Play/pause buttons launches iTunes instead of playing/pausing the Deezer app I am using the Deezer app music. It worked well, I could use the media buttons to control play/pause/next track/previous track. But a few days ago, (after an macOS update?) now when I hit play/pause it launches iTunes instead of controlling the Deezer app that is already running and playing music. It was correctly functioning before, so I don't know where this change of behaviour is coming from. This is very annoying as it makes the Deezer almost unusable as I have to bring it to front to control it.

Found the answer on the Deezer community forum:

You have to allow Deezer the accessibility rights, go to:

System Preferences
Security and Privacy
Privacy tab
Choose "Accessibility"
Add "Deezer" to the allowed software

You'll have to unlock the configuration by clicking on the lock and enter your system password.

The original answer can be found here.


MacOS wont boot after partitioning my SSD I installed Kali Linux on my iMac as Dual Boot. After a while I needed more space for Kali so I decided to shrink my Mac Partition (APFS) using MacOS Disk Utility Tool.

I created a new 100 GB Partition (exFat).
I tried to reboot my Computer and only Kali Linux showed up as bootable.

So far I tried to boot in Recovery Mode, but instead of the normal MacOS High Sierra recovery menu the recovery menu from MacOS Lion showed up.

kali@kali:~$ sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

Disk /dev/sda: 931,53 GiB, 1000204886016 bytes, 1953525168 sectors
Disk model: CT1000MX500SSD1
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: E1EA0C68-DA59-406C-944A-089B812AD69D

Device          Start        End    Sectors   Size Type
/dev/sda1          40     409639     409600   200M EFI System
/dev/sda2      409640 1561962535 1561552896 744,6G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3  1561964544 1757014015  195049472    93G Microsoft basic data
/dev/sda4  1757276160 1920016383  162740224  77,6G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda5  1920016384 1953523711   33507328    16G Linux swap

kali@kali:~$ sudo gdisk /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.5

Partition table scan:
  MBR: hybrid
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): p
Disk /dev/sda: 1953525168 sectors, 931.5 GiB
Model: CT1000MX500SSD1
Sector size (logical/physical): 512/4096 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): E1EA0C68-DA59-406C-944A-089B812AD69D
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1953525134
Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
Total free space is 265581 sectors (129.7 MiB)

Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
   1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
   2          409640      1561962535   744.6 GiB   8300
   3      1561964544      1757014015   93.0 GiB    0700
   4      1757276160      1920016383   77.6 GiB    8300
   5      1920016384      1953523711   16.0 GiB    8200

Any ideas to on how to boot in MacOS without losing all my macOS data?

The answer below was developed based on your question and the image you posted. A cropped version of this image is posted below.

Enter the following from linux.

  Note: I can tell you have taken steps that have not been posted to your question. Therefore, even if the procedure below repairs the partition tables, there may be damage to the APFS container from these steps that are unknown to me.

sudo gdisk /dev/sda
p
x
o
n
m
t
3
8300
n
5
409640
1561962535
AF0A
s
p
w
y

Explanation

Execute gdisk on the internal drive as root user.

sudo gdisk /dev/sda

Print out the GUID Partition Table (GPT) and the Master Boot Record (MBR) partition table.

p
x
o

Change the MBR partition table from hybrid to protective

n

Change the kali volume partition type from Microsoft to linux.

m
t
3
8300

Add back in the APFS partition.

n
5
409640
1561962535
AF0A

Sort the partitions in ascending order.

s

Print the resulting GPT.

p

Write the result back to the internal drive and exit gdisk.

w
y


About Mac computer's file permission I was trying to install Joomla on my Macbook Air under XAMPP. I successfully installed it, but when I try to open the front-end, I keep getting this mkdir():permission denied error.
Two questions raised while I was trying to solve this problem:

I noticed when I do ls -l, the owner/group of some folders is myname:admin, while those of other folders is root:admin. I am the only user of this computer and the myname user should have all root privileges.
What I don't understand:
A. Why when I do chmod I had to sudo chmod.
B. Why there are folders with different owner.

To solve the problem, I forcefully changed owner/group of all related files and directories to root:root and permissions of those to 0777. But eventually I will have to move this over to a production server and it is not wise to keep the owner and permission like this. Is there any better way to solve the problem while keeping the owner/permission settings as tight as possible?

sudo is needed to change permissions of files and folders that the current user account does not have permissions to modify.

In this case, the chmod myname required sudo because some of the files and folders being modified were owned by root.

By default, the first user account is an administrator. This is likely the account you are currently using. Administrator permissions are not equivalent to those of root. root exists above administrator users on OS X.

With regard to how best to deploy Joomla on a production server, this is better asked in a separate question.


What Is The Path Where Apache Is Located? When I check logs (Apache, Ruby on Rails) it appears that my development Mac Mini Server is being scanned.  I would like to install mod_security.  I'm currently running the latest version of Mavericks but plan to install Yosemite within couple of days.  I use Apache 2.2.26.

Where are the Apache modules located on the Mac Mini Server in Mavericks and Yosemite?

If there is a better way to protect my service, such as turning on the Firewall in System Preferences, I'm open to that.  I just don't know enough about how to set that up where I can do what I normally do and add my websites to it.

The default location is:

/usr/libexec/apache2/


Why does Safari freeze on YouTube HTML5 videos? I'm in YouTube HTML5 trial, and the experience is terrible with Safari.
Every video is lagging severely, and the browser gets unresponsive constantly.

I have zero problems with the Flash version, and Chrome handles HTML5 YouTube just fine.

Activity Monitor says QTKitServer - Safari Web Content grabs more than 100% CPU.
Can I fix this?

I have 17-inch Mid 2010 MacBook Pro running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 with 8 GB of RAM.

I had a similar problem with my Safari. I went into /Library/Internet Plug-Ins and removed the two piece of Flash cruft (regretfully I'm at work, so I don't the exact file names.)  After a reboot, Safari worked much better, as did Chrome.  Not sure why Chrome improved, but it improved most of all.

Incidentally, I thought I was on a Flash free system previously, so I'm not sure how those bits got there.  If I need Flash, I just go to Develop -> Open Page With -> Chrome (you need to enable the Developer Menu, under Advanced in Preferences.)

Hope this help


Synchronize 2 different iPhoto libraries I need a tool/script to synchronize two different iPhoto libraries between two Mac books. By now I want to have common albums with my mother and myself.
Is there anything to do this automatically via Internet or local network?

Is it possible that iPhoto Library Manager might be of any use for you in that situation? It’s not free and I don’t have any personal experiences with this software but from what I’ve read it seems to work.

Hope it helps.

Good luck.


How do I export BBedit Settings to another mac I currently have bbedit setup with my custom shortcuts and I would like to export these setting to my office mac. Is there a way for me to export these settings ?

To export your settings and preferences to a new Mac copy the following files and folders to it:

file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.barebones.bbedit.plist

folders:

~/Library/BBEdit
~/Library/Application Support/BBEdit

~ indicates your user folder.


Is there a battery monitoring app that can send a notification when the battery reaches X %? I would especially love an app where you could customize the percentage at which point the app will send a notification (for example, 80%). I looked at some battery apps I found on AppStore, but none of them had this feature. The reason I'd like to have this feature is I want to unplug the charger before the battery hits 100%. Or at the very least, know when I have hit 100%. I don't want to have the phone plugged any more than necessary since that will cause damage to the battery.

I read that the optimal range (for the battery in the long run) would be somewhere around 70% and 80%, i.e. you would try to keep the battery percentage in that interval at all times. It would be easier to maintain this if my phone sent me a notification whenever I reached one of the two points, as I can't use all my time checking the battery.

Does such an app exist?

EDIT: I don't have a MacBook. I'm looking for an app for iPhone.

There is an app called Coconut Battery that does this but it is hardwired for certain values all less than 50%.  There is also a setting for number of minutes left. Load the app and go to Preferences under the coconutBattery menu item. This opens a panel and one option is Notifications. See image below.

CoconutBattery is free but there is a Pro version for $9.99. This will also report on iOS devices connected to your computer.


How can I back up my app data? I have some app data that I'd like to preserve when the time for a new iPhone rolls around.  This app does not (seem to) have any cloud-syncing functionality.  I regularly sync my iPhone to iTunes via USB on a Macbook Air running OS X 10.5.8.  How can I ensure that this app's data is backed up, so as to re-use it on a new device?

If you take a full backup of your iPhone (right click on it in iTunes and choose Back Up) and then restore it to a new phone, all data will be preserved, including apps' data:

  iTunes will back up the following information

  Contacts* and Contact Favorites (regularly sync contacts to a computer or cloud service such as iCloud to back them up).
  App Store Application data including in-app purchases (except the Application itself, its tmp and Caches folder).
  Application settings, preferences, and data, including documents.

From iTunes: About iOS backups.


"Updates not installed" after updating all applications in app store after 4 months I turned on my MacBook Air [2015] and first off all I tried install JDK 8 and Eclipse for developing python.  after all things done, I notified by app store update notification so I clicked to update all of applications. but this things happened.

after downloading all files, iTunes 12.8.2, Safari 12.0.3 and Security Update 2019-001 10.12.6 it shows this message:
ok, now everything is good and waiting for progress bar to complete:
and after downloading things wait for restart:
it shows OS update progress:
and error happened :
MacBook restarted and go to MacOS again
and now this message showing up:
and now if i click on install, it goes to step one again. and everything repeated as I said in this list.

Machine Specs:

MacOS Sierra 10.12.6
MacBook Air (13 inch - early 2015)
8Gb DDR3
and about 20Gb free space

Somehow your installed copy of Safari became corrupted.

Delete Safari, then reinstall your current version of macOS.  That will reinstall a good copy of Safari, and then you should be able to install any updates.


How to transition from macOS Server deprecated services to the open source alternatives? According to Apple's recent statement, many of the current feature of macOS will be removed in future versions of macOS Server.

Apple offers alternative software and programs to use instead of the services in macOS Server.  I would like to transition to these new services but am unsure how to go about doing this so I get the identical (or as close as possible) configuration as I have currently, with macOS Server.

