My concern if there is a visual difference between 4k with 1080p vs 1080p with 1080p resolution.

On macOS you have both choices when connecting such a 4k monitor:

You can choose to have it run at a real 1080p resolution, where the signal sent to the monitor is really 1080p. In essence the image displayed on the 4k monitor would then be visually the same as had you bought a 1080p monitor of the same physical size.

You can also choose (which is most probably what you want) to have it run scaled to "Looks like 1080p". This means that the signal sent to the monitor is really a 4k signal, but user interface elements are scaled to be the same physical size as if you had been running 1080p. This ensures that the system is usable without requiring extraordinarily good eye sight. Note that this means that text is really drawn at the large resolution, which ensures crisp and sharp text, which is easier to read. Images and video are also displayed at a larger resolution (if available), which means you get better picture quality on the 4k monitor compared to a 1080p monitor.

In addition to the two scenarios outlined in your question and above, you also have the third option of running the monitor in a 4k non-scaled resolution. This means that you'll have a very large amount of screen real estate (i.e. room for lots of windows, content, etc.) - but everything will be 4 times smaller physical size - so this is usually only a good choice if you buy a really large monitor (like for example when using a 50 inch TV as a monitor).


iPhone 4S restore from backup 64 GB to 16 GB I am trying to restore a new 16 GB iPhone from my old 64 GB backup, and am getting the error message that the old backup is too large (for the record, I don't believe it's very much over 16 GB)...the old phone is broken, so I cannot try to make a new backup smaller (this was one solution I found here).

Any idea how I might go into the backup that is saved in iTunes and eliminate portions manually? Any help greatly appreciated. Thanks!

This is not possible within iTunes, which deals with backup and restore as a single block. Keep in mind that syncing apps is different from a backup and restore - so you could remove some apps to free up space and try the restore.

The backup is stored under ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/, but the files not in an easy-to-use form.

If you wish to explore your backup and see what can be selectively extracted or used, there are some paid applications to do that (check the free trials to see if they're helpful):
iBackup Extractor
iPhone Backup Extractor

Also see:
Processing iPhone / iPod Touch Backup Files on a Computer


How do I see all my failed login attempts (macOS High Sierra) I've tried the following commands:

syslog -F raw -k Facility com.apple.system.lastlog | grep <my_username>
cat /var/log/asl.log (DOES NOT WORK ON HighSierra)
who

Thanks to Scot, the following command works:

log show --predicate '(eventMessage CONTAINS "Authentication failed")' --style syslog --last 1d

The problem with this is that it does not give me the username of the account trying to be accessed.

Does anyone of any bash/Python programs or Terminal commands that will give me my failed login attempts (graphical login/ssh)?

See more info here

You can retrieve the failed login with a command like the following:

For streaming data:

log stream --predicate '(eventMessage CONTAINS "Authentication failed")' --style syslog

Or, failed logins in last hour:

log show --predicate '(eventMessage CONTAINS "Authentication failed")' --style syslog --last 1h

But, this won't show the username for the failed request, only that a failure occurred.


How do I add folders to spotlight search priority? How do I add a system link to the Applications folder and have it show up in spotlight.

Alternatively how do I add a specific folder to spotlight search priority. Easy to rearrange but I can not add anything.

A related question but not covering what I am interested in is:
Can I make a symlink (to a .app folder) in Applications directory show up in spotlight?

A Finder alias (not a symlink) will be added to spotlight, if it's sitting in a visible folder, like Applications.

You can create them programmatically using AppleScript (use osascript to integrate with other shell scripts.)

To create an alias use make alias file to {file to alias} at {destination of alias}.

By default (ie. if destination isn't specified) the alias is created on the current user's Desktop, ie. ~/Desktop.

Here's an example script to create an alias of a file in /Applications

set target_app to POSIX file "/usr/path/to/app"
set alias_dest to POSIX file "/Applications"

tell application "Finder"
  make alias file to target_app at alias_dest
end tell

By the way, osascript accepts input from stdin, so to run an AppleScript in a shell script, using a heredoc will work.  It may make it easier for you to setup the target file better:

#!/bin/bash
TARGET=/usr/path/to/app
osascript <<EOS

set target_app to POSIX file "$TARGET"
set alias_dest to POSIX file "/Applications"

tell application "Finder"
  make alias file to target_app at alias_dest
end tell

EOS


Finder folders gone? My Favourites sidebar has gone in All My Files in Finder:

There is a thing which you can pull out from the side like this:

but it doesn't have any of my Favourites in. But I have got them (it shows them in the Preferences):

If I open a folder/disk, it does show them:

How do I get my Favourites back? I have Lion.

Try restarting finder by hitting CMD + OPTION (ALT) + ESC -> Choose Finder and click restart.

If this doesn't work try performing a "Repair Disk Permissions" inside Disk Utility, and reboot.


What are the storage locations of the various types of Automator workflows The purpose of this question is to create a reference for the various default storage locations where Automator stores the files it creates and saves.

I've found a few from searching, but have yet to see a quick reference listing the possible storage locations for all the Automator workflow types. On OS X 10.6.8 with Automator 2.1.1 they are:

Workflow
Application
Service
Folder Action
Print Plugin
iCal Alarm
Image Capture Plugin

Can anyone provide a list? (If you have lists for other OS/Automator versions, that would be a nice addition to the reference as well.)

Tested this on 10.7.1, Automator 2.2.

