Changing OS X command line language On Debian I managed to change it using dpkg and now UNIX commands, manual pages and supported packages are in my native language. Is there a way to do this also on OS X? I already have the locales set to my native language but everything is still english.

Terminal and iTerm set LANG based on the region selected in System Preferences (defaults read -g AppleLocale) by default. It affects error messages and (some) help messages shown by bash, but not the language used by nano or for man pages.

$ export LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
$ ashuhuf
-bash: ashuhuf: Kommando nicht gefunden.
$ help unalias
unalias: unalias [-a] Name [Name ...]
    Entferne jeden Namen von der Aliasliste.

    Optionen:
      -a    Enferne alle Alias Definitionen.

    Gibt immer Erfolg zurück, wenn der Name existiert.

Adding something like export LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 to a configuration file like .bash_profile would have the same effect. I don't know any way to make the shell environment more localized though.

If others were searching for how to make Terminal or iTerm use English, add for example export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 to .bash_profile. Disabling setting locale variables automatically would make shells use the default C locale, which makes working with non-ASCII characters difficult at least in bash and other programs that use readline.


Is it possible to develop an iOS application for my own use without having to pay 99$/year? TL;DR How can I have a permanent profile for my Xcode-developped app on my own iPhone so that I could use it without having to rebuild it from Xcode every 6 days, likely by issuing myself the needed certificat and provisioning files ?

I'm an aspiring iOS developer and have built my first app, using the tools and language proposed by Apple (Xcode, Swift, SwiftUI).  Works fine in Xcode and on my iPhone. I'm quite happy with it.
However after 6 days, the app stops working on the iPhone; the iPhone needs to be reconnected to my Mac and the app needs to be rebuilt from Xcode, then it works again.
I understand that this comes from the provisioning profile being managed by Xcode and being temporary (6 days).
I understand enlisting in Apple Developer Program would be a workaround, but I find it quite abusive to be forced to pay 99€ per year to use and tune my own app on my own device.
I even read an old post saying that if I enlisted, my app would cease to work within a year if I delisted from the program. This is certainly not advertised loudly by Apple !
I understand they may be issues protecting the apple store monopoly, and hence apple business model, but I find it quite at odds with Apple official PR that promotes learning kids to develop and at the same time is preventing anyone to be able to use the programs freely for themselves.
So I would like to understand if this is a mandatory policy from Apple, or if I am missing something about managing provisioning profiles (sofar a total black box to me).
To be crystal clear, if there is a workaround, I believe it is about bypassing Xcode managing the certification process and creating myself the needed authorizations : development certificate for developer approval and permanent provisioning profile for my authorized device.
I make the hypothesis that it is not possible nor practical not to use Apple solutions, and that the problem is actually independent from the use of Xcode.
To rephrase it, my problem is :
Is it possible to develop an iOS application for my own use without having to pay 99$/year ?
And my understanding of path to solution is :
How can I have a permanent profile for my Xcode-developped app on my own iPhone ?
Precision :
I am not trying to launch a heated debate on jailbreaking, nor on the app store guidelines. I just want to understand wether in the current Apple ecosystem, if I want some applications of my own with me, I need to pay several hundreds of dollars in the next years to have the possibility to do it.

Quite simply, if you jailbreak your iOS device you can likely skip the code expiration checks. We have lots of questions on doing this tethered, so this might not even be a complete duplicate. I’ll leave how to jailbreak for another post since that is a moving target based on your hardware and time of year, release details.
For those that can’t spend the time to reverse engineer this, the $100 is a fair trade off, but for science and for some, I can understand why paying Apple to provide all the tools and code seems attractive if you can keep your test devices secured as designed.
The best way to develop without paying Apple is to use your own tools, and not Xcode. Python, shell, web apps, all sorts of interpreted code and widget apps exist now, as do cloud based solutions that compile down to native code and avoid paying Apple directly.
Your “I need a signed profile” request is the technical term for jailbreaking unless you intend to obtain Apple’s signing keys or rent / borrow someone else’s credentials who has payed to develop.


How does TRIM work in macOS High Sierra? Since all MacBooks with Apple-SSDs have TRIM enabled, I was wondering if trimming would “reset/prepare” the blocks for new writes, or would they leave the blocks there until a new write comes in.

If blocks are reset/prepared in advance of new writes, would forensic recoverability of data still be possible?

MacOS issues the TRIM command to the disk drive controller. From that point on the operating system have no control over the process. What happens is entirely drive dependent.

The most common is that the blocks are marked as unused in a bitmap in the drive, but the contents are otherwise left alone. In order to prevent the possibility of forensics, you’ll need to send a secure erase command instead.

Depending on the drive, that will typically either erase the blocks or throw away an encryption key - or possibly both (typically on Intel drives). The end result is making it impossible to retrieve the data that was previously stored in those blocks.


How can I create a BIOS USB stick for ASUS ROG Strix X570-F in OS X? I need to install a new BIOS for my new motherboard ASUS ROG Strix X570-F here where I need USB flashback tool and BIOSRenamer.
I need flash an USB stick and then rename the file somehow but the tools are only available for Windows.
How can I do the BIOS usb stick in OS X?

Macos doesn’t have any special ability to run other applications or OS apart from using virtualization to install windows or Linux guest OS on macOS host machines. Boot Camp makes permanent changes to your disk, so virtualization is usually easier to free up space than running windows on Mac hardware directly.

https://support.apple.com/boot-camp

However, using the dd tool or Disk Utility is a sure fire way to take an ISO image file and push it to a USB drive or read a drive into an image.

https://www.howtogeek.com/228886/how-to-create-iso-files-from-discs-on-windows-mac-and-linux/

You’re likely going to need windows to run those tools (or figure out how to extract the drivers and analyze how the resulting image is laid out on disk), so if you can rent / borrow a PC or use a windows trial license on the Mac - this is more about what’s most convenient for you to reach your update goal. Im certain with some extra details, there are people here that may be able to nail a command to extract the file and dump it on a USB without needing to do all the work I mention, but these are general options to get any installer running.

What is the smallest and/or fastest way to run Windows programs on MacOS (Catalina)?
https://apple.stackexchange.com/search?q=Run+windows+on+Mac


How do I get a log-log plot in Numbers I can't seem to find a way to create a log-log plot in Numbers 4.2, something that should be as easy as clicking twice!
The option is only available for the Y-axis:

You need to use a scatter graph for value-value graphs. Other graph types use category-value, shown at the top of your screenshot. To replace your graph with a scatter graph, choose Chart → Chart Type and select 2D Scatter. Now, under Axis the tabs will show ‘Value (Y)’ and ‘Value (X)’ instead of ‘Category (X)’, such that Logarithmic is available for both.


Interference on external VGA monitor (intermittent ripple) only when booted into MacOS X but OK on Windows Bootcamp, why? and how to fix? I'm seeing a ripple-like interference on an external display attached to my 2010 Mac Book Pro via VGA (Display adapter). This only occurs when the Mac is booted into MacOS X but not Windows. It's intermittent may not happen for a period but then comes in short sporadic bursts.

How can I stop the interference happening? It has only recently started happening in the last 2 months.

Reason for using (analogue) VGA and not digital HDMI or DVI is that I have a KVM switch that shares the monitor with 2 other machines - one of which only has VGA output.

Things I've tried already (still seeing the interference):

Eliminate the KVM itself from suspicion - connect the monitor direct to the Mac, via VGA no KVM in between
Re-arranged the power plugs of the various other PCs and devices in case there was some kind of earthing issue
Disconnected the Mac from the mains, again to see if there was an earthing issue
Checked drivers and OS up-to-date
Took Mac to Genius Bar at local Mac Store. They made thorough checks and diagonstics and reset "PRAM" etc. They couldn't reproduce my problem on a VGA monitor in-store

Tried to link the issue to hard disc activity or activities on other devices (DVD, blu-ray burners attached, USB3 Express card) but drawing no conclusions.

Since taking to Mac store not seeing the interference so much but it did still happen. Their further suggestions are to screen record to verify if the interference is in the digital domain (i.e. happening on the graphics card) or in the analogue domain (which I think is the case), to boot off the install disc (thinking here is driver issue), to check refresh rates of the monitor and try alternatives if possible.

The fact that I never see this when the Mac is booted into Windows leads me to believe that there is some kind of driver issue in Mac OS X.

Perhaps it is telling hardware to put signals on some pins or paths that cause interference. Or perhaps a flaw in the driver software that is involved with the switching between the discrete and integrated graphics cards (which shouldn't happen anyway because the Mac is always on mains power when it happens).

Thoughts?

Under OS X, open Terminal.app and enter the following command:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 2

Then, reboot your Mac.

This will enable subpixel font rendering on non-Apple LCDs. This simple tweak solved a lot of display issues for me back when I was using an external Dell display at work. I hope it helps you, too!


I'm having trouble with my administrator information I don't have administrator access for my MacBook Air and I need the username and password to be able to administer my laptop.

Boot off the recovery partition, open up terminal, and type

reset password

That should bring up a dialog that will allow you to change your password If, for some reason, the default account is not set as admin, you will need to boot into Single User Mode (⌘-S when starting up) and type:

mount -uw /
rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone

This makes the file system writeable, and then removes the file that tells OS X that you've setup the system. Hit Ctrl-D to continue your boot and you should get the "Welcome to Macintosh" startup and you will be able to setup a NEW account (make sure it is a new account). This account will be an admin account.


Upgrading Memory, HD, and Processor on a MacBook2,1 I recently got a MacBook2,1 as a gift and I'm looking to upgrade the memory, hd, and processor. Currently it is a MacBook2,1 with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and about 200GB of HD space. Oh yeah, and the battery's dead so it only works when it is plugged in. I read somewhere you can add an extra 2GB of memory to this bad boy. However, only 3GB is usable due to some I/O settings.

What's the best way to gauge performance of this machine so that I can choose an upgrade on a budget?

One of the best reference sites out there is EveryMac.com  They have a very reliable and comprehensive list of pretty much every Mac product ever made.
You should take some time to review and become familiar with the specs of your machine.
That said...
You aren't going to get a very modern OS X experience out of this machine.

