Installation failure - the mongodb driver for PHP on El Capitan I tried to install the mongodb driver for PHP on El Capitan. While running sudo pecl install mongo, I get the error message:

sudo /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/bin/pecl install mongo

fatal error: openssl/evp.h: No such file or directory
 #include <openssl/evp.h>
                         ^
compilation terminated.
make: *** [io_stream.lo] Error 1
ERROR: `make' failed
PEAR Version: 1.9.4 PHP Version: 5.5.28

I tried mongo driver install with PHP 5.5.26 also.

It should install the Openssl brew install openssl & brew link openssl --force

Using xcode-select --install to install commande line tools

It does work for me ^^


How can I remove Photos.app from Mac OSX El Capitan? Appzapper doesn't work
Appcleaner doesn't work
The typical Terminal Command i use doesn't work

Is the only way to doe this by disable SIP (System Integrity Protection)?

Try AppZapper, i always use it but idk if it really delete Apple's apps

AppZapper can delete .app and also every configuration file that it have

EDIT: i've found this, the guy in that tutorial is using CleanMyMac3 to do it. Hope it can help you


Matlab on the command line error in Lion I constantly get this warning in Matlab, which I run on the command line:

  This process is attempting to exclude an item from Time Machine by path without administrator privileges. This is not supported.

What can I do to prevent this?

It is reported here, they claimed that the issue is for all version of Matlab on Mac OS X Lion. So I guess you could simply use sudo to get this problem done. And wait with more patient for a fix.


reduce trackpad sensitivity when typing (MacBook Pro w/ Retina) When I type on my MacBook Pro, I tend to rest my palms near the trackpad - and sometimes they end up touching the trackpad directly.

As a result sometimes I end up moving the mouse around while typing. The worst is when it ends up highlighting text I've already typed, then I end up typing over it. This happens a lot.

How can I reduce the trackpad sensitivity to touch? On Dell computers the mouse utility actually lets you adjust this. It's a setting like "TouchGuard" or something, and if you turn it up this problem won't happen, though there will be a noticeable delay when you try to actually use the mouse.

I cannot find any similar setting on my MacBook Pro. Maybe there's a 3rd party utility?

In the System Preferences/Trackpad, you should be able to adjust the settings for your trackpad.


does leaving a hotspot on when no one is connected use data? I am concerned. I do not want the hotspot using data and wasting data without anyone connected. I was told to turn it off but i normally leave it on. I want to find out if it does or if it does not.

if it does it will be a very minimal amount. But it will drain your battery(if its a wireless device) and others have a chance of connecting to it if you leave it on (even if its password protected they have a chance of hacking it)


How to make a custom keyboard shortcut WITH NO MODIFIER I just bought the super awesome app Sketch 2 and am loving it but I want to create a shortcut for a tool that currently has no shortcut assigned to it. Many other tools have a single letter shortcut (like the vector tool is just "V", no modifiers involved) but when I try to make a single character shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts, it won't let me. It appears I have to provide a modifier and character :( Any way around this restriction?

You can do this with Keyboard Maestro's Device Key trigger:

Device Key
The macro can be executed when the key is pressed, released or periodically while it is held down. The trigger can also optionally be restricted to when certain modifier keys are pressed.

Device Key triggers can be combined with a macro group restricting to a certain application.


How to create a disk image from the command line Currently part of my build process is as follows;

Start Utilities/Disk Utility
Select New Image
Set Save As to widget
Set Name to widget
Set Size to custom size 50 mb
Set Format Mac OS Extended

but is it possible to do all this from the command line ?

You can do this with the hdiutil tool. The appropriate configuration in your case would be:

hdiutil create -size 50m -fs HFS+ -volname Widget /path/to/save/widget.dmg

Obviously change the "Widget" and path to whatever you need.

A few additional options that may be useful:

-srcfolder /path/to/source This will create the disk image with the data in the specified folder as the contents.
-megabytes 50 used instead of -size 50m. This will use binary sized megabytes (2^20 bytes) instead of decimal (10^6 bytes).
-srcdevice /dev/diskXsY This  is like srcfolder, but makes a block-based copy from another device, like a hard drive partition or DVD. Useful for making clones and images of install disks, etc.


What are the consequences of running the 13" Retina MBP in higher native resolutions This question is basically about how do different resolution settings affect the performance of your MacBook.

By default retinas are set at the "retina" display mode. You can also set them to the "more space mode", and with 3rd party tools you can go native (much higher)!

But what I want to know is, how does "upping" the res affect the performance of the mac, in particular how does going beyond the retina option affect:

The CPU
The GPU
IO?
RAM (I imagine there is no effect here?)
Battery life (I imagine this depends on how much the CPU/GPU is affected?)

And if any of these are affected, is the relationship 1:1, or exponential, or what?

From personal experience, the resolution has little impact of the 5 aspects listed. However, for me, there's a 6th and this seems to be affected quite a lot. Namely myself. I find that tiny fonts will make my eyes squint and I need to use more brainpower to read StackExchange questions, leaving a little less available to understand some of the remarkable comments left below the question (especially since the font is even smaller for those). My own battery life is severely degraded and I think I'll need to hit the sack in an hour or so. Damn it, that's it, I'll switch to 'Best for Retina', can't even see where the submit button is!


How to assign a service keyboard shortcut for a specific application (non global)? I would like to assign a keyboard shortcut to an Automator created service.

This must be working only for the application the service was created for.
It should override the default application keyboard shortcut (if any).

Example: Using my text editor, if I press F5, I want it to launch a reload Chrome tab service as explained on Stack Overflow Mac: reloading document in Chrome or Firefox?, but without activating the normal function associated to this key in the software.

Going from your example, I assume:

You have an existing Automator service that reloads a Chrome tab.
It is set to work in TextEdit only.
It is installed (in ~/Library/Services).

To set an application-specific shortcut then:

Open System Preferences > Keyboard
Go to the Shortcuts tab and choose App Shortcuts at the bottom of the list.
Create a new shortcut:

Restrict the shortcut to TextEdit
The name must be exactly the same as the menu title of the service


MDict can‘t load more than 122 files as group I had issue with MDict which others or the developer of app can‘t reproduce.
I can't load more than 122 files as groups.
If i using more than 122 dict files, app can't show, it shows fail to open file. The files not corrupt, all of them works for others and developer.
The issue only when loading all files together as group.
I reinstalled new macos, issue doesn't solve it.
Here is log file of app:
Should be normal way;
Found dictionary:/Users/**/Downloads/pro/****, added to list
Open file failed, reason:No such file or directory
Open file failed, reason:No such file or directory
Open file failed, reason:Too many open files
Open file failed, reason:Too many open files
Fail to load dict:/Users/**/Downloads/pro/*****, Error:Fail to open file

Files is ok, if i opened only one file is ok.
I appreciate for helping.

First solution to test:
The developer of App found the solution.
This is temporary Solution. Problem cause of apply system limit open file.
sudo launchctl limit maxfiles 65536 200000

More detail here: Maximum limits (macOS etc.)

Newer versions of macOS do not reference the file due to security
considerations.

The best solution:
ref: https://wilsonmar.github.io/maximum-limits/

Download this two file: https://github.com/wilsonmar/mac-setup/blob/master/configs/limit.maxfiles.plist

https://github.com/wilsonmar/mac-setup/blob/master/configs/limit.maxproc.plist

Copy and Paste this two file in folder /Library/LaunchDaemons/
In terminal write this code:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/limit.maxfiles.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/limit.maxproc.plist

Enter, will ask for user password.

In terminal, write:

sudo ulimit -n 65536 200000

Restart, i will work like a charm!


How do I instal OS X when boot combos don't work? I'm trying to instal OS X on a 2013 Macbook Air. I erased the OS X partition, the computer is booting to my windows 7 bootcamp partition by default. All boot key combinations(C, Option, CMD+Option+R, etc.) are not working, probably due to water damage. I can no longer get into recovery mode, but the files to boot into it are there.

If anyone can help me get into recovery mode I can use a time machine backup to instal OS X from there. Is it possible to change the boot drive from Windows 7? Could I some how delete Windows 7 so that the boot order will move on to recovery mode? Is there a way to install OS X from inside Windows 7?

A long shot, but there should be a taskbar item that bootcamp installed on your Windows OS. If it's still there, you might be able to right click on it and get into options to change boot preference. From what I recall that does not show the recovery partition. I don't have a windows partition at this time so I can't help much there.

another thought I have is you might be able to install a third party bootloader like rEFIt or rEFind and get in from there with a tweak to the config file to choose the rescue partition on startup.

Does your 2013 macbook have a cd drive? If not can it boot from USB or external cd drive?

It should be possible to tell the bootloader which MBR to boot into before restarting. I think you can accomplish what you need to from a live cd or similar. Doing it from within windows would be difficult but not impossible. There are tools like Paragon's HFS+ that will let you access mac filesystem (system requirements says it supports Windows 7). But yeah, dealing with HFS+ from windows or linux is a nightmare. I think generally the first step is to disable journaling, but you don't have that luxury now.

Apple stores can now reformat apple computers over the network using proprietary tools not publicly available. If they can do that for your 2013 model, it might save you some grief. Although I imagine they would wipe your windows partition so you'd need to back that up before doing that.


iPad app to automatically download and view a list of web pages offline I have a very specific workflow that I can't find a simple solution for.

I want to be able to make a list of web pages to read offline. Not articles, whole web pages. And I want to keep them up-to-date.

I really want an app for iPad that does the following.

Lets me enter a list of webpages and maintain that list.
Hit a button in the app, and it'll update every page on that list and store a complete offline copy so I can pursue it while on the train.
Still maintain links, so I can click on them (so, no PDFs or whatever).
Optionally have the ability to set readable fonts.
Even better, if there was a way to export this list and modify it on my computer, share it, manipulate it etc. (or if there were a web serivce with an API).