Workflow - for me this defaults to ~/Documents, but these can be saved anywhere you like.
Application - same as above. When saving a workflow/application for the first time, it even lets you change the type in the save dialog.
Services - ~/Library/Services
Folder Action - The actual workflow is saved in ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Folder Actions. When creating the folder action, it asks for a folder to 'attach' to in the dropdown at the top. The actions will apply to the folder you choose here.
Print Plugin - ~/Library/PDF Services
iCal Alarm - ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/iCal
Image Capture Plugin - ~/Library/Workflows/Applications/Image Capture

Easy way to find this out in case you forget - after creating/saving one of the types that doesn't prompt you right away for a save location, right click the proxy icon in the title bar to see the path:


Quality factors relevant for getting a replacement battery (MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)) The battery in my computer (MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012)) is due:

I'd like to buy a new one. I'm looking for something efficient, i.e. having a long battery time and with the most refill.

What kind of characterstics/quality factors do I need to look for while searching for a replacement?

There are a number of different battery manufacturers out there; the problem with figuring out which one is the better of all the others is you never know which one will perform and which one won't.

Pretty much all will have the correct specs and will connect to your device whether that be a MacBook Pro, an alarm system or a back up UPS.  What I have found in my many years of experience is to go with the vendor that offers the best warranty.

Generally speaking when I went "cheap" I ended up having to replace the battery much sooner than expected.  If I spent a little more on a battery with an 18 month or 24 month warranty, I usually got 3-5 years out of it which is the norm for me.

Egoway and Lizone are two batteries that I would recommend as replacements for your particular MacBook Pro.

Replacing them is pretty simple too.  You basically remove the 10 scews on the back and remove the back cover to expose the logic board and battery.  Remove the battery connector from the logic board (on the right) and pull the battery up by the tab.  Just reverse the steps to install the new one.

The pictures below give an abridged version of this procedure, but you can find the full detailed instructions on iFixit.com


Terminal command to force-install Mac OS High Sierra onto a specified drive? I'm wondering if there is a way to install Mac OS High Sierra using terminal onto a specified drive?

I'm working with a bit of a unique situation as I've been running Mac OS Sierra successfully in a RAID0 setup on a 15" 2011 MacBook Pro.  I've swapped the SATA-connected optical drive for a second internal SSD for maximum read and write speeds.

When I attempt to go through the installation process for High Sierra, I boot into recovery mode with High Sierra already installed on an external drive and the two freshly erased and partitioned internal SSDs in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format. I then combine both of the internal drives I wish to use in the RAID0 format with Disk Utility's RAID Assistant. After successfully combining and mounting the drives, I return to the High Sierra Installer to attempt to install the OS on the RAID0 drive.  I'm given the error "You may not install to this volume because it is part of a AppleRAID."

I've spoken with three Apple Senior Advisers over the phone and via chat who were all very willing to help me but unable to find any solution.

My hunch is that because the High Sierra installer automatically converts internal drives during installation into the new APFS, rather than using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, it may not be able to do this with a striped RAID virtual drive. I'm able to format both individual SSDs into the APFS format using Disk Utility but when combining the drives using the RAID Assistant the only option is to erase and combine using Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

I have been able to find some code that forces internal drive installation using the older file system, but you are unable to specify a drive:

/Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --converttoapfs NO

I'm willing to attempt to force-install to the mounted RAID drive if there is a way to use terminal to attempt this.

This is independent of the RAID problem and may be independent of any APFS problem as well.

The core of this question is that the commanline will not allow you to redirect the install away from the booted drive. Therefore this answer covers the question as presented in the question headline.

The startosinstall command offers the switch --volume to redirect the installer onto a specified volume.

Try it:

..path/to/startosinstall --usage

and find that option missing.

It is there for any High Sierra installer.

BUT

This option is only presented when SIP is disabled!

The -–volume argument will be hidden, because startosinstall requires – at least – either CSR_ALLOW_UNRESTRICTED_NVRAM/0x40/64 or CSR_ALLOW_ANY_RECOVERY_OS/0x100/256.
Without one of these, the --volume argument won’t be supported.

That means also that using that switch from the Recovery partition it will be present every time.

This trickery is documented at Comparison of startosinstall's available options depending on boot OS environment

So in the case of this question:

/Applications/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --converttoapfs NO --volume /Volumes/YourChoice


How to show that my Internet connection is still up and active in menu bar? I am looking for a solution to have the AirPort WiFi or other icon in the menu bar show when an active Internet connection is established.

I live in a funky WiFi connection area and connect true a router and extender. The router requires a password to connect. I use a WiFi extender to boost the signal from router.

The WiFi icon shows full connection in menu bar but that is only to the Extender.
The detail view for WiFi shows the following (left: active, right: not active):

The WiFi shows happy connection but it does not show missing internet connection.

Sometimes I lose the active Internet connection without knowing it and it is not been displayed in WiFi icon, but the Skype shows that, easy to see with a glance.

As a fix for that I use Skype that displays only when actually connected to Internet.

Can I modify the AirPort WiFi in menu bar to blink or something when it has lost the actual Internet connection?

I do not want to have Skype running to quickly see if I still have Internet.

And I do not want to have to use Terminal or System Preferences to just to see if I am still connected. Eventually in my browser I will get the notification that the site is not available, or check your internet, or something like it.

With regard to modifying the system AirPort icon, I do not believe that what you are asking for is possible.

To show internet connectivity, I use a combination of WiFi Signal (which could be substituted for the OS X AirPort menu bar item) and Cloud:

AirPort off

AirPort on & not connected

AirPort connected & no internet

AirPort connected & internet

This works very well and takes up no more space on my menu bar as I use Cloud anyway.

Dropbox is also a good alternative as it also shows network connectivity, although it is slightly slower to respond especially on slower connections where the network test takes longer.


Remove Duplicate Shared Computers After my upgrade to Yosemite, I am seeing a couple of extra shared computers in my finder sidebar.

There are two additional computers that seem to be copies, based on their naming, having (#) appended to the computer name.

After checking all computers on my network, I can see that this issue is not only on one machine, they all show the same list. Additionally, I can verify the duplicates do not exist as I cannot connect to them.

