Network prefix length My router IP is 10.0.4.1
Sub 255.255.255.0
so from what I understand my Network prefix length should be 24

I'm I right?

However I keep having issue when I enter this value

This might be an Apple Specific question but perhaps I can have some advice

This information is readily available online if you know what to search for. Specifically "Subnet Calculator."

24 in that context is sometimes referred to that way but really it is the number of bits in the netmask.

Honestly your question could easily be closed as your question does not have enough detail to make it specifically about an Apple product or service.

Please edit your question to give all of the details of what exactly you are doing and what results you are getting and what results you need/want. That may help to answer your question.


How can I log in into iCloud.com from an iPhone? I lost my iPhone and i had a lot of important contacts and documents in my iCloud mail account. The only "computer" I currently have available is my friend's iPhone which is connected to his own iCloud account. Is there a way to log into icloud.com from an iPhone?

You can use Google Chrome for iOS to go to https://www.icloud.com/ and force it to show you the desktop version, by clicking on the "Request Desktop Site" menu option. Then you get the login form, and you can login as usual.

Image source


Making the Dock immutable A relative who has difficulty with mouse control keeps inadvertently removing items from his Dock.  I enabled Parental Controls to prevent him from doing so, but Parental Controls has a bug that prevents access to secure websites, including any banking site.

How do I lock the Dock so that it cannot be modified, without making use of Parental Controls?

I found an answer on Apple Support Communities:

defaults write com.apple.dock contents-immutable -bool true; killall Dock


Is running an app directly after opening .dmg file without installation safer than installing it? For macos apps downloaded from the Internet, I am kinda paranoid and don't trust most of apps for security reasons, especially I am living in a country which does censorship too much.
I think there are three ways to run an app.

Open the .dmg file (basically mount it), double click the app to launch it directly.
Drag it to somewhere else (user space folder) other than the default Applications folder which requires root permission.
Drag it to the default Applications to install it.

I am wondering if I choose Option 1, can I say it's much safer way than the Option 3?

The above words are my question. The following words are just some optional questions. You can ignore all the following words.
If I choose Option 1, will it cause any issues when running such app? So far, I don't see any issues by using this way.
I am wondering if there are any better options here to run the app in a sandbox? (virtual machine is not an option here because I care about performance too. I don't want to pay extra cpu/ram resources to affect the performance)
Btw, I knew the best way to avoid such problem is to NOT run any apps I don't trust. But this is life, and I have to run the apps which I don't trust, otherwise I can not work and live in my society.

Open the .dmg file (basically mount it), double click the app to launch it directly.
Drag it to somewhere else (user space folder) other than the default Applications folder which requires root permission.
Drag it to the default Applications to install it.

I am wondering if I choose Option 1, can I say it's much safer way than the Option 3?

None of these methods provide additional protection. If the application intends to do harm, nothing in the options above will stop the harm being done.
If you do not trust an application, the source, or the developers, do not run the application.
If you must run an untrusted application, consider a constrained runtime environment such as a virtual machine. You mention performance rules out the use of a virtual machine; this is a security trade off.
If a virtual machine is not possible, create a separate non-administrator user account and only run the application using that account. This will provide some additional protection but your machine is still at risk.


Turn on/off Portrait Orientation, Depending on the Time of Day Compared to the iPad, the Touch's orientation lock is quite clunky. Oh well, I say. I only use it twice a day, on at 10pm and off at 7am—the time I spend in bed with the little gadget.

But it gets clunky, like I said, and it'd be nice to realize that it's nighttime and I'm likely in bed, drinking water and trying to sleep, and turn on orientation lock.

Is it possible?

This is certainly not possible with the stock software provided by the iOS and I haven't seen any application in the AppStore that does such thing. Should be "relatively" easy to do, but I'm not sure who'd want a software like that (other than you) ;)

EDIT: Now that I think about this, I'm not sure if the API for controlling that is public or private. If the later, then you can't really create an app that "modifies" the Phone's Settings, so my best guess is that you'd be out of luck.


How do I open Google Chrome in Incognito mode by default Is there any way (using apple script or by using settings on chrome) to open Google Chrome in incognito mode.

This can be achieved with the following in script editor:

do shell script "open -a /Applications/Google\\ Chrome.app --args --incognito"

Save it as an application, throw the alias in the dock. Tested this in 10.6.8.

Only works if you don't have chrome open already.


Cannot Add, Remove, Move, or Drag icons from Dock I'm using OS X Yosemite (10.10.2) and recently I have been unable to drag or move any items on the dock. Right clicking them gives no option for "remove from dock", and the icons cannot be rearranged. New icons cannot be added, old icons cannot be deleted.

I have tried restarting, and resetting dock preferences to default, and killall Dock, as suggested by earlier askers. None of it works.

I heard about problems with PushBullet - but I do not have PushBullet. Just in case, I deleted a lot of random applications. Still nothing works.

I've tried various commands from lots of answerers on other questions. I've consulted the Mac Help pages. Nothing.

Does anyone know how I can resolve this? After resetting my Dock in an attempt to fix it, it is now filled with the default icons too. This is really limiting my productivity.

Make sure the Dock is not locked:

defaults delete com.apple.Dock contents-immutable && killall -HUP Dock


How to put iPhone 3G into DFU mode when power button doesn't work I'm trying to enter DFU mode in my Iphone 3G. And yes, i know how to get it into DFU, but the problem is that my power button doesn't work, so my question is, is there a way to get in to DFU mode through the computer?

iClarified has provided this post that might be of use to you. It explains how to put your iPhone in DFU mode without using the power or home button.

Whatever you mean to do, just be sure to read the post completely before doing so, as without a power button you won't be able to shutdown your iPhone to reboot it again. Unless you let it go completely flat - this would take a while.


How to hide GMail labels in Apple Mail? When searching for mail in Mail.app with a GMail account, every instance of the mail shows up with every Gmail label, especially in the Bin label, since Apple mail autosaves drafts as you go along, there can be 50 instances of a single mail just in the Bin folder.

This makes searching impossible.

So I'm trying to turn off those labels in Gmail but no success so far. I have disabled "Show in IMAP" option in the GMail label settings for all those labels then deleted all the cached items in ~/Library/Mail/V2 and restarted Mail.app but that didn't do the trick.

Those folders are for your convenience, can be deleted in Mail -- or under the Mailbox menu, you can choose "Use this folder for" ...


How can I increase brightness on my macbook above the limit? I recently purchased the new macbook and when comparing it to my 2013 macbook retina, the newer model is much dimmer, it was as if I downgraded. Is there any way to "hack" the brightness in the backend to make it brighter than what the settings are?

According to reviews screen should have the following brightness levels:

MacBook 12" 2017: about 350 cd/m^2
MacBook Pro Retina 13" Late 2013: 330 cd/m^2

So the MacBook 12" should be at least equally bright as your MacBook Pro Retina 13".

You cannot increase the screen's brightness above 100 %. Please contact Apple or your vendor to exchange your MacBook or to repair it.


Which runs hotter, MacBook Pro or MacBook Air? I currently use a 13" Mid 2011 MacBook Air, and the thing I dislike most about it is that it can get very hot. I'm particularly physically sensitive to the heat for some reason, and at its hottest it makes me uncomfortable even to just sit at a desk with my hands on it.

Anyway, I'm in the market for a new laptop, and I'm considering the current 13" Retina MacBook Pro and 13" MacBook Air. I'm wondering: Which one runs hotter? (Under light use? Under heavy use? At max heat?)

It all depends on your usage (the load).

For normal uses (the CPU newer runs at 100% for long times) the MacBook Air would be the colder solution.

The MacBook Pro is the more power hungry machine (retina display) and could run hotter.

One way to see this is in the Battery life. MacBook Air can go up to 10 hours on a single load.

Your MBA might need a SMC reset to make sure the Fan control is working correctly.


how to clean the memory termed as 'others' in iphone 4s since a couple of days iam facing the problem with internal memory of my apple iphone 4s device so can you help me to find a solution for this. my ios software is 7.1.2 and not the jailbroken piece

Not quite sure what you mean. Most of the items labeled as ‘Others' are documents or info created by your Apps and can’t be deleted,  but you could try installing the (free) Battery Doctor app and running the memory boost and junk purge programs.

If this fails, back up (ESSENTIAL) and Settings>General>Reset>Erase all content and settings, then either reinstall your backup, or start as a new device and add apps one by one, starting with the most important. If you follow the latter course, make sure you screen grab and email or note down your network settings before resetting !


Protect files from other administrator accounts So at work there is a "shared" server that people can run things on that take a long time. I make quite a bit of use of this machine to the point where I made my own login to separate my user files.

The account I am using is an administrator.
The other account that everyone else uses is also an administrator.

In my user files is some private SSH keys for things like Github and Amazon Web Services that the other users could do mean things with if they were so inclined. I don't think they would, but it would be nice to not have to think about it.

Is there any way I can add some protection to these files without changing the permission level of the other login?
Is it possible for other administrators to access the saved keychain credentials of another administrator?
If you were to "do it right", how would you recommend setting up this machine such that it could be reasonably shared by people who need to perform administrative tasks, but not be a security nightmare.

Simple answer - no. Administrative access is too powerful for multiple users on a single machine. Even if you trust every one of these users implicitly, there will always be a chance of accidental misuse and potential data loss.

If you are admin - you can read any file on the Mac
If you are admin - you can delete and modify any file on the Mac

The only exception is SIP - where even root can't modify some files Apple has marked as restricted.

Standard operating procedure dictates standard user accounts for all users on a multi-user Mac, with an administrator's account for maintenance, etc.

You can make an encrypted DMG to store things that you can't allow another user of the computer to see. They could copy the files and try to brute force the password - but Finder does a good job of asking for and mounting such filesystems when you reference an alias to the file.

The keychain is a specialized version of an encrypted store. You might be able to store your keys there and they would be safe from other users in a similar manner.


Which 'system' apps can be safely removed I safely removed Front Row, Chess and Face Time which else system apps are safe to remove and which I should never touch?

I think it's a bad idea to remove "Dashboard.app" and "Launchpad.app".

I’m not sure why you would want to remove any of the apps that you mentioned — it’s not like they take up a lot of space or introduce security vulnerabilities or anything.

