Squeaky Retina MacBook Pro upon pressure to bottom-right corner I just got my new Retina MBP that I ordered online. I noticed a minor squeaky/creaky sound whenever I apply some pressure on the bottom right corner and beside the right speaker. The sound also generates when I press on the trackpad on very few occassions.

I am sure this is not normal, is there a way to fix this ? I tried finding a T5 screw driver but the screws used in the rMBP have 5 edges rather than 6. So I cannot really tighten it myself to check whether that fixes it.

I am currently in an international country that does not have a specific Apple Store, just a wholesaler that tells me to go to the service center and check whats the problem there. I do not want my new laptop to be scratched or mishandled, so I prefer doing it on my own. However I am not sure what I can do to fix it myself. Any suggestions ?

This believe this is normal. I have experienced the same in my unibody non-retina MBP.

I carefully studied the back cover for wear marks. Then I took a close look at the logic board without touching it.

On the whole logic board you'll find tiny elastic sticks. They can be pushed a little. These sticks hold the aluminum bottom off the logic board.
I did not take any chances, therefore I applied insulating tape on every place of the aluminum bottom that the sticks can contact. Also I did not want to open the cover multiple times :)
Apply the tape again as it easily wears out.

Now the MBP does not make any of the previous mechanic noises anymore.

This is what the back cover looked like when I was done.


How to preview a folder of white SVG files? I have a folder full of white SVG icons, but preview shows them over a white background, and I can't find a way to easily preview them all. I saw Gapplin, but 1) I find it hard to believe an external application is necessary for such as simple task, and 2) it seems I'd need to open 100 windows and tab through them.

How can I preview all of my SVG files?

Found this:

  You might want to try pressing option-space for Quicklook in full
  screen. This seems to have a black, rather than white, background. The
  drawback is that you cannot easily navigate through the files with the
  arrow keys.


How to disable accidental trackpad input in Yosemite? The solution to this problem in previous versions of OS X was a checkbox in the trackpad preferences that said "ignore accidental trackpad input." That option is no longer there in Yosemite.

Is it still possible to enable it, and if so how?

I changed "Click" to "Firm" in the menu.

System Peferences > Trackpad > Point & Click

It seems to have helped.


How can I change the scrolling direction of the mouse, independently of the trackpad? In System Preferences > Trackpad > Scroll & Zoom, there is a checkbox called Scroll Direction: Normal, which allows us to change the scrolling direction of the trackpad, but it also changes the scrolling direction of the mouse. Is there a way of changing the scrolling direction of the mouse, without changing the scrolling direction of the trackpad?

I have a Razer: Deathadder Elite mouse, but I would like the solution to work for different and less sophisticated mouses.

Have a look at Scroll Reverser, as it appears to do as you've asked.


What is the conventional location to install binary executables? I would like to install a binary executable so that all users can run it from the terminal. Where should I put it?

/usr/local/bin/. It may already be in your path.


Identify type of CD? I have a disk with almost no labeling.  I can tell by looking that it's a CD and not a DVD.  I can tell by looking closer which side is which (mfg. part/batch number) and that it is blank (writing makes a band of different appearance).

I can also have my MacBook Pro tell me all those things by putting it in the optical drive.

But is there a non-invasive way for MacOS to tell me whether it's CD-RW or just CD-R?  (ReWritable or Recordable.)

drutil can only tell me the drive's capabilities, unless I try an erase, which may make a CD-R unusable.

Web search for the part number(s) found nothing.

If I try to re-write, I’ll know.  But at that point, it will no longer be usable, and I’ll have to go buy another.

My nephew stopped by and found it by Properties in Windows, but it would be nice to know a MacOS or Darwin method.

This works for me, however the system must first recognize the disc that's inserted. Otherwise it can't return a value for a property of a disc it hasn't or can't recognize. I have noticed with RW optical media that it can take some time for the disc to be recognized. I have tested with CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R and DVD+RW optical media and all report the Media Type correctly in Disk Utility and Optical Media Type correctly using diskutil.

You should be able to ascertain the Media Type by using the Info button in Disk Utility after selecting the target optical device.

You should be able to ascertain the Optical Media Type from the command line in Terminal using the following command:

diskutil info diskN

Where N in diskN is a integer value of the target optical device, e.g.: disk2

To isolate just the Optical Media Type info, use the following command:

diskutil info diskN | grep 'Optical Media Type'

On my system, using the proper number in diskN, the output for the disc I have currently inserted in the SuperDrive is:

  Optical Media Type:       CD-R

You could also use the following command in Terminal:

system_profiler SPDiscBurningDataType

The output of which on my system for the disc currently inserted is:

$ system_profiler SPDiscBurningDataType
Disc Burning:

    HL-DT-ST DVDRW  GX40N:

      Firmware Revision: RQ00
      Interconnect: USB
      Burn Support: Yes (Apple Shipping Drive)
      Cache: 1024 KB
      Reads DVD: Yes
      CD-Write: -R, -RW
      DVD-Write: -R, -R DL, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
      Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO
      Media:
          Type: CD-R
          Blank: Yes
          Erasable: No
          Overwritable: Yes
          Appendable: Yes
          Write Speeds: 10x, 16x, 24x

$

This info is also available in System Information via the GUI under: Hardware > Disc Burning

Note: The information contained herein was tested under OS X 10.8.6 and if using diskutil info on the target optical drive in a different version of OS X/macOS then you might want to not filter the output through grep until sure that diskutil info on the target optical drive has an Optical Media Type: property listed, on whatever version is being used, as it does in OS X 10.8.6.


How can I configure the keyboard layout for the FileVault 2 unlock screen? I installed Mac OS X Lion and enabled FileVault to have a full disk encryption of my system disk. I bought my Mac with a French keyboard (since I'm French and used to this layout) but my Mac is configured to be in English, except for the keyboard layout.

However, after enabling FileVault, my Mac rebooted and I was greeted with the FileVault unlock screen and asked for my password. I entered it, and was told it was incorrect. After many try, I suspected that the keyboard layout was not French but US. I managed to enter my keyboard with this mapping and it was accepted (I'm lucky that I know enough of the Us keyboard layout to do that).

I went to the System Preferences, but I didn't see an option to change the keyboard layout on the FileVault unlock screen. Nor did I see an option to changed it when I was blocked at the prompt.

So, I'm wondering how can I change the keyboard layout of the FileVault unlock screen?

The following works.

System Preferences -> Login -> Login Options -> Check Enable Show Input menu in login window


iOS 7 screen is still shaking after reboot I have tried changing the Parallax setting (general>accessibility>reduce motion).  Still shaking!!

Weird thing...the shaking only appeared after re-booting my phone the first time after updating to ios 7.  After updating to iOS 7 initially, the screen did not shake.  Strange?

What can I do to resolve this?

I had it very bad since the upgrade - 24/7 - I changed my settings (General > Accessibility > Invert Colours) to invert the colours and it worked.  It's a bandaide but at least I can read my messages and mail.  My pictures however look like negatives..


Mac Mini Keeps freezing and have to manually power down and restart I have a mac mini 2.3Ghz Intel Core i5 running 2GB 1333 MHz DDR3.  The mac keeps freezing.  Sometimes while I'm working on it, but often just when I leave it and it won't wake up and I have to hold down the power button to turn it off and then turn on again.  Any ideas on how to sort this?  Should I just upgrade the RAM or is it likely to be a different problem?  When it freezes nothing I try including force quit seems to work.  Thanks in advance, David

I had a similar problem with my Mac mini. I tried different RAM, re-installed the OS, looked at system logs to try to figure out what was causing the problem. I got nowhere. Eventually I took it into the Apple Store to have a genius take a look, and at first it checked out fine. They kept it overnight and determined the logic board was bad. After a warranty replacement, it's working fine.


Checking the health of my iPhone's battery It seems that my iPhone's (4s - purchased Nov. 2011) battery loses its charge fast.

I have read all the relevant OPs. Is there any app which provides information about the battery's health? Or should I simply change it?

the current os does not seem to show this data or at least not as described above.
This is an excellent app which tracks battery health for both the laptop and iPhone.

Free -
http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/


Time Machine only has files from today I have been using Time Machine to back up my school folders, on a My Passport, for 2 years now, I have never needed to restore files until now.

I opened it today to only find files from today. It says I have some 240ish GB used already, but I cant view anything older than today. I know I should have some PSD and CSW files on it.

You need to use the Time Machine app to browse your Time Machine disk rather than looking through the disk with Finder.

Navigate to the folder where the files/folders are missing in Finder.
Open Time Machine.app.
Select the files/folders to restore and click Restore.


Missing date in 'About this mac' window I'm looking for used macbook pro and found this one. Why there is no date of manufacture in 'About this mac' window? Can it be hacked mac?
Also on second screen shot there is mystical '1Tb flash storage', does it mean 1Tb SSD or why then this hard drive called 'flash storage'?

There are other places in About this Mac, that can give you a hint, like Install date for applications.

Flash storage means SSD. Apple started selling MBP with 1Tb SSD from 2013. You can check your specific model using the serial number at Apple.

I did the check on Apple web site and it say you have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013)

Here is the full report:

And the full specs are here https://support.apple.com/kb/SP691?locale=en_US


Inbox by Gmail - making a small application Google have come up with a really good service at Inbox. I find it very easy to manage email that way and have been using it on my Windows PC as a chrome application for a lot of time.

Recently, I bought a MacBook Pro and just plain hate the default mail application they have installed. Also, since I own an Android phone and I use the Inbox Android Application there, it's really hard to see what I did in inbox reflected on Mail (see footnote)

My problem is that when I install the Inbox chrome extension, it is little more that a glorified shortcut. On my Windows PC, I used to select 'Open as a separate Window' and I didn't need to use Chrome at all. However, on the Mac there is no such option and it opens Chrome every time I open Inbox (on top of that I cannot pin the application to the Dock like I used to be able to with the Taskbar). So the question is  whether I can make a small application that I can pin to the Dock, which opens a fullscreen window showing the contents of the Inbox website.

I am a Mac newbie so please forgive me for any noobie things I said. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

(footnote) For example, you can mark an email as 'Done' in Inbox. Now I don't know where that email disappears on my Mac.

You can try Fluid -- it can create one off, WebKit "applications" that look a bit like native applications though are actually single web pages running in a de-decorated WebKit browser window. I've used it successfully in the past for things like Fogbugz.

