Yosemite: ssh slow to connect when using DNS alias Since updating to Yosemite, ssh from my Mac to a DNS alias takes about 7-8 seconds.

I've observed the following on multiple Macs running Yosemite. Assume I have a host name alpha, and a DNS alias to it named aa. The OS of the target doesn't matter.

1) ssh to an unqualified host name alias (CNAME record in DNS), e.g. ssh aa, takes about 7-8 seconds to connect
2) immediately repeating the same ssh command, ssh aa, connects in the "normal" amount of time (< 1s)
3) ssh to a fully qualified host name alias, e.g. ssh aa.example.com, connects in the normal amount of time
4) ssh to a regular host name (A record in DNS), e.g. ssh alpha.example.com, whether qualified or unqualified, connects in the normal amount of time.

When using ssh -vvv, the total delay is in one place:

$ ssh -vv aa
OpenSSH_6.2p2, OSSLShim 0.9.8r 8 Dec 2011
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh_config line 20: Applying options for *
debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
    *delay of 7-8 seconds*
debug1: Connecting to aa [10.10.1.2] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
...

There is no difference in output between any of the 4 scenarios, except for the host name displayed.

This has happened on every release of Yosemite to the current version 10.10.3.

I have searched the web many times, and not found a single reference to this problem. Ideas?

I found a “fix” for this, though it still doesn't explain anything.

In our organization, we have “standard” DNS arranged hierarchically for different sites, just as you would expect. We also have an Active Directory structure that is largely flat. The resolv.conf (actually defined in Network Settings) had my local DNS domain listed as a search domain. I discovered quite by accident that adding the AD domain as a search domain fixes the problem!

So now I have something like:

search mysite.example.com ad.example.com

Now ssh’ing to an unqualified alias takes no more time than any other form of the host name.

Really bizarre, and I have no idea why this fixes it.


Routing all web 'traffic' via tun device on Mac OSX Having checked through Stack Overflow I cannot find a suitable answer, so hope the community are able to help me.

I am using a DNS tunneling program called iodine, on the Mac as a client device and am currently able to connect to the server correctly, create the tun0 device and ping the server as defined, via the tunnel.

I am now trying to route my normal browsing traffic via this 'virtual' tun0 device but am failing to do so. I have seen some reference to amending the preferences.plist but cannot seem to get it to connect properly (presume due to my inability to find or define the UUID)

Anyway, if anyone has any ideas they will all be greatly received.

ifconfig tun0: flags=8851<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1130
inet 10.0.0.2 --> 10.0.0.2 netmask 0xffffffe0
open (pid 447)

Normally, rerouting traffic through a tunnel is done by changing the default route in the routing table on your system using a command such as route add default 10.0.0.2.  It may also be necessary to remove the existing default route to avoid confusing the routing subsystem.


How can I get Automator to mount a network volume? I am writing an Automator "script" that rsyncs media on my 10.6.3 MacBook Pro to my Ubuntu 10.10 HTPC. I can make Automator run my shell script for rsync commands, but I can't make Automator mount the three volumes on the HTPC (folders for music, videos, and pictures).

I automatically mount these volumes when I login (these computers connect via a wifi network), but sometimes the HTPC volumes get unmounted, so I'd like to remount by default.

Is there a way to mount the volumes in Automator? I am open to shell scripting, too. Thanks!

I build automator workflows like this all the time. You only need two actions, and they're both Files & Folders actions.

1) Get Specified Servers. This will let you build a list of shares to connect to. If you can map it from Finder -> Go -> Connect to server, you can use this.

2) Connect to Servers. This will connect to any servers passed to it (either from get specified servers or from ask for servers).


Can I use 2 harddisks to backup using time machine (not duplicate, but to extend) I have 2 x 500 GB external Harddrives and 500 GB internal harddrive . I use time machine to backup from the internal 500GB and one external 500GB HD to the second 500 GB HD. This is good till date since I only had to back up less than 250 Gigs in total.

What would happen if and when I exceed the disk space of 500 Gigs?

Can I use another 500 GB harddisk (in order to horizontally scale) on Time Machine . I need incremental backups like TimeMachine does and I like the interface too. I picked out 500 Gigs as an example.

Can I mount 2 external HDs as a single one so that the TimeMachine
does not need to know about it ?
Does TimeMachine support backing up
to use multiple harddisks depending on space constraint ?
How is this problem usually addressed for a non-business requirement ?

Sairam

Yes - there are two ways to do this.

Apple intends and designed Time Machine to work with disks in a sequential manner. You are expected to fill up the first disk and put it on the shelf. Then attach the second and fill it up. You can then go back to the first and this lets you have more history before the oldest backup is reclaimed due to space running out.

An alternative is to use Mac OS X built in RAID functionality. You will have to erase all the disks when you put them into a RAID the first time - but you can have two disks with half the data written to each every time a file gets written. This is striping or RAID 0.

Using a RAID would mean both drives need to be connected all the time. You would then have one large backup and since Time Machine won't be saving two copies of many files - you will get much longer time for storage using a RAID than the first method of using the drives sequentially. If your boot drive is almost full - I've seen times where the first method could store a month or two of history, but years would fit on the second method. It really depends what files you have and how often they change.


How to connect unlocked iPhone 5s to Verizon I have a fully unlocked iPhone 5s bought in New Zealand, and I wish to use it in the US on the Verizon network, however when I gave them the IMEI number they said it was locked and they couldn't connect it to their network.

I have been able to use it on several networks in each of New Zealand, USA, and Mexico, and Verizon is the only one that seems to think it's locked.  They've said this on two separate occasions, at different locations, months apart, so I don't think it's just inexperience or operator error from the Verizon representative.

Why isn't my iPhone able to be connected to Verizon, and is there a way around it?

I have read a few other Q&As here that mention that Verizon was a CDMA network, however these were older questions, and some more recent ones suggested that is no longer the case.

Unless you have a 6 or later, Verizon voice is CDMA-only for the 5s.

If your iPhone 5S is not CDMA capable, data might work on LTE portions of Verizon's network. It would still need to support all of Verizon's LTE bands (see iPhone LTE support). But, as mentioned above, voice would not work.  VoLTE is only supported on the 6 and later.

Verizon has a database of iPhone IMEIs that are legitimately sold as Verizon "branded" or as world-unlocked phones, and that are CDMA capable. If they can't add it, there's a 99% chance it wouldn't work to your satisfaction.

You can test whether it would work at all by loading a Verizon SIM from a friend's iPhone 5S or later.  (A SIM from any non-Apple device won't generally work because there is a difference in back end programming, especially for voice + LTE.)

In the off chance that it does work on your friend's SIM, the trick is to get customer service or a store rep to load up a dummy IMEI, or the IMEI of a known compatible phone, just to activate the SIM. I've asked them to do this on occasion where I'm setting up an employee's account and don't have the phone present, but need it activated so it will work as soon as the employee reports to my office.

(For what it's worth, I find that AT&T's lower frequencies in the 800-900MHz range tend to penetrate buildings better than Verizon or T-Mobile's 1900/2100MHz bands, at least in our neck of the woods in Utah. Your 5S isn't going to support the enhanced coverage offered by the 700MHz bands.)


Poor battery performance after SSD install I recently installed a Crucial SSD into my Macbook Pro (2.66 GHz Intel Core i7), and now the performance of my battery is probably about 50% of what it used to be.

I've tried to reset the PRAM, but the OS loads so quickly that it I've never been able to trigger, even though I'm quick with hitting the keys.

Any suggestions for improving performance, and/or resetting the PRAM?

Thanks

Modern Macintosh computers store very little information in PRAM so resetting it is seldom a useful troubleshooting step.

Have you checked the condition of the battery using System Information? (It's in the Utilities folder and also accessible from the menu: [Apple] > About this Mac > More Info… > System Report —assuming you're running Lion)

If you're seeing Service Battery under the Hardware > Power:Battery Information/Health Information section that's probably your issue.

You might improve the battery life with a System Mangement Controller reset. Assuming your MacBook Pro doesn't have a removable battery, the SMC reset procedure is:

  Shut down the computer. Plug in the MagSafe power adapter to a power
  source, connecting it to the Mac if its not already connected. On the
  built-in keyboard, press the (left side) Shift-Control-Option keys and
  the power button at the same time. Release all the keys and the power
  button at the same time. Press the power button to turn on the
  computer.   Note: The LED on the MagSafe power adapter may change
  states or temporarily turn off when you reset the SMC.


Error: "sudo: command not found" when trying to use XAMPP I am trying to use XAMPP to create a server on my MacBook. I'm following the tutorial here:

https://www.webucator.com/how-to/how-install-start-test-xampp-on-mac-osx.cfm

and I'm stuck on the bit where I'm required to put the command

sudo /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/xampp security

I get asked to input my password and then encounter the following error:

sudo: /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/xampp: command not found

Any help here please?

Idea #1

The error could be because it's attempting to run this command:

$ sudo /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/xampp

You may need to pass the entire command with single or double quotes to the sudo command like this:

$ sudo '/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/xampp security'

Idea #2

If the above isn't your issue then I'd suggest changing directories and running the command directly from there:

$ cd /Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles
$ sudo xampp security

Idea #3

If that still doesn't work, take a look at the contents of the xamppfiles directory using the ls command and verify that xampp is in fact a file in this subdirectory. It it's missing then one of your steps to install XAMPP was either skipped or failed.


Limit Total Size of Cached Files I have a beefy Docker image that I'd like to run on my work machine (OSX 10.13.3, 16 GB RAM, Core i5), but I find that when running the image, along with a web browser, that the computer crashes or needs to rest for long periods of time due to memory errors. Most of these  seem to stem from the set of cached files stored in memory, which seem to increase over time:

Is there a way to put a hard limit on the size of the file cache (say, 2GB)?

As seen here, it is possible to clean Cached Files manually, or you can install a third-party cleaner such as CleanMyMac 3. However, I would recommend leaving the Cached Files the way they are, as it can greatly speed up load times of applications running on your computer. Unfortunately, there is no native way to limit the size of the Cached Files folder.


