How to check if cron job works? I use crontab -e without sudo to edit cron jobs and add the following line there -

20 22 23 10 * date "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" >> ~/Documents/log.txt

then I check the log file and it doesn't contain the date and time.

I tried to edit crontab as root, but it also doesn't update the file. What could be wrong here? Is there any way to see the log of cron jobs execution?

P.S. Update crontab created under root:

0/5 * * * * /bin/date "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S" >> /tmp/log.txt
0/5 * * * * echo >> /tmp/log2.txt

log2.txt is created now.

Your cron error message are sent to the mail account of the user that is running the cron job.

Type mail at the command line to see the messages. For a list of mail commands, see man mail.

You should be getting mail with an error message something to the effect of:

/bin/sh: -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `"'
/bin/sh: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file

As for you command and why it's not working, it's because the "%" sign is a "newline" character, meaning that it tells the shell to "go to the next line."  So, after it encounters the first "%" it goes to the next line and it never sees the rest of the command.  This is confirmed by the "unexpected EOF while looking for the matching ' "  '(double quote).

The local man page for crontab (man crontab)is quite sparce with details and I am speculating it's because cron has been deprecated for launchd1.  However, the crontab manpage from developer.apple.com explains it

  The "sixth" field (the rest of the line) specifies the command to be
  run.  The entire command portion of the line, up to a newline or % character, will be executed by /bin/sh or by the shell specified in the SHELL variable of the cronfile.  Percent-signs (%) in the command, unless escaped with backslash (\), will be changed into newline characters, and all data after the first % will be sent to the command as standard input.  The command can optionally be prefixed by "@AppleNotOnBattery" to tell cron not to run the command when functioning on battery power.  For example, the "sixth" field when using this option would appear something like "@AppleNotOnBattery /usr/bin/touch /tmp/foo"

Your fix:

So, what you need to do, is "escape" the "%" character with a backslash (\) so that it tells it to interpret it literally.

Your command should be:

0/5 * * * * /bin/date "+\%Y-\%m-\%d \%H:\%M:\%S" >> /tmp/log.txt

1 From man crontab:  (Darwin note: Although cron(8) and crontab(5) are officially supported under Darwin, their functionality has been absorbed into launchd(8), which provides a more flexible way of automatically executing commands.  See launchctl(1) for more information.)


Counter formula that subtracts with each transaction This must exist, but I can not figure it out with Numbers. I have an inventory of products I sell. I want to automatically subtract from the total original inventory each time an item sells. And to do this, I fill out a re-useable packing slip in Numbers. The item and quantity is listed on the packing slip, which in turn automatically deducts from the inventory- a simple sum formula.

For example, I have 200 of an item and in Numbers it is listed as such in a certain cell in a table that keeps track of inventory. If I sell 10 of that item to a new client, I fill out a packing slip. My formula in the packing slip automatically subtracts 10 of that item from inventory. Now the inventory states 190 left. Great so far.

I save a copy of that packing slip for the client as a pdf. And then later that same standard packing slip is zeroed out and used for the next client.

So say the next order is a dozen for that same item. Now a problem. The inventory formula only recognizes the latest entry, so instead of now having 178 items left in inventory (200-10-12=178), the inventory states 188 items left because it 'forgets' about the ten already sold.

I don't want to manually fill myriads of entries in cells that compute each and every transaction just to make this work. I just want to formulate a running inventory count so each time a packing slip entry is made, the corresponding amount is further subtracted from the ongoing inventory count, just like a barcode reader might subtract from the total as a counter.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

I do appreciate the effort here to help me with creating a running inventory counter. I realized at some point I better take the initiative and delve into some script so as to create an 'action' on command customized to my needs.

The idea was to fill entries of a Packing Slip with item numbers and quantities of that item sold. Then on another sheet that kept track of inventory, the quantity of current items sold would deduct from the remaining inventory. So a script was needed. (a formula would otherwise always revert back with each new entry.)

Basically, on the Inventory sheet (which had columns of item numbers and starting inventory) I used an IfError function with Match and Index nestled to find and transfer the corresponding entries from the Packing Slip. From there it was a simple process of scripting to create a counter.

Probably preaching to the choir here, but if anyone is interested, I can furnish the procedure, which involved a combination Numbers functions and applescript.

I also got a little fancier and insert a chime sound on completion as a reminder that the current order deductions were made from inventory, along with a notification banner.


My 2011 Macbook Pro won't start - folder with blinking '?' My Mac will not start up. I went to recovery mode and made a backup of everything on an external drive. Now the Mac only starts up from the external drive.

I have OS X 10.10, Yosemite. I tried to backup and restore but it failed.

Most of the time my internal hard disk is not mounted. I ran Disk Utility today and got the following message for my HD Error: Partition Map check failed because no slices were found

How can I fix my Mac and make it start without the external drive?

Looks like a disk problem, dying.
In the Recovery Partition (start while holding CMD+R), start DiskUtility do Repair Disk.
Even when the issue is gone after that, prepare to have the disk replaced.


Thunderbolt Display Daisy Chain Mini Displayport Monitor I have an issue that I can't seem to be able to fix. Hope you can help me with that.
I have a MacBook Air 2012 13", a Thunderbolt display and a Samsung monitor connected through DVI on one end, and the other end DVI to Mini DisplayPort.
I would like this setup to occur: when connecting the MacBook Air to the Thunderbolt Display both the Thunderbolt Display and the Samsung display to work.
I have connected the Mini DisplayPort into the back of the Thunderbolt Display and connected the Thunderbolt display into my Mac, but the Samsung screen will not work.
Is there something I am doing that is wrong?

I have connected the Mini Displayport into the back of the Thunderbolt
  Display and connected the Thunderbolt display into my Mac and the
  Samsung screen will not work.

Unfortunately, this will not work.  You cannot attach (daisy chain) another monitor off of the Thunderbolt port on a Thunderbolt display. It's a limitation of the monitor, not the MBA

From AppleInsider:  Apple clarifies Thunderbolt Display will not daisy chain Cinema Display

  However, users with an existing Mini DisplayPort external monitor will
  not be able to daisy chain the screen from the back of the new
  Thunderbolt Display, despite it being physically compatible with the
  port. Apple notes that "Mini DisplayPort displays will not light up if
  connected to the Thunderbolt port on an Apple Thunderbolt Display."


After downloading file installer process runs and uses all memory When I download a file from the internet a process starts with name "installer" and uses all the available memory until my Mac crashes.

It's not related to the browser — I tested with Chrome and Safari.
The only solution I have is to kill the process from Terminal.

What is installer? How can I delete installer process from my Mac?

I have a 15″ Retina MacBook Pro with 16 GB memory.

I used EasyFind. It located right away all the files and folders matching my research criterias (in that specific case I was looking for "installer")
Deleted it right away.
Worked like a charm!


What to use on OS X Lion: OpenOffice.org, LibreOffice or NeoOffice? I was quite surprised to discover that both releases and beta versions of LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org do crash on OS X 10.7 when you try to access the preferences screen.

I even payed to get a copy of NeoOffice which I was able to use, quite well in the last week but ended up finding an ugly bug: bibliography references from inside frames are not numbered, they just use [0] but they are listed in the bibliography list.

You end up having a bibliography like:

[1] ...
[2] ...
[3] ...
[0] ... (this was used inside a frame)
[0] ... (this was used inside a frame)
[4] ...

As the maintainers of NeoOffice ask a 100$ payment to be able to post something on their forum, I do not feel that my 10$ investment was quite well made.

Also, their codebase seems to be quite ancient, compared with OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice. Their beta version is based on OOo 3.1 !?! while now Ooo is 3.3 final for quite a while.

Now, what should I use?!

Update: I removed all the preferences files related to LibreOffice and still crashes after about 30-60 seconds from start while I am inside the config window.

The crashdump is listed at http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=BJVtsKXY

Openoffice is effectively dead ofter Oracle bought Sun -- all the developers moved to LibreOffice, and, assuming you care about future enhancements and compatibility Libreoffice is the way to go now.  I used to use NeoOffice when it was the only native port of OpenOffice for OSX, but since LibreOffice has a maintained OSX port I just moved to LO.

I am on OSX 10.7.4, LO 3.5.4 and all works fine for me.


trying to revive a mac pro 1.1 without a disk drive or preinstalled software I have a mac pro 1.1 which came without any DVD drives or HDDs, I put an SSD into one of the slots and want to install any working OS.

it however cannot get into any boot menu, it boots normally with the chime but doesn't display anything on screen.

Video card is the original nvidia 7300, RAM is original. Debug lights show video card present, EFI goes on for a split second during boot but goes off after.

What steps can I take to turn this into a working machine?

Using a ghost image (a duplicate of the drive of another mac pro) I managed to get it functioning correctly without the need for a DVD / CD reader.


Compress PDF with adjustable ratio One can use Preview to compress a PDF. However Preview on Mac OS X 10.7 does a too hard compression for my taste. There is only one compression setting.

Are there alternative tools that allows you to adjust the compression ratio?

As Guy mentioned, ColorSync Utility is what your looking for. For me the standard compression was also too little resolution & too lossy compression. So I created a new filter in ColorSync - which then becomes available in e.g. Preview: Resolution 200 dpi, jpeg quality ~75%

Step 1: Open ColorSync Utility & create the new filter such as below

The above settings give me files with acceptable size and decent quality (e.g. for sending by e-mail)

Step 2: Open the PDF in Preview, then choose File > Export, Click the Quartz Filter pop-up menu, then choose the relevant filter ("Reduce File Size 200dpi" in this case)

Edit 2011-12-18: Seems for Lion it's not that straight forward regarding Preview integration. See here:

  Just copy your filter from /Users/YourName/Library/Filters/ to /Library/PDF Services/ and the customized profile will be back in preview.


How do I make an AppleScript with a drop-down menu without Xcode? How do I make an AppleScript that displays a drop-down menu without using Xcode?