I have tried the following:

Renaming my machines
Disabling / Re-enabling sharing
Restarting All Machines / Performing all necessary updates
Clearing recent servers from each computer
Restarting Airport Extreme
Relaunching Finder on each machine

Here is a screenshot displaying what I see in my Finder window:

UPDATE: Updating to 10.10.4 fixes this problem. In this point release discoveryd is replaced by the previously ousted mDNSResponder.

The originally supplied answer follows...

This is caused by an interaction with a daemon called discoveryd (that is present in Yosemite OS X 10.10.0 to 10.10.3) and the sleep proxies that are present within Apple TVs and Airports.

I outlined a workaround here; which is basically disabling "Wake for Network Access".

9to5Mac reports that discoveryd has been dropped in OS X 10.10.4 beta and replaced with the previously ousted mDNSResponder daemon. So this problem should be fixed in OS X 10.10.4.


Can I make/receive phone calls with phone number attached to iPad's Verizon account? Just a few days ago I got an iPad Air 2 via Verizon. On the account, there is a phone number associated with the line for the tablet. Is that number functional? I guess what I mean is, can you answer phone calls or make calls with the number associated with the tablet? I've tried calling the number from a different number and nothing happens, but I'm not sure if it's just me.

If it is supposed to be a functional number then is there a way for me to add that number to an already existing Apple ID that is associated with my iPhone phone number?

It serves only to make Verizon's back end provisioning work. You can't call to it, you can't call from it, you now just know it's not a "real live telephone number".

Pretty silly as there's a limited number of numbers that can exist in any one area code, but that's how things are engineered at present. Other carriers do the same thing, so it's not just vzw.


How do I get the photos off my iPhone to my Windows PC without using iCloud? Used to be I plug in my iPhone and there was a drive under This PC for the iPhone and I use Windows photo synchronization to copy the photos from the phone to the PC. However, now when I plug in the phone, it's not showing the phone at all! iTunes pops up and I can back up the phone in iTunes, but I don't see the phone in Windows Explorer in order to copy the photos! It worked just last month.

Windows 8.1, iOS 8.4

I installed an iOS update and also some Windows updates and it worked. I don't know why, because I restarted my phone already and that didn't help. I didn't have to restart my computer. The phone now appears in 'This PC'.


Going back to Mac OS X after installing Ubuntu So a while ago I made the step of going completely over to Ubuntu on my laptop and I completely removed Mac OS X and just had Ubuntu going.

Now I want to re-install Mac OS X - I remember having snow leopard on my machine previously, but do not hold the install disks any longer. My CD drive has also broken, so I cannot use a disk anymore.

I have seen on eBay and other websites that you can buy a USB stick with OS X Lion 10.7 booted on and then boot this from the USB.

Is this possible, without the need of the first ever install disks?

The original Apple "OS X Lion USB Thumb Drive" is a full upgrade, so you don't need your old DVD installer disks.

Depending on your Mac and your update history you may even start to Internet recovery mode (hold altcmdR while booting until you see a spinning globe in the center of the screen) and install Lion then. You had to install a special Firmware update before installing Ubuntu to do that though.


Are there any 1D laser barcode scanners that work well with iOS? I'm looking for a scanner that works similarly to the Microvision ROV which has worked very well for me in the past when connected to a Mac and Delicious Library.

Is there anything comparable on the market for iOS bluetooth scanning?

Requirements are to be dedicated external hardware. I prefer battery powered, bluetooth and fast/rugged aspect of a 1D laser powered barcode scanner. Small is nice, but the KoamTac appear to be too fragile so I'd rather something built more like the micro vision or symbol line of USB scanners that are built more like tanks.

I don't need 2D scanning and am really looking for a laser to pick the exact line needed to read multiple barcodes and rapidly scan in low light situations. I'm hoping someone has actually used this hardware and can speak to the usability of any devices for industrial and/or high volume scanning (think 100 iMac that need inventory from Apple's barcodes sitting on a shipping dock).

What hardware can assist with this?

What do you think of the Socket CX2870-1409 Barcode Scanner?
https://www.barcodesinc.com/socket/part-cx2870-1409.htm#overview

The reviews are very decent across the board.


MacBook keeps showing question mark on startup I am using MacBook 2010 with OS X 10.6.8. Today when I started my laptop it kept showing the Apple logo longer than expected. Then I read online to hold the shift key while booting. Doing that it started showing a folder icon with a question mark and it keeps showing untill the laptop gets shut down. Right now I don't have any disk utility tool either.

How do I solve my problem?

Sounds like your hard disk could be on its way out.

A folder icon with a question mark means that the Mac can not find a valid Operating System on the disk (or the OS which was on there has become corrupted).

Booting with your finger on shift boots the Mac into, what is called, Safe Mode (or Safe Boot). That is to say no extra software is loaded at boot time, only the essentials, as well as some checks being performed. Quoting the Apple web site for Safe Mode:

  Starting up in Safe Mode does several things:

  It verifies your startup disk, and attempts to repair directory    issues if needed.
  Only required kernel extensions are loaded.
  All user installed fonts are disabled while you are in Safe Mode.
  Startup Items and Login Items are not opened during startup and login    on OS X v10.4 or later.
  In OS X 10.4 and later, font caches that are stored in    /Library/Caches/com.apple.ATS/uid/ are moved to the Trash (where uid
  is a user ID number).
  In OS X v10.3.9 or earlier, Safe Mode opens only Apple-installed    startup items. These items are usually located in
  /Library/StartupItems. These items are different from user-selected
  account login items.

  Together, these changes can help resolve or isolate certain issues on
  your startup disk.

Your best bet is to start your Mac using an install OS X CD (or USB stick) or an external disk drive containing another installation of Mac OS X, and run Disk Utility (or preferably Disk Doctor) from that and/or reinstall the OS. Better still, maybe seriously consider replacing the hard disk, if it is getting old, and failing.