My personal use case is very simple. I have an Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S2) and an iPad (v1, wifi only, but I can use the tethering on my phone to get online). I'm a Wikipedia administrator, and there are a variety of public noticeboards for discussions of interest to administrators, like the administrators' noticeboard and the usually drama-filled administrators' noticeboard for incidents. I'd say there's probably about 10-20 pages I want. I'd rather like it if I could get either my iPad, wake up in the morning, push the "update" button, go brush my teeth and by the time I'm leaving for my commute, have all the pages up-to-date and readable on the train.

Answers you may suggest that are wrong up-front:

Instapaper/Readability/Read It Later: those are for saving things broadly like newspaper articles for later reading. They are optimized for extracting text. They are fantastic, but don't actually meet the use case.
Some combination of Evernote, Google Docs, AppleScript/Python/Ruby/Perl and sticky tape: I've got enough pain and broken software in my life already.
Anything involving RSS. Again, look at the links above. There are RSS feeds for individual changes to the page, but I'm interested in saving the whole page, not getting an RSS feed.

Basically what I'm looking for is an iOS version of what they referred to as an "offline browser" back in the early days of the web. Is there such a thing that doesn't suck?

As always, "there's an app for that". Or a few:

Web offline seems closest to your scenario. $1.99 at this time.
Offline pages seems like a strong candidate, but pricier
Terra web browser is free and will let you save pages for offline reading, but it's a manual process.


Existing text messages not showing up in Messages app on new MacBook? I have a mid-2017 MacBook Pro that I would like to use with the messages app.

I have successfully enabled text forwarding, and can now send texts to both iMessage users and SMS users.

However, my Messages app does not seem to be able to get any of the old messages I have sent from my iPhone.

It can send and receive messages, but cannot seem to sync text history across devices.

This includes both iMessages and SMS messages.

I have confirmed that my phone number is set to the default form of sending and receiving messages on both the Mac and iOS messages app by following the guide here

How do I get it to sync?

Messages don't backdate & sync.

Each keeps its own record of messages it sent & received & syncs to other listed devices it can communicate with at the time.

If, for instance you receive messages at your Mac whilst your phone is out of network coverage, they will not appear later on the phone; The messages will be considered to be delivered when any registered device accepts it, & it will not be retransmitted to the other device later.


Development environment in Visual Studio using Macbook Pro Platform: Yosemite 10.10.4; MacbookPro 15" Retina (mid-2015).
Questions regarding development on MacOS:

Does Visual Studio for MacOS have all development and debugging capabilities (especially in C, C++, and C# languages), like which Visual Studio for Windows has ?
General question - what are capability differences between Professional and Enterprise edition (of Visual Studio) ?
Visual Studio online installation - when is this manner preferred, and what are its cons and pros?
This link gives download of free version for students. Clicking on it - I see there is no 64-bit version, and the existing 32-bit, and 32-bit-Web-installer don't make "Download" button pressable. Is there a working option to download and install it (appears there as Visual Studio Professional 2013 with Update 4)?
Is Visual Studio running smoothly (performance, drivers, development capabilities), while installed -> on Windows -> on Parallels (virtual machine) ?
Is Visual Studio running smoothly (performance, drivers, development capabilities), while installed -> on Windows, using Bootcamp as dual-boot utility ("pure" Windows)?
What is the best combination-steps solution (convenience, performance, capabilities) for developing in Visual Studio on Macbook Pro?

No. Visual Studio Code is a glorified text editor
I am not certain, but usually enterprise is for volume licensing, although there may be other features given in enterprise not present in professional.
I think this is personal preference, pros are you don't need to burn a DVD or mount an ISO, and rather than one large file download it is lots of little files, and I believe it is resumable. Cons are you need to be online, and you do not have a backup that you can burn to DVD in case the installer goes down for whatever reason.
The 32 bit version is the only one that exists as far as I know, and it is what I have always used on my MacBook Pro
I have personally used it in VMWare Fusion on windows 7 & 8.1 pro with good stability, and a few people I know report the same with parallels
Yes, this runs very well & I have had no issues using this, I use this as my main setup as my mac is a tad slow with VMWare on 8.1 pro (My preferred windows version)
If you have a mac that runs your favourite windows version well in parallels, then use this method would be my advise. If you have boot camp regardless for games etc, then use that, or use boot camp if you experience large amounts of slowness when running windows in parallels and OS X at the same time.

My experience is from a late 2007 MacBook Pro with 4GB RAM.
Hope this helps answer your question


iPhone 4S having audio issues - Other side hears his echo during call My uncle bought a brand new iPhone 4S last week and it is suffering from an annoying problem, side b (not him) hears himself with echo. The error does not occur while
using headset or speakerphone, only when using handset.

Is there a fix for that problem?

iPhone 4S
Version 5.1

I had this exact problem with a 4S until today. Here is what I did:

I installed Skype and Google Hangouts on the 4S to check whether this problem occurs with any calling application or just GSM. I made calls with Skype and Hangouts via WiFi and had no problem at all.

So I had a friend with a 4S with no such problems and I borrowed his SIM card for a test. I called his number on my 4S and had no echo problems! I put mine back and the echo returned. To make sure, I repeated this a couple of times. My SIM had echo, his no echo.

So I went to my provider's shop and requested a new SIM. Problem gone.

I hope this helps people who have tried all else with no results.  Why the SIM caused this is beyond me.


TimeMachine/AFP extremely slow when accessing NAS over wifi we operate an 80TB QNAP NAS, both for storing bulk data as well as TimeMachine backups of our laptops. The NAS itself can sustain over 300 MByte/sec of write speeds when accessed from multiple ethernet-connected machines, and TimeMachine has decent performance (configured as AFP share).

However when accessed over wifi, the performance drop is massive - it doesn't show any "live" speeds but leaving a laptop for 20 hours (no energy saving) and only 850MB of transferred data speaks enough. Granted, our network setup is a bit non-standard as our Cisco WLAN AP controller is at our central datacenter connected to our office via a 100/100 leased line and has to share traffic with other clients, but even under loaded conditions an SSH transfer to the NAS achieves ~5 MByte/sec.

What exactly does TimeMachine do when using a network share? Is it possible that there are MTU fuck-ups somewhere along the connection, or does AFP require ultra low latency links (when over wifi, ping is 40ms)?

After your comments and my questions answered, here are my recommendations/best practices.

Probably the only real remedy would be to have the office AP switch local traffic indeed locally.
This feature is available in Cisco's APs/AP controller, called FlexConnect.

If you read the first paragraph and look at the illustration in the following PDF, you'll see that this is pretty much your use case. The AP controller is located in a remote location connected via a dedicated (VPN'ed) line – but traffic within the local branch/office is switched locally.

You should probably have a word with your net ops people to see if this is possible to setup or if your AP fits the requirements (a list of supported APs is also in the PDF).

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/8-1/Enterprise-Mobility-8-1-Design-Guide/Enterprise_Mobility_8-1_Deployment_Guide/ch7_HREA.pdf

The PDF is from the AP controller software version 8.1, but this feature goes way back (formerly known as Hybrid REAP). You should probably also consult the documentation version corresponding to your AP controller software version to have an accurate list of supported APs.

The real limiting factor will always be the sluggish data rate caused by your specific network setup, regardless of AFP vs. SMB.
So, all the following measures are only additional remedies and best practices you can try.

MTU

Check/set your maximum non-fragmenting network MTU over the Wi-Fi connection.

http://www.mseri.me/fixing-wifi-on-os-x-by-tweaking-the-mtu/

There is still the magic MTU number of 1453 floating around the interwebs in regards to (at least older) macOS versions, especially when interacting with Cisco equipment.

http://osxdaily.com/2013/01/14/set-mtu-size-from-the-command-line-of-mac-os-x/

SMB vs. AFP

SMB should generally be preferred over AFP by now, as AFP has been deprecated by Apple for quite some time.

AFP is not even supported anymore when sharing from APFS-formatted volumes.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208018

macOS SMB

Time Machine backups over SMB are supported in QNAP QTS version 4.3 and later.

https://www.qnap.com/en-us/how-to/tutorial/article/using-time-machine-to-back-up-your-mac-to-a-qnap-nas-via-smb/

By default, macOS packet-signs SMB connections, which greatly impacts transfer performance (transfer speed here with signing disabled is doubled!).

As I have no idea if/where you can disable signing globally/server-side in QTS (Syno guy :) or if this would be recommended in your use case, you can disable SMB packet-signing client-side on specific macOS machines.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205926

You can check if signing is disabled by using the command "smbutil statshares -a" (a SMB volume has to be mounted, otherwise the command output will be blank).

Please see the following URL fore more info:

https://kb.promise.com/thread/disable-smb-signing-on-os-x-10-11-5-10-12-x/

Samba settings

The two following best practices are not really related to Time Machine but greatly improve the general SMB experience for macOS clients.

You should augment the Samba config file (smb.conf) on the QNAP NAS according to the following URL:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207128

Ignore the FCP X specific stuff, this setting basically enables macOS-specific features in Samba.

Please check the QNAP specifics for Samba configuration.
(For instance, Synology uses a private Samba build with some configuration differences, like commas instead of spaces for multi-attribute config lines.

Also, augment the Samba config file by this:

access based share enum=yes

This setting forces Samba SMB shares to resemble the behaviour of AFP shares by only showing shares that you have permissions for.
By default Samba shows all shares, even the ones you don't have permissions for, which shows a permissions error message when trying to access a share w/o permissions.

Disable .DS_Store on network shares

You can try to disable creation of .DS_Store files on network volumes. This can speed up SMB performance.
First paragraph in the following URL:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208209

Time Machine

Try to exclude as many items/locations in the Time Machine preferences as feasible.
For instance, I excluded the /Applications folder, as it is usually the same/less hassle to reinstall an application than to recover it from a backup. Also, the ~/Downloads folder is usually a good no-backup candidate.
Additionally – but this is depending on the specific workflow – it can be feasible to exclude directories that contain data managed by version control systems.

Time Machine is a low priority process. Any other activity will suspend the Time Machine backup process.
You can try to disable the low priority throttling in macOS to speed up Time Machine.
Please see the following URL for more info (including how to make this setting permanent):

http://www.mackungfu.org/massively-speed-up-time-capsule-time-machine-backups

You can then use the free tool "Time Machine Editor" to exclude your work hours from the Time Machine schedule.

https://tclementdev.com/timemachineeditor/

DISCLAIMER:
Use these recommendations at your own risk. Specifially, try out the settings/modifications first on a test machine before rolling out to production systems.