Fluid may not work though since Inbox requires Chrome and I'm not sure Fluid will identify the browser in a way that'll let Inbox work. It may complain it's not running in Chrome.

If that's the case, here is a shell script that will create a standalone Chrome "app" for you similar to how Fluid works, but with the underlying engine for the app being Chrome. I haven't it used it, but the idea and implementation look sound. You should fork that gist if you're going to use -- gists can disappear. The script, recreated here, for reference is:

#!/bin/sh

echo "What should the Application be called (no spaces allowed e.g. GCal)?"
read inputline
name="$inputline"

echo "What is the url (e.g. https://www.google.com/calendar/render)?"
read inputline
url="$inputline"

echo "What is the full path to the icon (e.g. /Users/username/Desktop/icon.png)?"
read inputline
icon="$inputline"

chromePath="/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome"
appRoot="/Applications"

# various paths used when creating the app
resourcePath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Resources"
execPath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/MacOS"
profilePath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Profile"
plistPath="$appRoot/$name.app/Contents/Info.plist"

# make the directories
mkdir -p  "$resourcePath" "$execPath" "$profilePath"

# convert the icon and copy into Resources
if [ -f "$icon" ] ; then
    sips -s format tiff "$icon" --out "$resourcePath/icon.tiff" --resampleHeightWidth 128 128 >& /dev/null
    tiff2icns -noLarge "$resourcePath/icon.tiff" >& /dev/null
fi

# create the executable
cat >"$execPath/$name" <<EOF
#!/bin/sh
exec "$chromePath"  --app="$url" --user-data-dir="$profilePath" "\$@"
EOF
chmod +x "$execPath/$name"

# create the Info.plist
cat > "$plistPath" <<EOF
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" â€œhttp://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtdâ€>
<plist version=â€1.0â€³>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleExecutable</key>
<string>$name</string>
<key>CFBundleIconFile</key>
<string>icon</string>
</dict>
</plist>
EOF


how to rename a pdf in ibooks on ipod I just downloaded 40+ chapters of a medical reference book onto my ipod touch. They were not available to download as a whole book so I had to download them one at a time. I put them all in a folder in ibooks. Instead of being labelled "chapter 1" or "chapter 2" etc, they are all labelled by the name of the book (that is, they all have the same label). This makes referencing them much harder. I want to be able to find certain chapters quickly. Can I rename these pdfs so they can be easier to reference?   Thanks

In the PDF directory or folder you have your files, touch the "select" option on the top right. Then touch the name of the file you want to rename and the cursor will appear.  Simply delete the garbled-up iBooks name and type the new file name. Finally, touch the aforementioned "select" option to save it.


Why does my early 2011 MBP hibernate instead of sleep? If and only if my MBP is plugged in to both AC and an external DVI monitor, it will hibernate instead of sleeping. If it is not plugged in to the monitor, it will sleep like normal.

I have a 15" MBP, 2.2 Ghz, running OS 10.8.2, with a USB mouse attached, as well as a USB HD and FW Time Machine disk, connected to the monitor via an Apple Thunderbolt-DVI adapter into a DVI cable, with both displays running. It doesn't matter which way the machine sleeps, they all yield the same problem. The console has no weird messages. And disabling sleep is NOT a viable option.

What is causing this abnormal behavior and how can I prevent it (without disable hibernation entirely)?

I followed the instructions to completely disable hibernate, and have run into an even worse  issue. When put to sleep attached to the DVI monitor, the machine will completely shut down. What will let my machine sleep normally?

First, try disabling hibernation (safe sleep) entirely:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

Then, to remove any trace of other previous hibernations, run:

rm /private/var/vm/sleepimage to free ~4 GB (in my iMac's case)

Should you ever want to turn Safe Sleep back on, run
sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

If you want to manage all of this with a simple System Preferences pane and it's worth four dollars for you, there's always SmartSleep.


iPhone missing task manager I've updated my iPhone 3G to the latest version (4.1 8B117), but I'm still missing features such as the task manager, background wallpaper, etc. I've tried restoring it a couple times now, even set it up as a brand new phone, but I'm still missing these features. Can anyone shed some light on why this is?

The features you mentioned, "task manager & background wallpaper" are not available on the iPhone 3G.  In order to have access to all the features of iOS 4 you need to have it installed on an iPhone 3GS or later.


How do I improve gaming performance with Parallels Desktop for Mac? I have a late 2012 MacBook Pro 13" non-retina display and I use Boot Camp to dual-boot windows and Mac. I recently came across an application called Parallels Desktop for Mac that promised faster and better performance to what I was experiencing when natively loading Windows using Boot Camp.

I have used this software for a couple days and I love it, however I notice a big problem when it comes to gaming on it. What I am seeing is that when I play a Steam game (I.e. Skyrim or Fallout: New Vegas), when it tries to detect the default video settings it sets it to ultra high quality. This would be fine but the problem is, the game does not load at all unless I manually set it to low quality, yet, when I play the game natively, I can get away with using medium quality. My question is, what can I do to actually get the game to play at ultra high quality?

Parallels will rarely be as fast as natively booting Windows via Bootcamp, especially when you're gaming. You're much better off ditching parallels and going back to bootcamp for gaming. By running the VM, you're limiting the amount of resources that are available to OS X and your VM environment; thereby, making each run slower. On some machines where a faster processor and large amounts of RAM are available, may speed it up, but it will never be as smooth as running it natively.


.ZIP from Windows to Mac: folder structure lost - how to avoid that? I am creating .zip-files on windows that I want to make available to Mac-Users (created with ZipFile.CreatefromDirectory from .NET Core). However, when I extract these files on my Mac (running Mojave, using the context-menu's "Extract File"), it re-creates the source-folder that I had zipped - and a flattened structure in side that folder: where I previously had root\foo\bar.txt, I now have a file "foo\bar.txt" in the root-folder. How I can get a "foo" folder with "bar.txt"? Did that problem arise when I build the .zip or do I need to extract differently in order to preserve directory-structure?

The default install of macOS does not have an "Extra File" context menu - it seems like that could be a third party program / plugin.

The default install of macOS comes with the Archive Utility for uncompressing for example ZIP files. It will preserve folder structure by default.

So in your case, either you're using a third party extractor, that does not by default preserve folder structure, or you have made a mistake when making the compressed file.

I would test by building a small test folder structure on the Mac, then select the top folder in Finder and choose "Compress" from the context menu. Now you'll have a ZIP-file that you can try uncompressing in a different folder. This should create the same folder structure that you initially compressed.


How to delete simulators below iPhone 8 I have a base model MBP with only 120gb space so I'm trying to free up as much as I can. After running a DaisyDisk scan it looks like I have 8.6gb of simulators.

I'd like to keep the simulators for iPhone 8 and above, and remove the simulators for earlier devices. Is there a way to do this? In DaisyDisk it doesn't specify which simulator is for which device, it just looks like this.

Thanks for any help!

P.S - my personal phone is an iPhone 6+, I'm assuming deleting the iPhone 6 simulator won't cause any issues when I try to test apps on my device? As far as UI layout goes I can't see any issues doing the layout in an iPhone 8 storyboard then running it on my 6.

In Xcode,

Go to Window -> Devices and Simulators or Shift + Command + 2.
Click on Simulators at the top of the window.
On the left side you'll see the list of all the simulators installed on your system.  When you select one, you'll see the details of that simulator (OS version) on the top right.
Select the one you want to remove and press Delete.  Confirm your request on the confirmation dialog.  You can only delete one at a time so it will take some time if you want to delete many of them.

Xcode will delete the simulator.  After this, I usually restart Xcode but I don't know if that's required to clear out the hard drive space.

Regarding your PS, there's no correlation between deleting an old simulator and your app running on a device.  The only thing you lose is seeing how the app would look on a device you don't personally own.  Only you can judge the value of that.


Where are the good docs? I have been reading the OSX security pdf from the apple site, it describes how to ensure Snow Leopard can be brought up to the Common Compliance standard.

Entirely different than the diffident documentation available from  the "help" system.

I love it. What I don't love however, is the degree to which I had become complacent, treating the laptop as a secured place with a great UI to do my work.  I found out today, for example, that Spotlight seems to not index /System, which is lunacy, that is the most important place to keep an eye on files!

Where is detailed documentation like this pdf available for the core system?

EDIT:  Am I asking on the wrong site of the increasingly fragmented stack empire?  There is no tag for 'documentation', or 'howto'?

EDIT:  Found them.  Developer tools,

com.apple.adc.documentation.AppleSnowLeopard.CoreReference.docset

That's the goodstuff.  How to master the system, not just play with it.

I believe that you’re not asking in the wrong place, you’re really not asking a question. What you define like “The Good Docs” is completely subjective. The guide you linked clearly says:

  Important: This document is intended for use by security
  professionals in sensitive
  environments. Implementing the
  techniques and settings found in this
  document impacts system functionality
  and may not be appropriate for every
  user or environment.

  If you’re using this guide, you
  should be an experienced Mac OS X
  user, be familiar with the Mac OS X
  user interface, and have experience
  using the Terminal application’s
  command-line interface. You should
  also be familiar with basic networking
  concepts. Some instructions in this
  guide are complex, and use could cause
  serious effects on the computer and
  its security. These instructions
  should only be used by experienced Mac
  OS X users, and should be followed by
  thorough testing.

So clearly these “good” documents are not that good for everybody. In any case,
Spotlight doesn’t index /System because that could be a security problem on its own (it would need permissions to do that, a set of permissions that you don’t want to give to a userland daemon running all the time, with access to a UI). Why would a regular user want to keep an index of /System remains a mystery to me, it only has things that are for the System and not for the user to find and manipulate.

You can, however, use the terminal to touch that if that’s what you want, but no user should ever attempt to land in /System, it can only break so many things…

Where did you get the idea that

/System is the most important place to keep an eye on files ?
Spotlight is a tool to keep an eye on files?

The place to keep an eye on files is in your very own /Users/YourFolder, because that’s all the access you should have (to write that is).

Spotlight is an indexing/searching tool, not a tool to monitor files that may seem suspicious in reserved system places.

All in all, if you still want those docs, I’m sure that most of them will be available in the developer’s area of Apple’s website.  (developer.apple.com). You can create a free account and start from there.