In June 2018, Apple released official documentation outlining the step by step directions to move most services to alternatives.
The services included in this are

DNS
DHCP
VPN
RADIUS
NetInstall
Websites
Wiki
Calendar and Contacts
FTP
Software Update

The goal of each section is to have

The identical configuration as the macOS Server [service name] service.

Note: Some services are unable to be replicated completely

Major elements of the macOS Server Wiki structure, user model, and semantics—that is, separate wikis with separate ACLs, pages and files associated with specific wikis, user pages and blogs, page histories, directory- based users and groups, themes, avatars, custom banners won’t fully map to any current open source project.
APNs requires special Transport Layer Security (TLS) certificates in order for the server to authenticate to the Apple-hosted service. Those certificates are generated by macOS Server. There is currently no alternative means of generating the required APNs certificates, so push notifications can’t be used when macOS Server is no longer available.


Vector Software for Drawing and Diagramming What software is available for Mac that is good for drawing cartoons and diagrams?

These are some features it should have:

Edit any component easily after drawing it.
Easily add and edit text anywhere.
Graphics Tablet support, preferably with a pressure-sensitive option.

Also it should be able to import/export:

Import other image formats, and ideally should be able to convert hand-drawn images into vector images.
Export into png and svg formats, and for extra credit, export a clickable image map.

Extra Information:
Omnigraffle looks good for diagramming (and can export clickable image maps), but it doesn't seem like its for drawing non-diagrams.
EazyDraw looked like it might combine some graphing and drawing features, but I'm not sure how stable it is.

What software is there that has the above drawing features and can do some diagramming?

It may be difficult to get all features into one app but I'll suggest 5. They might have features in common but I'll highlight the ones you're asking about.

Artboard - Tablet support
Sketch - Imports/exports to SVG
Intaglio - Diagramming
iVinci - Converts from bitmap to vector
Pencil - Tablet support (mostly suited for animation and cartoons with bitmap and vector drawing, onion skinning, etc.)

All of them should allow

Editing any component easily after drawing it (layer support)
Easily add and edit text anywhere (vectorized text is a standard)
Exporting to PNG (also a standard)

I can't post more than 2 links but you'll find them easily on MacUpdate (all have trial downloads).


How can I remove "zombie entries" from login items when the controls are dimmed? How can I get rid of zombie entries in Login items?

In this case BambooCore App doesn't respond to the - control even when I select it. Also the hide checkbox is disabled on this item, just like the delete control.

It's far late, but I have discovered today, trying to remove a similar zombie item that you cannot remove items for ALL ITEMS when the padlock icon is closed. Open the padlock for any action that involves other users. That's all.


Mail.app keeps crashing: Got EXPUNGE but EXISTS is already 0 Mail.app on my High Sierra (it also did this on Sierra too) keeps crashing. In the error report I see that it always crashes with the same error:

Got EXPUNGE but EXISTS is already 0.

What does this mean and how do I avoid crashes?

I had the same problem, with it happening a few times a day but only when sending email. Rebuilding the mailbox did not help.

Eventually I found that I was storing draft messages on the server. This is picked in Mail > Preferences > someemailaccount > Mailbox Behaviours > Drafts Mailbox.

I changed that to a local "On My Mac" setting. I have not had a single error today and yesterday since doing so!

I think what was happening was my mail provider was sending the message and deleting the message from drafts, in the meantime, Apple Mail wanted to delete the message from drafts, and, they clashed depending on which happened first.


How can I bypass Textmate asking for my password every time I save a file? I'm using Lion and every time I edit a file, TextMate prompt me for my password.

Is there a way to bypass that?

Chances are you are trying to save your file somewhere other than under your home directory.  In my experience, Textmate Save dialogs often default to the system root directory.  If you try to save there, you will get an authentication request as you normally would not have write permission.  Expand the Save dialog box and choose somewhere in your home directory tree.


Find individual users' backup size in Time Capsule I'm the administrator of a 2 TB Time Capsule, to which my co-workers connect via individual accounts. I recently noticed a sudden jump in usage — from ~1 TB (0–1 over the course of 8 months) to ~1.5 TB (1–1.5 in a span of 2 weeks). My guess is that one of them downloaded experimental data files (which don't need to be backed up, as they're done so elsewhere) and stored them locally during those two weeks and accidentally backed them up, thus contributing to the bloat.

Is it possible for me to find out the sizes of these users' backups, so that I can then instruct them to use tmutil to remove only the specific backups with the huge data files? I do not have access to the contents of their backups (at least, not easily and I want to either).

You'll want to get a tool like BackupLoupe to introspect each backup event to locate the largest files stored on each interval (or search across all backups to find large folders and files).

You could also use a command line tool like tmutil compare or du -sm /whatever/* to calculate sizes and changes - but a graphical tool with searching ability even when the volume is not mounted is far superior for the task of finding large users of space on a Time Machine volume.


What are the radii of the iOS icon corners? What are the radii of the iOS icon corners at the various sizes?

There are a variety of iOS icon templates available for free on the web—the best I've seen so far is from The Hicksenian—that will offer up this information (and possibly even obviate the need to know entirely). There is even a (very) short discussion about the corner radii. A quick search for ios icon template will return a lot of similar results.


How do I restore Desktop to my favorites list in Finder? I know to drag the icon. But I don't know where the Desktop is to be found to drag! It's probably a simple thing...but I don't know where it is! Duh!

Use Finder Prefs -  Cmd ⌘   ,  & check the box next to Desktop


Is an older version of Python a necessity? ML 10.8.4 and I have installed Python 2.6, 2.7 and 3.3.  I keep reading that it's necessary to keep the the 2.6 version around because the system uses it.  However, I've not found any software that needs it other than that which I installed (and I can control which version THAT needs - I complied and installed SciPy for 3.3.2 for example).  So, using macports I pointed the python link to the 3.3.2 install to see if there is something hidden that I've missed.  I've not had any problems.

So I'm wondering if it's even necessary to keep the old versions around.  I am aware that this will limit certain versions of python scripts that I install.

Does anyone know what I definitively will break by having python link to 3.3.2 in a base install of ML?

Also, I suspect that the 2.6 version is an old hanger on from Snow Leopard (machine migration) as supposedly, ML uses 2.7.  But I can't confirm that.

While there are obviously differences in the different versions of Python, there are also differences between the "system" Python and those you install via Python.org, MacPorts, Homebrew, etc. All of these "additional" versions can coexist quite happily with the system versions in /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions - I have 2.3, 2.5.6, 2.6.7, and 2.7.2 on my 10.8.4 iMac which originally came with Lion installed. /usr/bin/python is 2.7.2.

Basically, there is no good reason to get rid of any of the system Pythons (they only take up ~200MB), and some very good reasons to not get rid of them. They are included for a reason, and there are various system utilities and programs that depend on them. You could get strange, unexplained behavior if you remove them, and vital stuff may not work, as Python scripts and libraries are behind some major system tools. Python has been designed to have multiple versions living happily side-by-side, so if your system is set up properly (which I generally trust the Apple engineers to have done), there won't be any conflicts as hypothesized by another answer.

If you want to change which version of Python runs by default when you type python into the Terminal prompt, then change your $PATH environment variable to point toward your installation of choice, do not unlink or change /usr/bin/python. For example, I use MacPorts, so /opt/local/bin is ahead of /usr/bin in my $PATH, so I never run the "system" version 2.7.2. You can then start your scripts with

#!/usr/bin/env python

and it will search your path for the correct binary.

You should have no problems at all using MacPorts point to your version of choice. One thing I would suggest, though, is to keep /opt/local/bin/python pointing to the latest version of Python 2 (2.7.5, currently), and use /opt/local/bin/python3 point to 3.3.2. Yes, you have to remember to add the 3 on the end of the command, but several months back I tried setting python to Py3, and occasionally would get weird errors from some programs expecting Py2 to be there.

Hopefully this helps answer your actual question, please let me know if you need anything else.


Are there any deep details on the specifics of what the “Low Power Mode” in iOS 9 actually affects? So as mentioned in this canonical question and answer thread on iOS 9 features, “Low Power Mode” is a good thing. This is what iOS 9’s blurb on “Low Power Mode” explains it does when activated:

  Low Power Mode temporarily reduces power consumption until you can
  fully charge your iPhone. When this is on, mail fetch, background app
  refresh, automatic downloads and some visual effects are reduced or
  turned off.

Okay, I get the gist of this. I understand the broad concepts. But is this really all that happens in “Low Power Mode?” For example, what are the exact visual effects which are “reduced or turned off?” Are there any more specific details from Apple on exactly what “Low Power Mode” does?

Apple hasn't really discussed specifically what Low Power Mode actually does. Its main underdocumented feature is that it underclocks the processor, reducing performance to increase battery life, but there's a few other tweaks it makes to the system as noted underneath the switch.

As shown in these screenshots, Low Power Mode reduces the performance by ~30%.

Source: http://www.macrumors.com/2015/06/25/ios-9-low-power-mode-benchmarks/

Apple lists the following as features modified by Low Power Mode:

  Email fetch
  Hey Siri
  Background app refresh
  Automatic downloads
  Wi-Fi associations
  Some visual effects

Source: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT205234

More details are provided in the developer documentation (Energy Efficiency Guide for iOS Apps):

  Reduce CPU and GPU performance
  Pause discretionary and background activities, including networking
  Reduce screen brightness
  Reduce the timeout for auto-locking the device
  Disable Mail fetch
  Disable motion effects
  Disable animated wallpapers

Source: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/EnergyGuide-iOS/LowPowerMode.html

Apple encourages developers to take advantage of this feature by implementing a lower power state in their apps. This means that this feature may increase battery life through support in third-party apps.

  Your app should take additional steps to help the system save energy when Low Power Mode is active. For example, your app could reduce the use of animations, lower frame rates, stop location updates, disable syncs and backups, and so on.


Can I use a Thunderbolt cable to connect an iPad to a MacBook Air as second display? Is it possible to use a Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt cable to connect a new-generation iPad with a new-generation MacBook Air so that the iPad can be used as a 2nd monitor?