On the other hand, it would make sense to remove e.g. Java, for the reasons I mentioned before. If you don’t need Java, you can remove it by following these steps.

First of all you need to check which JVM (Java Virtual Machine) you have in your system. To do so, open Terminal.app, and enter:

sudo /usr/libexec/java_home –xml

If you you have JVM installed, you’ll get the JVMHomePath returned:

/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home

Then, remove JVM from your system:

# Wipe out the JVM installation location
sudo rm -rfv /System/Library/Java

After this, restart your Mac, and confirm JVM was successfully removed by running the first command again:

sudo /usr/libexec/java_home –xml

It should say something like:

Unable to find any JVMs matching version "(null)".
No Java runtime present, try –request to install.

This means that it worked, and that your OS X Lion is Java-free again.

(This is an improved version of the instructions on http://stikine.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/howto-remove-java/.)


Mac desktop says "Unable to download App" but the App is downloaded on the iOS device? My desktop is now running MacOS 11.1 (Big Sur). I also have several iOS machines.
On my iPhone I successfully downloaded the iOS Axos app. On my desktop, I am now seeing this error:

This is confusing, because I did not attempt to download the app on the desktop, there is no Axos app for the desktop, the App Store says nothing about Axos, and I see no error on my iOS device (which successfully downloaded the Axos app.)
Any thoughts on how to clear this?

I'm on macOS 11.3 Beta (20E5172i) and have the same issue. I've bought an app on my iPhone and my MacBook appears to subsequently try to download that app. I get these messages whenever I download a new app on my iPhone.

I found this setting in the macOS App Store Preferences and disabled the automatic app download, but don't know yet if this fixes the issue.


Error while installing Homebrew on Mac OS X (10.10.3): Unable to change file mode on /usr/local/ When I run the command on the home brew website,

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

I get:

==> This script will install:
/usr/local/bin/brew
/usr/local/Library/...
/usr/local/share/doc/homebrew
/usr/local/share/man/man1/brew.1
/usr/local/share/zsh/site-functions/_brew
/usr/local/etc/bash_completion.d/brew
==> The following directories will be made group writable:
/usr/local/.
==> The following directories will have their owner set to 17oei:
/usr/local/.
==> The following directories will have their group set to admin:
/usr/local/.

Press RETURN to continue or any other key to abort
==> /usr/bin/sudo /bin/chmod g+rwx /usr/local/.
chmod: Unable to change file mode on /usr/local/.: Operation not permitted
Failed during: /usr/bin/sudo /bin/chmod g+rwx /usr/local/.

However, I see no reason for this, as I am an admin on my computer.

From your ls output:

drwxr-xr-x     5 root  wheel  uchg   170 Aug 20  2015 local

That uchg flag means the file or directory cannot be changed. You can remove it with this command: sudo chflags -R nouchg /usr/local

For more information about file flags, see the man page for chflags: http://ss64.com/osx/chflags.html


App Files on Mac OS X - Visual Studio Code I have been using an App (Visual Studio Code) on Mac OS X for several months now. Somehow I've gotten the app into an unusable state on Mac OS X. I uninstalled it and reinstalled it. However, that did not work. It looks like my user settings and preferences persisted though. Which means that there are some files or settings somewhere on Mac OS X.

Where do those files / settings get stored? I would like to remove them and start from scratch and see if that fixes my issue.

Thanks,

To completely remove Visual Studio Code you should delete the following files and folders:

/Applications/Visual Studio Code.app
/private/tmp/VSCode Crashes
~/.vscode
~/Library/Application Support/Code
~/Library/Caches/Code
~/Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.VSCode.*
~/Library/Saved Application State/com.microsoft.VSCode.savedState

monitored with fseventer (OK it's a 404, but the domain still exists)


Apple wireless keyboard it's always turned off at startup My wireless Apple bluetooth keyboard has been acting up recently. While I use the computer it works just fine but every time I boot up the computer after it has been shut down the keyboard, which is always left on, is turned off and I need to power it up - every time the computer starts up.

On the other hand my magic mouse works wonderfully, so I understand this isn't normal behavior.

How can I get the keyboard to stay on despite computer power cycles?

So the keyboard really needs to long-press turn on again? That's weird.

But these are things I will try:

Re-Pair the keyboard. Delete it from the known bluetooth device list, and pair it again.

Test the keyboard with other Macs

Replace the battery


How to find out why iTerm2 suddenly wants to access my Calendar? Out of the blue I am prompted for this permission grant:

How can I find out what is triggering this request and why?

The last command I ran was du -h -d 1 in /

From an open issue on the linked iTerm2 project page on GitLab:

iTerm asks for contacts and calendar access on Mac OS

  I tested version 3.2.6 on macOS 10.14. It does not request contacts or calendars in a stock install. If you run a program in your .bashrc or other login script that needs access to such (e.g., icalBuddy) then it will be asked for in iTerm2's name.

  Anything inside the terminal that tries to access just some calendar file ou directory will initiate the MacOS dialog asking for permission. But that does not mean iTerm is trying to access.

  Thy this command:

  $ find /

  It will list all your directories, and.. there will be a moment that MacOS will ask you for permission to let iTerm access your calendar. Lol.. this is a funny erroneous comportamental feature of MacOS..

As is apparent, from the comment, the -d 1 component of the command line attempted to access Calendar files, thereby triggering the permission dialogue.


Can I do 4K@60hz with my early 2015 MacBook Pro Retina? I have a MacBook Pro Retina early 2015 8 GB and Intel 6100 1536Mb.

Today I used an HDMI cable to my TCL 55" TV (TCL U55S6906 / Chassis NT667E-EU) and when running Mac OS X the text is blurry and only at 30Hz. While running Windows 10 it looks better but is still at 30 Hz.

Also, sometimes it goes black for a second or two, and sometimes it shows green lines and plays a strange sound.

My TV only has HDMI but I wonder if I could get 60 Hz with a Thunderbolt 2 cable to HDMI 2.0? Does anyone know why it shows those lines and makes those sounds (which remind me of interference).

I have a similar device (Early 2015 rMBP with 16 GB running macOS Sierra 10.12.6) and can confirm that it will power an external 4K display at 60 Hz - it's supposed to power two external displays at 4K (3840x2160) in addition to the builtin display, in fact. However, there are anomalies on my side when it comes to the refresh rate depending on my screen setup. Also, MacOS does not let me choose the refresh rate for the 4K screen when it's connected through the Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable - other than feeling the difference, I only see the refresh rate in the system profiler.

Hardware:
rMBP Early 2015 with macOS 10.12.6 and 16 GB RAM;
Display 1 (old): 900x1440 via mDP-DVI adaptor and DVI cable; Display 2 (4K): 3840x2160 via mDP-DP cable

Scenario 1 = 1 desktop:
rMBP is closed,
Display 1 (old) is disconnected,
Display 2 (4K) is the only desktop displayed at 3840x2160 @ 60 Hz

Scenario 2 = 2 desktops with builtin screen:
rMBP is open at 2560 x 1600 Retina,
Display 1 (old) is disconnected,
Display 2 (4K) is connected with 3840x2160 @ only 30 Hz

Scenario 3 = 2 desktops without builtin screen:
rMBP is closed,
Display 1 (old) is connected with 900x1440 @ 60 Hz,
Display 2 (4K) is connected with 3840x2160 @ only 30 Hz

Scenario 4 = 3 desktops:
rMBP is open at 2560 x 1600 Retina,
Display 1 (old) is connected with 900x1440 @ 60 Hz,
Display 2 (4K) is connected with 3840x2160 @ 60 Hz

To sum up, this means that my early 2015 rMBP 13" will only display 4K @ 60 Hz on the screen capable of doing so if either all 3 displays are active or the 4K display is the only active display. The refresh rate on the 4K screen is dropped to 30 Hz if it's one of only two active displays. This result has persisted despite restarting my Mac but I do not know if this behavior is limited to my example. If any reader has a logical explanation and/or solution for this, please post your answer.


Photoshop to iPad color profile woes This is driving me insane.

I always design in Photoshop with my monitor profile as the active profile. My PSD's are never color managed. This is the way I've designed since I can remember and I have always had great results. Until now.

I'm designing an iPad interface and while my blues are blue in Photoshop and soft blue/greys are soft blue/grey - saving as a PNG (not converting to sRGB), emailing them to my ipad and previewing them in the Photo app makes my blues dull and my soft blue/greys more like a brown grey.

Any help would be appreciated.

2017 update: Display P3 Macs will display incorrect colours if you use the strategy below. I should write more about the setup required for the 5K iMacs and 2016 MacBook Pros.

You're well on track if you use "Don't Color Manage This Document" for your PSDs. That's part of the issue solved. And by disabling "Convert to sRGB" in the Save For Web window, you've solved another big issue (profile conversion on export shifting colours).

Emailing photos isn't really the best way to do on device previews though. If you can, use something else (there's a few apps that do it).

iOS devices have a gamma that's identical to OS X and Windows, so the main difference you're seeing is a difference in the display and their profile. Do not listen to anyone who thinks you should be assigning a colour profile in Photoshop or trying to saving colour profiles in exported images — they don't know what they're talking about. PNGs and other image formats have their embedded colour profiles ignored by iOS at runtime (in some cases, Xcode may display with colour management, so you should make sure you test on the device itself, or at the very least, in the iOS Simulator).

The real goal when designing app interfaces is to perfectly match the colours displayed on screen in Photoshop and saved in files with what’s displayed in other applications, including the iPhone Simulator. You want the colours to not just look the same, but the actual values saved into files to match the colours we defined in Photoshop perfectly.

So what you're after is for colour values entered into Photoshop (i.e. #FF0000) to remain that value on in the PSD, in the exported PNG and to be on the device, in memory as #FF0000.

It's possible and actually not that difficult.

Full instructions can be found here (I'm the author of the article, I hope it's ok to post it here):
http://bjango.com/articles/photoshop/

However, the displays found on various iOS devices (even of the same generation/type) can be subtly or quite different. The absolute best way to get good results is to do realtime device testing, using an appropriate app for that (and one that knows enough about this stuff to get it right).


