MacBook Internal SSD Not showing up in System Information or Disk Utility A couple days ago my MacBook, an early 2016, 12-inch, Retina model had a hard freeze, rainbow wheel and screen frozen.

After a forced restart holding down the power button I was able to get to the login screen but my password would not work.

After additional restarts I was greeted with the Flashing ? Folder icon for no startup disk.

I tried it number of times, making sure I was not doing caps lock or anything of that nature. I was eventually able to get it running by installing macOS Mojave to an external drive however...

The internal hard drive does now show up in anything: Disk Utility, diskutil list,System Information App > Storage, Recovery Mode / Only Recovery Mode etc.

The HDD on these models is soldered to the board so I cannot remove it for further testing.

Does this mean that my SSD is totally done for? Are there any other ways I can access it and test it?

Below is my output from diskutil and some screen shots from Recovery Mode

EDIT: The 319GB Drive is my external WD Hard Drive I am booted from, the CD sized drive is one of those built in partition on an external drive where the recovery software they bundle is stored.

The Internal Drive is not showing up at all and should be 512 MB.

Find below the system_profiler terminal output:

users-MacBook:~ user$ system_profiler SPStorageDataType
Storage:

    WD SmartWare:

      Available: Zero KB
      Capacity: 160.6 MB (160,604,160 bytes)
      Mount Point: /Volumes/WD SmartWare
      File System: HFS+
      Writable: No
      Ignore Ownership: Yes
      BSD Name: disk1s0s2
      Volume UUID: CF13F5E3-21B4-391A-8E7A-61487FE0364D
      Physical Drive:
          Device Name: Virtual CD 070A
          Media Name: WD Virtual CD 070A Media
          Protocol: USB
          Internal: No
          Partition Map Type: Unknown

    Untitled:

      Available: 263.79 GB (263,788,789,760 bytes)
      Capacity: 319.16 GB (319,160,279,040 bytes)
      Mount Point: /
      File System: APFS
      Writable: Yes
      Ignore Ownership: No
      BSD Name: disk2s1
      Volume UUID: E37C64A0-D133-4FAF-9942-22DF646B6E92
      Physical Drive:
          Device Name: My Passport 070A
          Media Name: AppleAPFSMedia
          Protocol: USB
          Internal: No
          Partition Map Type: Unknown

/dev/disk0 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *319.4 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk2         319.2 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:        CD_partition_scheme                        *804.4 MB   disk1
   1:     Apple_partition_scheme                         700.4 MB   disk1s0
   2:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk1s0s1
   3:                  Apple_HFS WD SmartWare            160.6 MB   disk1s0s2

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +319.2 GB   disk2
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Untitled                44.9 GB    disk2s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 44.7 MB    disk2s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                510.4 MB   disk2s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      4.3 GB     disk2s4

Yesterday I had the same problem and solved it by creating a bootable USB with Mac OS Mojave.
Next you need to power on the Mac while holding Option, then select "boot from USB". Wait and open Disk Utility and the SSD will be there.
This solution worked for me. I think disk utility in network recovery is limited or is a old version without support.


MacBook Air A1465 screen black and full of multi coloured lines how can I fix this? has horizontal and vertical lines flickering and then screen starts rolling
nothing is displayed tried cmd opt rp still not working help!

Run Apple Diagnostics to check if there are any issues, but these seems almost certainly like a hardware issue. Take your computer in and have it looked at by an Apple authorized service provider.


Why iMessage generate a lot of Encryption and Signing keys? First of all I don`t use iMessage. I log out of iMessage on my iDevices.

Today I took a look of my login Keychain Access and there were 366 items. All of them were iMessage Encryption Key and iMessage Signing Key.

I delete it, reboot my Mac and open Keychain Access again. In the reboot 8 keys (see screenshot) were create. Is this behaviour normal?

There is no problem in deleting those. Just close your messages app, remove all of those from keychain and reboot your mac. It will create a fresh pair for use.

PS: Log in and use it! It is one of the most secure IM services in the world, works seamlessly and allows you to send SMS from your mac.


Unable to start after having applied all known recovery steps Traditional recovery steps

After a forced startup due to a wifi connection issue, the startup stayed stuck with a grey screen, Apple logo and turning spinning indicator.
Then I tried all the following solutions:

Startup in Safe mode: failed
Reset the NVRAM: failed
Startup after checking disk and files with the disk utility of the recovery disk: failed. The disk check was successful and the permissions check revealed some inconsistencies but all have been repaired successfully. Startup on the recovery disk was successful.

Using Single User startup mode

Then I started in Single User Mode and followed some guidelines found on Apple pages and various forums.

I reach a #root prompt after

hfs: mounted Macintosh HD on device root_device
XPCM: registered
Root device is mounted read-only

With a proposed alternative to modify the files or to continue the booting process.
I applied /sbin/fsck_hfs -fy. It returned:

** The volume Macintosh HD seems to be OK ** and
***** The volume was modified *****

I applied /sbin/mount -uw /. It finished with

/dev/disk0s2 on / (hfs. local. journaled)

I applied

launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist.

It returned:

Couldn't stat <plist> No such file or directory. Nothing found to load

Using dscl(1)

I read somewhere that the previous error message could be ignored in some situation, but it was impossible for me to determine if it was the case here. I went into dscl(1) as the issue seemed to come from Open Directories. I stayed in the interactive mode as I'm not expert to take the risk of modifying the files and I was not sure of which files to check.

The answer was the same than the previous error message indicated above: "nothing found to load"
A ls command returns:

ls: DS error: eServer error; <dscl_cmd> DS Error: -14910 (eServer error;)

I exited the dscl interactive mode to come back at the #root prompt.

Trying to look at plist content

Through the command line I changed the current directory to look at files in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons. All files are there, with dates, size and permissions.
Some things surprised me. When asking a simple cd not followed by options the return is -sh: -cd: HOME not set. Maybe this is due to the Single User startup mode? The other one is that when I ask cd .. whatever could be the current directory position in the tree I get -sh: -cd: No such file or directory
I then tried to open a plist to check its content with plutil -convert xml1 <file name> as I was in the LaunchDaemons directory. I first tried with another file, like com.apple.newsyslog.plist. It returns file doesn't not exists or is not readable or is not a regular file. The same answer is returned for the opendirectoryd.plist file. Files of this directory are all dated as of Sep 23, probably the date where the system was installed when I bought the MBP, the size of opendirectoryd.plist file is 698 ko and authorisations are -rw-r--r--
I tried also to open one of my files in the user directories as this error message was maybe due that they were system files. But I had the same answer with a  plist I built myself and I was sure to be valid as it's used by XCode in my developments.

I'm now stuck there ignoring what could be the next step. I would like to avoid re-installing the system. I feel that it's like the startup is unable to find an entry point in the directories even if the command line finds files traditionally. But it's just an assumption. If its true, is thee a way to make him find the files?

Add-on's after initial post

On Feb. 8 (22:50 UTC). I got another computer to connect the MBP in target mode. I was able to open the plist with PropertyList Editor to check that the content was not corrupted. Plist files are valid, even if I don't know if their content is pertinent with the situation.

Thanks for your help.
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), OS X Mavericks (10.9.1)

Your Mac has Internet Recovery, so you can boot to that and reinstall to a USB drive or SD card while leaving your internal SSD intact.

Should that fail, you have a good case to seek hardware repair from Apple or someone else you trust.
Should that work, then you can decide whether to wipe the SSD and reinstall or perhaps use the clean OS to assist in cleaning up or backing up files in preparation for reinstalling on the internal SSD.

If you repeat your fsck in single user mode, it should eventually come up clean or with a permanent error. I would use the Recovery HD to run fsck / Disk Utility since that is less likely to have corruption than your OS (which still runs in a limited mode in single user mode). It's entirely possible you have software corruption that single user mode can't fix or a failing hard drive - but given the work you've done, I'd take a positive step by installing a clean OS on a clean drive before investigating the current OS more.


Spotlight finds Notes via magnifying glass, but not via Finder "Find" or mdfind I discovered that Spotlight can find my Notes if I just use the magnifying class icon in the main menu bar, but not if I open a Finder window and use command-F.

I've always assumed these were just two different ways of getting at Spotlight, using the same underlying data and engine. Is that completely wrong?

I was looking for something I wrote recently, and didn't remember whether it was text, a WP document, email, a note, or something else. So I opened a Finder window, hit command-F, switched to "Contents", and typed in a few words. Got lots of stuff, but not the file I wanted.

I tried many alternate words and phrases, limiting the search to my user area, limiting modification dates, etc. etc. -- nothing.

Then I opened Notes and did a search there. Instantly found the right note.

So I copied a short phrase out, pasted it into the magnifying glass's searchbox. It found it just fine. Then I did command-F from a finder window again, and pasted it as a "Contents" search. Not found. I then reproduced the same problem with a different note and different search words.

I checked a bunch of things:

I tried words not in the first paragraph of the note, in case Spotlight considers that the "Name" rather than "Contents". No difference.
It doesn't matter whether I limit to my user area or not.
Nothing relevant is excluded via System Preferences / Spotlight / Privacy.
I wasn't trying to search for partial words.
I fiddled with mdfind, and it couldn't find the notes either.
The notes in question are not locked.

So, anybody know what the deal is with Find and Notes?

This is on a MacBookPro running High Sierra (10.13.6). Notes is Version 4.5 (876.1). It's syncing to my iCloud account, and that's the default for new notes.

The Notes app in macOS does not display notes as files on your computer regardless of whether they are synced to iCloud or not.

The Spotlight service is designed to display relevant information to a user by having access to all Apple apps (and most App Store apps) and their content. Notes does not store its content as a simple .txt or .rtf files so it gets its information by querying the app for the content you provide it. The app responds and Spotlight will open the app for you.

This database of content is rebuilt every time Spotlight indexes your computer. You can force Spotlight to re-index your machine by following the steps in this article: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201716

Finder works differently as it will only search for physical files on your computer, meaning that notes will not show up.