I have no administrative account after updating to High Sierra 10.13.5 I have just updated my Mac to High Sierra 10.13.5 and my account which used to be admin has now became standard. It seems I no longer have an administrative account and no solutions worked so far. I have tried resetpassword (doesn't allow me to set admin); .AppleSetupDone (seems this file doesn't exist anymore?); Single User Mode (two ways of using it, one is to boot and delete the applesetupdone file, the other is to create new user and set as admin).
In the last solution, after dscl . -create/users/hanahadmin
It appears
/system/library/launchdaemons/apple.com.directoryserviceslocal.plist: No Such File or Directory

I am not at all knowledgable at this and don't know many technical terms or skills, I just tried to follow the instructions but nothing works. I have found some people with the same problem as me. It seems that those who say they do not have AppleSetupDone file are struggling with every single solution, those who have the file say it works.
Please help me on this matter!
Many thanks.

I have tried several solutions, most are from this link
I don't have administrator account on my mac

Wow. You certainly have done several steps to remove the AppleSetupDone file. I would try the most correct one

cd /private/var/db
rm .AppleSetupDone
ls -la
exit

The ls is just to be sure. If that doesn’t workyoull need to reinstall the OS or erase install if you don’t need a backup. Let me know in comments how the last try to remove the setup file works? (all those allocation zone messages have me thinking your storage or data on it are messed up beyond easy repair)


Remove list of recently updated apps in Mac App Store How would you remove the list of recently updated applications in the Mac App Store?

(the part selected in red in the screenshot)

Source.

If you hide an item you purchased in the Mac App Store, you won't get update notifications for it, and you won't see it on your Purchases page. If you're using Family Sharing, hidden items will also be hidden from your family members.

Hide purchases using these steps:

Open the Mac App Store.
Choose Store > Sign In, then enter your Apple ID and password.
Click Purchases.
Right-click the item that you want to hide and choose Hide Purchase. A prompt will ask if you're sure that you want to hide the item.
Click the Hide Purchase button. The item will fade. The item below it, if there is one, will replace it in the list.

Unhide purchases using these steps:

Open the Mac App Store.
Choose Store > Sign In, then enter your Apple ID and password, if you're not already signed in.
Choose Store > View My Account.
Enter your Apple ID password, if prompted.
From the Account Information page, click View Hidden Purchases.


Is it possible to automatically configure multiple iPads with the same settings? I need to configure a bunch of iPads with the same settings. For instance, volume level, auto-lock, side-button, timezone and light level.

Currently I'm doing this manually on each iPad through the Settings app in the device. This is both tedious and error-prone...

I'm thinking it should be possible to create a master settings file or image file (or something) with the correct settings which could then be loaded on to each device.

Is that possible?

Background: We need deliver iPads preconfigured with our "kiosk" app for customers to place in their office/retail locations. For instance, disabling auto-lock is crucial here. Currently I have some 20-30 iPads that needs to be configured the same way.

iPhone Configuration Utility

You can use Apple's free iPhone Configuration Utility on Mac or Windows to create custom .XML configuration profiles for the iPad and install them to iPads over USB. I do not know which specific parameters you will have access to configure.

There is also a third-party MDM (Mobile Device Manager) server platform for rolling out custom apps and the like. That would probably be way overkill for your needs.

Apple white paper, "Deploying iPhone and iPad in Business" . (PDF)

Update

March 7, 2012--Apple has released a new program called Configurator for mass deployment of iPads and iPhones in school, businesses, and institutions. It is free in the Mac App Store.


Where are my all installed programs? I am new to Mac OS X and till the time I was using Windows 7/8. I tried to download and install programs in Mac OS X, but I do not see them in Launchpad.

Where are all my programs are going. Secondly, what is path where software are actually installed in Mac?

All software in Mac OS X is installed in /Applications, which can be found in the Finder sidebar

Most Mac applications don't have to be installed, you just have to copy the applications in the Applications folder. Normally, all installed applications that are in the /Applications folder appear automatically in the Launchpad.

You can uninstall applications that don't come from the Mac AppStore simply by moving them in the Trash, applications from the Mac AppStore can be uninstall by entering Launchpad, holding the option key and clicking the little x that appears at the app-icon.

The location of the applications folder in the Finder:


Safe to remove - .rnd and .CFUserTextEncoding As a cleanup routine, I remove files from ~/Library/Logs and ~/Library/Caches directory.

I also remove ~/.Trash and ~/.DS_Store

My question - Is it safe to remove ~/.rnd and ~/.CFUserTextEncoding?

What are these files/folders for?

.CFUserTextEncoding is used to store defaults for language and encoding
.rnd is used as entropy bytes to aid in randomness algorithms
.DS_Store holds your Finder preferences for viewing that folder
.Trash is the terminal version of your macOS trash can

Deleting files you don't understand is generally considered a really terrible idea. For macs, we sometimes get lucky because the OS will kindly regenerate many of these for you after you delete them, but I would not count on always being saved this way. These files take up nearly no space, do not hurt anything, and deleting them has no benefit and causes their almost immediate recreation.


Certain Commands are not Found in Catalina's Zsh This is sort of a specific question that seems like it would be better suited over on Atom's user blog, but I figured I would post this here as well as I have actually asked it there and have received no response.  I've been having some issues ever since being pushed to switch to Zsh over Bash in macOS Catalina.  A lot of the issues seem to be surrounding commands not being recognized under certain circumstances.

As mentioned, the issue I'm currently having has to with with Atom editor and the shell commands that can be installed with it.  After downloading Atom and running the Install Shell Commands in the Atom menu, you should be able to launch Atom via the command line with the atom <file> command.  My issue is that, the command is not recognized at all until I manually the launch the application once.  If I try to use the command, I'm greeted with zsh: command not found: atom.  After the application is launched manually (outside of the command line), Zsh no longer reports that it cannot find the command atom command, and it begins to work.  This all resets as soon as I turn my computer off and on.

Does anyone know what could be causing this?  This never happened pre-Catalina.

I am going to bypass what could be causing it, to tell you how to “cure” it.

First, find out the exact path of “atom” (not Atom.app).  It is probably embedded somewhere inside of Atom.app, but it's possible the Install Shell Commands copies it to somewhere else.

If it disappears on a reboot, it might be copied to /tmp (!).  If that is the case, do echo $path and copy it to one of those directories.

After you have atom in a location that won't be erased on reboot, ensure that location is in your zsh $path as discussed in How does zsh find commands?


Copy folder & files with labeled files but strip the label? Is there an easier way to copy a folder that contains files with (colored) labels applied and strip those labels than making an Automator droplet/application?

So perfect would be having this to happen, but have it happen "by default" if I press ⌘ + D...

Automator goes like this...

Application receives files and folders as input
Duplicate Finder Items
Get Folder Contents (actually, the "Repeat for each subfolder found" should be checked)
Label Finder items (nothing selected, with is what happens when you click "x")

Seems clunky, but when I've got Smart Folders returning, eg, all yellow labeled files, I don't want copies when I back a folder up by duplicating it.  The app works fine, but wanted to know if there was an easier way.

You can set your Automator application as a service instead, and then apply a keyboard shortcut against that service as follows:

In System Preferences, go to Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts > Services

Find the service on the list.

To the right of the service name, double-click.

Enter the desired shortcut.


Podcast cover art missing since upgrading to iOS 5 Since upgrading my iPhone 3GS to iOS 5 some of my podcasts no longer display their custom cover art. They sync OK but use the default image. I'm still syncing over USB, no iCloud or Wi-Fi sync at the moment. The cover art displays correctly in iTunes itself.

How can I get the missing cover art back on my iPhone?

I was able to fix this myself in the end by deleting the podcasts on the iPhone itself and then re-syncing. Sometimes it took several attempts before the cover art came back.


Make the Stock Widget display percentage change Is there a way to make the Stock Widget in iOS's Notification Center to display percentage change instead of price change? Any Cydia tweak?

In the Stocks.app you can switch between those and market cap by pressing the price change tile on the right.

Sorry, the answer is no, you cannot.

The only configuration available for the Stocks Notification Centre widget is Enabled/Disabled.

Other apps that provide Stocks reporting may have been updated to provide more configurable notifications, however the stock (sic) app does not.


How do I get the Mac Terminal to show the gray font color I am running on a Mac with Snow Leopard.  Up until now, the default Terminal.app has served me well.  I have installed the IR_Black theme mentioned here: http://blog.toddwerth.com/entries/show/6.

However, I noticed in a particular program that the gray font doesn't render.  In other words, it's invisible.  I ran the script listed here: https://gist.github.com/1099707 and every color shows except for COLOR_BLACK (which makes sense) and COLOR_GRAY.

There are other coworkers on a Windows box that run putty and gray shows up for them just fine on a black background.  Is there anyway to get the gray color to show up in Terminal and still have a black background?

(If I used the Basic white-background theme, and run the colors script, then Gray just looks like a bold version of black.)

On Snow Leopard you can install the TerminalColours plugin, which lets you modify the default colours.

On Lion you get a thoroughly updated Terminal.app that lets you do this out of the box and also supports 256 colours by default.


Sending ePubs from PC to iOS iBooks via iCloud Drive? So my goal is to use iCloud Drive to hold all of my ebooks and organize accordingly. On my iPad and iPhone, I have enabled iCloud Drive and by iBooks in Manage iCloud Drive, toggled that on too.

From the PC, using the iCloud for Windows iCloud Drive interface (which essentially looks like Windows Explorer), I dump all of the ePubs into a folder named eBooks (that’s what I named it, but would not be opposed to any other name, really). The ePub files don’t show up in iBooks. If I navigate to settings and iCloud Drive, I can navigate into the ebooks folder and see them that way. Is there something I’m missing?

iCloud Drive and iBooks aren't directly linked, so you have to open Files app on your iOS device (iOS 11+) and open it in iBooks. The iBooks iCloud setting specifically refers to keeping iOS and Mac iBooks apps in sync with each other.

iBooks has a setting at the top that says "All Books" with a down triangle on it or something similar. Tap that and at the bottom of the screen, there is a toggle that says "Hide iCloud Books". Toggle that off and tap done.