Can I remotely control an IPad 9.7 running ios 11.2 with Teamviewer on a MacBook Pro? My mother has just bought herself a new IPAD 9,7 running IOS 11.2. I would like to set up Teamviewer so that I can control her IPad from my MacBook. So far I can only "view" her IPad when I start a screen recording, but have no control over the ipad itself. Is this functionality available with Teamviewer?

No.

  Access remote computers on the go with the TeamViewer: Remote Control apps for Android, iOS, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows 10, and BlackBerry. Use your mobile device to provide spontaneous support or to remotely access an unattended computer

There's simply no APIs available to do this AFAIK. Even Apple's own Apple Remote Desktop can't control iOS devices.


disk full - Mac OS won't boot My friend has a problem getting Snow Leopard to run because the disk is completely full. I suggested getting into command line mode (CMD+S on boot) and delete some things, but it didn't work (nothing happens) - is it because of full disk as well or because the OS is older? What can he do?

You could try booting from the Snow Leopard installation media and free up space from there.  It's been a little while since I've used a pre-Lion system, but IIRC, the main drive should be mounted and available from the installation environment.  Just don't actually run the installation!

If your friend is having problems booting, it's probably worth checking the disk with Disk Utility as well from the installation environment before writing to it.


Cropping tool for 4:3 or 16:9 images with Preview.app? Is there some trick to allow me to crop a screen shot in Apple's Preview.app to 4:3 or 16:9 dimensions?

I did notice holding down shift causes a 1:1 rectangular selection, but I need other common ratios.

I am willing to accept a solution from other lightweight tools.

I do not use the Photos app for much, but I use it for this. I import the photo I want to crop. Click on the edit tool in the upper right and in the lower right you'll see "Aspect" with various options. You can crop to any of the desired ratios or customize a ratio. Once cropping is complete, I export the photo and delete it from Photos.

E.g., this makes it easy to crop a 4:3 digital photo to 16:9 for use as desktop.


Does the iPhone 5S with iOS 8.4 have a cellular data addiction? Recently, I've been running out of data each month and it's being bugging me because most of the time my phone is either at home, or at work, where there is WiFi. Surely I can't be using that much cellular data I thought.

So I ran a test. Connect my phone to my home WiFi, I reset my cellular data usage statistics to 0 and then dropped into the AppStore to download an app (any app, it didn't matter which). Re-checking my celluar data statistics straight afterwards - 12.3Kb used. My question is why?

It's important to note that on my phone cellular data was turned on and I had an E connection at the time. Background app refresh was turned off. During the test, I didn't let the phone lock or go into standby mode, so there shouldn't be an issue with the WiFi going into hot standby. The WiFi was active the whole time (I was using it).

I know 12Kb isn't a lot but I'm chasing a principle here. My WiFi is on and being actively used - so why is my phone still using its cellular data connection? What else is it doing favours a significantly slower connection?

Can anyone help me debug / trace this? The best I can find is that "System services" is using a small amount of data (0.3Kb), mostly attributed to push notifications, but beyond that I'm stuck.

There are a lot of situations in which your phone, while connected via WiFi, might need to make a cellular connection. This would include normal communication with a cell tower, incoming calls, Visual Voicemail, or depending on your WiFi signal and performance, additional data from apps.

Once you have reset your cellular data usage statistics, re-run the same test you did. Once complete, go down into Settings -> Cellular  and look at which apps now report data usage. This will help you narrow down which app is causing it, but again there are too many potential answers as to why it is happening.


Apple recognized repair service asking for password? I took my MacBook Pro to an Apple recognized provider for repair, and as part of the repair setup they asked for my account password... Is that a regular routine?

It's pretty common for a repair facility of any kind to ask for a username/password for the sake of verifying functionality. This is why it's always a good idea to have a separate administrator account setup for these kind of tasks. Usually an "Administrator" account with a unique password works.

I've worked in the IT industry for almost 20 years, and I've always appreciated when a user has a separate admin account. It makes working on the machine faster as there usually isn't as much stuff loading on start up. It also keeps me from seeing any of your information, which is great for legal reasons.


Applescript if statement : greater than and lower than Can I run an script if a variable is between 4 and 6 characters only ?

e.g

set serialNumber to ""
set theLength to (get length of (serialNumber as text))
if theLength is equal to 1 then
    set serialNumber to "No Serial"
else if theLength > 4 and < 6 then
    ##do this
else if theLength is greater than 6 then
    ## do nothing
end if

This is obviously not working :   else if theLength > 4 and < 6 then

Change:

else if theLength > 4 and < 6 then

To:

else if theLength > 4 and theLength < 6 then

Or, since you asked "Can I run a script if a variable is between 4 and 6 characters only?", which is equal to 5, you can also use:

else if theLength = 5 then

In place of:

else if theLength > 4 and theLength < 6 then

However, if testing between two numbers that are (one or) more then one, just use the variable twice in the test as shown above.


Windows 8.1: how to update Broadcom driver without using external drive I am looking for a way to update a Broadcom driver without using BootCamp or external boot drive.

I have a Macbook pro mid-2012 (non-retina) and successfully had Windows 8.1 running on it, except it does not detect any ethernet and wifi devices.

I used Bootcamp through which I believe I got the latest Windows-support drivers and firmwares.

I do not have access to any external drive to build a boot drive and to any network which I might download softwares directly from a Windows partition. The entry point is the OS X partition.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Download on Mac from http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/downloaddrivers.php

Depending on write support, copy to Windows partition from Mac or from Mac partition in Windows.

If direct install doesn't fix it, try uninstall from Device Manager, reboot & install again - seems to have worked for others.


Operate PhotoBooth with mouse clicks I would like to make a wedding photo booth using my macbookpro and the osx photo booth software. To prevent that the guest can click away the apps or do things that I don't want to, I build the laptop into a box so the keyboard and trackpad are covered. I connected an old USB mouse with 2 switches soldered to the left and right buttons and I want the left button to activate the shutter and the other button change the build in effects.

Is there anybody who can point me in the right direction?

Thanks in advance!

The problem with your solution is that as far as I know PhotoBooth doesn't have a "next effect" command. One must click the "effects" button and choose. What you could do is create a new empty user, so people won't access your personal stuff, and lock the computer with PhotoBooth using a script.

Follow these steps, changing the application from Finder to PhotoBooth:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/337191/197509

People won't be able to do other stuff unless they can reach the keyboard.


iMessages not showing up in Logs When browsing my "MyVerizon" call/text logs I noticed that whole conversations that were held via IMessage were omitted from the log. While conversations on my other iPhone that were IMessages from same iPhone/sender/number/etc... DO show up. Any idea what would cause this? Would sending IMessages to the email/Apple ID address rather then the cell # accomplish this?

iMessages don't go through your cell phone provider so they don't necessarily know about them.  iMessages go through your network connection so to your provider they look just like any other network/internet/browser traffic.

If your text messages were from Apple device to Apple device (using iMessage for both sides), it's not going to show up on the provider logs.

If your text messages were from your iPhone (or other Apple device) to a non-apple device or an Apple device without a network connection but still connected to the cell network, that does go through your cell provider.  They will have a log of those messages.  You can tell which ones those are because the chat bubble on the Apple device is green instead of blue.


Open MS Office documents on Windows 7 guest VM in OS X host using Office for Mac I am running OS X Lion, VMware Fusion 4.1.2 which points to the Windows 7 installation created for Boot Camp.

When I am in my Windows 7 VM, I want to double click on files (.pdf., word .docx, .pptx, etc) and have them open using my MS Office for Mac and other native files.  I think that this is doable but cannot figure out how.

In My VM settings, under Default Applications, I have the box checked to "Open your Windows files and web links using Mac applications". I do not have the "Open your Mac files and web links using Windows applications" checked, as I want everything to open natively in OS X, not Windows. There is a Configure button underneath the 2nd option that I listed and I have mailto and web pages mapped to OS X programs (Mail and Safari). If I try and add another to the Default Applications, there are options for News, RSS Feeds, File Transfers, and Remote sessions. How do I add custom mappings to default applications so that when I click on a .docx file in Windows 7 explorer (guest OS) it opens in word on OS X?

Once you've checked the "Open your Windows files and web links using Mac applications", the following should work (providing the file resides in one of the folders shared from the Mac according to this VMware Fusion guide):

Right-click on one of the file types you wish you open in the VM and click "Open" or "Open With..." if the program already has an associated application (if you selected "Open", in the window that appears, check the "Select the program from a list of installed programs" radio button and click OK).

In the window that appears there should be a VMware icon in the top-left that says "Default Host Application", select it and click OK. (You can also check the "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file" so that it opens with the host application next time too).

If the VMware icon is not in the top-left, you may have to drop down the list with the "Other Programs" heading and you should see it there instead.

The document in the VM should now open in the default application on the host. For example, a pdf should open with Preview and a docx with Word for Mac.


iPhone 3GS no sim error I got an iPhone 3G from a friend and it is showing "no sim card" and I know the sim card is good and it won't let me do anything but phone start up. Can anyone help please?

Restore that iPhone. If the problem persists: take it to a repair shop. It is probably a hardware problem. I had the same problem myself.


IOs/phonegap - can't submit to itune - Invalid Segment Alignment I get the following error after submitting the app to itune:

Invalid Segment Alignment - The app binary at 'Envisearch.app/empty.o' does not have proper segment alignment. Try rebuilding the app with the latest Xcode version.

Our model is that we sell the same app as a white label to other companies.

I've being uploading the code with no such issue many times before.

What does it mean? how can I over come it?

As it says in the message

  Try rebuilding the app with the latest Xcode version.


Completely remove a program without uninstall app I removed a program from my MacBook Pro by deleting the app. I also found a few other things in the file system and removed them. Is there a way to ensure no additional information is left on my laptop? Perhaps from command line?

There is no guaranteed way or app that will remove all the files used by a program unless the application comes with an uninstall program, even then do you want all documents you created with the program to be removed?

Leaving aside the documents, you would have to assume that the program was well written and wrote configuration and other files only to the places that Apple suggest. These include ~/Library/Application Support for various files but exactly where in that directory? Some use the application name, others the supplier. ~/Library/Preferences, again what is the file name? Also ~/Library/Caches for caches. Add to these possible use of the /Library versions of the folders.

OSX does not provide a registry of files used by an app.

