Unable to complete first backup to iCloud due to lack of space I have always backed up my iPhone through iTunes but I decided to use iCloud now as well. I only have the free iCloud plan with 5 GB of storage (of which 4.5+ GB free), and I'm attempting to backup an iPhone 7 with iOS 11.0.

I tried enabling iCloud backup but I got back the message: "This iPhone cannot be backed up because there is not enough iCloud storage available."

According to this fairly old Ask Different answer and this Apple support document, there should be a "Choose Data to Back Up" option to allow me to disable specific items to backup (e.g. camera roll which should be enough to allow my backup to proceed). Unfortunately I can't see this option when following the Apple support document's steps for iOS 11. When going into Settings -> my name -> iCloud -> Manage Storage -> Backup, this is the screen that shows up:

According to the support document I should now select the iPhone I want to backup, but as can be seen, there is no such option. I speculate this is because I never completed any backups at all. Thus I can't tick off items taking up lots of space to get the backup to complete for the first time.

How do I access the list of items to back up, so I can tick off some items to get the backup small enough to fit the available space?

I also recently noticed that the backup "choose data to back up" section doesn't show up in iOS 11 unless you have an existing backup to select first, since the UI is tucked into the screen when you select a backup for a phone.

If you're willing to go forgo the 99 cent subscription fee for a month, you could increase your storage for iCloud, make a backup, see if you can refine the backup to fit back into the 5GB limit, make a new backup, and then bring your storage plan back down.

I did the first few steps myself, and the backup refinement options do appear in the new backup. I've just been too lazy to followup and actually trim my backup to downgrade my storage plan.

Alternatively, you could go into Settings > General > iPhone Storage, and see if you've got some easy targets using a lot of Documents & Data storage to delete to bring down the size of the backup. Only Documents & Data matters for third party apps, since the apps themselves are not backed up, only the app data (documents & data) is backed up. Also iOS itself is not backed up, only the settings and user data within.


iPhone 5s: benefits of 64 bit processors if no more than 4 GB of RAM? My understanding is that the (main) reason of having a 64 bit processor, is to be able to use more than 4 GB of RAM.

In PCs, it is now very common to have more than 4GB of ram, and to really be able to use such ram, you NEED a 64 bit processor.

But for a smartphone, which (afaik) doesn't have more than 4GB of ram, what's the point? what is the benefit?

What kind of apps benefit from it that will really make a difference ?

Specific examples of apps taking advantage would be nice.

Do final users will even notice a difference? Or is it just a marketing strategy?

Note, i know a similar question has been answered here: https://superuser.com/q/56540/152803
but in this one i ask specifically for smartphones, that one is focused on Intel/AMD architecture. Besides, that answer is now more than 4 years old...

My understanding is that the (main) reason of having a 64 bit processor, is to be able to use more than 4 GB of RAM.

Well, everything is 64 bits wide in a 64 bit CPU.  For one, computation involving large numbers is more efficient.

ARM introduced a few changes and improvements in the move to 64-bit.

All 64-bit ARM CPUs have built in floating point.
Quite a few things were simplified, making it easier for compliers to create more optimized code.
The SIMD/floating point unit has more registers.  This means more data can be processed in operations that use SIMD (like media decoding) or floating point (anything with 3d graphics).
It also has a few built-in instructions for cryptography.

Reference.

  But for a smartphone, which (afaik) doesn't have more than 4GB of ram, what's the point? what is the benefit?

This is true now.  I'd bet in 3-5 years it won't.


Is there a dashboard widget that displays Google Maps and traffic data overlay? Is there a dashboard widget available that displays Google Maps with traffic data?

You can make one yourself using the unsung "Open in Dashboard..." command in Safari.

Open Google Maps in Safari. Adjust the size of the window so the map the size you would like the widget to be.
In Safari, go to the File menu, then "Open in Dashboard." You'll get a little hover in Safari. Place the cursor in the upper left part of the map so that the entire map, and just the entire map, is highlighted. It may be a bit finicky to get the map highlighted properly, so just keep at it and it will be fine.
Click add in the top of the browser. Done!

You now have a Google Map widget that acts just like Google Maps in the browser. Navigate to where you want to see traffic, enable traffic in the widget, and you're done.


Will Mountain Lion install and run on a second drive (SSD) inside a MacBook Pro? I currently have a standard MacBook Pro from 2010. I bought an SSD drive and a caddy and I want to do a fresh install of Mountain Lion on the SSD, and stay with the other drive as secondary boot option.

Can I just put the SSD on the place of the optical drive, or do I need to put the SSD in place of the current HDD, and put the current HDD in the cadddy (and connect the caddy instead of the optical drive? I would like to stick with the data from the old HDD around.)

The laptop is a 13" model "Core 2 Duo" 2.4

If you are using something like the Optibay drive from MCE Tech, you an put either drive in the caddy. I prefer to make a single change at a time, so when I did this I put the new drive in the caddy and left the old working boot drive alone.

As for installing from a USB thumb drive (I assume this is what you meant since you weren't clear), you shouldn't have to. You can download the Mountain Lion installer and run the app. During the install process you can choose what drive to install the OS on, simple choose the newly installed and formatted SSD.

Once you have both OS installed, the system will remember the last drive that was selected in the Startup Disk preferences and store that choice in NVRAM so that it will continue to start from the preferred drive. You can hold the option key at boot to prevent this choice and pick from all bootable drives when you want to switch things on a specific boot.

Most people find that having two OS internally is confusing. Spotlight will try to find the correct version of Safari if you don't keep them both updated, but sometimes you end up running the wrong version of an app. This is confusing at best, and troublesome most of the time and can cause data issues when the wrong version of an app opens data it didn't expect from a newer version of iPhoto for instance.


How can I adjust the size of the OSXRESERVED partition that Boot Camp Assistant uses? I have a Windows 10 ISO that is 5.3 GB. The Boot Camp disk image that Boot Camp Assistant downloads is 2.8 GB. Together these are more than 8 GB.

Boot Camp Assistant creates a partition named OSXRESERVED of 8 GB that (I think) serves as the the Windows installation medium.

Boot Camp Assistant first copies the contents of the Windows 10 ISO to the OSXRESERVED partition. Then it copies the contents of the Boot Camp disk image to the OSXRESERVED partition. It then does an unattended install of Windows 10 and the drivers required for my MacBook Pro.

(Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

The problem is that 8 GB is not enough space. So Boot Camp Assistant gives the following error:

  The Windows support software could not be saved to the selected drive. There is not enough space available on the disk.

Is it possible to either:

A) resize the OSXRESERVED partition (taking some space from either the BOOTCAMP partition or the APFS container partition)
or B) tweak a 'OSXRESERVED partition size' setting in macOS that is used by Boot Camp Assistant and run it again?

Thank you!

Output from distil info OSXRESERVED:

Device Identifier:         disk0s3
Device Node:               /dev/disk0s3
Whole:                     No
Part of Whole:             disk0

Volume Name:               OSXRESERVED
Mounted:                   Yes
Mount Point:               /Volumes/OSXRESERVED

Partition Type:            Microsoft Basic Data
File System Personality:   ExFAT
Type (Bundle):             exfat
Name (User Visible):       ExFAT

OS Can Be Installed:       No
Media Type:                Generic
Protocol:                  PCI
SMART Status:              Verified
Volume UUID:               C6464CB1-7861-398E-93D4-06D988D784FC
Disk / Partition UUID:     A558AF49-0824-425E-B120-CFB50ADC2053
Partition Offset:          178210734080 Bytes (348067840 512-Byte-Device-Blocks)

Disk Size:                 8.0 GB (7998537728 Bytes) (exactly 15622144 512-Byte-Units)
Device Block Size:         512 Bytes

Volume Total Space:        8.0 GB (7996440576 Bytes) (exactly 15618048 512-Byte-Units)
Volume Used Space:         5.3 GB (5298814976 Bytes) (exactly 10349248 512-Byte-Units) (66.3%)
Volume Free Space:         2.7 GB (2697625600 Bytes) (exactly 5268800 512-Byte-Units) (33.7%)
Allocation Block Size:     32768 Bytes

Read-Only Media:           No
Read-Only Volume:          No

Device Location:           Internal
Removable Media:           Fixed

Solid State:               Yes
Hardware AES Support:      No

Apple provides instructions for installing Windows 10. See Install Windows on your Mac with Boot Camp These instructions provide a link to the Microsoft Windows 10 download site.

The October 2018 ISO (1809) has one file that exceeds the maximum file size for a FAT32 formatted partition. This can cause problems when the Boot Camp Assistant instructs a user to insert a USB flash drive which is FAT32 formatted.

Your Mac model is newer so you should not have this problem, since the OSXRESERVED partition is formatted ExFAT. For other users with old Macs, one possible solution, if problems occur, would be to use the April 2018 ISO (1803).

Is it possible to either:

A) resize the OSXRESERVED partition (taking some space from either the BOOTCAMP partition or the APFS container partition?)

It has been awhile since I ran the Boot Camp Assistant on a newer Mac. From what I remember, there was no way to stop the installation and customize the partitioning. You may be able customize by not using the Boot Camp Assistant. For the older Macs, the steps for installing were outlined in the question How to install Windows 10 into a 2013 iMac without using the Boot Camp Assistant, USB flash drive or third party tools? The answer is a bit outdated. I could update the answer if you post the output from diskutil list. I will admit that I am not sure if you would be better using the unattended install or not. In other words, I am not sure how exactly the OSXRESERVED partition is removed.
or B) tweak a 'OSXRESERVED partition size' setting in macOS that is used by Boot Camp Assistant and run it again?

There is nothing the the Boot Camp instructions for changing this partition size. The command defaults read com.apple.bootcampassistant does not show any useful defaults that could be changed.

Another problem to look out for is the use of the Windows Recovery Environment partition. In some cases, the partition is not allocated enough space. This can result in an empty partition. The files that would have ended up in this partition are being placed in the Windows partition.