These are my 2 cents (actually, it's more like 1,50 Euro).

Assuming from your name that you are located in a German-speaking region:

Viel Erfolg!

[EDIT] With QTS 4.3.5 it looks like QNAP added GUI options to enable access based share enumeration, so it is probably not necessary anymore to manually edit the smb.conf for this functionality. From the QNAP QTS 4.3.5 release notes:

  SAMBA
  - Added Microsoft Networking Advanced Options for ABE (access-based enumeration) and ABSE (access-based share enumeration).


New file/database in OmniFocus 2 for macOS When first starting to use OmniFocus, it opens with some example data preloaded for practice.

Am I supposed to delete that bogus data, and continue to use that existing file/database for my own data? Or am I supposed to create a new distinct file or database for my own real data?

I’ve tried looking through the manual. But I do not see anything about new files or about backing up my database.

Apparently, there is no way to create a separate new file/database in Omni Focus 2. The default workflow is to use the pre-created database along-with the built-in backup feature.

You can create a new OmniFocus 2 database by following the steps as mentioned in the Omni Group thread, Create new database / start from scratch?

  Once you're satisfied with the state of your backups, you can remove your current OmniFocus database:

  Hold down the Command key and click on the small icon at the top center of your OmniFocus window.
  In the menu that pops up, select the second item (a folder named "OmniFocus"):
  Hold down the Command key and click on the small icon at the top center of your OmniFocus window.
  In the menu that pops up, select the second item (a folder named "OmniFocus"):

  This will open a new Finder window. Once this window opens, quit OmniFocus.
  In the Finder window, delete the file named OmniFocus.ofocus, as well as any files ending in lock.
  Close this Finder window and relaunch OmniFocus.

  You should be prompted to create a new database, either from a sync server (usually Omni Sync Server, or perhaps your own WebDAV server) or simply by setting up the default database locally. I usually start with the latter.

  If you do have your data synced to a server, and you want to get rid of that as well, set up a local database and tweak it to your heart's content. Once you've done that, you can set up sync with your existing sync server, then choose File / Replace Server Database... to erase any sync data on the server, putting your new empty database online in its place. Be careful - this means your only copies of your old database are the backups on your computer!


Sidecar only shows a black screen on iPad until reboot It is 100% fixable by rebooting my Mac. It is also 100% annoying when I have to do that.
After the reboot I can use Sidecar wirelessly very reliably. Until I disconnect. Or change any Sidecar setting (Like: Show touch bar on/off). After that there is a good chance I have to reboot my Mac for it to work again.

Why does it do that?
How do I temporarily fix that? (Say: Is there a terminal command?)
How do I permanently fix that?

I found that if you go to display preferences -> arrangement -> tick and then untick mirror display option it will work but I would have to repeat this step every time I use sidecar :)


Can I use Siri to remember a parking spot? Can I use Siri to remember a particular GPS location, then later navigate back to it? It seems like it should be possible but I don't know what the voice directive would be.

I occasionally use a car-share program that only offers two-way rentals. In other words, I have to return the car to the exact spot I picked it up at. It would be helpful if I could use Siri to mark the location where I picked up the car, so that later I could get turn-by-turn navigation directions back to that parking spot.

Source:

Yes, you can use Siri for this.

Simply say "Siri, remember where I parked my car."

Siri will drop a pin at the GPS location you're at.  You can use Maps to go back to this location.

As long as the parking location is marked, you can launch the stock Maps app on your iPhone and easily get walking directions to your parked car. This way, you’ll never have that lost look on your face ever again.

When you want to delete this parking spot, say "Siri, forget where I parked my car."  This will make Siri delete the pin.


How can I monitor a specific folder and know what processes access its contents? I'm working with a complex Chrome Extension. As I debug it and make changes, some other files are created and modified.

I know for certain that are not modified by me and the extension is not being run.
Maybe it's a spun off process from the IDE... I don't know.

I've tried my luck with lsof without great success. I'd like to constantly monitor that directory and after a while check up on it and read something like "X file has been created by PID Y".

Take a look at fs_usage - you may be able to parse the results it gives you to determine the PID that created the file of interest

sudo fs_usage | grep [file]


how to block Adobe, Google and others from installing crap on my Mavericks Adobe and Google insist on install crap on several folders, like update checkers and things like that.

This is the crap I have identified by Adobe.

/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.AdobeCreativeCloud.plist

also crap from TeamViewer

/Library/LaunchAgents/com.teamviewer.teamviewer_desktop.plist
/Library/LaunchAgents/com.teamviewer.teamviewer.plist

crap like this run when the system starts and load bloatware on the memory with useless stuff.

I would like to prevent this from happening.

My first idea was to replace the original files with blank ones and set chmod to 000 but when I have to legitimate install some software from them, they replace my file with a new version. The problem is that the installation runs with root privilege.

Is there a way to block my tricky files from being replaced by an installer with root privileges?

I know what you will say... root privileges... but may be there is a way...

You can disable the individual launchd job tickets using the launchctl tool:

sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe.AAM.Updater-1.0.plist

This will immediately disable the job and the -w flag will stop the job from reloading next time you restart.

Given your dislike of these features, please provide feedback to Adobe, Google, and TeamViewer.

See disable screen sharing via the command line in mountain lion for alternative approaches for disabling launchd managed processes.


Crazy "System" traffic data - What to do? ios 9 - iphone 6s I have a very limited data amount (only 1 Gb of 3G / 4G) per month

So natrually I took all the steps in order to limit my data drainage:

Disable Wi-Fi assist
Only five applications have access to cellular data traffic. Whatsapp, Messenger, Safari, google maps, and Mail. That's it.

Nonetheless, over the last 4 days, my data consumption was 394 Mb, apparently!!
It's out of the question I used them all with the aforementioned application.

The only odd thing is "System Services" which counts for 460 MB! In that, I have a "General" amount equal to 359 Mb, 15.6 Mb of game center (! I never use it!) and 36 Mb of iTunes.

I want to disable all of that! What to do? Can somebody help?

I would look at which Apps are allowed to use Background App Refresh, in Settings > General & also possibly in Settings > iTunes & App Store what is allowed to download over Mobile data.

A third possibility is iOS updates themselves, which cannot be prevented; the best workaround for those is to always update on the day of release, through iTunes, rather than let the update download to the phone.


Apple ID password compromised - 2FA rescued - What next? I have a Mac, iPhone and an iPad. I use my Gmail account for the Apple ID and one day, I received a notification on my phone that someone is trying to login with my gmail account. The two factor authentication message popped up and I chose Do not allow. So, it didn’t even come up with the 6 digit code (2FA is fantastic!).

I then later changed my Apple ID password to something long, complicated and to something which I don’t use anywhere else (nor used in the past).

The whole thing happened because I had reused a password (bad, I know and it is my mistake).

Now, when I login to the appleid page, I see only these three devices (MacBook, iPad and iPhone) and nothing else.

Does this mean that my account is now safe?
Is there an activity page to see where my Apple ID is being used?
Should I now go about resetting the passwords which are part of the keychain?

Please advise.

You can ask for account data on https://privacy.apple.com and see if there is any active login. I don't remember if successful are counted only, or all.

Uncheck all irrelevant boxes and you'll soon get the email about data availability.

  Your Apple ID account details and sign-in records.
  Records of your Apple retail store and support transactions.

etc can be accessed. Source

Related write-ups

Does apple automatically sign out all connected devices when you change the apple id password?
Does someone know my (old) Apple ID password?
If you think your Apple ID has been compromised Apple Support. however, this doesn't address the intermediate case of failed login.
Two-factor authentication for Apple ID This mentions one more point of trusted phone numbers. Verification code could have been sent to a phone number too. So check your trusted phone numbers. They can be checked in  Settings > [your name] > Password & Security.

Personal notes:

A failed 2FA is an indicator of failed login, thus as far as I can think, no other device has the login. Only trusted devices can log-in directly without 2FA code. If either your trusted devices or trusted phone numbers are physically captured, they can be used to log-in. Keychain items are visible only on devices, not on web. For iOS, in Settings > Passwords & Accounts > Website & App Passwords.
For Mac, in Keychain access.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203783#stored


Is it possible to install a custom ringtone using iTunes 12.7 or later? Is it possible to install a custom ringtone on an iPhone running iOS  11 using iTunes 12.7 or later?
If so, how?

Yes. You can manually drag your ringtones into the device connected with iTunes.

Apple has an updated article here.


Any downside to using multiple mail and calendar apps on iOS? I am wondering if there is a downside to using multiple mail and calendar apps on my iOS device?  Specifically the iOS devices come with apple provide apps for both, but I have found 3rd party apps that work better for me.  If I have both (Apple's app as well as the 3rd party app) configured, am I doubling the amount of data & memory I am using on the iOS device?

Yes, you definitely will double the data sent, if one uses two apps for the same account.

However, using different programs may be useful.  For example, if you want to separate your professional Exchange E-mail from your personal accounts.  This way, there is a logical separation, and you run less risk of accidentally sending out a personal mail on a business acount, and vice versa.  Some mail apps even have password or PIN protection (for example, Divide), which will keep your E-mail accounts safe, even if someone swipes your phone when you are using it.


Window Stacking on OS X I have a MBP with retina display and run OS X Mavericks.

My problem:  imagine I have two applications open

a document viewer sized half-screen (filling the left side of the screen).  Call this "Window A".
an editor with two windows: one is full-screen because it contains really long lines (Window B) and the other is half-screen (filling the right side of the screen) (Window C).

I want to read the document and take notes on it in the editor, but when I give focus to half-screen-sized editor window, the document reader is hidden behind the full-screen-sized editor window.

Is there a way to make the stacking order independent of the app?

That is, when Window A is focused, I can still see Window C.  When Window C is focused, Window A is behind Window B.  I want to be able to view Window A and C at the same time even in Window C is receiving keyboard input.