However in iOS and now OSX sandboxes all the files will be under one directory and so can be removed - but note this might include any documents you created. Also, note that not all applications are or can be sandboxed.


iPhone won't sync with my iTunes account I bought an iPhone 4 online and I'm trying to get my mp3s onto it. I downloaded iTunes on my PC and got them on there, but now I can't get the phone to find the music. I click on Music and it just says that it's empty and you can download music from the store. I'm new to apple product and to smart phones all together (I know I'm late don't judge me.) Please help.

Also, my PC and iPhone have never been synced. I don't know if that's relevant, but I thought I should throw that in here. Thank you.

Run iTunes on your computer
Drag and drop your mp3s to the open iTunes window - this will add the songs to your iTunes library
Connect the iPhone to your PC
Click on the iPhone button once it appears in iTunes
Go to the Music tab once you entered into your iPhone in iTunes
Check the "Sync music" and "Entire music library" options as described in the first section here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1351
Click on the "Sync" button - this will transfer all the songs from your iTunes library to your iPhone


Sync photos between iPhone and OS X I want to import photos I made on an iPhone to a MacBook so that I can, firstly, keep a copy on the phone (to be able to quickly show photos to someone), and, secondly, to be able to delete photos from one device and get those photos deleted on the other. In other words, I want the photos synchronised between these devices.

I tried to:

Import photos with iPhoto via cable — it works, but the photos are not synced, just copied;
Enable iCloud Photo Library (Beta) option in Settings — iCloud — Photos on the iPhone. This way all photos get uploaded to iCloud, and I can see them in the icloud.com web-interface, but I can't see them in iPhoto. I tried enabling My Photo Stream and Automatic Import in iPhoto as suggested by Apple docs on their website, but that didn't help — iPhoto still shows "No photos" in iCloud source;
Use Photo Stream (without beta iCloud Photo Library) — still no photos in iPhoto.

I think I may have misunderstood something — in my opinion photo synchronisation should be a somewhat simpler task. I am also quite new to Apple stuff and thus I'm a bit confused with all these different terms; I am more accustomed to simple file operations as on Linux and pre–synchronisation era Windows operating systems.

What would be my options please? For now, I'm more inclined to ditch the whole idea of synchronisation and just copy my photos to the laptop (and maybe delete the sources on the phone).

I am using an iPhone 5s with iOS 8.1.3 and a MacBook Pro Retina mid 2014 with OS X Yosemite 10.10.2.

Well, for one iPhoto doesn't have iCloud Photo Library implemented into it. There has been a new update to OS X that adds a new photos app, update your Mac using the Mac App Store ad then also update your iPhone to iOS 8.3 ad enable iCloud Photo Library. Everything will be synced: Edits,  deletes and additions.


Format a SSD from Mac OS Extended to NTFS I have a SSD formated in Mac OS Extended, and I want to format it to NTFS because I will use it on Windows.

To do it, I installed Paragon. I rebooted my MacBook. I checked if the driver was actived, and it was. So I went to Disk Utilty, but I have no choice to format to NTFS. Only Mac OS Extended is proposed.

I tried with Tuxera too. But same result, it didn't show the NTFS option.

Do you know any other way to format a SSD or a HDD from Mac OS Extended to NTFS ?

I respond to myself because I managed to do it. On my SSD I had an installation of OS X Yosemite, so I couldn't format it directly to NTFS.

So I first format the SSD to Mac OS Extended. And then I could choose the NTFS format option from Disk Utility.


How do I remove my visa from the App Store which has been declined? Every time I try to download an app, it comes up with a message displaying "Verification Required". So I try to verify my information and it says it's declined. I've made purchases before and never had problems, I don't have any outstanding payments due. I'm only 17 for gods sake.

There is no "None" option when trying to cancel the payment option.

Also I cannot update or download apps, so snapchat won't let me into it because it says "Waiting..." And it's frustrating me. Please help asap!

You will have to add a functioning payment method to get past that. Even if you never intend to buy anything, if the account was originally set up with a credit card, a valid credit card has to be on file to download anything (including updates and free apps).


Do Apple Lossless tracks remain lossless when sent via Airplay to a 4th gen Apple TV? This question, from 2012, asks whether there is loss in the signal quality of an Apple-Lossless-encoded file when transmitted from a Macbook to an Airport Express.

I am wondering whether things are any different in 2016 when transmitting an Apple-Lossless-encoded file from a Macbook to a 4th gen Apple TV. Clearly Wifi is plenty able to transmit the file intact. With an HDMI connection to the TV and an Optical (audio) connection from the TV to the receiver, I should in principle be able to listen to an intact file.

Is it still the case in 2016 that lossless files go through an encode-decode cycle?
Is there any configuration that makes me say "use all available WiFi bandwidth, but let me listen to the original file"?
Is there any configuration that says "drop the video signal (for example, just display a static image of the cover of the album), and transmit the audio signal intact"?

Granted, this is not to be done for an extended period since the TV must remain on. Unlike the 3rd gen Apple TV, the 4th gen does not provide direct optical-out to the receiver.

I'm assuming you're talking about AirPlay Screen Mirroring from a Mac to an Apple TV. In that case, yes, you are loosing signal quality from compression-before-transmission and decompression-after-reception.

In particular, the audio part of the AirPlay Screen Mirroring is compressed using the AAC-ELD codec to ensure low-latency sound encoding. However, there is a signal loss involved.


Looking for Mac Typing software that supports Spanish keyboard layouts - Recommendations? I've moved from Windows to the Mac a while ago, and in this "self-improvement" path, I've also realized that I need to learn to touch-type (I can do around 50-60 WPM with 3-and-a-half fingers, but I need more).

I'm a Spanish speaker so I need to learn on a Spanish keyboard. I've already seen the answer to a similar question here (Looking for a typing tutor app) but all the answers offered assume English keyboards

I'm looking for a more "guided" learning approach.


Reinstalling MacOSX on MacBook from scratch (deleted Macintosh HD volume) I had Bootcamp Windows on my MacBook Pro. When I wanted to resize the partition and reinstall windows, I opened Bootcamp app but couldn't do it for some reason that I don't remember. Therefore, I used disk utility and formatted the partition but Bootcamp wasn't recognizing the formatted space and I couldn't resize the volume or merge it again with mac's partition. By referring to an online help, I used the deleteContainer command to delete Bootcamp container. But then I couldn't find the space that I deleted in diskutil list.The result was something like this:

/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         1.0  TB    disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            750   GB   disk0s2
   3:       Apple_KernelCoreDump                         9.31 GB    disk0s3

As seen above around 233 GB space that belonged to Bootcamp was missing. Since I want KernelCoreDump and also wanted to reinstall Mac OS since long time ago, instead of delete KernelCoreDump and resizing the container, I decided to reinstall OSX. When I formatted Macintosh HD through "Disk Utility" in recovery mode, I still couldn't find the missing space. Therefore, with Macintosh HD selected, I clicked on the "Delete Volume" button. When I ran diskutil list command, the deleted Macintosh HD showed up as "Container disk2" but that 233 GB space was still missing. Like this:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk2         750  GB    disk0s2
   3:       Apple_KernelCoreDump                         9.31  GB   disk0s3

I'm guessing it's because Kernel dump container is preventing the whole free spaces to merge. Now I am in internet recovery mode and want to make the "Macintosh HD" partition again but also need to get back the 233 GB space from the deleted container that is still missing as well as keeping KernelCoreDump container. How can I do this? Can I delete KernelCoreDump, merge the free spaces and create it again or should I do something else?

Use a different OS like Linux, and see if it detects the drive. Or alternatively you can install OS X on an external drive from Internet Recovery (if its large enough) and then try working with the drive. Usually reading a drive as an external drive has less problems when partitioned on Mac, as I learned when installing Ubuntu and Windows on my MBP. Work with the drive from there and find a way to reformat it as either exFAT or macOS journaled (extended).


How to fix  missing icons and labels in System Preferences -> Spotlight? I have a late 2011 MacBook Pro and I started noticing a weird bug in my Spotlight system preferences.

It looks like every time I open preferences -> Spotlight an assortment of icons and labels are missing from the Search Results tab.

I noticed the following log entries along with this

Assuming your drive passes hardware verification, you might want to rebuild your spotlight index.

First though, repair permissions as much as possible.

Rebuilding the spotlight index is straightforward but time consuming. You will see that it is indexing as the spotlight magnifying glass icon will have a dot in the center of the glass.

This is how to reindex your drive:

Launch System Preferences from the  Apple menu
Click on “Spotlight” and then click on the “Privacy” tab
Drag Macintosh HD (and other drives if necessary) into this window

Click “OK” when asked to confirm
Now select the drive(s) you just added and click the “-” minus button to remove it from the list (weird right). Note: if an item is left under the “Privacy” list, it will exclude from Spotlight indexing completely.

Spotlight will immediately begin to reindex the drive(s) you added and then removed from the Privacy list. Note: How long it takes to reindex the drive varies, ranging from 30 minutes to several hours, depending on the speed of the drive and it’s contents. At any point, you can pull down the Spotlight menu and check the progress:

The Mac will probably feel sluggish during reindexing as the mdworker and mds processes run and consume a lot of CPU and cause a lot of disk activity.
After all this, if the problem still occurs, here are some other techniques:

Alternative #1: Kill SystemUIServer

Launch ‘Activity Monitor’ (located in /Applications/Utilities/).

Locate the process ‘SystemUIServer’, highlight it, and click the red button “Quit Process”.

Within a few seconds the menubar will rebuild itself and often Spotlight will magically work.

Alternative #2: Rebuild the Spotlight Index manually

Launch ‘Terminal’ (located in /Applications/Utilities/)
At the command prompt, type this exactly (copy and paste):
sudo mdutil -E /

You will be asked for your password, provide it, as this command requires administrator privileges to run.

You will receive a confirmation message saying that index will be rebuilt.

Wait until index is finished rebuilding, this can take a while depending on the size of your hard drive, amount of files, etc.

Alternative #3: Change Desktop Resolution

This is a strange fix but it works sometimes.

Open “System Preferences” via the Apple Menu

Click ‘Displays’ and select a resolution smaller than what you are currently using, 640×480 seems to always work

Select your native resolution again, changing your screen resolution back to normal

The Spotlight search tray will magically become available again

Alternative #4: Clear caches and preferences

Clear caches and preferences relating to Spotlight, this is best done using a tool like OnyX, MainMenu and/or Cocktail.

