Map right shift key to behave like top arrow guys I'm a software developer and I use arrows keys a lot.
As long as Apple changed their keyboard layout it is so hard to use the new arrows setup. It' just drives me crazy every time when I try to go line up, or line down in my code editor.

Is there a way to map RIGHT SHIFT key to behave like a top ARROW ?
And map TOP ARROW key to behave like DOWN ARROW.

It would be a great solution for me. Thank you for your help.
I've been trying to achieve this by Ukulele app, but I don't understand this app or I'm doing something wrong.

I've not heard of Ukulele and it wasn't in the top ten search results on DuckDuckGo.  So, allow me to recommend another third-party piece of software, which is open-source, well-established, powerful, reasonably intuitive, and widely known and popular in its use with developers and "power users".

Karabiner Elements is stable in and updated for macOS Catalina.

Most keyboard mappings will be achieved using the GUI in a pretty straight-forward interface.  For complex mappings, there's a configuration file you can edit which uses JSON (Karabiner .json Reference Manual).

Yours are classified as simple modifications, e.g. ⇧ᴿ ⥱ ↑, so can be created straight in the GUI. Here's a screenshot series that shows how intuitive it is.


How to get rid of the third party profiler 'SearchArchive' Last couple of months I am facing the trouble with SearchArchive that changes my default search engine and let not edit. I found a profile created as the image in the mac profiles. When I delete that, all get fixed but after few seconds it comes back! Even I Deny it for few times it creates the profile forcefully (as I am seeing it). I am using Mac Mojave 10.14.6.
Any idea How to stop this!

This app is Adware and should be removed. Delete the app and then Files related to the SearchArchive adware that needs to be removed are:
~/Library/Application Support/com.SearchArchive/SearchArchive
~/Library/Application Support/com.SearchArchiveDaemon/SearchArchive
~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.SearchArchive.plist
~/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.SearchArchiveDaemon.plist

Removing these files should stop it from returning. Further info about this adware and how to remove it is given here.


Is there a way to have my iPhone 5 report current charging rate? For example, so I can test different USB ports on my computer and powered hubs to see if one charges my iPhone faster than another.

Since iOS can indicate the charge in percentages, you could simply get a pencil and some graph paper and wake the screen periodically and record the displayed percentages to fit that data to a charging curve.

We have some questions about getting the charge rate programmatically in iTunes, and you could ask if there is an API (private or public) by opening a question on http://stackoverflow.com but for users (as opposed to developers), the answer is no. You can't get a log file of the charge status directly from a computer or the device itself.

Here are some related questions that may help:

Can I get iPhone charge status from my Mac?
iPhone Status/Overview App Wanted


Avoid data plan being added onto AT&T iPhone 3GS I gave my jailbroken iPhone to my parents to use.  They don't need the data plan however AT&T keeps adding on the data plan since they detect it being a smartphone.  Is there any way to avoid the plan, with this being a jailbroken iPhone?

You'll have to change the IMEI to avoid the charge. There is simply no other way. As soon a phone connects to a network, the IMEI is registered and that's what carriers like AT&T use to determine if your device is a smartphone.

You can use ziphone to change the number but there's a lot of hurdles and provisos. As far as I know, that's the only JB program capable of doing it. Instructions are outline here: http://m.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=657

The Motorolla RAZR's IMEI: 358472042445412

Another alternative is to go to T-Mobile which don't have the Draconian charge.


Command+Z stopped working in all applications My Command + Z stopped working. In any app. Including keyboard viewer.

Neither Left nor Right Command.

It's not hardware – Command + Option + Z (or Command + any other modifier) works on both sides.

It's like something is 'trapping' that combo. What could it be? I quit Butler; that was the only shortcut app I had.

Update

Strange … if I go to Keyboard Pref Panel > Shortcuts, and 'Add' an All Applications shortcut for Undo, then in that little window I can enter Command + Z. But it still does not work anywhere else!

Whew! Found it!
It was an errant hotkey in Synergy.

Had to go through every running app one by one and look for hot key settings.


Is MotionX GPS capable of caching Google Maps Tiles? I've read this post here: How can I save Google Maps in iOS for offline use? but it didn't mention anything about MotionX GPS caching Google Maps tiles. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that it can cache proprietary tiles or Bing tiles or something, but can it cache Google tiles? That would be sweet if it could!

From the MotionX GPS manual:

  Unfortunately due to Microsoft restrictions on Bing maps and Google restrictions on Google maps, these maps types can't be cached or stored onboard. By contrast, MotionX road and terrain maps may be cached and downloaded.


How to access macOS localhost (port 3000) from Parallels IE? On my work Mac (Sierra) I'm running a NodeJS webserver on localhost, port 3000. I need to access to it from Internet Explorer running in Parallels for testing purposes.

I have searched and read and experimented extensively, and have thus far been stymied. My current situation is as follows:

I've got a Parallels "Host-Only" network with my Mac at 10.37.129.2 and my virtual Windows box at 10.37.129.3

Pointing my IE to 10.37.129.2:3000 fails.

I've jumped through every hoop imaginable to ensure port 3000 is open between the two, but nmap -p 3000 10.37.129.2 from the Windows side tells me port 3000 remains closed, as does Mac's Network Utility Port Scan software.

Sadly all guides and advice on the subject are either insufficiently similar, grossly outdated, or simply unsuccessful when attempted.

Any progress you help me achieve is greatly appreciated.

The relevant portions of my server.js are:

const port = process.env.PORT || 3000;
const host = process.env.HOST || 'localhost';
const proxyTarget = process.env.PROXY || 'none';

One of the way I could use it, I found my local IP4 address provided by the router.

From Mac system preferences > Network > IP Address: 192.168.x.xx

And let say if you access it in Mac with http://localhost:3000 you can do it also with http://192.168.x.xx:3000 from Mac itself and from Parallel Windows OS with shared network configuration.

This IP address could be changed each time you restart the router or choose another router etc.

Currently, I'm using Parallels Desktop 12


Possible to check out of the retail Apple Store using an Android phone? An Apple Store employee told me that it's possible to check out of an Apple Retail store using an app on your iPhone (is this true?).

Is there a similar app for Android, Blackberry, or any other device/platform?

To answer your question about ios devices yes can with this app, https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id375380948?mt=8

I can't find the article that touched on using other devices but the gist of the story was if you wanted to use another device to purchase items, call the store give them your information then pick it up in the store. (sparse attempt at humor)


Generic TWAIN driver for OS x? I am looking for a generic TWAIN driver for OS X, one that would not need additional hardware. I just want to use it for testing TWAIN.

I solved my problem by installing the demo version of VueScan. If someone else find a free tool that installs a driver that is visible in Photoshop, I will accept his answer :)


Why running lldb with HomeBrew Python 2 installed produces ImportError and NameErrors? I had upgraded vim with HomeBrew to version 7.4.1952 on OS X 10.11.6. It installed python 2 as a dependency package (Summarized parts of output is shown by ...):

$ brew upgrade vim
...
==> Installing vim dependency: python
   /usr/local/Cellar/python/2.7.11: 4,949 files, 66.6M
...

Now when I try to run lldb, it produces ImportError and NameErrors:

$ lldb myExecutableFile
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/SharedFrameworks/LLDB.framework/Resources/Python/lldb/__init__.py", line 98, in <module>
    import six
ImportError: No module named six
(lldb) target create "myExecutableFile"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'run_one_line' is not defined
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
NameError: name 'run_one_line' is not defined
...
Current executable set to 'myExecutableFile' (x86_64).
(lldb)

This is my $PATH in zsh shell:

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

How can I solve these errors?

I installed six module with pip python package manager and it solves the problem:

$ pip install six
Collecting six
  Using cached six-1.10.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl
Installing collected packages: six
Successfully installed six-1.10.0

$ lldb myExecutableFile
(lldb) target create "myExecutableFile"
Current executable set to 'myExecutableFile' (x86_64).
(lldb)


Disable podcast chapters on iPhone? I like to listen to podcasts on my iPhone, and there's one feature that really bugs me: when a podcast has chapters, it's impossible to see how far you are into the podcast, how much is left, or to scrub between chapters. Is there a way to disable this feature?

The button just to the right of the podcast title will show you all the chapters, let you jump between them, and show the length of time in each.

The only way I know to show how much time is left in total is to hit the Back arrow, which brings you back to the podcast listing. This screen will show you how much time is left in the podcast.


Is 2017 MacBook Air SSD compatible with mid 2013 MacBook Air 11"? I need to change the SSD of my MacBook Air 11" mid 2013 and I was wondering if the one of a newer MacBook Air 2017 would be compatible.
I researched online and I think that the ports remain the same (12+16 pins) but I was wondering if there would be any drive issue, and if so if it can be easily solved.

How can I research what controllers or compatibility exists between OEM storage on various Mac?

I'm the author of the Apple SSD article that klanomath linked to in their comment and I wanted to clarify some things that seem to have been misinterpreted.

First of all, the Mid 2013 release of the MacBook Air 11" absolutely can use the faster PCIe 3.0 x4 drives from the 2015-2017 MacBook Air 13", which I refer to in the article as the Gen. 4A SSDs.

Allan's answer mentions that the 2015-2017 MacBook Air 13" drives are PCIe 2.0 x4, but they're in fact PCIe 3.0 x4 drives. It's the PCIe interface of the MacBook Airs logic board that is limited to PCIe 2.0 x4.

And the quirky firmware changes that prevent compatibility with earlier MacBook Airs were only present in the 128GB and 256GB PCIe 2.0 x2 drives (referred to as Gen. 4C in the article) found in the Early 2015 release of the MacBook Air 11". All of the drives found in Early 2015 and later MacBook Air 13" laptops are 100% compatible with earlier Mid 2013 and Early 2014 MacBook Airs, as is the 512GB drive from the Early 2015 release of the MacBook Air 11".

Everyone in this discussion missed this paragraph from the article:

  Despite the two channel drive, the 11″ MacBook Air actually supports
  four channel PCIe connections, and they can be upgraded with the Gen.
  4A drives found in other devices. In fact, if the 11″ MacBook Air was
  configured with a 512GB SSD from the factory, it already included the
  same Gen. 4A drive found in the other Apple computers of the era.