Recover photos from thumbnails in Photos app When I open some of my pictures in Photos app, an error message occurs: "the volume cannot be found".

This is because the pictures were "imported" from the desktop on a previous computer and Photos didn't make a copy of them (the setting was disabled).

These original files were lost, however Photos is still able to display a large preview (which actually doesn't seem smaller than the original picture).

Where can I find the picture files behind Photos's previews, so I can reimport them correctly?

I've tried finding a preview file location field in Photos's sqlite database (Photos Library.photoslibrary/database/photos.db) but with no luck.

EDIT : I am technically savvy and can use the Terminal for file search, querying a sqlite database like the one mentioned above, or other tasks.

The photos are stored in:

~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary/Masters/

To get there go to your Pictures folder in your users directory and right click on your photo library file. Then right click and select  “show package contents”  I’ve seen the same photo in a variety of sizes in multiple different locations within the photos library. You may get lucky and stumble upon it by using spotlight or manually digging around.

Also look into repairing and rebuilding the photos library database, this may fix the problem for you automatically. Here is a source that discusses the process


Why can't I connect to local devices via VPN when IP subnet is the same between both networks? I have a VPN server running on my home network that I can connect to fine. The local IP subnet is set to 10.0.0.1 with the subnet mask set to 255.255.255.0. This works fine.
When I'm on a friends network, they have the IP subnet set to the same value as mine. In this case I can connect to my VPN fine (doing an IP check online shows my home IP), but I'm unable to connect to any local device.
If the friend changes their router settings to use 192.168.1.1 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, everything works perfectly (and I'm able to connect to my local devices on my home network).

It almost seems like when the IP subnet is the same, there is a conflict where it will prioritize sending it to the local network instead of sending it through to my VPN connection. I have verified that all of my traffic is set to send over the VPN connection.

Is there a way on macOS to fix that so that no matter the local IP DNS subnet of the network I'm connected to I'm able to access my local devices on the VPN network?

In your Mac's network settings, the local network is probably set to 10.0.0.0/255.255.255.0, this means that all IP addresses from 10.0.0.1 to 10.0.0.255 are local. The option "Send all traffic over VPN connection" does not help here because it affects only non-local traffic.
What you might try (but I would not recommend it) is to change your Mac's network setup to manual, then change the network mask, so only your friend's router is left in the local network. Assuming the router has 10.0.0.1, then the mask should change to 255.255.255.254 to route all other IP addresses through the VPN. Note that this makes it impossible to reach any other device in the local network. Note also that this setting cannot work when you are back in your own network. Finally, note also that this is a theoretical solution which I haven't tried, and it may well be that it causes other problems that I'm not thinking of.
The correct and recommended solution would be that you change the IP range of your local network to something more unusual that is unlikely to collide with other local networks, like for example 10.99.111.0/255.255.255.0. This is how I solved this problem, and I've never had any network collisions any more, even though I've used VPN from many different networks in other companies, hotels etc.


How to forward delete in Macports? When using the interactive Macports shell (running port), is there a way to delete characters to the right of the cursor?

Normally, you can simply use key the combination Fn + Delete to forward-delete. However, when this is used, the result is the production of a ~ (tilde) character.

My bash version is: GNU bash, version 3.2.53(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin11).  My Macports version is: Version: 2.5.4. My OS X version is: 10.7.5 Lion.

UPDATE: As mentioned by daniel Azuelos, control+d will delete forwards one character at a time. However, this is dangerous - if there is no text to be deleted, it will exit the interactive shell as well as the terminal (at least using bash).

I didn't test it with Lion, but there is a high probability that control+d would delete the character to the right of the  cursor, and control+k would
delete everything to the end of line.


Is there any way to dock the Adium buddy list to the side of the screen? This seems to be a pretty common feature in most Windows-based IM clients and I'm confused as to why I can't find this functionality in Adium. By "dock" I mean dragging the buddy list to the edge of the screen and having it essentially turn into a sidebar which no windows overlap and which takes up the entire height of the screen.

You can certainly achieve "something similar" if you tell it to be above other windows and don't hide when in the background (options I don't use or like)

Of course it won't be a real "docked" app like the DOCK, but it will behave mostly like it.

You can control the vertical and horizontal size:

And here's how mine looks:

UPDATE to be honest, I use it on the right side, but Adium will "stick" to the Screen side when close to it. The position in the above screenshot was for the purpose of showing you how it "docks" :)


How to only back up one partition of a Macbook hard drive? I have a Macbook Air that has 2 partitions on the hard drive. One is for Yosemite (450GB) named "Macintosh HD" and the other already has Mojave (50GB) on it named "Macintosh HD 2".

When upgrading the Mojave to Catalina, I wanted to back up the Mojave partition ("Macintosh HD 2") and upgrade it.

But when I plugged in an external hard drive named "Seagate2TB", Time Machine started to back up hard drive 1 first (450GB) "Macintosh HD".  Since I already set and boot up using Mojave, I restarted the machine, and ejected the 450GB partition "Macintosh HD", but when Time Machine started again, it still was backing up some 410GB of data, which means "Macintosh HD" is included.

So I went to Time Machine's Preferences, and clicked on Options, "+", and chose what to exclude: "Macintosh HD".

Next I rebooted the Macbook Air and wait for the back up to start, and it again, reported backing up 410GB of data.

How can "Macintosh HD" be excluded?

Your problem is a consequence of an over simplified vision of users from Apple:
a user has one uniq computer with one uniq partition then name it with a simple and uniq name "Macintosh HD".

Once you start to have external disks, different versions of OS on the same disk, you should carefully avoid all the failures this over simplistic naming scheme will led you to.

Change all your partitions names with a very clear and really unambiguous name
for you and forever.

My personnal use is as follows: every disk partition is named from the computer name it is used on ex.: coriolis, the partition number ex.: 1, its actual capacity, ex.: 250 Gb and the version of the OS it is used on, ex.: High Sierra for a production OS or 10.14.1 for a test one.

Ex.:

coriolis 1 250 Gb High Sierra
coriolis 2 250 Gb 10.14.1

All my computers, all my external disks have a different and uniq name registered at time of their 1st formatting.


Spaces in a folder name I have a foldername with a space between the name: /Volumes/Img/Horos Data/DATABASE/

I need to put it in a variable to use in a script.

In terminal I can use \ to use the folder: cd /Volumes/Dados/Horos\ Data/DATABASE/, but it doesn't work when I put in a variable like:

DESTINY=/Volumes/Dados/Horos\ Data/DATABASE.noindex/
ls $DESTINY

How can I put it in a variable?

Quotes can be used to escape spaces when assigning to a variable.

var="abc def ghi"


HTTPS sites won't work on Chrome, others don't work at all on Yosemite All HTTPS websites (such as Google) are showing this message

This webpage is not available, `Error code: ERR_TIMED_OUT`

I'm using Chrome 38.0.2125.104 on a mid-2011 iMac with OS X Yosemite. No other browser works at all, such as Safari, Firefox etc, but all sites work on other computers.

Using a socks proxy works, but that is not ideal, and I don't want to be stuck using Bing or restoring to Mavericks.

Thanks in advance.

I see the same issue, it looks like a bug.  It impacts both Chrome and Safari.

I found if I change the account profile settings to allow it to administer, it will start working again.

Not a great long-term solution, but hopefully Apple will patch it soon.


How can I place a shortcut to a network folder in my sidebar? My ultimate goal here is very simple:  I want to place a shortcut to a specific network folder (on another machine my home network), in the sidebar of my personal machine.  But I am getting some very strange behavior, as demonstrated in the following video:

https://www.loom.com/share/41174425ff9b40f49c4eccd6b7b61b3f

Here is what the video shows:

Mount a network volume
Choose a folder on the volume, and drag it into the Finder sidebar
Eject the volume
Select the alias you just added, from the sidebar.  Volume and folder mount fine.
Eject the volume.  Receive error dialog that the item can't be ejected because it is in use, but a few seconds later the volume is in fact ejected.
Dismiss the error dialog(s) and select the alias from the sidebar again.  Receive error that he item cannot be opened because the original item can't be found.  In the background you can see the volume is in fact mounted.
Dismiss the error dialog and select the alias from the sidebar again.  It will open up just fine since the volume is now mounted.

I can recreate these results every time, with any network folder.  The remote machine is a 2012 Mac Mini running Sierra, and my machine is a 2018 MacbookPro running High Sierra, in case the OS version matters.

Why is this happening and is there a way to make this functionality work without all the confusing and incorrect error dialogs?

Wow, it looks like I have found a workable solution to this.  Still a few strange bits which you can see in the new video I created, but the end result basically works.

Steps:

With the remote volume not mounted, open the Connect to Server dialog (Command-K in Finder)
Enter the network address of your remote volume.  If you have previously connected to it, it should be selectable in the dropdown menu on the right hand side.  The resulting address should look something like smb://Media%20Server._smb._tcp.local
Add the rest of the path to your desired folder, including the volume name.  In my case the volume was called Media1 and the folder was called backups, so the final result was smb://Media%20Server._smb._tcp.local/Media1/backups.  Click Connect.
Note that the resulting window displays the remote folder you wanted, but it is now mounted as if it were a volume rather than a folder.
Drag the icon in the titlebar of the window, to the sidebar.

Now you can mount and eject the remote folder directly from your sidebar.  There is still some strange behavior with occasional complaints when ejecting the volume, but they don't always happen and I'm wondering if they are caused by my being on Wifi on my Macbook.  Still in the end I seem to have a working solution after years of wrestling with this and never getting it to work reliably.


Beeping iPad connects to iTunes in VMWare's Windows 10 but not in macOS I like to connect my iPad (3rd Gen; Wi-Fi + Cellular) to iTunes in my macOS (10.12.5) using the USB cable. This fails but the funny thing is that it works fine when I enable the USB connection to be forwarded to my Windows 10 running on the same machine under VMWare Fusion (8.5.8). This rules out any hardware problem I think. It syncs and backups fine under VMWare.

