Dictionary doesn't work after upgrade to Catalina - why there is no reference sources here There are not reference sources under "Drag reference sources into the order you prefer", how can I drag them? and how to add these reference sources(dictionaries)?

They are supposed to be added automatically as a part of post-upgrade updating process. The upgrade itself doesn't bring everything up to date, the apps that are not part of the OS and some nonessential components are updated later.

If you are stuck with the lack of dictionaries for a prolonged time (more than a day and a couple or so of restarts), and especially if you see the degraded overall performance of your Mac, most probably the updating process is broken. I had the same picture yesterday, so I've started investigating and solved it. Maybe you have the same bug that I have had, maybe not. Still, I hope my solution would help, and to make it more general, I will describe the process, too -- so that even if your source of trouble is different, you can find your own solution.

So, first I've opened the Activity Monitor to found that trustd and nsurlsessiond are eating up the CPU. I even had to kill trustd (nsurlsessiond went down after that, too) so that I could continue to work without lots of spinballs. It looked like trustd tries to verify some app, and calls nsurlsessiond for update information and/or update itself, which, in turn, fails.

Then I've opened the Console and started searching in logs for nsurlsessiond -- and found lots of records that __mkdir failed to create a directory, "not permitted". The directory in question was /private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n00000y800007k/0 . I went to its parent /private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n00000y800007k and I've found in the Get Info that while _nsurlsessiond as a user had Read and Write permission, as a group it had Read only permission. Now, /private/var/folders/zz/ is not a place to mess with, but adding a permission to a known daemon and creation of a new directory are not that dangerous, so I did both: changed the permission of group _nsurlsessiond for /private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n00000y800007k to Read and Write (to do that you must first unlock it in the right-down corner of Get Info box), and created a new folder "0" in it, making sure it also gets Read and Write privilege for _nsurlsessiond.

Then I've restarted, and let the Mac idle for a while. Soon App Store showed updates for some apps that I didn't even remember. I let them all update, updated some other apps that could not auto-update previously (such as Chrome), and again let it idle or semi-idle while I was browsing the web etc. I intentionally avoided opening the Dictionary app at that time. Today I restarted the Mac again, opened the Dictionary app, and found that all its dictionary tabs  are back; when I've clicked on the German tab, it said "wait a minute for a download" and almost immediately showed me the dictionary. All the other dictionaries were back, too, after that.


Mac Mini 2018 which memory bank is which? Just installed 2 x 16 GB RAM in my Mac Mini 2018. Only the memory in bank 2 / channelB is recognized, not the one on bank 0 / channelA. But which one is bank 0 and which one is bank 2?

after opening it for checking/fixing issue: bank0is the one closer to the middle of the mainboard, bank2 is the one more outside.


What is the MAX pixel estate I can get from a MBAir 2011 with multiple displays? I intend to buy a MBAir 11 and need lots of pixels.

the more I have the better. If I could have 4 30' screen I'd do it.
Graphic performance is of absolutely no interest to me, as I only do programming and bloomberg.

What is the configuration that gives the most pixel estate ?

As has been said in the other answer, you are restricted to a single external display with the built-in hardware.

You can however add extra external displays using USB based display adapters. For example I use one of the DisplayLink adapters. Some of the DisplayLink adapters can do 2048x1152. There will be a limit to how many USB adapters make sense, before you start saturating the USB bus. But it should be fine for a couple of extra displays.

USB based adapters aren't well suited to 3D gaming and full screen video, but should be fine for what you want.


How to install .dict.dz/.index files to OSX dictionary.app I have a dictionary that consists of a dictionary.dict.dz and dictionary.index files. How can I install this dictionary for use with OSX dictionary app (running Mavericks)?

It works fine with GoldenDict, but I'd prefer to have this dictionary amongst the rest.

DictUnifier, which I have used to install a few other dictionaries, doesn't recognize the file.

It looks like your input files are in the DICTD format. This can be converted to AppleDict XML source and then compiled for use with the OSX built-in dictionary using pyglossary as described at https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/119166/66812.


Updated to OS X Yosemite, everything has deleted So I've already tried to find a solution on Google, but I'm not really good at following some broad IT instructions.

If you guys could help, that's be more than awesome!

After I installed OS X Yosemite, all my stuff was gone!

It's like a whole new Mac!

Meanwhile, I have figured out that my usual stuff is still stored somehow on my Mac, but I don't know how to get it back to being my regular account.

If I go to Finder > Macintosh HD > Users, there's a folder with all my stuff in my regular account.

Any assistance would be truly appreciated!

Since you can see your "stuff" it is still there but under another user.

Somehow you made a mistake and created a brand new User account with nothing in it so now you have 2 users on your computer each with they separate folders and files.

What you need to do is to log out of that user account (go to Apple icon top left and select log out).

Now you can log in in to your other user account.


Time machine encrypted backups Possible Duplicate:
  Time Machine + FileVault on Lion or Mountain

During a Time Machine backup, is the backed up data at any time unencrypted?

If yes: can I disable that at the cost, perhaps, of time/space?
If no: why does the system say "Encryping..." when I stop a running backup before returning the Time Machine state to "waiting for next backup"?

The new FileVault is a whole drive encryption, so Time Machine doesn't do any sort of encryption. The kernel / OS handles encryption as the data gets written to the drive so it's an all-or-none type of thing.

Once encryption is on for a specific drive, all new writes are encrypted whether or not Time Machine or another process is writing. The "Encrypting..." status is transient where the system is going through every block on the device and encrypting it so short of disabling the entire drive's setting to be under FileVault control there is no way to opt out of encryption for some new writes while leaving the encryption enabled.


How to make a custom keybind that runs an applescript file? No additional questions. I'm fine with installing an additional program.

First, (Automator -> New -> Service) to paste the code, and then (System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Services) to bind the Service to a keyboard shortcut.
BetterTouchTool
Karabiner


How to show file/window names in Mission Control? I need to switch between windows often across apps. I have 4 terminals open, 5 projects in Visual Studio Code, 4 github repos open in Sublime Merge, 3 Finder windows, 6 Chrome windows, and on top of that 1 each of Music, Preview, Octave, SlickEdit, TextEdit

I need to switch between VSCode, Sublime Merge, and Terminal most often and to specific windows but as you can see from the screenshot below it's difficult to figre out which window is which

I can hover over each window one at time and it will show a title but it's really tedious to hover over several windows.

Is there a way to get Mission Control to always draw the titles over every window?

I keep one app on one desktop, so I switch to the relevant desktop, and use App Exposè which is generally three finger swipe down. It shows the window name below each window and hovering isn't required.

Application name not appearing below thumbnail in mission control unless cursor is on it
What is an efficient way for developers / power users to use OSX window management and Spaces on a single screen?