Alternative #5: Clean the Font caches

Sometimes, this is adequate to repair a screwy Spotlight, but it won’t hurt to clear them all

Hope this helps (I got this information from experience, but a lot of the text is lifted from OSXDaily.)


How to make clicking on icon in dock == open new instance I have several applications in my dock that can have multiple instances open (eg. Chrome, iTerm, Sublime, etc.)

When I click on one of the icons, I want a new window to open (this is what happens if no windows are currently open) However, if an instance is already open it just takes me to that instance.

This gets especially annoying when the instance is on a whole other desktop instance and cause my desktop to change.

Is there a setting you can set to make it so when you click the icon, it opens a new window instead of redirecting you to an already opened window?

You can kludge something together with some AppleScript and some clever icon image pasting. Here's how you'd do it for iTerm/iTerm2.

Open the AppleScript Editor and paste in the following AppleScript:

set myapp to "iTerm"
on appIsRunning(appName)
    tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end appIsRunning
if appIsRunning(myapp) then
    # What you do here will depend on the program. This works for
    # iTerm but you'll need to look up the actions for other programs
    # since this bit is iTerm-specific.
    tell application "iTerm"
        set myterm to (make new terminal)
        tell myterm
            launch session "Default"
        end tell
    end tell
else
    tell application myapp
        activate
    end tell
end if

You can use the Run button in the editor to test that it works. If you want a different profile opened change "Default" on line 12 to the name of the profile you want opened.

Now save this AppleScript. In the Save dialog under "File Format" at the bottom select "Application" from the list.

I saved mine as "New iTerm.app" to my Desktop.

Now every time I click on "New iTerm.app" on my Desktop I get a new iTerm window. I can drag "New iTerm.app" to my Dock and it'll be a Dock icon I can click on any time I want to get a new iTerm window open. But the icon is the generic AppleScript icon.

Let's change it to the iTerm icon. Select "New iTerm.app" on the Desktop and click Cmd-I to bring up the properties screen for the application.

Now navigate to /Applications in a Finder window, find iTerm in the list of installed applications, select it and click Cmd-I to open the properties screen for the iTerm application.

Click the icon in the iTerm info window so it gets a soft blue shadow around it. Press Cmd-C to copy the icon to the clipboard.

Now click the icon in the "New iTerm.app" info window and press Cmd-V to paste the iTerm icon on to the "New iTerm.app" application.

It should now have an iTerm icon.

You can move the "New iTerm.app" to your /Applications folder if you like. Drag it from the folder you decide to keep it in, back to your dock, and you can now click on it in the Dock to open up a new iTerm window with every click.

If you wanted to be able to distinguish it from the running iTerm.app Dock icon you could consider pasting the icon in to an image editor like Pixelmator and adding a big red + to it so it's clearly identified as the icon to press for a new iTerm window instead of the icon to press to see the exiting, open iTerm application.

Here are some more scripts for some other applications to get you started customizing things:

Google Chrome (New Window)

set myapp to "Google Chrome"
on appIsRunning(appName)
    tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end appIsRunning
if appIsRunning(myapp) then
    tell application "Google Chrome"
        make new window
    end tell
else
    tell application myapp
        activate
    end tell
end if

Google Chrome (New Tab)

set myapp to "Google Chrome"
on appIsRunning(appName)
    tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end appIsRunning
if appIsRunning(myapp) then
    tell application "Google Chrome"
        make new tab at end of tabs of window 1
    end tell
else
    tell application myapp
        activate
    end tell
end if

Sublime Text 2

Unfortunately ST2 doesn't seem to have an AppleScript accessible extensions. You can always take a look at the OS X command line tool that ST2 ships with. You can call that from a simple script in the Dock to open a new window in ST2. So:

set myapp to "Sublime Text 2"
on appIsRunning(appName)
    tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end appIsRunning
if appIsRunning(myapp) then
    # Assumes you've installed the subl command line tool for ST2
    # in to /usr/local/bin. Adjust accordingly.
    do shell script "/usr/local/bin/subl --new-window"
else
    tell application myapp
        activate
    end tell
end if


How to use OS X's terminal to ping an IP using the latency as a stopping condition for a loop? What I'd like to do is to ping an IP while the latency is above an specific value. I think an example will help:

Let's suppose I have the following result to the "ping *IP here*" command:

PING *IP here* (*IP here*): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from *IP here*: icmp_seq=0 ttl=53 time=127.238 ms
64 bytes from *IP here*: icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=312.762 ms
64 bytes from *IP here*: icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=251.475 ms
64 bytes from *IP here*: icmp_seq=3 ttl=53 time=21.174 ms
64 bytes from *IP here*: icmp_seq=4 ttl=53 time=27.953 ms

I'd like a way to make the ping stop after the latency drops below a given value. Let's say 100, so in the example above it'd stop after the 4th result.

I guess there might be easier way, but it works for me:

#!/bin/bash

TRESHOLD=10

while $(true); do

    time=$(ping -c 1 google.com | grep time | cut -d ' ' -f 7 | cut -d '=' -f 2 | cut -d '.' -f 1)

    if [ $time -lt $TRESHOLD ]; then
        echo "Less than $TRESHOLD ($time), continue"
        sleep 1
    else
        echo "More than $TRESHOLD ($time), stop"
        exit
    fi

done

Outputs:

~ $ ./1.sh
Less than 10 (8), continue
Less than 10 (9), continue
Less than 10 (9), continue
Less than 10 (9), continue
Less than 10 (9), continue
More than 10 (11), stop
~ $


How can I get the exact URLs/requests that a program is trying to connect to? I currently use Little Snitch to control network traffic on my Macbook Pro, and see what my apps are connecting to.

Unfortunately, Little Snitch only shows you the hostname that an app is connecting to. Is there a tool which will show you the full URL of the requests that apps are making? Even better if you can view the headers.

The most full featured way to peek into web traffic is to install and configure your system to use a web proxy.

The mitmproxy proxy (and mitmdump tool) is mature, reliable and well documented so I would start there unless you have another that meets your specific needs.

Also, widely used, superbly documented and well regarded is Charles Proxy


Crash when using university wifi I recently bought a MacBook Air 13", to use at my university (Technical University of Denmark).

But when I am using my laptop in a place with many other laptops, OSX crashes every 5 minutes (kernel panic). Other people have experienced the problem here: Apple Support Thread

Someone in the thread suggests disabling IPv6, but this does not solve the problem.

Have anybody in here experienced this problem, or can anybody figure out a solution?

I use: OSX Version 10.7.2, Build 11C74

After reading the linked Apple support thread, I believe the problem is likely Apple's fault. My advice is:

Take the MBA to an Apple Store (with a genius bar appointment) or call Apple support to report the problem
Make sure you have installed all software updates (perhaps you have, but this is not mentioned)


Why are there two different sleep states on a MacBook? It seems that there are two different sleep states on my MacBook:

Sleep State 1:

Invoked by: closing the lid or by the sleep timer.
Awaken by: touching the trackpad, clicking the trackpad, pressing a key, or opening the lid.

Sleep State 2:

Invoked by: Apple Menu > Sleep (or its keyboard shortcut).
Awaken by: touching the trackpad, clicking the trackpad, pressing a key, or opening the lid.

You'll notice that the main difference between the two is that in the first one you can simply touch the trackpad and the computer will wake up.

I have two questions:

Why are there two different sleep states?
Are there any other differences between them besides the one I mentioned?

I'm not sure if this is relevant or not, but I changed my MacBook's settings to cause Sleep to only Sleep and not the default 'Sleep and Hibernate'.

There are really three, sort of, but they're not exactly as you described:

Display sleep: The screen goes blank after a certain amount of time. You can wake up the screen by touching the trackpad or pressing a key.
Sleep: In this state, the computer goes to sleep: the hard drive stops spinning and the CPU uses much less (almost no) power. This can be invoked by closing the lid of the laptop, selecting Sleep from the Apple menu, or via a timer. You wake up the computer by opening the lid or pressing a key.
Hibernation: If the battery is almost dead, the laptop will hibernate to save power. This is similar to shutting down, except all the contents of RAM are dumped to the hard drive, which makes it much faster to start up (as well as starting the computer up into the previous state). You have to hit the laptop power key to wake the machine from hibernation.


How to transfer internet audio streams to ipad? I opened all my internet audio streams in iTunes and copied all of them into an iTunes playlist.

I would like to sync this playlist with the one on my iPad iTunes but I can't. When I select my iPad from iTunes this playlist is missing from the playlists.

The Music app on iOS doesn't support Audio streams. If you want to listen to audio streams on iPhone/iPad you can use one of the various streaming apps available in the App Store (e.g. WunderRadio, TUneIn Radio or Radium).


Mac High Sierra file system block size I have an older MacBook Air (Mid 2011) now running High Sierra.  I am backing up documents, pics, and videos to an external HD that is formatted in exFAT.  I use my MBA and a Lenovo system interchangibly and need files accessible on both, hence exFAT.  I noticed size and size on disk in Lenovo to be tremendously different (400 GB takes up 800 GB space for example).

In trying to figure out what was happening, I came across an unusual file system block size on my MacBook, at least as far as I am reading it.

I followed the steps shown on this page What are the sector sizes on Mac OS X?.

[![enter image description here][1]][1]

Apparently the 4096 expected file size is 4194304 instead while the Device Block Size and Allocation Block Size are both 4096.

Could you tell me if I'm reading it correctly, that 4194304 is extremely large?  If so, how do I fix it?

Thanks in advance.

No, that is not extremely large. The command "stat -f %k ." does not as such give you the block size on disk, but rather it is a guide from the OS to user programs as to how large amounts of data at a time it should transfer to/from disk for optimal performance.

With modern SSDs it is not uncommon for that value to be 4 MB as you indicate, instead of the 4 kB that was a kind of "default value" for many years, and not really observed by user space programs anyway.


How to I restore my old default keychain? I just re-initialised my login keychain because I had troubles after upgrading to Sierra (it kept asking me the login password). So I followed up an article in apple.com and recreate my keychain. Upon creation, the window said that the current default keychain would not be deleted, it would be moved elsewhere instead.