This might not suit your needs, but what about adding a new space and put your fullscreen window over there. It's very fast to switch the spaces using the multitouch abilities of your trackpad. I use this feature a lot when working on multiple documents.


OS X hangs up intermittently - spinning beachball of death My MacBook Pro hangs for 5 to 10 seconds intermittently. Basically, when I either click or type, the computer just hangs and then the spinning beachball shows up and it takes about 5 seconds to respond even for the simplest tasks.

Here are the computer specifications:

Macbook Pro 13-inch, Mid 2012
OS X 10.8.5 - Mountain Lion
8 GB RAM
Intel HD Graphics 512 MB
240 GB SSD (same problem occurs with the original 500 GB HDD)

Here is what I tried:

Reseting PRAM
Checking the console log for errors. No indication of errors.
Reinstalling the operating system
Upgrading to El Capitan. The upgrade "dies"
in the middle of the process
Deleting all caches with Onyx software
Replacing the hard drive with a brand new SSD
Checking for bad sectors, disk permissions and SMART status with Disk Utility
Installing Windows 10 with bootcamp. It actually works perfectly, which makes me think this is a software related issue

Any help would be very much appreciated. I've checked all kinds of forums for a similar problem but no one seems to lead to a solution.

I ended up taking the laptop to a Apple Store and they said that the hard drive bracket needed replacement. They agreed to do it for free since it is covered by the Apple Quality program. Apparently, the hard drive bracket is something that breaks in this model and Apple has the decency of repairing it for free despite being way out of warranty. One thing I will never know is why Windows performed well despite this hardware error. Anyway, my computer runs smoothly again, specially with the new SSD.


Weird, but true: iPhone earphones stop working when I walk into a particular room When I walk into our master bedroom, about half the time, my earphones on my iPhone stop working.  That is, the podcast continues to play (I'm usually using Castro, but it's hard to imagine that's the issue), but I'm getting no sound from the earphones.

It's not the particular phone. It happened with my previous phone (an iPhone 5) and it's happens with my new iPhone SE.

It's not the earphones. I've had this problem with the stock ph earphones nes, a cheap pair of drugstore earphones, and pair of nice $40 third-party earphones.

It's not what I'm physically doing. I keep the phone in my left pocket and on bud in my right ear. But I can do all kinds of activities -- cleaning, laundry, yardwork, whatever -- without this happening.

It feels like there's something about the room itself that causes this to happen. If it happens, it usually happens as soon as I walk through the door of the bedroom.

Do you have a Bluetooth headphones or speaker in your master bedroom that you've paired to your phone?  Perhaps the phone's audio output is switching over to Bluetooth when it's within range.


iPadOS Where has Find Friends gone? I just updated my iPad to iPadOS13.1.2 and can't find some of my apps.

I used to use Find Friends - but it seems to be missing in action.
I can't even figure out how to search on the iPad

The app is renamed “Find My” and you can use Siri to locate it if your spotlight search is messed up or just updating after the update.

Not all of Apple’s documentation online is updated yet, but here’s a great starter if the Guide app that ships with iOS 13 doesn’t help you enough:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210400


Is there a security tools package for Mac OS X? I mean a package of tools like those in the Kali Linux distribution.

The closest thing I know of is HackPorts.

  HackPorts was developed as a penetration testing framework with
  accompanying tools and exploits that run natively on Mac platforms.
  HackPorts is a ‘super-project’ that leverages existing code porting
  efforts, security professionals can now use hundreds of penetration
  tools on Mac systems without the need for Virtual Machines.


Is it possible for a non-administrator user to delete an app which that user installed from AppStore on macOS? The employees in my company are encouraged to get themselves the apps from App Store if they need them for a task at hand in addition to the apps pre-installed by the administrator. There seems to be no way to remove such apps when they are no longer needed.
What have I tried?

In App Store, in the grid of apps after clicking on my account, I tried selecting "Delete app" from the three dot menu of the app.
In Launchpad, I tried hitting ⌥ option key and clicking ⦻ which appears next to the app.
I tried going to Applications folder in Finder and choosing "Move to trash" from right-click menu.
I tried dragging and dropping the app from Applications in Finder and from Launchpad onto the trash bin icon in the dock.

Each time the pop-up asks to login as an administrator. I cannot satisfy it with my Mac login account or my Apple ID which I use for App Store.
I imagined that the application is installed to a place where the App Store is allowed access to, so I would be able to remove the app with the App Store in the same way that I installed it. I have no problem updating those apps manually in App Store. App Store also updates them automatically for me.
For example, here are the permissions of WhatsApp app directory:
/Applications % ls -la WhatsApp.app
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@  3 root  wheel   96  2 гру 12:08 .
drwxrwxr-x+ 28 root  admin  896  2 гру 18:08 ..
drwxr-xr-x  10 root  wheel  320  2 гру 12:08 Contents
/Applications % xattr -l WhatsApp.app
com.apple.appstore.store_cohort: 7|date=1605871800000&sf=143492&pgtp=Software&pgid=1147396723&prpg=Search_3d742123-f66f-4798-8833-3ee76553ac1b&ctxt=Search&issrch=1
com.apple.appstore.storefront: 143492
com.apple.appstore.vendor_name: WhatsApp Inc.

I tried rm -r WhatsApp.app, but, as expected, it returns Permission denied for each file until I terminate it.
May it be possible to be able to remove the apps, which I install from App Store, on my own or there is a technical obstacle which definitely prevents me from doing it? If it is not enabled by default, may be the system administrator can enable it somehow, so that I do not need the administrator for removing those apps, without giving me unnecessary permissions?
I am under macOS Catalina version 10.15.7 (19H15).
This question is similar to another one, but in my question I am specifically interested in how to remove the app, not in why the administrative password is requested.
Please note that my display language is not English, so some text may be not precise.

It is possible a non-administrator user can remove an arbitrary folder, but not guaranteed. The permissions model will show your permissions on the folder.
Your last shows the directory is locked to everyone except the owner. You are correct you need admin to change that.
The App Store generally doesn’t drop a folder, so you might need to open a support case with someone or disclose a screen shot / output shoeing your precise setup for someone to tell your specific case.

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-permissions-for-files-folders-or-disks-mchlp1203/mac

The article above should cover your attempt to change permissions on the folder in question. Based on your information, you might need an admin user to grant you admin status or just clean things if you can not.


Dell U3415W monitor does not wake when I power up my Mac Mini I have a late 2014 Mac Mini connected to a 34-inch Dell U3415W display via Thunderbolt to DP. My keyboard and mouse are connected via the monitor's built-in USB hub. There are no other displays connected to the system. I'm running macOS Sierra, but had the same issue in previous versions. I am using full-disk encryption with FileVault.

My issue is that whenever I power cycle my system, the display remains in sleep mode (monitor LED slowly flashes white versus solid white when it's on / Mac LED is solid white). No combination of keyboard presses, connecting/disconnecting peripherals, power cycling the monitor, etc. work.

The only way I can get it out of sleep mode is to type in my password and press enter with the display still blank (power save mode).

I thought of this workaround after connecting a 1280x1024 monitor to the mac alongside my regular 34-inch 3440x1440 display (second display worked). I normally only use the one display though, and it's been about a year since I've hooked up the other one thanks to this workaround. Also, I normally keep the power on so it hasn't been much of an issue.

I'm asking about this now because I recently upgraded to macOS Sierra and was disappointed to discover that the monitor would refuse to wake every time the system went into sleep mode! (not just when power-cycled)

Ultimately, I was able to resolve the sleep mode issue by powering down and unplugging the Mac (I read that this would reset the SMC). However, the issue remains when I power cycle.

Is there a way to make sure that my display always works?

I've speculated that maybe the FileVault boot screen can't handle the 3440x1440 resolution, but that seems like a serious oversight if true. Also, for what it's worth, when I boot up and the OS re-opens my windows, they are all clustered in what appears to be a 1280x1024 box in the upper-left corner of my screen.

How do I make my Mac Mini play nice with my display?

EDIT:

I tried resetting my NVRAM by pressing Command+Option+P+R on startup. I pressed it at about when the first chime occurred and waited for the second chime before letting go. After that, the password screen came up normally!

However, when rebooting (power cycling) afterwards, I still had to type my password into a blank screen. So, the issue is not resolved.

It's odd that a keystroke on startup can make the display wake up normally but that it fails without it.

EDIT:

I tried the HDMI solution below after the issue of my monitor not waking up from sleep mode started happening again sporadically, so the workarounds above were not a permanent fix if anybody was wondering.

I was able to resolve this by connecting the monitor to the mac mini with an HDMI-to-HDMI cable. I then selected the HDMI input on my monitor's OSD.


OS X Calendar email alerts — send via Outlook? I'm using Mac Outlook as my primary email program (my company uses Exchange and it's the "supported" program on Mac), but I've configured Contacts/Calendar to also talk to the Exchange Server.

I like the way Calendar handles alerts, and the fact that it can send email reminders, but I'd need them to be sent via Outlook as I'd rather not have 2 copies of my Exchange Inbox on the disk (to save space).

Is there a way to tell Calendar to use Outlook for outgoing email? For now, it asks me to configure Mail.app every time I set a reminder to send email.

Either you dummy configure Mail so you can access Preferences from the Mail menu and set in the General" pane your default email reader (if not working from Outlook preferences).
Or you may type in the following in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSHandlers -array-add '{ LSHandlerURLScheme = "mailto"; LSHandlerRoleAll = "com.microsoft.Outlook"; }'

This should add an entry to the "~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.plist"

Using Xcode you add a dictionary item with the two following items:

<key>LSHandlerURLScheme</key>
<string>mailto</string>

<key>LSHandlerRoleAll</key>
<string>com.microsoft.Outlook</string>

Using RCDefaultApp could do the trick but since it hasn't been update since 2009 I'm not sure it's still working.