Now, navigate in Files app on iOS and find the non-protected .epub you want to move to iBooks and tap it. It should download and open in iBooks.

Do note that since they aren't linked, deleting files in iBooks and deleting files in iCloud Drive should affect each other.


Mac OSX - Transfer Connect to Server Favorites to new computer? I have a new macbook pro that's on the company network. My old laptop had a large list of Connect to Server favorite locations that I don't have memorized.

Is there a way i can transfer this server favorites list to the new computer? If so how?

Thanks, Scott

Last Server

The last server you connected to is stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist:

FXConnectToLastURL = "afp://example.com/";

Favourites

Your favourite servers are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist:

favoriteservers = {
  Controller = "CustomListItems";
  CustomListItems = (
    {  Name = "afp://example.com/";
       URL = "afp://example.com/";
    },
  );
};

Copying this file from your old computer to you new one will transfer your list of favourite servers.
Recent Servers

Your recent servers are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.recentitems.plist

Hosts = {
  Controller = "CustomListItems";
  CustomListItems = (
    {  Name = "Example";
       URL = "afp://example.com/";
    },
  );


Unfamiliar prompt when inserting new prepaid SIM card into iPhone in China While visiting Shenzhen, China yesterday as a tourist I acquired a prepaid +86 SIM card from China Unicom. Everything seemed to work out fine, but I am wondering about one observation:

When the sales clerk inserted the new SIM card for the first time the iPhone brought up a full-screen prompt with (if memory serves) a two-line text in Chinese on dark background and apparent "OK" and "Cancel" buttons. He pressed "OK" before I could take the phone back and that was it. This was at an official China Unicom store and the transaction seemed professional and legitimate.

What could that prompt have been? I don't remember this exact behavior from my iPhone on previous occasions of inserting various SIM cards, but then how could a specific SIM card insert a proprietary user interface? I would normally have taken a screen shot at this point for further inquiry, but the process went to fast.

So my question is this: what might the prompt have been and is there reason to be concerned from a security perspective?

I just have the sim card of China Unicom.
The text is "尊敬的客户，欢迎您使用中国联通业务！"
Which means "Dear customers, welcome to use China Unicom business!"

I don't think there will be any security issues.
It is a sim application that can handle business（e.g. order data plan) with cellular data off.
Go Setting-Moblie Data-SIM Application you can find more.

I don’t know more technical aspects.You can see the wikiSIM Application Toolkit


How can I record video of the iPhone screen without jailbreaking the phone? Is it possible to record video of the iPhone screen, and if so how?  I'm talking about video screen capturing, not using a camcorder or any app that requires jailbreaking my phone.

Don't overlook the power of running things in the iOS simulator. Xcode is free for Lion users. This is a very limited solution since you aren't really on the iPhone and you can't run app store apps, since its running computer versions of the apps, not the ones you download from iTunes.

Being a paid developer allows some extra flexibility in capturing the screen while tethered, but this might be an alternate.

Until this becomes a feature, you'll be stuck with this and the other options you have ruled out - a real camera or jail breaking to modify the code and get a dump of the screen.


iOS 5 or iOS 4 upload to YouTube? I have iPhone4 running iOS 5.1. No, I will not upgrade to iOS6 because it will delete my beloved pre-installed Maps application, and the new one from Google is [snip...] ... not performing up to my expectations.

I also have an iPhone3G running iOS 4.2. This cannot be upgraded at all.

I had used the pre-installed YouTube app to upload videos in the past. Everything worked flawlessly. Now, this app no longer accepts my Google login. Yes, I've read about 2-step login process. I've tried that. Worked everywhere, but on the pre-installed YouTube app. Google is purposely blocking that app because [reasons].

An older version of Google's native YouTube app from Appstore (the latest one requires iOS6 that I cannot install) has no way to upload. It recommends to download YouTube Capture App. I try that... and it needs iOS6.

Someone please tell me how to upload to YouTube from iOS5 and iOS4.2 considering that pre-installed YouTube app cannot login anymore.

I upload through the Safari browser. You have to be in desktop view, but it works every time for me.


How to upload pictures from Photos app to dropbox I was trying to upload a few images from my iPad Photos app to dropbox. However, when I clicked on the share icon(the box with an arrow pointing upward),I don't see any Dropbox to select from. The only options I have are Message, Mail,Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Snapchat, Pocket, LinkedIn, and Evernote.

I don't want to go to the dropbox app and upload pictures there by selecting images from the photos app(assuming that it is possible). I am running the latest version of iOS(8.1) and have dropbox app as well as in the notification widgets. Still sharing to dropbox doesn't seem possible. I've tried the same thing in my 5th gen iPod touch, with the same result.

Could someone please help?

iOS native photos app doesn't support dropbox sharing although you can open dropbox app in you device and add files manually. Make sure you have given dropbox permission to access photos.

Details:
Manual Upload

Step 1

Launch the Dropbox app on your iPad, and sign in to your Dropbox account if prompted.
Manual Upload

Step 2

Navigate to the folder on your Dropbox account to which you'd like to upload a file. If you'd like to create a new folder for your files, tap the plus sign at the top of the left column and then tap "Create Folder." Enter the name of the folder, and tap the "Create" button to create your new folder.

Step 3

Tap the plus sign at the top of the left column, and then tap the "Upload Here" button.

Step 4

Tap all of the files you'd like to upload to your Dropbox, as you can upload multiple files at once. A blue check appears in the upper right corner of the files you've selected.

Step 5

Tap the "Upload" button to upload the files to your Dropbox folder.

Automatic Upload with Camera Upload

Step 1

Launch Dropbox on your iPad, and log in to your Dropbox account if prompted.

Step 2

Tap the gear in the lower right corner of the left column to visit your Dropbox settings.

Step 3

Tap the "Camera Upload" tab, and then switch the button from "Off" to "On." Your photos and videos automatically upload to Dropbox from your iPad's storage.

source


Restore ebooks (PDF) from iTunes backup? Upon opening iBooks.app on my clean Mavericks install, I noticed that all my ebooks from other sources than the iBooks Store were missing. Of course, they're not saved in iCloud. So I wanted to restore them from the Music/iTunes Media/Books folder of my Time Machine backup.
On my backup disk, there was no Music folder.. I forgot I had excluded it from the backup. I wanted to save space, and I'm using iTunes Match anyway, but I hadn't thought about the books.

All the books and PDFs were still on my iOS devices, which started syncing with iTunes immediately and deleted all books in the process instead of transferring them to my Mac.

Finally I had a look at the MobileSync folder on the backup disk. The backup seems to be some kind of database. I used grep  to search for a few unique terms from my books in the binaries, and they are indeed in there, somewhere.

I've tried to copy the folder to my Mac so I can look at the backup with iExplorer, but it doesn't show any books. Which app can I use to simply extract the books from the backups?

There is an application called iPhone Backup Extractor that will help you extract data from an iPhone backup. it will convert the files you see in the backup with randomly generated names to things you will recognise.
When you run the application and identify the backup you want it to use it'll give you a list of all the application data contained within the backup. BTW you'll need to move the backup folder so its sitting at /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/LONG_GIBBERISH_STRING for iPhone Backup Extractor to find it.
I'm not 100% certain where Apple stores books/documents that haven't been purchased but my guess would be within either "com.apple.iBooks" or "iOS Files".


How to get access to hidden folders from another Macintosh HD (Users/Applications)? I need to back up the main Users folder, as well as all other data, from my main Mac (2013 13" MBP). I've gotten the dreaded UEFI-inspired flashing question mark, and tried running Disk Utility's repair options on it, both on in recovery mode on the main machine, as well as from another machine (with the drive connected via a SATA-to-USB cable into another older MBP — my wife's).
B/c I didn't have the option of backing up the machine "normally" — copying all files and folders through the Finder of my wife's machine, due to perms issues — I've used the utility app Disk Drill to create a .dmg file, encompassing the whole drive's contents (a byte-for-byte copy, is what it's called in this software).
First, is there any other way of getting to the main Users folder, and the Applications, too? They're all hidden, as they were installed/created by a user not present on my wife's machine? (I just wanted the assurance of copying the files by hand, too, before wiping my machine's 1TB SSD and restoring the files from the disk image file I'd created in Disk Drill.) Secondarily (as a bonus question), is there anything suspect with the above approach?
Many, many thanks, to all who take the time to read, much less answer.

Since your failed system was on Catalina, which uses the Read-Only System Volume scheme with separate System and Data volumes, it sounds like you backed up only the System volume. The /Users directory, however, is stored in Data.
One possibility for why you did this is that the Data volume might be corrupted and unmountable and therefore didn’t show up in Disk Drill, so the System volume was your only obvious choice.
Another possibility is that High Sierra is two major OS releases behind Catalina. In general, it is inadvisable to mount an APFS volume from one OS using an older OS because APFS is a moving target and there are changes and additions to the format & filesystem driver that occur between releases. While unlikely, your wife’s machine may not be able to recognize the /Data volume. (It’s also unlikely but possible that mounting it on the old OS could have unintentionally caused damage to the newer format.) I haven’t used Disk Drill so it is possible that it did image your entire drive and the Data volume is still hiding in the .dmg, waiting to be read on a newer OS.
As a general rule, any time disk corruption is suspected, your #1 goal is to minimize disk usage (especially when hosted on the faulty machine) until you’re ready to perform a repair or transfer. Repair is no longer an option since Disk Utility couldn’t do it and no other APFS tools are currently available. So you’re left with transfer.
To maximize your chance of transfer, you need to be running at least the same version of OS on the lifeboat unit. You would also ideally be able to remove the physical drive from the target machine and place it in an external enclosure. Even so, your chance of success is slim if the Data drive failed to appear. You do need to be able to accept the fact that your data may be gone. (You could take out the SSD and set it aside, waiting for DiskWarrior 6 to come out and give you another chance at recovery.)
In short, try again with a Catalina machine, but minimize how much time the drive is powered on and be ready to call it a day.