No, the iPad doesn't have thunderbolt, nor the capacity to function as a screen for another device by any cable.

You could use your iPad as an external display over the network though (remember your Macbook can create a network if you don't have one), there are quite a few apps that do this,


Force MacBook to drain the battery while connected to charger I leave my MacBook Pro on my desk nearly all the time, connected to the charger with the lid closed, connected to an external display.  I've heard this is bad for the battery health, and everyone in my office have to replace swollen batteries every couple of years.
I want to regularly discharge the battery, per Apple's recommendation, but I don't want to physically unplug it because that temporarily turns off the external monitor, and then I have to reconnect the monitor.  So I am looking for a software method of disabling the power input, to force the laptop to discharge its battery to 20% and then re-enable the power input.

Short answer

To the best of my knowledge there's no consumer software capable of doing this.

Long answer

Using software to disable the power input until your MBP is discharged to a certain level wouldn't actually achieve your ultimate goal (i.e. avoiding your external monitor from being temporarily disconnected).

That's because disabling the AC power input (or more specifically, switching it from AC to DC) is exactly what's causing your external monitor to behave in this way, and there's no way for the hardware to discern why the AC power input is gone. In other words, it's not capable of telling the difference between an AC source being switched off, a power lead being unplugged, or some software just disabling the AC power input.

The only other way to try to achieve this is to get your MacBook Pro to use more power than what the charger is supplying for a period of time. While that's theoretically possible, in practice it's just not going to happen without something that will also act to override the System Management Controller (SMC).

To explain that a little further, to get your MBP to try and use more power than is being supplied would involve stressing out the hardware, at which point the SMC kicks in to protect it, so any software would need to try and bypass the SMC as well. While it is possible to bypass some functions of the SMC, I really wouldn't recommend it, and in this case it's likely to cause much greater long-term problems than a swollen battery or a short-term problem like a disconnected external screen.


Type Arabic numbers in Arabic keyboard You know that you are forced to type the Hindu-Arabic numbers (١٢٣٤...) in iOS and Mac OS if you are using the "Arabic Keyboard", so if you wanted to type English numbers (which in fact called Arabic numbers ) like (1234...) you will have to switch to the English keyboard, type the number, then get back to Arabic Keyboard.

Is there any way to override this? I am already using Karabiner to remap some keyboard keys, but it is not useful for the problem I am facing.

Arabic keyboards always have the ability to type English numbers built in.  Just hit the Caps Lock key in MacOS.

In iOS, try doing Press and Hold on a number key.


Prevent iPhone charger from capturing audio My car has an USB connection which I use to connect to my iPhone 4s (with iOS 7.1) as a charger. But the connection also captures audio, so no sound is emitted from the iphone when the usb wire is connected.

Is there any way to control what's the Iphone behaviour when an external device is switched on, just to avoid the audio to be captured?

For a solution that doesn't require jailbreaking and modifying your phone's OS, I would suggest a USB charge-only dongle, like this one or this.

Insert that on the USB end of your cable, and it will only connect the charging pins, not the data pins, preventing any audio or other data from transferring.


Prevent spotlight from indexing folders with a certain name Is there a way to globally ignore folders with a certain name (say node_modules)

I know I can do it manually for each instance but I was wondering if its possible to just let spotlight know not to index these folders? node_modules, for example, typically has thousands of files that I don't want to search and it ends up slowing down spotlight.

I've looked around but I can only find answers that suggest manually adding folders in spotlight privacy list. Does someone have a better, glob way to it?

There is no known method to exclude from Spotlight a file or a folder based on a pattern (ex.: its name).
However it's possible to exclude a folder from Spotlight by adding to it an empty file .metadata_never_index.
You can use this method to ignore all node_moduleand bower_modules folders:
find /path/to/projects -type d  -path '*node_modules/*' -prune -o -type d -name 'node_modules' -exec touch '{}/.metadata_never_index' \;

Edit:
It look like the method .metadata_never_index is ignored by Spotlight since Mojave.

Edit 2:
As @JohnLee pointed it out, the extended attribute com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem is not related / doesn't have any impact on Spotlight.
However *.noindex and symlink aren't indexed by mds (the backend of Spotlight). You can use it as band-aid:
# Rename all node_modules to node_modules.noindex and create a symlink node_modules -> node_modules.noindex
find /path/to/projects -type d \( -path '*node_modules/*' -o -path '*node_module.noindex/*' \) -prune -o -type d -name 'node_modules' -exec mv '{}' '{}.noindex' \; -exec ls -s '{}.noindex' '{}' \;

Note: if you use npm-ci, the node_modules is "automatically removed before npm ci begins its install".


Quicksilver goes straight to text-entry mode On my old-ish MacBook Pro (pre-unibody), Quicksilver has been misbehaving for quite some time. I fire the keyboard command to launch it (I like command-space, replacing Spotlight), and it comes up in text-entry mode rather than selection mode. I can hit escape and QS closes, but nothing I can do makes it come up prepared to navigate the objects it knows about.

It used to work just great. But it's a waste of cycles right now because it's completely unable to function as what it does.

I've re-launched it, I've deleted and re-installed it. Nothing seems to help.

If I recall, there's a QS trigger called something like "Command Window In Text Mode."  Go to Quicksilver>Triggers>Quicksilver, I think, and look at what triggers are enabled.

Another possibility is that you have the "Spacebar Behavior" set to "Switch to text mode" in Quicksilver>Preferences>Command, and this is getting triggered when you use cmd-space.  It shouldn't matter, but it's worth a look.


Deleting already sent texts If I send a text and then change my mind and delete it, will the other person still see it on their phone?I clicked on the body of the text and the window popped up, giving me the option to delete the message. Does it only delete it on my end or also on the other person's end?

I'm assuming you're using Messages on iOS which offers the option to delete your copy of a message. This assumption may not be needed since you can’t delete messages that iOS sends to another device whether it’s SMS / MMS or iCloud delivering it.

For messages, after a message is sent it doesn't matter what you do it on your side, it doesn't recall or delete the message on the other person's device(s).

You have the option to delete a text or image in order to save space on your device. You don't control the message content on the other device after you press Send.


Is it possible to switch Spotlight in OS X to using Google? Spotlight (in Yosemite) has the ability to search the web. However, this only works with Bing. Is it possible to switch it to using Google?

In OS X 10.10 someone has made a spotlight plugin which has unofficially reversed engineered the API necessary to add new search engines.
i.e. google. The project is called flashlight.
It comes out of the box with a lot of plugins, including google.
To use it, you start spotlight and enter g yosemite, for example, which does a google search for "yosemite"

This open-source app is hosted on git hub and has releases which mean you just install the .app file, as usual. However, it's not signed so you may need to go to system preferences -> security & privacy and choose to allow the app to open (which you do after starting it and getting the error message that the app is not from the app store). Assuming you trust the app and/or my recommendation. You may like to visit the github site and see how many people have starred this application, to give you some sense of confidence.
download here:
http://flashlight.nateparrott.com/

github:
https://github.com/nate-parrott/Flashlight#flashlight


How do I dictate @ to siri? I'm looking to learn how to dictate @ to siri. If there is a general resource to look up how to find odd characters, so much the better, but in US English I'm not figuring this out by myself.

The @ is the at sign for siri according to this unofficial guide:

http://www.siriuserguide.com/siri-dictation-guide/

I don't see any official Apple resource but this wikipedia article documenting the Basic Latin Unicode block (which also maps directly to ASCII text) has english pronunciation that works well with Siri.

The things I can't get to work from that table are:

^ - circumflex
_ - low line - (but underline works)

Also, dictating quotes needs to be with the quote on/quote off command and not by dictating when the quotes should be typed.


Macbook pro 13 early 2011 fan starts and stops constantly The fan on my old trusty macbook pro started to behave very strangely. It starts then stops then starts then stops and it just continues to happen. CPU gets pretty hot without any load (30-40%) - 72°C as well as laptop. Apparently it is not cooled down properly. When I run something with heavy load it seems to increase RPM but then CPU cools down and I get the issue back.

Potentially relevant infor: I have rather recently ~1 month ago changed battery because the old one became swollen. Obviously I have bought third party battery. Quite some time ago I have replaced RAM (to 16GB) and HDD (to SSD).

What I have tried so far and it didn't help:

I have tried to reset SMC twice
I have checked that it is not dusty inside and cleaned it to the best of my ability without compressed air and other instruments

I run 10.12.6 with the most recent updates, I didn't seem to install any apps before the issue started to happen.

I have just installed smcFanControll 2.6 and tried to set min fan speed to ~3500 RPM but issue continued. After I have set it to max 6200 RPM the fan tried to do the same but then somehow stabilized and is now spinning constantly at 6200 RPM. This has cooled down CPU and mac in general but obviously it is annoyingly loud.

Any ideas what could have happened?

In all likely hood,your fan has failed and it needs to be replaced.

The stopping and starting is indicative of a bad or seized motor.


Sequential LiveFont display with different text sizes in Motion I'm making some text-based animations in Motion, using LiveFonts to emulate handwriting. I want the individual letters to appear one after the other, so I set the "sequence" value in the inspector to 100%. This works great.

The problem occurs when I try to mix text of different sizes in the same text object. For example, say I have something like this:

When I run the animation, the big text and the small text start animating simultaneously, instead of in sequence from left to right. Here is what it looks like in the middle of the animation:

I haven't been able to figure out how to fix this, after tinkering around for some hours, but I am a Motion n00b so I'm probably missing something obvious.

For the time being, I've been using a workaround of making separate text boxes for when I need to use different font sizes, but there is a lot of formatted text in this animation and placing all the text boxes just so and getting everything perfect in the timeline has proven quite tedious.

Thanks for any help!

After some more tinkering, I found that I could get it to work by selecting the different sections of text and adjusting the "Hold First" attribute in the Format inspector. This is still a little tedious, but not nearly as bad as making multiple text boxes.


how to convert all mp3 to m4a and save tags and covers? Strange bugs with iTunes and iphone, when trying to transfer and listen files in mp3. In m4a everything is all right. Is there any way to convert all mp3 files to m4a and save all tags and covers? Thanks.