When an iPhone app uses Face ID does the app itself see your face (i.e. front cam)? When an iPhone app asks for and uses your Face ID, does that mean the app has access to your iPhone's front camera? Or does it mean the app only receives a true/false value from the iPhone saying whether it is you or not?
Example of notification:

The app does not get access to the iPhone's front camera when you agree to this popup.
The app is only allowed to use Face ID functionality. This means that it will know only whether or not the device owner is present. The app can decide whether that must be determined by Face ID, or if the user can choose to enter their pass code instead.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/localauthentication/logging_a_user_into_your_app_with_face_id_or_touch_id


How much space for bootcamp? I have around 100GB of space on my (27-inch, Mid 2017) iMac's SSD. I'm planning on using Bootcamp to play some Windows games, and I'm not sure how much space I need to leave for each OS.
I'll be storing all the Windows programs and apps on an external hard drive, so I'm not sure how much I need to leave to Windows 10 itself. I won't be using Windows for much else. I know I have to leave some storage free on the Mac side, but I'm not sure how much.

Windows 10 minimum hard disk space required is 32GB.  You need to start there, add up whatever your games/apps are going to require and allocate that much to the Bootcamp partition.
You get this information by looking up the minimum system requirements for each thing you want to install and adding them up. As a suggestion, most will give two values - the minimum and the recommended.  Always go with the recommended amount.
The key is to research!  I wrote this as more of a “tutorial” of sorts to show future readers how to obtain this info because the next release of Windows, macOS and whatever additional software  will change the specifics. Here’s some links to get you started:

Bootcamp System Requirements
Windows 10 System requirements

Once I have everything accounted for based on the suggested values, I usually add 10% (like a contractor) as cushion. It better to “have and not need than need and not have.”


Trying to re-sync Messages between iPhone and Mac This morning my phone asked me, unbidden to log into my Apple ID (or iCloud, I can't keep those straight). My login did not work (I used the correct password), but I was able to login after resetting the password.

Now Messages.app conversations that I reply to on my Mac do not sync to my phone. My friends got text that said "[my email address] added [my email address to the conversation." and then "[my email address] removed Dwight from the conversation"

How can I get my phone and computer back in sync?

Well, after about an hour, I was asked (on my mac) if I wanted to add my cell number to Messages. Which I did.


How to backup/export photos/videos from the new Photos app to an external hard disk? I have a huge library in the new Photos app on my Mac OS X Yosemite machine, I want to know the easiest way to export or backup all these photos and videos on an external hard disk (formatted for Mac), giving that, I want to use the photos and videos on a Window 7 machine.

Note: the option File -> Export will take forever to export thousands of these items.

If you simply want the entire Masters structure copied to a new drive, then

first find your iPhoto or Photos Library file. Default location for both is ~/Pictures/
Right click the Library file & select Show Package Contents - that will expose the 'file' as the folder it really is.
The Masters folder should be just inside. You can copy that to anywhere.
It is sorted into years, then months. Not all contained folders will actually be populated, if old photos were ever deleted, the file structure remains.

As pointed out in comments, if you need the copied structure to be readable natively on Windows, then you ought to format the target disk as ExFAT.
Windows cannot natively read Mac OS Extended disks & would need 3rd party support.


Deleting contacts on iCloud does not remove them from iPhone I've used iCloud's website to clean up contacts that were imported and the changes work...except - if I delete a contact on the iCloud website it does not get deleted on the iPhone. How can I force the deleted contacts on iCloud to be removed from the iPhone?

It appears that the contacts that were not being deleted were linked to Google and Yahoo accounts. The data from them were imported to iCloud. I'm pretty sure iCloud was deleting the contacts from the iPhone that I deleted on the website/desktop. I went in to Settings, Accounts and disabled showing the contacts for Google and Yahoo and all the trashy contacts disappeared.


Is there a command line utility to display a string or an image in the status bar in Mavericks? Basically I want to issue a command in a bash script or an Apple Script
and see some string (or icon) in the status bar aka "where the clock is".

Something similar to osascript but for the status bar:

/usr/bin/osascript -e 'display notification "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet" with title "Title"'

This is something that I looked for a long time ago and did not find a satisfactory solution to. Your question has inspired me to finish the project that I began back when I was searching for a solution to this.

Check out menubarnotifier on GitHub. You can display a notification in the menubar by passing a string to the script:

./menubarnotifier.py "Notification Text Here"

...and it will display in the OS X menubar. Clicking the notification will exit the application.

Add the location of the script to your path (or just create an alias to the script itself) and you will be able to use it from anywhere in the Terminal.

The problem with the existing implementation is that it logs using NSLog, which writes to stderr by default. You will need to suppress the NSLog messages to get any real use out of the script.

My approach is to add the following function to your ~/.bash_profile and then call the function when you want to add a notification to the menubar:

# menubarnotifier.py function
mn () {
    /path/to/menubarnotifier.py "$1" 2>/dev/null &
}

So you can use it with just:

mn "Notification Text Here"

And it will not log to stdout. It will also run in the background to not require Ctrl+C.

The script uses PyObjC, so you will need to install that if you don't have it already. I installed it using MacPorts easily with sudo port install py27-pyobjc* but I think you can get away with just sudo port install py27-pyobjc py27-pyobjc-cocoa.

The idea is to use NSStatusBar.systemStatusBar().statusItemWithLength_() to create a new item in the OS X menubar.

self.statusItem = NSStatusBar.systemStatusBar().statusItemWithLength_(NSVariableStatusItemLength)
self.statusItem.setTitle_(display_text)

I'll add more functionality later (such as images like you mentioned in your question). I also need to figure out a better logging mechanism so you can just run it and not see the NSLog output. For now, use the bash function that I wrote above to get this to operate the way you want it to.


Change brightness on iMac in target display mode Recent iMacs support a "target display" mode, where you can connect another Mac using a DisplayPort cable, and the iMac will function as an external monitor.

This used to work fine, however now if the iMac is running Mac OS 10.6.7 or later (including Lion), the iMac screen will switch to 100% brightness when put into this mode, and the brightness keys on the iMac keyboard can not be used to adjust the brightness. Has anyone found a solution to this problem?

yeah, toggling the function key setting worked for me. I'm on 17" 2011 mbp and the 27 inch cinema display with Lion.


iPhone 5s 16GB iOS11 randomly restarts I think it has to do with iOS 11.
I have tried updating to latest 11.2.1, but it did not help, also tried backup, reset, and restore did not help.
Does anyone have a solution?

EDIT 12/21:

I should mention that I took it the Apple store, and they did not find any issues. They recommended backup, erase and restore.
Also take a look as this user suggest the issue is iOS 11 - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8101649
I downloaded app that show battery capacity status - it is 1400/1570mAh 89%, this means its not a battery issue.

EDIT 12/25:

Went again to apple store to ask to try replace battery and see if that help. They did full test again, and said it seem like software issue, all hardware is in great condition. And they recommended reset without restore. We did full reset and I did not install any apps, and the issue is still not resolved.

EDIT 1/18/2018:

I bought a new battery from iFixit. It did not resolve the issue. I did notice that switching to low battery mode does help reduce the random shutdowns, but not completely resolve it. I guess my solution is switch to android device.

I believe that if apple would allow switch back to iOS 10.3.3 , then that would probably have resolved it. I assumed the latest iOS would be better, but probably not for older models.

Your issue could be one of two things: the battery or an issue with your OS.

You said you have already had your battery tested, but battery apps aren't very accurate and different tests at the Apple store will show different results.

Start by calling (or chatting with) Apple support. Do this on a different device. Ask if they can remotely run a Mobile Resource Inspector test. This will test many different components in your phone and is how they diagnosed my battery issue.

If they determine it is not a battery issue, do a FULL restore. You'll need a computer with iTunes for this.

  As always, make sure all of your data is saved. You will not restore from a backup, so save it another way.

Start by putting your phone in recovery mode.

Shut down your iPhone.
Press and hold both the Home and Top buttons until the connect to iTunes screen appears.
Connect to iTunes.

iTunes will show a popup asking if you'd like to restore or update. You'd like to Restore.

Your computer will download a completely new copy of iOS 11 - that's what makes this different than doing this on an iPhone.

If your computer takes longer than 15 minutes to download the update, you'll need to put your phone in recovery mode again. Press and hold the Home and Top buttons at the same time to do this.

  Warning: Restoring your phone this way will require your Apple ID password unless you didn't have Find My iPhone enabled. If you do not remember your Apple ID password, you should reset it at iforgot.apple.com

If none of this fixed your phone, I'd recommend talking to Apple Support about your issue over the phone. (Over-the-phone support is generally faster than live chat)


Pair with a Bluetooth device over Terminal I am trying to connect and pair a Bluetooth device from the command line. I can do it over the GUI using the standard process but I am looking to automate the whole process.

I am looking for commands that can be executed in a shell script to connect to the Bluetooth device. Just like Linux has "hcitool", "pand" commands, I am trying to find equivalent commands for macOS.

How can I accomplish this?

blueutil (available via HomeBrew) is the answer. I just used it following the guidelines in this blog post.

In my case, I had an iMac with macOS Catalina that had no trackpad paired. I was stuck at the "Send Apple Crash Analytics?" screen with no keyboard controls. Using SSH, I connected to the machine and used the following commands to pair and then connect the trackpad without access to the GUI. (First, I had to turn the trackpad into Discoverable mode. The default PIN for Apple pointer devices is 0000.)

% blueutil --inquiry
address: d0-a6-xx-xx-xx-xx, not connected, not favourite, not paired, name: "-", recent access date: -
% blueutil --pair d0-a6-xx-xx-xx-xx
Type pin code (up to 16 characters) for "Cheshire, Josh’s Trackpad" (d0-a6-xx-xx-xx-xx) and press Enter: 0000
% blueutil --connect d0-a6-xx-xx-xx-xx

At that point, the trackpad worked.


Finder window left border display bug I see a strange thing on all left borders of Finder windows:

The background is 1px moved, and the rounded corner mask fails.

I thought it was only me, but I saw this on several computers (iMacs and MBP, ML).

I can't believe Apple saw this and did not fix it… Anybody know where it comes from?

EDIT
And after upgrading from 10.8 to 10.9.3, I got the same + a 2px height (instead of 1) title bar border…
It now resolves when displaying and hiding toolbar.