On the other hand, if you are a “security professional” then you are using the wrong tools for your job. Spotlight is ok as it is, if anything, you might want to restrict it. I’m sure that if you make spotlight run as root it will eventually index that, but of all the possible ideas that come to my mind, that is probably one of the worst security ideas ever conceived. There’s a reason why root user is disabled by default, there’s a reason for sudo and there’s a reason for normal accounts. Use them wisely, use them in peace.


Specific: effect of rm -r /./* I was trying to delete files inside the current directory with rm -r /./* command. When executed it warned me about removing "...Siri..Application". I kind of panicked, thinking it's trying to delete all files from system and immediately terminated the terminal process.
I want to know if this command deleted any other files. I see most files there and am able to restart iMac so all seems good but just to be sure.

PS: sorry for lack of full warning message. I quickly closed the terminal and not going to try command again to get it.

The path you gave rm to delete was /./*. Let’s break this down:

/ The root mount point, such as Macintosh HD. This is the root of the disk, therefore an absolute path was given rather than a relative path operating on the current directory.
./ The current directory, which is now / by the path given so far. /. is equivalent to /, so // is the path so far, except duplicate directory delimiters are combined to a single delimiter, so / so far, the same as step 1.
* Glob all files and folders at this level.

Therefore, the command given was to delete all files and folders starting at the root mount point, i.e. delete all files and folders on the entire volume.

macOS System Integrity Protection will prevent this mischief from causing much damage to the system’s core components, but your own files won’t be protected if you have given full disk access to the Terminal app. I hope you have a backup of the files you need, especially from the beginning of the disk depending when you stopped the command.


How to migrate email database from Outlook for Mac 2015 to Windows Outlook? Recently I found out that there is no option available in order to move your Outlook for mac email database to windows outlook. It a permanent flaw that windows have never worked on. And users like me are deeply suffering from such ignorance. I am here to present my problem of migration and find a suitable and quick solution for this migration issue.

Looking forward for some valuable solutions. Thanks

You are absolutely right that there is no way back to switch from Outlook mac to Windows Manually as outlook mac exports its database as .olm files which cannot be imported into Windows Outlook.

If your email id is Imap enabled then you can directly login to windows outlook and within few minutes your emails will start downloading.

There are many applications available that help in transferring the outlook mac data to windows outlook. You can go for these only if your email database is large. Here is one I found that had some decent features: http://www.olmtopstconverterultimate.com/

Please note that these applications are paid. Give the trial version a thorough run g=before purchasing the complete license.

Thanks. I hope this helps.


Escape every character in bash I want to take a string like this:

Example string 59^!#&$(

And turn it into this:

\E\x\a\m\p\l\e\ \s\t\r\i\n\g\ \5\9\^\!\#\&\$\(

I've tried:

sed -e 's/./\\&/g; 1{$s/^$/""/}; 1!s/^/"/; $!s/$/"/'

as noted here:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/15783701/which-characters-need-to-be-escaped-when-using-bash/20053121#20053121

But as noted by dalelane in a comment, this does not work under vanilla installation of bash in macOS. I have confirmed this with macOS High Sierra.

Any suggestions?

This works for me with bsd sed-

echo "I am a jelly donut" | sed 's/./\\&/g'
\I\ \a\m\ \a\ \j\e\l\l\y\ \d\o\n\u\t

and with your string

echo 'Example string 59^!#&$(' | sed 's/./\\&/g'
\E\x\a\m\p\l\e\ \s\t\r\i\n\g\ \5\9\^\!\#\&\$\(


WPA2 Enterprise network doesn't appear in WiFi list (OSX Mavericks) My university has two WPA2 Enterprise networks, neither of which appear in the WiFi menu in Mavericks, but they do appear on my iPhone which is next to my MacBook.

At the moment, I have to manually enter the SSID and then it finds it. Is there a way to have it show in the list along with the other networks?

Once you have joined the network by the method you list, open System Preferences and the Network Control Panel; select Airport on the left, and then click the Advanced button on the lower right of the Panel. Check the box next to "Remember networks this computer has joined" and then, if not already listed in the above list, click the plus ( + ) button on the left below the list, and add the network to your list of Preferred Networks. If it is a network you use often, then you'll want to order it near the top of the list. Then click the OK button, and then click the Apply button, and close System Preferences.


How do I add an Apple TV to hotel wifi without a browser? I'm staying at a hotel and want to use my Apple TV. My problem is that because there's no browser on the Apple TV I can't get to the proxy web page where I can accept the terms of service.

I found a link explaining a work-around using a Mac as an ad hoc airport, but I don't have a Mac or other wireless router with me, just an iPhone and iPad.

I also found some advice about spoofing MAC addresses, but the instructions involved a lot of command line jujitsu that I don't know how to do on iOS.

Use a computer to imitate or “spoof the MAC address” and register the AppleTV hardware address and agree to the terms is the pragmatic manner to join.

Unlike the post you found, however, it can be done much more easily with a MacBook and without much jujitsu.

First get the MAC address of the Apple TV (available in Settings) and shut it down.
Then run the following in Mac's terminal app, replacing the MAC address shown with that of your Apple TV: sudo ifconfig en0 ether 98:01:a7:a1:f6:77.
Next confirm the change by running ifconfig en0 | grep ether.
Finally use your Mac's browser to sign-in and bypass the captive portal.

Once that's done disconnect or power off your Mac, plug your Apple TV back in and connect to the network as usual. Instructions here summarized from Spoofing IoT Device MAC Addresses.


How can I back up my Mac Auto Correct & Keyboard shortcuts Under System Preferences > Keyboard >  Text, I have a lot of entries under Auto Correct. How can I back these up to transfer to a different machine?

Same with the shortcuts under  System Preferences > Keyboard >  Shortcuts. How can I back these up to transfer to a different machine?

I am doing a clean install going from Sierra to High Sierra. Not sure if that makes a difference.

For text substitutions, the answer is here (and being OsX we should have guessed it by ourselves): https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204006

Not sure why you want to export the shortcuts, unless you customized a lot of them... however someone else asked for it: https://www.reddit.com/r/osx/comments/4fx2wo/is_there_a_way_to_saveexport_keyboard_shortcuts/


Permanently show hidden directories I am trying to repair a friend's USB drive that got a virus. All directories became .lnk and the original ones were hidden. I don't know how to permanently show the folders.
I've used sudo chflags nohidden /path but it doesn't work permanently.

Files & folders that start with a period will always be hidden in the Finder, and in Terminal listings (ls command, unless you use the -a flag i.e. "ls -a"), If renaming the folders is acceptable, then just remove the period from the folders you want to show.


Where did the update notifications for Java and Safari 6.0.4 go? Yesterday my Apple Store came up with the list of new updates available, including Java and Safari 6.0.4.

Since it was late I decided to wait till this morning to do the update. Now the same list does not show the Safari or Java update. So what happened?

I cannot find those updates on Appple websites.

Can someone help me finding these latest updates?

Java Update
See DL1572 for details.

Safari Update
Gets pushed via Software update (and installed automatically if the system has been set to download and install updates automatically).


USB not recognized after installing OS X Snow Leopard on it A while back, I tried installing OS X Snow Leopard on a USB Thumb Drive (64GB) in order to see whether it could run on a Mac with a broken HD. It worked, but was obviously incredibly slow (I didn't have an external hard drive to test with at the time).

Now I have the Mac fixed, but I'm having problems with the USB. It still has MacOS on it, but I want to erase it.

Here's what I tried on macOS High Sierra:
Disk Utility -> Select the drive (grayed out) -> Erase: Gives error "Cannot write to last block of device"

On Windows:
Command Prompt:

diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
clean
Error: Request could not be completed because of an I/O error.

On Ubuntu:
GParted -> Select my disk -> Delete MacOS X partition

Gives error: Error fsyncing/closing /dev/sdb: Input/output error

This might not be the right forum to ask about this, but I figured it was caused by OS X, so I put it on here. I anyone has a suggestion of a better forum to go to, please tell me.

Does anyone have any idea how I might fix the USB Drive?

"Cannot write to last block of device" is usually a connectivity error - it often crops up on HDs & SSDs with a bad cable.

For it to happen on a USB stick, then I'd say either the contacts are dirty or the device is dead [or dying].

You could try cleaning up the contacts with a bit of contact cleaner, then push/pulling the stick a dozen times in & out of a [non-powered] USB socket.

If that gains nothing, then I'm reasonably certain that if it's failing on three different machines, then it's had it.


Who can I contact to discuss adding features to Apple's operating systems? I have some ideas (i.e. certain software algorithms) which I think could enhance the user experience if implemented in the next version of Apple's operating systems.

I'd like to connect with somebody from the company to discuss this in more detail.

I'm not sure where to start because I know I'm going to get nowhere talking to customer service.

Can anybody here point me in the right direction?

If you are suggesting new features or enhancements, try:

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

If you are reporting bugs, try:

https://bugreport.apple.com/

If you need to discuss extensive changes or a new direction you believe Apple should take, I suspect you will have to apply for a job with the department you believe your ideas will have most value in, and then find those who make the design decisions, and convince them that your ideas are the best direction going forward.


IOS Browser Masquerading Is there a simple way to task the IOS Safari browser to masquerade as an OS X Safari Browser?  I understand that Win-tel browser have this capability and thought that Safari might have similar capability for testing purposes

In recent versions of iOS you can request a desktop site in Mobile Safari.
Long-press/hold the reload control icon (see annotated screenshot below) in the address bar until a dialog pops up, then select "Request Desktop Site".

The user agent changes from iPhone OS (e.g. mobile OS) to Intel Mac OS X (e.g. desktop OS).

(Screenshots below show a German user agent check webpage, but you get the idea.)

Mobile Safari: "regular" iOS user agent

Mobile Safari: desktop Mac user agent after "Request Desktop Site"


start and stop OS X router daemon I'd like to be able to stop and (re)start the OS X routing daemon and review the routed configuration file(s).  I think this would involve using launchctl unload and load, but I don't know the name of the routing plist file... Any hints on how to track this down?


Find out if account is disabled using terminal I need to find out if account is disabled using terminal on Catalina but without using pwpolicy. Is there a way to do it?