High Sierra: Converted to APFS and Finder not updating available capacity I'm running OS 10.13.1 and I did a fresh install of High Sierra and imported my files, apps, etc via the migration assistant. I have an original Apple SSD installed.

Since installing, the available capacity in the Finder is delayed in updating and inconsistent. Updating available space can take hours, days, or require a restart.

Currently the finder says I have 127.09GB (out of 500GB) available.
Disk Utility has 123.03 available.
"About This Mac" shows 93.67GB available.
System Information shows 79.4GB available.

Anyone else having these kinds of issues and is there a way to get available space to 1) be accurate and 2) update instantly?

Since you asked if anyone else is having these kinds of issues, yes, I can share that almost a year later, on the current version of High Sierra, this is still a bug. You basically can't trust the available space number now. I'll leave open the possibility that someone has a workaround.

In my case, we moved 20GB of files off the boot drive and deleted another 10GB (emptying the trash immediately). The free space number didn't change (other than to actually decrease slightly. I fiddled with checking various things – Finder Get Info on the disk, also had the false number. Finally as I was staring at the number at the bottom of the Finder window (the status bar) it snapped from 47GB to 77GB before my eyes.

I'll avoid giving my honest advice for how to get this basic feature working since it would not technically be an Apple-related answer so it might be ruled as off-topic.


How do I copy photos from an iMessage chat to the iOS Camera Roll? When I long press on a photo someone shared with me in an iMessage chat I get three main options: Copy, More..., and Speak. More only presents options to delete all, or select some messages to forward to someone. Speak doesn't seem useful. So can I copy a photo into my camera roll?

Tap on the photo bubble in the message list.
Tap to bring up the photo controls.
Press the Share button, and select Save Image.

This works in both iOS 6 and iOS 7.


How can I format my USB? I tried before to make a bootable USB but it failed.  When I now try to format it normally I can't.  Trying this and that shows:

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *15.9 GB    disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Untitled                15.6 GB    disk2s2

MacBook: diskutil unmountDisk force /Volumes/Untitled
Forced unmount of all volumes on disk2 was successful
MacBook: diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ Test /dev/disk2
Started erase on disk2
Unmounting disk
Creating the partition map
Error: -69877: Couldn't open device
MacBook:

Unplug your usb stick
Restart your mac
Download gdisk from https://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/files/latest/download
Double click the package and install gdisk.
Then open up your terminal and type diskutil list
Find the usb disk that you are trying to erase (/dev/diskx)
Unmount the disk you are trying to erase with diskutil unmountDisk force /dev/diskx
type use gdisk on the disk you want to erase. sudo gdisk /dev/diskx
Once in gdisk, type x for expert command and press enter.
Type ? to verify you are in the expert menu. Look for zap (destroy) GPT data structures and exit
Type z
When asked if you would like to delete the MBR partition also, type YES and hit enter.
Gdisk will now erase your GPT and MBR and tell you it is now okay to reformat in disk utility or another partitioning utility. Do so, and let us know if you can now format your disk.

IF NONE OF THIS WORKS. TRY THE FOLLOWING:

Unmount the disk you are trying to erase with diskutil unmountDisk force /dev/diskx
Use the DD command to erase your USB stick with zeros by entering sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/rdiskX bs=1m, where diskX is the usb disk you want to erase. This will take a long time. Please be patient.

FINALLY IF THAT DOESN'T WORK...
Create a linux live cd like linux mint, and boot from it. Then use gparted to erase and format your usb.

IF NONE OF THESE WORK...
Then your usb stick is most likely bricked and has hardware failure. Throw it out.


Four Apple Monitors on a Macbook Pro I have a 15" Mid-2014 Retina MacBook Pro and would like to hook additional monitors to it. Ideally, these would be 4x 27" Apple Displays of some sort.

I have done a bit of Googling, but information on this sort of configuration seems to be a bit sparse. Here's what I know:

This model can officially support 2x Thunderbolt Displays.
Thunderbolt displays can be daisy-chained.
Apple LED Cinema Displays (Mini DisplayPort model) can be daisy-chained off of Thunderbolt displays, but only if there are 1 or more thunderbolt devices separating them, and them
USB to (mini) DisplayPort adapters (external video cards) exist, but can only output at 720p to an iMac or Cinema Display.
USB to Thunderbolt adapters do not exist at this point. (And probably never will)
It is easy to go from (mini) DisplayPort to HDMI, but not the other way.

Based on the above, I have come up with several options in decreasing order of preference. (Ranging from simple/elegant to hackish) I'd like to know if anyone has tried any of these, and what kind of success you have had, or if you've done something different that I haven't thought of.

One last thing. When these monitors are plugged in, the computer will be in clamshell mode in a Henge vertical dock, so it won't need to power the internal display.

Option 1:
4 Thunderbolt displays. Two plugged into the thunderbolt ports, one daisy-chained off of each of those.

I understand that this probably won't work, but am wondering if anyone has tried it.

Option 2:
Two Thunderbolt Displays, each with an LED Cinema Display hooked up to it with, something in between (ie. a docking station)

I understand that this configuration will work if I hook up 1 pair, but need to know if the computer can handle 2.

Option 3:
Some way of getting a DisplayPort signal from a USB video card, Two thunderbolt displays, and two DisplayPort displays.

I haven't been able to find anything here, but if anyone knows about anything, I would really appreciate it.

EveryMac has some words of warning on trying to run 3 additional displays from a MacBook Pro…

  On a 15-Inch Retina Display MacBook Pro, site sponsor OWC briefly tested three external displays -- two iMacs used as displays at 2560x1440 via Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt/DisplayPort and an LG monitor at 1920x1200 via HDMI -- and shared that "moving images and media didn't create any lag and we were able to play video on all four displays simultaneously."

  However, in more detailed evaluation, a helpful EveryMac.com reader reported:

  I have a "Mid-2012" Retina Display MacBook Pro with two 27" Thunderbolt Displays daisy chained in clamshell mode. I tried adding a third 1920x1200 Dell monitor via the HDMI port, and it actually does work. But here is the catch: with no external displays, the system fans hover around 2600 RPM. With two 27" Thunderbolt Displays, regardless of what I do, the fans hover around 2800-3200 RPM. The GPU diode temp reads 69°C (156°F). If I force it via a fan control program to run at 2500 RPM, the GPU heats up. I was afraid of damaging my computer so I turned the fans back to auto-mode.
  Now the kicker. I tried with the three monitors and the fans go up to 4800 RPM. That's without doing anything. If I start running a YouTube clip, or do anything remotely CPU or graphics intensive, the fans max out at 5900 RPM (which is the max the machine will do). I exceeded that by having a few videos running at the same time, fired up 3 virtual machines, and had it compile some code. The whole system became choppy and it began stuttering.
  Since then, I've never used three monitors, just the two Apple Thunderbolt Displays. Apple probably doesn't officially recommend using three displays because it gets too hot.