Also, it maybe worth copying off any data that you require (or do not  wish to lose).  However, saying that, you can always use your [time machine] backup to recover any lost files. You have been making regular backups, haven't you?


Opening multiple outlook windows on macbook Pro I'm running Microsoft Outlook on Mac Book Pro 2015.
How do I open multiple windows of it?
On windows I could open outlook multiple times.
Can i do this on Mac?

To open multiple windows, simply go to File -> New -> Open New Main Window.

This will allow you to open your calendar and your email is separate windows so you can see both at the same time.


Forgotten Icloud username and password? My iphone recently died from water damage but i had an icloud account set up with all the phones details however i cant remember the username or password for the account so i can put the information onto a new phone any suggestions?

First, try and login to icloud.com and verify that you have your contacts and all the information you need there.

If you dont remember your password but still have access to your email you can try by using Apples iforgot page:
https://iforgot.apple.com/password/verify/appleid

You can try several different emails until you know your login, if you still have access to your email that is.

If you dont have access to your email, Apple can change that when giving their support a call, be prepared to answer a lot of questions amongst your security questions and for the last digits in your credit card number.


Using timed access control in airport extreme base station I have an airport base station model A1354. I am attempting to setup MAC Timed Access so a laptop can only connect between 5:00AM and 11:00pm through the Airport Utility version 5.5.2 (552.11). My AEBS is running firmware version 7.5.2

When I try to enter the time values by double clicking over the time and entering 05:00 AM and 11:00PM the time values don't stay as soon as it looses focus. Instead they become what is in the following screenshot, and the laptop looses connectivity as soon as I update the base station. I also tried entering the values in military time with the same result.

Here is the requested screenshot:

When you've altered the times, click the '+' button so a second line appears, then click 'Done'.


Android phone not even charging on a Mac Mini (Yosemite) I'm new to OSX, so I'm probably doing something which is obviously wrong.

I have a Samsung Note and USB cable which when plugged into my Linux laptop work without any issues.

I have a late-2012 Mac Mini running Yosemite.

When I plug the phone into the Mac Mini's USB ports it does not even start charging.  I have tried three different USB ports, including ports I know are working (as I swapped the keyboard and mouse plugs).

What do I need to do for my Mac Mini to at least charge my Android Phone?

I have zero experience with Android, that said it may be that a driver or such (sync software for Mac?) might be needed for the Mac to 'recognize' the phone


Messages open automatically at random times on Macbook Air My early 2014 MacBook air randomly opens Messages by itself. I don't remember setting something up or changing a setting that causes my MacBook to do this. I am logged into Messages, which is synced to my iPad messages, but it doesn't just open when I get a notification, it's completely random.
I don't want to delete Messages or log out of it because I still use it sometimes. I just want Messages to stop opening automatically. Does anyone have a solution?

Even though you don’t want to sign out, it’s the fastest way to diagnose this. Make a log of how often you catch it launching - and once you know how long it takes for 10 launches - sign out for that time.

Then if it launches in that time interval, you know it’s launching locally. If you never get a launch, you know it’s messages coming in that launch the app.

Until you know if it’s a push notification or a local event launching it, you’ll have a hard time diagnosing either cause.


How to evoke Preview's title bar saving dialogue by shortcut? Preview shows the currently opened document’s name in its title bar. When hovering over this name, a arrow appears at the right. After a click, there is a dialogue where you can chance the file name, the file tags, the directory and set the file as protected. This is quite handy if you want to add a tag without opening the file's preferences from the Finder view.

How can I open this dialogue using keyboard shortcuts?

Thanks for help.

You can use Automator/Apple Script for this with Mouse Tools command line app.
You can get Mouse Tools from here. It's a small tool to move mouse pointer and perform clicks.
[-h] return this help text
[-b] coordinates are measured from bottom-left corner of the screen
[-location] return the current mouse location
[-x "xValue" -y "yValue"] move the mouse to the {xValue, yValue} location
[-mouseSteps numSteps] move mouse in number-of-steps to the location
[-leftClick] perform a mouse left-click at the current mouse location
[-doubleLeftClick] perform a mouse double-click with the left mouse button
[-rightClick] perform a mouse right-click at the current mouse location
[-shiftKey] shift key down, useful when performing a left-click event
[-commandKey] command key down, useful when performing a left-click event
[-optionKey] option key down, useful when performing a left-click event
[-controlKey] control key down, useful when performing a left-click event
[-leftClickNoRelease] perform a mouse click and do not release the mouse click
[-releaseMouse] release the mouse after using -leftClickNoRelease

Then create an Automator workflow as a Service. Set "No input" as an input and "Preview" as an application. Add this Apple Script there:
on run {input, parameters}
    tell application "Preview" to activate
    delay 1
    set mouseToolsPath to (path to home folder as text) & "Downloads:MouseTools"
    tell application "Preview"
        set _b to bounds of the front window
        set _x to item 1 of _b
        set _y to item 2 of _b
        set _width to item 3 of _b
    end tell
    set xpos to _x + (_width / 2)
    set ypos to _y + 10
    do shell script quoted form of POSIX path of mouseToolsPath & " -x " & (xpos as text) & " -y " & (ypos as text)
    do shell script quoted form of POSIX path of mouseToolsPath & " -leftClick"
    return input
end run

In this case, my MouseTools binary is in Downloads directory.
Save it and give it a name You'll remember. Assign keyboard shortcut to this Serivce in Preferences.app under Keyboard -> Shortcuts.
I tested this and it works for me.


Slow WiFi speed on MacBook Pro late 2008 (A1286) I'm using a cheap TP-Link WiFi router and i'm hitting a wall at around 30 Mbps.
I've tested with other laptops and they run fine to 100 Mbps.