The latest OS X version that's compatible is 10.7 (Lion)
Max RAM is 3.5GB
HDD is SATA I (1.5 Gb/sec)

No matter how you slice it, it's not a strong platform to begin with.
However...
All is not lost.  It's still a good laptop to be used for surfing the web, checking email and even doing some office type work.

4GB of memory is cheap (2x2GB PC2-5300])
A New battery is around $50 on (don't ever buy used batteries, it's not worth it)
A SATA SSD can be had for as little as $45-50 on and even cheaper on eBay used.

With these few upgrades, you can install Windows 7 32bit (potentially Win10, but I haven't tried it), Ubuntu, or my personal favorite FreeBSD (you will probably have better results with *BSD since OS X is based on the BSD OS).  In fact, if you are looking for a machine in which you can learn one of the *NIXes, this is a great way to do it.
Bottom line...
If you are looking to keep it in the Apple family, just be aware of the limitations on it.  You will be using an OS that is now 7-8 years old and 3rd party apps which are long since deprecated and no longer supported.
If you want a modern experience, you can do some minor upgrades and install Windows, FreeBSD, or Linux on it and keep going with modern software.


Can't do anything with external hard drive, “.Trashes” is probably the boogyman I bought an external Samsung hard drive today. But I'm not able to do anything with it. Here are the problems I'm having:

I can't put anything on the hard drive. Finder gets stuck at 'preparing copying files'
I can delete anything on the hard drive system files, except the
folder ".Trashes". It gives error 'Unexpected error: -50'
I tried to empty the trash can, but nothing changes.
I set the file permission on the .Trashes to read/write everyone,
doesn't change a thing
Trying to format the whole drive with Disk Utility, but quits at
start, because the drive cannot be deactivated.

I've tried a few terminal commands

sudo -s -r rf /Volumes/Untitled\ 1/.Trashes` //Directory not empty
-r rf /Volumes/Untitled\ 1/.Trashes` //No permissions

Also

cd /Volumes ls -al cd name_of_partition ls -al
rm -rf .Trashes

Again: Permission error.

Also:

I can't change drive permissions via Disk Utility, via the button 'recover drive permissions', because it is 'blank'

One thing that really bothers me: I really want to format the partition, but every time it says 'Disk cannot be deactivated', when trying to recover, wipe or format.

I really can't figure out how to delete .Trashes, format the drive or get the damn thing working.

Any suggestions?

I had the same problem today. After trying everything sudo I could do under the sun, manually trying to remove the .Trashes file through finder, etc I wound up just reformatting the drive.

The reformat took significantly less time than me trying to figure out how to get the drive empty. Probably better for the drive, anyway.


Decrypt files recovered from encrypted external hard drive I am trying to recover the data from one of the external hard drives of my company. I ended up using DiskDrill to extract all the files into a new, non-encrypted hard drive. Unfortunately I made the mistake of erasing the original hard drive before properly checking the exported data... :/

If I look at the recovered data, all the file structures and file sizes seem correct. But if I try to open any file I get a system error saying:

  "The document “File.rtf” could not be opened."

I used cat to check the content of the file, and from the outcome it looks to me like it's still encrypted:

  |?!?z?n;?AԒ??Ћ???f??Y?-?bA?-??ۚw?5?vc?D???yr????l?&yg?????U#
  ????F?????l??
  ??ٔ=??S?????#t????v:??#?˰wDZ$??y>?n??y??C?j??,???WI?L?[?a??CC?
  P?U?>K?l?Ե???????OH?[Ẉ[Y?'^k?*?mDћ)?,0?Ի;
  ??^?\dW?|?`??=?c6&-~?\?YT+3w?4d?'?F@???D???G(?$??>??+?҃?6?t????p?M?wC[?:?$d1?{?Ϊ?.???~KW?r??Q?6??
  o@???u???
  ?B|?[[??>/%???$??[;?z?h?!???O??dn??;?"?GZ?v?{W?B???[???P?d?!????d??Q?@?mG??/?|?x?_???H%)?v?Z??$?]????F??>?"????!U?rFl???
  ?GB2?W0Iy??]??|x??]X??aN[??????WJ??????l B??噡g?ہ'I???^}Yk>??Ǘ

The command:

file -  /Users/Cortana/Desktop/File.rtf

Returns:

  application/octet-stream; charset=binary

The original disk was encrypted using FileVault. I do know the original password.

Is there any command I can run in terminal (or anything else really) that I can do to recover my data. I'm not an expert at unix so please explain it to me like I'm 5.

Thank you,
Danny

Unfortunately, you cannot recover the data.

From Apple's Support document:  Use FileVault to encrypt the startup disk on your Mac

  If you lose both your account password and your FileVault recovery
  key, you won't be able to log in to your Mac or access the data on
  your startup disk.


Lightweight Audio Waveform Viewer I'm doing a large amount of music library updating and de-duplicating and evaluating, and I would like a piece of software that would allow me to quickly be able to view a waveform of a selected audio file.

I currently use Fission for editing, but it loads slower than I would like, and I have no need for the actual editing aspect of the software. Additionally, Garageband is antagonistically slow and too hard to examine the waveform like I would like.

Is there software, or maybe something like a QuickLook plugin, that would allow me to select an audio file, and quickly get a rendered version of the waveform data within the file?

Loudness levels labels are appreciated, but not required.

It's not a Quick Look plugin, but Sound Studio it is fairly lightweight, and displays the waveform:

However, I'm afraid I don't think you'll find the waveform itself to be particularly useful for determining duplicate songs.


Will a factory unlocked French iPhone 4S work on Verizon in the US? I have a factory unlocked iPhone 4S that I bought in France. I am coming to visit in California. Will it work on the Verizon network?

Probably not. Verizon (like Sprint) uses CDMA, not GSM. Your phone will probably work on AT&T, T-Mobile, or one of the smaller regional GSM carriers around here. All of the above have prepaid SIM plans available with and without data so you can compare options before you arrive.


Untick the 'Open Safe Files' preference in Safari with Terminal After all the fuss over Mac Defender, I thought it might be a good idea to disable the open safe files option in safari for the users in our network. I'd like to do this with the 'Send Unix Command' via Remote Desktop.

How can I use terminal to disable this preference in Safari?

You can use the defaults application to change the preference for this using the following command:

defaults write com.apple.Safari AutoOpenSafeDownloads 0


How long are text messages saved in the iCloud server? ..and how can I get rid of them before they are subpoenaed?

As of the last update of Apple's iOS Security Guide, May 2016:

  iMessage messages are queued for delivery to offline devices. Messages are currently stored for up to 30 days.

(emphasis mine)

Note this time period has increased from a prior version of this guide, which stated that messages were queued for up to seven days.

If, by "text message", you actually mean SMS messages, those do not cross onto Apple's servers at all unless you have SMS Forwarding enabled, to have messages from your iPhone forwarded to other devices such as a Mac or iPad. Forwarded SMS messages are encrypted in the same method as iMessage messages (elaborated in the guide). It appears that the 30-day timeframe also applies to forwarded SMS messages.


Is there a Calendar program out there with features that can make the "days" be linked from 5am to 5am (one day), rather than from 12am to 12am? What if you're a person that sleeps and wakes at funky hours and wants to schedule things from 11pm-1am, for example.  In such a case, the event would be split up into two different days.  But for this weirdo, that's actually the middle of their day.  I'd like to be able to view my "day" in one go, rather than having to flip back and forth between the end of one day and the beginning of another.  Are there any calendars that allow for this kind of flexibility?

If you change the start of a "day" to be 05:00, then it wouldn't really be a day anymore.   You're best bet may be to change your timezone to be 5 hours off.


Export PPT as mp4 or mov in PowerPoint I want to export my presentation as video. Followed this: Save a presentation as a movie file or MP4.

But I can't find any video formats in the Export menu.

Should I install any extension separately to have this work? Is there any other software which does conversion of presentations to video with all transitions and animations.

P.S: I use PowerPoint for Mac Version 15.34 [Office 2016].

Sorry to answer this question myself. I had commented on a thread in Reddit who had a similar issue, and thanks to atomicshed, he linked me to another thread at Microsoft's site.
This solution worked for me:

Quit all Office 2016 apps
Rename the file /Library/Preferences/com.microsoft.office.licensingV2.plist to something else
Open any Office 2016 application, and sign in again to Activate the Subscription.

Now am able to export it as both MP4 and MOV. Thank you guys!


How to dedupe/merge contacts from different sources? I have Google Contacts and Office 365 People both on my iPhone/iPad. Whenever a contact is both on Google and Office, they will appear as two different persons in my iOS Contacts app. If I want to update any information about the contact, it appears that I'll have to do that twice.

Is there a solution to this problem?

Ideally, I'd like to have ALL my contacts on Google Contacts, and merely SOME of them on Office 365 People. I'd like the latter to be in sync with the former. I'd love them to show just a single card per person in iOS Contacts.

Merely partially answering my own question:

First make sure to have Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > CONTACTS > Default Account set to Gmail.

Cards from Office 365 and Google that are of the same person can be edited in iOS Contacts. Edit one contact and, right at the bottom (remove the keyboard) one finds link contacts.... There select the other card. (Press link just once.)

This will put all information of that person in one card in iOS Contacts. However, it doesn't seem to push any information from Office 365 to Google or vice versa. If anyone knows how to do that, please let me know.


Changing my Home icons Apple makes it rather hard to change things like the system font and icons for the home folder. And while I understand the problems that can occur when the system font is changed; is changing your icons (for Documents, Music, Home, etc) truly dangerous?

Mostly, I ask this question because El Capitan has made a normally simple process into something complex, annoying, and somewhat confusing. If changing my icons was truly harmless, why is it protected up System Integrity Protection [SIP]?

Dangerous? No. But it could wind up being wasted time when you at some point you update your OS and the settings you made get reverted back to the system default; that depends on what icon you changed.

Of course, we're not talking about a lot of time spent on changing an icon here, so I'd say go for it! I actually changed my Documents directory icon 8+ years ago, and it was still the same when I retired that MacBook earlier this year, after several OS upgrades. Some changes will stick longer than others!