After Windows is installed, you can verify the location of the Windows RE files by entering the command given below in an Administrator Command Prompt window.

reagents /info


How can I find all *old* Keynote presentations on my computer? I have some old Keynote presentations. When I try to open them with the latest Keynote (6.5.2 (2119)), I get the following warning:

This presentation can’t be opened because it’s too old.
To open it, save it with Keynote ’09 first.

I've managed to get Keynote '09 installed, and I can open with that, save, open with the current version, and save again.

It will be a pain to do this with all of my Keynote presentations, but it seems it has to be done if I want to be able to access them in the future. Or I should convert them to PDF so they are in a format with more long-term access options.

How do I find all of the Keynote presentations on my computer that are outdated? Is there an mdfind option that will allow me to find just the old versions?

A Smart Folder is probably the easiest way to find all your old Keynote files. To create one:

Open a Finder Window
Click "File" > "New Smart Folder"
In the search box, type "key" and then select "Keynote Document" from the dropdown
If you like, you can add a last modified filer by clicking the "+" sign under the search box.
If you want to save the Smart folder, click the "Save" button


Can't delete/merge my partitions on OSX Yesterday I tried to install Win10 through bootcamp, but it couldn't install it on the premade partition. Eager as I was i meddled with the partition scheme during the installer but with no result.

While in pain that I couldn't get my dual boot right, I wanted to reset the partition-table by using bootcamp, only it gave me this error:

  The startup disk must be formatted as a single Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume or already partitioned by Boot Camp Assistant for installing Windows.

I'm currently stuck using DiskUtils to delete the partitions and make my HDD whole again. But it won't work.

This is the output from diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE              IDENTIFIER
0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.3 GB   disk0
1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            401.4 GB   disk0s2
3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
4:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk0s4
5:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk0s5
6:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk0s6
7:                  Apple_HFS Backup                  96.7 GB    disk0s7
/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +401.0 GB   disk1
                             Logical Volume on disk0s2
                             F6E64063-7D4B-4D75-AAC5-C4D128919CD3
                             Unencrypted

My Mac model is MacBook Pro mid 2015.

The desired goal is to lose all partitions, including the "Backup" partition, which I can not seem to delete using the Disk Utility application. Eventually, I want to have a single Mac partition, which is required by the Boot Camp Assistant application to install a Windows 10.

Any advice?

Thanks

I would assume the same procedure would be followed as the answer posted to this question
"Merge Partitions with Disk Utility in El Capitan Gives operation Failed error".

In other words, the commands would be as shown below.

diskutil  erasevolume  "Free Space"  ""  /dev/disk0s7
diskutil  erasevolume  "Free Space"  ""  /dev/disk0s6
diskutil  erasevolume  "Free Space"  ""  /dev/disk0s5
diskutil  erasevolume  "Free Space"  ""  /dev/disk0s4
diskutil  cs  resizestack  F6E64063-7D4B-4D75-AAC5-C4D128919CD3  0

  Note: You need to keep partitions disk0s1, disk0s2 and disk0s3.

I would advise executing the command diskutil list after entering each of the above commands. If something unexpected happens, send me a comment.


Which command-line packages do you need? I generally have one of Fink, MacPorts, Homebrew installed. Most often for a single, small, and trivial package. I've found that all my day-to-day software exists in OS X versions.

So, which non-OS X unix software do you find is required, interesting, or otherwise always on your computer.

I'm looking to broaden my horizons. I have enough unix/linux experience to not be afraid, I just haven't found a good use-case yet.

For added clarity, I'm not looking for anything already installed with OS X. So, please, no ssh, vi, etc, unless you explain the reason you need a different version.

I frequently reinstall MacPorts (e.g., when there's a new major version of Xcode) so I keep a file with a list of my essential ports for easy reinstalling.

Here's my list of essential software that doesn't come with OS X.

arping
dnstracer
watch
wireshark
figlet
gnupg
ipcalc
lynx +ssl
minicom
mtr
ncftp
nmap
pstree
pwgen
p0f
sipcalc
ssldump
stunnel
tcpflow
unrar
w3m
wget
wordplay
fortune
cowsay
ack


Disk Utility First Aid Fails on Time Machine Disk I've been backing up my Mac with Time Machine on an external hard drive for several years. I recently plugged the external drive into my Mac, it spent a long time running fsck_hfs and finally showed this dialog:

Running disk utility gives a lot of Invalid extent entry messages along with the conclusion First Aid process has failed.

My intuition would be to copy the whole disk to a new drive. I have a vague recollection from learning about Time Machine several years ago that this would have to be block-wise in order to preserve the Time Machine backup (using dd or carbon copy cloner, right?). But presumably a block-wise copy of the drive would copy the extent errors as well?  So do I just have to give up and lose my entire Time Machine history at this point?

Time Machine makes extensive use of hard (as opposed to symbolic) links (for eg "this folder is the same as yesterday's backup").  See eg http://www.baligu.com/pondini/TM/Works.html.

I thought the issue with copying backup history was that many copy tools won't see the hard links, so you end up with multiple copies rather than links and run out of space, hence your recollections about doing a block level copy instead.

But now I look it up, apparently Finder can copy a Backups.backupdb folder correctly.  See eg http://www.baligu.com/pondini/TM/18.html (which is sadly a little out of date), and Apple's current documentation https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202380.

The message in your first screen shot says "You can still open or copy files on the disk, but you can't save changes to files on the disk". So perhaps you will be able to follow the instructions above to copy your Backups.backupdb folder (containing your backup history) to a different drive.


Can the Finder resume a file copy? I know about rsync and how to use it, but sometimes I just want to copy files using the Finder. However, if that fails, I have to do everything all over again, since the Finder does not seem to be able to resume a file copy action. Is there a way around this?

No, the Finder does what it does and that is do its best not to leave anything unfinished.  If it can't finish a copy it deletes the partials.

You could probably hack together a scriptlet that would let you drag and drop files onto it that would then rsync the file somewhere. You could even make it a folder action.  But it would be limited in where the files end up.


How can I get rid of the "move to applications" window? A few weeks ago I downloaded Brackets from the internet. Now whenever I turn on my computer, I see the following popup and nothing I have tried will make it go away. Can anyone explain what this is, why it pops up, and what I can do to get rid of it?

It's a mounted Disk Image [.dmg]
You should be able to right-click inside that window [over some empty space] & "Eject Brackets Release 1.14".
It should then not re-mount automatically. You can also simply discard the .dmg file once you've installed the app, by dragging to your Applications folder as indicated.
Any Application delivered by this method should be run only after copying to Applications & not from the mounted Disk Image itself. If it is running from the image, it will not let you eject.


What is the exact difference between 'tty' and a 'console'? I know the general idea of console, tty as here explains https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/4126/what-is-the-exact-difference-between-a-terminal-a-shell-a-tty-and-a-con

But when run who (using iTerm2) I got these and I don't understand the difference here. BTW, I open 2 tabs in iTerms

ws ➤ who
qiulang  console  Dec  5 17:47
qiulang  ttys002  Dec  5 17:48
qiulang  ttys004  Dec  6 10:41

The console is your physical computer and the various tty are virtual terminals.

Each tab or window of a terminal emulator like iTerm2.app or Terminal.app will connect to a different tty.  MacOS works the same as this quote from one of the answers on your linked question:

  So when you look to a "text window" on your linux system (under X11) you are looking to: a terminal emulator, connected to a virtual terminal, identified by a tty file, inside which runs a shell.

It is more clear what is happening if you run who with who -a (to show all details) and if you also use the tty command (which returns the current terminal).

An example

Here I rebooted at 13:20, left it on the FileVault password entry screen until 13:25 then opened a Terminal.app session at 13:29.

Last login: Fri Dec  6 13:25:54 on console
A1398% tty
/dev/ttys000
A1398%

You can see the last logon was 13:25:54 on console (when FileVault unlocked startup disk) and Terminal.app is running on /dev/ttys000.

Next at 13:30 opened a iTerm2.app session:

Last login: Fri Dec  6 13:29:06 on ttys000
A1398% tty
/dev/ttys001
A1398% who -a
reboot   ~        Dec  6 13:25   .           1
hali     console  Dec  6 13:25 00:04        97
hali     ttys000  Dec  6 13:29 00:01       577
hali     ttys001  Dec  6 13:30   .         600
   .       run-level 3
A1398%

You can see the last logon is shown to be 13:29:06 on ttys000 (when Terminal.app was opened) and iTerm2.app connected at 13:30 to /dev/ttys001.

who -a shows

console connecting at 13:25 (when password was entered and FileVault unlocked startup disk).
ttys000 connecting at 13:29 (when Terminal.app was opened).
ttys001 connecting at 13:30 (when this session of iTerm2 was opened).

If you boot into single user mode and type tty you will see the result /dev/console (who is not available)


Homebrew install package which then won't run I've installed homebrew and used it successfully for installing and using packages before. But when I installed a packaged called "shpotify" that can be used to control spotify from the command line, Homebrew installs it successfully, but then when I try to run it, I get an error "zsh: command not found: shpotify" Do you know what could be causing this?

Most probable answer:

The project is called shpotify.

The installed binary is called spotify

Use that as your command.


Bad idea to boot Tiger? Are there any possible ill consequences from booting my 2007 MacBook Pro (runs 10.8.3) into 10.4.11? According to Apple it's supported. I just want to run Diablo 2.

I found an old backup of my PowerBook G3 and if dd works right (asr strangely refuses to do it), I'll have a partition which can boot either machine, complete with a System Folder.

But I don't want this to affect or corrupt my real filesystem.

As long as you're not using FileVault it won't be a big problem.  If you are using FileVault or encrypted drives in Mountain Lion then Tiger won't be able to read them but even then it won't cause damage as long as you don't erase them when Tiger complains that they are unreadable.

Spotlight works differently in Mountain Lion so Tiger's spotlight and Mountain Lion's Spotlight will each have to reindex all your drives when you switch back and forth but that just takes time, it's not permanently damaging.