I think this will work.

dseditgroup -o checkmember -u testuser com.apple.access_disabled

Source: https://www.jamf.com/jamf-nation/discussions/14825/ea-for-disabled-accounts


Disable auto-update of Google Chrome with Firewall? I need to keep using an older version of Chrome to access an old work VPN which requires Java applets and for some reason crashes after several minutes when launched from Safari. The latest versions of Chrome has Java applets disabled, so I need to download an old version of Chrome and disable the autoupdate. I know you can disable the updater interval, but can I disable it by blocking certain domains in /etc/hosts by pointing them to 127.0.0.1 or using Little Snitch to block connections?

From this link:

This works to stop Google Chrome from updating itself automatically in Mac OS X:

Launch the Terminal, found in /Applications/Utilities/
Enter the following defaults write command and hit return:

defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0

Exit out of Terminal and restart Google Chrome

Direct Google search here.

YMMV.


Can I upgrade my Mac but not to High Sierra? My late 2012 MacMini i7 is running Yosemite 10.10.5. I have some apps that need at least 10.11, but I've read reviews saying upgrading to High Sierra, the newly released OS, is not recommended.

Is there a way I can install a newer version until such time as the newest one has been out a while?

[EDIT]

Unfortunately I have not previously downloaded any macOS installers for El Capitan or Sierra.

Since you've clarified that you've never downloaded an installer for a later version of macOS, then you've only got three options:

Download an installer from a 3rd party (not recommended)
Acquire an installer from a trusted friend or other trusted source
Try your luck at an Apple Store (or other authorised outlet) to see if you can find one willing to do the upgrade for you

There may be other workarounds open to you. For example, if you have access to another Mac (yours or a friend's) that is not capable of running macOS High Sierra, but is capable of running El Capitan or Sierra, then you could start your Mac mini in Target Disk Mode and set it as the default startup disk for the other Mac. Then you could use the optioncommandR startup keyboard combination to upgrade to the latest macOS that is compatible with that Mac. You'd have to make sure you select the Mac mini's hard drive as the install location.

Of course, I can't stress enough how important it is you have a backup regime in place, be it via Time Machine or some other solution.


Does using one USB port reduce performance on others? This was a difficult topic to search for on the Web, so I'll try asking here:

On a MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2013) with 2 x USB 3.0 ports, if I transfer files to an external drive using one port, does this in any way "eat up" the performance of the other USB port? Or does each port have its completely own bus / capacity?

A relevant side question is how the same applies to other multi-port setups such as:

the USB ports on Cinema Displays
the USB ports on Thunderbolt Displays
the Thunderbolt ports on newer MacBooks

I have often faced this interesting question. Apple has always tried to make its operations transparent - and although this is fabulous, sometimes this approach obscures information we want.

To discover how many busses your machine is running (as you rightly distinguish from mere ports) go to system profiler, and select USB on the left.

USB is listed amongst all the other protocols within your machine.

You will then be presented with a device tree which (usually) gives a pretty clear idea of what’s going on with the bussing.

If you plug things in to the ports you should see the devices come up.

To get to system profiler, select “about this mac” from the Apple Menu and the click "system report" in the window that comes up. Another way us to call up spotlight by pressing command and space bar together, type system profiler and launch it directly from there.

When you are looking at the usb device tree you may be surprised to learn that the usb bus is also in use internally - for example on some older macs, Bluetooth was running off the buss internally.

Hope this helps.


Can I play 4k video on my TV through my MacBook using a Thunderbolt/HDMI cable? A silly question perhaps, but nonetheless...
I own an early 2015, 13-inch MacBook Air, and I recently purchased a 4k 43' TCL TV with HDMI 2.0 ports.
I'm thinking about purchasing a Thunderbolt/MiniDisplay to HDMI cable that supports 4k@60Hz. Is this a worthwhile investment, or will my MacBook's capabilities hinder the ability to play 4k videos on the TV through my MacBook?

Yes, the correct mini-DP to HDMI cable will work and your MacBook is not limiting this.
Have a look at the tech specs from your MacBook Air or read this article on macrumors.


Improve applescript to open New Private Window with Safari I made this AppleScript to use with the script tool. It can be saved as the application to launch from a click. I have to approve the application though in the Security edit tool.

This open the private browser by clicking the menu items. Then it closes the first window by looking for the unthinkable URL in the Window menu. It is working but flashy as the windows pop open and close.

I wish it can be improved by some way to allow clicking the shortcut then see that only the Safari window is launched in private mode without so much "macro" like appearance. Can you help improve this for me?

# Start or bring forward Safari window
tell application "Safari"
    activate
end tell

# Open a URL that cannot be found
set theURL to "http://localhost:38"
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Safari"
        open location theURL
    end tell
end tell

# Launch a new private window
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Safari"
        tell menu bar 1
            click menu bar item "File"
            tell menu "File"
                click menu item "New Private Window"
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

# Close the first launcher window
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "Safari"
        tell menu bar 1
            click menu bar item "Window"
            tell menu "Window"
                click menu item "Failed to open page"
            end tell
        end tell
        tell menu bar 1
            click menu bar item "File"
            tell menu "File"
                click menu item "Close Window"
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

Try the following:

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    delay 0.5
end tell
tell application "System Events"
    open location "http://localhost:38"
    delay 0.5
    keystroke "w" using command down
    keystroke "n" using {shift down, command down}
end tell

Now here is the code I'd choose to use as it checks to see if Safari is already open and if yes, just opens a new Private window. If not then it works as I believe you intended, which is to close the opening window and then open a new Private window.

on is_running(appName)
    tell application "System Events" to (name of processes) contains appName
end is_running

set isRunning to is_running("Safari")

if isRunning then
    tell application "Safari" to activate
    delay 0.5
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "n" using {shift down, command down}
else
    tell application "Safari" to activate
    delay 1
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke "w" using command down
        keystroke "n" using {shift down, command down}
    end tell
end if

Note: The value of the delay may need to be adjusted for the speed of your system.  As coded the present values of delay work fine on my system.  The value is in seconds or fractions thereof as a decimal value.

By the way, I see no need to open a new Tab to "a URL that cannot be found" as I believe my method herein, in the block of code directly above, achieves your intended goal, both quickly and without as you put it, "see that the Safari window is launched in private mode without so much "macro" like appearance.".

By the way, the code in your question could be reduced to the example below and would actually run a bit faster then the way you presently have it coded.

tell application "Safari"
    activate
end tell
tell application "System Events"
    open location "http://localhost:38"
    click menu item "New Private Window" of menu "File" of menu bar 1 of process "Safari"
    click menu item "Failed to open page" of menu "Window" of menu bar 1 of process "Safari"
    click menu item "Close Window" of menu "File" of menu bar 1 of process "Safari"
end tell

However my first (and second) example, at the top of this answer, acts directly without seeing the menus open and close as it's not using click events but key presses.  Also while the condensed example of your code is just that, I wouldn't use it without appropriate delay statements where applicable.

In the end, I'd choose to use the second block of code shown in this answer.


How can I access the LaTeX commands from the terminal? I just installed MacTeX onto Yosemite and it installed everything in usr/local/texlive

However if I am in Terminal and try to compile a LaTeX file with pdflatex foo.tex, it cannot find the LaTeX tools. Further whereis pdflatex returns no results.

If I specify the entire path of pdflatex (e.g., /usr/local/texlive/2014/.../bin/pdflatex) it all works well.

How can I get the LaTeX tools to work from the terminal without specifying the entire path?

To get the LaTeX tools to run from the command line, you need to add the path to your pdflatex to your executable search path. To do this, you'll need to edit the .bash_profile file in your home directory. Open the file in a plain text editor (e.g. vi, emacs, bbedit) and add this line at the bottom:

PATH=/usr/local/texlive/2014/.../bin:$PATH

where /usr/local/texlive/2014/.../bin is the path you typed in your example to get pdflatex to run.

An aside

whereis only returns results from system-installed executables. which looks in the entire path. e.g. on my machine:

~ 503   whereis ruby
/usr/bin/ruby
~ 504   which ruby
/Users/steve/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.2/bin/ruby


Can't download 'already purchased' app after device crash At one point I tried to download an app (game) and it started well, but my iPad crashed during the process. When I now try to re-download the app, it shows the following message:

  You've already purchased this, so it will be downloaded now at no additional charge.

Tapping OK, the app refuses to download. How can I download the app?

Edit: Instead of resetting my iPad, please let me know if there is any other option?

The most probable source of your problem is Apple just changed their terms and conditions for the App Store and they won't let you download anything till you accept them.

Whenever Apple change their terms and conditions, the App Store app has a strange behavior (since I had an iPod touch in 2008). One typical situation is that it won't let you download an item that you had already bought.

What you should do is install a new app (one you have never downloaded). Then it will take a lot of time and finally (and hopefully, otherwise you should kill the App Store app and begin the process again), the new terms and conditions page will appear for you to accept them.

Once you accept the terms and conditions, you'll be able to download your previously downloaded app.

As you see, the problem doesn't have anything to do with the iPad crash but with the coincidence in time with the terms and conditions change.


Mac Book Pro 2.2 (2008) Core 2 Duo, display and trackpad stopped working My Mac Book Pro 2.2 (2008) Core 2 Duo, was working properly, and after waking it up (open the lid), the display was black...

It happened to me before and the other times I reckon it was some kind of bug with it not understanding it was meant to wake up (nothing a lid close, wait a bit and open lid wouldn't solve).

This time none of my previous solutions worked, and I forced a shutdown and then started it, and it remained with a blank (black) screen.

I can connect to it via the screen sharing application, and everything is working except the trackpad, the cursor doesn't move. Incidentally, connecting an external USB mouse, doesn't work, the cursor also doesn't move. (the cursor via screen sharing at least works).

By connecting to it remotely, I can go to the system preferences and can see that under the monitors preferences, it shows the standard display resolutions, and I connected an external monitor and nothing, so I assume the graphic card is gone.

So symptoms are:

no display, no external display;
no USB mouse (but it does read USB pen drives)

What I've done so far:

reseted VRAM
started from an external system

None of these worked and what puzzles me is why doesn't the USB external mouse work? (the rest seems to indicate the graphic card + trackpad are seriously damaged).