One option would be to use CocoaDialog**:

set l to {"aa", "bb", "cc"}
set choices to ""
repeat with x in l
    set choices to choices & quoted form of x & " "
end repeat
set dialog to paragraphs of (do shell script "/Applications/CocoaDialog.app/Contents/MacOS/CocoaDialog" & " standard-dropdown --title title --text text --items " & choices)
if item 1 of dialog is "2" then return -- pressed cancel button
item ((item 2 of dialog) + 1) of l

You could also just use choose from list:

choose from list {"aa", "bb", "cc"} with title "Title" with prompt "Please choose" default items "bb" with multiple selections allowed

** The original URL for this Github repo by mstratman has changed.  From research it seems CocoaDialog has transitioned to an org.  Here are the new changes:

URL
Github
Repo pertaining to the previous answer


How to debug the cause of an enormous Spotlight index? My Spotlight index (MacBook Air 13, 10.13.6) has been growing out of control requiring me to delete and rebuild at least twice per day.

I have about 70 Gb available on my HDD, and the Spotlight database located in /.Spotlight-V100/ slowly increases until it takes up the entirety of the free space.

At that point I delete the index as follows:

#!/bin/bash

sudo mdutil -a -i off
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100/*
sudo mdutil -a -i on

and allow it to rebuild itself.

This post indicates that others have seen this behavior, but gives no help in debugging, as the poster found an issue with a device driver that I don't have. Spotlight Massive (out of control at 100GB+)

Any tips as to how to debug this issue? I've poked around the Console.app but haven't found a clear pointer to anything going out of control.

One possibility is that there are a large number of mdworker processes created during the rebuild; I don't know if this is unexpected but it seems greater than what others have reported.

At this point I'm out of ideas of what to check. I rely on Spotlight pretty thoroughly for mail search within Outlook so I can't just turn it off entirely. Thanks!

Working under the assumption that it is a specific file, folder or file type that triggers some kind of bug that makes the index size explode, I would take a look at the actual files that Spotlight builds up (i.e. the database itself). Tryk looking at them with any text editor or even a hex-editor.

If this is indeed caused by a bug that caused the same content to be indexed over and over again, then you might be able to see which file or file type it is. Then you can narrow down which folder to exclude from Spotlight.

Another more time consuming method is simply by trial and error doing a kind of "binary search", where you exclude half of your folders from the Spotlight index. If the problem persists, the problem is in this half - otherwise it is in the other. Repeat that process until you've found the specific folder containing the problematic file.

If you're comfortable with the Terminal, you can also take a look at which files are actually opened and read by the mdworker processes. This could again give you a hint as to why the index is so big.

First use Activity Monitor like you have already done to find the mdworker processes. Make note of the "PID" column that contains the process ID.

Open Terminal and run the following command:

lsof -n -p <pid>

You need to replace  with the actual process ID. This will give you a list of the files that are currently in use by that process.

You could also run:

fs_usage -p <pid>

Again replace  with the actual process ID. This command will show you file accesses for that process as they occur. You can stop the display by pressing Ctrl-C.


Can I use my Apple Watch 4, having only an iPhone 8 Plus? If not, what is the latest Apple Watch that will pair with my phone? I have an iPhone 8 Plus, and in continuing attempts to pair it with an Apple Watch 4, was able to read the iPhone just barely display a dialog saying “iPhone is out of date,” quick as a flash, and then quickly slide it down.

Can I get my Apple Watch working without buying a newer iPhone?

If not, what is the latest generation Apple Watch that I can use without buying a newer iPhone?

Your iPhone can work with any Apple Watch starting from the original one to the latest one. The only thing that needs to be ensured is that both the iPhone and Apple Watch are running the compatible versions of iOS and watchOS.

It's recommended that the devices run the latest available version of the respective OS. Currently the latest version of iOS available for iPhone 8 Plus is iOS 13.2, while the one for Apple Watch Series 4 is watchOS 6.0.1.

To answer your questions specifically:

  Can I use my Apple Watch 4, having only an iPhone 8 Plus?

Yes.

  If not, what is the latest Apple Watch that will pair with my phone?

As stated above, you can pair technically pair any Apple Watch with iPhone 8 Plus.

  Can I get my Apple Watch working without buying a newer iPhone?

Yes.

  If not, what is the latest generation Apple Watch that I can use without buying a newer iPhone?

Apple Watch Series 5, which is the latest model released by Apple.


Problem with web-sharing and resolving localhost I was using web-sharing and accessing some webpages that I had developed using localhost. I messed up a PostGreSQL installation and deleted anything related to PostGreSQL and in the process appear to have damaged my apache installation.

If I run ping localhost the result is

  --- localhost ping statistics --- 794 packets transmitted, 794 packets received, 0.0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev =
  0.033/0.076/0.920/0.055 ms

I then tried running apachectl configtest and recieved the following output:

Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libpq.5.dylib   Referenced from: /usr/sbin/httpd
Reason: image not found /usr/sbin/apachectl: line 90: 16227 Trace/BPT trap: 5       $HTTPD -t

I also tried

curl http://localhost || echo $? curl: (7) couldn't connect to host 7

Within System Preferences->Sharing->Web Sharing when I try to tick web-sharing I end up with it being unticked automatically. I'm fairly sure that my local webserver is not working, but I'm not sure what I can do to fix this problem.

Judging from your feedback in the comments, the installation of PostgreSQL brought its own version of libpq (which then got removed during un-install). To fix

cd /usr/lib
sudo rm libpq.5.dylib
sudo ln -s libpq.5.3.dylib libpq.5.dylib

Then run apachectl configtest again to check for further errors.


OSX Yosemite upgrade error: "a mismatch between the MBR and GPT partition maps..." My MBP's HDD is half OSX and the other half is Bootcamp.

While booted into OSX I decided to let Software Update install Yosemite. I left the room. Upon returning a while later I found the following error message: "a mismatch between the MBR and GPT partition maps is not supported".

I found an excellent post in this forum by @klanomath that dealt with a MBP stuck in an endless upgrade attempt loop like I'm experiencing, but that situation required reinstalling OSX; I'm hoping this "mismatch" can be repaired so the installation can continue.

If not, is it possible to interrupt the endless installation attempts and see if the existing OSX is still bootable? (has the existing OSX installation been destroyed by the upgrade yet?)

I found another post in this form, by @AndyD273, where it looks like a proposed solution exists but I do not know how to get from this endless loop state into the position where I can download, much less install, gdisk and use Terminal (and I cannot ask via comment in that post because I lack the "reputation"). All I know how to do is use the Option key to get to my Windows 8.1 partition.

To interrupt the endless installation attempts you have to remove the temporary Yosemite installer folder and some invisible files in the root of your main volume.

Boot to Recovery HD by pressing cmdR right after the start-up chime.

Open Terminal from the menubar Utilities -> Terminal. cd to your main volume in the /Volumes folder with:

cd /Volumes/name_of_main_volume

Get an overview with ls:

ls -la

Then remove all Yosemite installer related files and folders:

rm -R OS\ X\ Install\ Data/
rm .IAProductInfo
rm .OSInstallMessages
rm .OSInstallerMessages

Enter exit to quit Terminal.

Now open "Choose startup disk", choose your main volume to "re-bless" it again and reboot your Mac.

Download and install gdisk and continue repairing the MBR/GPT partition table like described in the answer here.


Can I use a t-mobile contract free iphone 6 in europe with a sim card from a local provider? Or: How do I know if my country has a compatible network? A friend of mine is going to NYC. I'd like him to buy a contract free t-mobile iphone 6 for me cause they are cheaper in the US. I would like to use this phone with my european sim card provider. Is that possible?

When I've googled this I've seen some contradictory information on forums (can't post more than two links here cause I'm new) and in various websites. An apple customer rep told me: "As long as your preferred wireless provider is compatible with the T-Mobile GSM network, then it will work." What does compatible mean here? Is it a matter of frequencies and stuff that is fairly standardised? If I'd be able to connect to the local carriers network (ie. roam) with a t-mobile sim while travelling does that mean the network is compatible?

It seems like you might be able to discover if you're phone is useable in other countries for sure by looking at the per country coverage lists you'll find if you google "International Plans Calling Abroad Traveling T-Mobile".

The question "When I buy an iPhone 6 from the Apple website and select contract-free from T-Mobile, is the phone carrier unlocked?" that's already available on this page might be seen as an answer to this question. However clarifying what "compatible carriers" mean and wether information on where roaming is possible answers the question "are there compatible carriers in my country?" might be nice for other users, at least it'd be nice for me.

http://store.apple.com/us/question/answers/iphone/is-iphone-6-for-tmobile-unlocked/QU2A7TAHD7HYCJPD9

http://hothardware.com/News/Want-An-Unlocked-iPhone-6-Pick-Up-The-TMobile-Version-ContractFree/

EDIT:

For LTE coverage info, I think you can compare supported LTE bands on the different models of iphones with LTE bands on networks in your country:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_6 (see LTE bands)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LTE_networks (look for your country)

The phone will work (all the typical phone functions) without any problems. From what I've heard, it is only unlocked if you buy the T-Mobile version directly from the Apple store (not from a T-Mobile store).

As mentioned above, the LTE functionality is the question. Apple's website details the T-Mobile version's included LTE bands (model A1549 (GSM)).

You can check those bands versus what bands your carrier uses to determine if it will give you the full LTE functionality. Wikipedia has an extensive LTE band list per country.


How can I enable magic mouse momentum scrolling in Windows 7? I have my magic mouse and I've gotten it working with windows 7. Left and right click work as well as scrolling.

Now I want smooth/inertial scrolling as well as middle click. Is it possible?

Also is there a way to imitate the ability in OS X to scroll any window regardless of whether or not that window has focus?

Answering the second part of the question, KatMouse is your solution.  It brings very Mac-like cursor/scroll interaction to Windows.


Can you pull up the context menu in a Stack (e.g., Downloads)? My Downloads folder is on my Dock, and sometimes when I want to open a file, I don't want to open it in the default app. For example, I want to open a jpg in Pixelmator instead of Preview.

Anyway I can do that from the Dock and not have to open the folder, find the file, and then open it?

I thought that you might be able to right click on the icon as you would in windows, but it doesn't work?

If the application you want to open the program in is in your Dock, you can drag the file icon from the Stack and drop it on the application icon.

Alternately, command clicking on the file in the Stack will open a Finder window with that file already selected. You would still need to control-click it and open it, but it cuts out a few steps.

Sadly, there does not appear to be a way to make the context menu appear in a Stack.


Is there a way to auto-paginate "Page 1 of 3" in Pages? Is there a way to auto-paginate with "1 of 3" "2 of 3" "3 of 3"?