I have Yosemite at the moment, and an interesting fact is that, in the past, i don't remember on what OS, i was able to hit 100 Mbps on WiFi.

Any suggestions regarding WiFi settings or chip firmware ?

Be sure you are running the latest version of Mac OS X ( get 10.7.2+)
Apply all available system and software updates available to your Mac from Apple menu > Software Update
Reset the WiFi Router
After you’re positive you’re on the newest version of OS X and have all software updates applied to the Mac in question, proceed with the solution:

Add a New Network Location & Renew DHCP Lease

Launch “System Preferences” from the  Apple menu
Select the “Network” panel
Click on the “Location” pull down menu and choose “Edit Locations…”
Click on the + plus icon to add a new network location, give it a unique name, and click “Done”
Back at the Network panel with the newly created location selected, click on “Advanced” in the bottom right corner
Click on the “TCP/IP” tab
Click on “Renew DHCP Lease” and wait for the numbers on the left to repopulate, then click “OK”
Renew DHCP in Mac OS X Lion

You should now have a stable wireless connection under Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2.

For most users the wifi stability issue was resolved with installing the latest OS X Lion updates, but in some cases is seems that old network connection profiles brought the problem forward for to the newest OS update.


Could not create symlink for "/Users" I want to create symbolic link for /Users to /home. So i tried to execute ln -s \Users \home. which gave me error ln: /home/Users: Operation not supported.

Any way to do this?

Thanks

Do it as root, and use forward slashes:

$ ln -s /Users /home
$ ls -ld /Users /home
drwxr-xr-x  6 root  admin  204 Apr  8  2014 /Users
lrwxrwxr-x  1 root  wheel    6 Sep 17 15:49 /home -> /Users


Double Typing on my MacBook pro I've been having this issue for the past few months, where my Mac will echo type whole/partial words while I'm typing. This isn't the same issue as double typing keys, but rather whole phrases will appear again in the middle of me typing. It looks something like this:

"Hello ello world!"

Sometimes it will execute a command to close a window twice.

This goes away when I'm in "Safe Mode". Does anyone have any clue where this is coming from?

I don't think this is a keyboard issue, honestly. Well, maybe a buffering issue? I contacted Apple Support and they didn't have much to say. I reinstalled the operating system, and it still comes up. Though, it did seem to largely go away for a few days.

Additional Details:
Running Catalina 10.15.1 (Happened on previous versions of Catalina too)
MacBook Pro 2017 13inch

There appear to be many variations on this question, that I have found.

However the problem addressed in this question is the one that I was experiencing.

So I'd like to try to post here a comprehensive answer that addresses the best possible solutions that have come up so far, starting with all the most common, simplest and least likely to work suggestions up to the ones that seem to address this problem specifically.

Note: If you've done your research, you'll note already an enormous amount of overlap with multiple pages linking back and forth to one another, in regards to this issue. My attempt here is simply to aggregate as many of the key factors involved into one place.

Background

So for a long time now, MacBook users have reported a 'double typing' issue, most especially with the most recent MacBook Pro's to hit the market. There have been many reports of this problem occurring on 2015, up to 2019 edition MacBook Pros, from the 13' to the 15' Touch Bar, and every thing in-between.

There appear to be multiple similar problems, that may or may not have more than one possible solution. The most common reported issues I have seen are:

single keys such as b or n being pressed and outputting doubles like bb or nn in their place. Space bar is also commonly reported to be double typing.
some people may also be irked by the default setting of a double space autocorrecting to a period ..
instances of multiple repeated strings or sequences of keystrokes, at seemingly random intervals, for example whole words, or even multiple words appearing twice, and also modifier commands such as: ⌘+w or ctrl+tab.

In my case the problem was the latter. I'm sure other variations of this problem exist, these are the ones I've encountered most frequently in my search for a solution.

Possible Solutions

This is a summary of most of the answers that I have come across so far, hopefully one of them will work for anyone who is experiencing this problem.

System preferences -> keyboard = Slide the bar left to turn 'key repeat' to off. This is one of the most common solutions as it is by far the simplest and quickest to try. It's also the least likely, from what I've gathered.
cleaning your keyboard, as per these instructions there's even an app to help you do this
turning off the period autocorrect option = System preferences -> Keyboard -> Text: Uncheck "Add period with double space"

This problem has become so substantial that Apple has released an extended service specifically for this problem, whereby they are replacing keyboards free of charge for anyone who's device falls within their approved list, which as of Jan 2020 includes all Mac products using the butterfly keyboard.

Like many others however, it seems to be increasingly clear that for most people (though not all) this is not a hardware issue. Many users, including myself, have testified that this occurs not just on the Mac keyboard, but external keyboards also, wired, wireless and bluetooth alike.

Most significantly this problem appears to have started for many, only after installing Catalina.

Users have reported that the problem disappears when:

Running their Mac in 'safe mode'
In other user accounts on their machine (this is true in my case)

So a number of other suggestions have also popped up. For those who believe that their problem is software related, the following solutions may work for you.

Install an app called Unshaky
Reset your NVRAM as per a comment from this other question

option+⌘+P+R

Update to the latest version of macOS Catalina (version 10.15.3 as of the time of writing) -- System Preferences -> Update Software
Create a new user account
Re-Install MacOS in the Background
Roll back to the previous MacOS, Mojave
And the worst case scenario - A full wipe of your system and re-install a fresh version of your MacOS

For anyone who has Wacom tablet software installed

this Reddit post appears to have isolated a fairly specific problem, but it appears to have fixed the problem for a lot of people, and makes intuitive sense to me, for anyone who has Wacom Driver software in their system.