Is there an easy way to remove a URL from Safari's address bar history? So, I love the new, awesomebar-style address bar in Safari 5 - with it's history search, I've gotten to the point where I no longer use bookmarks for most sites, I just remember the 2-4 letter strings that will bring what I want to the top of the search results.

This is great, except for when I screw up and add things to the history that screw with it. For example, one of my most used shortcuts was to get to a site I frequent by typing "bl" and hitting enter. Somehow, at one point, I did this without a search coming up, and now, the "Top Hit" for "bl" is "http://bl/", which is obviously, not an actual site.

Is there any way to remove a single entry from the history without clearing the history entirely?

Bonus points if it can be done from the address bar without navigating around in prefs or anything. While the answers currently given work, I'd love to find an easier way to do it.

click on show all bookmark (open book) on top-left of your safari. then search the site you want to remove (e.g: http://bl) after that delete it from history when you delete the singe site you never find http://bl when press bl in address bar.

search here:


Virtual DJ for a Wedding Short of creating custom audio and a custom playlist, is there a way/app that will act as a virtual DJ for a wedding including things like introducing the guests who are going to speak, daddy/daughter dance, chicken dance, etc?  I could do everything in a playlist but if someone has already done this then it's all the better.

Since it's a wedding, the only recommendation I can make is to hire a professional DJ that can work the crowd. Predefined playlists might be fine for ambience music during dinner etc, but they'll never get the real party started. You need some interaction with the crowd if you ever want to get them on that dance floor. Also don't assume timing of a wedding party goes exactly as planned when you think of automatically announcing speakers etc, it just doesn't work out that way.

There is quite some DJing software available however. A popular choice is djay (also available for iPad). But a good set-up goes further than that. You can have a look at this page for a more extensive guide on DJing on the Mac.

But again, please go for an experienced DJ. It's worth it. I'm sure he has his own set-up, wether it be digital or analogue.


Rolled back from Catalina back to Mojave but I had two drives one for boot and other for saved files, realised old files are still around I rolled back from Catalina to Mojave because I was having issues, it was my first time to do so and foolishly didn't use Time Machine.

I have two SSDs, one for boot and the other for my files, and I realise that my files are still on the other drive but I can no longer access them, the folders have the red stop sign.

Is there a way to access the files and use those folders again as my main user folder?

It's an easy task to make your old (Catalina) user folder accesible again. I don't recommend to use it as your (Mojave) user folder though.

Upgrading from Mojave to Catalina not only changes system files and apps but also may have changed some content of your user folder. After replacing iTunes and its library with the new triplicitas Music, TV and Podcast and their libraries, your old Mojave iTunes won't work anymore. Other files may have been "upgraded" too e.g. preferences files, Mail data folder etc.

You probably want to move your current user folder (Mojave) to Mac Storage again.

I assume that you didn't change your macOS shortname (=isa).

Rename the old isa (Catalina) folder:

sudo mv /Volumes/Mac\ Storage/isa /Volumes/Mac\ Storage/isa-catalina

Change file and folder permissions of isa-catalina to your current user and group id:

sudo chown -R `id -u`:`id -g` /Volumes/Mac\ Storage/isa-catalina

Move your current user folder /Users/isa to /Volumes/Mac\ Storage

You probably followed one of several how-tos (e.g. Move Your Mac's Home Folder to a New Location)
Move personal files and folders from isa-catalina to isa. As mentioned earlier I don't recommend to move content of isa-catalina/Library/... to isa/Library/... except prefs and config files of non-Apple apps.

To get your ("Catalina") music/podcast/photo/movie files back you have to dig into the respective folders and *.library files. Catalina's Photos Library.photolibrary is probably incompatible with Mojave's Photo.app.


Finder doesn't starts on Mountain Lion (10.8.2) It happens almost every time after startup. When I click on the Finder it tries to start it, the menubar starts, then the desktop icons disappear for a few seconds then they come back, but the finder window never starts.
Sometimes it says when I try to launch it:

The last time you opened Finder, it unexpectedly quit while reopening windows. Do you want to try to reopen its windows again?
If you choose not to reopen windows, you may have to open and position the windows yourself.

but otherwise I don't get any errors. The same happens with Chrome too.
I usually fix this by restarting the computer like 7-8 times and sometimes it just works. I already repaired the disk permissions. the verify disk says everything is ok.
What could cause this, and how can I fix it?

You can try to reset this apps preferences.

Got to ~/Library/Preferences
Search this folder for files that contain finder in its' names.
Delete them
logout and login back


Burning songs to a virtual CD I have a playlist of 180 songs that I downloaded from the internet. I imported it into iTunes, but all the data for the songs was put into their name. for example: 001 - artist - song title was put into the ‘song name’ section and the rest of the data fields were left blank. I tried getting track names from gracenote or whatever iTunes uses, but it said that I need to import the songs through iTunes in order to do that.
So basically, what I want is a way that I can burn the 180 songs (1.5gb) onto a virtual CD and then have iTunes import from the CD.
I have tried using Toast Titanium’s burn to .dmg function but it has a 99 song limit for burning CD’s. I have also tried using Virtual CD-RW but Finder wouldn't let me burn the files to the virtual CD it had created because there was ‘not enough space on the disk’
Is there an app that can create a virtual CD (CD-R/CD-RW) that I can burn 1.5gb of music to?

No music formatted CD can hold 1.5 GB. I suspect most virtual CD software will deliberately limit the maximum contents size to 800 MB to mimic real CD limits.

Have you considered using a script to extract the information from the filename and set the results as metadata?

Manage MP3 ID3 tag information from the command line discusses a suitable command line tool available.

iTunes supports AppleScript and the Doug Scripts web site appears to have a good selection of example scripts.


How can I tell if a given *.ipa will run on an iPad or iPhone? I backed up my laptop's ITunes folder by copying out all the *.ipa apps I had installed.  Some of these IPAs are no longer available on the app store, or require newer hardware than I own.

How can I tell if a given *.ipa is intended for an iPad or iPhone by looking at (or using tooling to probe) the file?

Every app has a info.plist file with some configurations for the app. Using this file, you could see if the app has been build for iPhone and iPod, or iPad. To view this file, do the following:

Make a backup of the .ipa file
Rename filename.ipa to filename.zip
Open the .zip file

In the zip file you just opened (or extracted), you have another app. With a right mouse click, you can show the package contents of that file.

When viewing the package content, there is an info.plist file. I prefer Xcode to view the data within the plist file, but on the App Store there're various other apps that your could download do view the contents of the plist file.

The info.plist file has a "UIDeviceFamily" key that should contain an array. The value of this array could be a 1 or 2 or both. Please refer to the image below to find out what the number means.


Disable update for one app on iOS How to make one app never update? It's the old Ingress version. New is very bad, even if has some better management things that previous needed, but it's strangely weird.

You can't disable one app update access.

You can turn off automatic updates and not update it manually, to turn off automatic updates:

Go to Settings
iTunes & App Store
Find App Updates and turn it off


How can I duplicate myself in a movie (using iMovie)? I would like to make a quite simple "special effect" in a short movie : showing "me" two times in the same room (for instance sitting at the same table and talking to each other).

Can I do this with iMovie and how ?

There are some good tutorials on this on Youtube here and here. The problem in both of these examples is the obvious lines where you can see the contrast and lightness changes.

However if you had either Adobe Premiere Elements or Adobe After effects this effect is a lot easier, and more professional like this you can find those tutorials here (Premiere) and here (After effects)

Have a rummage around the Creative Cow website for good tutorials


How do you enable Google Location History on an iPhone? I would like to enable Google's Location History on my iPhone so I can see my location history at https://www.google.com/maps/timeline.
I tried enabling this functionality as follows: Open the Google app > Menu > My Account > Personal Info & Privacy > Activity Controls > Location History. Here my iPhone is listed, with a disabled checkbox. A message is displayed that says "Use a location enabled Google app on the iOS device to change the setting". When I click on the checkbox to enable it, nothing happens.
I have Settings > Privacy > Location Services enabled, and Settings > Privacy > Location Services > Google Maps set to "Always".
Is there any way to enable the Location History functionality?

I found the answer myself. For some reason, enabling the device through the Google app did not work, however the same screen in Google Maps works fine.

Open the Google Maps app > Menu > Settings > Location history > Enable the device.


Backup iPhone contacts etc to move to new iPhone I'm going to replace my iPhone 5c with another new one. What should I do to keep my contacts, events, notes, etc. and then restore it on the new iPhone? Should I just backup my phone with iTunes or something else?

iCloud is your most hassle-free bet. On your 5s, go to Settings > iCloud. You'll find the following settings.

• iCloud Drive: Any apps turned on here may store content in iCloud without the use of iCloud Backup. This means when you get your new phone, you can set it up as new and still have access to the same content if you redownload the apps.

• Photos: This one's a bit trickier. You have switches for both iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Photo Stream. These are two separate things and the only reason to have both on at the same time is if you have devices on both iOS 8 or later and devices prior to iOS 8.
iCloud Photo Stream is available starting with iOS 6 (I believe) and only stores your most recent 1000 photos. It does not keep track of which photos are in what albums, does not keep track of edits, and when you get your new iPhone it will only download the most recent few hundred. iCloud Photo Stream does not take up your allotted iCloud storage space, which is 5GB if you're not paying monthly for more.
If you're willing to take up more of your allotted space, assuming you have enough, iCloud Photo Library is a better option available on iOS 8 and later. It has no limit on how many photos it can hold, also stores videos, keeps track of edits and albums, and allows your new phone to get all of the same content with no limits.

• Mail: Stores emails from any iCloud email accounts. If the accounts are not email, you will likely still be able to get your stuff on the new phone when you sign in again.

• Contacts, Calendars, Reminders, Notes: Stores the associated app's content without the need for a backup.

• Safari: Stores bookmarks, reading list, history, iCloud Tabs, etc.

• News: Stores information on what you've subscribed to and liked/disliked.

• Wallet: Stores passes, cards, etc.

• Keychain: Securely stores your saved passwords from websites and apps to the cloud.