Yes. Pages 09 certainly has this.

In the insert menu you should use both page number and page count to get page 2 of 3. You can use these anywhere, not just in the header or the footer.


How to reinstall old iOS software? I have an older iPod touch which which supports up to iOS 6.1.6 and nothing newer.  This device is equipped with a Linea Pro barcode scanner and previously had an application called "Web Barcode" installed.  Recently I was attempting to do some work on a web application I wrote and realized that I needed to update to a newer version of Web Barcode - but unfortunately the Apple ID saved on my device was deactivated a few years ago.  So I went to settings and updated it with my current Apple ID.  Then again tried to update the App from the Apple store.  Still no dice - it was asking me for the password on the old account.

So then I figured I'd just remove it and reinstall from scratch.  Deleted the app and went to the store but now I am met with a message that the new version requires at least iOS 8.0.

I feel I followed a very logical series of steps to update this application and while I can understand that I won't be able to install the newest version, how can I get the old version back?  The device is completely useless without the barcode scanning application and the Apple store is now refusing to install any version at all on my device.

What can I do to get the original version of this application reinstalled?

To download the last compatible version of an app, the app must be in your purchase history for that Apple ID already. Use iTunes 12.6.3 to download the app, signing in with your new Apple ID. Once the app is in your purchase history, attempting to download it again on your device should prompt you to accept an older version of the app.


How to exclude Mail messages from Finder search? I want to exclude Mail messages from showing up in Finder search.

->FINDER, NOT SPOTLIGHT<-

I have asked this question on other platforms, and I have found the emphasis is very necessary. Yes, you can exclude Mail from Spotlight by going to the Spotlight preference pane and unchecking Mail. This has no effect on Finder, at least in Mavericks (it did in Lion. I skipped Mountain Lion, but I believe it also suffers from this problem.)

You can  also narrow what IS returned in Finder search, by clicking the plus sign and adding filters. But this is not a solution either: you can only filter what "is" returned, there is no "is not" option.

For bonus points, answers about how to exclude folders would also be wonderful. If you have ebooks, you know that they too turn up in pretty much every search. Put simpler, I just want the Spotlight preferences to apply to Finder...like they used to.

It is inconvenient, but if you add -kind:mail after your search term in the Finder, it will exclude Mail messages too.


Is there an LDAP Server running on OS X Snow Leopard? Is there an LDAP Server running on my OS X Snow Leopard deployment?  How do I find it?  Can I connect to it over the standard LDAP port of 389?

The simple telnet test results was not encouraging...

bobk-mbp:~ bobk$ telnet localhost 389
Trying 127.0.0.1...
telnet: connect to address 127.0.0.1: Connection refused
Trying ::1...
telnet: connect to address ::1: Connection refused
Trying fe80::1...
telnet: connect to address fe80::1: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host

The reason I'm asking is that I am developing an LDAP authentication capability in the webapp I work on and it would be most convenient if I can just test it out on my dev workstation leveraging the user accounts already set up there.  My enthusiasm for deploying and maintaining an LDAP server on my dev workstation is rather low and if my mac already is running one I would just like to use it.

Enlighten me.  Is LDAP already running on my Mac how can I connect to it?

My dev box is plain-jane Snow Leopard on a MacBook Pro.

Homebrew has an OpenLDAP formula.  Deploying slapd this way uses much less RAM than installing a virtual machine with Linux running slapd.


Running Chromium OS from bootable USB on MacBook? I wanted to try the Chromium OS builds from http://chromeos.hexxeh.net/, but failed to create a bootable USB drive.

I followed the steps on the site:

Download the Mac builder
Download the vanilla .iso
Run the builder (and tell it to use the .iso)

But when I tried to reboot and hold down the option key, the USB drive didn't show up.

When I rebooted back into OS X, it complained that the USB drive wasn't recognized. In disk utility it showed several partitions.

Has anyone had experience with Chrome OS on a MacBook?

From my experience you are best downloading VirtualBox and launching it as a full-screen virtual appliance. Apple's EFI doesn't like to load USB drives that aren't OS X or Windows 7 installers. I have run into this same issue trying to run Ubuntu and Haiku from USB. If you have an optical drive you are better off burning the ISO to DVD and booting that way. You could also checkout rEFIt at your own risk as an alternate boot loader.

By the way it is normal for OS X to not recognize the format of the USB you created. That is because it is probably not in HFS+, NTFS or FAT. Not that it makes it any easier to boot.


How to clean install and only re-install old applications/files as you need them? I have Gooogled this for a couple of months now casually but have never gotten a guide that seems suited to me.

I am running Snow Leopard. It's really starting to get slow. Basically, most guides on the net either tell you how to do a clean install and keep all of your files, or none of them.

What I am looking for is something in between.

I want to be able to have a completely fresh install, but then grab back stuff from my old backup as I need it. MS Office, maybe the occasional word file after that. Eclipse IDE, with all my original preference settings. Only as I need it. That way I can make more of less.

Does anyone know a guide online that resolves my problem? Or does anyone know how to do this themselves?

At this time, I am not interested in upgrading to Mountain Lion

I'm not sure that you have an issue. You are free to install formally or drag and drop any app from source to hard disk - if it doesn't meet that system's requireents, it will be sort of whited out and won't run.

Got good preferences files? Do the same thing.

Hope this helps.


Figuring out what IP's and Ports a program is accessing I play poker semi-professionally online and live. When I play online I have a hard time limiting the amount of time I play. There is a free application I found called self-control. It allows you to block domains, ip addresses and ports to applications under what it calls a "blacklist" for a specified period of time. I entered into the blacklist the name of the poker website hoping its client side poker software connects through its main domain and even when self control program is blocking access, the program program still connects to its server.

Question-Using terminal or some other utility how do I determine what servers or ports to block to prevent the poker software from connecting to its severs?

There is

lsof -i

and

netstat -n

just to name few of Terminal commands to look who is using the Internet.

Those are information only, and will not block anything.


Mac App Store stuck on Sign In I recently installed a fresh (erased my HD) install of OS X El Capitan 10.11.3

During my first log in I skipped sign in to my apple id

Now when I open my Mac App Store and try to Sign In, it gets stuck after I press Sign In button

I am using proxy authentication from my university


Macbook Air 2012 memory upgrade I've won a 4gb RAM Macbook Air yesterday.
I know that the RAM is soldered to the motherboard, so therefore non user upgradeable.

I was wondering whether my nearest Apple Store could perform an upgrade to 8gb RAM on site? Do they offer that kind of service?

Congratulations, that is a nice price! Unfortunately the RAM is soldered to the logic board. So changing simple RAM DIMM's is not possible. The only way to upgrade your RAM is to swap the old logic board with a 8GB memory logic board. In most larger (official) Apple Stores there is the knowhow on how to swap logic boards. But I do not know the costs and I think it is not an economy wise decision.


MacBook Pro Input/Output audio not found I have an audio problem on my MackBook with the following specifications:

MB Pro Retina (13 inch Early 2015)
Operation System: macOS Sierra 10.12.5

Here is the chronology of the problem: Initially, everything was okay. I could hear music from iTunes on my MBP connected with a cable to an external speaker. Then I accidentally unplugged the cable on the speaker, so I plugged it in again but then I couldn't hear sound from my MacBook anymore.

I have tried the following solutions to address this:

Restarting my MacBook
Reinstalling my operating system
Resetting both NVRAM and SMC
Plugging and unplugging to/from the audio jack on the MBP
Killing coreaudiod on Activity Monitor
Deleting the apple.bezleservices.plist file at ~Library/Preferences/com.apple.BezelServices.plist
Taking it into Apple Store Service near my town

The Apple Store said it was a hardware issue, but I'm not sure on this. So, I went home to try the various "non-hardware" approaches above.

FYI: My iTunes and Siri also don't work. Playing a song in iTunes shows no song progress. If I try to use Siri I get a "no audio found" message.

Below are various screenshots of my problem:

My questions:

How can I troubleshoot this further?
Is there a way for me to narrow down whether or not this is definitely a hardware issue?

I just experienced a similar problem.  I discovered that when I plugged in my external speakers (in the radio plug port), my System Preferences defaulted to a lower volume output setting (presumably to prevent blasting out too much volume in small speakers).  Try opening System Preferences and resetting the output volume to a higher setting.


macOS Catalina - External Hard Drive not sleeping when lid closed and laptop sleeping So I'm trying to figure out why my external hard drive remains on (light displaying) when the laptop is sleeping.

Details:

macos 10.15.3
macbook pro

energy saver

disabled > Enable Power Nap while on battery power disabled in battery and power adapter
enabled > Put hard disks to sleep when possible in battery and power adapter

The LED on your USB external drive probably just indicates that it is connected to power.

The MacBook Pro provides connected USB devices with at least 0.50 watts of power (according to the USB power specification and Apple technote HT204377) even when the laptop has been put to sleep. This low level of power is particularly helpful for input devices like keyboards and mice, because it ensures they have enough power to register activity that can be used to wake the system.

If you want the drive LED to turn off, you can either unplug it from the laptop or you can shut down the laptop completely.


Mac Pro 1st Gen Graphics Card Question I have just inherited a first-gen Mac Pro, however it comes with no power supply, no CPUs and a 7300GT graphics card.

My questions are:

1 - I know OS X needs an Apple graphics card to boot, is it possible to put the 7300GT in one of the slower PCI-Express lanes and put a PC graphics card in lane 1 (the x16 lane) and still have it boot? If not, what are my options? I intend to use the PC card only when booting to Windows.

2 - Power supply - Are there any PC PSUs that will work with this? What are my cheapest options?

3 - CPU - Are the bare minimum CPUs the Wolfdale Xeons? Will any desktop CPUs be compatable? Does the machine need two physical CPUs to boot?

You should be able to boot without a graphics card, but that will be an easy part to find.  The Wikipedia article is quite good about processor families so you have several options there. The apple power supplies are top notch, but you might find an equivalent.

Have you considered buying a scrap Mac Pro for it's power supply? I would be hesitant to spend money if I were not sure of the provenance of the stripped Mac Pro you have. (If the Mac worked, why strip the CPU, GPU and power supply? )

Good luck with your frankentosh!


Why does the iTunes artist list jump to start when I scroll it? I updated my iTunes yesterday, along with Lion, as did a lot of other people. Now I've been experiencing some weird behaviour.