Changing to manual IP causes no internet connection I'm setting the same settings even same router/gateway but it always just disconnects me.  Setting back to DHCP with manual address then it goes back to normal with internet.

192.168.1.3 is the default gateway that is set in my router. i want to set my gateway to 192.168.1.1 but this manually setting just doesn't work.

EDIT: i'm running macos 10.14.6 and macbook pro 15 inch mid 2015 if these matter

This worked for me. Although confusing because the UI for the IP configuration wasn't reflecting properly. I had to check my internet's ip using google to confirm that my internet was in fact changing.

route delete default
route add default 192.168.1.1


Problems with enhanced features in -regex of utility "find" For example, this doesn't find the file:

: > 12; basename $(find -E . -regex '^(.*)(\d{2})' -print 2>/dev/null)

But this does:

basename $(find -E . -regex '^(.*)([0-9]{2})' -print 2>/dev/null)

At the same time, for example:

echo -e '12\nabc\n456' | grep -E -e '^(\d{3})'

works quite well, though seemingly uses the same regcomp().

What am I doing wrong and how can I fix it?

It appears there is a bug in the native MacOS find in which its -regex option does not correctly handle any of the Shortcuts described in man re_format. The following command seems to work:

find -E . -regex '^(.*)([[:digit:]]{2})' -print

This slightly simpler variant also seems to work:

find -E . -regex '.*[[:digit:]]{2}' -print

In short, grep -E and finds -regex option don't seem to handle regular expressions in exactly the same way.


slow boot (and slow EFI?) in brand new MacBook Pro 16" I have a very new Mac and it seems far too slow to boot in both Catalina and now Big Sur perhaps it’s worse.
Device :
MacBook Pro 16 inch (MBP 16.0)
CPU 2.3 8  Core intel i9
16GB DDR
GPU Intel UHD Graphic 630 / AMD Radeon Pro 5500M
SSD 1Gb

I bought in July a MBP 16.0, from the first time I boot I had a very slow boot

UFI was very slow (the screen remain black and the Apple logo won't show up before a good 17 secs)
the full boot time is over a minute start to finish
nothing in the user login item at all (no apps launch)

The long EFI is very frustrating too as I want to press the power button a few times thinking I missed the button but no.
I’ve researched and resetting the NVRAM/PRAM and SMC have shown no improvement in start duration.
Any idea where the issue is from?

I wish I had that fast new gear, but if I were to triage this, I would do some tests with FileVault enabled and FileVault disabled and [avoid the power button. It would be super frustrating to have a slow boot and I’m sure with some tests, there’s a reason why it’s slow and figuring and then solving that technical detail would be satisfying indeed.
As to the process to quantify this startup, use something other than the power button. Use lid open to wake, press any key or connecting power and also use a camera to time things (or narrate while recording to a watch or phone.) Make sure you test no FileVault and automatic log in on a clean erase / install with nothing connected save the Apple power adapter if you suspect hardware being the cause and not software you loaded. Then enable FileVault, and let it finish encrypting and repeat the test. It will pause for you to log in, but you can subtract that delay later - it shifts the boot order on you.
Then once you’re sure the timings are repeatable or know the variance, boot to internet recovery and erase everything and reinstall the latest shipping OS and note that build number once booted. Since you’re on beta, you might have pre-release bridge / firmware and need to wait for that to ship if you want to have Apple look over the logs to see if a repair is in order.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

I would not use any install method other than internet recovery and erase install in this case, that ensures you get any bridge, firmware updates slipstreamed into the install process and you do depend on Apple to clean up in the coming months since you hopped on the beta train. If there is something amiss, it should be pretty easy to compare with other similar models and know yours is as fast as them or not. Great work on the 17 sec time - that’s one item to benchmark, but looking at the log files and collecting extra data points might help.


iPhone restore error "This device isn't eligible for the requested build" - tried everything..? I restored my iPhone 4s yesterday on my computer and it went through with no problems.

Today when my iPhone crashed and I tried to restore it again - I keep getting the message "This device isn't eligible for the requested build".
Nothing has changed from yesterday - so I don't know why it was OK then but not now...

I've worked through the apple suggestions - no problems with the hosts file, no third party security software, firewall off, etc  I've even tried it on another computer and I'm still getting the same message. It fails after the software is extracted (i.e. at the end of the first stage after I press restore) and it tries to verify with Apple...

Last bit of the restore log:
[11:33:28.4130] failed to personalize the restore bundle: This device isn't eligible for the requested build.
[11:33:28.4136] AMRAuthInstallDeletePersonalizedBundle
[11:33:28.4313] Restore completed, status:3194
[11:33:28.4313] Failure Description:
[11:33:28.4313] Depth:0 Error:Failed to copy auth install options in DFU mode.

Could the fault be on the Apple server side rather than mine or are there other things I should be trying?

Your problems are entirely on Apple's end. The message indicates that Apple no longer signing that version of software.

Yesterday, the code signing servers would sign the iOS 6 package you had downloaded on your Mac and let the device install that version of the OS.

Today, Apple is no longer signing that version of the software for that device.

I don't know how to say this other than Apple is forcing your hand to upgrade whether you are ready or not.

Had you used a jailbreaking tool to save the signature, you would have been able to replay that signing activity and possibly trick iTunes into restoring iOS 6. I wish I had better news, but you may have to jump to iOS 7 unless someone invents a new exploit to jailbreak iOS 6 in the absence of Apple's signing servers being cooperative with iOS 6.


restore notes iCloud IMAP I've deleted "notes" IMAP folder. Now I have no notes on Macbook, iPhone, iPad.
Please help me to restore my notes. I have TimeMachine backup.

Try restoring ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes (I would keep a copy of the existing folder in case this causes other problems). That's where my Notes seem to be stored. If that doesn't work, you can dig out the individual files representing your Notes within that folder.

The directory structure of the com.apple.Notes folder is very odd. It seems to have aliases to things like my Desktop and Movies folders in it, for reasons that I completely do not understand. In any case, I found my IMAP Notes in ~Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes/Data/Library/CoreData/ExternalRecords/E7804A95-977C-4A1C-98A1-8C1D77E02D49/IMAPNote/_records/0/

Hope this helps!


keyboard shortcut to position tab How can I set up keyboard shortcuts to put a tab into a position?

⌘1 for example selects the first tab, can I make a keyboard shortcut like ⌘⌥1 to make my current tab the first tab in the tab bar?

If you are using Chrome, the Rearrange Tabs extension works perfectly.

For Safari, you can setup an Automator service to run this Applescript and bind it to a key combination:

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    tell front window
        move current tab to before first tab
        -- for some reason it just creates a new tab with the same URL,
        -- so we need to do this:
        close current tab
        set current tab to tab 1
    end tell
end tell

To set up an Automator service and assign a keyboard shortcut to it:

Edit: On macOS Mojave in Automator, services might be named "Quick Action" or "Contextual Workflow".

Open Automator and choose "New Document"
Select service as the type of document
At the top, set it to "Sevice receives no input in Safari" like this:

Search for and drag in a "Run Applescript" action
Replace the (* Your script goes here *) text with the code from earlier
Test the script to make sure it works with the Run button
Save the service with whatever name you want
Close Automator and now go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services
Find the service that you just created(it should be in the "General" section) and use the "Add Shortcut" button to add a keyboard shortcut for it.

Now you should be able to use the keyboard shortcut.

Here's a GIF of it in action:

Unfortunately, there is no way to prevent the reloading of the tab when moving it. It is impossible to get the same effect as actually dragging the tab to move it.


How can I configure my keyboard to be backlit at the login screen? I recently had to reinstall Lion.  Now, when I boot the keyboard is not backlit when at the login screen.  It used to be backlit when at the login screen.

I'm using a Macbook Air 11" July 2011 model.  In System Preferences I have the checkbox: Automatically illuminate keyboard in low light checked.  The setting for Turn off when computer is not used for: is set at Never.

It appears that the problem is related to FileVault.  When I turned FileVault off and rebooted in safe mode the problem went away.  I could change the brightness of the screen and the keyboard at the login screen.  Volume controls worked too.  Now that I've turned FileVault back on the problem is back.


Which is correct, iTerm or Terminal? (Option as Meta or Esc+) Each provides the ability to change the behavior of Option: as Normal, Meta, or in iTerm only, Esc+. However, an interesting phenomenon is, in order to have Emacs-style shortcuts at the command line, they require contradictory settings:

iTerm: Esc+
Terminal: Meta

Example hotkeys enabled are Option-b to back up a word and Option-f to move forward a word.
iTerm doesn't work if also set to Meta. So, it seems that they understand "Meta" to mean different things.
My question: Which one's right? Is it Meta or Esc+ that enables this Emacs-like behavior? Or maybe, they're both right, but map the keys differently?

Neither is correct nor incorrect.
The ESC control code is part of the ANSI escape sequences which was used to send control codes to early terminals like the VT-100.  Emacs used many of these Esc sequences to control how the the user interacted with the program.
The Meta key first showed up in 1970 on the SAIL (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Labs) keyboards, MIT’s Lisp computers and ultimately Sun Microsystems (my alma mater as tech companies go).  It appeared as a diamond key.
The Meta is a modifier key similar (in function) to what the Apple Command key was.  On modern keyboards, it maps to ALT (Option) or the Windows key on PC keyboards.  If a computer lacks the Meta key, you can send the ESC sequence.
Either one is fine, iTerm (IMO) seems to take a more global approach to connecting to various *nix machines where Terminal is Apple/OpenStep (since Apple acquired them) and uses a Meta key.
In the end it’s what you’re more comfortable with - Esc or Meta/Option


Keyboard and touchpad are not working when booting from live USB I have a MacBook Pro (mid 2017, 13", no Touch Bar) and I want to create Linux live USB. However, keyboard and trackpad are not working when I'm booting Linux OS from live USB. I'm able to select EFI boot, proceed to selection how I want to boot my Linux system but as soon as OS is loaded - trackpad and keyboard don't respond. I tried Ubuntu 16.04 and Linux Mint 18.03.

Did anyone succeeded to boot Linux OS from a machine similar to mine? How can I create workable Linux (preferably Ubuntu) live USB on my MacBook?