Despite all the good info in that article, it's a bit dense to read in places and I think much of the information could have been conveyed in a better way. I've recently started working on some improvements that should make it easier to quickly grasp the most important details and should be publishing those changes in the next couple weeks.


Fresh Lion install on a MacBook Air (Late 2010) without Recovery Key As the title says, I have an MacBook Air (Late 2010 - MC505LL/A*), with preinstalled OSX Lion. Also it shipped with an USB key called "Recovery Key", and afaik, I'm supposed to use this key if I restore/format my Mac

The problem is that I can't find the USB key, and I'd like to know if I can do a fresh install of Lion without it. I have an ISO image of Lion (to use with an external reader)... and I've read that there's an Internet process, where I can press CMD + R while booting, to perform a fresh install with a internet downloaded image, but it's not avalaible on all models.

Will this work ? I'll try it this weekend, but I'd like to know if anyone has experience in something like this.

Thank you all !

Using ISO

If you restore the ISO to a flash drive or other drive partition, you could ⌥ alt-boot from it and erase & install OS X.

In my example I selected a random DMG, however in your case you would use the ISO image as the Source.

Internet Recovery

Yes, but only if you install the Internet Recovery firmware update for your MacBook Air.

Once you have, hold ⌘ cmd + ⌥ alt + R on boot to begin.

An image of OS X will be downloaded from the internet, and can be installed normally.


Is there a OS X equivalent for iproute2? I am searching a command line tool collection like iproute2 on Linux.

Network Utility is OK, but I would like it on the command line.

iproute2mac
https://github.com/brona/iproute2mac

is available on brew so far


Toggle Bluetooth AppleScript not Working in Yosemite Prior to upgrading to Yosemite, I used Keyboard Maestro to invoke this Applescript with a shortcut:

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal pane "com.apple.preferences.Bluetooth"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    click button 6 of window 1
end tell
quit application "System Preferences"

It behaved just as expected, toggling bluetooth whenever I pressed my shortcut.

It's no longer working with Yosemite though, I'm sure it has something do with Apple changing the System Preferences pane or the order of icons, but I'm not sure what to change. The Keyboard Maestro shortcut is invoking the file, because I hear the sound I had assigned to it, so it's definitely something with the script.

Here's what I'm getting under "Replies" when I run this in Apple's Script Editor:

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal pane "com.apple.preferences.Bluetooth"
        --> missing value
end tell
tell application "System Events"
    click button 6 of window 1 of process "System Preferences"
        --> button 6 of window "Bluetooth" of application process "System Preferences"
end tell
tell application "Script Editor"
    quit
end tell

Updates:

It's definitely not the pane that's causing the problem. To debug, I changed the code to:

tell application "System Preferences"
    set current pane to pane id "com.apple.preferences.bluetooth"
end tell

And it correctly opens the Bluetooth pane. Now all that's left is to figure what kind of action I want to run on this pane:

Update on solutions: Thanks fartheraway! Both of markhunte's and fartheraway's solutions worked for me, but I chose the latter because it was more similar to my code. I guess you can't choose two "best" answers. I wish there'd be a solution to make it work without bringing up the preferences pane (visually) like my script did with Mavericks, but these two should be good enough.

Simple toggle on or off that does not need to check state first.

property thePane : "com.apple.preferences.bluetooth"

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set the current pane to pane id thePane
    --delay 1
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "System Preferences"
        try
            click button "Turn Bluetooth Off" of window "Bluetooth"
        on error
            click button "Turn Bluetooth On" of window "Bluetooth"
        end try
    end tell
end tell

tell application "System Preferences" to quit


I downloaded malware called extended icons from skype - removal? I got this as a skype message:

"Your skype does not support extended icons. Please download the extension here: " (skypemoticonscomplete dot com)

And then went to the url and downloaded/installed...which I immediately regretted as it became quite clear this is a malware/trojan/virus.

So far it has:

added this icon to my firefox:

It also has opened 2 drives under the devices section in finder:

skypEmoticons
maccaptain

I found windows removal advice for windows, but not for mac.

But, nothing for mac - was hoping somebody had a solution :)

Dang. Sorry to hear about the hassle.

You may get some mileage out of ClamXav from the malware/antivirus side:

http://www.clamxav.com/

Additionally, you may want to run AdwareMedic to search out and remove any adware that may additionally have been deposited:

http://www.adwaremedic.com/index.php


Is there a built-in text-to-graphic utility for OS X Lion? I believe I've seen one or more utilities, possibly command-line or Applescript, which will take a string and create, for example, an image containing that text with the specified font size, etc.

I can't find it again. Does anyone have a hint?

ImageMagick doesn't come with OS X, but it should though.

convert -background skyblue -border 10 -bordercolor skyblue -fill 'hsb(10%,50%,50%)' -font /Library/Fonts/Arial\ Narrow.ttf -pointsize 24 label:"some text" output.png

If you have to specify some more complex styles, using webkit2png might be easier.

echo "Test" > test.html
webkit2png test.html --clipwidth=55 --clipheight=35 --scale 1 -C


High download speeds, slow browsing speeds I'm running Lion and since the past 2 weeks I've been having really really slow browsing speeds, but extremely fast download speeds (file downloads, torrents, YouTube and Hulu streaming, etc) but page loads are extremely slow. It's only on my laptop and not any other devices in my house, and I'm running it wireless. I've cleared my cache on all three of the browsers I have installed (Chrome, Safari, Firefox). My main browser is Chrome. Sometimes pages don't even load in Chrome or Safari, but then they load in Firefox. Some times when it wants to, it loads pages fast, but that's about 1 in a 1000 pages.

Any ideas what could be causing something like this?

And in case it's of any use, I'm running on a Macbook Pro i7 Quadcore 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD

It could be that there's a DNS problem somewhere. Web browsing tends to involve a lot of small connections, with several DNS lookups just for one page, whereas large file downloads only need to make one lookup. So if there's an issue with your ISP's DNS servers, it could be slowing down your web browsing without affecting your large transfer speeds.

Try switching your DNS to use the Google Public DNS servers. Open up the Network pane in System Preferences, select your wifi and click Advanced…. Then go to the DNS tab, and enter in 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4, as shown in the screencap:

Make sure those entries are above anything else in there.

It may be another issue, but this is a good starting point.


iPad getting annoyed by upgrade requests I have an original iPad. I cannot upgrade it anymore because the newer OS's do not work with an original iPad.

Unfortunately, I get incessant upgrade notifications.

Is there any way to turn these off?

As mentioned in the comments, your iPad (MC764LL/A) is an iPad 2, and not the original iPad as mentioned.
The latest version of iOS on your iPad is iOS 9.3.2. Since you are using iOS 9.1, you will get an update notification. You could, however, choose to ignore it.
I would suggest you install the new OS.
To answer your question: No, you cannot turn off the notification for an iOS software update.


Customising Lion’s accented letters Possible Duplicate:
  Add characters to the press and hold character picker in OS X Lion

I’m slightly disappointed by Lion’s iOS inspired feature to show a selection of accented characters on key hold.

On a German keyboard, when pressing a, I am able to choose between ä,  â, à, á, æ, ã, å, ā. So far so nice.

However, I feel some characters are missing. There is no ç (although I could type this one using option+c), no ğ and no ł either. On the other hand the letter ń is shown (which like ł is more or less only used in Polish) but to which OS X does not show an upper case version. shift+n yields no results.

Is there some way to enhance and expand this set of letters with own additions?

This problem has been solved recently elsewhere in the forum:

How to add characters to the press and hold character picker in OS X Lion?


How do I fix broken dictionary on iPhone? Using iPhone 4s. In settings > general > keyboard I have a British keyboard, and no other keyboards. In settings > general > international I have region format set to UK and language set to British English.

Yet many apps seem to ignore that.  EG the stack exchange app will highlight colour but not color; apps highlight programme (eg tv programme not computer program). There's a bunch of -ise / -ize suffixes that get mangled.

How do I fix this?

Go to settings/general/keyboard/add new keyboard and see if there is one called English (UK). If so, activate that one and deactivate English - British.


In Terminal, how can you determine which shell is actually running? Using Terminal on OS X 10.11.4, initializing Terminal opens a new window running bash (by default). As I understand it, inputting echo $SHELL should output the shell that said command is submitted to. So, why do I get this output after switching from bash to tcsh?

[<dir>] <username>$ tsch
[<dir>] <username>% echo $SHELL
/bin/bash

It depends on the shell you are running in.

If it is a POSIX confirming shell e.g. bash, ash,ash, sh, and some others e.g.  csh, tcsh then echo $0 will return the shell's name

e.g.

~ $ bash
bash-3.2$ echo $0
bash

or

~ $ ksh
$ echo $0
ksh

However not all shells are POSIX e.g. I used to use ipython shell profile and now fish


How to never "allow this device to access photos and videos"? I have an iPhone at work, and I charge it by connecting it to my work laptop (Windows 7) via USB. Every damn time I do this, the phone asks me to Allow this device to access photos and videos? with the choices Allow and Don't allow.

I want to say never allow because I don't want any data connection at all but Apple has not provided this useful choice. What workaround can I use?

Note: I would just use a wall charger instead but there are no power sockets in my workspace.

added: The phone is listed as an Unspecified device under Devices and printers. When I open the properties, it just says This device is working properly. and I am not allowed to update the drivers. See screenshot:

You don't specify, but I'm guessing you're using a Windows laptop. It's actually an issue on the Windows side of things, because what you're getting the wrong message. That is, if you're supposed to get any message, it should be the Trust this computer message.
The way to fix this (assuming you are in fact on Windows), is to:

Go to your Start menu and open Control Panel

Click on device manager

You should see a list of device types with arrows to the left of their names

Find the one with iPhone listed under it (usually it'll be under the Portable Devices category, but not always)

Right-click on iPhone and select Update Driver Software...