I have my iTunes setup like above. I usually browse to artist by typing the first few letters of their name, and the list jumps down to the results. It still does that. However, when I scroll the list afterwards it jumps to the very top of the list, regardless of scroll direction.

Have anyone experience similar problems? And if so, how have you solved it?

Edit: Problem has been solved in the new iTunes 10.5.1

It's probably scrolling to where the cursor is, and since you searched, the cursor has been reset and moved to the top of the list.  Click once in the list to select a visible item, then scroll.


Copying files over file sharing on Mavericks extremely slow I have three Macs on the same LAN/Wifi at home (Airport Extreme), all running Mavericks 10.9.2. Two Mac Minis (bought 2013) copy files to/from each other over file sharing at an acceptable speed, e.g., takes 2-3 min to copy 2G data over WIFI.

However, the third is a Macbook Air 2012. When copying files between the Mac Minis to the MBA, it's extremely slow. For the same 2G data, it's about 1 hour over WIFI.

What's more strange: I restarted the MBA a couple of times just to see if things can improve. The first time when it restarted, the copying process estimated to 2 hours, and the second time 3 hours!

I tried many suggestions on this forum dealing with Mavericks' slow Finder and file transfering, none of which helped.
I think one logical conclusion I can reach is that there is something different between the MBA and the Minis. But I can't figure out where.

One of the Minis uses a fusion drive, and the other SSD. So I don't expect disk performance to be part of the problem.

Solved it myself.

The MBA was on a different WIFI connection (2.4GHz). The problem is gone after I switched the MBA to the 5GHz WIFI, which the other machines are connected to.


Can you upgrade your iOS device on a computer that it is not synced to? My wife never syncs her phone to her laptop, which I rarely have access to, but I would like upgrade the version of her phone's iOS when updates come out.

Is it possible to plug her phone into my computer (a MacBook) and upgrade the OS whilst preserving all of her settings/music/etc, even if her laptop is a Windows 7 PC? Further, even if this is possible is it advisable?

Yes you can.

It's not a smooth process, since that computer will back up all the data and app packages for all your apps, then restore that backup data but it won't have the apps or music that doesn't get backed up as part of the backup process.

It will work, but you might want to transfer purchases / authorize that computer for a more transparent upgrade process. You can't really know it worked if you don't reload the apps after you restore your "backup".

There's nothing preventing you from doing this and then restoring your backup when your upgraded phone gets back to the computer from the last backup. You have to keep track of things and not do work that will get wiped when you load an older backup, but I've done this many, many times and it works well when you understand a bit how backups work.

iPhone and iPod touch: About backups


If I backup my iPhone will all the information on my phone be deleted? I want to backup my iPhone to iTunes but I still want all the information to remain on my phone. Will my information be deleted if I backup it up?

No.  A backup only copies the information to a remote location. The original information on your phone will remain. The backup preserves the information, should the information on your iPhone become damaged. It also makes it easier to transfer this information to another iPhone.

If you backup your iPhone to a computer (connected via the USB cable) using iTunes and check the box next to "Encrypt Backup", you will also backup all of your saved passwords.


iPhoto '11 is really slow to launch Ever since updating to iPhoto '11 it has become incredibly slow to launch. Using it is acceptable performance wise, but launching is terribly slow. I just closed it and reopened it to get an accurate time, and it too 3 and a half minutes! BTW, it only does the bouncy thing for a minute, then it just sits there. At first I ended up launching it multiple times because I thought it wasn't opening.

It is a 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Mac Book Pro with 5 GB of RAM.

Everything else launches in an acceptable amount of time. Even iMovie is much faster. I have a fairly large library (75 GB), but it isn't any larger than it was before.

I've emptied the iPhoto Trash. Anything else I can do to speed it up, specifically launching?

Try rebuilding the library.

Quit iPhoto
Backup your iPhoto library
While holding Cmd ⌘+Option, relaunch iPhoto
Select the options to rebuild everything


How to shut of my iphone 4s I'm unable to turn off my iphone 4s.  I've attempted several times by holding the top right button down then slide the shut off prompt off but moments later it pops back on.   Currently the phone doesn't hold a charged and gets hot. This activity has been happening for a few weeks.

Is it actually rebooting, or failing to shutdown?

You can try a hard reset. Hold both the power button (that you've been using) and the home button in until the device reboots.


Snow Leopard: Current: python 2.6 - Desired: python 2.7 Is it possible to upgrade the native python version (2.6 on my Snow Leopard) to a more recent one? Or do I have to just install python 2.7 besides the current one?

You can install 2.7.

It is generally considered a bad, bad idea to change the native version, because built-in apps and frameworks are written for specifically the version that is bundled.

The way to go is to install 2.7 along side 2.6. This is generally considered the best practice.
That way, you can use 2.7 when you want, and apps will still use the version they were made for.

Go to this page to get the Python for Mac installer. Follow the directions to install it. Then, to access the new version, type python2.7 in Terminal. You'll have a Python shell of the version specified.


Why do my hidden photos still show up in the Albums? I have a bunch of photos that I have hidden, but I can still see them in my albums. Is there a way to hide them totally?

You can delete it! Hide works only for moments, so in moments hidden photos won't appear


Lion and later: Stop auto launching iTunes on Bluetooth headset connect? iTunes has an annoying habit of auto launching upon connecting a Bluetooth headset to Mac. Pre-Lion, you could go to System Preferences -> CD/DVD Settings, and disable an option for auto launching iTunes.

However, in Macs without a CD/DVD, and post-Lion, up to Mavericks, there is no such setting available. Neither iTunes 11, nor System Preferences 10.9 present a setting to disable this annoyance.

Some say to disable the iTunes Helper from Users & Groups -> Login Items, but this appears to have no effect.

Is there another way to change this behavior?

Also posted on Reddit.

Also posted on Apple Discussions.

I'm on a MBP with osx 10.9.2. Disabling iTunes in "CD and DVD" preferences does not help. Just renaming iTunes to something else does not work.

The service "Remote Control Daemon", rdc, is responsible for delivering commands to (for example) iTunes. Use this script, iTunesPatch. This script modifies the actual binary for rdc to inhibit the command it sends to start iTunes, which means that all other functions of rdc still works as expected.


Spotlight not indexing secondary drive I have two drives on my MacBook Pro. One is a SSD with the root (/) partition, and the other is a hard drive with a home directory partition (/Users). Both partitions are HFS+ format.

When I make a search using Spotlight, nothing on the /Users partition is searchable, since it is not indexed.

Trying to use mdutil to start indexing the drive does not work:

## Attempt to enable indexing and flush any existing index
$ mdutil -i on -E /Users
/Users:
        Indexing and searching disabled.

## Attempting the same as above to all volumes
$ mdutil -i on -E -a
/:
        Indexing enabled.
/Users:
        Indexing and searching disabled.

Turns out this is due to having the nobrowse mount option set for the affected partition. Removing this option for the partition's /etc/fstab line fixes this issue.


iTunes Error Message 54 I ran into iTunes error message 54 when I was attempting to backup my phone. I have an iPhone 4 with iOS 4.2.1 that I'm trying to update to iOS 7.1.2.  I am currently on Windows 10 operating system with the latest iTunes. I need step by step instructions please.

Step one - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205597 - following all the links - especially on a PC might take two hours or more depending on how good you are with troubleshooting security on PC OS.
Step two - get more logs/detail - take notes of the articles above in case you didn't do what they asked and instead did what you thought was correct
Step three - ask a follow on question or contact Apple support with the "more logs"


macOS Content Caching serving lots of data to unknown clients TL;DR:

Hidden/unknown client has downloaded 300GB of data from my macOS Content Caching (from origin, not cache). Traffic didn't come from my devices according to my testing. This stopped after I disabled SSH and SMB, changed password, and enabled firewall (I did them all at once). What happened? Why and how was it serving so much data?

Full details:

I have setup a headless late 2014 Mac mini on my local network for Apple content caching. It runs macOS Mojave, it’s connected to the network using Ethernet, it’s freshly formatted and up to date as of this writing.

Setup was super straightforward: check a box on sharing, disable sleeping on energy saving, wait for clients to connect.

I had also enabled SSH, VNC and SMB, changed users to “administrators only” on each of them, installed the Server app and few other utilities (docker, AirServer, DriveDx, server apps from the Mac App Store).

I have about 5 clients (Macs, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV) that usually connect to it. None of them normally consume much data: the first 7 days I got it running, they transferred a total of 37GB of data. I have an AirPort TC (WPA2 Personal with DHCP, not NAT) which, every time I checked, only showed these 5 devices on the Wi-Fi network, and the Mac mini is the only one on Ethernet. The ISP router has NAT but wireless is disabled. The macOS Server app shows “reachable, no services”.

But on the 8th day, around the time I decided to do a full SMART disk self-test on the HDD, the content caching server started serving 12GB per hour, every hour, non-stop, from origin (not cache). Seemed strange. I turned off Wi-Fi on all of my devices to sleep it off and see whether it would stop: it didn’t.

As far as I know, the Mac mini itself doesn’t use its own content caching for downloading content for it (which I thought was strange), so I ruled it out as the source of all downloading.

On the third morning of constantly serving 12GB/hour (from origin) and a total of 336GB served, I got very worried and disabled SMB, SSH except VNC (or else I can’t access it), changed the admin password (previously it was neither an easy nor a short one), enabled the firewall (the default is off on a fresh install) and since then, the content caching has been serving 0 bytes for the last hours. Caching is still working for my 5 devices.

Apple says caching server doesn’t do networks other than local by default. My ISP’s upload speed is pretty much constant at 20mbps (2,5MB/s), so I think it’s not completely impossible for this data to have left my local network because it was being served at approximately 25~28mbps.

What could possibly have caused this? Could there be an unknown reason or nefarious client at work here? Could any data have been stolen?

I’ve never used content caching before, but Apple docs say data is encrypted. The log is huge and doesn’t seem to help me because, if I understand correctly, it doesn’t log IPs by default. I didn’t get any warnings for any of my Apple accounts, I have 2-factor auth for pretty much everything.

I also have pi-hole logs, but all network usage is merged into a single, virtual IP.

Thanks in advance and sorry for such a long question.