Ubuntu does not natively support MacBook Pro Mid-2017 yet, so you have to manually install some drivers and patches to get it fully working. During the process, you will need a usb mouse. Also if you don’t have a usb keyboard, you can use on-screen keyboard (which is what I did). Then you have to follow this tutorial: Linux on MacBook Pro Late 2016 and later


Travelling with a Macbook Air When travelling to a foreign country my notebook loads websites in that country and language. I want it to continue with my home country sites and not have it know I have changed countries. How?

As mentioned a VPN is needed. This will echo the web traffic.

I have read online that this might help:

https://vpnuk.net/setup/

But I have personally never used it


Mac OS X Mavericks fails with disk corruption error I have a similar problem described by the question posted to this forum labelled "OS X Mavericks upgrade - disk/partition failure".  I, however, didn't stop the installation process.  Instead, I continued with the option of later recovering/restoring the files from the Time Machine, believing that all data on my hard disk would be wiped out.

Mac OS X Mavericks was successfully installed, and all files/programs seems to be intact.  What did I do right?  In the case where there was a disk corruption, how could I determine,

1) which files were corrupted?
2) whether or not a log file was generated outlining the corrupt sectors/allocation units?

Also, how would I go about using Time Machine to restore the corrupt files (if any), as I have not done this before?

Any advice/suggestions would be appreciated.

Edit:

I suppose my question is whether or not the installation process did, indeed, fix the corruption.  If so, where would I find the 'lost+found' folder (that is, if one exists)?

Sounds like you are good to go.

During the install it run in to a problem of incompatible software, but once that was out of the way the installer finished the job.

If you want to verify your install, run cmd-r and the restore (online) function. That might take a while so it is your choice to do or not.

The second question:

Enable the Debug in Disk Utility, that will allow you to see the hidden partitions. It is very well hidden, because Apple does not trust us been able to handle our property.

Enter the following command at the Terminal prompt:

defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1


How do you watch HTTP requests an iPhone app is making? Just the same way you can open the web inspector or activity window in Safari on your laptop and see all the HTTP requests any website has made, how do you do that on the iphone for an iPhone app, if the iPhone app is using HTML5 (or even if it's a native app)?

The easiest method is to install a debugging proxy and point your iPhone to it (specify the proxy address in the settings for the wifi network). Obviously, this'll only work over wifi and not via a cellular data connection. You'll then have access to all of the http(s) requests and responses sent and received by your iPhone.

Something like Paros can do what you want (it's written in Java, so will run on most platforms).


bash- command not fount error I tried to install omnet++ on my Macbook pro (OS 10.10) yesterday. I got an error so I delete path in my bash-profile.

Now, every command I try to run in my terminal shows an error of command not found. I try many ways but did not find a answer.

First, get your PATH back for the current shell by running

PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin"
export PATH

Then fix the PATH problems

edit your bash-profile and put back the line you've deleted. If you don't remember, take the two lines from above
path_helper takes its input from the files in /etc/paths.d, at least one of those files seems to be corrupt (the last two entries in the output look kind of strange). To fix, run /bin/ls -l /etc/paths.d to get the name of the file containing the additions for omnet++ (should be named accordingly) and remove it with sudo /bin/rm /etc/paths.d/NAME-OF-FILE


Network error since the macOS Catalina update No internet, "ERR_INTERNET_DISCONNECTED" error in chrome since the macOS Catalina update.

I tried,

resetting the router
reconnecting to the wifi it in safe mode
diagnostics report

I tried it in Safari and Chrome a few hours ago and it didn't work in both of them. Now, it isn't working in Chrome but surprisingly it is working in Safari.

PS - Again it stopped working :(
I can open Stack Exchange in Chrome but not other sites. What is happening?

It's a DNS resolver problem inside the macOS. It's not picking up the DNS servers provided by the router or inputted manually in the
"network settings". The actual Internet connection is still there - you can confirm through running nslookup apple.com 8.8.8.8 through the Terminal.

The only way to solve this as of now is to reboot the Mac. Killing the mDNSResponder doesn't help.

I would also recommend contacting Apple Support through the chat, explain them this problem (and the solution). They will schedule a call with second line of support. You explain them the problem again and they will send a note to developers. I already sent my report in - more reports should expedite them releasing a fix.


Default audio to AirPods from iPhone Audio from my iPhone used to automatically go to my AirPods when I put them in my ear. About 4 or 5 days ago I started having to open Control Center, then tap on the little two arcs in the corner of the audio control widget and then select AirPods in order to get audio through them.

Is there a setting that changed? How can I get this to go back to the easy way from before?

I don't see any settings in Sound and Haptics or Bluetooth that look like they will fix this issue.

Unpairing the AirPods, restarting the iPhone, and pairing the AirPods again seems to have cleared this up.


Contents of folder have disappeared Twice in the last week the entire contents of a folder have disappeared when I start up my computer. The folder contains over 100 GB of files, including all my work files. It's the first folder in the root directory of my hard disc. I'm running 10.9.5 on a 27" iMac. I have been able to restore all the files using Time Machine, but it's time-consuming so it would be much better to solve the fault that's causing this in the first place

This was a bug in a recent Adobe Creative Cloud update (version 3.5.0.206), causing the first folder, alphabetically, to be deleted from the user's boot drive.

It was first noticed by Backblaze, as their backup structure creates a folder that is often at the top of the list, .bzvol

As your folder was called Workwith a space at the head, that will have filed it to the top instead of any 'dot' folder.

Backblaze recommends creating a new folder called .adobedontdeletemybzvol by typing the following in Terminal sudo mkdir /.adobedontdeletemybzvol, however, this wouldn't work in your case, as space will file above a .

The bug has been fixed & a new update released by Adobe, but in the meantime, creating a new folder starting 'space a' would be safe… maybe adobedontdeletemywork would be appropriate ;-)

Refs:
ArsTechnica - Warning: Bug in Adobe Creative Cloud deletes Mac user data without warning
Backblaze helpdesk - .bzvol is missing


How can I use Siri to select between multiple email addresses? When using Siri to send an email to a contact with multiple email addresses, I can't find a way to select one of the addresses in a hands-free way (without clicking with my finger).  Siri reads out the two addresses, and then gives me a voice prompt to pick one, but when I say one of them back it just loops back to the "Which email address for..." prompt.

Anyone know what to say here?  I've tried just saying the domain of the address, "one", "the first one", the entire email address, but none of them work.

Ok this is what i saw when i asked SIRI to send a mail to a contact with multiple address, i then chose 'Home' and siri asked me what should she send!. It was pretty straight forward IMHO, so i suggest you try to disable/enable SIRI, if that doesn't work, then i think you will have to restore iOS option. Hope this helps mate


Time Capsule network, Windows machine on different subnet? I just received a Time Capsule for my birthday last week.  I installed it, everything went fine and I was loving it.  I transferred files from my 2 Macs and my 1 Dell and all was rosy.
Then the weekend past and today I tried to access the Time Capsule from Explorer on my Dell (running Windows 7) and it doesn't see it anymore.  I tried using the "Airport Base Station Agent" and when I connect through that or try to Map a Network Drive I get an error saying that "NAME OF TIME CAPSULE" cannot be found, check the spelling and try again.

In doing some digging, I discovered that my Macs are on the IP Subnet 172.16.8.xxx and my Windows machine is on 192.168.216.xxx.  And the Subnet Mask for the Time Capsule network is 255.255.252.0 (notice the 2nd to last is 252, NOT 255) while the Windows machine is on 255.255.255.0.

Actually, when I run ipconfig the Windows Machine is even more confusing than that.  The settings I listed are for the "Ethernet Adapter Local Area Connection 2" but there is also a "Wireless LAN Adapter Wireless Network Connection" which is on 255.255.252.0 with an IP of 12.9.104.xxx

To make it even stranger, I have VirtualBox running on the Windows machine running a Ubuntu server.  The Ubuntu machine is set up to grab its own IP using DHCP from the network and not use the Host Machine IP.  The Ubuntu VM running on the Dell has the same IP range as the Macs and the Time Capsule.

I have some ok experience with networking, though not a ton going between OS X and Windows (I usually use DropBox for file transfers).

Summary:
1 Time Capsule.
2 Macs connect to Time Capsule fine.
1 Windows 7 Dell connects to Time Capsule Network, but on different IP range and cannot see anything else on the network.
1 Ubuntu VM running on the Dell connects to Time Capsule network on same IP range as Macs and can connect to Macs correctly.

Edit
I forgot the strangest part (as if the VM thing wasn't weird enough).
When I use the "Airport Utility" from Windows (which was used to set up the Time Capsule initially) it sees and connects to the Time Capsule fine on IP 172.16.8.xxx, but when I PING that IP...no dice.  It times out every single time.

What in the world do I do?

If your Dell running Windows 7 is connected via ethernet or WiFi directly to the Time Capsule, then it sure should be able to ping. Perhaps a firewall is blocking those packets? Also - you might want to manually assign a 172.16.x.x address to be sure it's not a routing issue.

Airport Utility uses IPv6 when it can as well as Bonjour (mdns) so it will find attached units more aggressively than ping. Also, I've connected to Time Capsule from PC across the internet, so it's not something that has to be on the same subnet - just that the networks have to be working correctly.

In your case, 255.255.252.0 isn't a wide enough netmask to unify 172.16.x.x with 192.168.x.x. However, shares work over the internet, so it's really a routing issue and not something necessarily wrong with a netmask. Can you at least get all the machines on the same subnet?

Mobile Me also solves this problem for mac users but I doubt that's something you can sign up for during the transition to iCloud (and it would merely work around your network issues, not solve them).


An external monitor for my macbook late 2008. Trouble? I use a macbook 13' late 2008. It is perfect for traveling but when I am at home I would like to use an external monitor.

Before buying anything, I have some questions. The monitor I want is:

http://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-E2770V-BF-led-monitor

My questions:

Can a macbook 13' late 2008 use a Full HD screen such as that one?
Can I connect the macbook and the monitor using the HDMI port?
I don't want to have the macbook open when I am using the external monitor. Is that possible?
Since the macbook is going to be closed, I would need to connect an external keyboard. Any problem with that?