Install the most recent Catalina compatible Wacom software from their website --(This is what solved the problem for me)
Uninstall any Wacom drivers you may have installed on your system. Official instructions can be found here

disconnect tablet from USB
Navigate to: Finder -> Applications -> Wacom table -> Wacom Tablet Utility
Click the 'Uninstall' button
Restart your machine
Find and delete all related folders as per the linked instructions

Acknowledgements

Finally, I'd like to acknowledge the multiple posts and pages that I have drawn on to find this solution. I can't take credit for any of the solutions posted here, I found them all in my efforts to fix my own frustrating problem. I hope that anyone experiencing this problem finds a solution in this answer.


Mac mini temperature issue I have old mac mini upgraded from 1,1 to 2,1 and CPU from T2300 to t7200. Now I have some troubles with my smcFanControl. It show than my temperature is 73-80 celsium when cpu is loaded.
Is it ok temp for this apparat???

Maybe i need install old macOSx? Now i have installed MacOSX Lion 10.7.5 ?

Actually it is better to look at the CPU load, that will result in heating up.

Intel designs microprocessors to operate up to 110 Celsius, before the build in thermal switch kicks in to prevent self destruction.

70 Celsius is almost the standby temperature (room + CPU)

Intel has made a easy to use app to check your CPU health. See if it works on your model.


See sender's email-address in Google Inbox for iOS How do I see a sender's email in Google's email-app Inbox for iOS?

I cannot click the displayed name or the photo, either while reading the email or when answering it. It just shows, in this case, an unknown first name of someone.

The extended headers can be viewed by tapping the "to me" that in small, gray text shown under the sender's name. The "tap target" (area where you can effectively tap to initiate the action) is very small.

The email address is then visible next to the sender's name.


Is there a way to have BBEdit automatically save files when switching to a different application? In Sublime Text 2, there is a save_on_focus_lost preference option. When set, every time you switch  to another app all current files are saved. Is there a way to make BBEdit behave the same way?

BBEdit has "Attachement Point" scripts that are automatically run during different conditions. Here is a list of Attachment Points:

http://www.bbeditextras.org/wiki/index.php?title=Attachment_Points

Here is a script that should do what you want:

https://gist.github.com/benspaulding/1287814


Sort by least played song I have a playlist with ~200 songs, I use this playlist during my (1-2hr) workout, it seems that when I start the playlist I hear a few songs I heard the day before.  I don't want to listen again to the songs I heard yesterday...yes I could just hit >> to advance to the next song but that interrupts my workout.  Is there a sort option that would play the least played song next in a playlist?

I'm not sure about being able to reverse sort by Number of Plays, but you can exclude anything played in the last x days with a Smart Playlist...

For example...


Lyrics sync with running audio Does anyone have any idea on how to keep text in sync with audio such that as the audio progresses, the lyrics that are being sung are what is being displayed onscreen?

What I actually want, is my audio file to be playing playing and at the same time the lyrics of that audio file will be highlighted. (Similar to a karaoke machine.)

Soundhound can show lyrics in real time.


Applescripts not working in Finder since Mavericks I have a bunch of Applescripts that do things like change sort column in Finder windows, but they've stopped working since Mavericks.

If I close and reopen the window, then the change takes effect, but this is annoying.

Is this a bug? Is there a workaround?

E.g.,

tell application "Finder"
tell list view options of window 1
    set sort column to name column
    tell column kind column
        if sort direction is normal then
            set sort direction to reversed
        else
            set sort direction to normal
        end if
    end tell
    set sort column to kind column
end tell
end tell

This looks like a bug. I've tried rewriting the script various ways but the change only seems to take effect for new windows.

So here is a horribly hacky way to get this to work.

tell application "Finder"
    tell list view options of window 1
        tell column kind column
            if sort direction is normal then
                set sort direction to reversed
            else
                set sort direction to normal
            end if
        end tell
        set sort column to kind column
    end tell
    set currentPosition to position of window 1
    set currentTarget to target of window 1
    make new Finder window to currentTarget
    set position of window 1 to currentPosition
    close window 2
end tell


How to delete a song from inside an iPod? My girlfriend has an iPod Nano (3G) and she asked me how she can delete a song from inside iPod.

I didn't find any option inside the device, is it really like that? Can I delete songs only using iTunes?

Correct, on a stock iPod that is non jail broken, you can only delete music via iTunes.


Is there a way to use a Finder hot key to open a folder in TextMate? I have setup a System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Services item to allow me to use a hotkey to "Open in TextMate". It works fine on files, but does not work on folders.

If I Control+Click on the same folder, select "Services" from the pop-up menu and choose "Open in TextMate" the folder is opened as a project in TextMate. This is exactly what I'm looking for. Is there a way to setup a shortcut to have the same open folder as project behavior as the Control+Click method?

I think that's a bug with Finder. Services that receive folders as input don't seem to be listed in the Services menu when folders are selected (but it only applies to column view; they are listed in other view modes).

In any case, one alternative would be to just use an AppleScript without wrapping it as a service. You can give it an app-specific shortcut with FastScripts.

try
    tell application "Finder"
        open (get selection) using path to application "TextMate"
    end tell
end try


Does MoneyWell have a "jars" system? Does MoneyWell have a "jars" system?

I imagine if I have PHP 1000, I want to be able to "give every peso a job" like place it in a "jar" for example. Then I want MoneyWell to track that "jar" for me, like if it's positive, I'm obliged to spend it (or transfer it to an untouchable savings account). If it's negative, it means I'm over the budget.

I think that is how moneywell works.

Every month or week depending on your salary period you allocate your income to buckets (which  think correspond to your jars) and then when you spend anything you take hat money from a bucket. If the bucket is positive you are in budget otherwise you had better work out where to cut your budget.

The buckets are your budget are are a different split to you accounts which show where all your money is saved etc.