• Backup: Everything above will work seamlessly without needing a backup, and when you get your new phone you can just "Set Up as New" and it's all automatic. If there is some stuff you want to keep not covered above though, such as an app not supporting iCloud Drive, you can turn on backup and in Settings > iCloud > Storage > Manage Storage > your backup you can choose which apps specifically you want backed up. If that app is already turned on in a step above, it probably doesn't need turned on in Backup.
If you use Pages, Numbers, or Keynote make sure Use iCloud is turned on in Settings > Pages, Settings > Numbers, and Settings > Keynote.
If you're using Backup, when you get your new phone you'll need to do "Restore from iCloud Backup" instead of setting up as new.

• If you don't have enough iCloud space, you can always experiment with other clouds like Dropbox, but iCloud is the most seamless. There's also iTunes Backup like you mentioned which is easy but not quite as seamless.


Quicksilver-like app for iPad? Quicksilver is a long-loved Mac app that gives you a single entry point, a command box, for performing a wide variety of actions on the Mac.  It is easily extensible and scriptable.  A similar app on Linux is Gnome Do.

Does anything like this exist for iPad? -- a universal commandline that's more useful than the built-in system search?

No.  In short.

The longer answer:  All apps in iOS are sandboxed, meaning they effectively have no permission to do anything other than that which they were written for, other than through specific exceptions through API calls to other parts of the OS etc as allowed.  For example my Twitter app is allowed to access my contacts to use and set contact details as is deems fit.  Many apps (in my case Instagram,Tweetbot and Youtube) are allowed to send tweets through the Twitter App, but in all these cases (or any case where one app access some data or functionality provided by a second app) this is not a system wide availability.  Using said APIs an app can make portions of itself available to other apps, but unlike Quicksilver/Alfred/Launchbar on the Mac, this must explicitely be defined by the target app.  So taking for example the "Due" app for iOS which is a reminders app, it has an API that will allow other apps to create reminders in it, but that is all that other apps are allowed to do, and in order to do so they must be aware of the Due API.  As such the "Agenda" iOS calendar app has integrated the "Due" API, and is able to set a reminder in Due for an event created in Agenda.  But it cannot search for existing reminders in Due, or just start Due (or close it) etc.

So in order for an app like QS to exist on IOS, it would need to incorportate the API of every other app that it might want to connect to, and be limited by the fact that a) not every app (in fact I'd say very very few) actually has an API, and b) even where they do, they are often tied down to very specific functionality.

A bit rambly, but I hope this answers your question.

Just got an upvote on this, and re-read, and there is more the the answer than when I first made it.  There are a few apps these days that are trying to get closer to what the OP wanted, by effectively collecting and allowing the use of as many of these 3rd party APIs as possible in one place.  One such ass is Launch Center which collates APIs for nearly 50 apps, allowing you to do all sorts of actions from a single place - it's no quicksilver replacement, but it is an effective way to get at particular app functions directly rather than having to open the app and navigate to the function manually. - 1 example, is using clipboard contents for all sorts of things - tweet using clipboard contents, new task from clipboard contents etc etc.  Very useful.


Mysterious login/password woes after migrating to Catalina After migrating to Catalina, login after restart and after change-user feature different users/passwords, please help!
I recently set up my new Airbook laptop with a fresh MacOS 10.15.7 and used the TimeMachine (full backup); at the same time I migrated from HighSierra to Catalina. Everything OK, until I restarted for the first time: my password did no longer work. I tried Recovery Mode, resetpassword, and to my surprise, it listed 3 accounts that were different from the accounts appearing after the restart, that is:
resetpassword: g.f. (my account, I think), root1 and adm;
after_restart: gf, root1 and another_user.
I reset all passwords, and after restart, I still could not log into gf, but I could log into root1. As root1, I could change the password for gf, via "System Preferences"; that possibility is greyed out ever since. I did change-user, clicked on gf (surprisingly I see the default Catalina background image, not the one I set myself), and now I could login with the password I always used before that "first restart after migration".
Only via changing the user (once logged in via root1) and via a login screen that then features the Catalina image, I can currently access my account, and I fear that even this may be disabled after the next restart. When I'm logged in, and I do "su root1", "sudo passwd gf" asks for the Old Password, and entering the password-I-always-used:
passwd: Credentials could not be verified, username or password is invalid. Credentials could not be verified, username or password is invalid.
Trying "sysadminctl -resetPasswordFor gf -newPassword xxxx" fails, too:
sysadminctl[19219:817916] Operation is not permitted without secure token unlock.
Moreover, as gf and as root1, using sysadminctl, I find that "Secure token is ENABLED for user gf". However,
sysadminctl -secureTokenOn gf thepasswordIknow
returns "Operation is not permitted without secure token unlock". Moreover, as root1,
sudo sysadminctl -adminUser root1 -adminPassword - -secureTokenOn gf -password -
returns "Incorrect password for user gf", if I use the thepasswordIknow.
What to do? (Why are there two distinct lists of accounts?)
Please help... I fear this nightmare gets worse and then I cannot access my account any longer.
I'm grateful for any hints
gf

I’m a big fan of using the Apple graphical tools since they help make it clear what’s being done.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/reset-your-mac-login-password-mh35902/mac
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202860


Wallpaper not switching with desktop I have issue with wallpaper. When I am switching desktop, wallpaper is not moving along but "stays under". killall Dock fixes this but recently it is occurring so often that it became annoying.

What could be issue? Is there permanent solution?

It's not obvious to me why the killall Dock command would help with this, but since it does it may be worth you doing a reset and restart of the Dock.

Reset and restart the Dock

If you go ahead with resetting and restarting the Dock you will need to re-add any non-default icons to your Dock. (I usually find it's a good opportunity for people to start afresh and only add things as they actually use them).

To reset and restart the Dock follow these steps:

Go to Finder
Press and hold the option key down
Now go to the Go menu
Select the Library option to open the User's Library folder. You can let go of the option key now.
Go to the Preferences folder (i.e. within the Library folder)
Find and move the com.apple.dock.plist file to the Trash
Now open Terminal (usually located in Applications > Utilities)
Enter this command killall -KILL Dock
Press enter

Remember you'll need to re-add some apps back to the Dock.

If this doesn't resolve your issue, it'd be worth also testing what happens when you're booted into Safe Mode and afterwards again. See below.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. switch desktops and take note of what happens with your Desktop Background)
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Switch desktops again and take note of what happens with your Desktop Background

Once you've booted into Safe Mode, let me know how you went.


how do i disable my messages from showing up on my macbook air Recently I allowed my laptop to get messages that have been sent to my phone, but that was a huge mistake. I have a macbook air and I do not need to disconnect my phone from my laptop, I just need to disable my laptop from receiving or even seeing my messages.

Open Preferences in the Messages app and log out of your Apple ID. That will prevent your device from receiving any messages there.

Additionally you can disable message forwarding in the Messages settings on your iPhone.


How to remove audio device from Preferences? I'm trying to remove an old device from the Sound Preferences pane. The app is trashed along with whatever preference files I could find. But it remains after reboot.

Aggregate Devices are accessed from Applications/Utilities/Audio Midi Setup.

You can select & remove it from there.

(On phone, will flesh out later)


Testflight or coupon codes for review websites We will soon be launching the first version of our app. We want to write to a lot of app review websites about our app and want to give a free test version to them. There are 2 options:

Add them as external testers to TestFlight.
Give them a coupon/voucher code to download the app.

Problem with option #2 is that there is a limit of 100 codes available. Is it allowed to just give review websites a TestFlight version or is there some rule or limitations to who you can add as external tester (for a paid app)?

There's no rules on iTunes Connect help to say who you can give TestFlight access to.

Giving access to TestFlight to reviewers might be an advantage, besides the promotional code limit, as the app doesn't need to be live for reviewing to take place (or the review can be of a new, unreleased app version).


Get back guest user osx 10.10.1 I upgraded to 10.10.1 and now I can only reboot to Safari mode and enable parental controls on guest user is greyed.

Does anyone know how to get the real guest user account back?

If FileVault is enabled the guest user can only use Safari because they can't access the encrypted disk partition the system resides on.


Share Itunes Library with all users on same machine Looking to share my Itunes Library with my wife on same machine. SO for example, when I log off, and she logs in, I would like to be able to access my library in her ITunes.

I have spent countless hours combing the internet with no success and wondered if this is now even possible. I have read this THIS stack exchange thread about how to share but it seems this method doesnt work.
|
When I open Itunes on my wifes account with OPTION key and choose the newly created Library from my existing account nothing gets imported.

Another method I tried and failed with is to simply export the the Library from my existing Itunes as XML. The result was that the playlists get loaded fine but all the songs are missing (except for 3 or 4 songs)!

It should be noted that all the Media for the playlists and libraries are in a shared folder that are accessible to my wife's account with read & write permissions turned on.

I also tried setting up Home Sharing, but this does not seem to work on the same machine.

Running Sierra 10.12.6 with Itunes version 12.7.2.60

At this point i have no clue what to do. Any help is appreciated.

The trick to doing this is to have your iTunes library stored in a location that is accessible to both accounts (i.e. both users have read/write access), and to then configure iTunes in both accounts to use the same library.

My recommended approach for doing this is to use an external drive connected to your Mac and then configure iTunes within each of your Mac accounts to use that library.

Follow these steps:

Ensure iTunes is not running
Within Finder, move your iTunes library folder (by default this folder is located within ~/Music/iTunes/) to a location accessible by all user accounts. As mentioned above, my personal preference is to store it on an external drive connected to your Mac.
Hold down the option key and launch iTunes
You should now see the Choose iTunes Library prompt (see below)

Click on the Choose Library... button
Now navigate to the location you moved the library to at Step 2
iTunes should now open up and work as it's always done previously
Quit iTunes
Now log into your wife's account
Hold down the option key and launch iTunes
Repeat Steps 3, 4, 5 and 6

After doing the above you'll be able to access the same iTunes library from either user account.