Click browse and navigate to the following location:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support\Drivers

Select it and it should load the driver

NOTES:

I've tried giving you generic instructions as it's not clear what version of Windows you're using.
You should have your iPhone connected in order for Windows to see the device.
Note that you may get the Trust this computer message on your iPhone, but once you opt to trust it then you should be fine to go.


Dual monitors waking from sleep very slow? I have 2 EIZO screens via Thunderbolt/Display port connected to my MacPro (2013 cylinder).

One day I press a key and the screen comes on straight away after sleep, the other day it can easily take 20-30 seconds. I can not find any pattern.

I'm pretty sure the mac self wakes-up, its just the signal to the screens that is in some cases delayed.

Anybody an idea what might to cause that?

Thanks!

Assuming your cables are good and connected firmly, I would try resetting the NVRAM and SMC (in that order).

Resetting NVRAM

Your Mac use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM) to store a whole range of settings. Here’s how to reset this:

Shut down your Mac. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionPR keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again and you here the startup chime for the second time.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Resetting SMC on a Mac Pro

Follow these steps for resetting the SMC on your Mac Pro:

Fully Shut Down your Mac Pro
Unplug the AC power cord
Wait at least 15 seconds
Plug the AC power cord back in
Wait at least 5 seconds
Switch on your Mac Pro

Now use your Mac Pro as usual to determine if the problem still occurs. If so, try using your Mac in Safe Mode for a while to see if the problem occurs.

Booting into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac Pro into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac Pro
Restart your Mac Pro
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. did your Mac Pro boot okay, are you still having issues with your screens waking up, etc)
Once you've tested long enough, exit Safe Mode by restart your Mac as normal

Let me know how you went and we'll go from there.


Apple Bluetooth Keyboards and Mice My school has 25 iMacs in a lab for students. They each have a wireless keyboard and mouse.

The problem is that the keyboard or mouse will run out of batteries and the kids will just grab another mouse and use it on the computer. This creates havok in the room and before long i have to manually unpair all devices and map each keyboard and mouse one by one and it takes me over two hours.

Is there a way to only allow the imacs to pair with one keyboard and mouse?

I don't know of a way to make it only pair with a single KB/M/Trackpad, so a workaround it to prevent it pairing with anything further once you have paired what you need.

One method to do this, on the assumption that the users of the computers do not have administrator access:

Step one - turn on parental controls for the users of the systems in System Preferences > Parental Controls:

Then turn on Limit Applications, and scroll down to untick System Preferences under Allowed Apps > Other Apps

Now make sure that the Bluetooth menu bar item isn't shown in System Preferences > Bluetooth:

Obviously this may prevent legitimate access to other system preference items, but as I cannot find a way to lock down Bluetooth to Admin access only, then the next best thing is to prevent you from getting to the Bluetooth config areas.  It may still be possible to manually start the Bluetooth assistant, perhaps someone could comment on that.


In the past, how long have Up-to-date OS upgrades taken to arrive? I've bought a Macbook Pro Retina display before Mountain Lion was released. I have signed up for a copy of Mountain Lion for free, as promised by Apple if you purchase an Apple computer after June 11, 2012. When I finished the application form, the page said to wait till I get an email from Apple.

The problem is I don't know how long to wait. If past is prologue, how long is it before I can expect to get Mountain Lion? It has been three hours, and I still have not received an email.

This appears to be a real issue, per this MacRumors article from earlier today:

  Apple support staff have acknowledged the difficulties and are advising customers that they may need to wait up to three days to receive replacement codes, although some replacement codes are reportedly already coming through without any action required by the users.

Hopefully your codes will arrive within that window - if not, I recommend you contact Apple support; given proof-of-purchase on your MacBook, they should get you sorted.


Please help me fix my messages I have an iPhone 5c, when I send iMessages my contact receives them as coming from my email address. I went to Settings to change this but my phone number is greyed out and my email address is in black. It will not let me change it to my phone number.
I can't find the "Start new conversations from" section.

Go to Settings->Messages->Send & Receive and then tap your phone number under "Start New Conversations From". Your phone number should not be greyed out here, you were probably just looking at the "You Can Be Reached By iMessage At" section.


Does installing Yosemite require an internet connection? After it has finished downloading, does installing Yosemite require an internet connection to install?

No, there is a difference between download and install. Download is to get the files from the Internet, and install is applying the downloaded data.

However on most OS installations, an internet connection is recommended (Sometimes necessary). Sometimes, the installation goes wrong and in that fact, you might need Internet Recovery to fix it.


Trouble with Snow leopard VPN. Doesn't start at machine startup I use VPN client that comes inbuilt with Snow Leopard OS to connect to VPN on the macbook. Mac OS uses “racoon” process internally to make any vpn connections work. This process starts when the machine boots up and runs in the background even if vpn is disconnected. Racoon won’t run in the background anymore when the vpn is disconnected.

As a workaround, I have to start this manually each and every time and it works:

cd /usr/sbin
sudo ./racoon

How can I make it just like it used to work before? FYI, I don't have Time Machine on...

Try

launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.racoon.plist

This should start racoon and keep it running.


Shortcut to a specific accessibility feature Is it possible to apply a keyboard shortcut to  toggle on/off a specific accessibility feature of Mac OS X, for instance the Switch Control or the Head Pointer?

For Switch Control, see my answer to: applescript access switch control through system preferences
For Head Pointer:

How is it possible to check the box you mentioned for Head Pointer?

         Quoted question from comment under the OP.
Test this example AppleScript code in Script Editor to see if it works. Then try it again with the activate command commented out. e.g.: # activate
It may only work with System Preferences being visible, you'll just have to see.
if running of application "System Preferences" then
    try
        tell application "System Preferences" to quit
    on error
        do shell script "killall 'System Preferences'"
    end try
    delay 0.1
end if

repeat while running of application "System Preferences" is true
    delay 0.1
end repeat

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    reveal anchor "Head_Pointer" of ¬
        pane id "com.apple.preference.universalaccess"
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "System Preferences"
        repeat until (checkbox "Enable head pointer" of ¬
            tab group 1 of group 1 of window 1 exists)
            delay 0.1
        end repeat
        click checkbox "Enable head pointer" of ¬
            tab group 1 of group 1 of window 1
        delay 0.1
    end tell
end tell

tell application "System Preferences" to quit

Notes:
The example AppleScript code can be use in a Automator Service/Quick Action and assigned a keyboard shortcut in: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services
Or there are several third party applications that can trigger AppleScript scripts, with assigned keyboard shortcuts , e.g. FastScripts.
Note that I am not affiliated with the developer of FastScripts, just a satisfied user.

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and sans any included error handling does not contain any additional 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.


Connection timeout when sharing internet with password I have a MacBook Pro with Mountain Lion 10.8. I am connecting to the Internet via a USB Internet Key. I enabled internet sharing via WiFi.

My friend has a MacBook Pro with Lion 10.7.

When I enable WPA2 Personal with a password, he gets "connection timeout" when clicking on my network name (even before entering the passcode). When I select "none" for security (no passcode), he has no issues connecting.

By request, I've added a screenshot showing that my only options are WPA2 or 'None':

To try to make things clear let's say you have 2 Mac named:

Alex
Bob

Here is the scheme of your small home network :

Internet --- USB --- Alex --- WLAN --- Bob

If when Bob try to join the wireless network (AirPort or WI-Fi or better WLAN) initiated from Alex,
it gets an immediate rejection, this may be due to a network access
with the wrong security setting.

To check this hypothesis, on Bob, simply go within:

System Preferences… > Network > WiFi > Advanced…

and look at the column Security.

If it is anything else than WPA2 Personal, double click on this network setting to fix it.

If it is already WPA2 Personal, double click on this network
setting to check if the registered password is OK.


Does the Airport Extreme log MAC addresses of devices that attempt to connect? I recently had a burglar enter my home and take a number of items and I am chasing a long shot in catching him.  I am hoping that the burglar had a smartphone that, when he entered the home, attempted to log in to my wireless network (but didn't because the network has a password).

I have an Airport Extreme wireless router and I am hoping there is a log that I can access that would show me any MAC addresses (of the smartphone) that attempted to access the wi-fi network during a very specific window of time.  I don't know if these logs exist and if they do exist, if you can pull the MAC address for a phone. Does anyone know if this is possible?

I was able to pull up the logs on the router, but unfortunately they were only for current day. I would have needed to export the logs to have a chance to catch the guy. Oh well, it was worth a shot.

To do this, I needed to install the airport utility v5.6 (in addition to the v6.x that was already installed).  The newer versions don't have an advanced tab which contains the ability to view "logs and statistics."


How to recover storage from "Videos" pseudo app? With the goal of recovering storage space, I attempted to delete the Apple TV App. This app was still taking up 490MB of "Documents and Data" storage after I deleted all videos I could manually delete (the TV app libray screen said "You don't have any videos.") However, deleting the TV app only changed it to "Videos" which still takes up 490MB of "Documents and Data" storage.

There is no option to delete this "Videos" pseudo app. As far as I can tell, there is no actual "Videos" app I can start from the home/search screens.

I also tried to locate the media file(s) taking up storage via iTunes. There was one file under "Movies." There was no option to delete this file from iTunes. I think I uploaded the file to my iPhone via CopyTrans Manager. So I tried deleting the file via CopyTrans.

Now the file does not show up in iTunes or CopyTrans, but the "Videos" app still consumes 490MB of storage. How do I recover the 490MB of storage taken up by the "Videos" app?

I have a feeling this file was orphaned somehow because it was uploaded a long time ago on different versions of iOS/iTunes/copyTrans before the Videos app became the TV app.

I read syncing may result in files that cannot be deleted. Since I manually manage the media on my iPhone, all sync settings have been set to disabled.

update: Now I have the same problem for the Music app: no files in library, but "documents and data" takes up 318MB of storage after I tried toggling the Movie sync on/off. Even though I only enabled syncing for movies there was a warning that the music would also be deleted since the library was empty. The music was deleted, but the storage was not...

So a system restore (I actually upgraded to iOS 13) fixed the problem. I had been trying to reduce the size of the backup before upgrading, but perhaps it would not have affected the backup size.