The riskiest part is trying to create a dual-boot disk.


iTunes and iPod Touch "Payment was declined" I recently bought a new iPod Touch 5 and made 3 purchases. The last app I purchased downloaded successfully onto my iPod but I never got an email receipt from the store. So I checked my purchase history and it says

  "We were unable to authorize your credit card for this purchase.
  Please update your billing info."

So I went to the "Billing Info" page and validated my PayPal account. Now it says

  "Your PayPal transaction was declined."

I tried adding a credit card as my payment option and I get:

  "Your credit card was declined. Please enter valid credit card information."

What should I do?

Thanks

It turned out that my bank was declining the purchases. Problem solved.


How do I change a calendar's color in iOS 4.2.1? This is very similar to this question however the only problem is that I'm running solely Windows OS on my PC.  I also only sync with google calendars and that's all.  However, it appears the sync doesn't match the calendar colors.  Is there anyway to synchronize or directly change colors on the iPod/iPhone?

A partial-workaround is suggested on this Google thread:

  There is a workaround that solved the problem for me.

  The iPhone assigns calendar colours in
  this order: red, orange, blue, green,
  purple (then repeats that cycle). So
  the first step is to switch off
  Exchange syncing for Calendars in the
  iPhone settings then go into the
  m.google.com/sync web app and just
  enable one of your calendars. Then
  re-enable Exchange syncing. Now you'd
  think it would colour that first one
  red and it may do in your case but for
  me it coloured the first calendar
  orange, possibly because I had some
  other local calendars already on the
  iPhone.

  If it colours your chosen calendar
  with a colour you were not expecting,
  just start again (disable
  Exchange/change sync settings and
  re-enable) and take whatever colour it
  chose as the starting point in that
  cycle above. Once you've got the first
  calendar/colour combination working as
  you like, go back into
  m.google.com/sync and select the
  calendar you want to go with the next
  colour in the cycle. Wait a few
  minutes. Check that it's showing up as
  expected in the calendar app. And then
  go back to m.google.com/sync and
  repeat. If you take this one calendar
  at a time approach, you can assign
  colours as you want them, except of
  course you will face problems if you
  have say three green calendars and no
  purple ones...


MacBook Pro 2015 13" vs MacBook Air 2019 for Final Cut Pro X I've been thinking about a switch from my current 2015 MacBook Pro to the 2019 MacBook Air. I use Apple's Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X very consistently, so having a smooth workflow on these apps is a must.

Current specs:
- 2.9 GHz Intel Core i5
- 8 GB Ram

Potential upgrade specs:
- 1.6 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i5
- 8 GM Ram

My current computer also has some issues with the screen and some of the screws on the bottom plate, which is why I've considered a switch. Do you think upgrading to the 2019 Air could suit my needs?

Generally speaking, a MacBook Air is not the best system for heavy users of CPU-bound applications like Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X. The primary reason for this is that the thinner chassis has less efficient cooling than a larger machine like a MacBook Pro, resulting in the CPU being more likely to throttle down to lower speeds more quickly when it gets hot.

If you can afford it, a better upgrade for your use case may be a 13" MacBook Pro but be aware that a refreshed model is rumoured to be being released this year, with an upgraded keyboard (the same keyboard as in the 2019 MacBook Pro 16" and 2020 MacBook Air).


What is iPhone 6 Plus 128GB 1080p 30fps Maximum Video Time Length? What is iPhone 6 Plus 128GB 1080p 30fps Maximum Video Time Length?

Is it "Available Storage Space," or is there already a fixed time limit? Digital Still Cameras are generally restricted to 29 minutes because of tariff restrictions (vs. being categorized as a video camera). Will iPhone 6 Plus do the full 29 minutes, or longer, or is there a shorter technical time limit?

I believe limit is only storage space and power.

For sure there is no 30 min limit on duration since last time I did 55min video without any interruptions.

And since bitrate of the video is variable depending on the scene there is no fixed time limit per GB either.


Where can I go to make enhancement/feature requests for OSX Lion? Don't get me wrong, I like Lion, though I do miss many things from Snow Leopard and wish to express this to the OSX team via some sort of suggestion forum.

I'm visually impaired and the OS is seemingly becoming more and more visual.

One thing that seems to be missing which I can barely live without is the CTRL+WHEEL to zoom in/out, the options seem to be there but don't work, or somehow work differently than they used to?

Here's the official Feedback form for OS X.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

The general feedback pages do get to the marketing and engineering people as well as measuring user satisfaction, but you also can sign up for a free developer account and file bugs more directly with the engineering team. It's best to reserve this for real bugs, but it's also appropriate to make usability / functional requests there too.

http://bugreporter.apple.com

Your issue where you can repeatably break a known function is clearly a bug and might get resolved much faster through the bug channel. You can upload specifics of your hardware and steps to reproduce and honest bugs get resolved quite efficiently through this channel.


macOS Won't Show WiFi Login Page When connecting to hotel WiFi, the WiFi login page doesn't appear on macOS. When trying to go to a standard webpage I get an error about my network connection.

After reading a lot of documentation and articles online some common suggestions include:

Navigating to http://neverssl.com or http://captive.apple.com in a web browser to see if a non-SSL site will trigger the login page to appear
Try navigating to the router IP address (listed in System Preferences) in a web browser. This did redirect me to a different site, but that page had the same error as everything else.
Flushing the DNS cache
Restarting my computer
Ensuring that there are no custom DNS Server addresses
And more

None of these solutions triggered the login page, and none helped me establish a connection to the internet.

What is strange is going into recovery mode (the mode where you can reinstall macOS), and going into the Safari browser there shows the WiFi login page perfectly. But I don't want to stay in recovery mode forever, I want this to work in my normal system.

On macOS Catalina (10.15.1), the solution for me was to manually open the /System/Library/CoreServices/Captive Network Assistant.app application in the Finder, which will trigger the standard application for displaying the WiFi login portal.

You might still need to follow the suggestions listed above in order for this to be successful (since I had completed them prior to attempting this solution).

I found this solution from a blog post that has a more in depth solution for automatically triggering this process automatically until Apple releases a fix. But since it's not that difficult to manually open the /System/Library/CoreServices/Captive Network Assistant.app application I decided not to go through the entire workaround process.

Edit: it's important to note that not all networks will require this solution. In some cases just navigating to a non SSL site (examples provided in original question), will work just fine and show the login page. But if you get an error message about not being connected to the internet, this is a good thing to try.


keeping python 3 up to date on a mac I want Python 3 (and I do not want to mess with OS X provided python).  According to:

https://docs.python.org/3/using/mac.html

I can get Python 3 and live long and prosper, BUT it is not clear what happens when I want to upgrade using the next DMG.  As an example I can tell you what happens with R on OS X: you get a GUI in /Application and stuff in /Library/Frameworks.  On upgrade the GUI is upgraded and the new framework is placed in the /Library/Frameworks directory, side by side with the old (there is a nice ‘current’ symlink that makes sure that the old stuff is ignored).  I always delete the old stuff to avoid accumulating crud, and that’s it.  Would this approach work for Phyton?

I personally use Homebrew, which is a very nice package manager.
If you want to give this a try, first of all make sure you have the XCode Command Line Tools installed on your Mac.
Then install Homebrew by typing

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

in the Terminal.
Homebrew will place its "Cellar" (the set of all the packages you installed with Homebrew) in /usr/local/Cellar.

Now, about Python 3, once Homebrew is installed simply type

brew install python3

and there we go. You have Python3 installed on your Mac.

Notes:

this version will automatically take place instead of the OS X version (if it doesn't, just run brew link python3 - this will symlink python3 into /usr/local/bin/)
to update python run brew update in the Terminal (this will update Homebrew) and then brew upgrade python3 if a new version of python3 is found by the command brew update
at the end you can run brew cleanup python3 to remove every old version
with this fancy package manager, you can also take care of R


AppleShowAllFiles Command not working in Mavericks OS X 10.9 I have looked everywhere, but the command
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder
and all variations thereof does not work since I upgraded to Mavericks. Why is this?? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. All advice for 10.8 does not seem to carry over to this new OS

It worked for me in 10.9. You should be using -bool TRUE (not just TRUE), although it worked for me either way. Also, are you running it as two commands (killall Finder is a second command)? The only other thing I can think of is that cfprefsd might have the old setting (or lack therof) cached, so you may have to shut it down it first. If I understand the setup right, that shouldn't be necessary, but just in case:

killall cfprefsd
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool TRUE
killall Finder


Apple TV 3rd generation I bought an Apple TV but the remote didn’t come with it (used). I was told I could just use the Apple TV remote app on my phone. So I powered up Apple TV , connected it to router with Ethernet cable so it's on the same network as my iPhone. On the Apple TV remote app - it connects but wants a 4 digit code to be entered on the Apple TV. I can't do that with no remote and the Apple remote app gives no other options!!! How do I enter that code without the actual remote?

Yes, there is a way out of this conundrum, assuming you have a bluetooth keyboard? It doesn't have to be an Apple bluetooth keyboard, any bluetooth keyboard should work.

Follow these steps:

Disconnect the keyboard from the device it's currently being used with and switch it off
Switch on the Apple TV
Switch on the keyboard
Your Apple TV should recognise the keyboard and prompt you with a code
Enter the code using the keyboard
Once the keyboard is paired, you can use it to navigate through the Settings and add your Apple Remote app
Once connected and everything is okay, switch off your keyboard and reconnect it to its original device

Let me know if you run into any problems.


install Linux on iMac G5 Is there a Linux distribution, that runs on an old iMac G5 with a PowerPC processor? I would like to use the old iMac as computer for my mother, she would only need an up-to-date browser running, nothing more.

I found MintPPC, based on the Debian "testing" branch. Would that work?

I am installing mintPPC right now with this installation instruction. It seems to work fine.

Debian is probably your best choice. The problem is that the Flash Player situation would be worse on Linux than on Mac OS X. There is no official Flash Player for Linux PPC. There are some alternatives, though, described in this article. This page has an extremely detailed guide on installing Debian for PowerPC. Also, this page describes which macs are compatible with Debian PPC. Oh, and yes, MintPPC would work.