  Ultimately, although the Retina Display MacBook Pro models are technically capable of running three external displays as well as the internal one, the above reader is highly likely to be correct. Although Apple does not formally provide a reason for why only two external displays are supported, it is clear that the system can overheat with three connected. Consequently, EveryMac.com does not recommend running more than two external displays on the Retina Display MacBook Pro models.


Adobe Flash not working I have a user on a MacBook Pro with Yosemite that tried to install Flash.  She downloaded the installer and ran it.  It said it completed, but Flash is not working in Chrome or Safari.  I downloaded the uninstaller from Adobe and ran it to uninstall Flash.  It said it was successful.  I then redownloaded the Flash installer and ran it successfully.  Still, Flash is not working in either browser.

Ideas?

One place to check is chrome://plugins/ in Google Chrome. Just type that into the address bar and hit ENTER. You should see a list of all the plugins that are available through Chrome. If you've downloaded and installed Flash, you should see two entries there. One for your own install and one for the version of Flash that comes bundled with Chrome. It will also tell you there if the plugin is disabled or enabled.

Also if you go into Settings in Chrome and search for "Flash" it will highlight the "Content Settings..." button under Privacy. Check Plug-Ins under there and see whether "Block all" has been chosen from the available "Run automatically|Click to play|Block all" options.

Another thing to check for are ClickToPlugin or ClickToFlash extensions that can be set to selectively block Flash plugins. You can find the installed Chrome extensions with "Extensions" from the Window menu and the installed Safari extensions with "Safari Extensions..." under the Safari application menu.


How can I mark a podcast as "Listened to" on my iPhone? Is there a way to mark a podcast as "Listened to" on my iPhone/iPod? Occasionally I get podcasts that I've already heard, and I was hoping there was a quick way to mark them as played.

Well, you could start playing it and quickly fast-forward to the end.  Or, you could use a different app for podcasts, such as Instacast or Pocket Casts.


External hard drive disconnected during reformat: now will not format Using disk utility, I was erasing and re-formatting to FAT. During that process, the usb cable was removed. Now, the hard drive will not format. When recognizing the hard drive, a window shows up stating "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer" with the options to "initialize; ignore; eject." "Initialize" does not seem to do anything.
Disk Utility shows the physical drive, but no sub folder (volume?) When attempting to erase and create a new partition, I get an error.
The disk was already empty, so I'm not worried about retrieving files, but is the drive itself physically damaged?

You could try overwriting the partition table with zeros. To do so, enter sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk3 bs=1m count=1 in a Terminal window. This will overwrite the first megabyte of the drive with zeros, which will include (and thus erase) the partition table (or its remnants). Remove and re-insert the drive; if everything goes well it will tell you that the disk was not readable and it'll offer to initialise the disk. (I tried this with an old USB stick a minute ago and it worked fine.)


Reinstall Mountain Lion on an older mac I bought a new mac and want to sell my old one. It came with Snow Leopard but I upgraded a few times since I bought it. I have deauthorized, reformatted and reinstalled OS X on my mac following the instructions here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5189

When I reinstalled, it installed Mountain Lion (not Snow Leopard) and asked me for my iTunes account to verify that I purchased Mountain Lion. I used Command-Q to quit after the install, so it is at the factory default welcome screen at the moment.

My question: if I sell it, is my iTunes account tied to the computer now since it asked for that during installation? And if so, is it possible to return it to an identity-free state to sell?

I just saw this article this morning that might be helpful: How to Prepare a MacBook Pro For Sale that was Upgraded to Mavericks by Scott Williams


Will macOS Big Sur remove the default Python installation for good? I initially thought that this would happen with Catalina, but since it didn't happen a similar question is again relevant:
My question is two fold:

When I eventually update to macOS Big Sur, will the Python (2.7.X) installation – which currently ships with macOS – get removed from my system?
What about if I do a fresh install; will python be gone then?

Relevant section from macOS Catalina 10.15 Release Notes (emphasis mine):

Scripting Language Runtimes
Deprecations

Scripting language runtimes such as Python, Ruby, and Perl are included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won’t include scripting language runtimes by default, and might require you to install additional packages. If your software depends on scripting languages, it’s recommended that you bundle the runtime within the app. (49764202)
Use of Python 2.7 isn’t recommended as this version is included in macOS for compatibility with legacy software. Future versions of macOS won’t include Python 2.7. Instead, it’s recommended that you run python3 from within Terminal. (51097165)

Source: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/macos-release-notes/macos-catalina-10_15-release-notes

I can't find anything about this in Big Sur's release notes though.
Edit: I am not actively using Python 2, I'm simply wondering this since it might affect some 3rd party software which relies on the OS's Python installation.

No, on Apple Macs being shipped with Big Sur, Python 2 and Python 3 are both still included.
$ which python
/usr/bin/python

$ python --version
Python 2.7.16

$ which python3
/usr/bin/python3

$ python3 --version
Python 3.8.2

This is on an M1 Mac mini running macOS Version 11.0.1.


How can multiple people do the same workout? We have subscribed as a family to Apple Fitness+ and have it via a TV with Apple TV. All family members have access to the Apple TV already via profiles.
It’s possible to have one person’s watch synchronised with the TV, but is there a way of allowing multiple people to do the same workout at the same time?

I've not seen a way to do this so I've thought it may be possible to start the exercise simultaneously on a iPhone/iPad and do the workout using the TV with another family member but still get your activity updated because you were paired on the phone.


When I set an export PROMPT_COMMAND, it changes my terminal settings? So, I wanted to add a timestamp to my terminal prompt and I followed this  askUbuntu answer to do so. And it works fine. In my terminal preferences I have set the new tab to open the present working directory. After adding the export PROMPT_COMMAND in .bash_profile, however my new tab opens the default directory. When I comment out that line, it works normally again.

Why does this happen? How can I get timestamps on my terminal prompt without messing up my new tab settings

The problem is that PROMPT_COMMAND is used by the system bash to enable per-session history. If you look at /etc/bashrc_Apple_Terminal you see

# Note that this uses PROMPT_COMMAND to enable per-session history
# the first time for each new session. If you customize PROMPT_COMMAND
# be sure to include the previous value. e.g.,
#
#   PROMPT_COMMAND="${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND; }your_code_here"

So if you want to follow the recommendations in the advice you've linked to you are better off just using

export PS1="\t [\u@\h \W]\\$ \[$(tput sgr0)\]"

or similar. If you really want to use PROMPT_COMMAND

PROMPT_COMMAND="${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND; }echo -n \[\$(date +%H:%M:%S)\]\ "

but the prompt will get messed up if you navigate back in time with Ctrl-P.


Where is the insert key on a MacBook Air? I am trying to edit a line of code within a program that I use for work.