Thanks

Edit:

Is a macbook 13' late 2008 aluminium unibody

To answer your questions:

Per the MacBook specs, your MacBook shouldn't have a problem pushing video to a 1080p display, as the GPU can support up to 2560x1600 resolution.
You'll want to use the Moshi Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter if you want to use HDMI. Note: on your model this will do video only, not audio. This shouldn't make a difference on your display, but I thought you should know. Support for through Mini DisplayPort is added in the Mid 2010 models.
You can accomplish this by using clamshell mode.
As you'll read in the above clamshell mode support article, you actually have to use an external keyboard to get it to work in the first place, so you're good here. You can use a wired or wireless keyboard/mouse for this.

Hope this helps. Good luck!


Should I worry that TimeMachine is making many backups during one night without me using my computer? When I want TimeMachine to backup my computer, I usually plug my external hard drive before going to bed.
Unfortunately, I am already in the position where new backups are replacing old ones on the drive.
So I am quite worried when I see that TimeMachine is creating many different snapshots during the night.

Are these identical backups going to affect the oldest ones on my drive?

Or since they are identical, TimeMachine does not remove an old snapshot everytime it creates a new one?

I am a bit confused and would like to know if I need to change my backing up routine, like doing it at the same time as I am behind the computer, to be able to unplug the drive right after?

Thanks.

It is completely natural for Time Machine to keep backing up when noone is using the computer.

Usually those backups will contains almost no changes, and thus they take up almost no space on the external drive because only changes are backed up. They will eventually push out old backups, but it will probably take a long while because the changes are so small.

Even when not using the computer, there are constantly made small changes to log files, etc. that are transferred over. However note that some virtualisation programs for running Windows, Linux, etc. on the Mac can cause relatively large backups to be made even when almost no user visible changes have been made inside the virtual machine.


Does Apple design its own CPUs? We're having a little debate here at work.

Does Apple design its own CPUs? And by CPU design I mean what is on Wikipedia.

I'm also interested to know the manufacturers of Apple's CPUs/SoC (maybe even GPUs)

Apple is known to design the ARM used in the iDevices. But Apple definitely does not design everything. For example the GPU is a PowerVR G6430 and the ARM architecture is derived of ARM's V8-A.

On the Desktop/Laptop it's done by Intel since it's their CPU.

Apple's latest A7 are made by Samsung, but it's believed to shift to other manufacturers (for example TSMC) since Samsung is a major competitor for Apple.


Where is a good place to share automator files I've had a request to share an Automator workflow I made. Where is a good place to do that? Something like pastebin but for workflow files.

Gists on github are a great way to do that. Or just share the repo that contains the file on github.


My icloud password does not work when prompted on start up. This is a problem that is driving me nuts. I have tried everything I can find to get this to resolve. When I start my computer, I get a popup that wants my icloud password. I enter it and the password is not accepted. I then go to the browser icloud log in and I can log-in just fine. iTunes has issues as well. I plug-in my iPhone 6 (IOS 8) and the program does not see the phone. I went so far as to reinstall the ios in the phone.  Was better for a while but now just does not see the phone. Prior to the iphone everything worked without much trouble. But was not using iCloud sync service.  I also have a pop-upo on start-up requesting my Keychain password for call.app and sometime messenger.app.

You may need to run Keychain Repair to fix a few items in it that could be problematic. This issue is apparent due to the popups from the system requesting your Keychain password.

To check keychains for problems using Keychain First Aid:
Open Keychain Access, located in the Utilites folder in the Applications folder.
Choose Keychain Access > Keychain First Aid.
Enter your user name and password.
Select Verify and click Start. ...
If there are problems, select Repair, and then click Start.
 Apple KB (Note article says 10.6 but it'll work on up to 10.10)

Run the Keychain First Aid and have it repair anything that could be causing an issue. Restart the computer and see if you get the same prompts. At that point, you may need to reset the Keychain (note: this will delete all saved passwords for applications, etc):

Open Keychain Access, which is in the Utilities folder within the Applications folder.
From the Keychain Access menu, choose Preferences.
Click General, then click Reset My Default Keychain.
Authenticate with your account login password.
Quit Keychain Access.
Restart your computer.
Source


How to operate an iPad from a Mac or Windows PC? I have a setup in office where on a desk is a fixed iPad on a stand. On the same desk, I have a Windows PC or iMac.

Customer  is looking at iPad. I am the desktop user and I want to control the iPad from my desktop to demo a website. Customer looking at iPad should not see any part of my desktop other than the website. Since the stand secures the ipad and hides home button on the iPad, I want to be able to access the Home button from my desktop to wake up iPad from sleeping.

What is the solution for above?

You cannot wake an iPad with standard software from the desktop. You'll have to use one of the iPad models that support Tap to Wake instead (i.e. they can be woken up by touching the screen, and/or for some models by using the Apple Pencil on the screen).

For demoing the webpage you can use the Safari Web Inspector. On the iOS device you'll need to access System Settings => Safari => Advanced and then enable "Web Inspector".

Connect the iPad to your iMac and open Safari on the iMac. From the desktop Safari's Preferences, you'll need to enable "Show Develop menu in menu bar" in the Advanced tab.

Now you'll have a Develop menu in Safari where iPad has its own submenu. When you open Safari on the iPad, you can choose it from that menu - and you have various tools at your fingertips. For example you can highlight elements on the page using the element finder, or you can navigate to other pages, run Javascript code, or whatever you would like.

The above works because your use case is specifically to demo a web site. There's no generic solution for remotely controlling the iPad across the wake screen, home screen, built-in apps, third party, apps, etc. Solutions exists that allow you to see the contents of the screen (for example using Quicktime to record on the iMac, or using third party solutions such as TeamViewer). However, none of those allow you to remotely control the iPad.

It is possible to integrate remote control in specific apps, but it requires you to be able to modify the app - so it is in practice only an option for the app developer.


Is it possible to configure an Airport Extreme Base Station to forward to an external IP address? Our company has a small office but we often work remotely. One of our service providers requires that we access their customer service portal from a known IP address. We don't all have dedicated IPs for our home connection so we were hoping to use our Airport Extreme base station to setup a forward.

I expected to find this in Airport Utility->Network.

There is a section for Port Settings which we're using to forward specific ports to a windows machine on our local 10.0.1.x network. However, I'd like to forward the inbound traffic on a specific port back out to a public IP address so it looks like we're all hitting the portal from the office IP address.

When I try to add another entry the IP address to forward to (labeled Private IP Address) is already set to 10.0.1.

Is this possible with an Airport Extreme?

I don't think this is possible.

Possibly you could turn on a web server on one of your computers and forward the requests to that from the airport basestation. It then could be forwarded from that computer to the address.


How can I force an app to uninstall? I just installed an app that was a waste of my time. The problem is, when I long-pressed the app to delete it, it didn't show an (x).  How can I delete it?  I've looked through the settings.  I'm kind of new to iPods so if this is simple, just say it bluntly.

You open up Cydia>Manage and then delete the app. Enjoy!


Where does Apple Appstore commission for inApp purchases apply? I always knew that Apple has commission from paid apps, but I only just found out this applies to inapp purchases as well. Due to this, many apps raise the price of their inapp purchases on appstore so that they do not lose revenue when compared with other platforms where they sell these services. This obviously worries me as I do not want to spend more money than I have to and I want to know, when does the commission apply so I can try to avoid it as much as I can.
Examples of this:
YouTube premium - costs 13$/month on iPhone, but 10$/month everywhere else - 30% extra
Twitch Subs - cost 6$/month on iPhone, 5$/month everywhere else - 20% extra
Spotify premium - costs 7.3€/month on iPhone, but 6€/month everywhere else - over 21% extra

I do not know any other examples than this, but I am sure there are many, because not everyone is willing to take a 30% revenue cut.
My questions are:

Does this apply on shopping apps like Aliexpress, eBay, Wish or not?
Where else does this apply?
What should I avoid paying for through an iOS app and rather pay for through my PC?

I mean I pay monthly for many things. If I slapped an extra 20% on only half of them, I would be paying quite a bit extra! Say you pay for YouTube premium, 2 Twitch Subs and a Spotify Premium, which would total to 20$ and 6€ (about 27.5$ total) per month, but through iPhone it would cost me 25$ and 7.3€ (about 34$) per month, which is almost 7 dollars per month, I mean thats almost enough for another membership somewhere.

Yes, Apple takes a cut of the price both purchasing an app itself - and for in-app purchases. If they didn't do this, I imagine all apps would be free, requiring an in-app purchases - effectively circumventing the whole system.
This is similar to how it works on Android phones, where Google Play Store takes a similar cut of both the initial app price and additional in-app purchases.
On both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, the standard cut is 30% of the initial app price as well as for in-app purchases. However for subscription based in-app purchases, the cut is reduced to 15% after one year.
If the seller is a small business the fee is reduced to 15%. On the Apple Store that applies for companies selling less than $1 million worth of product on the App Store in a year. On the Google Play Store that applies for the first $1 million worth of product sold in a year.
Your question is then about shopping apps. The fees above apply to everything sold through in-app purchases. Items that you purchase by other means are not affected.
This means that for example physical goods and services, and person-to-person services (for example online fitness training, online tutoring services, medical consultations, etc.) are sold by other means, thus you're not paying Apple or Google anything in that case.
For some types of apps with digital content, Apple allows app sellers to let users access content they have purchased outside the app - for example from a PC. This is typically the so called "reader apps" (tv/movie streaming, magazines, newspapers, e-books, music streaming, etc).
Remember that when you purchase subscription from a vendor web site instead of through the App Store, you'll have the terms and conditions given by that web site. They might be worse than what you'll get from the App Store.


Upgrade to install iOS 12 on iPhone 8 I recently bought an iPhone 8. Today a badge appeared on the Settings app. Opening the app lead me to Software Update.

My iPhone is showing an update available for iOS 12.