Now I have to restore it, but where was it moved? How can I find and restore it?

Thank you, regards

Ok I can answer by myself. Doing the above, keychain will in fact store a copy of the old 'defaults' (all the previous... Don't why they're called 'defaults'). The copy (at least in Sierra) is located in

~/Library/Keychains/login_renamed_1.keychain-db

You can have back all your data by opening Keychain and drag/drop that file on the left column, on the top area. Once done, you'll be able to find all your old data below (Password, keys, etc...)

The apps will find them again, eventually asking you the password (the login one) to open the backed-up ones.


How can I store 15 years of older MacOS Mail on an external drive? I started with Eudora files and converted them to Mac Mail files. Now I have the Eudora files, which I can easily locate onto an external disk because they're flat files.

But I also have that decade+ of converted mail taking up a huge amount of room on my Mac.

I don't want to delete the Mac Mail files, but I want to move them off of my computer and onto an external disk. They are in mailboxes since the Eudora files were sorted into mailboxes.

There are a number of existing questions/answers that address this very topic:

Archiving mail from Mail.app
Archiving Apple Mail to an External Drive
Move mail boxes data to external drive on Mac Mail on Mavericks
Moving individual Mailbox to external drive

These posts should get you on the right track to migrating your mail over to the external disk.

Basically, what you need to do is either copy/move the mbox file to the external drive or use the Export function in the Mail app to export mail to a mailbox located on the external drive.


Drag and drop so slow? I've had my MacBook Pro for around half a year. Before I used Windows all my life. The problem I'm having with my MacBook Pro is that it's very very very slow when I try to drag a file into a program when compared to Windows.

For example, I have a .jpg image on my desktop. I'm on my desktop and I drag the file into my Chrome or Firefox browser I can upload it to Imgur or something. While I drag the file from the desktop to the program on the dock, it blinks a few times... it then opens the program and sometimes I have to hold the file into the program.

All this is much faster in Windows. Is there a way for me to do this faster? I'm even willing to install a program to speed this up. Thanks everyone!

When you drag onto an application on the Dock or an unopened folder in Finder, the operating system isn't sure if you just intend to drag-and-drop, or if you want to place the dragged item in a specific place once the folder or application is opened.

In an application like a web browser, where a window can have multiple tabs, the application doesn't know which tab you're trying to send the item to, or if you want to open a new tab with that item to view it, or ...

If you drag-and-hold over an application or unopened folder, after a few seconds the application or folder will open (or un-minimize). This is called spring-loaded folders. There's no way to disable this. In the case of folders, you can continue to open subfolders in this manner until you find the location you want.

In the case of some applications, you can change what happens with the dragged item.

In Chrome, for example, you can:

drag onto the tab bar to open a new tab with that item for viewing
drag onto the Bookmark Toolbar to create a bookmark to it
drag into the address bar to open that item in the current tab
drag onto a target in the loaded tab (such as your Imgur example)
drag onto another tab in the tab bar to bring that tab to the front, and then into the address bar or a target location on the page loaded in that tab

To answer your direct question: Having the application window or folder open somewhere on your desktop (even if it's on a different monitor that's hooked up to your computer) will allow you to drag directly into the open application window and drop it immediately without delay.

Similarly if, somewhere on the screen, you can see the icon of a closed folder that you want to drag an item into, you can let go as soon as your mouse cursor is over the closed folder and it will drop the item into that folder without delay or opening it.


Switched SIM cards but contacts are no longer on my iPhone? What do I need to do, once I have switched SIM cards on my iPhone, to get my contacts to appear?

SIM cards can store a certain amount of contacts, but most phones nowadays do not automatically store them there, instead storing them on the phone itself.

If your old phone has stored your contacts on the SIM card, you can import them onto your iPhone in the Settings app:

Go into Mail Contacts and Calendars, scroll down to the Contacts section, and tap on Import SIM Contacts.

Note: iPhones CANNOT store contacts onto the SIM card. If your previous phone was an iPhone, you will need to sync them by some other method.

More Info: Apple Support Doc


Where are new contacts stored on iOS? I have two Google accounts linked with my iPhone: home and work.

When adding a new contact in the Phone app, where will iOS store the new contact? I'm not given a choice of which Google account it should use.

You can set which default account it should use to store your contacts. Go System Preferences -> Mail, Contacts, Calendar -> scroll down to the contacts sections and set the Default Account


How can I boot my MacBook Pro from a DVD to update my SSD firmware I have a MacBook Pro 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7 (mid-2011 model) running OS X 10.8.2.  I upgraded to an SSD which I bought from Crucial and works just great.  Crucial sent an email recommending I upgrade my firmware to get even better performance from my SSD.

I downloaded the firmware to my desktop in the form of an ISO file from the Crucial website, and the instructions told me to burn this to a disk and change my boot order in order to boot from this disk.  I burned the disk but subsequently have not been able to get a bios screen or to be able to boot from the DVD I created.  I have tried holding down the C key but nothing seems to happen.

What do I need to do to complete the installation of the firmware?

You should know there is no such this as "BIOS" on a Mac (the equivalent system is called EFI, but you don't boot into it to change settings). To boot from a DVD or any other external medium, you'll have to hold down the Option ⌥ key while booting.
Then you'll get a list with all the bootable devices and there you can select the device you want to boot from.

Or you can go to System Preferences > Startup Disk to select your disk and then reboot. Then you'll also boot from the disk.


Repeated pop-ups 'Safari wants to use the "login" keychain' I get repeated pop-ups saying

I then enter the password

But the system always keeps on telling me it's the wrong password, which I'm sure it's not

This is what the Details reveal:

What is going on here, and how can I fix it?

I'm running OS X 10.6.8.

Somewhere along the lines either your user account password has changed or your login.keychain has become corrupted.  By default Keychain is set to sync it's password with your user account's password, allowing it to unlock when you login to your account, which in turn provides applications & processes access to it's contents.  When you change your password in the Users & Accounts section of System Preferences it communicates the change to Keychain Access, which in turn updates the login.keychain password.

Problems like this typically arise when a user account password is changed outside of Users & Accounts in System Preferences, by using the Reset Password utility in each OS X installer or by some other means.  When you change the password using one of these alternate methods the change is not communicated to Keychain Access.  When you login and start using the system following one of these changes you will continuously receive prompts similar to the one you've posted.

There are a couple of methods for getting around this and getting things working properly again:

The first method is to try any possible passwords that you may have used in the past.  Keychain doesn't have a lockout mechanism that would lock you out after X many tries so feel free to try as many as you can recall.  Assuming this works, and it accepts one of the passwords, you can update the keychain password to match your login password.  This can be accomplished by opening Keychain Access (located in /Applications/Utilities), clicking on Edit in the menubar and choosing "Change Password for Keychain 'login'".  This will allow you to enter the original password (whichever one just worked for you) followed by the new password, which should be the same password you use for logging in and/or doing software updates.

The second method is to create a new keychain.  You can navigate to /Users/~/Library/Keychains, where ~ represents your user's short name, and locate the login.keychain file.  Change the name of this file to login.keychainold or something similar.  Once you've changed the name log out of your user and log back in.  Within a few seconds one of the many processes should detect that login.keychain no longer exists and prompt you to create one, possibly with the verbiage "reset to system defaults", follow the prompts to accomplish this.  When it asks for a password you will enter your login password, the same one you just used to log back in.


MacPorts Software clean-up: /opt/local/var/macports/software The MacPorts directory /opt/local/var/macports/software is really full of "stuff":

Can all the .tbz2 files be deleted?

I am running out of space on the SSD.

Yes all the files in that folder located with in ${prefix}/var/macports/software/ can be deleted. Those are the installer packages for programs that you installed using MacPorts. MacPorts will re-download those as necessary when running the install or presumably the upgrade command too for a given program ,etc.
The descripton of the purpose of the directory ... is noted in MacPorts Guide under Binary Archives.

3.4.1. Binary Archives
Binary archives can only be used on a target system running MacPorts. Binary archives allow MacPorts utilities to begin installation after the destroot phase and install and activate a port on the target system. Binary archives are created whenever a port is installed, and can also be downloaded from a server.
...
Binary archive files are placed in ${prefix}/var/macports/software/. The archive file type is set in the macports.conf file. The default format is .tbz2; other options are: tar, tbz, tbz2, tgz, tlz, txz, xar, zip, cpgz, cpio.


How to control Bluetooth wireless radio from the command line? This question is almost the same as my previous question, but with one major difference; I want to turn on/off Bluetooth from the command line (bash or similar), NOT from AppleScript - the answers for this I saw on superuser all used AppleScript.

I would guess that networksetup might be useful but have no idea what interface(s) to interact with - I would like an answer including a complete command I can run (and understand) - if device model matters, it's Snow Leopard on MacBook2,1 to MacBook7,1, except MacBook5,1, and if you can only do for 6,1 and 7,1 that's fine.

Blueutil is a neat little command line tool to do this. It's free and comes with the source code.  If you have homebrew installed, you can install it via brew install blueutil.

  Usage:

  Print bluetooth status
  blueutil

  Switch bluetooth on
  blueutil --power 1 or blueutil -p 1

  Switch bluetooth off
  blueutil --power 0 or blueutil -p 0

Works just fine on a Macbook Pro running Lion (10.7.3) and Mac mini running Snow Leopard (10.6.8). You will get some errors if you switch off the bluetooth whilst a magic mouse is connected, it still works though :)


Macbook Pro 13' Late 2011 didn't see Samsung 850 Evo SSD on boot I'm trying to update hard drive in my Macbook to the new SSD one.

Notebook model: Macbook Pro 13' Late 2011.
SSD model: Samsung 850 Evo 250Gb.

Then I connect SSD thought USB adapter notebook can see it, format it and install OS on it.

Then I try to boot from this disk with Opt key pressed (disk connected through USB) it didn't show in the list of boot devices. But if you disconnect all other devices, it boots from this disk.

Then I try to replace my current HDD with this new one, Macbook didn't detect it on load. (It detected old drive without problems, I put it back after I try SSD to test).

Any ideas why can this be?