I need to use the insert key to be able to add additional spaces that I can then type letters, numbers or characters.

How to get this function to work on my MacBook Air?

FN + Return = Insert

(MacBook Air 13)

Also Works on MacBook Pro.


Why does my blutooth output sound bad when input is on? When I have my bluetooth headphones connected to my mac, if an application is using the Input, the quality of output is extremely degraded. Why is this? How can I fix it?

This can be reproduced by going to the input tab of system preferences while listening to music in the background.

Here's video of whats going on in Audio MIDI setup, the Format seems to be degraded to 16kHz.

https://i.imgur.com/qi356xp.mp4

Kinda of relevant. I found this app and in the description it says something interesting:

  Get the best audio quality. macOS will normally use the SCO codec if it think you're going to use the microphone.

Could this be the issue I am having?

I just checked by holidng the option key (suggested by @bmike) on the menu bar icon. The codec does indeed switch from ACC to SCO when the mic is activated.

Also relevant:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7814292?answerId=31255072022#31255072022
https://audaciousfox.net/2017/airpods-macos-call-quality-fix

I'm just going to say it.. the "fix" of switching to the internal mic is not really a fix. It's a workaround, for a broken experience and promise. Lots of people post this as a fix. It's not. Imagine Apple advertising their headphones like this - "Enjoy bluetooth music and talking with your iPhone, iPad, and MacBook*(quality will be significantly degraded when using bluetooth microphone). That would be a joke, but it's actually what is happening. When people buy bluetooth headphones, they want to listen AND talk with them, not switch to a MacBook internal microphone. To be fair, all of my bluetooth headphones have this issue. You can see in the Audio MIDI app that bluetooth input is set in stone to use a lower quality. I even tried a tutorial I found online where the person said that changing the bluetooth plist file would fix it, but I tried it and no fix. For whatever reason, Apple choose to set the bluetooth input to the lowest possible quality on a MacBook.. but that's not the case for iPad and iPhone. So why is it like this on a MacBook? Apple? We are waiting for you to give us a true "fix".

-Here's a link to the fix that worked for someone, but not for me.. maybe it'll work for you. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6879939


USB C, HDMI Switch for MacBook Pro/Mac Mini I know nothing about KVM switches, but they seem to be what I need to easily swap between my home computer and my work laptop on my HDMI Monitor, Keyboard, and Mouse.

I bought https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07M66SD79/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 but when I swapped to the MacBook Pro which is USB-C only nothing worked. I'm currently using it for the Mac Mini, but I need a solution that actually lets me switch between both.

I'm not really interested in having it act as a power supply for either because those are seem wildly expensive and I already have power supplies for them.

If I have to: https://www.aten.com/global/en/products/usb-&-thunderbolt/docking-switches/us3310/ seems as though it would work, but they seem focused on having a latop and smartphone plugged in. Not a laptop and mac mini. Power supply seems concerning here.

Keyboard and mouse only

Only taking into account the keyboard and mouse you can perhaps use software to share those with multiple devices instead of hardware.

Synergy can do this, but is currently paid.
The last free version is 1.8.8 and is available at sourceforge.

Screen, keyboard and mouse

Alternatively you can access one machine (e.g. the Mac Mini) via remote desktop from the other (e.g. the MacBook Pro). If they're on the same local network and depending on the use case the speed should be very acceptable.

I'm not affiliated with Synergy, just a happy user.


Open iMovie '09 .rcproject in iMovie 10 I have a vintage 2009 iMovie project (.rcproject) I rescued from an old Time Machine backup, and I'm trying to open it in iMovie 10 under Yosemite. It's large enough that I'm pretty sure it does actually have the video in it.

Unfortunately there's no just "open a file" option and everything I can find on line about the '09 -> 10 transition is about upgrading your iMovie "library". I haven't got a library, just one .rcproject file. How do I convince iMovie 10 this is something it can upgrade / open?

(Additional info: I do have iMovie 9.0.9 on this machine, but under Yosemite it refuses to launch.)

In iMovie 09 an RCProject file is a binary text file which contains instructions and references to the actual video material. The actual video clips are stored in an Event folder. Check to see if you still have your Event folders. The clips would be in there.

You mention that your RCProject file is large. This probably means that you rendered your finished movies. iMovie saved the "Media Browser" copy in the rcproject file so it doesn't have to render it again unless you make a change.

So open your RCProject file and navigate to the Movies folder. Any completed movies would be in there.

To open the RCProject, right click on it in the Finder and select SHOW PACKAGE CONTENTS.

One more thing: If you do find the Event folder to go with the RCProject folder, iMovie is finicky about where these files are located.

Put the RCProject file in the Movies/iMovie Projects/ folder.
Put the Event in the Movies/iMovie Events/ folder.

With these in place, there is a chance that iMovie 10 will see them. However, I am not sure if you have to convert to iMovie 11 (which is version 9) first. Both iMovie 9 and iMovie 11 use the RCProject format. The current iMovie is called iMovie (no year) and is Version 10. It uses a scheme more like Final Cut Pro, so everything is in an Event folder, including any projects relating to that event.


"Command not found" when attempting to cd in Terminal I am getting errors trying to set up web starter kit via Terminal. I get an error trying to install the kit:
$ cd web-starter-kit $ npm install returns -bash: $: command not found.

How do I get this to work?

Davids-iMac-3:~ david$ git clone https://github.com/google/web-starter-kit.git
Cloning into 'web-starter-kit'...
remote: Counting objects: 4397, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (102/102), done.
remote: Total 4397 (delta 12), reused 81 (delta 3)
Receiving objects: 100% (4397/4397), 7.15 MiB | 196.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (1572/1572), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
Davids-iMac-3:~ david$ $ cd web-starter-kit/app
-bash: $: command not found
Davids-iMac-3:~ david$ $ cd web-starter-kit $ npm install
-bash: $: command not found
Davids-iMac-3:~ david$

The first $ in the command should not be typed.  It represents the unix prompt.

So, instead of

$ cd web-starter-kit/app

you should use

cd web-starter-kit/app


Charge MacBook with USB (Adapters?) I want to buy an external charger, it has USB. Are there any adapters (including transformators, I think that might be needed, right?) so I can charge my MacBook with the external charger?

That is not possible.

The USB can not carry the Voltage (14 V) and Current (> 1 Amp) required to charge MBP.

If it is for the car, you can try this product http://www.amazon.com/Spal-Magsafe-Adapter-Charger-Notebook/dp/B009G1B22O


Is there an app that just posts to Twitter and Facebook? I'm looking for a Mac (and/or iPhone) app that allows me to post to both Twitter and Facebook in one action. The trick is that I only want the app to push data. I don't want it to pull down any content from either services. The reasoning behind this is that I want to be able to make a post without moving the reference point in Twitter for the last thing I've read (a la TweetDeck).