I have some chat data in WhatsApp and Messages which is important. Also have some important photos. I don't want to lose all this data. What measures can I take to ensure data safety?

It is recommended to upgrade your iPhone 8 to iOS 12. iOS 12 is a free, major software update available for all eligible iOS devices. A major iOS software update named with an incremented version number is released by Apple every year. iOS 12 was released this year on 17 September 2018.

An iOS update helps you get more out of your device that you already own via free software update. iOS 12 is also touted by Apple to be a evolutionary update with a focus on performance. Thus, it is recommended to upgrade your iPhone 8 to iOS 12.

It is obvious to be concerned about safety of your data. To ensure that you don't lose access to your data, it is recommended to have a full backup of your device. If you use a Mac or a Windows computer, you can use iTunes to perform a full backup of your iPhone. In case you don't have a computer, you can also choose to backup your iPhone to iCloud over-the-air. Do note that the basic (free) tier of iCloud provides 5 GB of storage space.

To enable iCloud Backup, on your iPhone go to Settings app → Your name on top →  iCloud → iCloud Backup and turn it on.

Messages exchanges via Messages app are backed up to iCloud as well. WhatsApp has an in-app mechanism to take chat backup which you can use. (Behind the scenes, WhatsApp also uses iCloud storage for backup).

Last, to ensure safety of your photos, you can enable iCloud Photos in Settings app → Your name on top →  iCloud → Photos and turn on iCloud Photos.

Don't forget to make sure you have enough iCloud storage to enable all the aforementioned data backup. You can buy additional storage by choosing the desired monthly plan.

Note that apart from an yearly major update, a bunch of minor updates are also released by Apple frequently. iOS 12 has introduced the ability to turn on automatic updates which you can use. To turn on automatic updates, after installing iOS 12, go to Settings app → General → Software Update and turn on Automatic Updates.

It is a safe practise to have all the data backed up before upgrading iOS. The way the process is designed, OS upgrade doesn't affect user data or any installed apps on your iPhone and is generally safe to do so. Only recommendation is to keep the device battery charged/plugged in to a power source to ensure that the device doesn't run out of battery while update is in progress.


How to use Spyder keyboard shortcuts with Mac OS I'm using the Spyder IDE to do Python development on macOS. This IDE provides some keyboard shortcuts I'm used to from other platforms, especially

F9 for running a line or selection of lines of codes.
F5 for running an entire Python script.

Unfortunately they don't seem to work. I found a suggestion to reset the shortcuts within the application by going to Preferences -> keyboard shortcut and restore the defaults. That didn't work for me, so how can I make these shortcuts work?

nohillside gave me a good hint and deserves credit for this answer.  On a Mac when using F functions shortcuts where two different items are on that key, you have to use the "fn" key first at the left-hand bottom of your Apple keyboard.  If the the F function key has only one item, then you can use it directly without the "fn" in front.
Thus, on my own Apple keyboard (and I suspect yours is the same), you don't have to hit fn before F5 or F6.  But, you have to use fn in front of all the others.
Attempting to resolve this issue through the Preference -> Keyboard path just did not work at all for me, no matter what I tried.  And, I tried a lot of different things.
nohillside had uncovered another way to attempt to resolve this issue from a GitHub reference.  It seemed incredibly complicated and very invasive suggesting you modify numerous of your Python packages.  That seemed somewhat dangerous.  And, I am just sticking to the fn solution when typing F9.  That's easy enough, and not that tasking.


launchd plist format for running a command at a specific time on a weekday I'm trying to run a command at 10 minutes after 2am every weekday only.  In my launchd .plist file, how can I specify this?

I don't want it to run every 2 hours and 10 minutes, just once every weekday at the specified time.

There are a few caveats with creating launchd .plist files.  I'll summarize them below:

Each Weekday must be a  entry specified in an  placed in the StartCalendarInterval dictionary entry.
Weekdays go from 1 to 5.  Sunday is 0 and 7 (I know, right?)
You have to know how you want your item to run and place the .plist in the appropriate directories/folders:

~/Library/LaunchAgents - Specific to the user.  Will run when the user is logged in.
/Library/LaunchAgents - Specific to all users.  Will run when the user(s) is(are) logged in.
/Library/LaunchDaemons - Runs regardless if user(s) is(are) logged in.  Must use sudo to load .plist

My preference is #3 (load as a LaunchDaemon) so my script will get executed whether I am logged in or not.  When using as a LaunchDameon, you must use sudo to load the .plist:

sudo lauchctl load com.user.fileCleanup.plist

Note:  As for the naming convention in my example, I like to use com.user.< name of my script >.plist  This helps me in identifying and debugging any issues should they arise and keeps with the Apple naming convention of com.apple.some-app.plist  This is entirely optional on your part.

Below is a script that I am using to clean up work files (I modified it for your specific time parameters). You can edit this file with your favorite text editor (I use Komodo Edit), but TextEdit or even nano or vi from the command line will work.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.user.fileCleanup</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Users/allan/Documents/Scripts/Unix/fileCleanup.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <!--  Weekdays are 1 - 5; Sunday is 0 and 7   -->
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>1</integer>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>10</integer>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>10</integer>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>3</integer>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>10</integer>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>4</integer>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>10</integer>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>Weekday</key>
            <integer>5</integer>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>2</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>10</integer>
        </dict>
    </array>

</dict>
</plist>

Bonus Footage....

This next part is optional...

So that I can get some feedback that my scripts executed and what the result was, I created a small AppleScript function that invokes the display notification (it's quite simple for my needs, but obviously could be improved).

on run argv

    set Message to item 1 of argv
    set Title to item 2 of argv
    set aud to item 3 of argv
    set STitle to "Terminal"
    set Snd to "Blow.aiff"

    if (aud = "sound") then

        display notification Message with title Title subtitle STitle sound name Snd
    else
        display notification Message with title Title subtitle STitle
    end if

end run

Within my script, I check for success or failure, depending on what that is (i.e. a file existing in a particular directory), it will generate a notification.  If not, another notification, but this time with sound!

#!/bin/bash
if [ -f "$SOURCE" ]
then
    scp -q "$SOURCE" "$TARGET"
    osascript $ASCRIPT_DIR/notify.scpt "Podcast Transfered successfully" "$TITLE -- SUCCESS" "nosound"
else
    osascript $ASCRIPT_DIR/notify.scpt "The file $TARGET does not exist" "$TITLE -- ERROR" "sound"
fi

Here's the sample output:


Product to overlay MacBook Pro Touch Bar with physical keys Is there any product that you can buy that can be overlaid on the MacBook Pro's Touch Bar to simulate physical keys and hide the actual Touch Bar?

i.e, you'd configure the keyboard settings to use traditional non-changing function keys, and then you'd stick some sort of physical button strip on top, and it would function like a traditional Mac Book Pro.

One solution (albeit, a bit of a hack) that I found is to place a wireless magic keyboard over the top of the  built-in laptop keyboard.
If you place it in the right spot, it doesn't press the underlying keys (although see Karabiner information below to stop this issue).
As someone who despises the low action of the butterfly keys, this has the double benefit: (1) it restores traditional escape and function keys, and (2) it provides the awesome keyboard experience of the magic keyboard. It also means that you can use the trackpad.
It can also help to use Karabiner to disable the built-in keyboard when external keyboards are plugged in. This overcomes the problem of accidentally activating the keyboard undeath when pressing firmly on the magic keyboard.
For details on how to do this, see this post: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/235266/11747


Applescript to filter the clipboard Let say I have this in my clipboard :

************TH4F    fsdfssdggg0878  Ex.US   Unknown 0   $100.00 05/24/17 04:40  No Bonus
************TH4F    fsdfssdggg0878  Un.UK   Unknown 0   $50.00  05/20/17 04:44  No Bonus

who can I only keep the total and add it in a list and same for the date ?

I'm a bit stuck on the script for now :

repeat with i in (get (the clipboard)'s text items)
    return i
end repeat

You can't really (or shouldn't) use text items without first defining your text item delimiters.

If each field in the formatted text is separated by a tab character, then the task is trivial:

set my text item delimiters to tab

set cbTotals to {}
set cbDates to {}

repeat with row in the paragraphs of (the clipboard as text)
    set the end of cbTotals to text item 6 of the row
    set the end of cbDates to text item 7 of the row
end repeat

If the fields are, as they appear here, actually separated by a variable number of spaces, then one might be tempted to count each space between each field, and enumerate the text items in the same way we just did above.  However, this is impractical, and more importantly, it is not a very robust way to approach this in a general context, because the content of your data might change slightly at some point.  For example, you may, on one occasion, select the text flush with the start of the line, whilst on another occasion, over-select and include some leading whitespace.

One way to ensure consistency is to deal with the spaces first:

set my text item delimiters to space

set |cb₀| to the text items of (the clipboard as text)

repeat with cbField in |cb₀|
    if cbField's contents = "" then set cbField's contents to missing value
end repeat

set cb to the strings in |cb₀| as text

Now cb contains an homogeneously-delimited version of your clipboard data, where each field is separated by a single space character.  Now we can employ the same technique from earlier, and obtain the relevant text items.  Without changing your text item delimiters, which will currently be set to space:

set cbTotals to {}
set cbDates to {}

repeat with row in the paragraphs of cb
    set the end of cbTotals to text item 6 of the row
    set the end of cbDates to text item 7 of the row
end repeat


Retrieving creation date of iPhone Reminders Does the iPhone ≪Reminders≫ app store creation dates of the reminder lists and the individual items thereof?

Is there any way to retrieve the information using iCloud, PhoneView, iFunBox, etc?

You can open them on macos (osx) and export (file -> export). Then you'd get a raw version where you'd find CREATED field.


OSX cmd+tab behavior with multiple windows & monitors After upgrading to a second monitor I have run into some unexpected cmd+tab behavior that is really impacting my workflow:

With one monitor, when using cmd+tab to switch between applications, OS X gives the focus to the last active window of the application one switches to.
With multiple monitors, OS X prefers windows that are on the same monitor as the previous application.