The
come up every ~0.5 second in sync with the beeping of the iPad. They read:

> Assertion failure: error == noErr (-402653052)
> failed to connect to USB device 0x6100003940f0, UDID 340a25595bfa87ccb0d4fd3f7bee6c5ea4470d80 (0xE8000084)

The System Information lists the iPad as present under the USB 3.0 Bus.

FIX: from: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5523411?start=0&tstart=0

"""tap Settings > General > Reset > Reset Location & Privacy. This will also reset your location and privacy settings. You can also untrust all computers by tapping Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings on the ipad/iphone"""

I guess the last part is what fixed my problem as on macOS the question came up if I wanted to trust this computer. After that it worked again. I hope this helps other people looking for a similar problem.


Need Help Un-Installing a Bad Tweak! I am on iOS 10.2 (Jailbroken, iPad Air 2) and I recently installed a bad tweak, it put me into a boot loop in which I got out of, but when I enter safe mode I can't go into cydia and un-install it because cydia keeps crashing, I try to enter yalu102 app and re-jailbreak but when it "successfully jailbreaks" it goes back into a boot loop because of the bad tweak I installed.

Are you sure it's a boot loop and not a respring loop? You say you "got out of it" suggests it's the latter. Cydia crashing means you're not in Safe Mode but rather in an unjailbroken state. Whilst tapping go in yalu102, hold volume up until the device resprings to try entering No Substrate Mode. From there you should be able to open Cydia.


Why am I experiencing random bluetooth disconnects? I have an iPad Air 2 64GB now running iOS 8.3. I've experienced problems where when using Keynote on my iPhone 5S to remote control a keynote presentation on my iPad, the connection will be dropped at random times during the presentation. I attributed this to Keynote bugs, but then my iPad also started randomly losing connections to my Logitech Ultrathin keyboard cover (the onscreen keyboard would appear) or I'd type a certain character and it would start repeating ad infinitum. I removed the interference factor from the equation by noticing that the problem would also occur within my office with thick walls and no bluetooth devices nearby … so I had Logitech replace the keyboard, but the connection drops still occur. I also reset all settings on my iPad, which didn't help.

So my next question is this: could the bluetooth hardware on my iPad Air 2 be flakey? Everything else about it works fine.

It sounds like you are not alone and no fix in sight at the moment according to this report.
How to potentially fix iPad Bluetooth Problems

iOS 8 Bluetooth problems are among the most common iOS issues and they
were a big problem inside iOS 8. We ourselves have run into iOS 8
Bluetooth issues with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus and while iOS 8.1
delivers fixes for Bluetooth issues, we expect Bluetooth problems to
persist inside Apple’s brand new iOS 8 update.
There doesn’t appear to be a cure all, we’ve heard about a few
possible fixes that iPad users will want to try. iOS users have
singled out “Reset All Settings” as a solid fix. It hasn’t worked for
everyone but there are a ton of people that are claiming success after
trying it on their iPhone. It should work for Apple’s iPad as well.
To do this, open up the iPad and head to Settings > General > Reset >
Reset All Settings. This is going to take a bit of time and users will
lose all saved settings but the pay off is that it seems to be fixing
Bluetooth issues for many people. It’s certainly worth a try if
Bluetooth keeps acting up after Apple’s iOS 8.1 upgrade.

For the time been, you can file your report with Apple and hope for the best.
https://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html


Mac only approves password on second entry Every time I try to open my Mac, it doesn't approve my password the first time but approves it the second time. What is the reason?

The reason you're asked to enter password two times may be because FileVault is enabled. When FileVault is enabled, you're first prompted to enter in your login information to unlock the disk at the EFI Login Window, and then you're prompted to enter in your login information again to go into your actual user account.

Recommended workaround is

You turn off FileVault (System Preferences → Security & Privacy → FileVault),  or
To allow automatic login when FileVault is turned on, enter this on Terminal

sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DisableFDEAutoLogin

Please refer to this Apple Support Communities thread for more details
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7690125


How can I find conflicting keyboard shortcuts? I'm on Yosemite 10.10.4, using Safari 8.0.7.

When I press ⌘ + Shift + 7 Safari doesn't show all tabs, as it's supposed to be, but presents me with the crosshair you get when you would otherwise press ⌘ + Shift + 4.

When I press ⌘ + Shift + 4, I also get the crosshair.
Pressing ⌘ + Shift + 7 outside of Safari also gives me the crosshair.

I already checked all shortcuts defined under "System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts" and I also used the apps CheatSheet and KeyCue to display shortcuts, but they only show ⌘ + Shift + 7 for "Show all tabs" in Safari and ⌘ + Shift + 4 for taking selected screenshots.

How can I find out, where the conflicting key bind is coming from?

This behavior started a few days ago, but I can't seem to recall any specific changes or app installations, If there even were any...

I actually found the culprit...

In order to find the error I tried several other numbers with ⌘ + Shift and found ⌘ + Shift + 6 triggering a screen recording interface I hadn't seen before.

Opening this interfaces options I found it originated from CloudApp and there in CloudApps "Keyboard Shortcuts" I found it (see image).

CloudApp must have integrated the shortcut with it's recent update.

I removed the shortcut and now Safari is working again as it should :)


How should paths in /etc/paths.d get added to $PATH? None of the paths I have in the /etc/paths.d directory are being added to $PATH in any of the shells on my High Sierra system.  Presumably there’s supposed to be something in some file that says to look in /etc/paths.d when a shell starts; what is that something and where should it be?
Ideally I’d like to know a proper way (i.e. not some weird hack that technically solves the problem but will cause more problems down the line, because that’s almost certainly how I got into this mess) to get $PATH to use the contents of /etc/paths.d for at least bash and zsh.

/usr/libexec/path_helper is used to build PATH from the default in /etc/paths and the entries in /etc/paths.d (see man path_helper for details). By default this is called in /etc/profile which is executed for each sh/bash/zsh style login shell.
On my system /etc/profile looks like this
# System-wide .profile for sh(1) and friends

if [ -x /usr/libexec/path_helper ]; then
    eval `/usr/libexec/path_helper -s`
fi

if [ "${BASH-no}" != "no" ]; then
    [ -r /etc/bashrc ] && . /etc/bashrc
fi


Is there any way to get the Multi-Safari version of Safari 2 working on Snow Leopard? Michel Fortin’s Multi-Safari actually makes it possible to test websites in old versions of Safari, should you feel the need.

Unfortunately, the Multi-Safari version of Safari 2 doesn’t quite work properly in Snow Leopard. For me, it worked for a few minutes. Then, for no apparent reason, it stopped loading web pages — the progress bar would stay stuck at a fairly short length, and the status bar would say it was waiting for the web site.

Is there any way to get it working reliably on Snow Leopard?

Safari 2, sorry, why would you need to test for that? It's REALLY not in use by anyone anymore.

Anyway, the best way I can think of running it is to virtualise an earlier version of OS X - Tiger or Jaguar.


Is it a good idea to seal off the optical drive bay after installing a second HDD? When installing a HDD instead of the SuperDrive:

Does the bracket, which holds the HDD, seal off the optical drive slot in the unibody?

If not, it seems that debris and dust could get in. (I guess it may depend as there are various types of bracket.)

But if it does get sealed, I wonder if closing that gap can negatively affect airflow inside the machine, and thus, risk overheating.

Any thoughts?

Also, perhaps those bristles can be removed, and an aluminum/plastic filling could close it up? Something that would be flush with the outside. Is there something like that?

Depends on your bracket/caddie style, but for peace of mind I would advise using electrical tape over the gap on the inside, any exterior covering cannot be less intrusive than just ignoring the hole. Airflow etc is not an issue.

Debris entering the Mac isn't a huge concern as there are slots larger than the optical bay and unless your optical drive has massive amounts of conductive metal debris in it - leaving the felt-like skirt in place should suffice for all but the most messy environments.

Unless you are also sealing the heat exhausts by the display hinge - sealing the optical slot won't matter either for good or for bad, so I'd say it's not a good idea to spend time/effort to further seal that slot.


Edit outgoing IP packets How can I edit outgoing IP packets on the fly?

I believe NetfilterQueue would allow me to do this on Linux, so I am looking for macOS alternatives.

Overall, I want to be able to capture a packet sent from my machine to a specific IP address, edit some information in the IP header and send the packet on its way.

Edit

I have just skimmed through iptables man page and realized that mangle table would work perfectly for my usecase. As I understand, macOS's alternative to iptables is some variant of OpenBSD PF. I can't seem to find anything about altering packets in PF documentation. Is it possible to set some rules for altering packets using macOS PF?

You can do one of two things:

(a) Configure macOS's native packet filter, PF, to forward packets to a "divert socket" (akin to a Unix socket on Linux; see divert(4)). An application running in userspace can then listen on this divert socket and inspect packets, followed by dropping them or handing them back to the kernel (with or without modification) for sendoff. See this blog post for an example config, and pfctl(8), pf.conf(5), and the PF User's Guide for comprehensive info on PF's capabilities and how to configure it.

(b) Deploy a kernel extension which uses the native IP filter interface, IPF (akin to Linux's Netfilter), to inspect, modify, and drop packets. See Jonathan Levin's Mac OS X and iOS Internals for details; the 1st edition describes this interface in §17.7.4 IP Filters (page 698).

I don't know of any general-purpose daemons that work on principle (a) or kexts that use principle (b) that allow you to write config files that specify rules for modifying and dropping packets in transit, so it seems like you'd need to write your own daemon or kext for your specific use case.


How to install OS X again with no access to a recovery partition? I have a Mac running Fedora with no recovery partition and no access to any computer with Mac OS X. How can I reinstall OS X on this computer?