The conversion & the discard of the old mp3 will have to be done in 2 steps, so you need to make sure you've enough disk space to temporarily store double the amount of space the mp3s currently take up. If not, you'll have to do the conversion/discard in small batches, one album at a time.

Start in iTunes Prefs > General > Import Settings...
Set to AAC Encoder.

Then, back in iTunes main window, switch to My Music & sort by Songs, which makes things easier to find.
If it doesn't show already even if you scroll the window to the right, then right-click the top of the columns in the main window & add a column for Kind.

Click this column to sort by Kind

The sort is simply alphabetical, so at the top will be AAC files, Apple Lossless etc., further down MPEG [mp3s] Below that may be other file types so make sure you don't accidentally select any of those.
Click the top MPEG file, scroll down & shift/click the last one.

Right click one & Select Create AAC version.

Wait until the process is finished - minute or hours depending on how many tunes...

You then need to find all the original mp3s that will still be in their original locations, now with an AAC file next to each one.

Navigate to your iTunes Music folder ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Music hit  Cmd ⌘   F  & type mp3. The search will offer name matches: mp3 or kind is mp3 audio, pick kind.
Assuming you converted all your mp3s, anything showing in that search result can now be deleted. Simply select all & Trash.

To be certain, relaunch iTunes & scroll down the song list, making sure nothing has an exclamation mark ! at the left, which would indicate a missing file.

One you're sure, you can empty the trash.


Reinstall Mountain Lion after factory reset to Lion I have a MBP Early 2011 which came with Lion. I purchased Mountain Lion from the App Store and installed it, and it worked fine for awhile. Recently my machine crapped out and my disk was corrupted pretty bad, and I had to reset to factory settings, so I'm on Lion again.

When I go to the App Store, Mountain Lion is there, but it wants me to pay the 20 bucks again. I originally bought it from the App Store, so I would have thought it would have remembered me, but I guess not.

Is there any way to get it back, short of contacting Apple for support?

From Personal Experience: I believe it's the same for everyone. It is the only item in the Mac App Store that doesn't show purchased even though it is purchased, even in UK, however I don't think they would make you pay for it again as it is linked to your account. You could call them and ask them or ask a Genius in store, I would just to be sure you don't get billed again for it, even though you shouldn't.


Cannot add a photo to an album in Camera Roll In the Photos app on my iPhone 4 with iOS 5, I cannot add a photo in the Camera Roll to another album. The album is there, but I cannot select it after tapping on the "Add to" button.
The album I am trying to copy the photo is an iPhoto album synced to the phone.   Can this be the reason of the problem?

Asked and answered. The iOS 5 Photo app allows you add photos from the camera roll to the albums you create on the device, but not to albums created on the Mac using iPhoto or Aperture.

When those photos are downloaded to the computer (manually or by Photostream) you can remove them from the device, which removes them from the device-created album, and add them to the appropriate album in iPhoto. They'll be added to the iPhoto album on the device the next time the device is synced with iTunes.


Microsoft Onenote iPhone app is not syncing Any tip for troubleshooting? I've already tried closing and reopening my notebook.

I have run into occasional sync issues and the two things that have worked for me is either changing the password on the live.com account via the web interface or removing OneNote from the IOS device and reinstalling it.


iTerm2 more contrast to active tab Is there a way using iTerm2 to give the active tab more contrast compared to the rest of the tabs?

Yes, you can choose a Tab Style in the preferences, under the "Appearance" pane.

The standard styles "Metal" and "Unified" appear to offer better contrast for the active tab than the other two. From your screenshot, it appears you have selected "Adium" which does indeed have very poor contrast.


"Network accounts are unavailable" when logging into OS X Lion (Open Directory on localhost) A Mac OS X Lion 10.7.5 is running the Services:

Firewall
Mail
Open Directory

The role of the "Open Directory" service is "Open Directory master".

After a restart the machine is no longer able to login at the graphical console (LoginWindow). The Login Windows displays "Network accounts are unavailable" briefly after boot. The Open Directory users can be remotely accessed using "Workgroup Manager" running on another Mac in the same LAN.

Normally the users were visible at login window, now the only user visible is "Other...".

We tried to login at "Other..." with both a local user (uid=501) and an OD user (uid=1025) at the graphical login window. Neither succeed. We enabled the root user with "$ sudo dscl . -create /Users/root NFSHomeDirectory /var/root" and "$ sudo passwd root". Logging in as user 'root' also fails at the graphical loginwindow. Only user ">console" login does succeed as well as SSH logins.

How to fix graphical login at "Login Window" for local and OD users?

It's possible that the server has service ACLs enabled for the Login Window. If you can connect to the server using Server Admin (from another Mac on the LAN - as you have with WGM), you may be able examine those settings. Here's an article that details enabling that setting for Mail (applies to Login Window as well.)

Go into Server Admin -> servername.local ... Select the "Access" tab at the top of the window, and confirm that you are not managing service access for the "Login Window" section. If you are ("Allow only users and groups below"), you can potentially correct the list of users that have access in that window, or choose to "Allow all users and groups".

Also - Apple does not recommend logging into network user accounts directly on the server (at the Login Window.)


How to move only purchased music from iPhone I have multiple Macs registered to my iTunes account.  If I plug my iPhone in to any Mac other than the one I usually sync with it, I have the option to transfer purchased items from my iPhone to the connected Mac.  This works great for moving music I purchase on my iMac to my MacBook.  However, every time I hit "transfer purchases," it also tries to transfer applications.  I have no reason to puts apps on my MacBook, and don't see any reason to waste the disk space.  Is there any way to tell iTunes to only transfer purchased music off the phone?

Maybe you can try this :

The first time iTunes ask to transfer
purchases, say No
In the App Tab of your iPhone in iTunes, uncheck the top box : "Sync Apps"
On the bottom of Application Tab, you'll find another box you can try to disable : "Automatically sync new apps"
Try a new sync


Adding website to block via /etc/hosts not working I block some websites via /etc/hosts on my machine. But for reddit.com it does not work. What does I have to do?

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1   localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost
127.0.0.1 mackeeperapp.mackeeper.com
127.0.0.1 mackeeperapp2.mackeeper.com
127.0.0.1 mackeeperapp3.mackeeper.com
127.0.0.1 mackeeper.com
127.0.0.1 reddit.com

Safari keeps its own ephemeral DNS cache. If you've just added the record to /etc/hosts, try quitting Safari, running dscacheutil -flushcache and restarting the computer.


Why is my HD full of nothing? I'm running 10.8.
Everything is updated.
Tried all the usual memory recovery stuff and resets. Disabled time machine.
When I look at at the HD folders in terminal, with show all sizes all the files only total about 110GB (including hidden files)

The only thing unusual about this computer is that it has a ton (~100) of users that are managed with parental controls. Not sure if that would affect this issue. Also, because it would take so long to manually reenter all these users I'm hesitant to wipe it and reinstall everything.

Any ideas before I wipe it and start over? Thanks.

Two things.

The spotlight process that catalogs files has stopped (perhaps due to low disk space) so they yellow information is incorrect. It should show you a warning IMO that the catalog process failed or needs to update. The "Other" is a catch-all so you're seeing that.
Copy 20 GB of files to an external drive (photo library, movies, virtual machines are easy targets) and then delete them. You can use Finder to show folder sizes and locate some targets. At that point, restart into Recovery and repair the drive and volume using Disk Utility.

Then boot the system normally and let the system run for several hours to see what really is using space. Once you have a good reading, you can add files back from the backup. Your wipe and start over is fine too. Maybe let the system stabilize and show realistic data before restoring your user account and settings/files.

See these for more details:

Why is it important to keep lots of freespace on OSX? What is the impact?
Finder Reports Disk is Full, Other Tools Don't Account for it


Is it possible to set how long the lock screen will disappear on the iPhone? Sometimes on the lock screen of the iPhone there is a Notification I'd like to look at and copy data from. But the lock screen seems to disappear within 5 seconds.

There is a way to set the screen to dim down and disappear after 1 minute or 5 minutes, but doesn't seem to have one for the lock screen.  Is there a way to set it to disappear after 20 or 30 seconds?

There is no setting to customise this. The only solution would be to do a screen action so it stays on for longer. Like, swipe up to see your notifications or press the Home Button to the passcode screen and return to the wallpaper screen.

On iOS 12 there is a solution. Unlock your phone, swipe down from the top and view your notifications from there. On this screen the iPhone will dim according to your Autolock settings which can be changed in Settings -> Display & Brightness -> Autolock.


Unable to toggle Time Machine on Have been backing up an iMac to Time Machine on an USB drive for some time.

I now find that in the System Preference for Time Machine the toggle for OFF/ON is grayed out and cannot be shifted to the ON position.

Selecting "back up now" from the menu still works fine.

The user is an admin, running 10.9.2.  The user login is managed by Active Directory (I know very little about this, but my Windows admin assures me that they have no policies in place that should stop Time Machine from working).

I have two machines that are exhibiting this behavior, one has had it for many weeks the other just surfaced.

Problem persists across restart, and permission repair.

Update to add:

I've tried the following at the command line:

sudo tmutil enable

And have also downloaded, installed and configured Time Machine Scheduler

Neither was a path to joy for this issue.

Turns out that Time Machine was being blocked by Active Directory policy configuration after all.


Mac Pro (2018) Boot/Update/Shutdown Issues (Blackscreen and "macOs coud not be installed on your computer" I'm facing multiple Boot/Update/Shutdown issues with my Mac Pro (2018)

1) Mac gets stuck on a black screen while shutting down (no cursor or UI elements visible)

2) Mac doesn't boot on it's system drive by default. Instead it goes for a "install" drive and gets stuck on "macOS could not be installed on your computer" (see image below). I'm forced to click the restart button and hold the alt key to be able to chose the appropriate drive and once then boot the OS.

3) From within the OS, Mac keeps warning me that an update is available. I already tried to install it many times but every time the mac restarts in consequence of the update it get's stuck in a black screen for something like 5 min, then I noticed a progress bar that showed up saying that the system is installing the update (2min) and finally, suddenly, it goes back to black and stays there for a long period of time.