This article gives background info on why there might be "zombie" storage usage even after deleting the files: How to Delete Documents & Data on iPhone or iPad. (TDLR: "caches, app data, preferences, login details, and assorted other app-specific information")


Make sure deleted photos on an Ipod touch can never be recovered? How can you make sure deleted photos on an Ipod touch 5 can never be restored or found by someone else?

Deleting them should be good enough, but due to the iOS sandboxing restrictions, full deletion is not truly possible. However, recovering these photos would be extremely difficult and require extremely expensive software and a great deal of knowledge. After time, the picture files will be overwritten and then be truly inaccessible. Best advice: don't take/save pictures you'll later regret.


removing auto complete group address I have a groups mail settings that are not working.

Using the auto complete gave the option of just the group name or the group name with the same name in carrots to the right.

One of the groups follows my preference setting to hide all group recipient email addresses.

The other group shows all the addresses.

To fix the problem I renamed the group and deleted the old name from the On My Mac list of groups.

Now the original name does not appear, but the one with carrots is still there--although I get the warning it does not appear to be a valid email address.

How can I make it go away?

Ok, the groups are made and edited in your Contacts not in your mail.

But to hide the group members names and addresses you do that in Mail preferences.

To not show group names/addresses un-check the Addressing.

You can only have show or do not show.


Getting Siri to say 1 and not one When I ask for directions and say any single digit number, Siri spells it out instead of writing it numerically. Is there away to change this, because directions does not recognize numbers spelled out?

Just say "numeral" followed by your number


Endless stream of "Suspicious packet count xxx when bytes xxx for flow xxxx" followed by "Flow details for excess packet count " in Console I have a 2018 MacBook Air Retina.
Fresh reinstall of macOS Catalina (10.15.5). Nothing installed except apple numbers, pages and google chrome.
After a few hours, after noticing that on idle the fans are spinning at maximim, I opened Console.
In "Errors" I  have an endless stream of
"error 09:41:36.901853+0300 symptomsd Suspicious packet count 121 when bytes 968 for flow 7434"
and
"error 09:45:08.399365+0300 symptomsd Flow details for excess packet count "
If I check Network Utility I see that the packages are sent via the Ethernet network interface.
And this goes on forever, and my macbook is getting really hot and slow, to the point I can't use it anymore.
This continues even after I turn off wifi.
I did SMC and NVRAM resets, nothing.

In my experience, the symptomsd "Suspicious packet count" is caused by a problem with the Apple Wallet. Go to System Preferences -> Wallet & Apple Pay (on Catalina, might be different on other versions of macOS) and verify that all your cards are still good.
You might also see errors like "SEID Changed" or "Hardware has changed" or complaints from nfcd if you have restored a wallet backup to a different computer (or a repaired computer that had its T2 chip replaced).


"Disk not ejected correctly" msg from 2016 MacBook laptop I sometimes use the laptop periodically throughout day without unplugging it or the external drives.  However, if it puts itself to sleep as a result of a period of inactivity, when I reawaken it, I get the message "Disk not ejected correctly"    How can I get rid of this message as I have not removed the disks at all, the data is not corrupted, and I have not told the computer to go to sleep!

If I remember correctly, to completely get rid of the message, you can go to System Preferences -> Energy Saver and uncheck the box that says "Put hard disks to sleep when possible". That will eliminate the message, but it also means that your computer will use more energy and that the hard drives will be on and spinning constantly.

If this doesn't work, let me know. (Disclaimer: It's possible this won't work; I can't remember if "Put hard disks to sleep when possible" works only for internal drives or also for external ones.)


Terminal on Mac won't launch a shell - stuck on login: incorrect I've been having this issue for a while where I come to open the Terminal and I'm met with this:

Login incorrect
login: _

I've already deleted the com.apple.terminal.plist to no avail. The really interesting thing is that sometimes it works, maybe 1 in 50 times. I literally have no idea what might be causing it and after searching the web for the better part of half a day it seems everyone else's issues are fixed when they delete the plist file.

How do I sort this out? I've tried running different shells (bash and zsh), but I still get this log in screen.

Also when I use Activity Monitor, I can see there is no shell running just the login.

What worked for me was:

Completely close all terminal windows.
Open Finder from the Dock.
Press Command+Shift+G and type in ~/Library/Preferences/, then press enter.
Locate the file called com.apple.Terminal.plist and rename it (using highlight and then single click) to com.apple.Terminal.OLD.plist.
Re-open the terminal app.

Note that the file might also show up in Finder as com.apple.Terminal if you do not show extensions by default.


Looking for a good SSH apps for iPhone I have been using a free SSH app on my phone for a little while but stopped because using VIM mostly broke it. Now after some updates I seems to have a limited number of key strokes before it expires. So now seems like a good time to shop around.

There are the requirements:

Can emulate color
Can run VIM, though being able to run EMACS would be cool too.
It does not have to be free.
it must run on a non jail broken phone.

What is everyone else using? What do you suggest?

Being the fanboy that I am, I completely admit that I am absolutely in love with Prompt (by Panic). It's already come a long way since it's initial release, and here's a few wonderful features;

It's not cluttered. They provided an app that offers what you need out of an SSH client and added a few bonuses that make it so much more worthwhile.
Command, and parameter, auto-completion. (Oh my god this is amazing.)
Public/Private key authentication support. Well documented, and also quite improved in recent versions with regard to how to load the actual key.
Leveraging the amount of free space in the meta key bar, you can assign 4 "favorite special character keys", so pick the ones you use most often so you rarely have to hit the 123 keyboard key, or worse, the #+= key. I currently have /\.- chosen.

Prompt is $8 (universal app!) on the iTunes App Store.


How to enable OS X screen sharing (VNC) through SSH? I forgot to turn on "VNC viewers may control screen with password",
to enter on my working Mac,
is there way to turn-on this feature remotely via SSH (I'm on WindowsXP now)?

Source: http://technotes.twosmallcoins.com/?p=279 (archived)
Putty is a good SSH client for Windows.

SSH into your remote OS X machine with an administrator’s log in and password.

Enable Remote Desktop (a.k.a. Screen Sharing, a.k.a. VNC) with this command:
sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart \
-activate -configure -access -on \
-clientopts -setvnclegacy -vnclegacy yes \
-clientopts -setvncpw -vncpw mypasswd \
-restart -agent -privs -all

Login using a VNC client. As I mentioned, TightVNC worked for me;
for some reason, RealVNC and UltraVNC didn’t.  Your password is
“mypasswd” (see the -vncpw flag in the above command;  you can and
should change this).

When you are done, turn off screen-sharing using your SSH session:
sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart \
-deactivate -configure -access -off


Mingler allocated most of RAM The Mingler process periodically allocates most of the RAM I have on my MacBook Pro, bringing it to a halt. I have never just let it run, though I am doing that now just to see what will happen. I've read through discussions at support.apple.com and none of those helped. How can I control Mingler? More generally, is there a way to limit processes using a system resource on Mac OS X Lion?

I think Mingler is a process related to iCal or the Sync Utility.
see here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2178706?threadID=2178706 for more details as of how to make it go aways.


Change background login screen in macOS Sierra I am trying desperately to change the login screen image (defaults to a blurred image) to any other image that I want. I have already tried:

How to change your login screen in macOS (and change it back)
How to Change the Login Screen Background In macOS Sierra, Yosemite, and El Capitan
Change login screen in Sierra

And I can garantee you, none of them work any more in macOS Sierra, they used to in previous versions of the OS, but not anymore.

I would really appreciate some help!

You can do this by editing system .plist's through defaults (tedious), or you can use Onyx for this (simple). Onyx is quite a capable utility and it's free - if you like it, donate a bit for the Author though he does a great job with this app.

You can do this by launching Onyx, entering your admin password and choosing the login tab:

There are also tons of other options you can check out. Tinkering with Onyx is quite secure since you can roll back to defaults with one button press, so don't worry about bricking something - but still be aware what you click ;)

If you want to do this without any extra software, you would need to edit your defaults by importing/exporting them. I wrote a script for the exporting part, it writes each domain into a separate file for easier overview and keeps system namespace/user namespace separate + sorts out system/apple defaults from those that were changed/set by any software the user installed.

I use it mostly for filtering crap leftovers from tests to keep the defaults tidy- since the background/login is also set there- that's what you need to edit.

In some cases, you might need to parse binary .plist files, and this needs an editor that can parse those- easily done with TextMate (or Xcode if in need of "vanilla"). Hope that solves your problem.

Script is here: export-defaults.zsh


How to deploy a .pkg with Profile Manager I need to deploy the Microsoft Office 2019 suite to a bunch of MacBooks. I only use Profile Manager (part of MacOS Server) and am struggling to figure out how to do this successfully. I've experimented with   mdmctl to create a .plist file and have applied it by uploading it under Custom Settings but nothing happens on the Mac. I've not been able to find any guides on how to use Custom Settings to deploy these plist files.

mdmctl is part of the open source MDM, MicroMDM. As far as my research has gone, Profile Manager does not support the InstallApplication MDM command that enables an admin to deploy packages to clients. If you have mdmctl, then you may have MicroMDM setup already, and you should reference their documentation for deploying apps. See https://github.com/micromdm/micromdm/wiki/Quickstart.

If you are just looking to deploy Microsoft Office 2019, you could "purchase" the apps for free using VPP and Apple School Manager or Apple Business Manager as a DEP solution. Once you've purchased the apps through the DEP portal, and assuming you've tied Profile Manager to your DEP account, you can then push the apps out. Apple documents what MDMs need to deploy apps, but their own Profile Manager does not support this functionality. I found this page in hopes of getting Profile Manager to deploy a munki package, but I still haven't found anything indicating that it is possible.

DEP Starter Page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204142
Office 2019 in App Store: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/microsoft-office-and-the-mac-app-store-ad2293a8-f5aa-4652-ae3f-83dda906d748


Backup workflow from macOS to NAS? I manage several Macs in an office which run a mixture of 10.10 - 10.13 (all latest sub versions).

I'm looking for a backup solution / workflow so I can set automated backups for each machine to a Synology NAS on the LAN.