If the Mac is new enough to support it [roughly late Snow Leopard or Lion as its original OS], Internet Recovery would be the way to go.

Hold  Cmd ⌘   R  at the boot chimes to get started.


Fix Safari 6 Address Bar Selection Behavior This is probably just something I have to live with, but with Safari 6 Apple made the address bar different from every other text field on the OS, in that a single click (at least when it's displaying a URL) selects the entire contents of the text field rather than placing the insertion point.

It's probably a long shot, but is there a defaults write command or similar that fixes this?

This is built-in to Safari 6. To the best of my knowledge, there is (currently) no flag to control this with.


Mountain Lion 10.8.3 file sharing broken for particular named folder I'm running Mountain Lion 10.8.3 on a 2012 Mac Mini. The Mini is headless and I'm using an iMac to do screen sharing for admin purposes. I'm trying to set up sharing of a particular folder on an external HDD attached to the Mini via USB3, but for some reason I can't share this folder and the problem seems to be related to its name. I would like to know what I can do (other than just renaming the folder) to fix the problem.

In more detail: I'm trying to share a folder containing FLAC music files. These files are in a folder called Music/FLAC on the volume Titan, an external HDD attached to the Mini (Saturn). Hence I'm trying to share the folder FLAC.

The HDD has been formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I don't know how to work out whether it is case sensitive or not. In Disk Utility I can run Verify Disk and it says the volume appears to be okay but Verify Disk Permissions is greyed out (because owners are not enabled for external drives?).

I'm logged in using an administrator account. I go to Sharing in System Preferences. The File Sharing service is checked. In Options, Share files and folders using AFP is checked; SMB is not. I click the + button to add a share, navigate to the FLAC folder, and click Add. The dialog closes, but no share is added. Similarly, if I navigate to the folder using Finder, do Get Info then check the Shared folder checkbox, the change is not persisted when I close the Get Info dialog.

If I look in the Console app, I see entries like this:

  System Preferences[4648]: SFL(4648): AddNewItemWithProperties_rpc
  returned -36 System Preferences[4648]: LSSharedFileListInsertItemFSRef
  returned NULL for path:/Volumes/Titan/Music/FLAC

Now here's the really odd part. If I rename the folder to flac (that is, change the case), then the file sharing works fine! Some experimentation with various casing seems to suggest that all lowercase is fine, but any uppercase letter causes the share to fail. The computer is happy to share the MP3 folder located in the Music folder however.

I'm kind of at a loss to explain this behaviour, but then I don't have much experience with Macs.

The only other thing that may have a bearing on this (although I hope not) is that there is also a NAS box on the same Ethernet network that has a public SMB share named flac. I can't see how this would make any difference though.

Update 26 March

@GrahamPerrin: Your steps 1-4 are basically what I had already done, but I tried again to make sure. No change: flac works ok, FLAC doesn't.

As a quick fix, I was going to share the folder as flac, but although it shared, the share appeared as flac-1 on the iMac. Whatever is going on it definitely doesn't like that folder name, regardless of casing. So now I've renamed the folder to FLACs and shared it like that, and it seems happy enough.

I'm not sure what to tell you about the actual problem but I can share some insight that might help you track it down.  The iMac connecting to the lower case "flac" share but mounting it as "flac-1" tells me it's all ready connected to a volume named some form of flac.  It could just be that it's all ready connected to the SMB NAS you mentioned.

Regardless I've seen an issue where software expects a certain path and instead of throwing an error about not finding the path it just tried to create it which then leaves a sort of null path that you have to manually remove.  If you don't remove it then names like "flac-1" start appearing.  Re-reading that it may not make sense but regardless the steps I've used to see what's what are firing up Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities) and typing:

ls -la /Volumes

If you see more listed here than you expect or can find through normal finder navigation then you can remove them (Only do this if you're 100% sure it's a path that contains nothing you ever want to see again!) by typing:

rm -rf /Volumes/NULLPATH

where NULLPATH is what you wan to get rid of.

Along these lines if the mini is all ready showing a "FLAC" or some such in /Volumes then you're not goign to be able to share a folder by the same name.  As in if the mini is connected to the SMB NAS then you're going to have to use a different share name.

Also you can turn ownership on, on your external HD by opening the get info window on the drive and checking the box at the bottom of the window to "Enable Ownership on this volume".  I'm not sue it will in any way effect your issue but might be something to try.


how long does it take to synch across devices I've imported 1,000 photos into Photos on my Mac, and my settings are "Store in iCloud", it is over an hour since I did the import and when I log into iCloud.com via Safari I can see the photos there in Photos however they do not show on my iPhone 6 (logged into the same iCloud account) which has iOS 8.3 and uses Photos. I wonder how long does it take to synch to my devices or is there another step I need to take to get it to synch.

I am seeing the iCloud Photo Library syncing getting faster in iOS 11, even with my backup phone iPhone 5s.

Prior to iOS 11, it takes as soon as several hours, and up to days for the new photos to show up on all my devices. And at that time, it needs WiFi connection for the sync to happen. **The feature is designed the way that plugging into power and connected to WiFi triggers syncing. **

But in iOS 11, the photos even sync on cellular (but limited, eg. videos excluded). And the photos show up on all my other devices almost instantaneously - within minutes. (And my home and office WiFi is upgraded at all)

To conclude, to make the syncing faster:

Update to iOS 11 (it really helps with the photo syncing process)
Plug the device to power
Connect to good WiFi
Suspend other network heavy applications such as App Store Updates.


Why does my new bootable external SSD show up as 2 volumes? I have an iMac (model 18,2) running Mojave. I have installed a new external (USB 3.1) SSD, and installed Catalina on it (and am in the process of migrating to it as the primary load source).

When I am running under Catalina, both the new SSD and the internal hard drive show up as single volumes ("SanDisk SSD" and "Macintosh HD"). But when I am running under Mojave, the SSD shows up as two volumes: "SanDisk SSD" and "SanDisk SSD - Data." Moreover, when I put custom icons on those two volumes (via Get Info) from Mojave, then reboot to Catalina, it's the icon I applied to "SanDisk SSD - Data" that appears.

This is most confusing. Can somebody shed any light on what's going on?

(FWIW, my customary disk drive icons are based on a photograph of a 1960s-vintage removable disk pack, of the sort that might go into a "Merlin" drive on an IBM 370 or compatible.)

You are seeing Catalina's way of setting up boot volumes, that's all. In Catalina, when you install macOS on a drive, it gets split into two volumes behind the scene: one read-only where the system and all system files reside, and one writable where your user files and every file that must be writable resides.

This is a way to further harden and protect the system from any accidental or malevolent change. The split is done by some file system level 'magic' and the volumes occupy overlapping space on the physical disk.

The preceding is a bit simplified, but you get the idea. When you see this volume in Catalina, it is presented as a single volume to the user. But when you see it in Mojave, it is shown as the two volumes it appears to be for Mojave, since Mojave has no knowledge of Catalina's boot disk setup scheme.

To use under Mojave, you can just ignore the volume without the "- data" and use the volume with "- data". All changes you do to that volume (as you have already seen with the icon) should show up back in Catalina.


Trouble Mounting NTFS drive on OS X 10.9 Mounting NTFS drives works in OS X natively. Mounting drives with fstab is common and can be seen here and here and here.

I was able to successfully do it with the following addition to my fstab.

UUID=30ADE88E-0889-42FF-AEC3-3AE0D11C7FE4 none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse

However, on reboot the next time I plugged in my drive it no longer worked.

I tried sudo mount -a but that failed with the following error:

mount: realpath /none: No such file or directory

The diskutil command is my go-to for finding drive information.

➜  /  diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS 512ssd                  499.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:               Windows_NTFS 900GBWD                 900.2 GB   disk1s1 <--- SEE
   2:             Windows_FAT_32 100GBWDFAT              100.0 GB   disk1s2

Once you know your drive location in /dev then you can find the UUID with diskutil info disk1s1:

➜  /  diskutil info disk1s1
   Device Identifier:        disk1s1
   Device Node:              /dev/disk1s1
   Part of Whole:            disk1
   Device / Media Name:      Untitled 1

   Volume Name:              900GBWD
   Escaped with Unicode:     900GBWD

   Mounted:                  No

   File System Personality:  NTFS
   Type (Bundle):            ntfs
   Name (User Visible):      Windows NT File System (NTFS)

   Partition Type:           Windows_NTFS
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 USB
   SMART Status:             Not Supported
   Volume UUID:              30ADE88E-0889-42FF-AEC3-3AE0D11C7FE4

   Total Size:               900.2 GB (900174610944 Bytes) (exactly 1758153537 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        0 B (0 Bytes) (exactly 0 512-Byte-Units)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (not mounted)
   Ejectable:                Yes

   Whole:                    No
   Internal:                 No

However, I'm not sure why the fstab isn't working anymore or how I can correctly mount this drive. How do you mount a NTFS drive as writable in OS X?

You don't.  OS X does not have reliable r/w support for NTFS.

Purchase one of the reliable solutions, such as Paragon, or Tuxera.


Is there a better way to put videos into the ipad? I have many videos on my computer that I want to put in my iPad. When I use iTunes, I have to manually click one video by one video to input the video into the iPad. Is there a way I can multiselect or highlight/drag and drop into the iPad? It's taking up a lot of time just to tick and untick (remove) them from the iPad. (I can't sync all because I have more than 16gb of videos and it cant fit my iPad).
I've tried to google for ways to multi tick them, cntl + A doesn't work.
Am I doing it wrong?

I have created separate playlists for my devices (one for music and one for video). I just sync those playlists instead of manually maintaining the Sync Movies list. This is much easier since you can use the deeper integration of playlists in iTunes to manage the contents. (drag/drop, popup menu, ... etc).


pause download from appstore and shutdown then resume after restarting computer I am using mountain lion on macbook pro.