System Preferences Badge remains after upgrade to macOS 10.15 Catalina Just upgraded my MacBook Pro to macOS 10.15.4 (Catalina) from macOS 10.14.6. Everything went well AFAICT, except a badge remains on the System Preferences Dock icon. I go into the Software Update preference pane and it says everything is up to date. I tried

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences AttentionPrefBundleIDs 0; killall Dock

but the badge returns if I click on the Software Update pane. How do I get rid of this, now that everything is updated? (Or is everything not really updated?)

The 10.15.5. update recently came available, so I installed that. The badge has now gone away. Looks like a Catalina update got things reset internally.


Is undoing Yosemite's CoreStorage conversion dangerous? I tried to make an 8 GB partition on my hard drive so I could make it into a bootable drive, like Recovery HD but without the need to redownload the OS, but for some reason Disk Utility wouldn't let me make a partition smaller than around 40ish GB. After some trial and error in an effort to make a partition of no more than 8 GB, I wound up with quite a bit of unused free space.

I entered a bootable USB drive, prepared to wipe my HD into one volume and restore everything from a backup, but then I encountered this method for reclaiming free space that had me revert my HD back to its non-CoreStorage state. It worked perfectly to reclaim the free space and enable me to specify a disk partition size, but it seems too good to be true. (As in, I wasn't expecting it to be this easy so now I'm scared.)

My question: Is there an important reason why Yosemite always converts hard drives to CS volumes, such that undoing the conversion could come back to haunt me in the future? If so, how do I go back to CS?

There are no obvious reasons to convert parts of the main drive(s) to a CoreStorage scheme - except for Fusion drives and FileVault 2 encryption - until now.

To convert your classical to a CoreStorage scheme boot to Internet Recovery Mode, Recovery Mode or an external bootable (thumb) drive, open Utilities/Terminal in the menubar and enter:

diskutil list to get the Disk Identifier of the partition to convert (usually it's disk0s2).

Then enter:

diskutil cs convert DiskIdentifier with the DiskIdentifier found in the step above.

The conversion will take some seconds ( SSD) or up to minutes (HDD).

After the conversion is finished, quit Terminal, open Disk Utility and check the result for errors. Then restart to your main volume and continue enjoying your Mac.


What program can print source code well on OS X? I am looking for an OS X application to nicely format and print source code from a variety of programming languages.

Line numbers would be nice
Constant width font
Printing the contents of the clipboard would be a real plus

Does something like this exist (besides the obvious programmers' editors), free or reasonably priced?

You will find a nice answer over at sister site superuser. It involves a terminal program called enscript which comes with lot's of options and I know at least of one support file for extending its capabilities to print Ruby code.

EDIT:

I just noticed the "clipboard" part of the question. The clipboard content can be accessed from the command line and fed to enscript using pbpaste as mentioned in Matteo answer.


10.15 Catalina - Not showing Sync Mark on Finder As you can see in the screenshot, the files that are synced is not showing an icon indicating whether synced or not. It used to show different icons when syncing, and sync complete.

I believe it is set properly to show the icon.

Below is a screenshot from the setting page of Backup And Sync, the app that I am using to sync these files.

I have solved this particular problem by unticking "Show file sync status icons and right click menu" and reticking it. Open another Finder.


What can developers see in my address book? When Facebook or other developers ask for access to your address book, what content can they see?

For example, is this only limited to names and email addresses and phone numbers or does this include everything including notes, anniversary dates, birthdays, etc.?

It can access everything that's displayed in the Address book.

More about that can be found in the documentation.


2013 macbook retina has extremely short battery life I've recently bought the new macbook pro 13" retina (2013) this November and noticed that it has extremely short battery life compared to my old macbook pro 13" (2010).

On a full charge, my new macbook has about 4H whereas my old one after three years of use still hovered close to 6H, and over 10H when new. Has anyone else been having this problem?

*** update

Here is another snapshot 7 minutes later. I've only been using chrome to do light browsing. notice that the battery life has gone down by 34 minutes...

The picture you post might not indicate any problem whatsoever with the hardware. However, the tools and steps to determine if this is hardware or software are quite easy and powerful.

Since the Mac is new, you would be free to use internet or in-person support to ask Apple to help determine if the battery is sound and the software installed properly. You can also check System Information (spotlight will locate it) and check the power settings. If the health isn't Normal initiate hardware service with Apple as software alone won't remedy the low battery life.

To determine if software is the cause, I would do this as follows:

Back up your files or the entire drive. It could be hardware and why risk losing anything - whether during troubleshooting or if the Mac fails completely.
Make a new user account as administrator
Disable automatic log in
Shut down your Mac
Plug in power and wait for the LED to turn green and disconnect from power
Start the Mac and log into your newly created empty admin account

It won't have any saved state, nothing extra running except perhaps any software you have that starts at boot (instead of when your normal account logs in). Run Activity Monitor for 20 minutes and nothing else. Also, document the power in System Information -> Power:

You care about documenting the overall settings and these settings over time as the Mac runs:

  Charge Information:
    Charge Remaining (mAh):     5975
    Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 6432
  Amperage (mA):               -1101
  Voltage (mV):                12096

Open Activity Monitor and go to the Energy tab. Not all the programs listed are running as things from the last 8 hours of non-sleep time are displayed, but you can sort on Energy Impact to show running processes.

In the next 20 minutes where you don't do anything on the Mac except wait for the battery to go down a bit, watch for apps that are using non-zero energy. In general, apps that support App nap and sudden termination will let the OS be most frugal with power when the app isn't busy with work.

After 20 minutes, you should have a good reading on the estimated run time with no load as well as a baseline for what apps are using power before you start loading your menu bar extras, chrome. You can use the Activity Monitor to watch and determine whether your battery can run for 8+ hours idle (it should) and if programs you don't want are causing the CPU and GPU to drain that 8 hour allotment in half the time. Since all shipping MacBook are capable of draining their batteries in 3 hours if the CPU and GPU are loaded 100% - you'll have to determine your energy usage by using Activity Monitor or getting Apple to assist you in testing the battery.

They do have diagnostic tools that can read the power logs and battery information and summarize things more rapidly, so if none of this makes sense you can always get a new Mac checked during the warranty period for proper battery function for free.

This turned out to be longer than I hoped, but my guess is you will find a good battery and that the "light browsing" in chrome is actually one or two tabs that take continual CPU time as well as a few other background tasks that run constantly and prevent the energy savings that depend on App Nap and CPU sleeping for un-noticed to us, but significant portions of the time.


reducing dimension of an icon with Preview I had an png icon file of dimension 40*40 with a size of 2 KB. I adjust its dimensions with Preview app to get 25*25. I got the icon file converted to 25*25, but now its size is 3 KB. Why? As we reduce dimension, the size must get reduce. But it is not happening?

There are multiple algorithm to optimize the size of PNG files.
Preview is known to not be not optimal on that point.

If you want to optimize the size of your PNG, there are multiple tools available on the web.

Just by randomly searching on google :

https://pngquant.org/
https://imageoptim.com/
http://www.gingerbeardman.com/pngenie/


How can I login to icloud.com from my iPhone? I was reading the following answer which tells you how to enable shared Reminder lists:

Is it possible to share reminders?

However, at the moment, the only way I can get to icloud.com is from my iPhone (site is blocked at my work).

When you go to icloud.com from your iPhone it doesn't let you login and see the actual site features, it only links to information on how to setup iCloud (and Find my iPhone / Find my friends)

Any ideas how to get full icloud.com functionality from the iPhone?

This is not possible, nor was it possible with Mobile Me.  Particularly irritating when a number of people share an iPad and don't want to enable full email for each other for example.  I'm afraid there is no way around it, unless perhaps you can download a different browser from the App Store that will enable you to change your user agent string to trick the website into thinking you are using Firefox or something that isn't mobile safari.


How to preview location of image on Albums on iPad? I am able to see image's location on Photos tab on iPad, but how to preview the same in Albums tag using iOS 8 Photos app?

I use the View Exif app to extend the Photos app to have geo mapping visuals. It shows all the exif information I've ever needed so I'm quite happy with the value.

I'm interested if there's another way, but this works great for me.


How can I see app reviews in itunesconnect from all store fronts? Itunesconnect says my app has "6 reviews" (woohoo!), but I can't see them. It says "No reviews for this store front". I assume (after some googling) that the store front is associated with country. I tried changing from United States in the dropdown at the top, but United States is the only choice.  I'd like to see all reviews regardless of store front/language. Is this possible?

I think it just mean you have 6 people rated your app but no one has written any reviews. But I don't think it is possible to see reviews from all regions.

It could also be possible that review takes time to show up. source

  Your review might need to be approved before it's published, so it might not appear immediately.


How can I tell when HD Voice is being used in a phone call? The iPhone 5 supports a wideband audio protocol for phone calls dubbed HD Voice that is supposed to improve the clarity of phone calls when it's used. Not all providers support it, but I've verified that my provider, Telus, does.

How can I tell when HD Voice is in use during a call? Is there a visual indicator in the phone app?

As far as i know, iPhone5 dont have HD voice indicator, i realised this when calling my dad with his Z10, he said there is HD Voice title on his Z10 answer button but there is no particular hd voice symbol or what so ever on my i5. Well, the voice quality with hd voice is just so clear and different, you should know whether hd voice is on or not just by voice quality.


Is Other World Computing's 1.5TB Toshiba Aquarius laptop hard drive legit? I have pretty high storage needs, which are constantly increasing. Fortunately, the largest drives available seem to be scaling with the amount of space I can occupy. The 1TB disk I currently have sitting in the Superdrive bay of my 15" Macbook Pro (Mid 2010) is making me nervous with its loud seeking. I'm going to replace it for sure, but it seems as though laptop disks above 1TB are not yet readily available (besides the 15mm tall form factor, which is no good for MBPs). I noticed that Other World Computing is selling this drive, Toshiba part no. MQ01ABD150, but I can't seem to find any info outside of OWC. I know they carry some specialist products not always readily available elsewhere, but am I right to be skeptical of this drive? Anyone know anything about it, i.e. whether it will truly fit a 15" unibody MBP?