The problem was with Hard Drive Cable – it worked okay with SATA 2 devices, but can't recognize SATA 3 devices. On the similar MacBook Pro with stock cable everything worked fine.

After I replaced it (https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Late+2011+Hard+Drive+Cable+Replacement/7655), everything also started to work.


Is Bluetooth battery information readable in Windows on Boot Camp? Is there any way to see the battery level of a Bluetooth device (e.g. magic mouse) in Windows with Boot Camp?

There is an application for Windows called "Bluetooth Battery Monitor." It is in beta right now, but I use it for my Ghostek SoDrop 2.0 headphones, and it works well.

You can download the beta at: https://www.bluetoothgoodies.com/

I don't think that BootCamp per se would make a difference as to whether the Windows program would work or not, or any program at all, for that matter.


Can Gatekeeper be disabled via terminal in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion? How can you disable Gatekeeper via Terminal Commands in OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion? I am looking to replicate the Security & Privacy preference pane selection to allow applications downloaded from Anywhere to run:

By having a terminal command, I can write a script to do this task remotely rather than manually going to each Mac and changing these settings with a mouse and several clicks.

The spctl tool should do the job.

sudo spctl --master-disable will turn off the Gatekeeper checks, and sudo spctl --master-enable will re-enable them (to the default setting of App Store and signed apps — it doesn't appear that setting it to App Store-only is possible).

Note that it will not throw any error if you run it without sudo permissions, but sudo is in fact required.


How to force OS X to give a different IP lease with DHCP? Is there a command line solution to get a different IP from a DHCP server? There are some solutions, like switching to BOOTP and back to DHCP, that will sometimes yield a new IP, but often the DHCP server will simply hand back the IP it just got back.

We're looking to create a log-out script that will change the IP of public computers at our school. We're using Websense filtering. Right now if a faculty member logs out of a computer, a student logging in right after wouldn't have to authenticate as they would get the elevated faculty member's access. Keeping the Websense timeout low minimizes this risk but is a pain for mobile users on the network.

There is no way to do this from the client level, but you may be able to configure something in your router.

It's usually by design that a router will maintain a listing of the MAC addresses of the clients that it has handed out an IP address too, and when the timeout for the DHCP lease happens, it gives the same IP to the same MAC.  If there has been some lapse and the client isn't connected at the point the lease expires, they will very often "reserve" the IP address (or at least put it to the back of the lease queue) it did have just in case it requests another lease, and can therefore give it the same one again, on the proviso that it doesn't run out of IP addresses to give to active clients, in which case the IP will be recycled to a new client.

Running a manual DHCP refresh before your lease expires will likely pull the same details.

One potential solution, although this is at the server end, is to run 2 DHCP servers, each with half of the range available to them to assign out.  You can then write a simple client script that switches the DHCP server on the Mac, and then refreshes its lease.  You would need to ensure that each single DHCP server has a range large enough for all your clients, because there is the potential to have all your clients on 1 server in certain circumstances.


Setting Default gmail Send-From Address on iPhone for photo sharing If I take a photo using the camera and then to share it by email, the default is to send from one of my gmail addresses configured.  I'm trying to use the one of the other gmail address as the From address.

This question is similar:
Setting Default Send-From Address on iPhone

But that question along with the rest of what I can find on the web, only deal with a single gmail email address.

After receiving an IOS update to 10.1.1, I was then asked which email address to use when sending a photo.  Either I didn't find the right spot under IOS 9 or this was addressed in IOS 10.


How do I permanently disable logging in Outlook 365 for Mac I ran into an weird issue today when I was prompted that I was running out of space on my disk.  Digging into the issue I found that Outlook has been generating a debug log so much that it chewed through almost 200GB of data in plain text.

Weird thing is logging is not enabled when I checked the settings and I can't seem to find an answer as to why it keeps generating the logs.  Deleting the log, stop, and then start Outlook again creates a new log file that hits over 200MB in less than 6 minutes. After about an hour it became over 1GB already.

How do I stop this non-stop generation of logs?

To disable logging:

Restart Outlook and when prompted to turn off logging click "Turn Logging Off"

If you disable logging manually you must restart Outlook to fully disable logging, otherwise, it will continue logging in the background


How to Exit iOS Recovery Mode My iOS device is stuck in Recovery Mode.

How do I exit this mode?

iOS 7

Hold down the home button and the lock button at the same time.
Keep holding them down until you see the Apple logo then release the
buttons and you should be finished!

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oX9VM590pvo

iOS 6

Download the TinyUmbrella application.
Connect your iPhone or iPod in Recovery mode to your Mac or PC using its USB cable.
Open TinyUmbrella and give it a few seconds until it recognizes your device.

Source: http://www.guidingtech.com/16182/get-iphone-out-of-recovery-mode/


When I add a file to iTunes library, does iTunes make a copy of it? If yes, where is the copy saved? When I add a file to iTunes library, does iTunes make a copy of it? If yes, where is the copy saved?

If the option "Copy files to the iTunes Music folder when adding to library" is activated, iTunes makes a copy.

The default storing location is:

Windows 7: \username\Music\iTunes
Windows Vista: \username\My Music\iTunes
Windows XP and 2000: \Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes
MAC OS X: ~/Music/iTunes/


Breaking pdf to various images, compress, and recombine I want to save each page of a PDF file as separate image, compress them, and recombine back as PDF.

Some PDF files I often use are strangely large in size.
I mean, some 100 pages but some 200M.
I suspect this is because some PDF files are saved in graphic manner of too high resolution or in a way not properly compressed.
The fact that files having similar condition, in terms of resolution and legibility, have often smaller size, make me wonder there is still room of compression.
(I have no knowledge in image processing, so this is just my feeling.)

My plan is as follows.
I ask of 1 and 3, and it is desirable that I can do all of these on command line, so that I can write a wrapping script myself, which shall be easy matter.
Screenshot does 1, and Preview can do 3, but it is not clear whether they can be done with CLI.

Save each page of the PDF as image.
Filter each image.
I do not ask for this part, since image processing tools are abundant.
I can explore appropriate filters myself.
In terms of legibility, I find it reduces file size if the image is turned black and white.
Recombine these images

If you have totally different ways to compress a PDF, you are also welcomed.
Perhaps there is somebody who have wrapped the whole process, and I need not reinvent the wheel.

Converting a PDF which is mainly text into images will almost certainly increase the file size, not decrease it. PDFs are quite efficient at containing text — converting to image negates that as you are then just storing images.

Preview includes a Reduce File Size option for PDFs. Open the PDF with Preview, choose File → Export and select Quartz Filter: Reduce File Size. You can also choose Black & White here which may also reduce the file size.

If you really want to see a convert of your PDF to a PDF of images, you can use ImageMagick.

convert /path/to/in.pdf -resize 100% -compress Group4 /path/to/out.pdf


Cannot see files from Finder but I can from Terminal I have one folder where ExifRenamer (some tool for renaming images by date created) put my renamed pictures, but I cannot see them from Finder. I can see the files with ls -la but I cannot see it from Finder. How can I change make it "normal"
CMD SHIFT dot (.) won't show files.

-rw-------  1 nemb  staff    6033609 May  1 18:19 2019-05-01_18-19-42.jpg
-rw-------@ 1 nemb  staff    4645069 May  4 21:02 2019-05-01_18-30-14.jpg

Try sudo mv -r /path/to/.folder /path/to/newfolder
For example, if the folder was named .images, was located on your desktop, and you wanted to see it as images2 you would type sudo mv -r Desktop/.images Desktop/images2.

You could also try running defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES and then relaunch Finder, which would instead show all files and folders, including hidden ones (anything starting with a .).


Remap the . in the numpad? In my locale digits are represented like this: 100,90 (instead of 100.90 as in the USA), but, even using a PC keyboard, OS X 10.7 is replacing the . in the numpad with a  , via software

This is REALLY annoying, for example:

I type IP address: 192,168,1,1
I type terminal commands: ,/myscript.sh and so on

How I could swap the , for a . but only on the numpad?

This thread on superuser discusses a similar problem. The accepted answer points to this key mapping program which you may find meets your needs.

The other, more robust but slightly more complex solution, would be to create your own custom keyboard layout using Ukelele. You can then install your custom layout in your  ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts folder, and activate it using the System Preferences -> International pane. (the best way to use Ukelele is to duplicate your existing Turkish keyboard layout file and modify just the single key in question).

As a fast solution, and if you don't mind changing other keys on the keyboard, you could use the International pane to switch to a US keyboard layout.


Is there any way to use a USB camera connected to an iPhone? I've got an iPhone and I've got a USB camera. Is there any way to plug the camera into the iPhone and use it as the source camera for Facebook Live or other camera related items?

You should plug both your iPhone and camera to your computer. Then you sync the pictures from the camera to your iPhone. I think this is the only way it can work. Good luck!


How are phone calls initiated from iPad's FaceTime routed? An iPad is configured with the same Apple ID as an iPhone, which is configured to enable the iPad to receive / initiate phone calls.

Is the iPad directly communicating with T-Mobile's cellular gateway or is the iPhone an intermediary for the voice packets?

Both can happen. Contact your carrier to see if they allow WiFi calling or need handoff to be present.


Can I create Windows-style alias in Finder? In Windows, we can hold down Ctrl or use right mouse button while dragging the file in Explorer. When we release mouse button we see a menu where we can choose 'Create shortcut'.

It's quite handy, I think. Can we do something similar in Mac OS?

UPDATE: I do know how to create aliases, I'm interesting whether I can automatically create alias for the folder by just holding some key while dragging or smth like that.

Click any file or folder, press and hold down the ⌘ Command + ⌥ Option keys, and then drag the file or folder while continuing to hold down the ⌘ Command + ⌥ Option keys.

An alias appears where you release the mouse button.


macOS: Terminal scrolls past file boundaries When I have a file open in either the standard Terminal or iTerm2, I've noticed a weird problem. When I use the Trackpad to scroll through the file with two fingers, if I scroll to the top of the file and scroll a bit more, it goes past that and goes back into my Terminal command history.

I'd really like this behavior to not happen, and stop at the top/bottom of the file. I've only observed this in macOS and not Linux.

Is there a setting I need to tweak?

I managed to eventually find the settings to stop this behavior.