I want to know if it is posible to pause while downloading xcode from appstore and shutdown my computer, then resume my download from where i paused it when I start my computer again. I need to know this because xcode is very large to download and due to slow internet speed I cannot download it all at once.

I've had mixed results with pausing app store download.
There is a decent chance it would start over from the beginning of downloading.


My old iphone keeps my settngs I gave my old iPhone 4 to my friend and it has been unlocked however we seem to be linked as she receives all my shared photos. Now she wants to set up Gmail on her phone and it seems locked on my email address. Can you help please.

Is the phone locked to iCloud? If it is then I refer you to this answer.

Assuming no, then you will just need to wipe the phone. Assuming that you have backed up your data (music, photos etc) then open the Settings app.

Go to General -> Reset (scroll to the bottom) -> Erase All Content and Settings -> Erase iPhone

Wait a while (it can take some time) and then the phone will be as new. It will welcome you with a "Welcome" message.

That's it!


iPhone 5 charging sound keep repeating, why? I am using my iPhone 5 for iOS development so it is attached to computer via cable and often when I hold it and rotate it to see screen in a different orientation and I accidentally touch the cable at the neck, Xcode warns me about lost connection, and the lightning sign disappear from iPhone screen on the top right corner and I can hear this irritation charging sound.

What can be the problem? The screen is a little bit scratched.

If I would replace screen would it solve the problem?

I have bought and tested with a brand new Apple cable.

I brought iPhone back to Apple Service and the guy cleaned my iPhone at the plug with the needle that you can open the sim card tray. So he cleaned it, and that was lots of dirty coming out. And after all I have to claim connection is much more stable. So you should clean it first.


How to watch a 1080p video on retina display with a 1:1 pixel ratio (with no scaling up)? I am trying to watch a 1080p video on my Macbook Retina 13 but it is scaled up to the 'scaled resolution' 1280x800. If the video is scaled down to 1280x800 before being displayed, I will be losing in precision.
VLC for example claims to support Retina Displays but that seems to only concern the fonts and not the video.

You can't watch any full screen video that is not in the exact native display resolution without scaling. At least in my knowledge.

The question is - is the scaling good or not. You may try different players.

If you want pixel to pixel mapping, you can only set the player size to 100% of the video, and it'll show as one of the windows on the screen, depending on the video file resolution - but only that way will you have the pixel-accurate playback.

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong.


Using the same Apple iCloud with 2 devices I am going on holiday and want to use my second iPhone with a local SIM card.  So I want to know whether I can configure the second iPhone using the same apple account or if I should rather create a new apple icloud account?

iPhone 5s - my UK sim card associated with my iCloud account
iPhone 4 - SA sim card - rebuild and synced with my iCloud account

Then use both phones while on holiday.

Any thoughts?

Using the same iCloud account on both phones shouldn't lead to any issues. After all it's basically the same setup as using an iPhone and an iPad with the same iCloud account, and that's something which works for a lot of people.


Removing all of an Application? I am having an issue with the AppStore, and this is a related, but different question.

How do I find and remove all bits of the AppStore application? Besides the obvious app itself, sitting in the application folder, what prefs, helpers, etc are there that must be removed?

I ask this because when I removed the application file, deleted it, and reinstalled (from 10.6.6 updater image), the app icon showed a pending update the moment it launched, and it showed that I was signed in to my account. This implies there's more stuff I need to delete.

This is very tricky. From 10.6.6 (when Apple released the Mac App Store), the App Store has been pretty deeply built in to the system. You can see this by the fact that if you click on the  in your Menu Bar, there is an option to launch the App Store from there.

In later versions of OS X it is even more deeply embedded as software updates for the OS are downloaded through the App Store. In order to completely remove all trace of the App Store and still have a stable system that won't crash or kernel panic, you would have to dig in to some of the Apple Frameworks and binaries to remove references for the App Store.


What could be wrong with an Ethernet port on a black macbook? In my house is an older black macbook. If I plug it into the house ethernet with a cable, youtube videos pause and spin the throbber and other network operations are also sluggish.

If I disconnect the cable and turn on WiFi, all is well. The TimeCapsule supplying the WiFi plugins into the same hub as the aforementioned cable (though there are many more feet of wiring involved).

Is there an log on Lion that would tell me if the ethernet interface was getting errors, or getting sick?

You would normally expect better performance from a wired connection, even it it is slower on paper, so there would seem to be a problem, and it would be anywhere on the physical connection from the macbook to the internet router.  I would first check what sort of connection you have, 10 half duplex would be bad, 100 full better (1Gb full best, but I don't know if the blackbooks had gigabit ethernet).  Check this out on your switch/router and your macbook if you can.  It could be set/requested at either end of the connection.  A bad cable could force a slower auto-negotiated rate too, so try swapping it out.


How can I mirror the display from an iOS device to an Apple TV? Is there a way to mirror the display of an iPod Touch or iPad to the Apple TV using AirPlay?

I know I can do it for Applications that support it, but for presentations it's often useful to just mirror the whole display, e.g. when wanting to show something in Safari.

If you have an iPad 2 and a iOS developer's account (or patience until this fall) you can try the hot new iOS 5 feature:

AirPlay Mirroring for iPad 2


How to batch combine mkv and srt files to mp4 with ffmpeg I'm trying to get an applescript to combine .mkv's with .srt's after i added those files to  a folder.

I've managed to do the automatic conversion from mkv to mp4 and add them to itunes.
The only thing that I cannot accomplish is to get the srt automatically.

I also can do this in the Terminal window, one "mkv" at a time. The command that is working fine for me to do this, is:

ffmpeg -i movie.1.mkv -sub_charenc WINDOWS-1252 -i movie.1.srt -vcodec copy -acodec copy -scodec mov_text -metadata:s:s:0 language=por movie.1.mp4

I have the mkv file with the same name as the srt file.

The apple script I'm using to do the batch conversion is:

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items
tell application "Finder"
    set fold_name to the name of this_folder
    try

        repeat with i from 1 to number of items in added_items
            set new_item to item i of added_items
            set the item_path to the quoted form of the POSIX path of new_item

            if name extension of new_item is "mkv" then
                do shell script " /usr/local/bin/ffmpeg -i " & item_path & " -vcodec copy -acodec libfaac " & item_path & ".mp4"

            else if name extension of new_item is "mp4" then
                tell application "iDentify"
                    activate
                    open new_item
                end tell

            end if
        end repeat
    end try
end tell end adding folder items to

I'm a newbie in the applescript, and the thing why i don't get it to work is, that the script returns in the end a file called movie.1.mkv.mp4 created from the movie.1.mkv.
That means that I'm not abble to get in the variable "item_path" only the filename without the extension. Perhaps it's very easy, but i didn't manage to do it.

Can anyone please help?
Thank you

Using and adapting code from

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12907517/extracting-file-extensions-from-applescript-paths

Add to the top of your code:

-- overcome finder limitation...
set text item delimiters to "."

then later extract the name and extension portions...

if new_item contains "." then set item_ext to (text item 2 of new_item) as text
if new_item contains "." then set item_name to (text items 1 thru -2 of new_item) as text

That should do it... :)


How can I make my very own OS X Lion Install DVD/USB Stick? I bought new MBP some days ago and it came with the lion installed on it. Now I am curious can I make an OS X Lion Bootable Disk?

I read some tutorial to make an OS X bootable Disk if you download it from appstore, but if Lion was installed by factory on it how can I make a bootable disk?

Open Terminal, and type this command to list all partitions on your hard drive or SSD:

diskutil list

Identify the "Recovery HD." For example:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Filesystem              119.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

Then run the following (replacing [ID] with your identifier (will most often be disk0s3).

diskutil mount readOnly /dev/[ID]

So the following would look like:

diskutil mount readOnly /dev/disk0s3

The disk image inside the Recovery HD partition has been marked invisible, so use the Terminal command to mount it:

hdiutil attach /Volumes/Recovery HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg

Now, from the newly mounted Mac OS X Base System Image, double-click the 'Install Mac OS X' application and proceed past the licensing agreement.

Choose the external drive or spare partition when the installer asks where you'd like to install OS X Lion.

Once the installer completes the download, do not restart your system. Rather, quit the installer. If you restart, you'll likely lose the local Lion installer. Once you have the InstallESD.dmg in the Mac OS X Install Data folder, you can burn it to a DVD, or image it to a USB flash drive to create your very own Lion boot disk.

This article was adapted from: How to get a full Lion install disc for a new MacBook Air or Pro
All credits go to: CharlesS


How do I avoid update checks for third party software (cobook), dont want to "update" by mistake I have an app that I bought, unfortunately the company was also bought and the new version is seriously worse.

Hiding is not possible for third party software.
Removing MAS receipt makes the software "damaged".
Setting softwareupdate ignore cobook, does not work either.

There has to be some hack available, I don't want to "update" by mistake, and it bugs me to see the red "1", since I usually keep my software updated.

This would however be a downdate.

The MAS receipt is designed just so you can't do that - otherwise you could hand the app to all your friends without them having to buy it ;-)

Did you try telling App Store to "Ignore Updates" - right click in empty space to the right of the App name… though I've heard reports this is no longer working in Yosemite; I've no updates to test on right now.


Black screen after login and frozen loading wheel I am trying to help a friend with their machine. They are using an iMac (3-4 years old) running 10.12.

At first, their issue was at login. They would get to the login screen, enter their password, see the loading wheel for 1-2 seconds, then the screen would black out. But the machine is still on. Happened for a few times.

Now, though. It just powers on, get to the first loading screen, and then freezes. Tried multiple times. Same thing.

I wasn't sure what to do, so I had them follow this guide, What to do when your Mac displays a blank screen and the cursor after a macOS update.

I had them reset the PRAM three times.
Then boot to Single User Mode, and enter the commands in the article.
There seemed to be some errors in the drive, but I am not qualified to interpret them.
Here are screenshots of all the entries and readouts in Single User Mode.