Update

An OWC representative said that the drive would actually be too big to fit a MBP, in either bay.  So the wait for a larger-than-1TB laptop drive continues.

Other World Computing is a very reputable Apple specialist and I don't doubt that the Toshiba drive is compatible. If they list your particular Macbook Pro in the compatibility list, then it surely should fit. And the description mentions 12.5mm height which also confirms it should work.

And a quick Google search on the Toshiba part # MQ01ABD150 yields several results on other availabilities of that drive, albeit more limited than many smaller capacities.

It's worth noting that it is a 5400rpm drive and not 7200rpm, which you would be even less likely to find, if 7200rpm drives at that capacity even exist in the notebook compatible (12.5mm height or less) variety yet.


Turn on dark mode at a certain time After upgrading to macOS Mojave, I was wondering if there is a setting which would automatically turn on Dark Mode at a certain time of day?

I only found the setting to turn it on and off manually.

In case someone is interested in an answer that doesn't require you to install anything but does require you to touch code just a little... Here you go....

How to toggle dark mode with Applescript:

tell application "System Events"
    tell appearance preferences
        set dark mode to not dark mode
    end tell
end tell

How to turn ON dark mode with Applescript:

tell application "System Events"
    tell appearance preferences
        set dark mode to true
    end tell
end tell

How to turn OFF dark mode with Applescript:

tell application "System Events"
    tell appearance preferences
        set dark mode to false
    end tell
end tell

There are pretty robust applications out there that can run scripts or actions at a specific time, but these applications are mostly fairly extensive and expensive. I did want to mention one because it allows you to do more than just toggle the dark mode: Keyboard Maestro - It's sort of like Automator, but better. Don't let the outdated look fool you.

I would use  launchd, because it doesn't require you to install anything. It does require you to touch a little bit of code, but nothing major.

How to trigger Applescript at a specific time with Launchd property list file (plist):

You need to make a new .plist file in ~/Library/LaunchAgents (~ represents your user folder)

If you want to make it run for all users, put it in /Library/LaunchAgents (Macintosh HD).
This .plist is just a text file that you can edit in any text editor and save as text with the extensions .plist.
You likely have existing files in those folders that you can duplicate to create your own. If you open an existing .plist file with TextEdit.app, you won't accidentally save it as a .rtf file or something.

Copy & paste this in the .plist file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
  <dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.time.trigger.darkmode</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/usr/bin/osascript</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <string>osascript</string>
      <string>/Users/joonaspaakko/Desktop/toggle-darkmode.scpt</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <array>
      <dict>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>21</integer>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>20</integer>
      </dict>
    </array>
  </dict>
</plist>

The line below <string>osascript</string> points to the Applescript .scpt file that should be triggered. You will change this in step 3 after creating a script file.
The array below <key>StartCalendarInterval</key> that says Hour and Minute is where you set the time. Current set time is H 21 M 20 = 9:20pm

These steps are maybe a little backwards since I already have the script location set in the .plist but let's create the .scpt file next.

Run Script Editor application /Applications/Utilities/Script Editor.app.

Paste in whichever Applescript you wish to use (At the top of the answer in case you forgot)
You can test run the Applescripts in this application by pressing the play button.
Save as Script file. If you're just using the script yourself, save it somewhere under your home directory. If you're setting this up for all accounts you'll need to store it in a location everyone can access, such as /Library/Scripts.
Return to your .plist file from step 2, and change the line below <string>osascript</string> to point at your new Applescript (.scpt file).

When both files are created, an important step is to log out (or restart) because these launch agents start running in the background on launch.

If you want to stop it from running, you can move the .plist from the folder or just delete it.


Create bootable USB of Windows 8.1 on Mavericks 10.9.4 I've followed the instructions to enable the "Create windows 7 install Disk" in bootcamp but I am attempting to install Windows 8.1.  How do I force bootcamp to allow me to create a windows 7 or later install disk?

You have to have a version of Bootcamp AND Mac that explicitly supports Windows 8.1. Apple has a knowledge-base article that shows what O/S and Mac supports what version of Windows:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5634

Unfortunately there are some Mac models that just won't support certain versions of Windows. Interestingly (or oddly..) enough the new MacPro and most (many?) of the new Macs only support windows 8.


How to change 24hr Time format Is it possible to make the clock to show 0900 instead of 9:00 for 9AM? I’ve already tried changing the format under System Preferences → Language & Region → Advanced… but the setting doesn’t save.

It cannot be done.

It looks like you can, but in fact it doesn't affect the menu bar clock.

System Prefs > Language & Region > Advanced... > Times

Changing the format in here, you'd expect it to affect the menu bar clock... but in fact it affects timestamps shown in Finder windows only.

There is no equivalent Advanced mode in Date & Time


What are all these large files and can I get rid of any of them? I constantly am told that I am running out of disk space, even though I almost have no applications (outside of the ones that come with the laptop).

I have Xcode which is about ~10GB, but that is it and it says I am running out of disk space.

I did a search on All My Files and sorted by size and I see the following...

What are all of these? Are they needed or is their a way for me to get some disk space back?

Obviously you have or had an Android SDK installed. These images in the SDK are used to test different android versions on the emulator. Simply right-click one of the file and choose "Show Enclosing Folder" and you will see to where they belong or what they exactly are.

If the Android SDK is still installed, you should be able to deal with them using the SDK Manager.


Image Capture "Delete After Import" Disappeared There used to be a checkbox when I import pictures from my camera that said "delete after import" or something like that. It's not there anymore. Any ideas?

If Image Capture detects that the device uses iCloud Photo Library, it disables 'delete after import'.

You can tell when the program starts the option shows, then a split second later, when the iCloud icon shows up next to the device, the 'delete after import' option is gone.

Here are some work-arounds:

On your device, go to Settings > iCloud > Photos > and then turn off iCloud Photo Library. This of course has larger repercussions (photos are no longer saved in the cloud).

In Image Capture, with your device connected, select all the photos you want to delete and then ⌘-Delete


Can a file be copied to one hard drive in a RAID 1 mirror set (software RAID), and later have the 2 drives sync up? I think I read that we can set up a RAID 1 mirror set (software RAID) using OS X Mountain Lion using Disk Utilities, and later plug in one drive and copy a file to that drive, and later on, plug both drives in, and the two drives will sync up automatically?

But I just set that up (using 2 brand new drives), and then Eject the RAID set, and now unplug both drives, and plug only one back in, and the drive won't show in Finder, until I use Disk Utilities to examine the drives, then the drive will show up in Finder.  And then I copied one file to the drive, and plug in the other drive.  And then this second drive blinked for 10 seconds, and I thought they sync'ed up.

However, when I Eject both drives and then plug back the second drive alone and invoke Disk Utilities and look at the drives and then go to Finder to see the files, that new file is not there.  And if I plug both drives in and restart the machine, and invoke Disk Utilities, the 2nd drive show up as "Failed", and the RAID set show up as "Degraded".

So is there a way to copy files only to 1 drive and let them sync up later?  Sometimes, my Macbook Air may have only 1 open USB port, so I can't plug both drives in.  (when I don't have any USB hub).

(I later on tried using "Rebuild" in Disk Utilities, but it took a few minutes and was rebuilding the drive and later on reported that the remaining time is 4 hours.  The first drive only have 5GB or content, and the 2nd drive only has 3.5GB -- only 1 file which is 1.5 GB is missing).

You're thinking of RAID-1 in the wrong way. RAID-1 is not an architecture intended to happily use a single surviving drive within a raid-1 group, and work out mirroring content later. Ultimately it will do that, but that is considered a recovery operation from a failed state, and it will destructively overwrite the mirror drive after replacement. In RAID-1, the two drives are expected to be both online and available all the time, as transactions will be committed to both. A loss of one drive will not stop the system from operating, but that is considered a failure mode, and as you've seen it will operate in a degraded state.

The expected user operation at that point is to replace the failed drive, at which point the RAID software will make a block-for-block copy from the surviving drive onto the new drive, a process sometimes referred to as resilvering. It doesn't look at files within the filesystem. This can be a resource intensive process, and as you note, can take hours. This is expected behavior.

If you want something that will enforce eventual consistency in drive contents, use something like Rsync. There's an app to help set it up. http://arrsync.sourceforge.net


Mark email as read if it is moved to trash On my iphone 5, I often delete emails without opening them. When I then work on my Macbook, these emails are marked as unread in the Mail app and, as a result of that, the Mail symbol in the Dock shows a notification. This behavior is confusing. Is there a way to mark an email as read upon moving it to trash? These emails come from different senders, so I cannot create a rule in the Mail app.

One solution could be as follows:

In Macbook, create an Apple script that uploads new emails and marks emails in a given folder as read:

tell application "Mail"
check for new mail
set read status of messages of mailbox "Deleted Items" of account "XXX" to true
end tell

Note that emails that are deleted on iphone do not end up in the Trash but Deleted Items folder in the Mail app on Macbook.

Using the inbuilt Automator on Macbook, create and store an .app that executes the above script.
Use freeware ControlPlane to run the above app upon each log-in. I allowed for a time lag of 10 seconds for the Macbook to establish Internet connection before the app is executed.


Is there an iOS4 app that when clicked will perform the same function as Settings->Airplaine Mode on/off? I have issues with my iPod Touch 4G where it disconnects from the access point for no apparent reason, and I need to go into the settings app and toggle the airplane mode to get the wifi working again.

Is there an app that I could run to automatically turn the wifi off and then turn it on again so that I don't have to waste so much time opening the settings and toggling airplane mode?  I haven't been able to find one in the appstore.

Not without a jailbreak.  If you get a jailbreak there are various ways to do things such as switch airplane mode on/off, adjust screen brightness, turn wifi/3G on or off.  The app SBSettings is one such example.  You'd be better off diagnosing your AP problem than jailbreaking your phone for just this feature though in my opinion.


How can I take a screenshot while holding down the control key? I'd like to screenshot a drag operation on OSX (I'm using Mavericks). Specifically, I need to do the following:

Hold down the control key
Begin the drag
Take a screenshot
release the mouse button and control keys

The problem is, the various screen capture key combos (Command ⌘+Shift ⇧+3, etc) don't seem to trigger while the control key is held down. Is there any way around this?