See the video tutorials for more examples.


Academic reference manager that supports freehand annotation I currently use Mendeley and have been happy with its organisational capabilities. However, I would like to be able to make freehand annotations and drawings on pdfs, which Mendeley does not support. I've downloaded a trial version of Papers, but I am finding its metadata input extremely clunky and error prone compared to Mendeley. I would like to be able to sync between iPad and Mac easily. Can anyone recommend a good reference manager that supports freehand pdf annotation?

I can recommend Zoterro. I used it when I was at university. I'd highly recommend the website refme, it was my best friend in university.


Why hasn't my battery life improved even though I changed the battery? I have a mid-2009 white MacBook. About a week ago, I switched the aging and failing battery for an identical new battery I got off eBay (supposedly original part and new - looked legit both in description and packaging).

After switching the battery and resetting the SMC, a fully-charged battery reports six hours of available battery life, the way it should. But the battery runs out after only three or so. Pretty much the same battery life I got out of my old battery.

Could there be something I'm doing wrong software-wise here, or is it likely that I got a shitty used battery which was polished and made to appear new?

The first step is to look at the detailed battery information from the System Information/System Profiler for each battery.

  Charge Information:
     Charge Remaining (mAh):     5587
     Fully Charged:              Yes
     Charging:                   No
     Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 5611
  Health Information:
     Cycle Count:                289
     Condition:                  Normal
  Battery Installed:          Yes
  Amperage (mA):              0
  Voltage (mV):               12420

Pay attention to the Full Charge Capacity and cycles for each battery.

The second step (assuming my guess that you have a non-unibody Mac where the battery is user-replaceble - swappable without removing the bottom of the Mac) is to run a simple calibration charge cycle on the new battery (and followed by the old one perhaps to compare). Once your computer gets to know the new battery (it guesses based on average battery performance until it determines the chemistry particular to each battery that gets used over time).

The third step if you really want to measure everything on both batteries is to use the pmset -g pslog command to document each battery as it powers your Mac from full to the low power shut off point.

Here is the relevant section from the man page linked above:

 If your system suddenly sleeps on battery power with 20-50% of capacity
 remaining, leave this command running in a Terminal window. When you see
 the problem and later power and wake the computer, you'll be able to
 detect sudden discontinuities (like a jump from 30% to 0%) indicative of
 an aging battery.


Will updating macOS delete my kext configuration I have after disabling discrete GPU permanently from EFI? I have followed all the instructions provided at MacBook Pro: How to disable discrete GPU permanently from EFI?

My question is:

Is it safe to update my macOS to latest High Sierra or even to Mojave (Recently I have High Sierra 10.13.1) or it will erase all my kext settings and make my broken GPU appear again? And do I have to do all the process all over again from the beginning, which I would like highly to avoid.

Sorry if this question been asked before, since i cant find this question somewhere else.

As it's currently written I have to assume that you followed the highest voted answer. That means you only removed the dGPU kexts. That is suboptimal anyway.

Look here for a better solution.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/295805/251859

Now, updating macOS 10.13.1 to 10.13.5 will install a non-working but critical kext (AMDRadeonX3000.kext), thereby your machine will still boot.

That changes with 10.13.6, where a working, new kext will be installed. That means you will then have to move the kext again.

On upgrading to Mojave you will naturally get a full set of working kernel extensions. If that is coupled with a non-working dGPU that will lead to a boot failure. This requires additional operations then.

But that shouldn't bother you much, as most MacBook Pros for which that hack is intended are not officially supported b Mojave. That means it is unlikely that you upgrade by accident through a wrong click in the AppStore…


How can I download apps from the App Store without using Touch ID? I can no longer install any apps from the App Store to my iPhone as the only way to now do so is via Touch ID which I cannot use on my phone. How can I download apps from the App Store without using Touch ID?

Go to the Settings app, then to Touch ID & Passcode. Enter your passcode, then turn off Touch ID for everything.


Full screen zoom: follow keyboard focus doesn't work well There's a setting in full screen zoom called 'follow text focus', which is supposed to cause OSX to follow the position of the text caret instead of the mouse pointer when in full screen zoom mode.

The problem is it doesn't work very well.

I have a 2 monitor setup for my main Mac, but the second monitor is a wacom cintiq and it is only on when I'm using it to draw.  The rest of the time it's off.  This means that full screen zoom needs to be in "Continuous" mode. If you have it in "Keep cursor in the middle" mode then the cursor ends up at the edge of my main monitor most of the time, or off it altogether.

However, the text cursor behaviour can't be influenced at all, and in "follow text focus" mode it will just fly off the edge of the monitor, even in apps where following the text focus works.

In Microsoft Word 2011, text focus follow doesn't seem to work at all!

I'm trying to find some kind of solution that will suit, but am stuck so far.

I think if I can get OSX to act as if the cintiq isn't even attached when it's off that might help to some degree.  However, the only way I know of doing that is physically disconnecting either the display's power, or disconnecting the DVI cable.  Neither of these are really an option as the connectors aren't exactly in accessible locations.  If there's some way of getting OSX to go into single monitor mode when the cintiq is off then I'd love to know what it is.

Even this wouldn't fix the problem with Word and other apps that don't honour the text focus following.  Is there anything I can do about them?

I can't help you with Word, etc., but here's how to get it to stop recognizing the Cintiq:

Go to System Preferences.
Open the Displays pane.
Click "Detect Displays."

If the Cintiq is turned off, this should fix it. When you want to re-detect it, simply turn it on and Detect Displays again.

If you want a quick way to access Detect Displays, there's a menu bar icon that can be enabled for Displays tools while you're in the same preference pane: Tick "Show displays in menu bar" and you can have quick access to that as well as a few other relevant things.