Does such an App exist?

Note: There doesn't seem to be a good way to do this yet. The answer I accepted is as close as it looks like you can get currently.

I use If This Than That to do stuff like this. It's like glue for internet services.

There's a bunch of recipes that post Facebook wall updates to Twitter automatically for you. Here's one: http://ifttt.com/recipes/1854

This would save you from having to open a Twitter client. But now you've got posts in Facebook truncated in Twitter because of the length restrictions.

Why not just switch to a better Twitter client? One that has TweetMarker support?

If you want to try the best-of-the-best but bleeding edge check out the currently-in-beta Tweetbot for OS X. It's a sweet, sweet client and with TweetMarker support you can open it, tweet a new tweet, and then close it down and it doesn't lose your position. It even syncs the position other TweetMarker-enabled clients.

If you're not willing to run beta software try Twitterrific -- also has TweetMarker support and also doesn't lose your position if you open, tweet, and then close it down again.

If you use one of these Twitter clients and combine them with an IFTTT recipe that reposts and tweet you make with the #fb hashtag to Facebook you'll be all set. Here's the recipe I use.


Collapsing file groups in Mac finder A folder in my mac is set to list view and files are grouped by kind like Images, Movies, documents etc. I wonder if there is a way to expand/collapse entire groups.

In windows, there's an arrow next to the group name and when you click it, the group will expand/collapse. But I can't find a way to do that in mac. If I have hundreds of files in one category, say, Images, I have to scroll all the way to reach the next one (movies, documents etc). If this is not possible in finder, is there any alternative?

Edit: To be clear, I'm wondering if there's a way to expand/collapse the group headers (eg: Images, movies, documents etc) and not folders.

None of the groupings allows you to collapse/expand folder in List view. So to facilitate quick grouping, (I forgot defaults) go to View menu -> customise toolbar and include the  icon in toolbar.

You can group by None and then later set Sort by to Kind. It will not allow "Kind" groups to be collapsed, but allows the same for folders, at least.

After your edit, I am prompted to suggest the Icon view and Group by Kind. It has collapse and expand groups of a particular kind.


Is it a known problem that Time Machine does (sometimes) not backup Thunderbird profiles completely? I restored my system completely from a Time Machine backup only to find out that for quite a time about 5 Gigs of data are missing in the backup of my Thunderbird profile.

I can follow the weeks back where it started, but it doesn't help as those files would be weeks old and not contain the ones from, say, yesterday.

There is no folder manually excluded via Time Machine configuration. It's just missing.

Besides the Time Machine configuration there is another way to exclude files and folders from being backed up with Time Machine: the com_apple_backup_excludeItem attribute.

To find all files or folders with this attribute enter in Terminal:

mdfind "com_apple_backup_excludeItem = com.apple.backupd"

To check if the attribute is set for a single file or folder use:

xattr -x /path/to/item

If you get a result similar to this one: com.apple.metadata:com_apple_backup_excludeItem the item is excluded from a Time Machine backup.

Or:

tmutil isexcluded /path/to/item

If you get the result -    /path/to/item the item is excluded or +     /path/to/item the item isn't excluded.

To remove this attribute from an item use:

tmutil removeexclusion /path/to/item


Preview files in finder without quicklook I'm a programmer and I use a lot of different file types that are all plain text.  I would like to view the contents of the files in finder, but not in QuickLook, rather in the right-most preview pane, like it does for standard text files.

I'd like the same thing for my codefiles (.scala, .html, .css, etc...)

The plugin qlstephen does in fact show the content of text-based files in the preview pane, not only the QuickLook window.  What really threw me off was that the pop-up window & the pane embedded in finder are both called QuickLook.

Anyway, it's dead easy to install.  Download the latest version from here: https://github.com/whomwah/qlstephen/releases

Unzip

Copy the binary to the directory ~/Library/QuickLook  (create QuickLook if it doesn't already exist)


Talking clock in a different language I've got my Mac speaking me the time every hour, but I'm currently trying to learn French so I thought it would be a good idea to make it speak the time in French.

However, rather than saying "Il est 11 heures." she says "It's 11 hours." (in a lovely French accent).

Is it possible to make her actually speak French?

How did you set up the system to say the time?

I set it up as follows:
System Preferences --> Dictation & Speech --> Text to Speech --> Customize --> Add a French voice. It took some time to download.

And then on the command line:

$ export LANG=fr_FR
$ say `date`

This works for me.

What might work in the GUI is to set the date format to French:

System Preferences --> Language & Region --> Advanced --> Format Language - French

As you can see in the screenshots below, this changes the date and format only, not the entire language of the system.


Revenue for individual apps? I'm relatively new to the App Store (not new to Objective-C, though) and I'm wondering how easy it is to track how much money each individual app you have in the app store is making.

I have an App in the store already, and I haven't received any sort of income statements yet so I don't know how they're split up, but I have a friend who wishes to work on my next project with me - we want to split the profits 50-50.

Say I have two apps in the app store, is there a way to find out how much each app is making, if they both use the same revenue models (fremium, iAds w/ IAP)?

Absolutely. They will report and provide a way to export that date each individual sale or in-app purchase. So you will be able to break it down by app, by country, by time etc.


What doesn't get cloned to new hard drive in Super Duper? I recently upgraded my 2010 Macbook Pro HDD to an SSD. I went from a 500GB HDD to a 512GB SSD (Crucial M4). I formatted the new SSD using Disk Utility into Mac OS X Journaled file system. I then used Super Duper to clone the original drive over by selecting "Backup -  all files" from the dropdown.

I recall that the original drive had about 120GB of free space leftover on it. With my newly cloned drive, it states that there's 195GB free. I primarily used iStat Menus, to measure the amount of free space.

So the math looks to be like:

195 - 12 - 120 = 63

About 63GB of difference, taking into account the 12GB of increased storage already. It's actually probably closer to 70GB considering I've added some new files in usage recently.

What didn't get cloned over to the new drive in this approximate 60-70GB?

Everything boots up and runs just fine. There just seems to be some kind of discrepancy of what was reported as free before and currently.

Some things to consider:

I have Windows 7 (Ultimate) and Windows 8 (Preview edition) as VMs using Parallels 8, which were cloned over.
This is taking into account that I emptied the Trash already.
The original HDD is a Seagate from Apple.

When you select the SuperDuper script / copy mode, you can change the scripts, that SuperDuper will run during the copy process.