Open Terminal and type the command below. From there you have 10 seconds before the screenshot is taken (you can do whatever you want or hold any keys you want in that time).

Afterwards, you can find the screenshot in the directory you executed the command.

screencapture -T 10 screenshot.jpg


Package command line tools into an automator script or app? I'd like to know if there's a way I could package compiled command line tools together as part of an automator script or an app.

Let's say, for example, I want to use a command line tool called foo and this relies on jpeglib and a few other libs. Am I able to put them in the same folder and somehow pipe this new $PATH to the foo app?

The reason I want to do this is that a client requires something that I usually use a bash script for. In order for them to do the same thing they'd need to installed XCode (to get the gcc compiler) and install the command line tools (through macports, fink, etc...) and of course that's hassle.

All macs have several shells available (GNU bash 3.2.48 ships with the latest Snow Leopard) including zsh, sh, bash, csh and ksh. You can safely embed one or more shell scripts without fear that other macs won't have the tools to run your program.

The simplest thing to do would be to just embed a functioning shell script in an AppleScript or Automator workflow. Both handle piping arguments or file paths to stdin/stdout so you can interact with the script if desired.

The site Mac OS X Automation has some great tutorials to get you started if this makes sense to solve your issue.

Also, if you are looking for a tool to package your bash script and an automator/applescript document in one nice unit - the package maker application is available for free as part of the iPhone Configuration utility. It's more work, but will make any mac user more comfortable installing your tool.

For an open source option that is amazing - try Platypus - http://sveinbjorn.org/platypus/


Difference between network service disabled, inactive and interface down There are (at least) four difference ways for me to disable my Wi-Fi on my Mac:

Click on the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar and select "Turn Wi-Fi Off"
System Preferences->Network, select Wi-Fi, click Cog, select Make Service Inactive
sudo ifconfig en0 down
networksetup -setnetworkserviceenabled Wi-Fi off

The first two are equivalent, i.e. they change the same setting.

What I'd like to understand is, at a low level, what are the fundamental differences between 1, 3 and 4?

Turning the wifi off through the Menu Bar is equivalent to:

networksetup -setairportpower en0 off

... and so, the same as turning it off in network settings.

I cannot speak to the low levels, but networksetup is an Apple addition, whereas ifconfig is standard not just for BSD, but for Linux as well. (Though the two utilties are ultimately distinct, not just in their implementation but API)

If I had to guess, and I will guess since Apple's internals aren't exactly transparent (please, someone correct me if you're able), networksetup is meant to control the actual hardware, the Wi-Fi device, whereas ifconfig is a purely OS-level utility. Much like you can quit your video-chat app, vs put a piece of tape over the camera.

A few things I can verify:

To function, both the interface, say, en0, must be UP (so, ifconfig en0 up), as well as airportpower being ON (so, networksetup -setairportpower en0 on).
Both downing an iface, and turning airportpower off, will render the Menu Bar symbol as a hollow outline.
BUT, if both DOWN/off, if you bring airportpower on, if ifconfig ... up has not been run after running ifconfig ... down, then the symbol will not be hollow, and macOS will scan frantically for networks, but be unable to: (1) connect to a network (2) bring UP the iface0 (3) change the routing table

So, that wifi symbol seems to be the result of a state-change, not actual state. In that, the actual state of whether or not Wi-Fi is being shown as able to connect isn't connected to the visual indicator. But the interface, even when DOWN, does seem to somehow scan in a way, in that if you turn back on the airportpower, the "status:" given by ifconfig will swap rapidly back & forth between active and inactive, even if the actual interface is not UP.

So, there is inconsistency. But it's that way because there would be no reason to turn the second one off after doing so the first. And because Apple's desires & ideal API differ from those of BSD.


Easy way to toggle some settings on iPhone If you jailbreak iOS, there is an app that gives you quick access to toggle settings such as wifi, 3g, data, location... by just swiping the top bar.

Is there a similar solution without jailbreaking? an app or a setting?

I have iPhone 4S, iOS5

Yes if you run iOS 5.0 and not upgrading to iOS 5.1.

For the majority of us, this means no since OS older than 5.0 don't have this and it was disabled at 5.1 and later. Who knows what the future may bring...

For historical purposes, here is how this worked on 5.0:

Apple apparently has silently added URL shortcuts for these sort of quick functions to iOS 5.0. Jeff Broderick (blog at http://brdrck.me/ ) has assembled a nice dashboard of these shortcuts with gorgeous icons to save the web clips to the home screen of your iOS device.

Simply browse your iOS device to http://brdrck.me/settings/ and pick from the many web clips that he has assembled. These are basically the same as taking a web site in the iPhone configuration utility and adding it to your home screen with a nice icon.

This could be something that was meant for testing or will get pulled according to some rumors about the latest 5.1 beta - but there's no way to know what will happen other than waiting until official documentation comes out or this change gets pulled / disabled.


Can I delete /Library/SystemMigration Can I delete /Library/SystemMigration after my upgrade to 10.11. I think, there is nothing, that I want to save.

You can delete this folder.

This directory is a backup of shared caches (relevant to application launches) of the old system.

I saved ~ 600 MB from this.


Can I make a custom keyboard shortcut available to all users? I've created a keyboard shortcut but it only works for my current user, we have 3 users on our Mac (OS X 10.8.3) but if I set up a short cut, I have to then set the same one up for our other 2 users.

Is there a way to make it universal?

Typically when you adjust a Keyboard Shortcut, the file(s) that are actually effected are in ~/Library/Preferences/ . If you take those same files to /Library (Not the User Library) they should be accessible to All Users.

Examples might be

com.apple.systempreferences.plist

com.apple.symbolichotkeys.plist


Remap arrow key to different shortcut I am used to vim and like to move with H, J, K, L. I would like to avoid switching to the arrow keys when I am in a text field for example.

Is there a way to remap the following keys in all application on Mac OS X, so that:

← can also be triggered by OPTION H

↓ can also be triggered by OPTION J

↑ can also be triggered by OPTION K

→ can also be triggered by OPTION L

You can use Karabiner to remap keys.

  A powerful and stable keyboard customizer for OS X.

This page details how to add custom behaviors.


The SIM card inserted in this iPhone does not appear to be supported I received following message after I restored my iPhone OS to 4.2: The SIM card inserted in this iPhone does not appear to be supported. How can I use my SIM?

Depending on your carrier, some SIM batches are known to be problematic (Bell is a good example). Outside of that, the most obvious is if the iPhone was jailbroken and unlocked, the restore would remove the modification and return it to proper function. If everything should be working legitimately, you can take it to an Apple Store and they can look up which carrier the unit is locked to (if any).


New screenshots/files not visible in Finder in Catalina, well visible when using a file manager like Nimble Commander Pro I've set the permissions to the 'screenshots' folder 'read & write' for all users in the list.  The screenshot app is added to have full rights on the drive in the settings...  I don't understand why I can't see the new screenshots via Finder but via any file manager, is not an issue.  Is there someone that can plz let me know what I'm doing wrong?  I'm Catalina since a few hours only, and this really works on my nerves... :-(. I noticed that I can't see newly added or created files either in the Finder!  If you ask me, this is not really an improvement!

The problem is solved after performing the macOS 10.15.1 update.

Seems it's not solved at all!
It happens once a while, with no reasons and when this happens, only a reboot helps!


Why is the IP address to my MacBook Pro being zapped by another computer? This started two days ago and I can't decide if my MacBook is at fault, my router is at fault, or I have a hacker. My MBP will throw an error saying the IP address I've been using has been assigned to another machine and blah blah blah reset the router or contact my local admin. (Which is me; this is our home system.) I'll renew the DHCP license and the error immediately comes up again. Also happens if I am HARDWIRED to the router itself. (So if wi-if is on I get two errors simultaneously.) I tried changing my MAC address to something else, thinking it was a possibility the MAC address was being spoofed, but the problem continues. I have a linksys router and a cable modem.

We have three iPhone 4s's, two iPad 2's, and a Windows laptop or two (depending on whether he brings his work laptop home. We also have a few roku devices and two IP cameras (monitors for the kids' rooms). Oh, and the printer. I can see everything assigned to the router in the DHCP tables and never see the assignment of the old IP to another machine.  I tried pulling out an older linksys router and the behavior has not changed. Security is WPA2 with a 16-char string that I have not yet changed. (My weak point; it's a pain to update those cameras.)

Any ideas? I'm not opposed to getting a new router if that's what it takes; I was prepping to do that later this morning anyway when stores open. But I'm afraid the new router will do the same thing.

Edited to add: yesterday I also tried powering down some of our iThings. When all phones and tablets were powered down the problem seemed to go away. But then it returned with a vengeance so I powered them back up so we'd be able to communicate with the rest of the world.

Once Macs are given a dynamic IP in a DHCP-based system they prefer to hold onto it at all costs, even with releasing/renewing. Check to make sure there are no static IP configurations for another computer that your Macbook is trying to use instead.

If there're no IP's configured statically then try resetting the router to default settings.


dual screen resolution setting is reset after logout, reboot or sleep On a mac mini running OSX 10.11.6, if I set dual screen resolution to 1920x1080, it resets to the default 800x600 if the computer is reset (or if slideshow mode on powerpoint is activated), or if the user logs out, or if the computer is awoken from sleep. I have tried resetting the nvram, to no avail.

How do I make this setting persistent? Note: I need the setting to be persistent while in guest mode. I have three other mac minis with identical configurations whose dual screen settings are persistent, even in guest mode.

Try setting your resolution to the desired level, then simply logging out and logging back in. Does the issue persist?

Have you tested in Safe Boot? Please do, it'll tell us a lot.


Can't install Windows 7 on Macbook Pro I want to install Windows 7 on my Macbook Pro(15'' mid 2012 version). It seems like only Windows 8 can be installed. I was using Windows7 on this mac before. I have erased it and want to install it again but this happens. Can someone please help me?