I don't get any visual feedback of what's going on I stopped the system by pressing and holding the power button after 10 minutes of black screen.

Powering it back on while pressing the alt key (yes, I need to do this every time I boot the mac in order to avoid the error mentioned in line 2!) and choosing the system drive takes me back to the operating system.

If I open the "App Store" application I will see that the update is still there and to install it I'm forced to download and install it once again.

What's is going on? Am I missing something?

Possibly a Combo Update could remedy the situation, as your Mac seems to not like the update, or it could be lying to itself about having which prerequisites are required, or more likely, the package appears to be either unsigned or un-executable.

The Combo Update for macOS 10.13.4 is available from Apple at This Link


dd on Catalina gives "Permission denied" error even after grant it Full Disk Access in Security and Privacy date; sudo dd bs=1M if=2020-02-13-raspbian-buster-full.img of=/dev/rdisk3; date
    Thu Apr 23 20:22:45 PDT 2020
    Password:
    dd: failed to open '/dev/rdisk3': Permission denied
    Thu Apr 23 20:22:54 PDT 2020

I've tried giving Full Disk Access to all of these, but to no avail:

/usr/local/bin/gdd
/usr/local/bin/dd
/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin/gdd
/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin/dd

The device exists:

diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         1.0 TB     disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1.0 TB     disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume d - Data                638.3 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 81.1 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                526.9 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      3.2 GB     disk1s4
   5:                APFS Volume d                       11.1 GB    disk1s5

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *8.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS time-machine2           2.0 TB     disk2s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS data2                   6.0 TB     disk2s3

/dev/disk3 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *31.9 GB    disk3
   1:             Windows_FAT_32 NO NAME                 31.9 GB    disk3s1

I'm not sure what the problem is?

My bad.
If this happens to you, you might want to check the switch on your SD card to see if it is set to read-only. :)


Which Mac to develop iPhone apps? I'm a developer working with Windows. I have some cutomers who are interested in iPhone Apps, so I'm looking for a Mac right now. The problem is, that I have no clue at all about what to buy.

I don't want to use the Mac as my primary machine, I just want do to the coding on it. So it doesn't need to be that powerful I guess. So what would you recommend? New or used ...

Does the Mac work with my USB Keyboard/Mouse? Does it work with my monitor with DVI port? Do I need adapters or completely new Hardware?

I read somewhere that I need an Intel CPU. Is this true?

The current low level Mac Mini with an upgrade to 4GB memory is probably the best bang for your buck. That's what I have except with 8GB; got my memory from Amazon for $130, cheaper than Apple memory. It's a very capable machine. If you use a lot of programs simultaneously, the standard 2GB is kinda cramped, but 4GB would do fine; it just seemed like a good deal for 8GB and I use more than your average number of apps simultaneously and lots of Safari tabs.

The new MacMini is much nicer than the 2009's. I know this because I had one before this one; with 2GB of course :).

You're gonna love OS X by the way. Don't be surprised if you ditch Windows in a year.

About your specific questions:

Any current Mac has an Intel CPU. Apple switched from PowerPC back in 2006 and yes you need one, but you don't want a computer that old anyway!
Just about any keyboard or mouse will work fine with OS X. If you are using some kind of fancy mouse or keyboard, then you'll probably will need some third party software to get all those custom parts working, but all the standard parts will work; left click, right click, scroll wheel, cursor control etc. There is a chance however that there is no OS X equivalent of the third party software you may be using.
Finally, Macs work with standard monitors and even regular modern TV's with DVI, VGA, HDMI inputs (virtually all of them do). The most you'll ever need is a common adapter found at Best Buy, Apple Store etc.


Problems integrating Python 3.1 on 10.6.5 I am beginning to learn Python, and want to "upgrade" my Python installation os OS X 10.6.5.

I know it's a bad idea to directly upgrade the Python install, so I have installed Python 3.1 separately from the default Python install (2.6.1).

However, whenever I use the "python" command from the terminal, it starts up Python 2.6.1.

I have tried multiple recommended ways to get the "python" command to start up the newest version, rather then the default:

1) I have tried running the script "Update Shell Profile.command" script in the Applications/Python 3.1 directory, and get the following output:

    This script will update your shell profile when the 'bin' directory
of python is not early enough of the PATH of your shell.
These changes will be effective only in shell windows that you open
after running this script.
All right, you're a python lover already

2) I have created a file named .profile in my home directory, with the following contents:

#### Let's take care of our $PATH
# A backup of the original $PATH
# /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin

# My preferred order - /usr/local goes first, damn it!
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/X11/bin

As recommended here: https://superuser.com/questions/29652/how-do-i-properly-update-python-on-mac-os-x

Neither one changes the effects of the "python" command; it still starts up Python 2.6.1. I can still start Python 3.1 by using the command python3.1, but I'd like to set Python 3.1 to the default for the "python" command.

At least with MacPorts, this is done with the python_select command.  It may not be immediately applicable to your setup (you didn't mention MacPorts) but it's somewhere to start.


Git auto-completion not working on Mac OSX 10.11.5 El Capitan I have tried the examples found here to get Git auto-completion working on El Capitan, however none of the examples work for me.

I installed bash-completion with Homebrew (brew install bash-completion).

This is my ~/.bash_profile currently (as you can see, i've tried a few things):

CRMPiccosMacBook:etc crmpicco$ cat ~/.bash_profile
alias ll='ls -lG'
alias composer="php /usr/local/bin/composer.phar"

#if [ -f $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion ]; then
#   . $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion
#fi

if [ -f `brew --prefix`/etc/bash_completion.d/git-completion.bash ]; then
    . `brew --prefix`/etc/bash_completion.d/git-completion.bash
fi

#source /usr/local/git/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash
#GIT_PS1_SHOWDIRTYSTATE=true
#export PS1='[\u@mbp \w$(__git_ps1)]\$ '

So, if I go into my directory with the cloned Git repo and type git checkout m and hit [TAB] I get nothing (when expecting master to be pre-filled).

When I run a source on it, it doesn't exist - however it's installed.

CRMPiccos-MacBook:signup crmpicco$ brew install bash-completion
Warning: bash-completion-1.3_1 already installed
CRMPiccos-MacBook:signup crmpicco$ source /etc/bash_completion.d/git-completion.bash
-bash: /etc/bash_completion.d/git-completion.bash: No such file or directory

You are confusing the basic bash completion with the add on required for completing git commands.
The git that is installed by Apple lacks the required git-completion.bash file so you need to install the full git. You can do this easily with homebrew -brew install git will do the job.
Once you've done that then uncomment your top three lines :-
if [ -f $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion ]; then
    . $(brew --prefix)/etc/bash_completion
fi

Now source ~/.bash_profile and it should work fine.


Fastest way to delete all Timemachine Backups for a machine What is the recommended way to get rid of a whole TimeMachine archive (aka Backups.backupdb)?

Using Disk Utility to erase the whole disk is not an option.

I moved everything to the Trash, but "preparing to empty trash" was counting files to delete forever. I cancelled at -100,000 files.

So what's the recommended way to delete huge amounts of files?

If you've got:

  Operation Not Permitted

after executing

sudo rm -rf Backups.backupdb

you should follow this approach, which is adding bypass before the remove command:

sudo /System/Library/Extensions/TMSafetyNet.kext/Contents/Helpers/bypass rm -rfv Backups.backupdb


How do I lock my MBP screen without locking my keychain? On MacOS High Sierra (10.13.3), how do I lock my screen without locking my keychain?

I run some long-running terminal scripts that make periodic use of the keychain, and would like the ability to lock my screen and walk away for lunch, without causing the terminal scripts to block for a password prompt.

If you have a screensaver you can lock that with your password so whenever screensaver tries to quit it needs a password. To set this up, first set up your screensaver if you don't have one. Then open System Preferences/Security and Privacy. Click the first tab in that window named General.  The 2nd line on this box allows you to set a password associated with the screensaver.


Will a 1.8GHz MacBook Air be much faster than a 1.3GHz model? I am looking to purchase a refurbished Macbook Air from Apple's refurbished store.

When comparing the models there are two I am looking at. The difference between the two is slight but one of the difference is the processor.

One has a processor of 1.8GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 2.8GHz) while the other has a 1.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 (Turbo Boost up to 2.6GHz).

I am experienced with PCs but not Macs. The price is nearly identical ($20 dollar difference.)

The newer model is 1.3Ghz.

Am I going to see a big difference in speed between the two Macs?

1.3 GHz seems to be mid-2013 Haswell based machine with Intel HD 5000 graphics, the other one is probably mid-2012 Ivy-bridge one with Intel HD 4000.

Haswell based CPU is about 5-10% faster than Ivy Bridge according to various benchmarks (so, all in all it should be comparable in terms of pure speed, but read further)
Haswell chips make SSD drives run faster
Intel HD 5000 is much better than 4000 (and that will give most significant boost to overall performance IMHO)

So, if all other specs are the same, I'd go for 1.3 Haswell one, the problem is that you never know what you'll get when buying refurbished machine.


If I disable Location Services, will Find My iPhone continue to work? If I disable Location Services, will Find My iPhone continue to work? I turned off Location Services, but iOS 8.3 is allowing me to leave Find My iPad turned on. The message underneath says though:

Locating your iPad on a map is disabled. Turn on Location Services to enable it.

No, Find My iPhone will not continue to work if Location Services is disabled. However, if you enable lost mode, it will automatically enable Location Services.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201357

  In iOS 7, if you turn off Location Services and use Find My iPhone
  Lost Mode, Location Services will be re-enabled on the device as long
  as the device is in Lost Mode. Once Lost Mode is disabled, Location
  Services will return to its previous state.


How can I replace the Mac Mail icon in Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan? I'm going to give Mac Mail another try. But I can't stand the stamp icon. I'd like to replace it with the iOS icon.

I have the .icns file but the old "get info" trick where you just paste the icon over the existing one doesn't work.  I've also tried "Show Package Contents" on the Mail.app and replacing the ApplicationIcon.icns from the Finder and Terminal under sudo. No luck.