Need more details to really say anything conclusively.  When the data transfer is happening, you should run sudo nettop and look at the local addresses the AssetCache service is connecting to.  This will reveal what device on the local network it's serving, or the lack thereof.

Some other quick thoughts:

I'm fairly sure content caching DOES apply to the local machine.  So updates downloaded by your Mac Mini will be counted and cached.
Do system wide network usage stats show at least as much data transfer as the Content Caching stats? If not then it's probably just a bug in content caching statistics.
Are you using iCloud? Content Caching can include iCloud content if you have that enabled.
Do you have an iOS device plugged in over USB and have tethered caching enabled? That's a potential source.
Try looking at the content caching log while this is happening: sudo log stream --predicate 'subsystem == "com.apple.AssetCache"' --info


Why does Pages, export to *.doc a file that is larger than expected? I authored a 1 page document of about 900 words, and an embedded image (a chart).  Storing/exporting this document from Pages 5.2 causes the file to expand to 1.6 MB in size.  However, opening and saving the same .doc file in MS Word gives me a file (.doc) of only 99 KB. Why is Pages so inefficient (some 16 times larger)?

Is there a way to force Pages to trim the size?  My best alternative is to open the same 1.6 MB file in MS Word, and then re-save (which gets it back to a sensible size).  But I would like to eliminate MS Word entirely, except for the *.doc, which my clients like.

There is a bug in Pages. When you export a file in ".doc" or ".docx" format it embeds 489KB PNG files (a single one in a docx file, three in a doc file). These files are intended to be used as the background fill on default shapes, but they are present whether they are used or not.

I documented the bug here.

And reported it to Apple as rdar://17089255.

At the moment the simplest solution is to open and close the file in another application like Microsoft Word or LibreOffice. They both strip out the unused PNG files.


Create ZIP files from containing related files from multiple folders Is there a way to automate creation of ZIPs containing files with common name elements?

What I have are multiple variations of the same image:

files/2250/8199print.jpg

files/1200x1200/8199square.jpg

files/1200x900/8199wide1.jpg

files/1200x628/8199wide2.jpg

files/480x360/8199small.jpg

What I'd like to do is create some sort of application that goes into folders, finds related files (all contain "8199") and then archives them all into a new file named "cartoon8199.zip".

I tried to create an Application via Automator, but couldn't figure out how to make the Name Contains field in Find Finder Items include a variable.

Any ideas on how to achieve this?

I'm on a Mac running HighSierra 10.13.3.

Thanks in advance!

Heres your script as promised. Any questions or suggestions? Comment below :)

What the script does: Searches through a selected folder for folders. Searches through each one of those for files. If those files contain a specified search parameter then the file is moved to a folder in a location specified. Once all files are checked, the files in the folders at the location specified is ziped up.

For what you want: First Prompt choose the /files folder. In the second prompt enter 8199.

The Script:

set myFolder to choose folder with prompt "Choose a Folder" # Choose the /files folder
display dialog "Enter Your Search Paramaters" default answer "" #Enter "8199"
set mySearch to the text returned of the result
set myZipLocation to the POSIX path of (choose folder with prompt "Choose where to save your ZIP file")
display dialog "Enter the Name of Your Compress File" default answer ""
set myZip to the text returned of the result
tell application "Finder"
    set myFolders to every folder in folder myFolder
    set myFiles to {""}
    repeat with i in myFolders
        set myFiles to myFiles & every file in i
    end repeat
    do shell script ("mkdir " & the quoted form of (myZipLocation & "/" & myZip))
    repeat with i from 2 to count of myFiles
        if the name of (item i of myFiles) contains mySearch then
            set myPOSIX to the quoted form of (the POSIX path of (item i of myFiles as alias))
            do shell script "cp " & myPOSIX & " " & the quoted form of ((myZipLocation & "/" & myZip) & "/" & the name of (item i of myFiles))
        end if
    end repeat
    do shell script "cd " & the quoted form of myZipLocation & "&& zip -r " & quoted form of (myZip & ".zip") & " " & quoted form of myZip
end tell


Avoid the terminal process to close, after BBEdit runs a script I use BBEdit to write and test Python scripts, and I usually run the scripts in a terminal process, with the "Run in Terminal" command.
Is there a way to have the terminal process opened by BBEdit stay "active", after the script is completed?
I would like not to have the

[Process completed]

message and instead to still have an active prompt, either the shell or the the Python environment, with all the variables I have created in the script still existing.
This would be similar to the situation when I launch the script from an existing terminal process, either from the shell:

$ python script_name.py

or from the python interpreter:

>>> script_name.py

In particular, in the last case, when the script exits, I still have the process active in the terminal window.

As I understand, you have a Python script in BBEdit.

You choose to test the code using the "Run in Terminal" option from the '#!' menu.

Now a Terminal window opens, runs the script and exits.

Now here is the culprit. BBEdit does not only run your script, but also adds an exit. There is no option in BBEdit to remove this exit command. But BBEdit is highly scriptable and there are some workarounds. You can create a BBEdit Script (from the Scripts menu) that runs, but personally I think creating Service is the easiest one (run some AppleScript that opens your script in the Terminal as you would have done manually).

In this treat you have provided a script that actually does what you want.


MacBook Pro 15" late-2012 no input/output devices detected I did something silly. I replaced the trackpad in my MacBook Pro 15" mid-2012. It (for some reason) involved taking the motherboard out (via iFixIt's instructions). Everything works now, except the sound.

OS X reports no input or output devices. Nothing works, even when I plug headphones in. I'm not sure how OS X detects that a sound device is actually recognised, so I can't really troubleshoot the hardware. Any ideas?

I've tried all the usual, reset PRAM, SMC, etc.

I can't be sure, but I think that the first step to solve the problem is to check the connection of speakers to motherboard. Are they connected properly? Disassemble the laptop and check all the loops and wires.


How to port forward port 25565 on airport time capsule I am trying to port forward port 25565 for a game server. I have tried to go into the port mapping settings, and creating one for 25565 on TCP and UDP and also reserving the ip on DHCP Reservations. The port still is not open as shown by http://portchecker.co/check and other port checking websites. What am I doing wrong?

The port forwarding settings on Airport Utility require a private IP to be specified - is the port definitely forwarding to that IP address? Try setting it up as static on the device instead of reserving a dynamic IP.


Message about Apple ID used in another Mac I have received this message in the screen:

"Your Apple ID is now being used for iMessage and FaceTime on a new Mac."

I indeed updated OS in another Mac, which would be an explanation for this message, according to previously solved questions on this matter.

... but I updated it three days ago, and that machine is supposed to be switched off, far away from here.
Should I worry?
Does the expression "is now being used" mean that it is being used at this precise moment?

The message you got is to notify you that you have singed in on the mac you updated with your apple ID.

Normally you should receive this message on other devices that are connected with your apple ID.

That you received the massage after 3 days could have something to do with the recent outage of some apple services, but I'm not sure about this


Trigger custom script on specific log message I am using AirServer for Airplay on my Mac. As far as I know, AirServer does not provide an interface to run scripts on specific actions. However, I found a AirServer specific message inside the Console app whenever a device connects or disconnects to the service. I also tried the following in Terminal:

log stream | grep "AirServer"

I am looking for an efficient way to run a custom script whenever the process AirServer spills out a specific message (in my case connect/disconnect).

AirServer implements a basic AppleScript interface which can tell you if AirServer is in use by calling:
osascript -e "tell application \"AirServer\" to inUse"

Another approach is create a basic app which monitors AirServer's notifications using NSDistributedNotificationCenter:
com.airserverapp.MirroringDidStart, com.airserverapp.MirroringDidStop,
com.airserverapp.AudioDidStart, com.airserverapp.AudioDidStop,
com.airserverapp.VideoDidStart, com.airserverapp.VideoDidStop


Should the internal disk of a Mac be erased? I saw this post which said that the internal disk of a Mac should not be erased, but it doesn't explain why. Does anyone know?

Yes, you can always erase a disk internal or external to set it up clean. The only reason to not erase is if you want to try and recover or back up any data.

I might try to repair a disk from recovery mode once or twice, then I erase to get a clean install.


Is there any utility or program that will let me assign keyboard shortcuts inside of apps? I'm a web developer, and use a specific IDE for all of my work. It does everything I need it to do, so please don't suggest a host of other IDEs. The only issue I have with it is that there is no keyboard shortcut for printing. It drives me up a wall to have to use the menus for this. I'm new to Mac - is there a program or utility like AutoHotKeys that would let me create keyboard shortcuts that work inside of apps?

Usually Command + P is the keyboard shortcut to print. If it's not, you can add your own keyboard shortcut. You shouldn't need any additional apps to do this. It's built right into the Mac.

Go to System Preferences -> Keyboard. Select Keyboard Shortcuts. At the bottom, click the + button to add a new keyboard shortcut. To add a keyboard shortcut to a specific application, select it from the Application dropdown menu. Enter the name of the command exactly as it appears in the menu (In this case it may simply be "print").

Additional cool trick

If you don't always feel like setting a keyboard shortcut: You can use Command + ? to bring up the Search menu from within the application itself. Start typing in the name of the command you'd like to select. Once you have enough characters, the menu item should be highlighted. Hit Return and it will select that menu item. Instant keyboard shortcut!

**EDIT**

Since you specified that this issue is about Komodo Edit there's some good news and bad news:

The bad news:
Komodo Edit, like Firefox, is built using XUL. Many XUL applications have an ongoing bug when it comes to respecting keyboard shortcuts set from System Preferences on the Mac. Namely, they don't. (If anyone has any solutions or comments about this please let me know)

The good news:
Komodo Edit lets you set your own keyboard shortcuts from within the application! Go to Preferences -> Editor -> Key Bindings, search "Commands" for "Print", select it, and assign whatever keyboard shortcut you like.


setting up ipad as new ipad or back up from another device I connected my ipad to the computer for the first time. I tunes showed up and asked me if I wanted to set it up as a new ipad or back up from a previous iphone that is no longer working.

Although there are things from that iphone that I would like to be able to retrieve ( some purchased books etc ) I am not sure I want to back it up completely from the old iphone.

However I am afraid that if I set it up as a new ipad then I won't be able to retrieve the stuff from the old iphone I would like to keep.

Main question really is if I set up as new ipad would I ever be able to retrieve any thing from the old iphone?