Thank You

Steve Chambers is right.

As Windows release new versions boot camp is updated to support them and more often than not they drop support for the previous version of Windows.

You could either install Windows 8.1 (it still has the start menu ;) ) or install Windows 7 under parallels desktop.

I personally use parallels desktop as it allows me to use Windows and Mac at the same time. I run it on my 2014 MacBook Pro retina. No issues, everything runs perfectly.


Blocking information on my iPad from other people I recently purchased an iPad that I allow my employees to have access to for Spotify, Sirius, etc. but not my email, texts and personal files.  I used my Apple ID setup the iPad so now they can see my personal info.

Is there a way to hide my personal info?  Or can I create another Apple ID and still keep my old one.

You probably could solve this with turning your iPad into a managed device and configuring it from your Mac/PC. For a single device this may be overkill though, I would just restore the iPad to factory settings and set it up with a new AppleID specific for that device.


How can I remove the borders from my Dock? Like on the right side of the following image:

I don't use El Capitan, but it should be the same as in previous versions.

In Finder menu bar: Go → Go to folder…

Insert this path: /System/Library/CoreServices/Dock.app/Contents/Resources/

Search for: "dockbackground"

Now, what file it is that you need to modify depends on a few things:

If you have Retina Mac, it's one of the @2x.png files
If you have System Preferences → General → ☑ Use dark menu bar and Dock checked, it's going to be one of the files with "dark" in the name.

In this case, since you want to remove the border, you can just move all these files to another location.

Admin password required.

The changes take effect next time the dock loads. You can force it to reload a few ways:

If using Terminal is not for you, you can just log out and log back in.
OR if you don't mind using Terminal, the quickest way is to open Terminal.app and run: killall -kill Dock (The dock will go into hiding and come back almost immediately with the changes)

If you want the old borders back, you can just move the files back to the folder.


Brew says Wine is installed but it fails to run with "command not found" error I've recently just had a horrendous Mac hard drive issue which required an erase of the hard drive and a restore from an old back up.

Since it's been back, it's not quite been the same. I had Wine installed however wine my.exe no longer works. I get a -bash: wine: command not found error. I thought it might somehow have become de-installed, but upon trying to reinstall I get: wine-1.7.19 already installed To install this version, first 'brew unlink wine'. I've been having lots of permission errors which can't be corrected by disk utility, all of which are "ACL found but not expected" and brew doctor found a whole load of broken symlinks which have since been pruned. All very odd behaviour.

How do I get Wine to run without having to unlink it and reinstall it? I'd much prefer if I could just continue where I left off.

I'm not using MacPorts as far as I'm aware.

If it is a simple problem then brew unlink wine and brew link wine might resolve it. This isn't the same as uninstalling and reinstalling, which would be brew remove wine and brew install wine. It should be quite quick.

When brew installs a piece of software it installs it to /usr/local/Cellar and then links it to /usr/local/bin. Unlinking just removes those links, so it is still there but basically sitting somewhere it wouldn't normally be found.

But the first thing to try would be to check that /usr/local/bin is in your path. You can check this by typing echo $PATH in a Terminal window. You should see something like /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin.


What's the keyboard shortcut for keyboard layout switch in Mojave? Shift + Control + Space doesn't seem to work anymore.

Using Mojave 10.14.1 at the moment. I checked to see the mentioned shortcuts in the "System Preferences" --> "Keyboard" --> "Shortcuts" tab and then selected "Input Sources" on the left side menu:

(I) Select the previous input source: Control + Space
(II) Select next source in input menu: Control + Option + Space

(The first one was checked by default - even though I only 1 layout.)
My first post on StackExchange. I hope it was helpful!


Command-Tab-1, what is this? Hold down ⌘ and then press tab and tilde (`), we all know what this is. This is the application switcher.

But if you hold down ⌘, press tab, and then press 1, and then press tab, ~ and 1 other stuff happens. What is this called and how can I use it to my benefit?

This is using a brand-new MacBook Pro with no customizations.

Video: https://youtu.be/N8z6ozxOAag

It seems this invokes the 'App Exposé' feature, which shows all windows of a single application in the Mission Control display style.

It is by default available with a four-finger downward swipe on the trackpad; that will invoke this display for the currently active application, or, if you do it while hovering over an application icon in the Dock, for that specific application. You can change this in System Preferences → Trackpad → More Gestures:

As @user3439894 mentioned in the comments, you can also right-click an icon on the Dock and select 'Show All Windows' from the context menu:

Another option is to create a keyboard or mouse shortcut for the 'Show Application Windows' command in System Preferences → Mission Control:


I can't find LINE IN - Audio Input Problem with a Mac Book pro early 2015 I'm trying to record on my Mac book pro early 2015,  but the Line-In port does not appear. I only have the "built in Mic" option. I have plugged different kinds of mini jack in the only in/out port, with the device already turned on...and NADA.

You don't have a line in.
Per the Technical Specifications for your MacBook, it has support for a line out, but not line in.

Audio

Stereo speakers
Dual microphones
3.5 mm headphone jack

Support for Apple iPhone headset with remote and microphone
Support for audio line out (digital/analog)

Emphasis mine
To get a Line-In, I suggest using a USB-DAC or a USB Mixer so you can get a proper line level input and output.  In fact, I try not to use any of the built in audio ports due to their poor shielding and "economy grade" components.  You'll get better results with a proper audio interface.


Unable to partition a SDXC card using Disk Utility I have placed 200GB SanDisk card inside Nifty adapter and put it into SDXC slot in my Mac.

I want to use it as permanent & encrypted storage. Unfortunately encryption requires GUID partition which I tried to create but without any luck. "Partition" option - under "APPLE SD Card Reader Media" in Disk Utility - is greyed out.

I'm stuck.

P.S. I own Late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina 13" with MacOS Sierra (v10.12.6) installed.

It will probably be supplied as MBR, so you need to Erase first.
Partition doesn't let you change the underlying Partition Map format, MBR->GUID


Can I select United States if my country is not listed? apparently my country is not listed so I'm unable to finish my registration
for the apple ID thing. I'm thinking of selecting United States in there but it keeps asking me for a billing address/phone which I don't have since I don't live in there. So my question is what might happen if I put my friend's US address and phone there? Will it work? or will i face backlash from apple and they're going to disable my device permanently? Thanks

You can put United States as the country for your Apple ID and, if necessary, use your friend’s US address (or any US address at all) as yours. Apple does not try to verify that you are actually from the US or, by any means, you or someone else is associated with that address. However, Apple will ask for a US-based credit or debit card or a US-based PayPal account whenever you want to buy anything from Apple such as music, videos, an app or a service like iCloud.

Or you might keep buying US iTunes gift cards off of the internet (or you may buy them yourself if you are visiting the US frequently or your friend may buy them for you and send them to you once in a while) but the first option is a bit costly and slightly risky and it is up to you to decide about the sustainability of the latter two.

In addition, if you would like or need to change your Apple ID country in the future, you might eventually lose some of the stuff you have bought from Apple until then under that Apple ID.

You can find here at Apple’s support site payment options accepted by Apple.

P.S. You shouldn't need a phone number to create an Apple ID. But if you put your friend's phone number in and confirm it for another purpose later on, then, unlike the address, s/he would not be able to use that number for another Apple ID.


How do I make OS X require my password immediately after the display is put to sleep? I have OS X set to require my password immediately after “sleep or screen saver begins” (and I'm assuming this includes display sleep). Since Mavericks, there seems to be a one-second grace period: if I trigger the screen saver or put the display to sleep, and then immediately hit the shift key or move the mouse, I'm dropped back into my account with no password prompt.

I'm currently running Yosemite.0 (10.10.0). Is this a bug in Mavericks that never got fixed, or what? More importantly, how do I get it to require my password immediately?

By design the first action system does is to save your work in a large file (depending what you had going on) so to be able to wake up exactly to where you left of. Once that is done the next step is to lock it with password.

That action does require time (writing the image), so if you are very quick you can catch your system in the writing action.

Here is a example:

Close lid-->

11/15/14 07:54:30.000 WindowServer[86]: device_generate_desktop_screenshot: authw 0x0(0), shield 0x7fdfc2449050(2001)

11/15/14 07:54:30.038 WindowServer[86]: device_generate_lock_screen_screenshot: authw 0x0(0), shield 0x7fdfc2449050(2001)

Open lid-->

11/15/14 07:54:33.928 WindowServer[86]: CGXDisplayDidWakeNotification [174799469151647]: posting kCGSDisplayDidWake
11/15/14 07:54:33.929 WindowServer[86]: handle_will_sleep_auth_and_shield_windows: Deferring.


How I can install a Homebrew recipe maintained in a separate git repository outside of /usr/local/Library/Formula? I'm writing a quick Homebrew formula for my own private purposes (it's unlikely to be shared). I'd like to install it , but would prefer not to maintain my own local fork of Homebrew, but instead outside /usr/local/Library/Formula (it happens to be within an existing private git repository I have, but I think that's incidental to the question).

I've tried:

brew install ./my-formula.rb
brew install file:///Users/myusername/mygitrepository/my-formula.rb.

Neither seems to work. Instead I see:

Error: No available formula for my-formula
==> Searching formulae...
==> Searching taps...

How can I install this formula?

Note: Installing the formula using git repository syntax is unlikely to be what I need - I'm looking to install the formula during its development, in other words before I commit to my git repo.

I am using Homebrew 0.9.5.

ln -s /Users/myusername/mygitrepository/my-formula.rb /usr/local/Library/Formula/
brew install my-formula

Both brew doctor and brew update shouldn't mind, at least not until a my-formula formula is added into the official brew repository!


Withdrawing iTunes Connect payment in another territory Can anyone tell me for sure whether Apple pays the developer in Cayman Islands? Do I need to have the developer license from Cayman Islands in order to receive payment in Cayman Island ?

Any resources clarifying my queries are appreciated.

The Cayman Islands is supported by the App Store to buy apps. This means you can receive payments. The app store is available in these countries.