IMPORTANT NOTES

If you don't already, ensure you have a backup regime in place (e.g. using Time Machine)
If using an external drive (as per my recommended approach) ensure you include this new location with whatever backup software you use (so that it's getting backed up)
There are a number of reasons why I prefer using an external drive for my iTunes library. Some include:

It frees up space on your main boot volume
It results in faster transfer rates (in the event your internal drive is not an SSD)
I like to keep all my digital media on the same drive (i.e. I also use the same drive for my Photos library)
It makes your iTunes library (and others if they're on the same drive) easy to physically transfer (in the event you need to)


Fan for MacBook Air? Macbook Air gets hot near its processor and gets sluggish for a while, whenever I make "heavy" tasks at the same time. I wonder if a fan under its base would make any difference since mac has no ventilation. In any case, would it help at all?

Edit: I consider the cases when the speed of the internal fan is quite normal but the area near the processor gets hot, since I can understand whenever fan speed is high, producing all that noise (e.g. when installing an OS).

It could help if you see kernel_task soaking CPU cycles.

From https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203184

  Activity Monitor may show that a process named kernel_task is using a large percentage of your CPU, and during this time you may notice a lot of fan activity. This process helps manage temperature by making the CPU less available to processes that are using the CPU intensely. In other words, kernel_task responds to conditions that cause your CPU to become too hot. When the temperature decreases, kernel_task automatically reduces its activity.

So if your case is more than 10°F / 5°C warmer than the ambient temperature and you are seeing high CPU/kernel task usage, cooling the bottom case or increasing airflow significantly might actually speed up your Air.


Why do some apps require a password when I move them to the trash? Some applications located in /Applications require a password in order to move them to the trash, others don't. Then there are also apps which cannot be deleted because they are required by OS X (a warning pops up).

Upon further inspection, I've come to the conclusion that Apps installed via the Mac App Store require a password in order to be moved to the trash. Why?

This is a permissions effect.  Most Application installed on Lion by default, via the App Store, and some installers are installed as system a.k.a Root and root only by default has Read and Write access to the Applications installed as root, while everyone else including your user is read only or custom for each Application. Applications that you drag and drop are owned by you, and you can delete them at will usually with out a password.

Verify in the Finder or Terminal what the permissions are on Apps that require a password to move to the trash, its likely that those Apps that are set to read only access for your current user are the ones asking for a password and a temporary privilege to delete something owned by the system.

In terminal try:

ls -la /Applications


How can I copy a Playlist from one iTunes library to another? I have one iTunes instance (v10.6.0.40) a Windows 7 PC.  I'm having problems copying playlists from there to my Macbook Air's iTunes instance.  Here's what I do:

On the Win7 machine, I right click the Playlist, choose Export, export it as a .m3u8 file, and save it in my Dropbox.
On the MBA, I grab the new playlist from the Dropbox, and drop it into the Mac's iTunes library.

After that, instead of a list of songs from they Playlist, I just get this:

Which I guess means that the newly imported playlist is blank.

How can I (successfully) copy playlists between two computers?

Under the File menu, In the Library expanding list, you will find "Export Playlist".

On the receiving machine you would use "Import Playlist" found in the same menu.

Seems like you have the right procedure (although I do not know for sure that drag and drop will work with the playlist...) but have you tried to export a .txt file - that's what I get when I export a playlist. If you have the option could you export it as txt, verify that the file contains a list of songs, then verify that it also contains a list of songs when you get it back from dropbox? You should at least be able to isolate where the list disappears.


Move quickly between pages in Safari on iOS7? I know you can swipe from the screen edges to move forward and back in your history. I am looking for a quick way to go between the open web pages on my iPhone (without all the tapping required to bring up the overlay buttons, then the page view, then scroll to another page).

It would be great if there is a way to use multi-finger swipes to switch between open pages (~tabs), like ⌘⇧} on OSX.

No, Safari does not have a feature like the one you're describing. However, Chrome for iOS has this functionality by default.


iPhone switches to speakerphone when away from my face Since this morning I think, when I'm on a call and move my iPhone away from my face a bit, it seems to automatically switch to Speakerphone (the voice can be heard out loud) and it shows the number pad. When I get it close to my face again, it goes back to normal.

I have an iPhone 4S, latest iOS 6.1.3, clean install (no jailbreak).

I am not sure if this is a bug or a hidden feature I enabled by mistake - but this is very strange to me...

When you lay your phone on the table and dial a number, you should see this screen.

If you see speaker in blue, you might try tapping that part of the screen to see if you can return to the receiver for sound out. If so, hang up and repeat the call.

If all calls start with speaker, then you have a problem with the software or hardware. The Apple troubleshooting web site might help, but I'd do this first:

Power down the phone and test after a clean restart.
Back up the device (you will need to restore your data to the device after resetting things other than the settings in the immediate step below)
Go to the Settings app > General > Reset > Reset All Settings
Repeat the dial on the table test
Now erase everything on the phone Settings app > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings
Repeat the dial on the table test
Restore the device using iTunes to erase it.
Check the headset port and dock connector for foreign debris (or liquid damage)
Get the hardware serviced by Apple (or other service provider) by going through the Apple Troubleshooting website mentioned before this list.


Trouble extracting zip file in macOS I downloaded Signal desktop app from this URL:

https://updates.signal.org/desktop/signal-desktop-mac-1.24.1.zip

However, when attempting to extract the zip archive using unzip command, this is what I get:

~/Downloads$ unzip signal-desktop-mac-1.24.1.zip
Archive:  signal-desktop-mac-1.24.1.zip
  End-of-central-directory signature not found.  Either this file is not
  a zipfile, or it constitutes one disk of a multi-part archive.  In the
  latter case the central directory and zipfile comment will be found on
  the last disk(s) of this archive.
unzip:  cannot find zipfile directory in one of signal-desktop-mac-1.24.1.zip or
        signal-desktop-mac-1.24.1.zip.zip, and cannot find signal-desktop-mac-1.24.1.zip.ZIP, period.

Should be pretty straightforward. I don't know what the problem is. unzip -t also fails with the same error.

I've tried to download this several times. Same problem. Also happens with signal-desktop-mac-1.23.2.zip. I doubt the archive is corrupted across several versions, and my system has no other known problems.

Running

file signal-desktop-mac-1.24.1.zip

in the Terminal outputs:

  signal-desktop-mac-1.24.1.zip: Zip archive data, at least v?[0x314] to extract

indicating that there's some issue with how the zip file is encoded. That explains why unzip may have failed to extract the files from the compressed archive.

However, when attempting to extract via built-in Archive Utility by double clicking, or right clicking and selecting Open, the archive extracts successfully.

I tried it, successfully extracted Signal.app and was able to run it.


What Bit Encryption does Apple Use on Mobile Devices? Apple Encryption Question: I know if you have the iPhone 3GS or later version, an iPod touch 3rd generation or later version, or any iPad, the user can employ encryption to protect the contents. My question is specific, does any one know what bit encryption Apple uses?

As per page 11 of the iOS Security Guide:

  Every time a file on the data partition is created, Data Protection creates a new 256-bit
  key (the “per-file” key) and gives it to the hardware AES engine, which uses the key to
  encrypt the file as it is written to flash memory using AES CBC mode. (On devices with
  an A8 processor, AES-XTS is used.) The initialization vector (IV) is calculated with the
  block offset into the file, encrypted with the SHA-1 hash of the per-file key.

Emphasis mine


How to train iOS 8 spellcheck for acronyms? In iOS 7, one could train spellcheck to recognize acronyms by, e.g., typing 'My Story (MS)' so that when you subsequently typed 'ms' it would appear as 'MS'. This no longer works -- or, at best, works  occasionally and often forgets.

The iOS 8 advice, e.g., from http://www.wired.com/2014/10/quicktype-tips-ios-8, to select text and double-tap the shift key to get 'all caps' suggestions in QuickType, is tedious and works only occasionally.

How does one train the spellchecker for acronyms in iOS 8?

You can manually add them by using the keyboard shortcuts feature.

Go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts then add as many as you want.

It may be a little tedious at the beginning but the settings will stay there forever.


how to do clean apache2 installation I have messed out a lot of things with currently installed apache. It doesn't work at all. So, I want to delete apache completely and re-install everything. I want to do completely clean installation. How would I do it?

OSX version: Yosemite

Package Manager: Homebrew

You can use an external command called brew rmdeps or brew rmtree.

To install and use, issue the following commands:

$ brew tap beeftornado/rmtree && brew install brew-rmtree
$ brew rmtree <package>

You can view the full discussion on this thread.


Administrator password lost for late 2013 MacBook Pro with Yosemite An ex-employee change her administrator password when she was fired and nobody can access the MacBook Pro (late 2013 model). It is running on Yosemite. I have tried using the Command/S key to change it, but it does not work. What can I do to restore the computer and set-up a new administrator?

First of all - restart your computer. Press the Command and R keys at the same time when the grey screen appears and hold them until you see the Apple logo. A small loading bar will appear under the logo. Sit tight as your system boots into Recovery Mode.

Click the Utilities tab in the top menu bar, select Terminal, type resetpassword and press Enter. Close out the Terminal window and behind it you will find the Reset Password utility. All you have to do now is select the user account you want to reset, enter a new password or leave it blank and click Save. Then just simply restart the computer from the Apple menu and login with your new password.

However if the user was protected by FileVault or Firmware password, you will probably need to clean-install OSX.


My iTunes account shows an incorrect device How do I change my device in iTunes. It shows an inactive iPod but I need it to show my iPhone. I could not locate the area within iTunes that this change should be made.

Launch iTunes on your Mac.

Click on your name in the upper right hand corner of iTunes. In the menu, click on Account Info.

Type in your iTunes password when prompted in order to continue.

When your account loads, click on Manage Devices under the iTunes in the Cloud section.

Click on Remove next to the devices you want to remove.


How can I attach a contact replying an email on Iphone with IOS7 I have not found a way to share a contact with someone that requested it by e-mail, I should be able to reply with an attached contact information, does anyone know how to do this?

You can send your Contact card via emai from the Contacts app.

The above was for Mac contacts, in your case for the iPhone there is a share contact with the same functions.