How can I replace the Mac Mail icon with something a little more consistent with the rest of the OS?

The proper way is to:

boot your Mac to Recovery Mode by holding CMD+R at startup
Go to Utilies and Terminal in the menu
Type csrutil disable and Enter
Restart normally and change your Icon

Repeat the procedure to re-enable System Integrity Protection (SIP or Rootless) but this time, enter csrutil enable

that's it !


US Extended Input Source missing I'm wanting to type some Pinyin characters (e.g. adding a bar above an a with Alt A + A) and am following this guide http://pinpinchinese.com/blog/how-to-type-pinyin-tone-marks-mac-os-x-yosemite/

However, I don't see the option of a US Extended Input source. Here's what I do see:

Any suggestions?

Fwiw, I'm running El Capitan 10.11.2 (15C50).

In El Capitan the US Extended keyboard was renamed to ABC Extended.


Spontaneous Mission Control invocation I have a very weird situation that when I start my Macbook, Mission Control is invoked many times for a couple of seconds. Then it stops and everything goes back to normal (occasionally though it starts again the craziness but very sporadically).

In the beginning I though that my trackpad was completely broken so I went to System Preferences > Trackpad > More Gestures and I disabled the gesture  there. But unfortunately the problem still persists...

Is there any way to see from where Mission Control takes an invocation command? I thought of adding a keylogger to see if the keyboard is also broken and sends random events but if something else is the problem then this is not enough. I wish there was a debug mode or something that I could see who is talking to which service of my mac :/

Any ideas???

I would look at two things:

Check to see if Mission Control is listed in System Preferences -> Desktop & Screen Saver -> Screen Saver -> Hot Corners

Check to see if Mission Control is listed in System Preferences -> Users & Groups -> Login Items

Either of these might cause issues similar to at least some of what was described.

Additionally, when you shut down or log out, if the checkbox "Reopen windows when logging back in" is selected, all the programs that are running when you log out will be restarted the next time you log in - this might be re-launching some software that you don't actually want to use any more. I generally uncheck this box. If you select "Apple Menu" -> "Log Out" and make the checkbox unselected, you can then hit the "Cancel" button to not log out, and the checkbox deselection will be retained.


iOS applications for iPhone 4 When I click on software to update to iOS 8 on my iPhone 4, it responds that my phone is updated with iOS 6.5. What do I do to get 7 &/or 8?

For iPhone 4 the maximum iOS is 7

According to Apple, the oldest iPhone model to get iOS 8 will be the iPhone 4s.

To update the Apple iPhone 4 to iOS 7, iTunes version 11 must be installed on the computer prior to installing the update.


How do I delete songs on my iphone using Windows version of iTunes? I have an iPhone 8+ and use the Windows version of iTunes. There are all these songs my son purchased thru iTunes showing up on my iPhone. How do I get these listings off my iPhone?
Note: The songs are not physically on the iPhone, but listed as downloadable. I don't want them listed at all.

There are two ways to see only your downloaded songs, at least on iOS 13 and newer:
Method 1

Launch the Settings app.
Scroll down to the "Music" section and click on it.
Deselect the "Show all purchases" option.

This should now only show your local downloads.
Method 2

Launch the Music app on your iPhone and click on the "Library" icon in the bottom menu bar.
In the top right corner, click on "Edit".
A customizable list with checkmark circles should appear. One of the categories that you can select is "Downloaded", which – as the name suggests – shows only the songs that are stored locally on your phone. You'll also see another category called "Songs". This category shows all of your songs (both in the cloud and the ones stored locally on your phone).
Uncheck the "Songs" category and check the "Downloaded" category.
Click "OK" in the top right corner of the screen to close the list. You should now see only your downloaded songs whenever you click on the "Downloaded" category.

And if you want to see all your purchases once more (including those that haven't been downloaded), you can simply select the "Songs" category instead of the "Downloaded" category – that is if you haven't disabled the "Show all purchases" option in Settings.


Will an iOS reinstall make a jailbroken iOS device "unjailbroken" and “supported by Apple” again? Will an iOS reinstall

Work on any jailbroken-iPhone and
Make a jailbroken-iPhone "unjailbroken"?
Make a jailbroken-iPhone "supported by Apple"?

Similarly, does such an iOS reinstall reset the iPhone (jailbroken or not) back to a "clean, factory default" state?

My near-term purpose: I have an iPhone 4S running iOS 5.1 I'd like to jailbreak to at least install better Google Voice integration like GVIntegrated.

Apple cannot tell if you've previously been jailbroken if you do a full restore. Apple has a tutorial on how to do this (support article HT201252).

Jailbreaking only affects the software, and restoring a jailbroken device to an official version of the iOS firmware will make your device "not jailbroken." Doing a full restore can be done to any device regardless of whether or not they are currently or have previously been jailbroken.

Doing a full restore will set the device back to factory defaults for that version of iOS. A full restore erases everything including /private/var/ where all your personal data is stored. If you do an update instead of a full restore, data from the jailbreak could be left behind, since an update leaves files from the previous version.

Additional Information

There is one part of an iOS device called the NVRAM that persists even across a full restore. The NVRAM contains environment variables that are needed for the device to boot. If you have gone out of your way to make modifications to your NVRAM, it can reveal that you have been jailbroken since these modifications can only be made from a jailbroken state. If you don't know how to make modifications to your NVRAM or you've never heard of NVRAM, then don't worry, this doesn't apply to you.


What's the difference between the different "generations" of iPod touches? I've been looking at buying a used ipod touch from craiglist but I'm confused as to what's what. The adds all say things like "2nd generation 8gb" or "3rd generation 16gb" and I'm not sure what the difference is.

The short answer is processing speed, screen resolution and memory. The newer ones are obviously faster, and the lastest generation (4g) includes both front and back cameras for shooting video and video calling.

For a full list of the differences check out this wikipedia page.


What features have been added to the Files app since it was introduced with iOS 11? As far as I'm aware, the Files app was introduced in iOS 11 and replaced the iCloud Drive app - what I can't seem to find, however, is how functionality of the app has evolved from iOS 11 to 13. Could somebody explain how the app has added features across iOS builds - for example, what changed from iOS 11 to 12, and from 12 to 13?

iOS 11 introduced the Files app.

iOS 12 added the following features, summarised from

https://support.apple.com/HT209084

AR Quick Look support

iOS 13 added the following features, summarised from

https://support.apple.com/HT210393

  External drives supported in Files to access and manage files on a USB drive, SD card, or hard drive
  SMB support to connect to a server at work or a home PC
  Local storage for creating folders on the local drive and adding your favorite files
  Zip and Unzip support for creating and expanding Zip files

https://appletoolbox.com/everything-in-the-new-files-app-for-ipados/

Document scanning previously only in Notes, now available to scan to Files directly.
Column view (iPadOS).
Multiple Files app windows (an iPadOS feature supported by Files app).


Stop new iOS auto-download on iPad I noticed some weird traffic pattern on my internet connection, tracked it back to my iPad, after some tinkering I finally realized that my iPad is downloading iOS 6.1 on it's own!!! I didn't ask for it, and there's no button or obvious means to stop it. For now, I've disabled the WiFi; but seriously, this is terrible, how do I stop it?

The device: iPad 2 - running iOS 5.1 - No intention to upgrade anytime soon

In short, you can't stop the download once the OS has been told to download it.

First of all, I highly suggest you update to the latest iOS version because developers are constantly dropping support for older iOS. As for how to stop auto updates, after 45 minutes of searching, I think I found a solution. Doing this will also disable automatic downloads.

Here is what you (or others in your situation) can do:
Navigate to General > Store on your iPad. Next, turn on the switch that is labeled "Use cellular data". That will help most, but in your case, you mentioned turning off WiFi - so if you are concerned about that bandwidth, you'll have to keep networking off until you get to a network where bandwidth or cost for traffic isn't an issue.

This doesn't actually stop the download permanently, but will tell the OS to not burn your data plan and wait to complete the download over WiFi. Now, your phone will retain that downloaded OS image until such time as you erase the device and restore from a backup (where the download is not backed up and will be lost) or apply the update.


Can I run Lion in a virtual machine under Mavericks? I've just realised I can't install previous osx partitions with Lion on an iMac 2013. Therefore I would like to try to use Lion in a virtual machine.

I need it to use xCode 3. Am I going to have issues with this approach?

A virtual install of OS X Lion runs without issue on Mavericks.

All the popular VM software understand Lion as an OS and should let you install it. I don't see you having any problems with this setup as long as your hardware is Mac.


External keyboard Logitech Slim Folio Pro not always allow me to type text on iPadOS 14.2 Sometimes I am  unable to type text into text field in the apps on iPadOS 14.2 (the same behaviour I encountered before on previous versions of the iPadOS).
Sometimes this also happening for "Spotlight" but this is rarer than for the apps.
I could use function keys in that moment so this is not an issue with connectivity.
This is probable some "feature" of Apple system. How I could avoid this  problem?
I use Logitech Slim Folio Pro (Bluetooth keyboard & cover)

Restart your iPad
(or sometimes removing the keyboard, turning display on/off, and then reattaching the keyboard works, but less often)
I run into this problem frequently with the Smart Keyboard with the 1st-gen iPad Pro 11". Even though some keys are recognized—such as being able to bring up the Spotlight search with CMD+Space—none of the text keys work to be able to type anything in. Restarting is the only guaranteed workaround I've found so far.
For the quickest restart—about ~45s in total—do this in quick sequence:

Press Volume Up button
Press Volume Down button
Hold the Power Button until the iPad shuts down and the Apple logo appears


Unsupported URL Error on iPod I have an iPod touch 4th generation Jailbroken 5.0.1, and today I started getting this "unsupported URL" error within apps, and on the home screen safari shortcuts. I have noticed that the url's start with "o" so it looks like "ohttp://". I have no idea how to fix this so any help would be great!

Aha! I figured it out with the help of

http://www.iphoneforums.net/forum/iphone-help-15/unsupported-url-after-limera1n-jailbreak-4114/

When I had reset all settings on my iPod to fix my YouTube app, it turned browser changer back on.