What can I do? is there a solution for this?

my 2008 santa rosa 2.2GHz MacBook Pro has suffered both the graphic chip problem (no picture on screen but accessible through screen sharing apps or ext monitor), and the trackpad cable problem (no response from keyboard or trackpad although ext mouse and keyboard function ok). Both are common faults on this model. Graphics prob repairable under the special warranty extension from Apple. Trackpad cable fairly easy using ifixit.com guide.

When my graphics card was in broken mode, (it was intermittent), it would not show up in the Graphics/Displays section of System Information (Lion); the Intel chipset would show up there instead; so thus you can check if you have the graphics chip (poor solderflow) problem. It would however give me the output to an external monitor ok (?!*)

It sounds as though you might have suffered both at the same time...although your ext mouse should work(?!*)


Anyone know about /private/var/keybags/backup_keys_cache.db Today I got a popup message in my iPad2 (jailbroken using absinthe) that it have 0 free space.

Using ssh, I check the size of folders in the iPad and found out an interesting file that took 4.1G space and keep growing.

The file is /private/var/keybags/backup_keys_cache.db

The owner is root user and wheel group. Curious, I rename the file into backup_keys_cache.db.orig. I do ls again and found that the file got created again and now keep growing in size.

AbiFathirs-iPad:~ root# ls -alh /private/var/keybags/
total 4.1G
drwx------  2 root wheel  170 Feb 18 23:54 ./
drwxr-xr-x 30 root wheel 1.2K Feb 18 23:52 ../
-rw-------  1 root wheel  97K Feb 19 00:03 backup_keys_cache.db
-rw-------  1 root wheel 4.1G Feb 18 23:56 backup_keys_cache.db.orig
-rw-r--r--  1 root wheel 2.9K Feb 18 18:44 systembag.kb

I want to know if anybody else have this problems? I tried to uninstall newly installed application, from cydia and from app store, but the process that wrote to this file is still running and the file continue to grow.

I tried to install lsof, but when I run it, it crash with message Cannot allocate memory

Update Feb 19, 2012:

One of my friend suggest a temporary solution to prevent the process writing into this file. Delete/rename the original file, then create new file as symbolic link to /dev/null

cd /private/var/keybags/
mv backup_keys_cache.db backup_keys_cache.db.orig2 && ln -s /dev/null backup_keys_cache.db

Now with the file become symbolic link into the black hole, it should not hog down the storage space. I still have the original 4.1GB file saved in my laptop, and smaller file that created after the original file got renamed.

I tried to use db4.6_dump to read this file but I got this message:

DATA=END
db4.6_dump: backup_keys_cache.db: DB_VERIFY_BAD: Database verification failed

My friend suspect it could be from sniffing tools, but he also curious why the file could be that big.

Update Feb 28, 2012

Today I found out that the application (malware?) might have ability to learn and find a way to always write the backup_keys_cache.db file. It could detect and delete the softlink that I made into /dev/null with the same name. I tried to delete the file, make a directory with the same name, but today the directory have been renamed and the backup_keys_cache.db file now had 1.9M size.

If the file not got into 4.1GB, I might not aware about it's existence. I need to know if any other iPad 2 users had the same problem. Please check your device and see if you had the file in there or not.

After examining syslog in my iPad, I found 2 rows that contain the word key

Feb 28 22:25:21 AbiFathirs-iPad backupd[50473] <Warning>: INFO: Refreshed cache in 4.852 s

Feb 28 22:25:21 AbiFathirs-iPad backupd[50473] <Warning>: INFO: Exporting keychain

I check backupd executable in the process list and found it here:

# ps A|grep backupd
50803   ??  Ss     0:00.43 /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/MobileBackup.framework/backupd

After examining the executable file content using strings in my ubuntu laptop, I found out that this might be an iCloud backup application.

So I try to disable iCloud in control panel, and new the file /private/var/keybags/backup_keys_cache.db no longer appear.

I don't know why the cache file could get to 4GB size last week. But at least now I knew which application that cause it.


What workflows help when using Photo Stream to import from iOS to Aperture? When I take a picture on my iPhone, the photo is going to PhotoStream and to Camera Roll.

My way of importing the pictures to my Mac was just to go in the PhotoStream folder of Aperture, and copy the pictures into some particular project, that way, the picture is "disconnected" from PhotoStream and will stay forever in my mac.

But that means I now have 1000+ pictures in my iPhone, and the backup to iCloud is not working anymore.

My best stab at a workflow is to manually import the whole iPhone in Aperture and then deal with duplicates. This works miserably when I forget and re-import photos and duplicate a whole bunch of imported pictures from PhotoStream. Can the detection of duplicates where the ones that were already imported via PhotoStream from Aperture be relied upon?

What is the usual workflow that avoids this main problem of duplicates?

Delete the photos from the Phone after you've processed them in Aperture? Seems like the obvious thing. Tap the Share Button and then select the pics you want to delete and then tap delete.


Configure ipfw to filter by ip range I am a Linux user and very new to OSX. I have an OSX 10.7.5 "Lion" server that I am configuring as a webserver. I only have shell access.

I am tryin to configure the firewall, but ipfw is quite different from iptables. Currently, all ports are open to the world. I would like to add the following rules:

port 80/443: allow incoming connections from any IP address.
anything else: only allow incoming connections from within current subnet.

How would I accomplish this with ipfw?

Although you seem fine handling the command line, on OS X it is best to use the Server Admin Tools (like @lupincho suggested). But how can you use the Server Admin Tools GUI when you only have terminal acces?

You can run the Server Admin Tools app from another mac, this will allow you to login on a remote server and change it's settings.
If you do not have a spare mac with the Server Admin Tools installed, you can do the following:

SSH into your remote OS X machine with an administrator’s log in and password.
Enable Remote Desktop (a.k.a. Screen Sharing, a.k.a. VNC) with this command:

  sudo
  /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart
  -activate -configure -access -on -clientopts -setvnclegacy -vnclegacy yes -clientopts -setvncpw -vncpw mypasswd -restart -agent -privs -all

3) Login using a VNC client (such as TightVNC). Your password is "mypasswd" (see the -vncpw flag in the above command;  you can — and should — change this).

Now you can open the Server Admin Tools and do your thing.

4) When you are done, turn of screen sharing using your SSH session:

  sudo
  /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart
  -deactivate -configure -access -off


Can. MacBook Pro run in closed-display mode without physically. closing the lid? I have two external monitors with my MacBook pro. I'd like to keep the MacBook lid open for speaker quality - listening to music, but have the same result as it would be closed with external monitors. Changing the brightness of the laptop screen to None does not eliminate the unnecessary screen.
Is this possible to blank the screen while the lid is up and the keyboard is clear?

So, basically, you want to be in closed clam shell mode but keep the lid open so you can hear the speakers better.
Unfortunately, there's no command that will disable a monitor.
Use a magnet to trigger the lid sensor
You didn't identify which MacBook Pro, but it's not really necessary.  Simply slide a small magnet (a refrigerator magnet will suffice) around the the outer rim of the top case (where the keyboard is) until the screen shuts off.  That's where the sensor is located.  This will work will all Mac laptops.
Use External Speakers
A better option, IMO, is to use quality external speakers.  There's a limit to how "good" internal speakers sound and a speaker no more than 2 inches (5cm) in diameter driven at a few measly watts isn't going to give you quality sound.  Get a USB DAC (Digital to Audio Converter) and connect some quality speakers - it will make a substantial difference in what you're hearing.


What is the easiest (fastest) way to get direct link to MP4 video on YouTube? My Mac is rather old and has issues (many dropped frames) with playing YouTube videos in HD on fullscreen, whether in Flash or HTML5.

However, playing them in VLC makes no drops whatsoever, and what is even better, it plays them fluently even remotely, so I don't need to download those videos. All I need to do is open network file in VLC and paste here link to YouTube .mp4 or .flv file. Works like a charm.

Right now I get links by copying them and letting jDownloader pars YouTube urls. This gives me direct links to all available formats and sizes. Here I pick one I prefer, copy url and paste it to VLC.

Is there any faster way to parse those urls without the need of 3rd app like jDownloader? I tried some Safari plugins but none of them gave desirable results to me.

I don't think it's much faster. I use youtube-dl from MacPorts or Homebrew.

> youtube-dl -g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkmyLTPh3UY
http://r7---sn-nfpnnjvh-1gil.c.youtube.com/videoplayback?itag=34&expire=1357448601&source=youtube&factor=1.25&sver=3&ip=178.193.24.93&algorithm=throttle-factor&ms=au&key=yt1&mv=m&upn=tGspI9WJELc&burst=40&id=3249b22d33e1dd46&mt=1357423931&cp=U0hUTFRPVl9FS0NONF9MSVpHOlp2Yi1jNlUyeUdG&fexp=914501%2C919358%2C910207%2C929206%2C916611%2C920704%2C912806%2C928001%2C922403%2C922405%2C929901%2C913605%2C929104%2C929109%2C929110%2C913546%2C913556%2C908496%2C920201%2C913302%2C919009%2C911116%2C901451%2C902556&ipbits=8&gcr=ch&sparams=algorithm%2Cburst%2Ccp%2Cfactor%2Cgcr%2Cid%2Cip%2Cipbits%2Citag%2Csource%2Cupn%2Cexpire&signature=910FFEBF23CC5F88185DB98028C346DF76EF83C3.2B57D82069876F73C1E8F886AEFFDF2F2039F7F5

You can copy this URL automatically to the clipboard with | pbcopy. See osxdaily.com for details.


Delete a purchased file from ITunes Download Queue without downloading file This is related to an earlier question, but the advice there doesn't work for me. My disk space is full. Whenever I open iTunes, it tries to download some purchases that I don't want anymore (old Lost episodes) that I haven't wanted for years. All that I want to do is cancel these downloads. Deleting them in itunes doesn't work. The recommended advice on an earlier question is to finish downloading them, then delete them, but I can't do this for diskspace reasons (there are about seventeen episodes, so it's not practical for me to sit there and slowly deleted enough diskjunk to download an episode at a time, then delete the episode - and even if it were, it seems rude to hog this much bandwidth.) Any other solution?

In iTunes Downloads folder (open Terminal, type: open ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Downloads/), delete list.plist file to remove the queued downloads.
Then restart iTunes.

You may also want to delete other files in there too since they are certainly not needed.

(From my answer, https://discussions.apple.com/message/24479839#24479839)


Chrome for iOS keeps loggin out of reddit.com Google Chrome for iOS refuses to remember my login session once closed, nor does it remember my username or password.