Mac OS X 10.6.8 not storing password in system profile - used for pre-authentication to the wireless network Running 300 MacBooks with Mac OS X 10.6.8.

When logged on as a local admin I can connect to WiFi, I save the connection in the system profile, allowing pre-authentication before users attempt to log on.

This has been working fine for nearly a year. Now the system profile requires re-entering the WiFi password before connecting after logon, restart, even turning airport off and back on.

What could be causing this? DNS? IAS/Radius? DHCP?

Windows clients just work.

Any ideas would be great, the users are back on Monday!

Make sure that you haven't enabled the security settings in System Preferences -> Network -> Wi-Fi (Airport?) -> Advanced -> Wi-Fi: "Require administrator password to:"...

It may also help to examine log files on the computers that are having the issues. Best place to start is probably the log at /var/log/system.log. If you're using RADIUS, it may help to enable EAPOL logging:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.eapolclient LogFlags -int 1

To disable EAPOL logging, you can perform this command:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.eapolclient LogFlags -int 0

You may need to reboot after applying this command. The resulting log file should be located at /var/log/eapolclient.< interface >.log (e.g., eapolclient.en1.log)


Are whitespaces a good idea for a rootCA or intermediateCA for a self sign/closed on-prem PKI - with iPads? Good morning,
we've got iPads running with a native App and would next use a safari Homescreen Shortcut for a web based catalog. However, connecting to the F5 LTM, which rotates and terminates the (internal)SSL connections towards AWS ingress controllers results in a redirect loop, where the console tells:

default 13:59:24.084312 +0100   com.apple.WebKit.Networking [C324 Hostname#3249e3e3:443 tcp, pid: 342, url: https://katalog.company.domain/, tls] start
default 13:59:24.084919 +0100   com.apple.WebKit.Networking nw_connection_report_state_with_handler_locked [C324] reporting state preparing
[...]
default 13:59:24.152504 +0100   com.apple.WebKit.Networking TIC TLS Event [324:0x104a86050]: 11, Pending(0)
default 13:59:24.152647 +0100   com.apple.WebKit.Networking TIC TLS Event [324:0x104a86050]: 14, Pending(0)
default 13:59:24.171978 +0100   trustd  cert[0]: MissingIntermediate =(leaf)[force]> 0
default 13:59:24.172312 +0100   com.apple.WebKit.Networking Trust evaluate failure: [leaf MissingIntermediate]
default 13:59:24.172390 +0100   com.apple.WebKit.Networking TIC TLS Trust Result [324:0x104a86050]: 4
error   13:59:24.172439 +0100   com.apple.WebKit.Networking TIC SSL Trust Error [324:0x104a86050]: 3:0
default 13:59:24.172474 +0100   com.apple.WebKit.Networking TIC TCP Conn Cancel [324:0x104a86050]
default 13:59:24.172671 +0100   com.apple.WebKit.Networking [C324 Hostname#3249e3e3:443 tcp, pid: 342, url: https://katalog.company.domain/, tls] cancel
default 13:59:24.172711 +0100   com.apple.WebKit.Networking [C324 Hostname#3249e3e3:443 tcp, pid: 342, url: https://katalog.company.domain/, tls] cancelled

So there it is, quite visible

missingIntermediate

We've added the rootCA and intermediate on the devices via mdm. I can see the rootCA is trusted. The mdm profile lists the certificates properly.

Chrome says: NET:ERR INVALID_CERT_AUTHORITY

The certificate names are the sort of: company Name Root.cer, which results in %20 URL encoding behaviour at certain perspectives.

Might this cause the above behaviour?

Our network is rather locked up, and we've explicitly allowed outside communication for the devices - which so far works well.

What am I missing?

Most probably you have installed the intermediate certificate in the wrong place. The root certificate should be added to the trust store on the iPad - this you've got working already.

The intermediate should NOT be placed in the trust store - instead it needs to be installed in the Keychain instead.

Spaces in the file names haven't got anything to do with the problem, as the file names "disappear" when the certificates are imported.

Note: In terms of "best practice" the way you are preceeding are more or less a work-around for the fact that you've got a misconfigured server/F5. You need to install the intermediate certificate on the server/F5 (i.e. whatever terminates your SSL), so that the TLS server actually replies with the full chain including the intermediate certificate.


Problems with Varmilo VA88M keyboard, seems to switch to ANSI layout I have, since some 2 months, a VA88M Varmilo keyboard (and am very happy with it), a ISO Nordic keyboard layout. Suddenly it switched some keys around so that the >-key suddenly generated °-char and the < key generated §. I removed the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.keyboardtype.plist and KeyboardSetupAssistent appeared and I could fix it. (as suggested here) but it only worked for a while. Now the file doesn't exist anymore and when I try to run KeyBoardSetupAssistent manually it just says that there is no unknown keyboard.
Help me out here, please!
I've also mailed Varmilo but they had no good ideas.

One possible fix is to create a custom layout with
https://software.sil.org/ukelele/
Which puts <> where you want it.


I accidentally allowed software to load when asked. How do I find out what I allowed (and block it again if needed)? I just upgraded to Mojave, and all went well. When the system restarted, I was shown the name of an application or extension that was being blocked from loading, and I mistakenly authorized it to load. I didn't get a chance to read the name and don't know what it is. How can I figure it out?

It will depend on precisely what permission it was requesting - though note for future reference you're going to see a lot of these with Mojave, so get into the habit of reading carefully; even to the extent of researching exactly what it is you're allowing before clicking either option. Some apps will never ask again & then you may lose functionality.

Generally, these allowed apps are listed in System Prefs > Security & Privacy > Privacy & then whichever subsection they requested permission for. [I think] The two new options in there since Mojave are Full Disk Access & Automation.
I don't know of any way to determine the date the permission was granted.

Of course, once identified, there is a simple checkbox to allow/disallow.