Your content that is stored on the cloud (apps, music from iTunes Store, etc.) can all be retrieved from the cloud as long as you use the same Apple ID to connect to the Store.

Other content from other services (e.g. Kindle books in the Kindle app) can similarly be downloaded from their providers.

Only content that was copied manually (e.g. synced from iTunes on your computer) would need replacing the same way you copied them to the iPhone previously.


Remote controlling a Macbook Pro with the lid down? I have a MacBook Pro that I would like to use while I'm at work, but am reluctant to actually take to work because the environment is quite dusty.

I have been provided with a IBM Thinkpad running Windows 7 at work and would like the remote control the MacBook Pro from work over an existing VPN tunnel. Ideally, the laptop would just be connected to the power and the lid would be closed to prevent any dust or anything building up on the screen.

Is there any offical or advisable ways to do this? I imaging something like VNC but the fact that the lid would be closed and I may want to disconnect the VNC connection and reconnect after the laptop will have gone to sleep could be an issue.

The MacBook Pro is running OS X Lion and has an SSD drive (if that makes any difference to sleep issues, etc.).

There is probably not going to be an offical way to do this but, what you want to do is disable the laptop from sleeping when the lid is closed. And adujust the energy saver settings in System Preferences to never let the Computer Sleep. Then use your existing VPN  tunnel as expected.

See Is there any way to set a MacBook Pro to not sleep when you close the lid? for suggestions on ways to stop your Mac Book Pro from sleeping when the lid is closed.

  The top rated suggestion was downloading InsomniaX to disable sleep mode.


Applescript to set Track Comment to Rating I'm trying to develop an applescript that sets the comment tag to the track's rating.  i.e., if it's a 3 star track, I want the comment to say "3 Star".

tell application "iTunes"
  set theTrack to (item 1 of (get selection))
  set comment of theTrack to theRating
end tell

This isn't working for me.  Any Ideas?

First thing is that the rating value is just stored as "rating". But iTunes stores the star rating as a value between 0 and 100, so you need to convert from that value to the number of stars.

There might be a smarter way to do this but this code seems to work.

tell application "iTunes"
    set theTrack to (item 1 of (get selection))
    set theRating to rating of theTrack
    if theRating = 100 then
        set comment of theTrack to "5 Star"
    else if theRating ≥ 80 then
        set comment of theTrack to "4 Star"
    else if theRating ≥ 60 then
        set comment of theTrack to "3 Star"
    else if theRating ≥ 40 then
        set comment of theTrack to "2 Star"
    else if theRating ≥ 20 then
        set comment of theTrack to "1 Star"
    else if theRating = 0 then
        set comment of theTrack to "0 Star"
    end if
end tell


How to make a colour clicker using AppleScript? How can AppleScript be used to make the mouse cursor search for a colour on the screen and click on it when found and return to its starting position after?

How to make a script that can do this process:

define a colour by selecting it from a screenshot
search on that defined colour and click it then return back to starting position

Consider using Sikuli to implement your task rather than AppleScript:

  Sikuli automates anything you see on the screen. It uses image recognition to identify and control GUI components. It is useful when there is no easy access to a GUI's internal or source code.


Booting ubuntu on macbookpro with osx and windows installed I have osx and windows 8 installed using bootcamp and they are running fine.

I installed ubuntu 13 on external thunderbolt drive, it installed fine, however i am not sure what is the best way to triple boot.

I installed grub on mbr on external thunderbolt drive, so in theory if i install rEFTit, i should be able to choose either osx,windows, or ubuntu to boot?

Yes. You are right.

rEFTit will let you choose what to boot, including the ubuntu.

Also, not many people know this, but fsck tends to break journaled file systems after alot of usage (not sure how this applies to SSD's).

So, you did a good thing not installing the *nix based operating system on the same drive as the mac.

Here is one worry I have. Im not sure if a reEFIit knows how to read (boot) a thunderbolt drive.

Here is my setup:

2013 Air 512 GB SSD split into 3 partitions
rEFIT has replace Apples original EFI.

sda1 -> Mac OSX (Never boot into unless for firmware update)
sda2 -> Windows (Almost never boot into it unless doing something for work)
sda3 -> sda3a sda3b sda3c
sda3a -> Linux Mint
sda3b -> Arch Linux
sda3c -> gentoo.

rEFIt gives me the first 3 options. Then I use grub to choose my flavor.

Hoe this helped.


Hold down and release right-click with a single click Essentially, what I want to do is:

Upon clicking the right mouse button, simulate holding down the right mouse button.
Upon clicking the right mouse button once again, simulate releasing the right mouse button.

Use case: I'm playing an old first-person shooter with a Magic Mouse 2, so I can't aim and shoot at the same time.

This can be done using ControllerMate. Simply create this chain:


iPhoto: How to make an "Abroad" smart album I want to make a smart album that includes all photos with location information but excludes my home country. But filtering out a certain country just includes all photos without location information. How do I filter out those?

Ok, I solved this. Add a "match all" filter with:

'Place' 'contains' "" (blank)
'Place' 'is not' "Insert home country"


10.8.3 update will not run - keeps asking for restart I have tried to update to 10.8.3 a number of times, however, when I come back from the necessary restart, the same message appears in the App Store - as if nothing had happened. please help with this issue. thank you.

Assuming you have checked and the system isn't actually running 10.8.3 (Open About this Mac and look under OS X for the current version), you might find it easier to download the combo updater and try that to update your iMac.

It writes to /var/log/install.log (as well does the Mac App store) and you will have a clear indication after running the Combo Updater as to the cause of failure as well as whether the Mac App Store failure was similar or different.


Simultaneous left and right click with trackpad I'm trying to play a game on my MacBook (The Settlers under DOSBox) that makes use of something the manual calls a "special click": holding down the right mouse button and clicking the left mouse button.

It seems to be impossible to do that using the trackpad. Apart from attaching an external mouse, is there any way to simulate such input?

It turned out to be quite easy to patch DOSBox to allow using a keyboard key as a mouse button.  I submitted a patch for adding that functionality to the key mapper.

If you want to try this out, save the following into a text file called map-mouse-buttons.diff:

Index: src/gui/sdl_mapper.cpp
===================================================================
--- src/gui/sdl_mapper.cpp  (revision 3914)
+++ src/gui/sdl_mapper.cpp  (working copy)
@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@
 #include "dosbox.h"
 #include "video.h"
 #include "keyboard.h"
+#include "mouse.h"
 #include "joystick.h"
 #include "support.h"
 #include "mapper.h"
@@ -1497,6 +1498,20 @@
    KBD_KEYS key;
 };

+class CMouseButtonEvent : public CTriggeredEvent {
+public:
+   CMouseButtonEvent(char const * const _entry,Bit8u _button) : CTriggeredEvent(_entry) {
+       button=_button;
+   }
+   void Active(bool yesno) {
+       if (yesno)
+           Mouse_ButtonPressed(button);
+       else
+           Mouse_ButtonReleased(button);
+   }
+   Bit8u button;
+};
+
 class CJAxisEvent : public CContinuousEvent {
 public:
    CJAxisEvent(char const * const _entry,Bitu _stick,Bitu _axis,bool _positive,CJAxisEvent * _opposite_axis) : CContinuousEvent(_entry) {
@@ -1708,6 +1723,15 @@
    return event;
 }

+static CMouseButtonEvent * AddMouseButtonEvent(Bitu x,Bitu y,Bitu dx,Bitu dy,char const * const title,char const * const entry,Bit8u button) {
+   char buf[64];
+   strcpy(buf,"mouse_");
+   strcat(buf,entry);
+   CMouseButtonEvent * event=new CMouseButtonEvent(buf,button);
+   new CEventButton(x,y,dx,dy,title,event);
+   return event;
+}
+
 static CJAxisEvent * AddJAxisButton(Bitu x,Bitu y,Bitu dx,Bitu dy,char const * const title,Bitu stick,Bitu axis,bool positive,CJAxisEvent * opposite_axis) {
    char buf[64];
    sprintf(buf,"jaxis_%d_%d%s",stick,axis,positive ? "+" : "-");
@@ -1866,6 +1890,15 @@
    AddKeyButtonEvent(PX(XO+2),PY(YO+4),BW,BH,".","kp_period",KBD_kpperiod);
 #undef XO
 #undef YO
+#define XO 5
+#define YO 8
+   /* Mouse Buttons */
+   new CTextButton(PX(XO+0),PY(YO-1),3*BW,20,"Mouse");
+   AddMouseButtonEvent(PX(XO+0),PY(YO),BW,BH,"L","left",0);
+   AddMouseButtonEvent(PX(XO+1),PY(YO),BW,BH,"M","middle",2);
+   AddMouseButtonEvent(PX(XO+2),PY(YO),BW,BH,"R","right",1);
+#undef XO
+#undef YO
 #define XO 10
 #define YO 8
    /* Joystick Buttons/Texts */

Then, in the terminal, check out the latest DOSBox code from Subversion:

svn co svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/dosbox/code-0/dosbox/trunk dosbox-svn

Enter the directory, and apply the patch with the patch command:

cd dosbox-svn
patch -p0 < ../map-mouse-buttons.diff

(This assumes that the patch file is saved in the parent directory of dosbox-svn.  If it's somewhere else, adjust the command as needed.)

Then, follow the instructions in the INSTALL file to build your new version of DOSBox.  Basically, it's these three commands:

./autogen.sh
./configure
make

Though you may have to install various dependencies, which can be done through Macports and similar tools.


1st gen iPad stuck in setup I can't get pass the license screen after a restore on an iPad. After a restore in iTunes, i didn't backup, we don't have a backup so just a wipe and restore to factory settings is all she wanted. This is for my gf. I get all way to to entering her apple id and the next screen is the various software liscences to read and agree to, but lo and behold; you can't click on the blue agree button. all inpu ti ignored, i can disagree, i can click back to return to the apple id login etc. Home button gives you options to setup etc. Even using the voiceover, i can see all the elements on the screen but the agree button is ignored.

We can't hack or jailbreak the device, it was given to her by her work. And I'm pretty sure its just a regular consumer device setup, So i'm sure nothing their IT department could have caused this, they're the ones to have suggested a restore.

I've tried logging in with my own apple id. I've tried setting up a new apple id, all can't get pass the liscence screen in the setup.