Share Contacts From Your iPhone Or iPad:

Open Contacts
Tap on a contact that you wish to share.
Scroll down and tap Share Contact.

You have three share options:

Airdrop (use only to share with other ios7)

Message

Mail

Choose the option you like, fill in the addressee details, and click Send.


CD with data not opening in selected application I am hainvg a problem with an app called Reunion 9. My dad made me a CD/GED file with data from his PC and I'm trying to load it onto my MacBook Pro. When it initially opened, it gave the screen to choose an app. I clicked Adobe, but that won't work. Now, I can't get back to that screen to try something else.
It automatically goes to Adobe and tells me it won't work.

Got any suggestions for how to return to the application selection screen and what application I should select?

it's reasonably simple to change the default application (the process is quite similar to that on windows)

Use Finder to find the file you are trying to open.
Right Click (or Ctrl left Click) Choose "Open With" -> "Other"
Use the resulting finder window to find the application you want to open the file with (you may need to change the "Enable" drop down to "All Applications")
Tick the checkbox, "Always open with"
Click "Open"


Encrypt folder on Mac without dmg file so that the contents can expand in size I want to encrypt some folders on my Mac.

I know there is a way of doing it by making a dmg file, but I also want to keep editing those folders. So I just want to encrypt that folder while being able to add more things in the encrypted folder. You know, it should act as how the password works on a user account, if that makes any sense :P

You can use a sparse bundle which will expand when the contents increases in size.

Enable advanced image options in Disk Utility.

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility advanced-image-options 1

Open Disk Utility and select File → New → Disk Image from Folder… or press ⌘N.
Select the folder that you want to encrypt and press Image.
Choose sparsebundle as the Image Format, and choose the level of encryption you require.
Choose a password to encrypt the image and click OK.

If, after removing some files from the sparse bundle, you wish to decrease its size, you can compact it:

hdiutil compact /path/to/folder.sparsebundle


Show hidden files files in Finder except .DS_Store I configured my Mac to show hidden files by setting AppleShowAllFiles to true running this bash command:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES; killall -HUP Finder

That solved my previous problem. However, there's a file that does not matter to me and I want it to be hidden again, .DS_Store.

I still want to see the other hidden files, except .DS_Store. Is there a way?

I am using OS X 10.11.

One way to achieve your desired results is to upgrade to Sierra.

macOS 10.12 shows all hidden files via your command
defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool YES
 – but Finder has been taught a 'new trick': it will never show you .DS_Store files regardless of your wishes or instructions.

This has the side effect that your Trash will be almost always be displayed as full, even when it is 'empty' as per Finder inspection. Because the .DS_Store file for Trash will trigger the 'full' Trash icon.


2012 Macbook Pro Boots With Startup Sound, But Has Black Screen This is sorta urgent, since my dad's whole business relies on his computer, and it needs to be fixed.
Anyway, it will startup and and make the mac "on" chime. But after that, nothing happens. We can tell it is on because pressing the caps lock key will turn the capslock light on and off, and the black screen is still brighter than the bezel. We tried doing a PRAM reset, and that didn't work at all. We still have yet to start in Safe Mode, but again, this is my dad's whole business at stake, so if you or you know someone who can help, that would be great.

-LionMac

EDIT: We just tried booting it in safe mode, and nothing happened. (Maybe it is the logic board. If it is, could someone confirm that so we don't waste any more time trying different solutions?)

Ok, I would like someone to close this topic, because our problem is fixed. My dad took it to the Genius Bar at our Local Apple store, and they found out it was a problem with the power supply. (Not sure how that happened, especially considering the symptoms the Mac had) But anyway, thank you for all of your help.


Mac Terminal NetStat How can I use NetStat on my mac to view all connected IPs of a gaming server? I wonder if theres a way to see how many ms they have.

netstat(1) only tells you about the connections local to the machine you are running it on. So if you can run netstat on the gaming server, then you can find out the IP's of the clients. Look for connections to the game servers port.

If you are looking to find out the ping time or lag for each of the clients I'm not sure there is a good way unless you are running on the game server, and then you may get an idea of the lag by getting the IP addresses of the clients and then running ping(8) on each of the addresses.


Missing Firmware Partition after NVRAM reset in MacOS High Sierra Maybe someone can help me. Earlier today, I was working on my MBP and it wouldn't read my external flash drive, yet it read it last night before I ejected it. However, today it wouldn't find it. I ejected it and tried in my other MBP and my MBA, and my Windows 10 pc, and all three devices could read it. This led me to believe that my ports were somehow not working so I performed a NVRAM reset, and when I did, the screen went haywire, and I was looping at the login screen, which I have been doing for the last 16 hours. So, I ran a diagnostic on the computer and couldn't find any hardware issues. Not only is my screen jacked up, I can't use my flash drive and I can't access my work.

So, I swapped hard drives with my other MBP and it couldn't detect it, so I swapped them back, and the hard drive showed up on that one however, when I tried to command+R, it won't go to the utility disk. So, I tried going to shift+option+command+R, and finally the globe appeared, and I was able to attempt to recover from my time machine, but once the process started, it stopped and the screen went gray and has been that way for hours.

Now, after I put my hard drive back in my second MBP, it's not reading its hard drive at all. I am getting OS X Base System, and nothing more. My hard drive was working perfectly before I swapped it out, now it's not working at all.

I took both hard drives to best buy to have them tested, and they both are operable and both were cloned. Now, I'm getting the error message that MacOS can't be installed to that volume because it's missing a firmware partition. I don't know what to do now, as both my work and my school computers are inoperable, and I have no idea how to get them back up and running.

Please help me.

You Title is bit misleading for me.

Based on your description on what is going on lets try to repair your disk.

1- check the cable connections for firm fit.

2- Start or restart your Mac. As soon as you hear the startup tone, press and hold

  Command-S

on the keyboard. Keep holding down those keys until you see a black screen with white lettering. This is called “booting into Single User Mode.” As soon as you see the black screen with white lettering, you can release the keys.

Wait for the text to stop.

The last line should end in root#.

Right after the root# prompt, enter the following:

/sbin/fsck -fy

Press the Return key.

It will attempt to repair your disk and tell you the result.


What video connector for a mid-2012 macbook pro to External Monitor What are the different (and the best) option for connecting my mid 2012 Macbook pro to an external monitor. Three connections I know of are VGA, HDMI and DVI. What is the difference and what cables do I need? Are there any other options I can consider? Are there any adaptors that let me switch between VGA and DVI?

The best connector is obviously one which matches your monitor.

If you are getting a new monitor, most now use HDMI.

HDMI and DVI-D are very similar, and dual adaptors are common. The main difference is lack of sound on DVI.

VGA is an analog connection, and effectively obsolete, but you can get VGA adaptors for a Mac.


In Yosemite, can you "un tag" more than 10 files at once? The tags replaced labels in Yosemite.

Labels could be added or removed whatever the number of files selected, and could not be combined.
Tags are another story, since you can combine them.

But if you select:
FILE-1 and FILE-2 etc all the way to FILE-20,
then add a tag to them, and if you do not deselect the 20 files, and go back to the File menu, in order to remove the green tag, you cannot "remove tag" on these 20 files the way it worked before (say, with labels, before Yosemite, when you would remove label on 1-∞ files at once).
It doesn't work over 10 files the way it would work if only 1-10 files were selected. Remove tag doesn't work for over 10 files.

Visual explanation of the problem:

One file is selected then "add green tag" appears as an option in the Finder:

The green tag is added:

While this one file is selected, "add green tag" becomes "remove green tag" in the File menu of the Finder (or "remove tag "green"", which isn't proper English, but whatever):

Now I select 30 files without any tags:

and "add green tag" to them (notice how now all the tag circles are strangely circled with a white stroke, by the way, not sure what that's supposed to mean to the user):

Green tags gets added to 30 files without a problem:

Now I am looking for the "remove green tag" option for these files, but the Finder asks me if I want to "add tag green" to these files:

If I "add tag green" of course nothing happens, since you can only attribute one green tag once to each file, and this has already been done once. Neither does this remove the tag.

It seems that it would make sense if the command displayed said "remove all green tags in selection", but that's not the case.

I can now only de-tag my files by groups of 10 files.If I select 10 of them, then "remove green tag" in the File menu works...

Therefore, if you inadvertently tag 1503 files in one clumsy gesture, and do not have access to the Edit -> Undo "add tag green" command, how would you select all 1503 files to remove their tags in one single move instead of 150?

You can do this using the Edit Tags button as seen in the screenshot. Just delete the tag of the selected files from the typing field.


How do I get rid of the mackeeper popup from http://mackeeperapp2.mackeeper.com? This is not the zeobit version. Adware scanner doesn't find anything. It pops up (or under) whenever I close Safari.

I have Mac OS X 10.7.5.

It is advertising MacKeeper and I would like it to bug off.

Add the following lines to /etc/hosts and mackeeper goes away forever:

127.0.0.1   mackeeper.com
127.0.0.1   www.mackeeper.com
127.0.0.1   mackeeperapp.zeobit.com
127.0.0.1   mackeeperapp.mackeeper.com
127.0.0.1   mackeeperapp2.mackeeper.com


What is the simplest way to dual-boot linux? I am looking for the most straightforward way (both in initial setup and in maintenance) to set up a second partition on an OS X machine for (either) Debian or Ubuntu. I won't be running any other OSes so the ability to triple boot is of no interest to me.

Most articles suggest installing a third-party bootloader, either Refit or Refind, as one of the first steps. Is this really necessary? In the past, I've just partitioned some empty space with Disk Utility and let the Ubuntu installer format and install to it however it pleases. Is there something wrong with this approach?

Formatting a partition with Disk Utility on OS X and letting the Ubuntu installer do the rest of the work is a simple and straightforward approach.
The Ubuntu installer also takes care of configuring and installing the bootloader.

Theoretically, you could boot Linux with only Grub-EFI, as the Linux kernel supports direct EFI boot. But this requires a lot on work on Macs, because you need to configure and install grub-efi. See also this page.

So i recommend using rEFIt or rEFInd in order to boot Linux on a Mac.