EDIT bis
So, I had a brand new Mac in hands, didn't install any software yet, and when I hid the Toolbar and showed the status bar, same bug.
So you all have this (don't you ?).

EDIT ter
So, just updated to Yosemite, on 10.10.2, there's still a similar bug.
Am I the only one to use Finder windows without toolbar? I cant' believe no one saw this at Apple.

Yes - that's a bug that might get fixed if it's not intentional.

You can lobby for fixing at https://developer.apple.com/bug-reporting/ and posting it to https://openradar.appspot.com to get community support to duplicate your request


Apple TV airplay Stuttering on Yosemite I just upgraded to Yosemite today and found that mirroring my laptop to my apple TV is very stuttery... It's not lagging but every second there's a slight delay, both audio and video.

Anybody else encounter this? I was messing with my router a bit today unfortunately so I'm not sure if this is a Yosemite issue or not...

Anyone know what I can try to fix it?

Edit: MBPr Late 2013, ATV 3

A possible workaround for the airplay/wifi issues is to use the following terminal command

sudo ifconfig awdl0 down

This will disable AWDL & Airdrop but will allow you to have bluetooth on with airplay...

sudo ifconfig awdl0 up

will re-enable.

Credit to Mario Ciabarra who detailed the problem and solution in his blog post.

Another workaround that may be of benefit to some is to make sure ATV software is up to date, and then switch off bluetooth while using Airplay. This resolves the problem for me.

Also, I seem to get best results when in extended desktop mode instead of mirrored although I haven't tested it really. This was definitely the case in Mavericks.

Hope that helps!


How do I stop loading images in Junk mail folder in Mail.app 6.6 with Gmail I have setup Mail.app to use my Gmail account. Gmail has a spam filter that works excellent for me. But I sometimes check the Junk mailbox in Mail to see if something got there by accident.
When I go through the messages the images in those messages get loaded anyway as the message is placed by Gmail in the Spam folder (which is linked to the Junk mailbox) but Mail.app does not mark it as Junk and therefore loads the images.
If I manually mark the message as Junk, Mail stops loading the images.

How do I make Mail to mark the messages in Gmail's Spam folder to be marked as Junk, forcing it to not load the images?

You have to "map" the Gmail folders to match what happens in Mail.app.

Open Preferences in Mail.app
Go to Accounts and select your Gmail account
Click the "Advanced" tab
Enter [Gmail] (yes, with the brackets) into the 'IMAP Path Prefix' field
Close the window and Save changes to the Account.


How can I center a PNG with a transparent background using the CLI? I'd like to come up with a technique for properly posting images on this site on my Macbook using a CLI tool to do the conversion.

This is a sample image that I'd like to make it so that the image is properly sized with a background that's transparent and makes it so that when the image is posted to AskDifferent or other StackExchange sites, that the image will be large enough with a transparent background that no additional tricks are required to center images within posts on these sites.

For reference this is the question that started this:
- Have DHCP for Wi-Fi and static IP for Ethernet?

Original

This is the image that without any tricks shows up as left justified

Goal

Another user helped me out and posted a improved version of this image that he used GIMP to merge a transparent background which resulted in this:

NOTE: To be clear, I'm familiar with the techniques covered in posts such as this mSO post on the topic, titled: Is it possible to horizontally center an image on Stack Exchange sites?.

Background

I've used ImageMagick in the past to do pretty extensive image manipulations from the CLI. I've written about it extensively here on the Unix & Linux StackExchange site.

Specifically, here's a method I highlighted in this question titled: How to convert, resize and center image with ImageMagick.

Approach

The approach discussed there could be adapted to achieve a solution to this question like so:

$ convert 807634040.png \
    -gravity center \
    -background transparent \
    -extent 678x 807634040-new.png

Resulting in an image like this:

How it works

The convert command is expanding the original image, 807634040.png, so that its width is now 678 pixels. This looks to be the optimal size to use when posting images on SE sites. The -extents 678x means to use the width of 678px but leave the horizontal as whatever it was originally set.

The other options mean to center the image (-gravity center) and to use a transparent background when extending the original.


Adobe Acrobat opens whenever I save a PDF file. Please make it stop! So. I installed Acrobet. I generally like it for dealing with large PDF files. However, since I've installed it, is insists on opening every time I download a PDF from Chrome.  I'm sure this is a silly-ass setting somewhere, but I've not found it.

Help?

Update

The exact behavior is that I look at the PDF in Chrome, then "Save As" to save it.  At that point the Adobe Acrobat takes over.

Sadly, chrome://plugins/ is no help.  See screenshot attached:

You can disable/remove the Adobe PDF plugin from chrome://plugins/.

As part of the installation of Adobe Acrobat, there is an option to Customise the install and choose whether to install the plugin. It's enabled by default.


Change user password without the old one on macOS Catalina How do I change a user's password without the old one, via the command line, on macOS Catalina beta?
sudo dscl . -passwd /Users/abc password used to work before Catalina, but asks for the old password now.
Are there any alternatives that can be used?

You'll have to reboot the Mac in recovery mode, open a terminal, the issue the command "resetpassword". You will have to reset the password for every account on the system or it won't let you proceed.

The really horrible thing about this new Apple "security measure" is that it allows malware authors to create accounts on your computer that you can't delete unless you know the procedure I outlined in the above.

Followup:

The reason for this is because the account that you want to reset the password for has a Secure Token set. If the account was created at the GUI level or at the command line using "sysadminctl", and was created as an admin account, then it most definitely has a Secure Token set.

Followup #2:

Not all Macs will have the SecureToken enabled on all accounts, this is usually the case where the Mac originally came with some version of Mac OS prior to Catalina. No, root doesn't even have this token enabled. However, the SecureToken capability has been around since High Sierra and was set any time that Migration Assistant was used or if FileVault was ever enabled. If a Mac was upgraded to Catalina, the user who ran the upgrade will get the SecureToken set on their account even if somebody else has it too. Those users will be the only ones who can grant the token to other users or revoke it and this has to be done at the command line with sysadminctl, you will also need to know the password to any account that you intend to modify. As of Catalina, if you forget the password to any account with the SecureToken enabled, no other users can reset that account password unless you know the current password. In which case, you will have to reboot the Mac into recovery mode and reset the passwords for all user accounts. Thanks Apple! (NOT)


Weird removable drive I have a removable 16gig flash drive from lacie. Everytime i put it into a mac computer that hasn't used that drive before, the files that stood on the drive once but are already deleted from it show up in that computer's trash. I don't know why this is happening but it's annoying.

Thanks for the help!

On OSX, trashed files are located on the same device as where they where before.

The Trash bin on OSX shows the trashed files of every storage device that is connected to the Mac.

So you have to trash your files while your drive is connected.


iPhone 4s turns itself off It started today and happened twice, my iPhone turns itself off even battery has 15%-17% charge, I can't open it, empty battery sign appears when I plug it in to charge, it begins to charge from 15%-17%, I couldn't find the reason, it has the latest iOS update, what could it be?

The clue is that it begins to charge at 15% or so.. you have some bad cells in the battery, so they are not considered for charging, but are part of the 100% the battery should have.

Take it in to Apple and have them look at it!


Share link for a photo from icloud or photos app There used to be a way to get a direct link to a photo in iCloud and share it.

I was surprised to see this still isn't possible from the photos app so i went to the iCloud website and i still can't get a direct link to an image.

Is it possible to get a direct link to photo in iCloud that i can share with anyone?

You can create a public album and share the link to it to anyone, but not to a single image. One solution could be to create a album for each image.

iCloud: Create a shared album

You can also place the image file in iCloud drive, view the file in a browser and copy the link to it.


Get full url address on Safari In Yosemite, the new Safari "hides" part of the URL, how could I show it without going to the address bar every time?

e.g. https://www.google.com.br/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=p9lIVJbjCYiX8QfnpoCgBQ#q=stackexchange becomes google.com.br

I found the solution, right after posting...

Go to Safari → Preferences → Advanced → Show Full Website URL


no sound coming from external speakers, that are plugged into jack on my macbook pro haven't touched any settings, or downloaded any new software. I just started up my computer and the headphones jack that power my external speakers aren't working?! I get no sound at all. Yet, when I unplug it from the jack, the sound from the computer comes on (3 sec) later. I've been reading the different posts and trying to follow the steps that are given, but it's not working.

You can try setting the sound output manually from system preferences. Does you external speaker get listed here upon plugging in?


How do i transfer apps from one iPhone to another How do i transfer apps from one iPhone to another. in Android we do the same using Zapya, where we can send applications. is there any way in Iphone for the same?

There's no direct-transfer of apps that I'm aware of. If the phones are signed into the same iTunes account the app should be downloadable from the app store on the 2nd phone, assuming the phone's iOS version & model is compatible.

Alternatively you can transfer your apps from the 1st iPhone to iTunes and then onto the 2nd iPhone but this only works if they're both signed into the same iTunes account.


Playing youtube playlist I can access the youtube Playlist with the default youtube application on an iOS device by tapping "More" then "Playlists", but how can I play those lists? When I tap on a playlist, it shows the list of videos included in it, and I can only play them individually one at a time. I want to play the whole list continuously. I don't connect my device (iPod Touch 4) to a computer, so I cannot use a solution that uses iTunes.

There is no way you could do that, I have that problem also.
You could try to send YouTube a feature request, but I won't think they will do that as Google now owns YouTube and Google and Apple aren't exactly the best friends...
But you coud try :)


Creating screenshots of iOS devices from OSX without Xcode Is there a way to create screenshots of iOS devices from OSX without using Xcode? I am looking for a fast way to do that.

I know 2 methods:

Using Xcode
Taking a screenshot on the device and sharing it using message/mail whatever

but both these methods are cumbersome and slow. I want to be able to create those screenhots fast.

Any suggestions?

You could use airplay mirroring to an Apple TV or your Mac and take screenshots from those output displays

Edit: Also, just enable photo stream on iPhoto and your phone and it'll automatically upload any screenshots you take with the power and home buttons. I can't think of a faster method than that


When do you replace an iphone 5s battery When do you replace a the battery of an iPhone 5s?  I used an app that said it has 900+ charge cycles.  I find I have to charge it constantly because it doesn't hold its charge very well.