As you can see, a couple of files are omitted:

So the temporary and cache files, etc. may have taken quite some space on your old disk. Some other possible reasons could be:

SuperDuper omits OSX swap files (/private/var/vm), which can become quite large
The spotlight index is rebuilt after cloning a drive. Depending on your system, the spotlight index may become quite large as well over time.
SuperDuper does a permission repair before cloning. Maybe some space was liberated on your old drive during that process.
As Richard suggested, SuperDuper does not clone the hidden rescue partition. But this should not be more than ca. 1GB


USB Flash drive not mounting OS X Some months ago I bought a USB flash drive 16 GB, and I have used it on my Windows machine with no errors or bugs, whatsoever.

Since that I need to move some files from my Mac, the flash drive does not
appear to be mounting in OS X at all.

When I run in diskutil list in Terminal, the flash drive does not appear, not even in Disk Utility.

I am starting to think that maybe something is wrong with the stick? However, the strange thing is that it's working just well in Windows. How can that be? Other flash drive (have tried with a 256 MB) works well on the mac, except the 16 GB.

Any suggestions or thoughts?
I am running Mavericks on a MacBook Pro (older one).

Based on the answers you've given in the comments.

The device doesn't show in Disk Utility
It doesn't show in System Information under USB
It works in other computers
Other USB sticks work in this computer
– Changing USB ports makes no difference
The device is getting warm
– It also doesn't work in another OS X system

I would suggest that there is an incompatibility between this USB stick and OS X, it could be there is some kind of damage to the sticks Firmware or a wider issue with the product that you've not been able to trace down other reports of.

Short of opening up USB Prober and understanding more about how USB communications happen, I would suggest the stick is defective and you try to get a replacement from the retailer.


iBooks Apple ID sign in prompt accepts my password but fails and re-asks, repeatedly I am on a new MacBook laptop running 10.14, and trying to sync my book library on iCloud to the Books app.

When I open the Books app it asks me to sign in to Apple ID, and it accepts my password. But then within about 5 seconds the sign-in window appears again, as if for the first time. It doesn't say the password or ID is wrong.  Typing in the password again has the same effect.

It does this over and over, and it doesn't seem to have signed me in, and so my books never get downloaded to the device.

Despite the books not being downloaded, the Books app identifies my iCloud "collections" in the side bar, but the collections are empty.

Also the Books app is showing me a preview of what my old library looked like on my old laptop (which I no longer have access to) but doesn't show any of the new additions to my iCloud library made on my iPhone.

Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks

I had the same problem in Mojave. I managed to solve it by going to the Store menu in Books, selecting "Authorize this computer..." - which it did, and suddenly all my  books appeared in Books. After this Books works fine.

(my Mac was already authorized prior to this, since I had no problems with iTunes for example)


How can I guard myself from Wirelurker? Just saw an article about the vicious malware that is Wirelurker. In short, Wirelurker can attack even non-jailbroken iOS devices, and has great potential to turn these wonderful iOS devices into dumb bots:

  Once WireLurker is on your iPhone or iPad, it appears to do a number of weird and wonderful things. If you’re not jailbroken, WireLurker simply installs/side-loads more apps from the iTunes App Store. If you’re jailbroken, it does a lot more, including infecting/trojanizing existing apps on your iOS device and backing them up to your Mac. In both cases, WireLurker constantly pings a central command server, which can trigger a payload update, or instruct WireLurker to harvest and transmit sensitive details from your device.

What can be done to safeguard against this heinous software?

Do not download third-party apps from untrusted sources.

In System Preferences, Set:

Security & Privacy --> General --> Allow apps downloaded from: to either

Mac App Store or Mac App Store and identified developers

So far it seems this is only transferable from a computer to device over a usb to iTunes connection, which means the computer must be infected with one of these third party apps.  Also seems pretty limited to China and its third party app store for now.

Digital Trends Article.

PaloAlto Networks Article


When I press the o key on macbook pro i get multiple o's When I press the o key on macbook pro i get multiple o's . They also pop up in the middle of writing other words as well.How can i fix this. The o's run across the screen.

Sounds like the key contact is contaminated.

Simple starter options would be...

Switch off the machine.
Repeatedly tap the key, 20 or more times, firmly but not too forcibly.
Turn the machine vertically & repeat.
Use a can of compressed air to blow out any dust/bits from under the keys.

If still no joy, I'd recommend professional repair.


Is there a way to sync Google reminders with the Mac ones The macOS Calendar/iCal already syncs nicely with the Google variety. Since 2016 and shortly after the iPhone, the Google web calendar was taught how to do Reminders. Mac OS has its own flavor of Reminders. It would be most productive to be able to use both together. Is that possible?

 ..synced to..  ?

There is a cool implementation of Google Calendars for Mac. See this project: https://github.com/sfirrin/Clean-Google-Calendar


Can I code using Swift on Mavericks? Is is possible to code using Swift on OS X Mavericks? I found the manual on iBooks but that's as far as I can get right now.

To code using Swift you'll need Xcode 6.

Xcode 6 beta is compatible with Mavericks 10.9.3 and upwards so yes it is possible to write Swift code in Mavericks!

NB: As of July 11, Xcode 6 beta is available freely on Apple's website.

Where can I download Xcode (n) Beta?


Auto login with FileVault in El Captain When using File Vault on El Capitan, is there any way to disable the Auto Login, so when you start up it loads straight away without needing a password.

If not, then is possible to set it so when you enter a password it goes straight to the desktop and skips the loading bar. (i.e. so it preloads before the password is entered)

I understand why a password is needed, but it is overkill for my situation.

I'm guessing the answer is probably "no", but I thought there might be a terminal command or some other trick.

If you want to automatically log in, you need to disable FileVault. A permanent work around would compromise your encryption entirely as described in this Support Article

You can use the fdesetup command to do a one time, immediate reboot and bypass the user log in step. This is designed for unattended reinstallations and works well in my experience if you need to restart and will be attending it physically so as not to lose control of your encrypted system.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202918


Can a MacBook Air use another computer's optical drive when running Windows on Boot Camp? I installed boot camp on a MacBook Air by following these directions. In step 2 under "Step 4:  Install the Windows Support Software", I did exactly as the guide said, and launched WindowsSupport/Boot Camp/setup.exe instead of WindowsSupport/setup.exe. I noticed that the latter has a Read Me.rtf associated with it which reads:

Double-click setup.exe, in the root level of this disc, to install the following:
•   Boot Camp drivers, which allow you to use your Mac-specific hardware with Windows, including your Apple keyboard, mouse, trackpad, and built-in iSight camera. For more information on Boot Camp, see http://www.apple.com/bootcamp.
•   Remote Install Mac OS X, which allows MacBook Air users on your local network to install Mac OS X using a Mac OS X installation disc in your computer's optical drive. For more information, refer to the MacBook Air User's Guide.
•   DVD or CD Sharing, which allows MacBook Air users on your local network to use your computer's optical drive. For more information, refer to the MacBook Air User's Guide.