How can a standard user backup everything using Time Machine? I have concern regarding this behavior.

When I use Time Machine as a standard user, it backs up everything (including data of users I do NOT even own). I realize that I still cannot access it, but how legit it is to allow me to backup everything on a system used by multiple users on an external hard drive and take it away with me?

You need to be an admin user to turn on Time Machine or change the disk - if you are an admin user you can see all the data on the machine.


Would a 2.6 Ghz CPU drain a laptop's battery faster than a 2.3 Ghz CPU? Apple offers the MacBook Pro with two processor options -- 2.3 Ghz and 2.6 Ghz.

I'm wondering if the more powerful CPU drain the battery more quickly by any significant degree.

(And incidentally, would additional RAM consume additional power?)

If everything else was equal (CPU architecture, generation, manufacturing process, OS, power management strategy, software running etc.) the answer is maybe. Modern CPUs like the i3/i5/i7 series downclock themselves when idle so it depends what you're doing and what the actual CPUs are. If everything is as equal as you can make it and you compare CPUs of identical generation, one with maximum clock speed higher than the other and you are using the CPUs to their maximum capacity - then the more powerful CPU does drain the battery faster - but it gets more work done in the same time too, and might get back to the idle state faster.

You can only really answer this question if you test your exact scenario.


Macbook Pro 15'' early 2011 - external monitor 27'' with DVI connection I want to buy an external monitor for my Macbook Pro (15'' early 2011). I would want a 27'' with 2560x1440 resolution but I have a doubt:
a mini diplay port/DVI converter is sufficient or I will need this one? Mini DisplayPort/Dual-Link DVI http://www.apple.com/it/shop/product/MB571Z/A/adattatore-da-mini-displayport-a-dvi-dual-link

the description of the adapter says:

  Use the Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter to connect your Mac to a 30-inch display that includes a DVI connector, such as the 30-inch Apple Cinema Display HD, and enjoy the ultimate widescreen canvas with a resolution of 2560 by 1600 pixels.

Hardware specs for my model say (https://support.apple.com/kb/SP620?locale=it_IT&viewlocale=en_US):

  Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors

Thank you for your anwser.

If you want a resolution of 2560x1440 and you want to use DVI, then you must use a Dual Link DVI adapter.  Period.  A Single Link DVI connector will only support up to 1920x1200.

That said, I wouldn't recommend going with Dual Link DVI but rather getting a monitor that natively support Display Port or mini Display Port like the Dell UltraSharp U2715H

I am a big proponent of the idea that the less you have to convert, the better the reliability.


Command-line stop MacBook from sleeping when lid is closed? I've used Caffeine before and it can stop my MacBook from sleeping when the lid is closed (sometimes I want to continue listening to something through headphones while moving around)

Is there a command that can be run from the terminal that will do the same thing?

I've tried caffeinate but it does nothing. InsomniaX does stop the MacBook from sleeping when the lid is closed, is there a way to implement this same functionality from the terminal though?

Disable Sleeping when the lid is closed running on battery

sudo pmset -b sleep 0; sudo pmset -b disablesleep 1

Re-enable sleeping when the lid is closed running on battery

sudo pmset -b sleep 5; sudo pmset -b disablesleep 0

Remember to re-enable or manually sleep your machine before putting it into a bag.
It will get very hot very quickly in an enclosed space.


Firefox/Services menu void The items in Firefox/Services menu disappeared after I restart my iMac, but not in every browser tab. For example, they are there and working correctly if the browser display the Help/Troubleshooting page (I'm not sure the name is the correct one, I have a localized version in Italian: "Aiuto/Risoluzione dei problemi").

If I actuate Firefox's refresh function, Services work properly until I close and reopen Firefox.

I tried to run Firefox with the option "-NSDebugServices com.apple.mail" getting the following messages:

Mail/New Email With Selection (com.apple.mail) is enabled in the services menu and disabled in the context menu, by the standard Services policy.
Mail/New Email To Address (com.apple.mail) is enabled in the services menu and disabled in the context menu, by the standard Services policy.
Mail/New Email To Address (com.apple.mail) is disqualified because its send and/or return types cannot be handled by the requestor ChildView 0x11b6e4680, gecko child 0x11ba56800, frame {{0, 0}, {1580, 1040}}.
Mail/New Email With Selection (com.apple.mail) is disqualified because its send and/or return types cannot be handled by the requestor ChildView 0x11b6e4680, gecko child 0x11ba56800, frame {{0, 0}, {1580, 1040}}.
GVA info: Successfully connected to the Intel plugin, offline Gen9
WebGL(0x12dc38000)::ForceLoseContext"

Please, do you have any idea how to fix my installation?

iMac Retina 5K Late 2015 -
OS X 10.11.6 -
Firefox 50.0.2

After the Firefox 50.1 release updated "The song remains the same"...

but:

Furthermore in other programs, where the Services menu works well, Internet related item like "Search with DuckDuckGo" opens Safari instead of my default browser Firefox (look at the icon near the menu text in the upper picture).

Mac services are only enabled if some text is selected.

Selecting text in Google Docs in Firefox (DE 63) does not enable any whereas selecting text in other pages (including your example, about:services) does.

There may be something broken in how the current selection is communicated to the Services menu.


macOS sometimes can't connect to WiFi hotspot that's really working perfectly Every now and then, my Macbook Pro running the latest macOS won't connect to my WiFi. It just keeps insisting: The Wi-Fi network "Ubiquiti UniFi" can not be joined.

This happens both at home, and work, and on other random locations. It's only occasionally, it connects just fine most of the time. But when the problem shows up, no matter how often I retry to connect, the error keeps showing up. And then later that day (like a couple of hours later) it randomly connects by itself as if nothing is wrong.

Something I noticed: normally when connecting to a WiFi, the connection thingy in the top menu bar in macOS shows an animation with the bars in the WiFi icon lighting up one after another, like this:

Now whenever this connection problem occurs, I noticed the bars do not light up. The animation doesn't happen, the entire icon just stays dim. It feels like it's not even trying to connect, but obviously that's just my interpretation from not seeing the icon animate.

Also whenever this happens and I try to connect with my phone (Android 7) or iPad (iOS 10) instead, it works fine all the time. So the WiFi access point itself is really working absolutely fine.

Also my signal isn't blocked or weak or anything, I'm literally sitting 2 meters away from the WiFi antenna, with no obstacles in between. And there's not a ton of other WiFi stations nearby that might be disturbing my channel (sometimes I see two or three other SSIDs in the list with weak signals, sometimes I see none).And there's not a ton of devices connected to the same network either. Usually just my laptop, sometimes also my phone or iPad, maybe a phone or laptop from my wife at home or colleague at work, but that's about it.

I have even tried resetting my Mac's NVRAM and the SMC, unfortunately to no avail.

Any suggestions what the hell could be causing this, or what I could do about this?

It happened again twice since I posted this, and I think I found something that seems to work. On the terminal, I do:

networksetup -setairportpower en0 off

networksetup -setairportpower en0 on

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport --scan

(that last command shows a list of available networks with their SSID)

networksetup -setairportnetwork en0 MyWifiSSID MyWifiPassword

Both times this made my connection work again.

Haven't tried Monomeeth's solution yet, but as it involves more manual interaction and rebooting my laptop, I hope the above 'on the fly' method will suffice.


Can I turn off macOS Catalina's internal display without close the lid while using an external monitor? I'm using two external monitors, and I want to be able to disable the built-in monitor without closing the lid. Option with disabling brightness doesn't fit my requirements because I don't want every time to search my cursor in the black screen. I need the lid to be opened because I'm ofently using touch id sensor.

Yes, it's possible.
Well, I can do it.  MacBook Pro, MacOS 10.11, if that matters.

Just find the spot where the lid sensor is,
(about 1/3 from the bottom on the left edge of this laptop) and
park a magnet on it.   The internal display goes dark, but
the external still displays, and the keyboard types, and both
the trackpad and external pointing devices still work.

It moves the dock onto one of the external screens, of course, and other items shift accordingly, taking a few seconds.


Can't Login to App Store, iTunes , Xcode , iClouds on Mac 10.12.5 On my mac I can't login to App Store, iTunes , Xcode , iClouds. Tried using different Apple id but i keep getting error.

  This action could not be completed. try again

I have also tried using the same id on other machine it works but doesn't work on my mac. I am even able to login with the same id on the browser. How can i fix this?

After i try to figure out now i found the solution

Open your Terminal and put this command

sudo mkdir -p /Users/Shared
sudo chown root:wheel /Users/Shared
sudo chmod -R 1777 /Users/Shared

Fixed it


Jailbreak: Need Top Option + Restore + Choose ipsw Anymore? Before a device was to be jailbreaked, all the tutorials recommended connecting said device to iTunes and then clicking option + Restore > Choose ipsw.

Recent tutorials don't include these steps any more. Rather they just mention restoring through iTunes and not over wifi.

Is the option + Restore > Choose ipsw Necessary Still For Jailbreaking?

The basic restore through iTunes will download the latest software image and restore it. This is equivalent to downloading the latest ipsw and using the Option + Restore method.

The Option + restore method has typically been useful for situations where you need to restore to an older or modified ipsw file, which was more useful in the earlier days of jailbreaking.


Remove iOS apps from purchase history I'm trying to remove apps I'll never use again from my purchase history.  Does anyone know how I might be able to do this? I don't want to just hide them, I want them gone. Realize same question was asked a few years ago which received a response that it's not possible.  Was hoping something has changed.  Thanks

There is no way to completely remove an app from your history. The closest you can get is deleting it and hiding it.

From this Apple Discussion:

  You can not nor do you need to. Apple wants you to have the app
  available should you ever decide you have changed your mind. You can
  hide it from the purchase list if it irritates you.


How to get rid of "application downloaded from the internet" message when installing homebrew casks? I used homebrew cask to install many applications for quite a while now. But recently macOS keeps asking me to first confirm the "application downloaded from the internet" question that is usually only displayed for apps that are run for the first time.

What happened and how can I get rid of this?

Update

I use an admin account to install apps (brew cask install calibre), but I basically use a non-admin account all the time. I can get rid of the message by logging into the admin account and launching the app once and then the message disappears also for the user account.