I know a Macbook and iPhone are not comparable but this link says after 1000 charge cycles for the Macbook, it's time to replace the battery so I'm wondering if there's a similar rule of thumb for an iPhone too (specifically iPhone 5s)

Your answer can be found here: Battery Service and Recycling.

iPhone Owners
Your battery is designed to retain up to 80% of its original capacity at 500 complete charge cycles.
The one-year warranty includes service coverage for a defective battery. If it is out of warranty, Apple offers a battery service for $79, plus $6.95 shipping, subject to local tax.

My personal experience is that replacing the battery at about 700-800 cycles is a must. But obviously it depends on how the phone is used.
And yea, I'd say the cycle count is kinda irrelevant. Cycle count gives you a good idea of what state it is in... But when you are the one who uses the device, you should know when you've had enough.
I've always used those 3rd party phone repair shops, where the battery replacements tend to be relatively cheap.


Lotsawater screensaver Mavericks problem Prior to updating to Mavericks I used LotsaWater screensaver. It would display my desktop while the screensaver did its thing. Now it shows a blank white screen when it kicks over to the screensaver mode.

Under System Prefs>Desktop & Screen saver, the preview window shows how it's supposed to look and if you tap on preview it works right.

Is it that the maker of this screensaver hasn't made it compatible with Mavericks? Or am I missing something?

Check the version you got.
v1.7 works like a charm for me under Mavericks.

v1.7 is available here: http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/lotsablankers/lotsawater

Edit: sorry, it doesn't work exactly as I said. Actually, the water animation works, but the screenshot Lotsawater is supposed to do is a black screen instead.
I assume the v1.7 is not Mavericks (full) compatible.

Edit 2: Developper fixed it!, v1.8 is now available and works like a charm :)

***Edit 3:  1.8 works like a charm on a single monitor, but the second monitor of a dual monitor setup still has a black screen shot. This wasn't the case with version 1.7 on Mountain Lion. I hope the developer has another update in the works.


MacBook Air on Yosemite no sound device I just upgraded my 2010 MacBook Air to Yosemite.
It froze during installation, I shut it down and when I restarted it booted normally to Yosemite.

Now everything seems to be working ok, but I have no sound. My case is not like most cases where it defaults to an external device. I have nothing attached, no monitors, no external speakers.

When I check system preferences/sound, I get no output devices found.

Here's what I've tried:
- rebooting
- reset NVRAM
- reinstalling yosemite (same freezing problem - waited for 4 hours)
- remove plist files from Library/preferences/audio and restarting

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Reset the SMC:

1) Power down the system
2) Unplug all cables except Magsafe
3) Hold down left Shift + Control + Option + Power button for ~5 seconds
4) Boot machine up

This usually solves issues when certain hardware devices on the device itself aren't responding, especially when multiple do not work.


iPhone back to OS3: What happens with application data? I have upgraded my iPhone 3GS to iOS4, but now want to go back to OS 3.1.3 that it had before.
There are plenty of instructions on how to do this, but what happens with the data stored on the iPhone?

I don't mean the data that is usually synch'ed with iTunes. I have several apps that just store information I have entered, with no function to sync it or transfer it to a PC or similar. A simple example would be the saved scores of an installed game.

If I would have to re-install the iPhone, I could restore a backup which would include the data, but when going back to OS3, I cannot use a backup since it would restore iOS4 also.

Will the installed apps and their data still exist after re-installing OS3?
If not, is there any way to keep the data?

Restoring firmware and restoring settings are two different things. You can restore to a stock version of the 3.1.3 firmware then when iTunes asks you to set up your device, you can select which settings image you want to back up from.

Or select the iPhone under "Devices" in iTunes >> right [or CTRL] click it >> Restore from Backup. Should work.


Canon MP140 Printer driver for Catalina Is anyone able to install a generic printer driver for old Canon printers? I have an old MP140 for which Canon is no longer updating drivers. My Mac doesn't automatically find any drivers so I'm stuck trying to add the printer without any drivers - which my Mac keeps me from doing by graying out the Add button:

I'm hoping to find a way to get this printer running with some generic 3rd (4th even!) party software. I tried connecting the printer via USB cable and ran into the same problem.

It's unlikely you'll find a generic printer driver for this particular model.
"Generic" printers use languages like PCL (Printer Command Language) (Developed by HP), or Postscript (developed by Adobe).  Additionally, they could emulate other printers like "HP LaserJet," "Epson," and even "IBM."  There are some Canon printers that do have this type of emulation support like the BJC-210, however, I can find no documentation whatsoever for the MP140.
Just as an aside, there are generic PPDs (CUPS Printer Description/Definition) for Canon Postscript printers.
On the scanner side of things, I did find that the scanner is  TWAIN / WIA compliant.  You should be able to find generic TWAIN drivers, but WIA (Windows Image Acquisition) is Windows only.  While TWAIN drivers for Mac will exist, the problem is most are 32 bit making them incompatible with Catalina (I obviously don't have a MP140 to test to see if it's natively recognized).
My recommendation is to retire it.  It's obviously a quality product, but unfortunately it's hamstrung by a lack of "pro grade" features like Postscript and PCL printer languages.  When shopping for your next replacement printer, go a step up and get something geared for business and not consumers.  The consumables will be less and the lifespan much longer (I have an old Datamax label printer that still works because of PCL compatibility; it's not even USB!)


I can't unlock my ipad I recently decided to get the ios8 update for my ipad but after the update, the ipad came up with the sign that I had to plug it up to iTunes. So I plugged it up to iTunes and it said I needed to restore my iPad to get the update. My screen was stuck on the same sign that showed connecting to iTunes so I didn't have a choice but to choose to restore and update. After I updated it, it was restored but there was an activation lock. I didn't recognise the email that is came up with that it was linked to. It was a personal iPad that I used for school so I was the only one who ever used it. I'm unable activate it because I don't know what email it is, even more the password to it. I have kept my receipt for buying the iPad and everything and it also said to try and remove it from Find my iPhone which I did but it still says I need to activate it with the email I don't recognise. Should I just bring it an Apple specialist? I'm sorry if this is very confusing but I have a lot of school documents on it and I have so much work to do for upcoming exams. I'm sorry if it sounds shifty because I don't even recognise the email it requires but please if there is anyone out there who can help me, I would really appreciate it.

Send a note to the email address saying "Hey, did we accidently swap iPads? I seem to have yours - where is mine?" If in fact it is locked with someone else's AppleID, I think you are out of luck. These theft prevention types of systems are intentionally hard to bypass. If you can bring your receipts and the device to an Apple store, they might be able to assist you. Good luck.


On OS Catalina Delete the account you are currently logged into I have a Macbook Air, and I am logged into an administrator account which I want to delete. Is there a way to delete the account I am currently logged into while using that account?

The closest you can get to delete your admin with the name admin_username (even with no other user left afterwards) without logging in as a different user in the GUI is to enable root and remove your admin with the superuser:

Open Terminal.app
Enable root with dsenableroot. You have to enter your admin_username password and choose a new password for root and verify it.
Change to root: su - and enter root's password.
Enter:

rm -dR /Users/admin_username; dseditgroup -o delete -n . -u admin_username admin; dscl . delete /Users/admin_username; reboot

The password of admin_username is probably required. I ran several tests with various permutations of the command above and either dseditgroup or dscl asked for it.

Warning: This will remove all admin_username files & folders! Most files can be recovered with a data recovery tool.

Afterwards the root user will be enabled and depending on your settings it will be visible as "Other users..." on the login screen.

The command was tested in a virtual machine. The admin user had a relatively small user folder (< 5 GB). On a real machine your milleage may vary.

Reading and interpreting all related questions and comments I suspect that the MacBook Air is a shared computer with two admin accounts belonging to different parties (PvsP/PvsB) being at loggerheads in the meantime.

I would hand over the computer to a wise, reliable and neutral person, explain the dilemma and expect a Solomonic solution.


How do I use AUNetSend in GarageBand '09 I found this thread, about how to use AUNetSend waaaaay back in 2005- http://www.macjams.com/forum/viewtopic.php?forum=6;showtopic=28700

  Double click on any instrument track in GarageBand to open up "Track Info" screen. Choose an additional effect from the area below "Compressor" (it should say "None") Go all the way down to your Audio Unit Effects and you should see "AUNetSend" and "AUNetReceive". Depending on who is doing wha,t if you are the sender, the other person has to pick the "AUNetReceive" option. Now since I don't have Tiger, this is were I get lost and don't know how this actually works from here, but if 2 people would like to experiment and fill in the blanks I'm sure a lot of people would really appreciate it!

How do I do this today? Well... should I say how do I do this a month ago, since I haven't upgrade to iLife '11 yet.

Assuming you’re using GarageBand ’09 (I think it’s the same in iLife ’11), you can still follow those very same instructions.
AUNetSend is an audio unit that uses Bonjour to send a stream of data in the format that you specify.

You can then modify the properties of the “send”:

The “listening” side should be using AUNetReceive…
I haven’t really tried this since the age of dawn, but assuming both Macs are in the same network, it would be more or less straightforward.


How can I use my iPad with a Bluetooth headset or hands-free? I'm looking to ditch my iPhone for my iPad.  Apps I've tried are: Skype, Google Voice, Talkatone & Whisper. I've solved the incoming call problem, all that remains is the Bluetooth hurdle.  When connected via my car's (Scion xB) bluetooth connection it pauses the music that is currently playing, but no audio from the call is received, nor is the car's microphone being used.

I'd love to hear your story on how you're using an iPad as a phone if you have one as well.

See iPad: Using Bluetooth headsets and keyboards in Apple’s Knowledge Base:

  Bluetooth car kit functionality is limited to audio output. Additional car kit features are not supported on iPad.

The article on supported Bluetooth profiles on iOS might also be of interest. As you can see, the first-generation iPad doesn’t support the Hands-Free Profile (HFP 1.5), but the iPad 2 and the third-generation iPad do, although the Phone Book Access Profile (PBAP) still isn’t supported.