I believe that by double-clicking the setup.exe in the Boot Camp directory, the first of these bullet points was installed. The second refers to something about installing Mac OS X, which isn't relevant to me. The third bullet point sounds like the exact opposite of what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to read a DVD off another computer, not have another computer read the DVD off of mine. Therefore, I don't think that it's a problem of not installing the right drivers.
Is it possible to use the optical drive of other computers on the same network in Windows as I can do in OS X?

Not as seamless as OS X, but you just share the optical drive via Windows File Sharing (SMB).


Running old games without CD I want to run Diablo (Windows/Mac game) on OS 9 but without using the CD. After installation, the user is required to insert the disc for the game to start. Making a .dmg image didn't work (as suggested by a website), as OS 9 doesn't recognise the format. Anyone knows something that might work?

Try creating a .img or .smi file.

To get from a dmg to an img try the following:

hdiutil convert /path/to/file.dmg -format RdWr -o /destination/of/file.img


What is a good chess app for an iPhone 4? I am interested in learning chess better, and my past experience with chess programs is that if there are multiple difficulty levels, they go very quickly to "I can usually beat this" to "Cut to the chase and resign." I haven't been able to find a rough area I can beat 30-70% of the time, get a little better, knock the difficulty up a notch, and win 20-60% of the time. (And then bump things up when I can beat the new level 30-70% of the time.)

Are there any good chess trainer/chess iPhone apps that are out there? (Are there good chess trainers to recommend on other grounds?)

Oddly, the app I favor the most is Deep Green due to the elegance, simplicity and design. It is fairly forgiving for novices but the middle ground is very level so as to allow you to improve without getting totally destroyed. If you have a decent strategy, you can get a lot of play in the middle ground as long as you don't make whoppers of mistakes. I say oddly because it doesn't have many bells or whistles to "teach" the game - lacks opening books, training modes, post game analysis or export functionality. It has beauty and simplicity and I find myself actually playing it because it's gorgeous and I learn more when I play more.

Shredder Chess seems to be stronger for learning, but is not nearly as pretty and I'm not serious enough to want to play it over Deep Green. It has fabulous end game support, databases, move puzzles and hints. It also exports the games and has a discount on the Mac version so you can take your analysis to the computer which probably makes this the best learning program. You can preview the engine and the feel of the UI on the mac for free here to get a sense of the program. The iPhone app plays a lot like the mac app. It's a 30 day demo and it's not as massively strong as Fritz and some of the really bonkers engines out there.


Browse website developed in BootCamp via OS X/Safari If I develop a website in BootCamp under something like http://localhost:3458 can I browse that web site from within OS X?

I was thinking maybe using Parallels/Virtual Box to point to the BootCamp partition and get it running and then from within Safari somehow point to that virtual machine's localhost.

This would be good so websites could be developed in Windows/Bootcamp and then viewed from OS X to see if they render ok.

Would be also good to run up another virtual machine to look at the virtual machine with the web server on it eg/a Linux VM looking at the Windows VM to see how the website looks in Firefox etc

Can any of this be done?

You won't be able to browse the website on the Windows BootCamp - as Windows wont' be running while Mac OS X is. You possibly could browse to the bootcamp file system via safari, but the webserver wouldn't be running, so that may not be valid testing if your site is anything more than static files.

You could as you suggest used Parallels/Virtual Box or VMware Fusion to run the Bootcamp Windows instance while the Mac is running - one issue with this though is that if you switch between running Windows as a VM (under one of those products within Mac OS X) and between it running natively via bootcamp (i.e. Mac OS is shutdown, but windows is running) then you may have to keep reactivating windows, as it considers the hardware to be different when you boot it under the alternative method.

Whether or not testing from a Linux machine is important or not, would be up to you. Linux browsers would be a pretty low statistic for most websites. You could easily run Firefox in both Windows and Mac to do your testing - personally, I'd feel also doing it under Linux might be overkill.


Discrepancy in hard drive space; can I delete these files? While trying to clear space from my MacBook Pro hard drive, I noticed a 12.4 GB discrepancy between the amount of free space shown in Storage Bar in About This Mac and the total sum inside my Macintosh HD using OmniDiskSweeper (or du -sh * in Terminal). I’ve managed to account for 9.1 GB of that by running ODS as the root user.

Where could the remaining 3.3 GB be?

Can any of the major offenders be deleted to free up space? They are:

/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd/data (4.3 vs. 0 GB)
/.DocumentRevisions/.cs/ChunkStorage/0/0/ (1.5 vs. 0 GB)
/private/var/folders/zz/ (1.3 GB vs. 9.5 MB, mostly in the file CFNetworkDownload_L4uNTH.tmp)
/.MobileBackups/Computer/ (1.1 vs. 0 GB)
/.Spotlight-V100/Store-V2/ (0.6 vs 0 GB)

You can certainly delete the two temporary items in your list:

/System/Library/Caches/com.apple.coresymbolicationd/data/
/private/var/folders/zz/CFNetworkDownload_L4uNTH.tmp

Avoid deleting the folder structures but large files in these locations can be safely removed.

To be extra safe, restart your Mac first and then remove any files. The restart will ensure the files are not in use.


How can I change the number format in Disk Inventory X? I'm using Disk Inventory X to find what is taking up the most disk space, and I've noticed that it formats numbers oddly, it particular, the placement of the comma. For example: 2,01.5 GB and 1,24.8 GB.

I would much rather not have the comma at all, like this: 201.5 GB and 124.8 GB.

How can I fix this?

The Software was updated Feb 28, 2019. The commas are placed properly.

http://www.derlien.com/


How do I find out (command line or python) if an IP address is from the local host? I am running macOS High Sierra and Mojave.

I'd like to be able to find out (for a python script) if some IP address is from the local machine or another machine. The local machine may have multiple IP addresses (such as one for ethernet and one for wifi) which both are active on the local machine (even if only one is used to connect to the LAN).

I've found a way, route get <ip-address> will show interface: lo0 in the output for any IP address that is from an interface of the local host.

Default route (ethernet):

hermione:~ gerben$ route get 192.168.1.10
   route to: hermione
destination: hermione
  interface: lo0
      flags: <UP,HOST,DONE,LLINFO,WASCLONED,LOCAL,IFSCOPE,IFREF>
 recvpipe  sendpipe  ssthresh  rtt,msec    rttvar  hopcount      mtu     expire
       0         0         0         0         0         0     16384         0

The other ip address (Wifi, not the default route when ethernet is connected) on this host:

hermione:~ gerben$ route get 192.168.1.11
   route to: 192.168.1.11
destination: 192.168.1.11
  interface: lo0
      flags: <UP,HOST,DONE,LLINFO,WASCLONED,LOCAL,IFSCOPE,IFREF>
 recvpipe  sendpipe  ssthresh  rtt,msec    rttvar  hopcount      mtu     expire
       0         0         0         0         0         0     16384         0

I don't know how reliable that is, but I could parse that. Update: this only works on Mojave, High Sierra will not report that it is local.