Wohoo! I just realized that there is apparently now a built-in solution to the problem! Homebrew offers a --no-quarantine flag. That means one can now install casks without the annoying message, by using
brew install --no-quarantine calibre

or
brew reinstall --no-quarantine calibre

Update: There is currently a bug in Homebrew that prevents the latter command (reinstall) from working.


How to disable or delay "Time Machine hasn't backed up your computer in x days" message? Mountain Lion and later OS X releases have a very useful feature where Time Machine can alternate between multiple backup destinations. I use this to back up to both a network share at home and an external drive I keep offsite. Because I only have physical access to the offsite drive occasionally, I don't back up to it often.

After 10 days, OS X gives me a message around the same time each day, such as:

Time Machine is still backing up successfully to the network share every hour, so this message is unnecessary (and the second sentence is incorrect).

I like being able to see when the last backup was completed, so I'd prefer not to remove the disk from Time Machine's destination list entirely. Likewise, turning Time Machine off (as suggested here) isn't an option because I still need my backups to run on the other drives.

Is there any way to disable or delay this message? Ideally I would be able to set it to a longer period of time, so it could remind me to go do an offsite backup every month or so.

Perhaps TimeMachineScheduler or TimeMachineEditor can help.


Why does Mail.app automatically add iCal events from invitations I receive? I sometimes receive emails with .ics file attachments. Mail.app automatically adds these events to my iCloud Calendar as soon as I preview the message.

How can I disable this behaviour and only add the event if I click on the attachment manually?

There are web app preferences to manage this in newer macOS.
In the Mail.app go to Preferences->general. There is an option "Add invitations to ICal" which is Automatic or None. You need to choose None.

When you have a mail with date and time in Mail.App will highlight that and clicking on that will add an event to iCal.


Battery drains too fast when device is Shut Down When I bought my brand new Macbook, it was like 9-months old (according to battery production date) and still had almost 40% charge on first turn on.

But after that, every time I charge my Macbook (to around 50%) for storage when I don't plan to use it and Shut Down the Macbook, the battery is completely drained (it won't turn on before charging) after only 2-3 months

This happens almost every time, I don't understand why (I know dropping a few percentage is normal, but not the entire battery...)

Please note:

I am sure it is turned off and not just in sleep mode.
I store it in a 18-24 (Celsius) environment.
My battery holds perfectly (around 8-10 hours) when device is on and I'm working with the laptop.
Battery Health 2 application shows the battery health is 98% (4294 mAh)

Firstly, try disabling WiFi before you sleep or power it off in case that is preventing sleep or waking it excessively.

I would get Apple service to run a battery diagnostic. This is the sort of thing they can very rapidly diagnose and easily measure if they have it in for service.

You should have months of stability if you charge your battery to 50% and then power it down. That’s what Apple recommends for long term storage. Something isn’t proper and warranty / AppleCare likely covers repair the bulk of them. Even if you’re out of coverage, get a quote and free diagnostic.

https://www.apple.com/batteries/maximizing-performance/

Support is easy to get started over chat or phone - https://support.apple.com. You are doing everything right and I hope it’s not a flat battery that you end up having to pay to swap when it becomes too unfit for your needs.


Disable the use of the "com.apple.quarantine" extended attribute on Mojave I recently got Mojave. Could somebody tell me whether it's possible to disable the use of the "com.apple.quarantine" extended attribute, for all apps that I have now or will ever download in the future? Thanks!

If I understood your question clearly, here is the solution that you can use to disable it completely.

Open Terminal
Type following command

sudo defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO

After that, reboot, and you should be set.

If you want to disable quarantine for files already downloaded

Open Terminal.
Execute the following command:

xattr -l /path/to/application/applicationName.app

You will see output similar to:

To remove an extended attribute manually, type the following command in Terminal

   xattr -d com.apple.quarantine /path/to/application/applicationName.app


Do not disturb Setting for emails i have an iphone 5s with ios 8.1 and would like to silent my phone at night and only to sound when i receive and email sent to my specific email address. Is this possible?

You can set 'Do Not Disturb' mode for specific times, & allow phone calls from chosen people, or from anyone who calls twice in quick succession, but I know of no way to do that for email.


Numbers: conditonal highlight based on a date in a different column In numbers, I would like to change the background colour of Column D based on whether the date in Column A is still in the future  (i.e. graying out).

I can get the colour formatting to work on the date column itself ('Date is after the date 0 days ago'), but how can I specify that the rule is based on a different column?
If I specify the above colour rule in 'D' (a pure numeric column), then the colour doesn't change as D doesn't contain a date...

This currently isn't possible. Conditional highlighting will only run the condition on the cell that the rule has been applied to.

  To change the appearance of a cell based on its cell value, create a conditional highlighting rule.

Source: Add conditional highlighting to cells — Numbers Help for Mac; emphasis mine.

The only exception to this is for conditions where a comparison is required — a second value can be referenced in the rule.

  Click  to use a cell reference. A cell reference lets you compare the cell’s value to another cell—so, for example, you can highlight a cell when its value is greater than another cell’s. Click a cell to select it, or enter its table address (for example, F1).

Source: Add conditional highlighting to cells — Numbers Help for Mac.

As a workaround, you could duplicate (or reference) the column A and place it next to column D, applying the conditional highlighting to that column instead. It won't be highlighting the cell with the data, but it'll give you something to glance at next to the data.


iPod shuffle not charging My iPod has been dead for about 8 months. I plugged the charger into a PC and its not blinking and there's actually no light at all. How long will it take for it to start again? I really need help and don't know how long it will take.

Depending on how depleted it is, it may not charge at all since the battery protection circuit could be completely offline and block power in that mode, effectively disabling all power. I came across this a few times and I fixed it by opening the device and applying regulated power directly to bypass this issue and get the controllers working so it could charge itself and get back into normal working condition.

In your case, if it was completely empty and then stored for 8 months, it is possible that this is the situation you're in.  Normally, a small leakage current still flows which allows the charging controller to turn on and make the device start working, but that does not always work. Using a proper charger helps if the device is built to recover only when applied the correct voltage with enough amps.


Remove Storage iOS Apps on Mac Is it possible to remove the Mac copy (iTunes/Mobile Applications) of all synced iOS applications (they are already installed on my iOS device)? They are currently taking up about 6 GB of space on my hard drive. I'm talking about the .IPA files. Thanks!

Quit iTunes.  Then you can go into your "~/Music/iTunes/Mobile\ Applications/" directory, and manually delete apps using the Terminal or Finder.  Before the next Sync, in iTunes control-click to hit the "Reset Warnings" menu item for your device.  During the next Sync, iTunes may ask if you want to (re)copy purchased files from the device.  Just say no.  iTunes will be confused, but the apps will remain on the device, and not on your HD.

It would be better to first make a backup copy of your Mobile Applications directory with Time Machine, or to another HD, before messing with iTunes internal data like this.


AppleTV and other Apple devices connecting by wifi but not by LAN I have an AppleTV in a local network that is connected by WiFi but it cannot find the iTunes library in my Mac that is connected via LAN to the router.

If I connect my Mac via WiFi, voilá, AppleTV is connected to my Mac without any problem.

If I connect both the AppleTV and my Mac via LAN, then they can connect without problem also.

The same issue occurs with an iPhone and the Remote.app.

I've opened ports, I followed all the advices from Apple support help and I test the connection via telnet but nothing has been useful for me.

I think the problem is related to Bonjour but I need an experienced opinion that can help me.

Why can't my devices on WiFi see my devices connected via ethernet?

This is usually down to the router involved, and a security setting disallowing traffic from machines connected to the Wifi interface to the (technically) more secure LAN interface.

If you provide more information on your router manufacture, model we may be able to assist more.


Lion AFP Time Machine Backups I have a MacBook Pro & a Mac Pro, both have fresh installs of Lion.  I've also set up the Mac Pro as a Lion Server.  I've set up a few AFP shares on the Mac Pro & I notice there's no "Time Machine Destination" option on the shares.  I know this option was there on Snow Leopard.  When I connect to the shares on the MacBook Pro, they do not show up as backup disks in the Time Machine preference pane.  Is it possible to do this anymore?

Have you set it up like the Lion Server Administration article quoted below?

Time Machine service offers a backup destination on your server to Time Machine users. Use the Time Machine pane of the Server app to make server disk space available for backing up users’ computers, or to change the disk used for storing user backups.

Time Machine service is available to users with Mac OS X Lion, Snow Leopard, and Leopard. Mac OS X Lion and Snow Leopard users who haven’t selected a backup disk in the Time Machine pane of System Preferences are automatically asked whether they want to use the server as a storage location. Other users need to open the Time Machine pane of System Preferences and change the backup disk.

In the Server app sidebar, select Time Machine.
Click the On/Off switch to turn on Time Machine service.
Select a disk to use as the destination for users’ backups, and then click Use for Backup.
Time Machine service creates the Backups shared folder on the disk you select.

To choose a different disk as the backup destination, click Edit.
If you turn on Time Machine service when file sharing service is off, file sharing service turns on automatically.

If you change the backup disk, users’ Time Machine preferences that were set to use the server for backup storage will automatically begin using the Backups folder in its new location.

After selecting a different backup disk, advise users that their first backup will take longer because it’s a full backup. Time Machine service doesn’t copy users’ backup data from the old Backups folder to the new Backups folder.

You can control each user’s access to the server’s Time Machine backup storage in the Users pane of the Server app.


"User"-folder is larger than contents My "user" folder is about 56GB big, but when I look at the contents (and add them up with a calculator) I get up to about 24GB. What happened to the other 32GB? Is there a way to free this space up?

I have a hidden folder called .rvm with the size of almost 3GB. My Library is almost 30GB though, can I remove something in there? It seems excessively big!

Edit: So, these are the biggest folders in my Library. Is there a way to get some space back, or do I just have to learn to live with this?

The one place you haven't listed is your Library folder..

From the Finder menu choose GO

then Go To Folder

 ~/Library

The chances are your Application Support directory has loads of stuff stashed.