There’s also this thread on the support forums where a lot of people can’t seem to get a bluetooth headset working with their iPad. As user Dave Lucente says:

  The iPad is not a phone, so it should not be a surprise that cell phone head sets will not work with it.


Gray folder with circle next to it I've got the strangest problem with some of my folders on an external drive. They folders in the root of the drive show up, but they are grayed out and I can't click them. However if I change viewing mode I can see the files that they contain. Any idea what this could be and how to fix it? I've attached two screenshots of the different events.

It's a tag without an assigned colour, and the contents is hidden due to the view options. Change the view options (⌘J) to Sort By and Arrange By Name.


Recommendations for note-taking app for Iphone that does NOT sync to the cloud I am moderately happy with the current (iOS 8) Notes app in my Iphone, and specially with the fact that I can sync it locally to my PC using iTunes, without using iCloud. The only thing I'm really missing is the ability to organize notes by folders.

Now comes the new Notes app in iOS 9, which seems to be the opposite: you can at last have folders, but you have to use iCloud to backup the notes. I've been looking for a note-taking app that can have folders (or tags) and does NOT require you to upload your notes to some cloud in order to sync them, and after searching up and down, the only one I've found is Notebooks, which seems fine, but I'd like to see if there are any other options around.

Is there any other app I am missing? (Syncing locally to a WebDAV server instead of iTunes is fine, if I have to).

No need for another app, there is a solution for syncing the iOS Notes app without using iCloud or any other third-party service.  Since you mentioned WebDAV, I assume you are willing to provide your own server.  It takes a little bit of setup, but if you create your own email server (specifically an IMAP server), Notes will sync to it.  There is no need to support sending mail at all, just IMAP, with which you will be able to create folders.  Just add new email account and turn on the "Notes" option for the account.  I believe the server version of OS X will even has an email server built in with easy setup, though there are many other good options such as courier or dovecot.  If you are happy only syncing at home, you don't even have to expose the server to the public internet, or you can get a domain name (or dynamic DNS service) and sync to your home server wherever you have internet access.  Note that new features in iOS 9 notes, such as handwriting and lists, are unsupported in IMAP notes accounts, but everything doable in iOS 8 is still possible including attaching images.


Is there a way to apply custom shaders to macOS screen? I know macOS has a feature to invert the screen using Control+Option+Command+8.

I was wondering if there is any way, like a macOS feature, an application, or even some API to apply other effects to the whole screen?

In High Sierra you can use keyboard shortcut to Invert Colors

Option+Command+I

More screen options are in System preference > Accessibility > Display


iPhone 4 Won’t Turn On or Wake Up? My lock button is broken and i have been using assist to lock my iPhone , but early today i pull my iPhone out of my pocket it I couldn't turn it on. I tried plugging it into the wall charger, nothing. I Tried plugging it up to my Mac , NOTHING and I'm not on a plan so I cant't get a new iPhone . So what do I do, I'm desperate for answers on how to fix this .

Unfortunately, it sounds like your iPhone 4 has had it. If iTunes can't recognize it, then something is seriously wrong. The only thing I can think of is that the battery got disconnected, but that's not likely. The best thing to do is to sell "For Parts or Repair" on easy to pay for part of a used iPhone, but older models can be pretty inexpensive. A used iPhone 4 should cost only about  $75-$100, while a 4S should run $110-$130, a 5 for about $200, and an iPhone 5S for about $350.


Fullscreen app location in Mission Control Is is possible to make the fullscreen applications be put right next to the desktop you are currently on, rather than to the right of all existing desktops in Mission Control?

Yes, go into System Preferences>Mission Control. Check the box next to "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use"


Is it safe to expand this Macintosh HD partition? A few years a go a friend of mine help me set up a partition on my MacBook air to allow me to run Windows 8.

About a year ago I decided I didn't want it anymore, and with the help of the internet, I tried but mangled the uninstallation. I thought I had uninstalled it but didn't see any improvement in space on the Mac side of things.

I thought I had issues because when I started up my laptop, I was still getting the windows start up (albeit broken beyond repair.) I now believe that this is just leftover files trying to boot what's already there.

Here is what I'm left with in Disk Utility:

Is it safe for me to try to expand the partition back to it's original size? I can move the line with no issues. Do I risk losing data?

Is it safe for me to try to expand the partition back to it's original size?

Yes, it should be safe to try to expand the partition back to its size. You can do this either by dragging the line or typing a number larger than 251 in the "Size" box.

  Do I risk losing data?

Any time you make changes to a drive (including resizing a partition), you risk losing data. I would argue that the risk is small but you should ALWAYS have an up-to-date backup. Make a backup immediately before you attempt the resize.


How to upgrade to specific release on Mac OS X (e.g. 10.7.3)? I have an old iPhone application which was created using Xcode 4.3.2. I want to get it running on Xcode. However, I am using OS X 10.9.5. So I get the error "This installation of Xcode 4.3.2 requires Mac OS X Lion". So I searched online and found an article about running Xcode 4.3.2 on VirtualBox. Now when I try to install Xcode 4.3.2 on Lion on VirtualBox, I get the error message "You have Mac OS X 10.7. The application requires Mac OS X 10.7.3 or later. How can I upgrade to 10.7.3 to get Xcode working?

If you start from a base install - 10.n.0 then you can always directly update to a given 'point release' by using the Combo Updater for that release.

These appear to always remain available from Apple.

The Combo updater for 10.7.3 is at https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1484


Data storage location? Difference between server and physical device Just for my curiosity and knowledge, all the DATA saved into services like iCloud email, Gmail email, DropBox, iCloud Drive, etc.  Do they actually take physical space storage inside each iOS or OS X device? Or they are just a mirror of their server? Example iCloud email service I do know that is a part of the 5GB but does it also take space inside the physical device? When there is no WIFI or Cellular connection at all, emails are still in the devices.

Do you also recommend a nice reading article about this topic?

Thank you so much and have a wonderful day.

On OS X, Dropbox and iCloud keep local copies of all the files you have stored on them. The reasoning being that Macs usually don't want for space like iOS devices do. On iOS, Dropbox doesn't store the files locally until you try to do something with one, at which point it's downloaded. iCloud handling depends on the application. I know for some applications, the files are kept locally. Pages for example will download all available documents, seeing as how text files are typically not that large. I'm not certain about the rest.


Import H.264 videos into Final Cut Pro X I tried to import an H.264 video into Final Cut Pro X without success. The software tells me that the file is not importable.

VideoSpec shows me the following video track parameters:

Format:  H.264/MPEG-4 AVC
Bitrate:  Max.: Undefined / Average: 725 Kbps / Min.: Undefined
Frame rate (fps):  Max.: Undefined / Average: 25.000 / Min.: Undefined
Encoding profile:  High@L3.0
Image size:  720*576
Pixel Aspect Ratio:  Undefined
Display Aspect Ratio:  16:9
Interlacing:  Progressive

Try using Clipwrap. It can quickly convert a lot of error-prone footage for you. there is a free demo available that outputs watermarks.


ZSH: .zprofile, .zshrc, .zlogin - What goes where? Now that I've upgraded to Catalina and I am using the new ZSH shell, I've noticed that ~/.bash_profile has been replaced with ~/.zprofile and since installing iTerm2 shell integration, it added a ~/.zshrc file.

Looking at the ZSH documentation on Startup/Shutdown Files, there are a number of files (located in the home directory $HOME or ~/):

.zprofile (login shell)
.zshenv (environment variables)
.zshrc (interactive shell)
.zlogin (login shell)
.zlogout (when the shell exits)

What is also confusing is that ~/.zprofile and ~/.zlogin are both for login shells, so, things can get confusing as to what to put where.

What startup/shutdown files should be used when setting up the ZSH shell environment and how/what should they be configured?

This is an attempt to write a canonical QA for this issue, as per the Meta post:  Where is the list of canonical questions stored for Ask Different? I expect it to be periodically edited with the goal of becoming a comprehensive information resource.
What should be used in ZSH on a Mac
I posted a more narrowly scoped question on Unix & Linux and got some clarification on how these files "work."  Here's the summary of that answer and what I've learned in my research as to what, in my opinion should be used in a ZSH environment on a Mac.

.zprofile
.zlogin and .zprofile are basically the same thing - they set the environment for login shells; they just get loaded at different times (see below).  .zprofile is based on the Bash's .bash_profile while .zlogin is a derivative of CSH's .login.  Since Bash was the default shell for everything up to Mojave, stick with .zprofile.

.zshrc
This sets the environment for interactive shells.  This gets loaded after .zprofile.  It's typically a place where you "set it and forget it" type of parameters like $PATH, $PROMPT, aliases, and functions you would like to have in both login and interactive shells.

.zshenv (Optional)
This is read first and read every time.  This is where you set environment variables.  I say this is optional because is geared more toward advanced users where having your $PATH, $PAGER, or $EDITOR variables may be important for things like scripts that get called by launchd.  Those run under a non-interactive shell so anything in .zprofile or .zshrc won't get loaded.  Personally, I don't use this one because I set the PATH variable in my script itself to ensure portability.

.zlogout (Optional)
But very useful!  This is read when you log out of a session and is very good for cleaning things up when you leave (like resetting the Terminal Window Title)

For an excellent, in-depth explanation of what these files do, see What should/shouldn't go in .zshenv, .zshrc, .zlogin, .zprofile, on Unix/Linux.

Some Caveats
Apple does things a little differently so it's best to be aware of it.  Specifically,  Terminal initially opens both a login and interactive shell even though you don't authenticate (enter login credentials).  However, any subsequent shells that are opened are only interactive.
You can test this out by putting an alias or setting a variable in .zprofile, then opening Terminal and seeing if that variable/alias exists.  Then open another shell (type zsh); that variable won't be accessible anymore.
SSH sessions are login and interactive so they'll behave just like your initial Terminal session and read both .zprofile and .zshrc
Order of Operations
This is the order in which these files get read.  Keep in mind that it reads first from the system-wide file (i.e. /etc/zshenv) then from the file in your home directory (`~/.zshenv) as it goes through the order.
.zshenv → .zprofile → .zshrc → .zlogin → .zlogout