VoiceOver reading results of Swift Playground print statements in Xcode (By way of background I have been helping a local blind child learn coding. He's switching schools from a Windows based school to a Mac based school so I am trying to familiarise myself with VoiceOver on the Mac.)

I have a very simple Swift Playground in Xcode which I am trying to build and run using VoiceOver.

var rate = 26
var hours = 12.5
var cost = Double(rate) * hours
print(cost)

As I type that last line VoiceOver reads what I am typing. I then use the keyboard shortcut Shift Command Enter (⇧⌘↵) to run the playground. VoiceOver announces "Run Playground" but does not read the resulting output. I cannot work out how to get it to read the result nor how to navigate to that bottom pane where it might read "325". How would I do either of those things?

It's really cool that you're helping a blind person learn how to code! There must be some approach to gather the output in the Xcode console, but it is certainly possible that XCode may lack VoiceOver support for it.

Nevertheless, I'm wondering if you can't take advantage of the built-in VoiceOver functions in a clever way.

Something like:

UIAccessibilityPostNotification(UIAccessibilityAnnouncementNotification, cost);

Essentially, just replacing print with a manual UIAccessibilityPostNotification.


Display spaces in menu-bar on Mavericks How to display the current space number in the menu-bar with Mavericks? Like it had been possible in previous versions of Mac OSX?

Coincidently the answer I got for another problem solved this one, too:

TotalSpaces2 displays the current space number in the menu bar.


Want to Update iMovie, etc. on MacBook Pro I have updates of iMovie, etc. on my MacBook Pro. But every time I go to update it tells me to sign into one of my email addresses first. I press OK and nothing happens. I sign into the email and there is no mail in there. Where do I sign in? I'm not sure what to do.

One possible explanation is that you have the latest version already. The latest iMovie version is 9.0.9 (1795). It prompts you to sign in to check if there are any newer versions. Since it finds nothing, it updates nothing.


Big Sur keyboard shortcut to select text Before upgrading to Big Sur I was able to use Shift-Command-Left/Right arrow to highlight a single word while typing.  This was in any app - email, browser, text, etc.
After upgrading to Big Sur, that command now changes the color profile.
For what it's worth, Shit-Left/Right arrow will still highlight a single character.  Shift-Command-Left/Right arrow will still highlight the start/end of the line of text.  And Option-Left/Right arrow still moves the cursor one word at a time.
I'm just missing the option to highlight one word at a time.
I know how to add keyboard shortcuts but not sure the best way to change this back?

Testing in macOS Big Sur and macOS Catalina, the shiftoptionleft/right arrow keyboard shortcut highlights one word at a time.
By default shiftcommandleft/right arrow highlights from the cursor to the end/beginning of the line.


iOS Developer Account - 50GB iCloud space still available. Will it go away? I have an iOS developer account for which 50GB of space on iCloud Drive (or whatever the overall service is called these days) was allocated, when I installed iOS 8.0 beta on one of my devices (an iPhone).

When iOS 8.0 released to the public I got an email saying that my 50GB limit was to be withdrawn.

But it hasn't happened and I can still see that much available (I don't have a paid plan - I'm only eligible for 5GB). Secondly, perhaps for this reason, iCloud Photo library has been available on all my devices since installing iOS 8.0, (the iPhone which was last updated to the iOS 8.0 GM Seed, and the other, an iPad, which went from iOS 7.0.x to 8.0.2 directly upon public release of 8.0.2)  whereas if I understand correctly, it is only being made available to the public since iOS 8.1.

My question is - is this a glitch or have other developers (consistently, and broadly) experienced the same thing? Will this storage space (and more importantly all the data I store in it - if I were to) go away suddenly?

Would I be better off contacting Apple Support to make sure this error (if any) is corrected?

This is part of the mail who sent apple regarding this:

  Your complimentary 50 GB of iCloud storage is expiring on November 1st and your account will be downgraded to your original storage plan. If you are using more storage than your original iCloud storage plan, you need to upgrade your plan or reduce the amount of storage you're using. You can view your storage used and upgrade your plan from your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac.

So, it will expire in a few days. Did not say anything about how will they do if you are over quota, just tell you to upgrade or free space.


What determines whether a Bluetooth mouse can be paired with iOS? There are some Bluetooth mice that can be paired with an iOS device, for example the Citrix X1, or the Swiftpoint GT. These can be used in any app that supports them, like RDP clients, etc.

A majority of Bluetooth mice do not even pair with iOS. I believe this is what prevents them from being used by apps. If they could pair, then I guess communication with them could be implemented in apps individually.

Why is that? What makes the Citrix X1 able to pair with iOS, which is missing in other mice?

The Apple Bluetooth accessory design guidelines document does not mention that the device must implement any additional Apple specific command, in order to be able to pair.

I also don't believe that every dirt cheap Chinese Bluetooth accessory's manufacturer has had their device verified, and got some signed ID for it, or whatever.

What makes the difference then?

iOS does not support ordinary Bluetooth mice.

Ordinary Bluetooth mice follow a standard by offering a HID (human-interface-device) detailing that it is a mouse (a specific type of pointer device). These would work with an ordinary Windows PC, Mac or other type of PC.

On iOS Apple have chosen not to support this. An argument could be that the iOS user interface is made for touch interaction, and not for use with a mouse.

Specific apps (primarily Remote Desktop apps) have added support for Bluetooth mice by implementing the whole thing themselves instead of relying on operating system for mice.

This means that the mice does not offer a standard HID mouse profile. To iOS these mice appear just as a "generic" Bluetooth accessory that the operating system does not support. Support is instead in each individual app.

The app (such as a remote desktop app) knows about this specific type of Bluetooth mice that are non-standard. They communicate with the mouse and receive data when the mouse is moved, buttons are pressed, etc. They have to on their own translate this data into actions on screen (i.e. determine which button was clicked, move the mouse pointer, etc.). None on this is done by iOS, but instead done by the app.


How to disable LinkedIn birthday event notification in mac calendar? I have a lot of connections in LinkedIn and due to this every time when I open my laptop I got notification about there birthday.

My calendar looks like this

It is very inconvenient, how knows how to disable these events or discard linkedIn from calendar?

The only way I found was to disable LinkedIn in your Contacts "Preferences > Accounts".  That is how I could prevent them from showing in my Calendar.

I highly recommend you to send feedback to Apple about this.


Can I use automator to generate videos? Let's say I have:

A txt file
A 1920x1080 image

I would like to generate a video like this where text is scrolling and audio is the output of the say command using automator (even a bash script is enough).

I was digging a bit with ffmpeg but with no success.

Can you help?

Automator can help script other applications but it is not able to create new content alone, such as movies.

Keynote and Other Alternatives

Have you considered using Apple's Keynote? Keynote can be used to create QuickTime movies involving impressively complex motion. Keynote supports AppleScript and can be automated.

Alternatively, the inexpensive and capable Motion is worth trying.

A more technical approach would be ImageMagik to create individual frames of the video and ffmpeg to stitch the frames together with music.


Automator gets stuck at shell script I am building an automator script to do automatic backups to a network drive via rsync. The shell script works perfectly fine in terminal and completes and everything, but when i run it from automator, it just hangs at that steps and never proceeds, e.g. the process keeps running in the background and the automator workflow never goes to the next step.

I found others with similar problems on other forums, but no answer to how to fix it. Should i add some kind of exit command to the shell script?

I found this link helpful to solve a similar problem I was having:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1867978

I tried adding exit 0 to the end of my Automator shell script and it didn't seem to make a difference one way or the other.

After I read the above link I added this to the command in my Automator shell script:

>/dev/null 2>&1 &

It worked great. My Automator shell script now terminates normally.

In the above question, I believe the rsync command could be changed to:

rsync -aovE --delete /Volumes/STORAGE/Batting/Volumes/home/Backup >/dev/null 2>&1 &

If you wanted to log the output from your command, as I did, to a file /var/log/rsync.log then you could modify it to this:

rsync -aovE --delete /Volumes/STORAGE/Batting/Volumes/home/Backup >/var/log/rsync.log >/dev/null 2>&1 &


MySQL 5.5.11 "the installation failed" after removing old installation on Snow Leopard I had an old instalation of MySQL but it wasn't working very well, so I Googled how to completley remove it and found this:

http://tomkeur.net/39/how-to-remove-mysql-completely-mac-os-x-leopard.html

and then did:

sudo rm /usr/local/mysql
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/mysql*
sudo rm -rf /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM
sudo rm -rf /Library/PreferencePanes/My*
sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/mysql*
sudo rm -rf /Library/Receipts/MySQL*

And now I'm getting this on a new install:

I also ran these commands:

sudo rm /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/groups/_mysql.plist
sudo rm /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/_mysql.plist
sudo rm /var/db/receipts/com.mysql.mysql.bom
sudo rm /var/db/receipts/com.mysql.mysql..plist

Installer error Log Says:

Apr 13 00:18:31 nizzlesmymac installd[3203]:
PackageKit: Install Failed:
PKG: post-flight scripts for "com.mysql.mysql"
Error Domain=PKInstallErrorDomain
Code=112
UserInfo=0x101e45ac0 "An error occurred while running scripts from the package ‚`mysql-5.5.11-osx10.6-x86_64.pkg`."
{
NSFilePath = "./postflight";
NSLocalizedDescription = "An error occurred while running scripts from the package "mysql-5.5.11-osx10.6-x86_64.pkg".";
NSURL = "file://localhost/Volumes/mysql-5.5.11-osx10.6-x86_64/mysql-5.5.11-osx10.6-x86_64.pkg";
PKInstallPackageIdentifier = "com.mysql.mysql";
}

This is the full installer error log: http://pastie.org/1791314

You may try to remove manually everything again, and to create the mysql user by yourself using this guide.

Then try to perform the installation again.


Not able to see the archive option Just got a new mac. When I right click a .zip file, I don't see the Decompress/Archive option. Do I need to download something or change a configuration option?

Right-click on the file and choose Open. This will automatically decompress the file with the built-in Archive Utility.


Software for employe-like tracking, particular with Email.app? My pal Dave has a number of full and part time employees (all Mac) in sales-like roles.