Other websites (google.com) autologin and stay logged in just fine in Chrome for iOS, and other browsers (Chrome desktop, Safari iOS) have no trouble with Reddit.

Latest Chrome for iOS
iOS 7
2013 iPad Mini, non-Retina

Anyone else have this problem?

Try logging in to reddit with HTTPS at pay.reddit.com

I can't say for sure if this will work, but at least it's something to try.

pay.reddit.com is HTTPS, not HTTP. Explanation: http://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/1y9543/ive_seen_httpspayredditcomr_a_few_times_what/


Does app review rejection list all issues? Our app was rejected recently with reason Google+ signin, which we understood is not according to Apple policy and need to fix.

While discussing about this issue we came across an interesting question with Apple review process, does Apple review team list all issues (if more than one exists) while rejecting app (or) would they stop reviewing other areas as soon as they found an issue (in our case Google+ signin)?

There is no guarantee all reasons for rejection will be listed in your initial rejection response although like the previous poster I have had multiple reasons listed in the "App Submission Feedback" email which tells you of the rejection. But the rejection points were related. If one point for rejection was a HIG violation and another was around In App Purchase I wouldn't be so sure both would be included.

We have also experienced multiple/sequential rejections as we tried to submit the same target version to the store and we've learned a little bit more with each submission.

We have also tried to open up a conversation and get more detail and ask for guidance on how we may have interpreted something differently when we saw some ambiguity. This process is slow and every time we have re-submitted according to the original guideline. Don't pursue this option thinking you might change the policy or get a special exception especially if there is any kind of time sensitivity to your release. I say this especially in relation to this question because even if you were approved for that one item there is no guarantee something else would not be found on your re-submission.

Just as another point of context, most of our rejections have come around In Application Purchase and specific interpretations of the product types.


Will Excel formulas be OK if they are imported within a spreadsheet into iPad Numbers? Will Excel formulas be OK if they are imported within a spreadsheet into iPad Numbers?

In general yes - but there are some functions that are only in Excel.

Googling found this comparison for Apple Numbers for Mac OS.


No ethernet icon in Lion? I remember having an ethernet icon in Tiger and Leopard in the menu bar. This was very convenient since it gave quick access to the settings just like you need it for airport:

In Lion I do not see this icon anymore. Also, I cannot find any way to activate it?!

If you are missing the Airport/Wi-Fi icon you can enable this in System Preferences -> Network:

For PPPoE services the same option is available once you added the service to the list of networks.


Is it possible to change the company behind a developer account? A few years ago I created a company to start an app project. I released the series of apps but things did not work very well. The apps did not generate any significant revenue and I gradually abandoned the project. The company did still exist, but my accountant charged me an annoyingly big amount of money to just keep the company, which had nearly no income and nearly not expenses, alive.

After a while, and after a big bill from the accountant, I started the process of shutting down the company to avoid the expenses. This process just managed to be completed when something happened...

On a day with some extra time on my hands I did some small changes to the apps on the account registered to the deleted company, and in the following weeks things started really rolling. Now the apps are making a lot of money...

Everything is functioning properly, and money is paid out to my personal bank account. I did not think of this as a problem until my accountant responsible for doing the accounting for my personal company, doing my taxes etc, notified me that I could not write off expenses for some ads that I had run to get more downloads of the now revived apps.

After thinking about all of this for a while I am now very worried that I am in big problems. What will happen if I tell Apple that the company behind my app-account is no longer active? Will they shut down the account and all my apps?

Can I change the company behind the developer account if I start a new company?

I am unable to create a new account and transfer my apps as all the apps uses Auto-Renewable Subscriptions which for some reason cannot be included when transferring an app between accounts. The extremely bad timing of shutting down the seemingly "dead" company is really torturing me. Now I am afraid Apple will suddenly shut down my account and stop all payments as the company no longer exists.

Can someone please help me regain some faith that I am not in deep trouble? I am very nervous about this.

I am worried I have made a big mistake.

There shouldn't be anything to worry about.

  What will happen if I tell Apple that the company behind my app-account is no longer active? Will they shut down the account and all my apps?

Not exactly. Best recourse in this scenario is to get in touch with the Apple developer support and discuss your case. Apple Developer support can be reached over Phone or email. The concerned personnel will be able to study your scenario and offer you applicable advise. They can direct you with moving over your apps to a different company.

Get started by visiting Apple Developer Support website, login with your registered Apple ID, and select the applicable case.

  Can I change the company behind the developer account if I start a new company?

Yes. iTunes Connect does allow transferring apps to another developer account. Relevant documentation can be found here. You should be also be able to discuss this query with you developer support representative.


What is this Google Backup and Sync "Back up your files" dialog asking? Google Drive recently became Google Backup and Sync, and this dialog started occasionally popping out of its menu bar item:

I don't have a "Boot OS X" folder that I'm aware of, in Google Drive or locally. When I look at the settings for Google Backup and Sync, I don't see anything about this. I haven't touched the settings since it was Google Drive, so it's set to sync my Google Drive and nothing more.

I can't tell what the files are from the little generic icons, and I can't figure out how to get a list. It's also not clear what device it's talking about, or what choice it's going to remember (since the options are essentially "yes" or "later").

Does anyone know what this dialog is about and what I might have done to cause it?

Yes, you can have no "Boot OS X" folder now, but if you backup these files to cloud, there will be such a folder containing these files.
The most probably cause of this dialog is due to the update from old Google Drive to new Backup and Sync changed your source settings automatically though you didn't do by yourself. Thus, better check out your current settings to find out. If it is what i guess, then uncheck the related source folder will terminate such dialog.
Best wishes!


Executing executable file by means of script file For executing file in linux terminal we run something like this:
./sflm -start
Now, if i want this procedure is done by executing a script file what should i do ? I want to for example run this command :
./script.pl
and then it run automatically my main command (./sflm -start).
Thanks in advance

I'm going to assume that, from your question, you would like to run a specific command from a script.

Quite simply, in your script, start with

#!/bin/bash

and below that, add your command name

sflm

Of course, this assumes that you have moved the sflm binary to a /.../bin folder. If you haven't, then

bash /path/to/sflm

This specifies that /path/to/sflm is to be run by bash. Substitute bash with any other shell of your choice.

Finally,

chmod 775 /path/to/script

And ./script to run.


How old are Macs that cannot run 64-bit applications? We're trying to decide how much effort to put into ensuring that our software works well in 32-bit mode. (It's scientific software that must handle large datasets, so ensuring that it works well does not only mean building universal binaries, but also designing around address-space limitations.)

Q: In what year were the last Macs sold that, out of the box, could not run 64-bit applications?

By "out of the box," I mean in the hands of naïve users that do not upgrade the OS, choose different kernels, or change the system configuration from the default in any significant way.

EDIT: Based on the comments on the question and this answer, I think the link Mac OS X v10.6: Macs that use the 64-bit kernel is much more relevant.

Basically, only the mid 2010 Mac Pro, the early 2011 MacBook Pro and the mid 2011 iMac were booting by default on 64-bit mode with Snow Leopard. Since Lion (mid 2011) every new Mac is 64-bit only.

So to answer your question:

  In what year were the last Macs that were not capable (without user tweaking) of running 64-bit software sold?

==> 2011

EDIT 2: As Vebjorn Ljosa mentioned in the comments, having the kernel run in 32-bit or 64-bit mode makes little difference for your binary, so you can probably assume that Macs sold after mid 2007 will run a 64-bit app (based on the data just below).

Mac mini:

last 32-bit only processors: late 2006
oldest 64-bit capable processors: mid 2007

iMac:

last 32-bit only processors: early 2006
oldest 64-bit capable processors: late 2006

Mac Pro:

always been 64-bit capable

MacBook:

last 32-bit only processors: early 2006
oldest 64-bit capable processors: late 2006

MacBook Pro:

last 32-bit only processors: early 2006
oldest 64-bit capable processors: late 2006

MacBook Air:

always been 64-bit capable

So it seems the last Mac to sell with a 32 bits only processor was the late 2006 Mac mini.


Automator "Watch Me Do" function does not work in app I am trying to make an app in Automator to hide or show the top menu bar and dock. I couldn't think of a better way to do it, so I used the "record" function so it could watch me carry it out. I tested it in automator, and it worked fine.

Here's the workflow:

Like I said, it works fine when I hit the "run" button in Automator, but when I export it as an application, it opens System Preferences, but stops working as soon as it hits the "Watch Me Do" function, and gives me this message:

Here's a video of the whole thing if it helps:

Video

Watch Me Do and Accessibility

Since macOS 10.9, you need to add your Automator application to your Mac's accessibility list. To add your Automator workflow, go to:

System Preferences →
Security & Privacy →
Accessibility

…and drag the Automator app you are trying to use into the list.

This is needed because Watch Me Do uses macOS's accessibility features to simulate user interactions. Accessibility is powerful and Apple require applications be explicitly listed before they are granted this additional control over your computer.


OSX Sierra - WindowServer process hangs, high CPU, whole OS freezes I just updated my 15 inch macbook pro retina 2014 model from OSX El Capitan to Sierra (10.12.2) and have noticed an ugly problem. It appears when I press and hold the F1-F2 (screen light +/-), the F5-F6 (keyboard light +/-) or the F11-F12 (volume +/-), the whole system becomes unresponsive for an amount of time proportional with how much I hold the button pressed. In the activity monitor I can see when it recovers that the WindowServer jumped to 100%+. This used to work perfectly on El Capitan, with normal behaviour(incremented/decremented the values until limits 0-16 bars on screen). I will file a bug report on Apple forum as well.

EDIT: I also posted on Sierra forum here. Dont know where else to report this so Apple engineers can see and fix it.

Wow I accidentally debugged this myself.

It seems after all that my problem was actually a side effect caused by the real issue which was: macOS Sierra changed how it handled defaults write NSGlobalDomain KeyRepeat -int 0, it no longer supported a zero value, and I had it changed to zero in Yosemite or El Capitan to make the cursor advance faster. To reset it back to normal parameters I changed the keyboard typing delays in the System Preferences > Keyboard back to fastest (both sliders were dragged to the left sidecheck using $ defaults read  NSGlobalDomain in terminal
, most likely cause I upgraded from El Capitan and something changed in Sierra, and the keyboard was queueing input events as fast as possible, so the WindowServer process hogged the CPU like crazy) and now my initial problem is gone.