What seems to be the issue, and what should I have them do next?

the part you want to pay attention to is the

  CoreStorageGroup::completeIORequest - error 0xe000002ca detected for
  LVG "Macintosh HD" (...) disk2: I/O error.

I Googled that error code and found a few reports online of people with that issue.  It looks to me like your hard-drive is failing (but that may not be true - it's just a guess).. any time I see the "I/O error", I typically assume the data is in jeopardy even if there's a chance it might not be.  You want to be as safe as possible.  I hope you have backups .. if you don't, you'll want to treat this situation as though you could lose all your data.

Hire a professional to make backups of your hard-drive and advise you on your best next steps.  It never hurts to talk to Apple, if it's under warranty they may be able to help.  If not, you'll want to decide if you want to get a new hard-drive put in (depending on the year your iMac was manufactured, it could be very easy or very difficult) or just buy a new iMac.


iCloud notes not syncing from mac to iPhone I have a mac just updated to macOS Sierra (10.12) today and an iPhone 5s just updated to 10.2 today. However, this problem occurred before the updates too. I use Notes on both devices with my iCloud account. When I create a note on the mac, it shows up on the phone. When I edit on the mac those edits show up on the phone. However, no new notes or edits from the phone show up on the mac.

This leads to silly effects such as: if I create note "aa" on the mac, I will have "aa" on the mac and "aa" on the phone. If I edit to "aabb" on the phone, the mac version stays as "aa." The, if I edit the mac version to "aacc" the phone version becomes "aabbcc" or "aaccbb."

I tried turning off iCloud notes on the mac. I tried turning off iCloud notes on the phone. I tried turning them both off at once, and then restarting both devices while the accounts were off on both. I'm running out of ideas.

Deleting the app on my phone and re-downloading worked. I'm not sure why, since I didn't actually "delete" the app, but rather "removed" it. Oh well. It works now.


Transfer Clash of Clans village with iOS 6 I would like to know if there is any way to transfer your village in clash of clans using iOS 6. I recently erased all the data of my iPod and re-downloaded all my apps. I opened clash of clans with my old Game Center and tried to get my village back but I received a message saying i need iOS 7 or higher to transfer my village, but I can't upgrade since I only have an iPod fourth gen. How can I get my village back?

i got this too but i think you might want to see this vid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9Ndjzr89B8

it might help u to ix ur prbolem u dont reall  need ios7 device just one with ur base. in ur case u do need ios 7 device may be ur brothers? or dads?


Switching apps based on where user looks I am using MBP with external monitor, in addition to the build-in display. It happens quite often that I 'mentally' switch to other monitor, but the active application is still on different one, where I don't look. Then I start typing, or press some shortcut which leads to unwanted behaviour (e.g. I close an editor tab instead of tab in the chrome).

I was wondering is there is any app, which would use camera to guess where the user is looking and switch the active app accordingly. I am sure that it would not be perfect, but I would give it a try.

Any other suggestions to deal with my problem are also welcome.

My answer falls in the "other suggestions" opening provided.

There's a tool called Isolator that may help you stop mistaking which app is in the foreground (and keep your focus in the right place).  Here's the description from the tool's home page:

  Isolator is a small menu bar application that helps you concentrate.
  When you're working on a document, and don't want to be distracted,
  turn on Isolator. It will cover up your desktop and all the icons on
  it, as well as the windows of all your other applications, so you can
  concentrate on the task in hand.

There's an option to make background windows blurry or semi-transparent, in lieu of simply hiding them.  Witness the blur:

(source)

Reviews elsewhere:

OS X Daily: Focus on Apps Easier & Apply Background Filters with Isolator for Mac OS X
Lifehacker: Download of the Day: Isolator (Mac) – mentions two similar tools.
MacApper: Anti-Distraction Apps: Keep Yourself On Task – (ditto)


Using all trackpad gestures via Apple Remote Desktop How is possible send all trackpad gestures via Apple Remote Desktop.app (ARD)?

Some working, some not, especially don't works gestures:

mission control (4 fingers up)
exposee (4 fingers down)
swiping left-right with 4 fingers - switching screens..

These gestures interpreted in my local machine, when i'm in windowed mode of ARD, and does nothing when i'm in fullscreen mode.

Is here any way use all gestures for example in full screen mode?

You can use BetterTouchTool to recognize all gestures and than send a keystroke to Remote Desktop which in turn will invoke the desired functionality on the remote machine.

BetterTouchTool can configure actions for gestures based on the current active application. This way you are able, for example, to map "three finger left" to the shortcut for "history back" which you can configure as the action of "three finger left swipe" for Remote Desktop.


Google chrome auto refresh When I try to load a page in Google Chrome without Wi-Fi and then turn on Wi-Fi the page refreshes automatically.

I do not want this because I don't have time to turn on a VPN before the page loads.

How do I prevent this?

This is not tab discarding. Sorry to anyone who misunderstood the question.

Per this answer, it seems like setting Chrome's "Offline Auto-Reload Mode" flag to "disabled" should do what you want?


Applescript, how to mount remote server without error if unavailable? I attempted this question earlier today but finally realized I had completely mangled what I was trying to ask and also posted the wrong script code.  This is attempt #2.

I have two Macs that reboot automatically early each morning in order to keep all of their various services functioning optimally. Each Mac needs to mount a volume on the other after they boot up.  This is easy enough to do, except for a case where one machine hangs during the restart for any reason.

If one of the machines is unavailable when the other boots, then obviously its attempt to mount the unavailable machine will fail.  The script is designed to run every minute or so in a loop for as long as the remote volume has not been mounted, since eventually it will come up.  But when the mount fails, it produces an error dialog on the machine trying to perform the mount, which then breaks the loop and the script does not repeat.

Is there a way in AppleScript to attempt to mount a server, but without an error dialog if that server is unavailable in the moment?

I thought this was a main purpose for try blocks, but it hasn't made any difference.

Here is the script I currently run at boot time (it's an Automator application).  The workflow is a Get Specified Server block, followed by a Run AppleScript block.  Here is the AppleScript:

on run {input, parameters}
    try
        set server to (item 1 of input) -- this gets the server address from the Get Specified Servers block
    end try
    set vol to "Streaming"
    tell application "Finder"
        set isConnected to disk vol exists
    end tell
    repeat while isConnected = false -- as long as the volume is not present, try to mount it

        try
            tell application "Finder"
                mount volume server & "/" & vol -- This produces the error dialog and halts the script, if the server is unavailable
            end tell
        end try
        delay 2

        tell application "Finder"
            set isConnected to disk vol exists
        end tell
        if isConnected = false then
            delay 60 -- if the volume still doesn't exist, wait a minute before trying again
        end if

    end repeat
    return input
end run

Everything works perfectly as long as the remote volume is ready and accessible.  But if not, the error dialog appears.

Edit:  I found this thread and this quite complicated thread elsewhere that are attempting to address the same issue, but no simple, definitive solution seems to have been found.

Using a macOS Catalina system as the file server with /Users/Shared/Videos as an SMB shared resource, and having done a bit of testing, found the following example AppleScript code to work well when testing using Script Editor from another system on the network in which the credentials have already been saved in its Keychain:

set ipAddress to "172.16.15.141"
set sharedResource to "Videos"

if workgroupAvailable(ipAddress) then
    mount volume "smb://" & ipAddress & "/" & sharedResource
end if

on workgroupAvailable(ipAddress)
    set workGroup to do shell script ¬
        "smbutil status " & ipAddress & " | awk '/Workgroup:/{print $2}'"
    if workGroup is equal to "" then
        return false
    else
        return true
    end if
end workgroupAvailable

The replies from the above example AppleScript code were:

When the shared resource was not available:

 tell current application
    do shell script "smbutil status 172.16.15.141 | awk '/Workgroup:/{print $2}'"
    --> ""
 end tell

When the shared resource was available:

tell current application
    do shell script "smbutil status 172.16.15.141 | awk '/Workgroup:/{print $2}'"
        --> "WORKGROUP"
end tell
tell application "Script Editor"
    mount volume "smb://172.16.15.141/Videos"
        --> file "Videos:"
end tell
Result:
file "Videos:"

What I found with using the smbutil status command over curl, which on my network required httpd running on the server, and ping, which could reply even if the shared resource wasn't available, was that smbutil status failed to return the Workgroup name if the shared resource wasn't available to be mounted and in turn no attempt to mount occurs if the Workgroup isn't available.

This example AppleScript code also did not cause any dialog boxes to appear at any point when the shared resource wasn't available.

Note that although testing was done with the rebooting of the file server and attempting to connect at various times during the reboot and the system actually being available, I was unable to test if the system had hung during the reboot, as it just has never hung during any reboots. As I know this is an unresolved issue with the rebooting of your server, you can give this a try if you so choose.

Obviously you can adapt the example AppleScript code to suite your specific needs.

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not contain any error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors. Additionally, the use of the delay command may be necessary between events where appropriate, e.g. delay 0.5, with the value of the delay set appropriately.


Why was my 2016 MacBook Pro keyboard illuminated when I woke up? MBP wasn't plugged into anything and isn't scheduled to wake up, the laptop was flipped in the open position all night. When I glanced at it at ~8am the keyboard was illuminated. I didn't touch it.

Did the camera sense movement which caused the laptop to wake up?

haven't had this issue again. must have just been a bug.


macOS - Prevent same background image from showing on multiple Desktops? I have set my desktop background image to automatically change every 30 minutes.

Most of the time, I have at least 3 Desktops/Spaces open on my MacBook; so sometimes I see the same image on 2 different Spaces.

Apart from increasing the number of images (which may decrease the likeliness of occurrence), what can I do to prevent the same image from being set as background on more than one Space?

The technique mentioned below would work if you do not set the Desktop background from the standard images provided in System Preferences.

Create a directory to hold the desired background images at some convenient location in your Home directory.
Within the created directory, create one directory for each open Space.
Place desired background images in each of the directories for Space. You can ensure that there are no duplicate images between directories.
Go to each Space one-by-one and choose custom directory for background image.
Set the background image for each Space from the respective directory.