In Terminal, it was Preferences -> Profiles -> Keyboard and check the box for "scroll alternate screen"

In iTerm2, it was Preferences -> Advanced -> set "Scroll wheel sends arrow keys when in alternate screen mode" to Yes.


APFS vs Mac OS Extended (Journaled) for Time Machine Backup on external HDD Which one between APFS and Mac OS Extended (Journaled) performs better as partition store type for Time Machine backup in an external HDD (Magnetic Storage over USB connectivity)?

Note this answer now depends on the version of OSX/macOS you have.
This answer is  for macOS Catalina and earlier versions - Big Sur now can use APFS - see  Apple's Types of disks you can use with Time Machine on Mac You can also use HFS+ as before.
You can't use APFS as a Time Machine target:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202784#format
Time Machine drives must be HFS+. That will likely change in the future but currently it is HFS+ only.


Triggers on specifc applications in Keyboard Maestro How can I tell Keyboard Maestro to only enable a given trigger (e.g. a hot key) when a specific application is active?

For example, I would like a specific macro/hotkey that pastes without formatting to only be active when I am editing a document in Word or TextEdit.

Create a Macro Group (File → New Macro Group or ⌘⇧N).
Set the Macro Group to only be available in certain applications:

Drag macros to the macro group.


Setting GUI Visible Environment Variables with OS Catalina I need to set a number of Environment variables that can be seen by GUI apps (i.e. Xcode). When running from a terminal this is trivial and is simply a case of adding a. number of export commands to my .bash_profile e.g.

export BOOST_INCLUDE=~/boost/boost-XXXX/boost

Unfortunately GUI apps do not see values set in .bash_profile. I am using Catalina and it appears that Apple modifies the mechanism every time MacOs is updated. Many online guides are out of date....

This article: http://www.dowdandassociates.com/blog/content/howto-set-an-environment-variable-in-mac-os-x-launchd-plist/ suggests that launchctl should do what I need but even the following simple example does not work:

In a terminal:

/bin/launchctl setenv FOO BAR

Then close the terminal and open a new one

Check the value:

echo $FOO

The output should be

BAR

But it is unset. Note it is also unset in the original terminal so I am not convinced that the command /bin/launchctl setenv FOO BAR is doing anything.

Note: This is about setting the environment variable for GUI apps NOT just for the terminal.

Run launchctl setenv FOO BAR in Terminal.app, then quit (Cmd-Q) and restart Terminal.


Terminal output as a screensaver? I want people to keep an eye on a script running in terminal whilst I'm away from my desk, but I don't trust them access to my machine.

Is there a way to show the terminal console as a screensaver, thus making it read-only and require login if they touch keyboard/mouse etc.

I'm aware of alternatives like logging to a log server they can access etc, however for now I'm only interested in outputting terminal as a screen saver. Is this possible with any known currently available screen saver software?

This may work, but looks to me like it needs quite a bit of work to make it go.

https://github.com/lunow/terminalscreensaver


How can I disable App Store update notification for non-admin users? I am admin on my MBA (Mavericks), and I want to get App Store update notifications. The rest of my family have non-admin (standard) accounts and I'd like to disable App Store updates and notification for their logins.  The answers to Disable App Update Notifications on OSX? apply to all users, not selective users.

There's no way to do this without sticking some funky commands in the command line. Best option is to just disable the update notifications system-wide (such as suggested in your article/link) and have the admin users check for updates manually.


Reduce the minimum iPhone volume (bluetooth speakers) When connecting my iPhone (4S or 6) to a JBL Flip 2 bluetooth speakers, the minimum volume is too loud. Under that, it mutes. It is not a problem of the speakers, as the volume using another, non-Apple, phone, can be reduced much more.

Is there a way to get finer decrements of the volume than those of the side buttons? Moving the slider suggests so, but it is difficult to control in such small space.

I tried using a volume cap as suggested elsewehere, but there seems to have no effect on the volume precision.

Any ideas?

I was just here searching for a way to do exactly this (reduce the "Step" for volume adjustments).  I gave up and went to solve a couple more music/iPhone related problems.
Anyway, turns out that if you have the Apple Watch and use it's built-in volume control, there are no stops--even when playing through bluetooth it let me adjust all the way from really loud down to whisper.
Another thing to notice--after I adjust my phone volume with the watch I think it somehow affects the built-in controls and I'm able to get a different range but I can't put my finger on exactly what's going on--and after I leave it sit for a while it goes back to it's old behavior.


Using Variables with AppleScript Action in Automator Hoping someone can help me figure this out. I'm trying to build a Quick Action in Automator that copies three text values, stores them as variables, then pastes them when directed. Right now I built it where it runs AppleScript to copy the first value from a spreadsheet to the clipboard, gets the contents of the clipboard, sets the value of the variable, then repeats that another two times. That part seems to work, but the next step has not. I tried to run an AppleScript where the variable is passed in, the input is set as the value of a new variable, then System Events keystrokes the variable. I either get the error that the variable isn't define or that the keystroke can't continue.
Any Suggestions? Screenshots of my workflow:

Keystroke means it will send a "C" to the program and not actually press the C key. Try using key code 8 using command down.
Also, you may want to add a line with activate after the "tell Excel" command to ensure the program is the frontmost application.
Finally, use delay 0.5 between commands, so the program has enough time to process the information before firing the next step.
You can get a list of full key codes here:
https://eastmanreference.com/complete-list-of-applescript-key-codes
Other possible issues: make sure the get value of variable is ignoring the preceding action, otherwise sometimes Automator will pass more than one variable ahead. You could also use item 1 of input as string, because sometimes it will get the wrong kind of data.


ssh VerifyHostKeyDNS not working I'm stuck figuring out why ssh is unable to verify my SSHFP entries.
VerifyHostKeyDNS=yes is set in my ~/.ssh/config

The Zone is properly signed as verified with
https://dnssec-analyzer.verisignlabs.com.
SSHFP entries have been generated with ssh-keygen -r myhostname
dig +dnssec myhostname.myzone.tld answers with the proper RSIG entries and the do flag set (tested with internal resolver (pfsense) and external (quad1, quad8, quad9))

I have tested everything with my Ubuntu 18.04 machine and can verify that it works (DNSSEC and SSH key verification), but my MacBook "thinks different"…

debug1: Server host key: ecdsa-sha2-nistp256 SHA256:tV75nOBtVSASQEc4Ruf3iwBDAokvusd8BnLsfIWrzPQ
debug1: found 6 insecure fingerprints in DNS
debug1: matching host key fingerprint found in DNS
The authenticity of host 'myhostname.myzone.tld (192.0.2.1)' can't be established.
ECDSA key fingerprint is SHA256:tV75nOBtVSASQEc4Ruf3iwBDAokvusd8BnLsfIWrzPQ.
Matching host key fingerprint found in DNS.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

I had the same issue on my Ubuntu Machine as systemd-resolved had DNSSEC not enabled.
But macOS's mDNSResponder has no options at all.
Could it be that macOS Catalina has no DNSSEC support (yet?/enabled by default?)

System: macOS Catalina 10.15.1
Local Resolver: pfsense (unbound)

$ uname -a
Darwin MacBook.home 19.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 19.0.0: Thu Oct 17 16:17:18 CET 2019; root:xnu-6153.41.3~29/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64
$ ssh -V
OpenSSH_7.9p1, LibreSSL 2.7.3

As it appears you know, you have to get your DNS entries and resolver to support DNSSEC before VerifyHostKeyDNS can possibly work.

This line in your output

debug1: found 6 insecure fingerprints in DNS

tells us that ssh found the the DNSSEC entries but did not trust them. This is most likely because it correctly asked for Authenticated Data (otherwise it would not find fingerprints at all) but the DNS resolver did not indicate the results were authenticated (otherwise the fingerprints would be labeled "secure" not "insecure").

First thing to do is verify that dig can validate your DNS by looking for the ad flag in the results of dig, like this (parts of the reply omitted for brevity):

$ dig +dnssec @1.1.1.1 icann.org

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> +dnssec @1.1.1.1 icann.org
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 17489
;; flags: qr rd ra ad; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags: do; udp: 1452
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;icann.org.         IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
icann.org.      587 IN  A   192.0.43.7
icann.org.      587 IN  RRSIG   A 7 2 600 20191202002438 20191110134355 8150 icann.org. W9PTVWEF4Dd6fQmPRmaq9n7IMCds3JSRks1GB+JBHzrL63OX2QMZ7o1X YSZb90Rr6m2Di7ckcBiZtp/JGwvwEN2xPfWc5XubFsfQ8Vxpdze3o6DK llilOoHxrdTtnvYQ2djV+pWBoIkmX+eIKJSEhofy/c5K95nLxQ51RYBB AfU=

Note that ad (Authoritative Data) appears in the list of flags. This tells you that dig was able to validate the integrity of the data via DNSSEC. From the comments on the question, it appears that you are not seeing the ad flag, and so you need to address that by verifying that your DNSSEC keys are all correctly set up and that your DNS server supports DNSSEC. This includes making sure that your local DNS server has the correct root keys for validating the DNSSEC chain of trust.

Some other notes

Once you get the ad flag from dig, you still need to be mindful of the fact that, as noted in the dig man page on the Mac, dig uses its own query system, not the system-wide one, so all dig can really verify is that you have your DNS entries correctly set up on your name server and that the DNS server you are contacting support DNSSEC. For that matter, ssh does not necessarily use the system DNS either, although in your case it appears to be.

Also, from a security perspective, you still have the issue of trusting the DNS server you are talking to. Unless you also set up some kind of authentication between your host and the DNS server, you remain vulnerable to a man-in-the-middle attack.


How to have chrome app on my kids iPads? I downloaded chrome on my iPad from the App Store, & I would like the kids to have it on their iPad mini which is connected to my account, how can I do that?  When I go to the App Store on their iPad it won't show the "free-install" button. What can I do?

Two things could interfere with the download.

Parental restrictions would suppress Chrome if your children's iPad doesn't allow that app due to age limits or explicit content filters.
Not using the same AppleID on both devices.

To address the restrictions, go to the settings app and inspect / relax any restrictions to get that one app installed. To address the Apple ID, take both devices and sign out of the App Store from the settings app. Then sign them both in with the same account. At that point, the purchase history for both should be equivalent.