Maybe I should change the title of the question so that others can find this solution..


Does autocorrect take into account an alternate keyboard layout? I notice that the autocorrect in Lion uses the character positions in order to suggest which correction to be made:

For example, if I type thst really fast, it will correct it to that but if I type thet, it corrects it to they.

This makes sense on a Qwerty keyboard, since the s is by the a, and the t is next to the y. However, it wouldn't make much sense on a different layout such as Dvorak.

Does Mac OS X Lion take into account which keyboard layout you are using and offer suggestions based on keys that are nearby the typo?

What if I created an entirely new keyboard layout, and use that instead of a keyboard layout which comes with Lion?

Apple has a patent on the autocorrect feature for mobile phones (and possibly for desktops as well). There was a lawsuit over iPhone vs Samsung autocorrect: http://gizmodo.com/5884179/apple-is-now-suing-samsung-over-autocorrect
. Moving right along, apple's autocorrect does use keyboard layout to predict a replacement word: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2010/07/yes_ill_matty_you.html . Lion will only try this feature if it can recognize the keyboard layout you are using based on a keyboard standard.


How to backup SSD if MacBook doesn't turn on? I have a MacBook Pro 15" Mid 2015 and after 3 years of using it, I think it is broken since it won't power on. I already tried resetting SMC and NVRAM but it's still not working. I don't hear any chimes or any fan noises and my charger is still working properly. I tried charging it for more than 3 hours but the light is always orange/amber. I guess this is a logic board issue.

I went to an Apple Center to get it fixed but they advised me to backup my SSD first because they don't do this service and they will wipe all of my files so they can diagnose it properly.

So my question is:

How do I backup my SSD when my MacBook doesn't even turn on? I'm guessing I need to remove the SSD but I don't know what to do after remove it.

How do I backup my SSD when my MacBook doesn't even turn on? I'm
guessing I need to remove the SSD but I don't know what to do after
remove it.

You are correct; you just need to remove it.
What you do afterwards is put it in a safe place (like a desk drawer).
Why?
There's no need to erase, much less even have, an internal SSD to diagnose and repair a power issue.
If the "Apple Center" (you didn't say if they were an actual Apple Store or an authorized 3rd party repair facility) said that "wiping" the drive was necessary, I would look for another facility.
You can boot a MacBook from USB, another SSD, or from another MacBook (via Target Disk Mode) so there's no reason that they should get yours (as a side note, they should have spare ones with clean OSes for diagnostics). An internal drive is absolutely not necessary for diagnosis/repairs (unless of course the issue is the SSD itself). As it's a power issue, the SSD is irrelevant and shouldn't even be touched.
The fix...
The problem that you are experiencing is related to the DC-in board (aka the MagSafe board).

Besides being the interface for your charger to your MacBook, it acts as a safeguard to ensure that you're not dumping 18V DC into your SMC (which handles power) that only takes 3 volts. (It's also very inexpensive).
It's not a complex fix, but it is detailed as you do have to remove the logic board. iFixit.com has an excellent step-by-step walk through on how to do this.  However, if this is not your cup-of-tea, I advise taking it in.
That said...you should be backing up on a regular basis.


Using master pages with normal Pages documents in Pages 7.0 The Pages 7.0 updated released yesterday (March 27, 2018) includes the ability to have master pages in your Pages documents. I read their support article on creating and using master pages, but I'm unable to find the master pages option. You are supposed to press the leftmost button on the toolbar, but it doesn't say "Edit Master Pages" in any of the options. There is an "Edit Master Pages" option in the "View" menu, but it seems to be grayed out for all of my documents. Master Pages should be usable for Pages documents as well as books. I can't seem to get the "Edit Master Pages" option in the View menu to "ungray," – even when trying to create a template or load one.

Could anyone explain how to use this feature?

According to this report, the feature can only be used with Layout docs.


Is there a way to use video files from other sources on iMovie on iPad/iPhone? I have been given an assignment to create a video in school and I would just like to know if and how you go about getting movies not recorded on the iDevice into the camera roll and then into iMovie. I have tried everything I can think of but I am stumped.

This is a total guess, but when you get photos in emails and on the web in safari, you can save them and they appear in your camera roll.

Could the same trick be used to save movies?


Can you enable the meta key in Mavericks? According to several help posts (for example), you used to be able to enable the option/alt key to act as a meta key. Can you no longer do that in Mavericks?

This is still possible in Mavericks. Have you looked under Terminal Preferences > Settings Tab > Profiles > Default Profile > Keyboard and then ticked "Use option as meta key" at the bottom?


Lost installation cd I lost the installation cds from my MBP.

Is that possible get a copy from apple? Or can I use a installation cd from another MBP?

Thanks

Call (or visit) AppleCare (a genius bar) for a replacement disc to be mailed. If another identical model's media is available, that would work, but the restore media are narrowly made to just work for one or a few models in general.


Macbook turns on but screen is dead or completely dark My Macbook Pro's screen just blinked and went dark.

When I turn the computer on, the fan turn on and runs but the screen is dark.
I tried all the option and tricks but nothing is works. I rebooted several times still the screen is black but the fan is running.

I'm not sure if the backlight is on or not, but at a first impression it's either on and black or there's no backlight and no image being drawn.

What can I do short of sending it in for repair?

Apple has an excellent process to triage macs that don’t boot all the way.

If you hold the option key or boot to internet recovery, you should see things on the screen even if there is no drive present, no OS present so you can know you need a repair if you can’t even see internet recovery like here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204156

In the end, you will have a working Mac again - possibly reinstalling the OS or erasing and then reinstalling or you take it in for service since there is a hardware issue.

Start here and ask a follow on question with exactly where your troubleshooting led you.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204267


unusual disk activity i am new in the apple world. I'm coming from pc + ubuntu. I've just bought a Mac Book Pro 13" with 2.5 Ghz Inter Core i5 and ram 4 GB.
I am suspicious something is wrong because it i have only skype, chrome, safari, and some other software (a programming light text editor like Sublime text editor) and few other things I listen a continuously little whirr, like when data are read/writte from harddisk.
So i opened Activity Monitor and i've seen few peeks in Disk Activity.

I am suspicious that this is smothing wrong with my new mac book. how can i diagnosticate better what is happening? is it normal?

Open a terminal and run this command:

 sudo fs_usage

It will dump the filesystem activity in real time. Once you're ready to stop the trace, close the window or press Control-C. If you're not familiar with sudo or fs_usage, right click on them before you press return and open the manual pages for each command to see what they do.

It's almost certainly fine, but without seeing the scale of the graph, it's hard to know for sure. Your Mac can take several days to optimize the files needed in the fast portion of the drive and finish indexing things (if you dump a lot of data on the drive and spotlight can't index it as it's written).


Can a 2012 Macbook Pro run a 4k display? I was thinking about getting a 4k display for photo and video editing. I just edit 1080p video and that was never a problem on my mid 2012 mbp non-retina with i5 and 8gb ram. It also was never a problem when I had a external 1080p display hooked up to it with a thunderbolt to hdmi adapter. Can the macbook run a 4k display even for basic tasks like web browsing and some stuff in sketch and affinity designer?

According to Everymac that machine can only run an external screen up to 2560x1600.


How do I delete email files on my mac so that it retrieves them again? The email on my mac is not working. I have tried several things.

Is there a way to delete the email files (files where mac stores the emails) on my mac book pro so that it downloads all my mail again. (I will leave it to download overnight).

You may need to rebuild a mailbox to update the list of messages it contains. For example, if messages appear to be missing or garbled, or if you can’t find all relevant messages when you search using the Entire Message search option.

In the Mail app on your Mac, select a mailbox in the sidebar.

Choose Mailbox > Rebuild.

When you rebuild mailboxes for IMAP or Exchange accounts, messages and attachments stored on your computer are discarded, and then downloaded again from the mail server to your Mac. Your mailbox appears empty until the download is complete.


iCloud contacts not showing up on phone I have an iPhone 5C on iOS 9.1. I previously had all of my stuff in the Google world - GMail (using Google Apps), calendar, and contacts. I recently killed the GMail application on the phone, and removed the account from Mail/Contacts/Calendars on the phone.

I exported my contacts from GMail as vCard, and imported them into the icloud.com contacts section on a desktop web browser, and they're showing up fine there. But they're not finding their way into the phone's contacts.

Under the iCloud settings, I do have Contacts selected - I've also tried unchecking and rechecking, and rebooting the phone, and it's been a couple hours, so I don't think it's a matter of being patient.

Any thoughts on what I could be missing, or ways to manually synch contacts?

(I did see this question, which also mentioned looking for a "All iCloud" group, but that group doesn't exist in my contacts - my Groups are totally empty.)

Not sure why it would be like this, but once I selected Mail in the iCloud list, the contacts showed up - you shouldn't need to synch mail in order to synch contacts, but it's not hurting anything since I'm not actually using Apple email, so I'd call that an acceptable workaround.


MacBook Air Early 2015 SSD > MacBook Pro Early 2013? BLUF: Can I use the SSD out of a MacBook Air in a MacBook Pro 13?

I have a road worn but otherwise fine MacBook Pro 13"/Early 2013. About a year ago it started having issues with crashes and hangs. I reformatted its drive and reinstalled macOS, which worked for a little while. But now that machine will not fully POST. It will boot, but almost immediately indicates that it can't find a startup disk. That indicates an SSD failure to me.

I happen to have an Air, but I'd rather have the Pro up and running——so can I swap out the drives? Both were running identical versions of Mojave.

Have you tried reverting to the original macOS that was shipped with this system? If you can reproduce the same behavior with Mavericks/Yosemite then you could very well confirm that this behavior is rooted in an SSD failure vs file system issue.

This blog post lists a number of issues as to why Mojave cannot find your hard disk, I would perform a systematic check before trying to swap out the hard disk.


Why does iPhone Voice Control turn on when I wear headphones while working out? I listen to music on my iPhone 4 while working out on stair master. After about an hour, voice control turns on by itself. I turn it off but it comes back on. Then the iPod is paused then skips couple songs. It doesn't stop.  I think it has to do with headphones or something. Maybe sweat getting into headphones?  This happens almost every time I work out.