I've heard using Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner with the backup destination as a NAS can cause issues. The following quote is from a MacWorld article:

  When you use a network drive for your Time Machine backups, you can have problems. (I’ve heard of this occurring on an external, connected drive, but only rarely.) You may see an ominous dialog saying “Time Machine completed a verification of your backups on diskname. To improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.” When this happens, you lose all your existing backups. You may have years of backups on your drive, and they’ll all disappear.

Source: When backups go bad: The problem with using network drives with Time Machine

Carbon Copy Cloner have also advised that backing up to a NAS is not the best option as instead of a bootable backup the backup is a diskimage, which isn't bootable and can become corrupted.

I'm not so fussed about the backup being bootable, as long as I can copy my /documents folder from the NAS I'd be alright. But obviously if the whole backup is corrupted that would be a problem.

Is there another piece of backup software or workflow which is better suited?

One of the things to consider is some of the devices are laptops so they may be taken off site at any time including mid backup, under those circumstances we wouldnt want the backups to become corrupted.

There is no general „best backup method“, it always depends on your setup and on the assets you want to protect (whole disk or only user data, snapshot or history etc). This also means that issues with a specific method may or may not be an issue in your context. The problem described in the article does occur, but I‘ve seen this both with NAS and with USB drives.

Having said that I just want to point out that TimeMachine works well in combination with a Synology NAS, and also handles disconnects during a backup gracefully (you just need to make sure that the backup can run through from time to time). It gives you a backup of the whole directory tree so it also covers any applications installed etc.


Will ext4 formatted disk configured as Time Machine over SMB be recognised as Time Machine disk when directly attached? I've bought a new router (LinkSys WRT32x), flashed OpenWRT onto it, and set it up as a NAS server with a disk attached (formatted in ext4 because OpenWRT is a Linux distro).
I have the disk recognised as a Time Machine backup disk through Samba 4, and I'm now backing my MacBook Pro wirelessly.
However, if I have to recover from this partition, as it is formatted in ext4:

Will I have to do so wirelessly through my router (supposing my Mac can still access the LAN in whatever state it's in) or will the disk be recognised as a Time Machine backup when plugged into my Mac?
What will happen if I can't restore wirelessly, will my Mac even recognise the ext4 disk?

Any knowledge or advice appreciated, I am keen to learn.

Yes, you will have to do via the router. It could be wirelessly or via a cabled ethernet connection. This is normally not a problem as macOS Recovery supports Wi-Fi and restoring from network Time Machine backups.
If you plug the disk directly into the Mac it will not be recognized as a Time Machine disk, and you will not be able to access its contents without a third-party ext4 driver.


My Mac book has been remotely hacked The problem being I got a phone call and they accessed my laptop and now I have turned the wi fi off because they obviously have access to it. I need in simple terms how I can erase or get rid of this problem

Honestly if it was me, I would make sure that WiFI WAS OFF (Like you said it was.) and then wipe the system completely of any and all data.

Of course this is assuming that you have a backup of your files previous to the hacking. If not, well then it gets complicated figuring out what files are safe to use.

So to wipe the Mac, boot it up while holding CommandR until you see the white Apple logo on a black screen.

When you get to the macOS Utilities screen, select disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Select your hard drive on the left and click on Format.

This will erase EVERYTHING on your drive

Once that is done quit out of Disk Utility, connect to your WiFi, and proceed with macOS install from the main menu.

This will likely install the version of macOS that your Mac shipped with. You can upgrade it for free once you have done this installation and restored your files from backup.


Why do some of my programs get terminated when the screensaver runs? I have Mac with OS X 10.6.6 running.

When the screensaver gets started and runs for a few minutes (10 or 15?)
Thunderbind, Firefox and a few other programs gets terminated because
OS X seems to want to log me out.
This is very annoying as I have to restart all of these programs again and again.

The interesting part is I have another Mac also running OS X 10.6.6
where I do not experience this behaviour.

Any help is appreciated

Robert

Go to the Security pane of System Preferences.

Uncheck the box that says, "Log out after [##] minutes of inactivity."


Do MacAlly keyboards require drivers to function? I need to replace the keyboard on my iMac G5, and I'm considering the MacAlly keyboards, probably the iKey Slim as it's available for less than $20 with shipping and tax. It also has two USB ports on the back, which I need. My only hesitation is that I saw a review on Amazon that mentioned a driver problem. I'd prefer to avoid installing any drivers. The MacAlly site isn't of much help.

Can anyone tell me if MacAlly keyboards come with drivers? If so, are they necessary? If they are needed, am I best off buying an old Apple keyboard on eBay or is there another brand I should consider? (Kensington's Mac keyboard looks nice, but expensive.)

I severely doubt that you will need any drivers to make it work out of the box, as nearly all keyboards are just plug-and-play with the Mac, although it seems with this one you only need install drivers if you want to activate volume control and eject functionality. (if it's any help, the driver is located here). This driver appears to be rubbish, not very friendly and unreliable, so if volume control and eject keys are important to you, and you really want to avoid installing drivers, then you had better avoid this keyboard, in my opinion.

Replacements wise, Apple do great keyboards themselves, particularly the newer slimline style keyboards. These go for about £30-£45 on eBay. They do not, however, come in a wireless form with the numerical keypad, which I know will be a problem for some people.
Apple keyboards come in laptop MacBook layout (wireless), MacBook layout (wired with extra USB port), and MacBook layout with numerical keypad (wired with extra USB port) variations. These all work right out of the box.

If you really want an Apple wireless keyboard with the numerical keypad, you can get help with that here.

In terms of others besides Apple's, I know logitech do some nice ones that work very well, but thats about all I can tell you I'm afraid.

Hope this helps.


No explicit songs show on my music I just purchased a bunch of new songs through the iTunes store on my computer and one by one I saw them being iClouded onto my iPhone.

I was very happy about this until I noticed that none of the songs that i bought marked "Explicit" were showing up.

Is there a way to fix this because I like these songs and honestly it's like one word so I don't see the big deal.

Can someone please tell me if it is possible to get these explicit songs onto music on my phone?

Check your Restrictions.

Go to Settings > General > Restrictions.
Enter your passcode.
Look under "Allowed Content" for "Music, Podcasts & iTunes U", it should say "Explicit" to the right.

If it does not, tap on it and enable it.

If everything is greyed out when you arrive at Restrictions, it means they are disabled; I've read people have had some success enabling them, allowing explicit content and then disabling Restrictions again.


Terminal: Is there a way to be notified of activity when tailing an error log I often ssh into a machine and tail -f it's php error log. My ideal situation would be to leave this terminal window open in the background, but when there's activity from the tail command, have the terminal window be activated and moved to front, or notify me in some way that an error has been written. This way I wouldn't have to always keep space on my desktop reserved.

Does this make sense?

Terminal's Dock icon starts bouncing if a tab that isn't active prints \a:

tail -f /var/log/system.log | sed $'s/$/\a/'

Or run sudo gem install terminal-notifier and do something like this:

tail -f /var/log/system.log | while IFS= read -r l; do echo "$l"; terminal-notifier -message "$l" > /dev/null; done


How can I use less disk space on system storage? When I look at my storage chart about 100 GB is devoted to system storage. Is there any way to clear some space from the system folder and if so how?

Are you on macOS Sierra? Use  -> About This Mac -> Storage -> Manage...

I'm almost completely certain a few of those options influence the system cache among other bloats which should help you.


Is it possible to display a Smart Folder as a stack in the Dock? I'd like to have my recent files at hand from my dock, preferably via a 'stack'.

I have already created a Smart Folder containing all my files that have been opened in the last 3 days and added it to the dock. However, I can not change the display mode: it is only there as a shortcut that opens a new Finder window.

Is there any way to change this behavior?

Instead of your specific recent documents search, you might also like this alternative:

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-others -array-add '{ "tile-data" = { "list-type" = 1; }; "tile-type" = "recents-tile"; }'; killall Dock;

This adds a recent items stacks to your Dock that has customizabile viewing options (grid/fan/list/automatic) like one is used to.

The right-click menu gives you the option to choose between recent applications/documents/servers and favorite volumes/items.


How to Wipe Badly Imported Contacts from iCloud My boss has a MacBook Air and an iPhone, and pays for iCloud. We also use Outlook here. We discovered that her contacts weren't being synced properly between her phone and Contacts.app, and attempted to merge them. What we've discovered instead is that we've somehow created inexact duplicates, with the duplicates containing vCard flags marking what kind of data each contact is using:

I don't recall exactly what we did to achieve this - I assume we imported some vCards and hoped that iCloud would sort through the duplicates - but is there any way to erase these contacts without manually stepping through, and has anyone seen this before and can advise how to stop this happening in the future?

Run a search for data that would show up in a corrupt vCard, but not a legitimate one. For example: "type=VOICE". You may have to do this several times with different strings. I would take the results and export them before selecting all (⌘ A) and deleting them. Make sure you can always undo, if needed.


What's the difference between rainbow and regular spinning wheel? I usually see the well known rainbow colored spinning wheel when the Mac is working on something, but sometimes there is a blue one. What is the difference between them? Do they come from the OS and have a special meaning or is it application dependent?

The rainbow spinning pinwheel is usually controlled by the OS.
  The blue pinwheel is shown by an app to indicate loading.

  The spinning wait cursor (shown below) is also standard, but it is displayed automatically by the window server when an app can't handle all of the events it receives. In general, if an app does not respond for about 2 to 4 seconds, the spinning wait cursor appears. If the app continues to be unresponsive, users often react by force-quitting it.

Source: OS X Human Interface Guidelines: Use the Right Pointer for the Job

The blue pinwheel is sometimes called the JavaScript pinwheel as JavaScript in websites are one of the primary ways a user will see this cursor, for cross-platform reasons, as in OS X a 'waiting' cursor is generally not recommended.


How do I identify adware when browsing Apple's App Store? I'm new to iOS and setting up a new iPhone. Can someone please explain how to avoid adware when choosing apps in the App Store? I will not install adware on my devices, and I'm happy to pay for apps that are free of any advertisements.