Using this approach you can ensure there’s no duplication.


Print Excel sheet with hyperlinks to PDF format while retaining links Hej,

I'm trying to print Excel 2011 sheet with hyperlinks into pdf format, but the output file doesn't retain hyperlinks.

Is there a way to preserve them in output format?

Rather than printing it to PDF try saving it to PDF.


Bug with iPhone data usage counter I know that I can see the data usage of my iPhone 4(iOS 6.0.1) under: Settings → General → Usage → Cellular, Usage , but the counter has a bug - now it's showing over 16GB(for 2-3 hours tethering). Any Idea of the reason for this bug? If I use some app for counting the data usage, would it show the right usage?

That is probably just a bug in the data counting mechanism. You could download your carrier's app to test how much data you have really used.

Another thing to try would be updating your iPhone to 6.1.3. There are always some bugs fixed in each release, and maybe this is one of them.


Is there in AppleScript any way to use "X of every" to get multiple properties of each object to create a record? It is possible to with the script:

tell application "Safari"
    set urls to URL of every tab of every window
end tell

when execute, get all urls of every tab of every window (two dimensional list)

Result:
 {{"http://domain1", "http://domain2", ...}, {"http://domain3", "http://domain4", ...}, {...}}

But is it possible with:

tell application "Safari"
    set (urls & name) to URL of every tab of every window
end tell

to get a record instead of list:

Result:
 {{{url: "http://domain1", name: "domain1 - foo"}, {url: "http://domain2", name: "domain2 - bar2"}, {...}}, {{url: "http://domain3", name: "domain3 - foo3"}, {url: "http://domain4", name: "domain4 - bar4"}, {...}}}

Is it possible, or should I use only repeat?

It is not possible to get a record with a single object specifier, but you can get a list:

tell application "Safari"
    {URL, name} of tabs of windows
end tell
-- {{{"http://url1", "title 1"}, {"http://url2", "title 2"}}}

For a record, you can use a repeat loop:

set r to {}
tell application "Safari"
    repeat with t in tabs of windows
        set end of r to {|url|:URL of t, |name|:name of t}
    end repeat
end tell
r
-- {{|url|:"http://url1", |name|:"title 1"}, {|url|:"http://url2", |name|:"title 2"}}


How to output a text to both terminal and install.log I want a few of my statements from my preinstall script to be visible to the user also (not just getting logged in install.log ) when my package is installed (via terminal).

Example : when my .pkg is called via the command "sudo installer -pkg /path/to/package -target /" , I want to print out "Thanks for installing my application" in the terminal itself

This is simple you can ua the following ways:

command | tee output.txt

The standard output stream will be copied to the file, it will still be visible in the terminal. If the file already exists, it gets overwritten.
command | tee -a output.txt

The standard output stream will be copied to the file, it will still be visible in the terminal. If the file already exists, the new data will get appended to the end of the file.

If you want any to know where I got this here is the reference:https://askubuntu.com/questions/420981/how-do-i-save-terminal-output-to-a-file/420983 @Byte Commamder.


How do I stop mail from automatically trash meeting invitations? Every time I accept a meeting invitation from Mail or Calendar, the invitation email automatically went to Mail's Trash folder.  Is there a way to stop Mail from deleting accepted email invitations?  Most of the times the invitation email contains useful informations, and I really don't want to delete those.

You can set a mailbox rule, that when a message is both in trash, and is a Meeting request, move it to the inbox (or a folder/area of your choice).

Screenshot is OSX which I imply that you are using. This would be possible on Windows too with a similar approach.


How to force the items of a window to be well-formed, like in Windows? When I create a folder it will be placed in an irrelevant position to the existing items in that directory, making a mess, killing all aesthetics, whatsoever. How to make the elements to be listed in a grid or something, like for example in Windows? I want this option to be the default.

Perhaps Finder menu > View > Show View Options > Sort by: > Snap to Grid is what  you're looking for:


How can I create a user that can login through SSH but not on the local desktop in MacOS X El Capitan? I would like to have a user account in my MacOS X El Capitan system which is limited to login through SSH. I do not want that user to be able to use the system through any other means, especially not on the local desktop. I would like that user not to be listed as possible options when logging into the desktop.

Obviously the user needs to be allowed to access via SSH on the Sharing preferences menu. Setting the user's shell to /usr/bin/false, a usual way to disable login for users on MacOS X without deleting them, seems to disable SSH access as well as desktop access. Currently the only way I could come up with is setting a password for the user that the user doesn't know, but I suppose users could then change the password by themselves.

On Debian GNU/Linux for example I would be able to disable the password and/or login altogether. Is there something similar on MacOS?

Set up your new User as a Sharing Only account, this gives them no actual account on the computer itself that they can log into…

System Prefs > Users & Groups

Click the lock
Click the + sign to add a new User
Set the new account to sharing only from the drop menu [stepped out on the pic for clarity]

Ref : Apple KB -  OS X Yosemite: Create a sharing-only user account

After Comments...
Apparently, this works, but only in combination with some other tweaks.

You need to set up a new group, 'remote users'.
Add your sharing only user to that, then add that group to Remote Login

It seems that Sharing Only users by default have the shell /usr/bin/false and the home directory /dev/null.
Both of these values seem to be magic values for some PAM modules to block the user from connecting.
You have to change both and have the user added to the remote users group to make it work.


Homebrew - How to upgrade a HEAD forumla? I installed libimobiledevice a few months ago with brew install --HEAD libimobiledevice, and tried to upgrade it today with brew upgrade libimobiledevice (no --HEAD because it's not an option for brew(1)), and I got this:
Warning: libimobiledevice HEAD-<commit-hash> already installed
# No upgrade happened

I checked the source code repository and the commit hash was not up-to-date.
So how do I upgrade a HEAD formula like libimobiledevice?
Edit: the commit hash is 333eb1a, pointing to a commit in June 2020.

It's --fetch-HEAD for upgrade command.
Try:
brew upgrade libimobiledevice --fetch-HEAD


Disable "helpful" iMac message icon when text with my iPhone So, now that I have my new iMac 5K, I'm pleased that it can text like my iPhone.  My Windows PC of course cannot. BUT I do NOT want anyone sitting at my iMac to read my text messages, or even know to whom I am texting.

My question is, can I disable the nonhelpful message status icon that iMac throws up when I text on my iPhone, but still use the iMac as a text machine whenever I please?

Thanks,
Ed

Yes, this can be done.

The best way to restrict access to your Messages is to use separate login accounts for each person using your iMac. Each account would then only have access to their own Messages.

If you would rather not set up accounts for everyone, you could simply turn off the alerts on your screen within the Notifications Preference Pane in System Preferences by turning the alert style to "None". However, this would not stop someone from simply opening up the Messages application to see all of your texts.


How does zsh find commands? Unless I switch back to bash, I now have to spell out the full path for scripts I have written.  How does zsh find commands?

Things in /bin, /use/bin, etc. still work, but things in ~/bin are “not found” even when that path is at the beginning of both $PATH and $path.

After putting

PATH="~/bin:$PATH
path="$PATH"

in ~/.zshrc,

echo $PATH; echo $path

shows it at the beginning of the path, but it still doesn't find the commands.  (And it's not permissions: the scripts work when I type their full paths.)

zsh doesn't expand ~ within quotes. You need to use

PATH=~/bin:$PATH

instead.

PS: And path=$PATH is not required, zsh does this automatically


Remove some photos (or videos) from iPhoto without deleting from Flickr I have a very large iPhoto library with photos and videos shared to Flickr using the built-in iPhoto/Flickr integration. I've run into problems with the size of my iPhoto library (>100GB) so I'm splitting it in two to help manage the space.

I understand that iPhoto syncs photos with Flickr rather than exports them, so if I remove a photo from my iPhoto library, it will delete it from Flickr. While historically, I've enjoyed this sync approach, with splitting up my iPhoto library it is problematic.

What is the best way to remove photos from iPhoto that have been published to Flickr (or Facebook for that matter) without deleting them from Flickr?

Found an answer here:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH2432?locale=en_US

Very simple actually, just remove the Facebook and Flickr accounts in preferences and then delete away!


Mark Email "Unread" from Email full view I have been switched to iPhone (iPhone 6s with iOS 9.2) from Android a few days ago. Previously in my Android "Email" software, I could mark that email Read/Unread from the full view. But in my iPhone "Mail" software, if I am in a full view of email I cannot find any option to mark it as "Unread". I need to go back to the list to do that. Can anyone suggest, am I missing something here?

(Pls be clear that I know how to do it from the "Inbox" list, so please don't put any answer / link suggesting that).

Click on the flag (bottom left) and choose Mark as unread.


Frequent location data extraction How to extract frequent location data from an iOS backup?

I'd like to use it to generate GPX (location+time) output and use it to tag my photos.

Does anyone tried to adress this issue?

Your photos should be tagged if taken by the phone. You can use iPhone Backup Extractor — it will show you location data and times, that your iPhone tagged a location, be that a photo, a message or something else, which may help you for what you are trying to do.

The other option may be to download your google maps timeline if you have this activated: https://www.google.com/maps/timeline

You can manually extract the frequent location data from here, but you will need to convert the files to something readable.

/private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.routined/


Why ever does Parallels 8 recommend max 4 GB RAM for a VM? I'm a VMware Fusion user and am trying out Parallels since VMware has some quirks that are annoying on Mountain Lion on a retina MacBook Pro (16 GB RAM).

I'm wondering about the baffling Parallels recommendation (when configuring a VM) that there is a maximum cap of 4 GB of RAM for a VM with Parallels (indeed, it recommends 1.5 GB for Windows 8). (See this forum thread.) Granting anything more would, in fact, slow down both the host and client, but I have no problem assigning 8 GB of RAM to a VM in Fusion; before really committing to Parallels, I'd like to know the rationale behind such a recommendation (and no, the Parallels forums don't shine satisfactory light on the subject, at least from what I've been able to dig up).