In short he wanted a

  plugin, or even a separate app that just reads the MBOX file?

  To get an idea of

  a)  What days emails were sent, (ie days they were working)

  b) Times that each email was sent, to see start/stop times.

Essentially, it seems basically "a report on when emails were sent".  (I guess, using Mail.app.)

Can anyone think of something like this?

Or perhaps, at least generally some Mac-focussed employee time tracking (or spying!) thing.

You can imagine it would be quite useful for customer support stuff, you could get reports like...

  Employee 13.  48 emails sent.  1015-1845 hrs

.. etc.

Any ideas?

Timing can help track how much time is spend on different applications (including Mail) and can give quite a breakdown on what a user is doing at that exact moment.

I can't answer to the emails sent, but I imagine it would be far easier to compile such a report using the mail server rather than each individual user's Mail app.


How to configure local apache virtual hosts? Configuring Apache for local development on Lion I've managed to clue out this much:

/private/etc/apache2/ and /etc/apache2/ are symlinked
/etc/apache2/httpd.conf is authoritative
httpd.conf draws on the confs in extra
original is a red herring of unknown origin - presumably Apache

Coming from Debian, I've become accustomed to handling apache virtual hosts by adding files to /etc/apache2/sites-available/ and symlinking them to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/. But that looks to be the special reserve of 'Lion Server' peoples. It's probably relatively trivial to set up that way but I'd like to know what other people have done;

How do you configure your vhosts?
Where do you put the code and docroot for your vhosts?
Where do you put the log files?
Where do you put the local application configuration?
How do you resolve the name service?

1. How do you configure your vhosts?

The "Lion way" to do so would be uncommenting the following line in your httpd.conf.

#Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Now you can edit /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf and put your vhosts in there. It's a good idea to start with a default one that will match all unqualified hosts, for example:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  DocumentRoot /Library/WebServer/Documents
</VirtualHost>

Next, you can either add every vhost to the same file, or you can set up a similar system like Debian by including all files in a specific directory next, like so:

Include /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/*

Now whether you symlink files here that exist somewhere else (sites-available) or put actual files doesn't really matter. Personally, I think sites-available is overkill for a dev box (and I don't ever really want to "disable" a vhost), so I just create a file for every vhost directly in sites-enabled or equivalent (in fact I named the directory /etc/apache/sites to avoid confusion).

2. Where do you put the code and docroot for your vhosts?

My actual sites I put in /Users/username/Sites. I prefer to put them under my home directory for easier access in Finder etc. That said, it is good to notice that this directory is exposed by default by the userdir module. Since I don't need userdir hosting, and I am going to configure webroots below, I disabled it by commenting the following line:

Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf

3. Where do you put the log files?

Log files I keep the same (eg. /var/log/apache/*). Again, for a local development box, I believe individual log files for every vhost are overkill. There's only so much that I can multitask :) If you do want separate log files, you can of course configure it that way inside the VirtualHost directive (for example /var/log/apache/my.project.dev-error.log).

4. Where do you put the local application configuration?

Which applications are you referring to? If web application, I keep those together with all other project files. Depending on your architecture, your config files do not need to be under your webroot if that's an issue, in fact typically my webroot for any given project will be /Users/username/Sites/someproject/web, so config files could be at /Users/username/Sites/someproject/config without exposing them through Apache.

5. How do you resolve the name service?

The most straight-forward would be adding each hostname to /etc/hosts. Unfortunately, this doesn't do wildcards. If you feel comfortable with setting up a DNS server like bind, you could configure one locally or on your network to resolve *.dev to 127.0.0.1, for example. Disadvantage of doing that on your network is of course that it will stop working at a different location. Personally, I use /etc/hosts.


Why is my Mountain Lion download freezing at 53.25 MB? I have been trying for about a day now, and no matter how many times I pause/resume or cancel and retry, my download of Mountain Lion is freezing at 53.25MB.

Why is it freezing and how can I resolve this issue?

There have been lots of discussion over the past few days on this, but these two threads seem to have the best details:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4135141?start=45&tstart=0
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1410290

The solution boils down to two main causes:

BT routers are known to have some kind of limit or cap on them. You'll need to find another source.
Some ISPs seem to not like the kind of traffic that is going through directly to the appstore. The solution is to pause your download, sign into a VPN or download Hotspot Shield, and start up the download process again. Once you've completed the download, you can disconnect/uninstall the VPN access.

For the record, option 2 was what I needed.


How can I get the list of allowed users for Remote Management via Terminal? I want to use a command line tool to get the list of allowed users for Remote Management (ARD). I was able to enable ARD using kickstart, but I'm having trouble finding how you get the information, not set it.

Is there a com.apple.Sharing or com.apple.ARD somewhere that I'm missing?

defaults /Library/Preferences/com.apple.ARDAgent

doesn't seem to give me the info I need.

Ok, did find

defaults /Library/Preferences/com.apple.RemoteManagement

but that only gave me whether all local users are allowed for ARD. That is useful, but I want a little bit more. Do I need to use dscl perhaps to find ARD groups?

I had a bit of a look at my Server and desktop Mac and it would seem that the permissions are stored in the local Open Directory database. The command dscl . -list /Users dsAttrTypeNative:naprivs when run by an admin will give you a list of users who have any privileges set for remote management.


How to reset MacBook Air that is booted but shows no screen? I was using my MacBook air after returning home.  The network was down, so I put it down, closed the lid, and went to reboot the router.  Upon returning to my MacBook Air, opening the lid, nothing displays on the screen.  Pressing the power button does nothing.  I've now attached it to a charger, but still nothing happens, other than the yellow light to indicate that it is charging. The apple on the top of the laptop is not illuminated either.

How can I get the computer to work again?  Is there a way to force it to reboot?  It seems it is booted and either asleep and won't wake up or awake, but not displaying the screen.

Should I just let it run until the battery is dead?  With no display, I would think that would take a really long time.

Apple advises first trying: Hold down the Power button for 10 seconds.

If that doesn't help, do a Power Manager (SMC) reset. No problem.

See this Apple support page for directions for specific Intel machines:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964


Which Siri on which device does what? I am trying to figure out which device Siri does certain things. I have a 13" MBP, iPhone SE 2nd gen., and an iPad Air 2. I know if I ask Siri to set a timer, my phone will set the timer. But, why not the iPad? If I ask Siri to open Google Chrome, which is on all three devices, which device responds?

I know if I ask Siri to set a timer, my phone will set the timer.

I'm assuming that you have "Hey Siri" enabled because I do this many times per day.

But, why not the iPad?

The iPad is fully capable of setting a timer via Siri.  I just set one on my iPad by invoking Siri with the home button.  It's also capable of doing so via "Hey Siri" as well. If yours isn't doing so - either via "Hey Siri" or manually, I suggest we look at this in another question, because that in and of itself is a technical issue.

If I ask Siri to open Google Chrome, which is on all three devices, which device responds?

I actually tested this.  Siri opens on the device that responds first.  Putting my iPhone next to my iPad and saying "Hey Siri" both devices responded however, it was always my iPhone that took control becuase it had the Siri "tone" first.  When that tone sounded, Siri on my iPad closed.  For the record, Handoff and Continuity was enabled.
For some reason, I don't have "Hey Siri" on my iMac with Catalina (10.15.5).  I can only invoke it by clicking the Siri icon or pressing the hot key assigned.  However, I would assume it functions in the same manner.
As for putting a priority on the device, decide which one you want to respond to "Hey Siri" enabled on one device and not on the others.  It's easy to invoke.  I have mine on my phone since I use it to control Apple Home (my lights, fans, etc.).  I don't enabled Hey Siri everywhere to avoid confusing things.


Software updates on a new iPhone I bought a new iPhone for myself. This is my first iPhone and I like it.

It is now asking me to install a Software Update. What is a Software Update and why is it needed?

Is it okay to install it? I have never used an iPhone before, and I want to make sure I am doing it right.

What is a Software Update and why is it needed?

A software update is released by Apple whenever they have improvements to the core software running on your iPhone. This core software, the operating system, is named iOS and is responsible for general functioning of your iPhone.

A software update can add new software features to your iPhone, fix issues with general functioning of the operating system software and add enhancements that improve the security of the device.

  Is it okay to install it?

It is perfectly normal, even recommend to install a Software Update on your iPhone. Installing a software update most often would require a restart of your iPhone. The restart would be performed automatically as a part of installing the Software Update.

Once started, installing a Software Update can take from a few minutes to around half an hour of time. So make sure not to install it when you would be needing your iPhone for normal usage such as making/receiving phone calls and messages.

  I have never used an iPhone before, and I want to make sure I am doing it right.

A software update should work fine most of the times. You need not worry too much about it. However, it may be a good idea to take a backup of your iPhone.

To learn more about iOS, the operating system software running on your iPhone, check this link:

https://www.apple.com/ios/

To learn more about installing software update on an iPhone, you can read this Apple Support article:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT204204

To learn more about the ways to take a backup of your iPhone, you can read this Apple Support article:

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT203977


Is there a way to sync iCloud data with a Nokia phone? I am using iCloud but I also have a Nokia phone that I use for emergencies. Apparently it has a calendar and an address book built-in.

Is there a way, using some software to sync the Nokia phone with iCloud via PC or mac?

The only way to sync a non-Apple device with iCloud is to sync your Mac with iCloud, then sync you may with the device using iSync.


How to play music from iPad on Yamaha amplifier without AirPlay, but wirelessly? I have a Yamaha amplifier 473 series and an iPad 1 with 5.1 iOS. There is no internet connection nearby, so have to use aux but want it wirelessly through the iPad. There are av, aux and usb inputs in the front of the amplifier. How do I connect the 2 devices to play music wirelessly without AirPlay?

Just buy 2 of this (or somthing doing the same job). It will transform any speaker to bluetooth speakers, so you will be able to connect any bluetooth using device to your speakers and get the sound wirelessly. You should buy one for each device you want to connect. You then can connect the two bluetooth adapter using this (not sure what it is called). If your aux uses RSA, you can find the equivalent for RCA connections.