For context, here is a screenshot of adware in Google's Play store which clearly labels it as such:

And here is the same app in the App Store, which fails to mention ads:

I'm looking to install a few games and so far I am unable to do so due to a lack of information...have I overlooked something?

As far as I know, there is not an equivalent in the App Store.
If this is a feature you'd like to see implemented, go here to leave product feedback.


"Account Not In This Store" Error I'm trying to subscribe to an app (downloaded from the MacOS App Store) and I keep getting the error

Account Not In This Store
Your account is not valid for use in the U.S. store.
You must switch to the Brazilian store before purchasing.

But I AM logged into the Brazilian store. I've seen a few mentions of this error, tried to follow the suggestions (logging in and out, restarting the computer, change store region and change back) to no avail. Does anyone have any idea how to solve this?

Thanks in advance

I managed to find a solution:

Uninstalling and reinstalling the app and changing stores didn't work, but I followed the ""Account Not In This Store" error message with "Change Store” button" tip from https://mindnode.com/support/kb/payment-issues and managed to subscribe!


How could I install Boot Camp drivers to my Windows partition? I've finally figured out how to install Windows without any stray network connection errors or invalid .iso file errors, but I've run into a bit of an issue. The Windows partition doesn't have any drivers. Its' resolution is 640x320 and I don't even know if I can change that. I've downloaded the Boot Camp drivers for my machine (Late 2013 MacBook Pro 15" with Retina Display) and I'd installed the Windows-run partition with those drivers in the .iso, but somehow none of those drivers were installed.

I'd downloaded them again to my Macintosh HD partition, but I can't copy them to my Windows HD partition because of file system incompatibilities or whatever. At that point I'd decided to copy them to an NTFS flash drive, then copy them from that drive to my Windows HD partition, but I'm still not allowed to do that. I'm given the not-allowed cursor when I attempt to drag the drivers folder over. I'm pretty sure I can launch Setup.exe in Windows HD if I can figure out how to copy those files over and everything will be okay, but I can't figure out how to do that.

One last thing I'd tried (the first) was to connect to Ethernet via Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter. This did not work and I'm assuming that's because I don't have an Ethernet driver, either. I couldn't even connect to the network.

I've never been through so much trouble just to play a game from The Sims series. Why can't they hurry to the release of a Mac version? :(

Thanks for reading.

Edit: Basically Boot Camp wouldn't allow me to create a bootable USB drive without some network error or claiming that I was trying to install from an iso which wasn't a Windows iso, when it was -- in fact -- a Windows iso. To avoid that I'd opened Microsoft's bootable USB creation tool (on my Windows-run server) to create the bootable USB drive on my flash drive. After that I'd copied the Boot Camp files over from the 'BootCamp5.1.5621' folder I'd downloaded from Apple's support site. I'd then chosen the following configuration in Boot Camp.

After starting the operation my Mac had restarted and I was greeted with the 'Starting Windows' message. I'd installed Windows to the appropriate partition, then booted Windows to see that I didn't have any drivers at all.

I know it doesn't make much sense, but that was the configuration and my Mac did boot the new Windows partition properly.

Edit: I've found a workaround.

I've used my Windows 7 VM within VirtualBox to copy the files over after creating a shared folder to /Volumes/Untitled (Untitled was my Windows HD). I'd copied the files from my OS X desktop (also had a shared folder between OS X and the VM for my OS X desktop) which was where I had the Boot Camp drivers, then copied them over to the Windows HD disk. Now I'm going to boot Windows again and try to launch Setup.exe from the Boot Camp drivers folder. I'd still like a better solution, though. All answers welcome!

Probably your Boot Camp partition is hosed and couldn't be removed simply.
So i would try to reinstall Windows 7 with your pre-made (Microsoft's bootable USB creation tool!) thumb drive.

Attach the Windows 7 installer thumb drive to your Windows server,  format it if necessary (FAT32) and create the bootable Win7 install thumb drive again with the Microsoft tool.

Download BootCamp5.1.5621 on your server

Extract BootCamp5.1.5621.zip

Copy the extracted files and folders ($WinPEDriver$, AutoUnattend.xml, BootCamp etc.) to the root of the thumb drive.

The file/folder structure in the root of your thumb drive should look like this:

Detach the thumb drive from your server

Attach the thumb drive to your Mac

Reboot your Mac and immediately hold the alt/option button until you see the boot menu

Choose your thumb drive as boot volume

Try to reinstall Windows 7. You might have to reformat your existing Windows partition with the disk management tool of the Windows 7 Installer (don't delete or resize it!).

If that doesn't work reboot to Mac OS X, start Boot Camp Assistant and try to remove Windows 7 completely.
If the removal fails check several answers here to remove your Boot Camp partition manually:
remove-windows-7
i-messed-up-the-fusion-drive (both require a Time Machine backup)
or some other answers here.
Before doing that post a comment and i will give advice depending on your partition layout.
Start Boot Camp Assistant from scratch to install Windows 7.


Stuck at Apple logo during boot. Cannot enter Safe mode. Cannot use Recovery USB A little background
I wanted to create a Mountain Lion recovery USB because I currently only have a Lion recovery USB. While downloading the installer image from the Mac App store, the computer froze and I had to perform a hard shutdown.
My question
I cannot boot into OSX anymore. How can I get it working again? I will try anything.
What I have tried

Entering Safe mode by holding shift on startup. But this does not seem to work. No matter how I do it.
Using the Lion recovery USB. This does not work either - I can only see a grey circle with a slash. Maybe this is happening because I have Mountain Lion installed. As I have said above, I do not have a Mountain lion recovery USB.
Contacting Apple Care / Genius bar because this Macbook Air has Apple Care. They will not help, because the Macbook Air's warranty is no longer valid as my Mac suffered from water damage not too long ago.
Downloading Mountain Lion from another Mac which only runs Lion. This is not possible in this case: The Mac App Store will only "offer" to download Mountain Lion - but when I click it the download is blocked because the Mac only runs Lion and cannot update to Mountain Lion (the Mac is too old). I should be able to download Lion at least, but have not found any option.

PRAM Reset

On boot, hold ⌘ cmd + ⌥ alt + P + R until the second boot chime. This can fix a variety of things including problems due to recent kernel panics.

Recovery HD

On boot, hold ⌘ cmd + R to boot into the Recovery HD. If this fails, hold ⌥ alt on boot, and select Recovery from the options available.

From here, you can open Disk Utility and select Repair Disk.

Target Disk Mode

If you wish to get information from the computer, and you have another computer and some way of connecting the two, you can boot into Target Disk Mode by holding T on boot. Files can then be taken off the drive by the other computer as if it was a normal external drive.

Internet Recovery

If you have a recent backup or Target Disk Mode worked (and your Mac is post-July 2011) you can start fresh by using Internet Recovery.

Hold ⌘ cmd + ⌥ alt + R on boot to begin. A new copy of OS X will be downloaded from the internet and installed, erasing your internal drive.


Dropbox and login items list I have Dropbox installed on my Mac with OS X Lion 10.8.2. I don't use it often, so I eliminated it from the login item list. However, every time I open Dropbox from the application folder, it automatically add itself to the login item list. Is that normal, even if I locked changes? Can I prevent Dropbox to add itself to my item list every time I open it?

Under Dropbox preferences, there is a checkbox for "Start Dropbox on System Startup".

However, as patrix says, Dropbox is really only useful if you leave it running all the time.


"This is not a supported method of installing the operating system” when reinstalling OS X I see somebody already asked same question but I couldn't find a answer, so I am asking it again and will provide as detail as possible information.

I am helping a friend to reinstall OS X on his MacBook Pro.

The laptop is Macbook Pro , model A1278, purchased around 2010.

I can enter Disk Utility and see it has a 240G disk, and a "Apple disk Image", I assume it's the factory reinstallation image.

The harddrive was partitioned as two partitions, one for Mac and one for Windows. My friend still want to keep the Windows partition ( Bootcamp), so I will not reformat the whole disk.

I have tried following steps:

erase/reformated the partition ( the "empty" one ).
Boot from Cmd-R , then "Reinstall MacOS".  the result is "This is not a supported method of installing the operating system”

It showed "El Capitan", so I guess the factory image is El Capitan.
Downloaded a El Capitan ISO, created a Boot-able USB key from it ( using Windows application TransMac ). Booted machine with "Option" key pressed, selected to boot from USB ( the Kingston disk), then "Reinstall MacOS". Got exact same "This is not a supported method of installing the operating system”.
Booted with Cmd-Option-R, it showed "Starting Internet Recovery,This may take a while.". Seems working OK, but then got "The recovery server could not be contacted" .

I have tried with WIFI connection and Ethernet connection, both with same error. Since it showed "High Sierra" logo, the Internet was working before it enter the real installation step.

It looks like as soon as the system start to install the OS, the network interface is disabled somehow.

I tried to entered terminal, I can see there is no IP on the en0 NIC. I even tried to use command line to configure a static IP on en0 and setup default route, then I can ping public IP like 4.2.2.2, but I couldn't get DNS configured under the terminal.

networksetup command is not available under the recovery terminal.

scutil command is available, but "list" command doesn't show en0 or WIFI interface at all, so I can't add a DNS configuration. Tried to manually edit "/etc/resolv.conf" , doesn't work.

Now I am totally stuck. I am familiar with Windows/Linux but not a Mac guy, not sure what could be the problem. Would appreciate any suggestion.

Update:
Turned out the USB disk restored by TransMac doesn't really work ( I thought I booted the system from USB, but only realized late it was the recovery partition, so no wonder it showed exact same error). But in Disk utility, it does recognize the USB disk and shows it has OS X Base installation.

Finally setup a Linux VM and used old good dd to copy the iso to USB key and it worked. I was able to boot from the USB and installed El Capitan, but then when the OS first start up, it stuck at here:

The reason I was asked to reinstall the system was it won't boot and always stuck at exact same place. Now I have re-formatted the partition, reinstalled El-Capitan, but seems went back to exactly where it was.

Thanks,
Jack

Update:

Tried Internet Recovery and still couldn't get Internet work in Terminal ( can't setup DNS, /etc/hosts file is on a readonly filesystem).