To give an example:

Consider having Xcode on monitor 1 and Terminal (window A) on monitor 2 and (window B) on monitor 2; focus is on Terminal window B
you cmd+tab to Xcode
you cmd+tab back to Terminal, but now window A has the focus and not window B

This behavior is potentially hazardous as one starts to enter commands into Terminal before realizing that the focus is on the wrong window.

My question is: Is there a way to make cmd+tab always return to the last active window of an application no matter on which screen the focus at the moment?

System prefs > Mission Control... uncheck 'Displays have separate Spaces'
That would be my prime suspect. I switched that one off the day it appeared in the OS.

From comments, that will disable the ability to move the menu bar & dock to each screen on an ad-hoc basis, though - which may be best asked as a separate question requesting a possible 3rd party solution, as I know of no way to do that natively.


Can I turn off IPv4 and just use IPv6 on my iOS device? I am connected with my iPhone 6 / iOS 9.0 to an IPv6 network created following this article. When I take a look at the console of my device, I see

Aug 11 12:15:07 titos-iPhone kernel[0] <Notice>: 076991.368570 wlan0.N[15305] checkIPv4AddressValidity@6178: Local IPv4  address 169.254.199.45
Aug 11 12:15:07 titos-iPhone kernel[0] <Notice>: 076991.369991 wlan0.A[15306] receivedIPv4Address@1524: Received address 169.254.199.45, entering powersave mode 2
Aug 11 12:15:07 titos-iPhone kernel[0] <Notice>: 076991.370023 wlan0.A[15307] receivedIPv6Address@1547: Received IPv6 addresses 20:1:0:0:0:0:0:0c:4:1:d6:67:90:6f:98
Aug 11 12:15:07 titos-iPhone kernel[0] <Notice>: 076991.370032 wlan0.A[15308] receivedIPv6Address@1547: Received IPv6 addresses 20:1:0:0:0:0:0:011:71:3f:2:43:17:32:dd
Aug 11 12:15:07 titos-iPhone kernel[0] <Notice>: 076991.370042 wlan0.N[15309] startRoamScan@5689:5689 starting RoamScan; MultiAPEnv:0 isdualBand:1 isOn5G:0

Why do I see Received address 169.254.199.45 when I'm actually trying to connect to an IPv6 network?

How can I disable this behaviour and only receive an IPv6 address?

169.254.199.45 belongs to Zeroconf. This does not necessarily mean, that any IPv4 outgoing connection can be made or will be made. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link-local_address and http://www.zeroconf.org/ (maintained by an Apple employee)


How I can set command-delete as a custom keyboard shortuct? I would like to set ⌘+⌫ as the custom keyboard shortcut for an app (Anki). The problem is that I can't enter that key combination in the field next to the Keyboard Shortcut in App Shortcuts in System Preferences.
Does anyone have a solution or a way around this problem?
I would like that particular key combination because Anki has ⌘+⌦ set as delete note, but that is much harder to type because it requires holding the fn key.

I figured out the answer. It doesn't appear to be possible to achieve that using System Preferences. I had to use Terminal to directly edit defaults using the following command.
defaults write <plist name of application> NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict '<name of button in menu bar>' '@'
For instance, to map ⌘+⌫ to Delete menu item in Anki, I used the following command:
defaults write net.ankiweb.dtop NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict 'Delete' '@'
There is an invisible unicode character for backspace behind @. To enter it manually, open Emojis & Symbols and type "u+0008".


Messages from my phone show up on my macbook air My Macbook air keeps getting my phone messages but since the computer is a school computer it doesn't allow me to go into iMessage.

What should I do?

it is something you put in since you had that machine -- this is keying it to your account (without even the need for the application).

open system preferences/INTERNET ACCOUNTS, look through each you have set up and delete what you can -- or what is related to your messages account

this is the central directory for accounts like messages (could also be controlled or synced through icloud).


Using a single user account between two mac OS installations on same machine I've recently set up two different macOS/OS X versions on my Mac in order to support running some legacy software. Each system is on a separate drive partition and my user account is on a third partition. I've mapped the my user account for each OS installation to the third partition so that documents and settings are available when booting in either system and I don't have reconfigure all of my settings.

On the surface that has worked. However, I've noticed a few peculiarities with settings that have changed. My guess is that going back to the older OS which might have different configuration format the default settings were generated and saved. And then when booting in the newer OS they were 'migrated' overwriting the settings in the newer OS. This seems to correlate with increased CPU activity when I boot into the newer OS after using the older one. But this is just a theory.

Are there any particular things that I should do or avoid specifically with this kind of set up? Or are there reasons that this is not a good idea and I should use separate user accounts for each OS installation?

I accidentally set this is up and it runs perfectly. I have mountain lion to run old things I still need and Sierra on a separate partition. They both have full administrator access to each other under my user ID.

The way it happened was I installed Sierra and then copied the data from my mountain lion installation. From the new Sierra I had full access to the mountain lion partition including system folders and vice versa. I can even run some apps like VLC and Office from the other OS’s apps folder.

Now I want to reinstall Sierra but when I copy the data from the old Sierra partition it no longer recognises the two user IDs as the same me and I can’t access the other OS from either.

I would love to know the logic governing what makes two IDs recognisable as the same user so as to find a way to reinstall Sierra with its current state AND retain access between the two OSs.


How do I make a shortcut command in terminal? I want to have ll as a shortcut for ls -ll. How can I add it to my Termianl application? I use iTerm as my primary Terminal application. I wish there was a single line command solution for it.

Add it to your .bash_profile by running nano ~/.bash_profile and adding

alias ll='ls -ll'

Control + X, then Y, then Enter to save the file.

Restart Terminal. ll should now be an alias for ls -ll. Use it like you would any other commands.


What is volumelcon.icns Can someone tell me what volumelcon.icns is?  I'm attempting to remove unnecessary items from File Explorer and don't want to remove something that is required.

.VolumeIcon.icns is an invisible file which holds the display icon for each attached disk.
If you delete it - not worth it as it's only about 1MB anyway - it will simply be re-created.

As a general rule - if it's invisible… leave it alone.
BTW, Mac doesn't have a 'file explorer' it has Finder.


2017 MacBook Pro starts with a question mark folder when there is less charge and when it wakes up from sleep My 2017 MacBook Pro reboots with a question mark folder when the charge is below 50%. When I connect my charger, it starts normally. I also noticed when the Macbook goes to sleep and wakes up, it shows the same problem. Also, it becomes really hot when i use heavy software like FCP and starts hanging. I went to the Apple Store and they asked me to reinstall macOS, which didn't work. The common issue with the question mark problem is the SSD, but in my case its not the SSD. I ran a speed test and the SSD is working properly. Do any of you guys have a solution?

I solved this unchecking the option "Put the hard disk to sleep when possible" under System Preferences > Energy Saver, both in "Battery" and "Power adapter" tabs.


Why does my Mac start up immediately when plugged in, while my iPhone needs to start up? What causes the difference between my mac an my iPhone, where my Mac can boot and become useful immediately after being plugged in, while my phone needs a couple of minutes before it can even start to boot?

It's sometimes a bit frustrating, but in many cases, understanding the reason makes things like this less irritating to me.

What causes the difference between my mac an my iPhone, where my Mac
  can boot and become useful immediately after being plugged in, while
  my phone needs a couple of minutes before it can even start to boot?

The primary source of power for a mobile device is it’s onboard battery. So it needs to be charged to some degree for the device to work.

When you say your Mac I am going to assume it is a MacBook of some sort. Because in the case of laptops, the system is designed to either run off of the built-in battery power or off of direct AC current if it detects it is plugged into AC power.


DIY Fusion Drive: Adding Recovery HD to a CoreStorage Volume Group After creating a "DIY Fusion Drive" using the methods below in 10.8, I'm now wondering how to add a RecoveryHD partition to the internal drive.

Here's what I did to create a Logical Volume Group across two physical volumes (128G SSD/750GHD)

(make a clone / backup of all your data first)
diskutil list (take note of the disk## of the two drives. In my case: disk0/disk1)
diskutil corestorage create fusion_volume_group disk0 disk1
diskutil corestorage list (take note of the Logical Volume Group UUID)
diskutil corestorage createVolume <UUID> jhfs+ FusionHD 749g
restore the clone onto the FusionHD

This worked great, but now my RecoveryHD is gone.  I'd like to add it back (it's on the external drive I cloned from my original HD)

Here's what the partition layout looks like right now:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         119.7 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         749.3 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               650.0 MB   disk1s3
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS FusionHD               *744.5 GB   disk2

Does anyone know the diskUtil commands to add the recovery HD?  Ideally after the fact, which is where I'm at now?

You'll need to partition the drives first, putting the Recovery partition on one of your physical drives. It can't be part of the Fusion drive as its unlikely you can boot directly into a Core Storage logical volume (you need a boot loader separately).

Take note of the partition structure in this Ars Technica article about the Fusion drive.

The best way to do this is probably to start fresh by reinstalling Mountain Lion on either the SSD or HDD, then repeat the Fusion process with just the proper partition.

Once you've done a standard install, check your partitions by running diskutil list, which should give output similar to this:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *120.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            119.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

Make note of the identifier of the Macintosh HD partition (disk0s2 in this case).

Then do the same steps you performed before, but change the diskutil corestorage create fusion_volume_group command so to specify the disk0s2 (or whatever the equivalent in your case is), and the identifier of the drive you didn't install OS X on. The resulting command should be similar to diskutil corestorage create fusion_volume_group disk0s2 disk1 but make sure you've got the identifiers correct. The key is that we want to make a volume group out of just the Macintosh HD partition, not the whole drive (so that the EFI and Recovery partitions don't get wiped out). Then follow the rest of the procedure as you did before.


Does the time zone in a mail header help me to identify the country of origin? I sent this from Ct USA eastern time last night. When he replied it says GMT. Does this mean he is in England or another country).

All we can deduce from this is that the sender is using a computer (or an iPad) on which the time zone is set to GMT+1. If accurate this means western Europe or parts of Africa. But as everybody can set their computer to whatever time zone they like it could be from anywhere.

For more information about time zones see the Time Zone Map or the Time Zone entry on Wikipedia.