If you're running in an x64 environment for both host and client then there shouldn't be any acceptable reason for needing to cap the RAM. Apparently, Parallels support states "because Windows is working in a virtual environment, that it only needs max 1-3 GB." My development machine and environment is not a toy, so such an answer seems borderline patronizing and makes me think they're simply covering up for a significant Parallels limitation.

UPDATE October 26, 2012 ---
Well, look at that. Latest update released today (October 26, 2012) now allows "assigning up to 16 GB of memory to a single virtual machine."

See http://kb.parallels.com/115024

  You can now assign up to 16 GB of memory (RAM) to a single virtual machine.
  Support for Windows Server 2012.
  New, more intuitive design to optimize Windows for working on Retina displays.
  Easily check the reclaiming disk space progress with a new progress bar.

However, I've installed and checked, and it still says "For best performance, set available memory to be within the recommended range of 512 MB to 4096 MB. Allocating memory outside of this range can slow down both the guest OS and your Mac."

The mystery continues...

It might be that the majority of the OSes that people virtualise (or at least those doing so with Parallels) can only use 4 GB of RAM anyway because they are 32-bit OSes, so it would not be necessary to have more than that. You shouldn't need more than 4 GB of RAM in the virtual machine anyway, so you partly answered your question. The majority of laptops these days don't have a massive 16 GB of RAM like you do; Parallels is only looking at the market side of things there.

If you really need more, why don't you just Boot Camp (you can Boot Camp with Linux as well); that way, you will use all of your computer's power if you need it. With your SSD, it won't take too long to restart.


Control-A combination doesn't work in Terminal My Control-A combination in terminal doesn't work.  Nevertheless, the Control-E combination still works. My macOS version is 10.15.4. Can anyone help me?

The problem was in Bartender, it was handling Control A.


How does Safari name the 'Apple Touch Icon' files? The touch icon files used in Safari are stored on a mac in the folder ~/Library/Safari/Touch Icons, and each file in a .png file, with what seems to be an arbitrary name.

By swapping an image in this folder, I can change the image displayed in Safari in the bookmarks bar.  However, I can't do the same for the bookmarks without an image already in the folder.

Does anyone know how Safari names these files, and how it connects a bookmark to this image?

If you bookmark a page that shows an icon for it under the Bookmarks menu, it (the image) is stored in the ~/Library/Safari/WebpageIcons.db file, which is an SQLite version 3 database. Images stored within the database can be in different formats, e.g. .ico, .png, etc.

If you really want to change the icon, that's in the database, I've done it with DB Browser for SQLite.


Apple Mail refuses to accept correct login After a hard disk crash and restore from Carbon Copy Cloner, Apple Mail refuses to accept known correct passwords. Connection Doctor logs say "Authentication aborted by client".

I have removed the Keychain. I have, successfully, logged in as a different user and made the account there.

Two other symptoms which may or may not be connected;
1. Internet Accounts will not delete or modify accounts
2. I can't log out of iCloud.

The accounts in Mail are a mixture. The two I'm focussing on are a Gmail account and a POP account. I have tried adding the accounts again.

I would even accept destroying all the accounts and importing them all again but I am unable to even do this.

This may be a symptom of problems with the so-called Local Items keychain.

I had some Mail accounts that would not login (though in the server logs I could see a successful login!), and I could not add new Mail accounts (I was getting strange cryptic errors which turned out to be accountsd failing to store the new password in the Local Items keychain).

For some reason (bugs or bad design) it seems to get corrupted or locked.  It is supposedly used to sync passwords for Internet Accounts to multiple devices, but it exists and causes trouble even if you don't use iCloud (I don't).

The solution is relatively easy, but very annoying:  First stop all apps, then entirely remove (or move to the Trash in case you're afraid you might want to have the option to restore it) the sub-directory (or directories) called ~/Library/Keychains/U-U-I-D/ (where U-U-I-D is a long hexadecimal UUID), and then immediately reboot.  I also removed the old mail account password items from the login keychain, but this may not be necessary.  Either way you may have to re-enter passwords for various accounts, but this time they should appear in both your normal login keychain and the magic Local Items keychain.

After rebooting you should see that directory re-created, and in Keychain Access you should see the Local Items keychain unlocked when the login keychain is unlocked -- if not then lock and unlock the login keychain.

Also make sure you have disabled (un-checked) all of the 'automatically manage connection settings' boxes for both incoming and outgoing servers in all Mail accounts (found in Mail Preferences under Accounts/ServerSettings).


Turn on MacBook with eject key or via USB I had a problem with my MacBook Pro keyboard (mid 2010), and the power button stops working. Now, to turn on my MacBook I have to short the power pads.

In the new MacBooks with no optical drive, the power button is in the place of the eject button. My eject key is working, so I would like to change this key to "power button" in order to can turn on my laptop without have to open it and short the pads.. Is this possible?

Is there another way to do it? Maybe via USB that when you plug it send a turn on command?

Another way that I have thought is that Macbook turn itself on when plugged in.
I tried sudo pmset -a acwake 1 but it doesn't work.

Any idea?

Did you already do the SMC reset?
If not do it even twice or thrice (firmware can be suprisingly stubborn).
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US


How can i retrieve all my contacts from iCloud to a new iPhone - I have no back up on a PC My iPhone has had problems and they have had to delete all its contents - addresses, etc.

Even if I have no back up on a PC - how can I download my contacts and apps from iCloud to the repaired iPhone.

If your contacts were being synced to iCloud (and if you set up a new iCloud account, I am pretty sure this is on by default), all you have to do is set up the iCloud account on the repaired phone.

This is separate than the backup to iCloud too. If that was setup, it may also contain contacts on a restore, but they should have been backed up to iCloud with the contact sync feature that is part of iCloud.


Why isn't my system producing an audible system beep in iTerm2 or Terminal? I want to be able to hear the system beep. Normally, this can be done by running any of the following commands in OSX:

echo -e "\a"
printf "\a"
tput bel

Running these commands in the standard Terminal app (Version 2.6.1 [361.1]) produces no visible or audible effect.

Running these commands in the iTerm2 app (Build 3.0.15) produces a small, golden bell next to the tab name at the top of the window, but produces no sound. If I enable the "Flash visual bell" setting, I get the small, golden bell plus a larger bell icon over the whole terminal window, as shown here:

The profile I use has what appear to be the correct settings:

For comparison, say "hello world" makes the computer speak "hello world" audibly -- my speakers are not muted.

Note that this question is similar, but asks for the special case of enabling sound in certain situations but not others.

Turns out that I hadn't selected an alert sound yet in System Preferences. Once I chose an alert sound, all three of the above methods produced audible system beeps, in additiona

To enable audio alerts, I chose an alert sound from the Sound tab of the System Preferences:

I chose "Sosumi" out of nostalgia for my IIci days.

Alternatively, this can be set as described in this answer, though iTerm2 needs to be restarted for it to take effect in Sierra or El Capitan:

defaults write com.apple.systemsound com.apple.sound.beep.sound /System/Library/Sounds/Sosumi.aiff


MacBook pro stuck in a loop after booting yesterday i turned off my computer as usual nothing strange yet ive noticed that it get so hot lately ( I figured out later that it’s due to dirt in fan , i cleaned it ) ; then today morning computer stucked in a black loop after apple logo , it shows in a half second cursor then it turn. Black again , i tried safe mode ( stucked in same loop )and repairing disk and reinstalling macos i tried alt command R+P and nothing worked , i didnt install anything yesterday yet i ignored an update from apple from last week ; im using sierra , i need help please , and thank you so much in advance

It sounds like the OS might corrupt hence failing to boot, you can verify this by booting up using verbose mode to see where it gets stuck at.

To fix the actual issue I think you should boot into recovery mode and do a re-install of the OS (formally called Archive install)
This shouldn't delete any data but if you had a backup then good. Here are instructions

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204904


Playing movies off our iPad at the cottage Our cottage does not have broadband access (even 3G/LTE is really marginal) so I'm trying to find a solution so we can get some movies at home and then watch them. At the cottage we have an Epson projector and a TV with HDMI.

We purchased a Lightning->HDMI connector, but when we attempt to play movies we downloaded to the iPad from iTunes, it states this is not allowed. I honestly don't recall what happens when we try the VGA input to the projector, but I seem to recall is says the same thing. And I tried getting the non-HD versions and that did the same thing.

So is there any way to do this? I know there have been licensing changes recently, does it effect any of this? Is there a setting I can use or some other type of connector that allows this?

Your best, but not least expensive, option is to buy an Apple TV.

This will allow you to AirPlay movies from your iPad (as well as any other Apple device) to your HDTV without using any cables.

I personally use my Apple TV to do this exact thing on TVs where we don't have a cable connection.

You can buy a new or used one but I wouldn't buy a used one older than version 3.

The movies you're trying to play using the cable might have HDCP copyright protection.


Unable to open Keychain Access on Mac When I try to open Keychain Access using Spotlight or Finder, I see an error saying: The Application "Keychain Access" is not open anymore. When I try to launch using open -a, I get:

$ open -a Keychain\ Access.app/
Unable to find application named 'Keychain Access.app/'

It was working fine until yesterday. A restart did not seem to help.

Update:

It looks like I shouldn't rely on Terminal's autocomplete while using open. Removing the trailing slash did not fix it. The new error is:

$ open -a Keychain\ Access.app
LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed for the application /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app with error -600.

Update 2:

Somehow it got fixed on its own. Among the things I tried was a restart, opening the app via the Terminal, and removing the plist from ~/Library/Preferences. None of those seemed to have had an immediate effect, if any at all, but Keychain Access is finally opening for me.

Lose the /.

$ open -a Keychain\ Access.app

works for me.
Or even:

  $ open -a Keychain\ Access