I went back to to try every boot key options I can find online, and Cmd-opt-PR to reset NVRAM fixed it.


Where is the source code for mmap function? So I was searching for sys/mman.h and ideally sys/mman.c
in https://opensource.apple.com/source/Libc/Libc-1244.20.1/ and didn't find it. Any idea why?
Where could I find the source?

I assume you mean mmap.c - you can find the source files here:

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/5394bb038891708cd4ba748da79b90a33b19f82e/libsyscall/wrappers/unix03/mmap.c
https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/master/bsd/sys/mman.h

The kernel part of the implementation where the functionality actually lies can be found here:

https://github.com/apple/darwin-xnu/blob/5394bb038891708cd4ba748da79b90a33b19f82e/bsd/kern/kern_mman.c


my Apple ID is ...@mac.com -- can I use it with iCloud? When .Mac first came out I signed up for trial and got "myname"@mac.com

I never did subscribe to .Mac or MobileMe, but it appears I still "own" that email address because I just logged into iCloud with with "myname"@mac.com as my Apple ID.

Is there a way for me to use/send/receive mail with that email address?  When I try to set up iCloud/Mail with this email address it doesn't seem to take it.

Any ideas?

According to apple's FAQ (you can find it here:http://www.apple.com/mobileme/transition.html)

  Can I keep my MobileMe email address once I move to iCloud? Yes. If
  you have an active MobileMe account when you sign up for iCloud, you
  can keep your me.com or mac.com email address and any email aliases
  you have created and move your MobileMe mail, contacts, and calendars,
  as well as your bookmarks, to the new service. When you're ready to
  make the move, go to www.me.com/move.

You can try to move your emails to iCloud by visiting me.com/move


iPhone 7 black Current/vibrations when charging Has any one had and issue of feeling electric current through back of phone when charging. It's like vibrations. I have tried different cables, plugs and charged in different locations and the same every time.

This is so commonly misunderstood that I shall attempt to provide a short précis, then link to a good explanation which is not overly-technical.

Common misconception - earthing/grounding

Most small household appliances are not, in fact, earthed at all - even if there is a valid earth pin on the mains plug.
They are what is known as 'double insulated' & carry this logo

The 'transformers' on this type of equipment are not the same as in high-power equipment & don't use a step-down coil transformer, linear supply. Instead they use a switch-mode supply.
All PSUs, whether linear or switch-mode leak a small amount of current due to capacitance. In double-insulated devices there is no true ground/earth so the design is optimised to try to prevent this leakage.
Unfortunately, switch-mode supplies run at very high frequencies, so the smaller capacitance in the smaller transformer ends up leaking just as much as the larger capacitance in a larger transformer running at 50 or at 60Hz for example.

The leakage current is usually less than 1mA and is often as low as 10uA, but even at such low current, it can still be present and still can cause problems.

So - the tingle or buzz that you feel is in fact you becoming the temporary ground/earth for this circuit.
It is usually safe, & any reputable manufacturer will ensure their PSUs are well within tolerance.

Cheap copies are cheap because they don't bother with most of the safety circuitry… you know, the stuff that makes the expensive one expensive in the first place ;-)

Have look at http://www.unitechelectronics.com/sparks.htm for a much more detailed explanation. Though it is aimed at hi-fi users & deals in 240v mains, the basic principles are identical.

[copied from my own answer on Super User]


iCloud slideshow - shuffle photos I am creating a slideshow for an event that individuals are adding to a shared album on iCloud. I would like to shuffle the photos. How do I do that?

It would depend on what device you are viewing the photos.

In case of iPhone:

To view slides in random order (shuffle) turn the shuffle on.


Device or computer could not be verified Recently I bought Macbook Pro Retina Early 2015, and after approximately one month my wifi shows

  No Wifi/Wireless device found

I rush to the iStore and submitted my macbook, they serviced it and returned it to me, after approximately 2 to 3 days the problem was back again and gone after 2 days. Since my wifi is working perfectly.

The problem I am facing is now when I open APP STORE and sign in there I get the following error message:

  Your device or computer could not be verified. Contact support for assistance.

I googled it search it on forums and got that its an issue of non registered network adapter. Kindly help me in this scenario is this a software bug or a hardware one or some effective solution.

Just had this problem. Not sure what exactly had helped, but I

Went to the Network Preferences and deleted whatever I could, all the locations except the one left and for this last deleted all the interfaces.
Rebooted
In the Network Preferences created a new location.

After that everything started to work again. Probably you could just delete and recreate your Ethernet interface.


Is there a bash command to check to see if Time Machine has finished backing up? I'm writing a script that will rsycnc my Time Machine directory to a remote server using ssh. I've switched from a shell script to an AppleScript and then back to an Apple script and I don't really care what kind of script the solution will require.

I've had success starting the backup process with this little snippet of code.

do shell script "/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/backupd-helper >/dev/null 2>&1 &"

What I'm trying to do now is have an rsync command performed once that backup is completed. Is there any clean way in AppleScript to check to see if the backup process is completed? Or is there a good "hook" that you can use in bash to check to see if it's completed?

tmutil status is the Lion way now that we have a nice tool for this sort of query.

On newer OS, there is an undocumented command tmutil currentphase that shows the name of the current phase.


Bootcamp Windows 10 memory BSoD I have run windows 10 on my iMac (late 2015, Catalina) over the last year through bootcamp with no issues. I only use it for video games. I recently built a PC for a better gaming experience and to free up space on my iMac. I am trying to retrieve my save files from the partition, but am getting a blue screen. There have been no changes made to my computer. One day I was gaming, the next day I get a blue screen.
I typically do a full shutdown before booting into Windows. That acts just fine - I select windows and it starts up. I first know something is wrong because of how slow it starts up. Then, it attempts a Windows update, gets about 50%, and then blue screens.
The specific error message is: attempted write to readonly memory
I knew bootcamp wasn’t the best option, but dang it if I don’t want to lose hours of gameplay.
I see two options:

fix the blue screen and get back into windows OR
retrieve files without accessing the partition (Guessing this is not feasible. That’s probably like getting something out of a box without opening the box.)

But I’m not even sure where to start.

Actually your second choice is a bit odd but possibly the way to go.
macOS will certainly read (not write) from/to the default Windows 10 partition format, NTFS.
You should be able to access that partition and, assuming you know what to look for, copy the needed save files from your games to a flash drive to then transfer to your PC.
And depending on how "hands on" you are, you could theoretically remove the iMacs internal drive, stick it in an external USB enclosure and access the drive from your new Windows PC. Assuming it's not a fusion drive.
There are also utilities that will back up the Boot Camp partition, and presumably you might then be able to restore it to an external drive and access it from the new PC. That would depend on the software you use to do that and how it restores any backups it creates.
All of this depends on the Boot Camp partition being largely intact. you say nothing about that, just that it blue screens.
Also if you have a bootable Windows 10 flash drive (like the one Boot Camp created, you could boot from that and repair Windows. I use Windows 10 install media all the time to repair a blue screen error.
But there is absolutely no way to get the data off the partition without accessing it. As to get the data off of it (no matter how) you must access the partition.
Hopefully this gives you some starting points for avenues to recover your data.


What is the relationship between `launchctl limit` and `ulimit`? There is not any ulimit configuration in system startup files/ shell startup scripts.

ulimit -a shows:

-u: processes                       1064
-n: file descriptors                256

launchctl limit shows:

maxproc     2048           2048
maxfiles    2048           2048

I vaguely remember that launchctl's limits should match with a shell's ulimit output, I might be wrong.

Is there any relationship between the lauchctl's limits and ulimit?

In the shell, ulimit provides "control over the resources available to the shell and to processes started by it" (see man bash). Therefore, it applies only to the shell and its children. The limits for launchd are related to it and the processes that it manages. The two are separate.

Individual programs can set their own resource limits by calling the Standard C Library routines ulimit() or getrlimit() and setrlimit(). Certain resource limits cannot be elevated unless the process is running as the super-user.

As a practical example, I debug large software projects and the shell's default limit for the number of open files isn't big enough. In my .bashrc file, I have the following:

# Increase the upper limit on the number of open files:
ulimit -n 1024

Now my debugger won't complain that it can't open all the files it needs. Obviously, this should have no impact on launchd.


Showing hidden files on the desktop. Is there a way to remove .DS_Store on desktop only? I hope I do not have to disable the  hidden file visibility in order to disable .DS_Store from appearing on the desktop.

.DS_Store constantly gets in the way in the desktop but not in any other folder.

I have a specific strategy in mind to remove .DS_Store on the desktop only. I would like to run an automator app that scans the desktop as a watcher. As it watches changes on the desktop, I would like it to detect the addition of a .DS_Store file and once it detects it, it would automatically move it to the trash (or a folder aside from the desktop.)

I am running El Capitan (osX 10.11) on a Macbook Pro.

I use XtraFinder, and it has the option to show all hidden items except for the desktop.


Do you have a better way to browse Windows 7 machines in Finder (SL 10.6.5)? Browsing the "network neighborhood" in OS X Finder does show XP machines, but not Windows 7 machines. (Vista machines have a similar problem). I can connect manually to Windows 7 machines ("connect to server" and then specifying "smb://ip_or_name"), but want to be able to browse Win 7 machines automatically.

Browsing works if security is lowered on the Windows 7 machines, and the OS X machine is forced to be the master browser. Question: Who has a better solution? I would like to find another solution without having to change OS X and all Windows 7 machines. Maybe you know some extra OS X software that "makes samba just work right"?

Windows 7 has extra network security options, and one of them sets its discoverability. By default in Windows 7, when you connect to a new network you are prompted for what type of network it should be: Public, Work, or Home. These profiles set up the firewall and security options when on that network; I can't off the top of my head list all the things they specifically set up, but when you select Public, sharing and discoverability are locked tight, whereas in Home they are more relaxed.

It's very likely that you have set your network type to Public on your Windows 7 computer. If you open the Network and Sharing Center, under the name of your active network it should say either "Home network", "Work network" or "Public network". If it is indeed set to Public (or Work), click it and then click Home network. You shouldn't have any problems after that.