Please keep in mind: Apple will only payout you monthly if you earned at least 150 dollar a total. If you don't make the 150 dollar this month, it will be combined to next month untill the 150 dollar minimum is reached.


WD External Drive Automatically Unmounts I am running OS X 10.10 on a Mac Pro and I am connecting a 2TB My Book VelociRaptor Duo to it via Thunderbolt.  If I leave the drive formatted in RAID everything works just fine.  I need it formatted in JBOD, but whenever I do so, the drive mounts for about 3 seconds and automatically ejects itself.  After it ejects I can see it in Disk Utility, where I can right click and mount it again, but it still only stays mounted for about 3 seconds.  Can anyone help?  I can't even use this drive because of this.

Oh! It's same things happen to me.
I could use it by JBOD format after few weeks.
But recently It suddenly start 'UN-mount' behavior.
I use iMac5k 2014 with OS X 10.10.5 (14F27)
I tried another TB cable, but fail.


Clean boot to Windows when using Boot Camp I was experiencing issues trying to update Windows 7 to SP1, and according to Windows Support I should do a 'clean boot' to Windows. My issue is that I'm running Windows on my 2009 MacBook, through Boot Camp. While following the steps they provided me, How to perform a clean boot in Windows, I noticed that when disabling services I'll be disabling drivers that I think are necessary for Windows to function on my Mac.

Will booting with these services disabled affect booting/not allow me to boot to Windows and/or OS X?

I would do as the KB Article suggests.  If there is an issue you can always boot to Safe Mode and reenable the disabled Drivers, Services, etc.

That said, keep in mind that when first installing Windows via the Boot Camp Assistant that Windows on Boot Camp installs and first runs without any Boot Camp Drivers installed.  So, I see no issues with disabling any and all non-Microsoft Drivers, Services, etc. in order to troubleshoot an issue or clean boot Windows.

Edit: I should have also said, I have done this numerous times, in the past, on PC's as well as Mac's and was never not able to boot because of disabling non-Microsoft Drivers, Services, etc.


How can I search voicemail transcripts? I want to find a particular voicemail message on my phone by searching the automatically generated transcripts. How can I do that? I've got an iPhone SE (2020 version) running iOS 13.

This is not possible with the built in Voicemail functionality. You could submit feedback to Apple to suggest they add such a feature to a future iOS update at feedbackassistant.apple.com.


What is the command sent by the home button on iPad bluetooth keyboards? The top-left key on some bluetooth iPad keyboards functions as a home button. What happens when you connect the keyboard to a regular desktop and push the button, ie, what does the computer see? Is this some sort of command that could be replicated, say with a HID like the Teensy?

I found a Bluetooth keyboard designed for iPad and other platforms here.  The product pictures show two labels on the top row of keys.

The top left key is labelled with both the "home" roundrect icon and "Esc".

So I think it would be worth trying to send the key code for Escape.


Update to iTunes 12.2 via App store I'm trying to update to iTunes 12.2 via App store however the app is hanging indefinitely whilst "searching for updates". This causes MacBook Pro to become unresponsive too

The app store depends on network responses and if the server is overloaded (as it is when big updates roll out), you can get caught waiting.

If you're not in a rush - set a timer and try again in 8 and then again in 24 hours.

If you are in a rush, force quit the App Store app and open terminal app.

You can run softwareupdate -ai and let that window wait as long as it takes for the server to respond. That is not going to hang your UI like the App Store app can. It won't be any faster, but at least you can do other things while you wait things out.


How can I tell Firewall to allow incoming connections for Python.app running Django Each time I run my Django development server, I get a dialog to allow incoming connections.

No matter what I do :

Click Allow in the dialog box
Add to the Firewall via the OS X GUI
(both real and venv python executables are allowed, and also the
Python.app
Self-sign the executable (see http://darklaunch.com/2014/02/02/fix-do-you-want-the-application-python-to-accept-incoming-network-connections)

OS X still systematically ask me to allow incoming connection.

It's not just annoying, it's impossible to work with my IDE which restart the dev server after each code change.

I have to either turn off the firewall, or change my IDE configuration, both are bad solutions.

How can I permanently add the script in my firewall allowed apps?

I'm running Maverick 10.9.4

Signing the python application, using the instruction in the answer to this question, worked for me.


Pop-up "Firmware changes detected" randomly appear This message just popped up on my Mac

What could have caused this?
I see the file eficheck.bin, how can I tell if my EFI firmware is OK?
After sending this to Apple, what happens next?

What could have caused this?

The macOS Sierra 10.12.5 beta (and the 10.12.4 beta before it) included an eficheck tool. This tool is designed to verify your EFI firmware by reading data from the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) flash and verifying its signature is valid (i.e. it hasn't been tampered with). Basically it's doing this to prevent system stability and security issues.

So, if you had installed either of these betas, that would explain what caused  this. If you didn't install either of those betas, then I'm at a loss - except to say it's highly likely the eficheck tool will be included in the public release of macOS Sierra 10.12.5. I don't believe it was a part of the public release of mac OS Sierra 10.12.4.

Either way, you can check for it by entering the kextstat command in Terminal and searching the output via the Find CommandF shortcut and searching for eficheck.kext (or part thereof).

I see the file eficheck.bin, how can I tell if my EFI firmware is OK?

Once again, I'm working on the assumption you had the beta installed. If so, I would not worry about it as many users reported seeing this even though their firmware was not modified etc.

After sending this to Apple, what happens next?

If you choose to send the relevant data to Apple, only the unexpected changes in your computer’s firmware and only general details of your computer (such as model) are collected and transmitted. In terms of what happens next, well, I'm not sure exactly what Apple will do with this data. Only time will tell.

More information was available at: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT207475 but it's since been removed (it was there as recently as three days ago). I include it here because I expect Apple will republish it after the release of macOS Sierra 10.12.5. If it's not I will either edit/delete it (as appropriate) from this answer.


Tabs not reopening when closing Safari on iPad with iOS 13.1 Since upgrading to iOS 13.1 on my iPad (5th Gen, 9.5"), whenever I close the Safari app or turn off iPad, my open tabs are NOT restored.

This was working fine before the upgrade. Anyone else or any suggestions? I keep tabs open till I’ve dealt with them. This behaviour is a blow for me.

While it’s not enabled by default, iPadOS has an option for Safari to automatically close open tabs if they’ve not been viewed for a while. Have you accidentally enabled that option and set it for one day? You’ll find it under Settings / Safari / Close Tabs.


How will the OSX Lion upgrade affect my Win 7 bootcamp setup? And what are things to watch out for based on previous upgrades?

No, the Lion upgrade will only affect the partitioned part of your hard drive housing Mac OS.

Edit:

It will also install a small partition housing, basically, the installer of Mac OS. This is so that if your installation ever fails or something like that you can always reinstall.


How to disable CMD + E to eject? I have a MacBook Air, I want to disable the CMD+E keyboard shortcut to eject because I want to assign it to another application and I really don't need to eject anything as I don't have a CD drive.

I've searched in the keyboard preference but that shortcut is not there.

Any ideas?

You can use Karabiner with a private.xml such as this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>Disable ⌘E</name>
    <identifier>DisableCMDE</identifier>
    <autogen>
      __KeyToKey__
      KeyCode::E, VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE,
      KeyCode::VK_NONE
    </autogen>
  </item>
</root>


Camera not listed under Privacy settings since upgrade to macOS Sierra I recently started working from home on my Mac by connecting to Microsoft Remote Desktop from my PC at this office. My problem is when using Skype or Microsoft Teams in the remote session, no camera is found.

My Mac built-in camera works well - I tried Facetime, messenger and photo booth.

I have checked the remote desktop settings: the camera device box is ticked to be used in the remote sessions.

However I have checked my Mac Privacy settings, and Camera is not listed in the options, which means I can't control which app or website can use it.

Note: I tried adding apps that use camera in Accessibility but that was useless.
Note 2: I recently upgraded to macOS Sierra 10.12.6 and might have "lost" it at that time.

So my question is: how can I add Camera under Privacy?

Unless there is another way to allow my Mac built-in camera to be use in my Microsoft remote session?

Do you have already tried a restart?

Very special. Normally there should also be "camera" to control the release of the camera.

Like this:

I would reload macOS Sierra 10.12.6 on your Mac, I have never seen anything like it...

Hopefully it will work soon ...


How do I sync tags between two Macs using Google Drive? I have two Macs, and I use Google Drive to sync my data. I created tags in Finder on one Mac for some of the files and directories in Drive, and they don't appear on the other one.

Is this possible? Or are tags restricted to the system they live on and not synced along with the files they apply to?

In case it matters, I don't use iCloud sync, and I'm not willing to turn it on.

The tags you see in the Finder that are associated with a file/folder are stored as extended attributes of that file/folder.

There is an excellent article which goes into some details about the portability/syncability of these extended attributes.  It suggests that Google Drive, amongst other cloud services, does not support the syncing of extended attributes, which is a pity. It lists three services which do support extended attributes, to varying extents, namely iCloud Drive (of course), Dropbox, and Resilio Sync.

I have personally found it effective when working with Google Drive to use workarounds to sync extended information. This includes different folder organization (e.g. red files in one folder, blue in other) or naming files differently. The exact way you'd do it is entirely based on the context of what you're trying to do, your goals, and whatever works for you.


How to make my Garage Band '11 ringtone louder? I created a ringtone using Garage Band '11 and my bass directly inputted to my MAC. I was able to create the ringtone I wanted, and selected the 30 second loop, however the volume is really low. I've tried bumping up the volume on both the track and the monitor locations but still way lower than, say a purchased ringtone.

Anyone know of a place I may be overlooking?

UPDATE:

I adjusted the settings in preferences under Audio/MIDI

And I also unchecked Export Projects at Full Loudness just to see if there was any difference in the output. But it sounded identical to the previous export:

I found a solution that works for me. Thanks to bmike for pointing me in the right direction. What I used was the Visual EQ to bump up the Output level of my master track. The Visual EQ is found under Master Effects of the Master Track window:

I adjusted to taste and boom! I've got a much better volume level for my ringtone.