Multiple restores, even did it on my own mac, she runs off a win7 laptop.
Important to note that there isn't any info on the thing that can't be synced  back via iTunes so that isn't our concern.

I could weIl be wrong but I believe you have to scroll all the way down the licence screen and check a box to enable the button


How can I open Google Chrome in Presentation mode using a shell script Previously in 10.6.8, I was able to start Google using
open /Applications/Chrome.app --args --kiosk http://www.google.com

Now, on newer systems, that does not work anymore correctly. The only way to get rid of the address bar seams to be using of the presentation mode.
Does anyone know the switch to call that mode?

I use the shell script for a presentation computer to start the browser on startup automatically in fullscreen mode.

Any help is appreciated.

I tested this out and then it wouldn't let me exit kiosk mode. I had to Cmd+Q to get out of Google Chrome. Save the following to a script, something like ChromeKiosk.sh and chmod +x ChromeKiosk.sh to get it to run.

#!/bin/bash
open "/Applications/Google Chrome.app" --args --kiosk http://www.google.com.au

This will open Google Chrome to the http://www.google.com.au webpage. Change it as you need. Copy and paste the rest of the script

If you want to turn it into an AppleScript so that you can create an application that can in turn be automatically run each time the computer reboots to a default specified user, use the following code and when you save the script, change it's type to Application

do shell script "/bin/bash open \"/Applications/Google Chrome.app\" --args --kiosk"

It's requires the \ (escape sequence) before the " because of the way the shell reads the spacing between the words Google and Chrome in the filename. You can also write it as

do shell script "/bin/bash open /Applications/Google\\ Chrome.app --args --kiosk"

It's just that I've never favoured the look of seeing a escape before a backslash. It's too messy. Stick with either the BashScript option at the top or use the 1st of 2 AppleScript lines and save it as an Application type.


How do I transfer my entire itunes library (retaining the original music playlists) from my iPad iOS 5.1 How do I transfer my entire itunes library (including the specific music playlists) from my original iPad iOS 5.1  via wifi to my new Macbook air with Yosemite?

The bulk of my music library is CD's that I have imported manually.

I have authorized both computers in the iTunes account tab.

I tried hooking my iPad, via it's USB cord, to the Macbook Air's USB port.  The iPad does pop up in iTunes, but I am not sure what to do next to permanently import all of the iPad's music, ibooks, movies etc. into the iTunes on my Macbook air.

You don't move your Music from the iPad to the new computer, you copy your entire iTunes library from your old computer to your new computer and then re-sync your iPad to the new computer.

Here are the Apple instructions:
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT4527


Appearance colors have gotten goofy I don't know what I did, but my screen colors are off base -- menu bar has a peach background and window title bars are something like lilac. Colors within any menu vary from blue to peach.

In System Preferences > General, I changed appearance and highlight color from blue to graphite, which changed nothing. But when I booted off a backup disk for some maintenance, the colors were as they should be.

My guess is a preference file is corrupted. Booted off the backup, I copied all the "com.apple . . ." preferences to my regular startup disk, replacing. Booted off the regular disk, no change. It must be another preference file, and I have no idea which one.

Anyone suggestion?

This is a 2009 iMac; OS is 10.11.6.

One possibility is that you have inverted the colors. In 10.11.6 I believe you might do that accidentally by pressing Command-Option-Control-8 at the same time. Try holding down the command, option, and control keys with one hand and pressing the number 8 key with your other and see if that fixes the color scheme.

Another possibility would be to look at the color profiles in the color tab of the Display section of System Preferences. If there are multiple profiles there, does changing profiles fix the problem?


How much free space do I need to install Mavericks 10.9.4? I have downloaded OS X Mavericks 10.9.4 which is 283 MB, and I have free space of 168 GB and I am getting an error as shown:

You have more than enough space on your disk

I'd very much like to see a picture of your 'About this Mac screen', from the  Apple menu, just to be certain you're heading in the right direction.

It should look something like this…

Also, you'd be better off installing the 10.9.5 Combo Update which will install all updates from 10.9.0 to 10.9.5 without needing any intermediate steps.

After comments & posted picture:
You cannot jump over an update using just the delta update, only using a combo.


Mac OS X unusual bash activity? So when I checked my computer this morning I had Terminal open saying:

Last login: Sat Mar 5 00:02:43 on ttys000

I checked uptime and it's been up 27 days, 2 users as usual.

Now I know for a fact that at that precise time I had left my laptop in someone's room for a couple of hours and when I looked through history, I found these commands were most recent (pretty sure it was not me as i recall the previous set):

cd ~/Library
cd Messages/
l
ls
cd Archive
cd ~
exit

When I repeated the commands I got as far as producing

Attachments    chat.db chat.db-shm chat.db-wal

But past that I can't trace or understand what the next command did.
Tried to change the history log to show date/time stamps on the history logs but they all just came out as today's date, I guess because I only just applied the format to it now.

I'm not a programmer, know v v little about any of this. Got as far as that ^ through Google. Could someone please explain what those commands most likely did, and whether I'm being paranoid in suspecting  that said person has tried to export my messages? The last previous command set (which I was there for) had ended in an archive of my most recent Pages work being sent over to somebody via iMessage - could that have been it? Just a bit weird because there was an "exit" just before this set, so it seems like somethings separate ... + I still can't explain the 00:02 login this morning..... Is there a way to prove the worst,  if it is so?

Thank you!

The commands you listed in your question take you into the currently logged in user's Messaging App's message archive, lists the contents of that directory and then goes back to the currently logged in user's home directory.  If you were logged in, then it's your messaging archive.

The exit command exits, or closes, the Terminal session, nothing more.

To see who has logged into your computer (or when the last time you logged in from where), type the command last in your Terminal:

$ last

To get a listing of the commands you have executed type:

$ history

If you want to save that to a file for later reading, type this:

$ history > ~/Desktop/history.txt

and a file will show up on your Desktop with all those commands.  You can use the same technique for last but be sure to rename the file.

Now, if you want to see what happens when you are not in front of your Mac, just clear out the history before you leave with the command history -c.  This way, you will see exactly what has been done when you weren't around.

Now, you obviously have a 2AM login into your computer.  Why

a) do you not have a password

or

b) if you do have one, why is it shared with others?


What does this keyboard shortcut symbol indicate? The following was taken out of Photoshop. But I have seen many applications showing the symbol on the left as part of a keyboard combination. Which key is it?

[Something] + Command ⌘ + O

Something is?

It's the alt/option key.

Think of it as a switch in circuit diagrams.


Why is my iPhone 3GS proximity detector not working? Whenever I use the phone on my iPhone 3GS, it detects my face's proximity and dims the screen. However, once the call ends and I take the phone away from my face, the screen does not brighten again until I press the power/wake button, at which point the screen returns to normal.

Why is this happening? How can I fix it?

Some basic info: I'm running iOS 4.1, jailbroken.

I don't remember ever reading about a problem with proximity sensors in iPhone 3GS running iOS 4.x. The well-known problem was with iPhone 4, and it was fixed in iOS 4.2.1.

I guess you will have to restore your iPhone, either to verify that your problem was caused by some rogue app you installed via jailbreak or to take the phone to an Apple Store.


Windows 7 on latest 2017 MacBook Pros? Is it possible to get Windows 7 on the latest 2017 MacBook Pros via Bootcamp?

Nope, the new MacBooks only support Windows 10. You may be able to install Windows 10 and then install Windows 7 over top but it is unsupported and you may not be able to find drivers for it. Not recommended.


How do I use a bootable disk drive to install Mac OS on an iMac 2011? I asked earlier about how to create a Bootable drive for the purpose of installing Mac OS on an older machine, and I received a great answer (thanks to @David Anderson).

However, now that I have the Bootable drive containing Mac OS El Capitan, I cannot find good information on how to actually install from it.

When I turn on my iMac 2011, it takes me straight to the Recovery screen (because I previously Erased the main drive). In Disk Utility, I see my USB drive. When I go back to the menu, and click "Reinstall OS X", I get a prompt saying "OS X can't be installed because you aren't connected to the internet". When I do connect, I click try again and then a fail prompt comes up saying "A required download is missing". This is where I hit a dead end.

Google searches for "install Mac OS from bootable drive" turn up nothing about the actual installation. All the articles are about how to create the bootable drive.

Does anyone know how to actually install the OS? Perhaps some command I can enter into the terminal at the Recovery screen?

Thank you very much in advance

Note: The images shown below are from a VirtualBox install of El Capitan. The installation was performed using a physical USB El Capitan flash drive installer. The instructions for creating this flash drive can be found here. You should see similar images when you install to your 2011 Mac.

Make sure the Mac is off.
Disconnect all devices from the Mac, except for any wired keyboard or mouse that you may be using.
Insert the El Capitan bootable flash drive installer into an USB port on the Mac.
Turn on the Mac and immediately hold down the option key until the Startup Manager icons appear.
Click on the text Install El Capitan below an icon. The Mac should start booting from the flash drive.
The first window viewed should be similar to the image shown bellow. Click on the Continue button.

Proceed until you reach a window similar to the image shown below. From here, select Disk Utility... from the Utilities pulldown on the menu bar.

Highlight the internal drive as shown in the image below, then click on the Erase button.

  Note: Your internal drive will not be named VBOX HARDDISK Media.

Enter a Name for the volume to hold El Capitan. Set Format and Scheme as shown in the image below. When finished, click  on the Erase button on the popup window.

When the popup window shown below appears, click on the Done button.

When you see window, similar to the image shown below, select Quit Disk Utility from the Disk Utility pulldown on the menu bar.

Highlight the volume you just named as shown below, then click on the Continue button.

Below is an image of El Capitan installing. To finish, answer any questions asked by the installer.


Prevent MacBook Pro from going to sleep Possible Duplicate:
  Is there any way to set a MacBook Pro to not sleep when you close the lid?

I would like to prevent my MacBook Pro (2009 version) from going to sleep when I close it. I can do this with a Windows-based laptop, but I could not find an option on the Mac. Is this possible? I want to be able to close it when outputting video to a TV, for example.

If using Lion, it should not go to sleep when an external display is connected. If it does, you can wake it up with an external keyboard.