Alternatively, you can open the start menu and type Network and hit enter. This opens the Network window, which lets you browse other computers on your network. As soon as the window opens, a yellow bar should appear at the top informing you that network discoverability is turned off; click the bar and then click one of the resolution options. This may fix the problem as well.

I haven't had any problem in OS X connecting to my Windows 7 computers that are set to Home network, as they should be. But a Windows 7 computer set to Public network should be basically undetectable.


Is Apple's multi monitor still not working on Mavericks or do I misunderstand it? Mavericks still hasn't solved the multi monitor issue to my great distress.
Running a MacBook Air 13″ and a Cinema Display 27″ at times I use all the default provided Mavericks tools to monitor my applications on both screen.

My assumption was that:

If I use text editor on the 13″ Mac mini screen, in fullscreen, it would appear fullscreen also on the 27″ Cinema Display
That if I would resize a window to fullscreen on the 27″ Cinema Display that it would appear full-size on the 13″ screen also (but no, its waaay bigger so I have to downsize it again)
I want it to behave so that my windows always have the right size on the display they are shown on. So if I maximise a window on the 27″, it should be maximised on the 13″ also. If I make it halfscreen size it should be half screensize on both screens.

Do I misunderstand the features of multi window? This is just frustrating and I'm not plugging my MacBook Air to my 27″ anymore because of this issue. I don't like resizing the windows every time again!

Are there tools to fix this?

When you say "full screen", I'm assuming you're referring to the full screen button on the top right of a window, as opposed to the "expand" green button on the top left of a window.

Mavericks has "solved" the multi-monitor issue by allowing multiple and independent spaces on each monitor. In pre-Mavericks, when you move to a different space on one monitor, all other monitors follow. In Mavericks, they are independent, meaning you can move each monitor to different spaces without affecting the others.

In relation to full screen apps:

Pre-Mavericks, going full screen would move one monitor to full screen and all other displays to a black/empty/useless space.
In Mavericks, all other monitors remain independent and free to access any of their spaces (allowing those monitors to remain useful).

So in response to your question

Full screening an application on one monitor has no affect on the others, and full screening it on your mac mini screen, should not make the app go full screen on your 27'' screen.
When you maximize a window on one screen, and then drag it to another monitor, TextEdit does not resize itself to fill the screen (whether it be to shrink when going from your 27" to your 13", or grow, going to your 13" to 27")
Overall I'm a little confused about your frustrations, but you cannot make it so a window grows proportionally based on the monitor. What I mean by this is that you cannot make it so if you have TextEdit open on your 13", and it covers 60% of that monitor, when you drag it over to the 27", TextEdit won't automatically appear as taking 60% of the 27" monitor. It will appear as the same size it was on the monitor you're dragging it from.

There are multiple 3rd party apps that help you manage and arrange your windows in Mac OS X that may help you. But as far as I am understanding, none that will help your issue, if you're referring to the top right full screen button.

You can use apps to help magazine your windows:

Cinch:  http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/
Divy:   http://mizage.com/divvy/
SizeUp: http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/
Moom:   http://manytricks.com/moom/

You may like Moom the best, and it is described: Do you spend a lot of time moving and zooming windows, so you can better see and work with all the content on your Mac? Instead of doing that work yourself, let Moom handle the task for you.


Creating files in /tmp changes default group ownership? We are supposed to stop using /tmp? I just noticed:

  ~$ touch ~/home.txt
  ~$ touch /tmp/tmp.txt
  ~$ ls -l ~/home.txt
  -rw-r--r--  1 jdough  staff  0 Dec  2 15:09 /Users/jdough/home.txt
  ~$ ls -l /tmp/tmp.txt
  -rw-r--r--  1 jdough  wheel  0 Dec  2 15:09 /tmp/tmp.txt

Is it unusual that OS X uses the file system to decide the group ownership? I'd expected all files created by a user to have staff as the group.

I've been tarring cds in /tmp and then putting them in cloud storage. Isn't that a classic use case for /tmp? As users, are we supposed to stop using /tmp? I don't want my group ownership messed with and tmp is now wired to unexpectedly change the group.

Of course, just using $HOME/tmp is fine. But, I'll be sad to stop using /tmp.

I had the same experience when using /tmp but using $TMPDIR worked as expected:

$ touch "${TMPDIR}/tmp.txt"
$ ls -l "${TMPDIR}/tmp.txt"

-rw-r--r-- 1 luomat staff 0 Dec  3 08:46    /var/folders/8k/0bqq33mn439938qxp7j7c1fc0000gn/T//tmp.txt


How do I download all iCloud Drive files to external hard drive? Using Google Chrome, I am trying to download or copy + paste all of my files to an external hard drive so I can delete them afterwards and downgrade my iCloud drive subscription to something cheaper. I have tried to find a way but I can't seem to find a way to grab them all at once. It also wont let me download the file folders  individually either. I also tried opening the iCloud folder on my computer and clicking the little cloud with the down arrow but it takes super long and hangs up my internet so I can't do anything else with it for hours.

The only way I could find to do this is to download the document files without the folders meaning I would essentially need to re-create the folder layout on my external, download the document files and then move them to the external drive which would be a pain and really slow.

Does anyone know of a way to do this a faster way? Or a way to back up iCloud so I can get to the files that way?

You should turn off Optimise iCloud storage in System Preferences-> iCloud -> iCloud Drive options, before you try to copy files as per the other answer. Since you have a lot of storage(paid version), trying to copy partially downloaded files can be a mess.

Other way can be to use https://privacy.apple.com. It lets you download selected information associated with your account. I don't know which would be faster. I suggest doing both.


Is there a PDF viewer with a vertical split screen feature? I have a very wide PDF and I would like to find a PDF viewer which would allow me to split the screen vertically so I can keep the left side the same while scrolling the right side back and forth.

I found the application http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/, but it only allows one to split the screen horizontally.

Is anyone aware of such a PDF viewer on the Mac?

You can take a snapshot in Skim (File -> Take Snapshot), then using the wonderful ShiftIt move the snapshot and the main view of the pdf to the opposite sides of the screen (vertically) with just a few keystrokes. Or horizontally. Or to all four corners if you want.


Dynamically adjust image canvas for images I am new to Mac.

In Windows OS, I use MS Paint to dynamically adjust the canvas using the mouse by dragging the borders within the GUI to paste multiple cropped images into it to create a single new image.

Is there a way to do this in macOS using Apple default or paid apps where I can dynamically resize the canvas using the mouse? Manually entering percentages or dimensions to resize the canvas (either in the app or in terminal) is confusing to me to achieve the right canvas size.

You can use Patina app (http://www.patinaapp.com/) in MAC.

This costs around 3.5 euros but it closely resembles MS Paint of Windows OS in terms of being able to dynamically resizing image canvas, adding text, etc

Sadly, they do not have a trial version to try it out beforehand. But I bought it and it seems fine as of now


How to customize Finder sidebar icons I'm using Dropbox and replacing some of the standard user folders like Documents and Pictures with symlinks to locations in my Dropbox. I can easily set the icons of these symlinks to match the icons of the standard Documents and Pictures folders, but I can't find a way to also change the symlinks' appearance on the Finder sidebar to look like the native Documents and Pictures folders.

In short, I've placed custom folders in the Finder sidebar; is there a way to change the icons they're given?

I've looked into Candybar, but it seems like that's mostly for changing the appearance of all appearances of the standard icons, whereas I just want to make a plain and ordinary folder look like a standard user folder.

I believe this worked in Snow Leopard, and is broken in Lion (perhaps on purpose). You won't be able to set your own icons for just any folder — file a bug if you'd like to see this fixed. But as you noted, they can be changed for the standard icons, using CandyBar
You can also just edit the image files themselves, at /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources. The icons are named Sidebar___.icns.


How to make the items in a variable a single item Lets say I have a variable Q set to {"a", "b", "c"}
how can I make it so that AppleScript takes the items of Q and turns it into a single item so that Q is now set to {"abc"}?

If you have: set Q to {"a", "b", "c"}

You can then do:

set Q to (Q as string) as list

(Q as string) coerces the Q list {"a", "b", "c"} into a string, "abc", and as list turns the string into a list item assigned to Q.

Not necessary, but if you also add:

return Q

Just to see what it returns, it will return:

{"abc"}

Which is what you wanted.


How to hide specific icon in menu bar? Mojave OS I have a requirement to hide specific icon in menu bar (McAfee icon). Tried using "LSUIPresentationMode" in info.plist but still the icon is visible. Any other way to achieve this?

To remove an icon from the status bar:

  Hold down cmd
  Click the icon you want to remove and drag it to the desktop (A cross icon should appear)
  Let go of the left mouse button

Source


2012 iMac RAM Upgrade I've just ordered the 27" iMac, which has user-upgradable RAM slots.

There are four slots, and the default configuration that ships is two 4GB modules, and two empty spaces.

Can I fill the other two modules with 8GB chips and bring the total to 24GB?  Or, is it not possible for me to mix two 4GB modules with two 8GB modules.

Yes, you can and it's quite common practice.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201191

One concern might be how the memory channels are laid out, as it's generally better to have symmetrical RAM configurations to balance dual-channel access. (so you'd want each channel to be 4+8)


iPhoto 8 alternative I kind of like iPhoto 8, but it's unmantained, is there an alternative that:

runs on 10.6
imports iPhoto library (events, albums, Facebook albums, hidden photos), and works more or less like iPhoto itself
is actively mantained
if it's not free, it offers an almost-fully working demo, i.e. limited in time but not in features (to be sure it actually works)
if it's not free, it has a reasonable price (i.e. 5~15€)

My problem with iPhoto itself is that the newer version requires 10.7, and the version I'm using has some very annoying bugs, such as every time I click on a Facebook album, it resets its privacy to "friends only".

(likely such a software doesn't exist, but searching for such a topic brings up such a mess that I'm not sure, it might be well hidden)

If you know of a program which doesn't have all these features, but have most of them, feel free to list it anyway (no Picasa).

Have you looked into Picasa? It has built in support for importing from iPhoto libraries. Release notes for v. 3.9 here.

You may not want to join the Google universe, though. Resistance is futile.