Apparently this is common issue.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2512674?start=0&tstart=0

https://discussions.apple.com/message/9714491#9714491

It certainly sounds like the headphones are causing this. It's likely that moisture is eventually getting into the in-line switch/microphone module which is bridging the switch terminals and sending spurious signals to the phone.

However, I'd try the following:

Check for liquid damage inside the headphone socket: Hold your phone up to the light so that you can see down inside of the headphone port. There's a small indicator at the bottom of the port which will have turned a red/pink colour if liquid has come into contact with it. If positive, this could indicate that the phone's headphone socket may (also) be at fault.
Obtain another pair of the same Apple headphones and see if the issue occurs again.


Selecting all photos in photo booth with a single gesture Is there a way to select all the photos in the iPad 2's photo booth application and copy them to a new/existing album? currently I need to select each photo individually by clicking (touching) it.
Am I missing some kind of gesture that will allow me to select all of the existing photos in photo booth?

EDIT: (Originally I had described a way to select multiple photos via the "Photos" app, and I didn't realize you could do that directly within Photo Booth.)

In short, no, you're not missing a secret gesture -- that's currently the only way to do it.

And unfortunately, I do not believe there is a way to create a new photo album on the iPad itself -- you'll have to do that on your computer and sync with iTunes to see the changes.


Encrypt drive with private key? Is there any way to encrypt my drive with a private key, and no external tools (to be installed), and then unlock via command-line?

I'm referring to my second drive and not my boot drive. I’m not keen on turning on file-fault.

You can use APFS encryption (essentially FileVault) on a secondary drives such as USB drives etc. When formatting the drive with Disk Utility choose “APFS (Encrypted)”, and you’ll be asked for a password for the drive.

When you plug in the secondary drive, macOS will automatically try to mount to mount it by opening a pop up asking you to enter the password to unlock.

If you literally want to use a private key, as in a key file (i.e. not a written password, but an encryption key) - then you’re out of luck. No such solution comes built in with macOS. However it can be done with external tools.


Iphone as audio driver My macbook pro speakers are totally busted and I think that the soundcard is broken as well because I cannot play music even through headphone jack.  The volume is always grayed out muted and no output device is available in system preferences --> sound including the internal speakers.

Is there anyway I can use my iPhone device as an audio driver as sorts, I can't figure it out with airplay.  I would want to plug in my headphones to my iPhone and then stream whatever audio was coming out of my laptop first to my iPhone and then out the iPhones headphone jack to my ears.  Suggestions?

Thanks!

Here ya go! Use your iPhone as a wireless audio device for your computer.

http://www.senstic.com/iphone/pocketaudio/pocketaudio.aspx


Connect computers via ethernet rather than wireless This is my current set-up:

Wireless network, multiple macs connected, two of them are standing next to each other. As I want fast file transfer between those, I've got an ethernet cable between them. With IPv4 turned off (on ethernet) on both of them, and Ethernet on one in the service order, this all works. Kind of.

Because the Mac will decide whether it wants to use wireless or wired, it seems like it will only use the ethernet when it transfers bigger files. Is there a way to always let them use wired instead of wireless?

When there are 2 routes available, I usually just temporarily Turn Airport Off in Network Preferences when I want to force a transfer (or other network connection) to start over the wired ethernet port.


Demonstrating iPad's screen on MacBook I need to use my iPad and show its screen on my MacBook. As far as I know, AirPlay allows me to use the iPad as a second screen for Mac but here I need to do it the opposite way.

I can't record my iPad's screen or use Continuity Sketch (in fact I need this mostly for drawing on my iPad only).

Can I stream or mirror  my iPad's screen on my Mac?

Connect your iPad via cable to your MacBook.
Launch macOS built-in QuickTime Player.app
Go to File menu → New Movie Recording or use the keyboard shortcut Option + Command + N
This would open a Quick Time window with the MacBooks camera turned on.
Click on the arrow besides the red circular Record button and select your iPad for Camera.

This would show the iPad's screen on your Mac. It won't let you interact with the iPad, simply stream the screen contents.

If you rotate the iPad to change to landscape mode, the display changes to follow.

You can click inside the Quick Time player window to make the controls and window borders disappear and you can also take the app window full screen if you want only the iPad's screen to appear on your Mac.

You do not need any 3rd party software or hardware to accomplish this and it works out of the box.

P.S.: If you are only interested in viewing the iPad's display on your Mac, you need not press the Record button, and no extra memory or disk space would be used. (Thanks, @alexkent for stating it explicitly).


TextEdit Chinese Plain Text Style Problems I'm working with Chinese text in TextEdit as a plain text .txt file.

This is what a normal line looks like: (and the style that my text document basically looks like)

     bai1 bai1   [pai⁵⁵ pai⁵⁵] (名) 瘸子、跛子。

this is a weird one:

  儿端公——坐地使法  bai1 ber1 duan1 gong1——zo4 di4 si3 fa2  [pai⁵⁵ pər⁵⁵ tuan⁵⁵ koŋ⁵⁵ ——tso²¹³ ti²¹³ sɿ⁵³ fa²¹] (歇) 儿即瘸子、跛子之类的人士。端公即男巫。儿端公只好坐地使法。运用中指不亲自出面就在背后使用阴谋诡计。

I'm not sure why black text is suddenly looking kind of grey and thin - punctuation marks are likewise looking a little worse for the wear.

I think it may have something to do with the fact that I'm using a Unicode extension-B character (which may be using Hanazono font) giving everything behind it a weird look but I'm not sure. Also, this is plain text, I'm not really sure what could be interfering with it - but it's really starting to bug me. (it looks so nasty).

What can I do to fix my weird looking lines?

I have so far only found one font which has all the characters -- Babelstone Han.   Try downloading that and switching the whole text to it.

Another possibility may be the MingLiu series of fonts that come with Word.

Of course plain text does not contain font info, so you are at the mercy of the the app and the OS regarding the fonts chosen, which will never be Babelstone Han unless this is installed and stipulated via rich text. In plain text I think you will always be stuck with two fonts which are unlikely to be identical in their display.

I notice, however, that your text above seems very even as displayed in my Safari.  I wonder what font it is using.


Automator service works everywhere except when using keyboard shortcut My automator service is as follows:

Workflow receives no input in Google Chrome.app
Input is entire selection (checkbox not checked)

Run Applescript

    on run {input, parameters}
     tell application "Google Chrome" to activate
     tell application "System Events"
      keystroke "i" using {control down, option down}
      keystroke "r"
     end tell
     return input
    end run

In Security & Privacy -> Privacy -> Accessibility, both Automator and Google Chrome are listed and checked, and under Automation, Google Chrome has System Events.app checked.

With Google Chrome open (specifically on a Google Sheets tab), this works:

When I run the step from Automator
When I run the entire service from Automator
When I run the service from the Chrome menu

However, it does not work when I use the keyboard shortcut I assigned in System Preferences: command+option+control+n. A cogwheel briefly appears in the menu bar then goes away, and I even added a notification center action to tell me the service ran (it does) - but nothing happens in Google Sheets. I have tried other keyboard shortcuts to no avail.

Any help appreciated. Honestly if Google would just add a two-stroke "insert row" hotkey, that would relieve me of this whole idiotic exercise :)

It is working fine here.

However in my experience most problems using UI sequences are related to the lack of delay for the system to execute the thread. Often it will process the strokes so fast that the actions are not yet finished before automator sends another command, causing overlays and hence ignoring the last action. A simple solution is providing tiny delays between each stroke.

Also the return input line can be causing issues, because the input is empty and there is no parameters.

I have tested this script successfully:

on run
    tell application "Google Chrome" to activate
    delay 0.1
    tell application "System Events"
        key code 34 using {control down, option down}
        delay 0.1
        key code 15
    end tell
end run


MacOS Resolution of localhost Does anyone know the exact mechanism by which localhost is resolved to 127.0.0.1 on MacOS without an entry in /etc/hosts? Is it logic encoded in mDNSResponder itself or something similar, or more high level in a config file somewhere?
Further, how could I determine this myself?  For example, via system call tracing or similar?

It seem like this is, in fact, hardcoded in mDNSResponder.
╰─ grep -A5 -B5 "Register localhost" ./mDNSResponder-1096.40.7/mDNSMacOSX/mDNSMacOSX.c
        const domainname *const localHostName     = (const domainname *) "\x9" "localhost";
        const domainname *const broadcastHostName = (const domainname *) "\xd" "broadcasthost";
        const mDNSv4Addr        localHostV4       = { { 127, 0, 0, 1 } };
        mDNSv6Addr              localHostV6;
        // Register localhost 127.0.0.1 A record.
        RegisterLocalOnlyARecord(localHostName, &localHostV4);
        // Register broadcasthost 255.255.255.255 A record.
--
--
        // Register broadcasthost 255.255.255.255 A record.
        RegisterLocalOnlyARecord(broadcastHostName, &onesIPv4Addr);
        // Register localhost ::1 AAAA record.
        mDNSPlatformMemZero(&localHostV6, sizeof(localHostV6));
        localHostV6.b[15] = 1;
        RegisterLocalOnlyAAAARecord(localHostName, &localHostV6);
    }


Get out of booting into Ubuntu on multi-OS Mac I installed Ubuntu on my iMac (Retina 21" late 2015) alongside macOS and rEFInd. Now, I believe the iMac boots automatically to Ubuntu in console mode. I tried a lot of combinations of keys, but without any result(option, command+R, command+option+P+R, etc.).
What should i do ?

If you properly install Ubuntu 18 Desktop, then you should be able to hold down the option at startup until the Startup Manager appears. You then can select the icon representing macOS which should boot macOS. If you hold down the control while selecting the icon, then macOS will become the new default operating system to boot.

The Startup Manager should also show another icon which represents Ubuntu. Since the Startup Manager can be used to boot either macOS or Ubuntu, the use of rEFInd is optional.

  If macOS does not appear in the Startup Manager, then you probably erased macOS when you installed Ubuntu.

If you choose to install rEFInd, then you should install rEFInd to separate EFI, FAT, or JHFS+ formatted partition. If you do this properly, then you can select rEFInd from the Startup Manager. In other words, the Startup Manager can be use to enable/disable rEFInd.

  Note: You should not need to use the bless command or disable System Integrity Protect (SIP) to install Ubuntu or rEFInd.