AppleScript at Startup and specific time I'm trying to run a startup AppleScript, and a AppleScript which run at a set time (I hate the automator / calendar approach)

on idle

    set currentTime to current date
    if the weekday of currentTime is (need to do for Tuesday to Saturday) then
        do shell script "kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext " password "..." with administrator privileges

    end if

    --only check once a day
    return 24 * 60 * 60
end idle

the only issue with this approach is the script it's running all the time, using memory and also I'm not sure how to calculate the correct time yet. (24.60.60 is every 00:00 right?) I would like to run it at 05 AM

if I understand it right, adding the script.scpt to /Library/LaunchDaemons will make the script run all the time even if the user is logged out, or logging with the screensaver on right?

I read about a another approach with seems even better, basically using a Plist to launch a script at a set time.

PS : would all this work if the disk is encrypted ? and can I use AppleScript to log an user at boot with the screen off (or discreetly)so I can start open some apps without have security issues.

Can I have your help and advises about which approach is the best one?
Many thanks in advance.

You can run a command at start-up with a launchd plist looking something like this, in /Library/LaunchDaemons

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>NameYourTask</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
    <string>CommandToRun</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

To run at a defined time, use something like this (this runs Monday, 1am):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>JobName</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>CommandToRun</string>
        </array>
        <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
        <dict>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>1</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>0</integer>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>1</integer>
        </dict>
        <key>StandardOutPath</key>
            <string>LogFilePath</string>
        <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
            <string>LogFilePath</string>
    </dict>
</plist>

LaunchD has a lot of options regarding how the jobs can run - it can watch and keep processes running, run when networks or files are present, etc.

It looks like you need to define your requirements, then work out how to implement the jobs.

Not below, the command string is a single string. If you want to pass arguments, you can, with multiple string tags.

<array>
    <string>Command</string>
    <string>Arg1</string>
    <string>Arg2</string>
    <string>Arg3</string>
    <string>Arg4</string>
</array>


Prevent Spotlight from indexing external drive Sometimes I use an external drive with macOS on it. This is in conjunction to my current internal drive which also is running macOS.

I find it annoying that, whenever I search for something (such as an application) when I'm in either OS when the external drive is connected, I get results from both my external and internal drive. However, I am only interested in running the application from the drive I've booted off of.

I tried circumventing this issue while on my external drive by creating a Spotlight exception for internal drive. This prevented files and apps from my internal drive from showing up. However, this also prevents me from searching for files on my internal drive, when I'm booted off my internal drive! Clearly this is something that I don't want.

It seems as though the Spotlight exclusions are per drive, which is not ideal in this scenario.

Is there a way to make Spotlight index only the drive which is currently booted? In this way when I'm booted off my external drive I'll get results only from the external drive, and same with the internal drive.

You could have a script that runs at startup that employs the technique suggested in this post https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/91759/183505

When booting from DriveA (when you want to disable spotlight indexing for External DriveB) you could execute :

touch /Volumes/DriveB/.metadata_never_index

When booting from external DriveB and you want to re-enable spotlight perhaps you could have your startup script execute:

rm /Volumes/DriveB/.metadata_never_index

The linked post also lists other ways to programatically alter the spotlight exclusions.

Here are some ways to add a script that will launch at login : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6442364/running-script-upon-login-mac

Good luck!

Edit : Method using bash scripts and plist files

First create a startup script. I chose to create one at ~/script.sh

Make sure it's executable chmod +x ~/script.sh

Script for OS that wants to hide a drive from spotlight

#!/bin/bash
flagLocation="/Volumes/DriveToHide"
flagRemoved=".ney_the_index"  # a new name

# if flag exists rename it.
if [ -a "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index" ]; then
    mv "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index" "$flagLocation/$flagRemoved";
fi

Script on the OS that wants to index the drive

#!/bin/bash
flagLocation="/Volumes/DriveToHide"
flagRemoved=".ney_the_index"

if [ -a "$flagLocation/$flagRemoved" ]; then
    mv "$flagLocation/$flagRemoved" "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index"
fi

if [ ! -a "$flagLocation/$flagRemoved" ] || [ ! -a "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index" ] ; then
    touch "$flagLocation/.metadata_never_index"
fi

Create a plist file ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.loginscript.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
   <key>Label</key>
   <string>com.user.loginscript</string>
   <key>Program</key>
   <string>/Users/yourusername/script.sh</string>
   <key>RunAtLoad</key>
   <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Test it by loading and unloading it:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.user.loginscript.plist


Touch ID not working after 9.0.2 update I have an iPhone 6 (model A1586) and I installed the iOS 9.0.2 update this morning, and now my TouchID is refusing to work in any fashion:

I cannot unlock my phone with any finger, which I've been able to do reliably previously

a. It scans my finger and the screen shows a passcode being inserted, but the phone then just shakes and rejects the unlock
I cannot enrol new fingers. I figured "I'll just delete my thumb and re-enroll it!", but after about 20 tappings I get a message "Try using a different finger. This fingerprint cannot be read" (yeah it doesn't matter which finger I use).
I restarted the phone (Home + Power) but this made no difference.

Is there any known issues or workarounds for this? I have a pretty long passcode and I use Apple Pay regularly, so it's going to be a PITA without Touch ID.

The touch ID data is stored in the secure enclave so the data storage there and the update of iOS is really not related in any direct way with the functioning of that software and hardware.

You can troubleshoot this the same as most iOS issues where you don't know if it's hardware or software by making a backup (or two - one to iCloud and one to iTunes) and then erasing all content and settings and then trying the "problem" task. In your case, after removing all your data and settings, you would test one or two fingerprints by adding them.

If that fails, then restore the iPhone from a iTunes. Repeat the test. If it fails, you have a hardware issue. If it works, then you can try loading your data from the backup and then trying one final time to see if the hardware and OS that work to save your fingerprint also work with your apps and settings.


Encrypted Users Directory This is the scenario:

I have some macbooks bound to Active Directory, so that any AD user can log in. Per requirements from above, all user data needs to be encrypted. Encrypting the entire hard drive proves to be problematic because it prevents authentication against AD when the laptop just boots up.

Is there a away to put the entire /Users directory on an encrypted partition so that a user can log in and then decrypt the Users partition?

After a bit more googling, I found what I was looking for:

https://github.com/jridgewell/Unlock

  Description

  Unlock allows the system to unlock and mount Core Storage encrypted
  volumes during boot. In other words, this allows you to log in as a
  user whose home directory is on an encrypted secondary disk without
  any problems.


iMac is stuck in a login loop My iMac is stuck in a login bootloop. After entering the password, I see a white screen for a second and then I am thrown back to the login screen again.

I tried the same in safe mode, and it behaves the same.

I also tried resetting the PRAM, and it behaves the same even after that.

Since this is a hand-me-down, I am not sure of the version its running. I am ok with data loss too.

Boot to single user mode (hold cmdS while booting), delete the setup file and try making a new clean admin account.

/sbin/mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
exit

At that point, assuming the OS is minimally functional, you can make a new admin account (call it test12345 or something to avoid hitting an existing user account) Optionally, you can delete the old user accounts and user home folders before you type exit above.

rm -rf /Users/whatever
rm /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/whatever.plist

Perform the two commands above for each user you want to remove from the system. You can also delete things more cleanly by logging in to your new admin account and deleting the old users from the graphical tool in system preferenes.


How to find out why finder hangs when "as List" / "as Columns" / "as Cover Flow" on Yosemite After a while, View -> as List and View -> as Columns and View -> as Cover Flow stop working: the Finder window will not update at all, or - for the Cover Flow the "selection" part will not show a selection but the Cover Flow itself will follow selection changes.

A temporary workaround is the solution at Finder doesn't work since Yosemite

But after a while, the issue starts to appear again.

Obviously something is interfering with Finder, but I've no idea where and how to get started, so:

How can I narrow this down to a cause?

I run a late 2013 Retina MacBook Pro with Yosemite (10.9.5) and a truckload of stuff including:

SwitchResX (I've disabled the extensions: no change in behaviour)
DropBox
Google Drive
brew
gfxCardStatus
TunnelBlick

The problem is/was Google Drive. As of early October they silently released a new version 1.32 that might have solved the problem but since that one hasn't reached my system yet I will get back to it later has solved the problem. All the versions since then work fine, including the new "Backup and Sync".

Version 1.31 intermittently fails only on Mac OS X Mavericks (10.9.5) but disabling the visual notifications solves it; upgrading to a newer version also solves the problem.

Some references:

others having the same issue: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/TeXBYS4qH0g and https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/drive/rzdrkYWlgGc
solving on Mavericks: https://www.maketecheasier.com/fix-google-drive-crashing-finder-in-mavericks/
version 1.32: http://www.macworld.co.uk/download/internet-tools/google-drive-13233635836-3328202/


Does Apple Care+ provide International Warranty on iPhones? If I buy an iPhone 8 from USA with AppleCare+ warranty plan, then would the warranty hold in India?

Be careful but also you might be fine in many / most cases. Also, AppleCare and AppleaCare Plus are not warranties but service programs.

https://www.apple.com/legal/sales-support/applecare/applecareplus/

Warranty is certainly one very good form of legal consumer protection. This body of law affects and extends and restricts business and you only get this protection from the country of purchase and generally for less often from the country of import to.

Is Apple's warranty international?

Just as with warranty, there is language that allows Apple to restrict service to the country of sale:

  Apple may restrict Hardware Service and ADH Services to the country where the Covered Equipment was originally purchased.


How do I set up Firefox to keep only cookies from select sites, when I use Firefox-Sync? I use Firefox on a desktop iMac, a MacBook and my Android Samsung Galaxy S III mobile phone. All installations of Firefox are set to sync over Firfox's inbuilt Firefox-Snyc feature.

On my desktop computer I have set Firefox to delete all cookies when I close Firefox and defined exceptions, telling Firefox to keep cookies from those sites. I followed this instruction.

This worked fine at first: I visited some sites, closed Firefox, opened Firefox, looked at the cookies, and all cookies had been deleted except those from the excepted sites.

But after I began using Firefox on my other computers, I noticed that:

(a) all cookies were being deleted sometimes; sometimes all remained

(b) the exceptions disappeared sometimes; sometimes they remained

So the question is:

How do I set up Firefox to keep only cookies from select sites, when I use Firefox-Sync?

Firefox Sync doesn't support site permissions, unfortunately.

It's been requested with bug 470699: add yourself to the CC list to be notified of future development.