Is there a better way by which I can determine if some random IP address is in fact on a local interface? One that works on more versions of macOS?

Preferably directly in python 3, so I don't have to run external commands and parse their output in python.

At the request of @Allan, the output of ifconfig (Mojave)

lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
    options=1203<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,TXSTATUS,SW_TIMESTAMP>
    inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
    inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
    inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>

en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    options=10b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_HWTAGGING,AV>
    ether f0:18:98:ed:f6:45
    inet6 fe80::1040:443f:fe24:97e8%en0 prefixlen 64 secured scopeid 0x8
    inet 192.168.1.10 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
    media: autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex,flow-control>)
    status: active
en9: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    ether ac:de:48:00:11:22
    inet6 fe80::aede:48ff:fe00:1122%en9 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x9
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
    media: autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
    status: active

en1: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    ether f0:18:98:b6:d3:d0
    inet 192.168.1.11 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
    media: autoselect
    status: active

awdl0: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1484
    ether 12:69:24:84:fd:9a
    inet6 fe80::1069:24ff:fe84:fd9a%awdl0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xd
    nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
    media: autoselect
    status: active

vboxnet0: flags=8842<BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    ether 0a:00:27:00:00:00
vboxnet1: flags=8842<BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    ether 0a:00:27:00:00:01
vboxnet2: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    ether 0a:00:27:00:00:02
    inet 192.168.97.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.97.255

I can egrep 'init.*192\.168\.1\.11' on that to get the ip-addresses of the interfaces on this host.

I've had to figure this out for some customers in the past. Easiest and most reliable method across OS versions I've found is string matching inet lines in ifconfig results.


Garageband 10 Audio Unit gone I am trying to use an AudioUnit plugin that requires a USB security authentication key. The first time I installed the Audio Unit I didn't have the key. When I received my key and authorized the software (Antares Auto Tune with the iLok USB key) the plugin did not show up.

I attempted to remove the cache files to force Garageband 10 to find the plugin but none of it worked.

The strange thing though is I can open Garageband 6 and the plugin shows up and if I create a new account on my computer the plugin shows up but this is suboptimal.

I received a response from Antares with the answer

  Once you are in the "Library" folder go to:

  Caches/AudioUnitCache/

  Delete the “com.apple.audiounits.sandboxed.cache" file.

  Go back to the Library folder, then open the Preferences folder

  Once you are in the Library/Preferences folder, delete the file
  "com.apple.audio.InfoHelper.plist"

  Empty your trash and restart your computer.

  You should now find Auto-Tune 8.1 in GarageBand.

This solved it for me.


Can't allow blocked software (HAXM) to run on macOS 10.13 I'm trying to install HAXM for Android Studio on macOS 10.13. I went to the 'Security & Privacy' panel in order to allow the software to run, but I've run into an issue.

No matter how many times I press 'Allow', nothing seems to happen. The message and button remain... I've even rebooted. It's still there.

This is a new feature in macOS High Sierra that blocks kernel extensions from 3rd-party developers until manually allowed via the Security & Privacy preferences pane. Note this is different from Gatekeeper — this blocks signed kexts until you allow them, and all unsigned kexts are blocked unless System Integrity Protection is disabled. Gatekeeper blocks unsigned apps from running until you allow them. Apple has some further details in TN2459: User-Approved Kernel Extension Loading.

According to reports such as this issue thread for Karabiner, programs that might be intercepting or simulating mouse clicks such as MagicPrefs or VNC could be at fault. If you can temporarily disable those programs, and be in front of the machine rather than connected remotely via Screen Sharing or similar, it will work.

As a more complex workaround, you can disable System Integrity Protection for kexts with csrutil enable --without kext, then reboot to the regular OS and ensure the Android emulator is working, then (optionally but recommended) reboot to Recovery Mode again and re-enable SIP with csrutil enable. This will automatically add all installed signed 3rd-party kexts to the whitelist.


Location information is not shown in "Years" view of Photos App I do not see the location information of the pictures I have taken in 2014 when I am in "Years" view.

I am sure pictures have GPS information on them. If I go in to 2014 year, I can see that pictures have location information.

Has anyone had this problem?

Notes:

This has been going on since iOS 7 and I started using iOS 7 when it was beta.
It is not that I have been to many places in 2014. In that case it should have said "United States, Canada & 4 more" (something like that)
I called apple support but they couldn't help.
I have the same problem on both iOS Photos app and Mac Photos app. For this reason, I have sent Mac Photos app diagnostic information to apple as a bug report but no luck there either.
I have reset and restored my phone, and iCloud pictures and no luck.
I have iCloud Photo Library on.

I think it is probably down to visiting lots of countries maybe?
For example, I have currently visited 7 countries this year (2018) and I am sure my info was there a month ago.
It seems to be a sequence as someone has mentioned already with ‘this country, this country & 3 others, where it doesn’t seem to mention 4 others or 5 others etc.
Another thing.... info does not show for me in 2015 either... that is the year I visited various Caribbean islands), so it’s probably a multi country thing.
Maybe there is something in that?


How can I download legacy software for an iPad 1? YouTube has stopped working on my iPad 1, so I deleted it and tried to re-download it, but the current version requires iOS 9.0 or later. The only solution I have found involves using a computer, but I’m not allowed to and it has a lot of problems.
H
ow can I download a compatible version of YouTube on iOS 5.1.1 without a computer?

If you bought/downloaded an app on one device and want to install it on device that has an earlier version of iOS, try these steps.

Here's how to find out if there's a compatible version of an app:

Open the App Store on your device.
Tap the Purchased tab.
Find the app and download it. If there's a compatible version, a message appears and you can choose Confirm to get the latest version of the app that works for your device. If there isn't a compatible version and you can't download the app, go to the app's product page and contact the developer for help.


Mac applications refuse to launch Every time I click on a application, both Apple and third party applications refuse to open. The little blue dot appears below the app on the dock, and then it disappears. I've restarted the computer multiple times and no luck. It's a late 2008 MacBook. Any ideas?

You can fire up the /Applications/Utilities/Console.app and look over the logs as you are launching programs.

If the messages are not clear, you could either edit some details in the question or post a new question for each app / message that has you stumped as to a cause or solution.

Of course, you also might try some generic troubleshooting steps like rebooting, checking the apps with a new user, etc...


Will Safari preserve my windows and tabs across an OS update? I have a(n embarrassingly) large number of windows and tabs open in Safari on Mavericks right now, which I'd like to save, and I'd also like to do an OS upgrade sometime this week.

I have "restore windows" turned on, and Safari re-opened them for me a couple of weeks ago when my Mac crashed and rebooted.

Can I be confident that the same will happen after installing El Capitan? If not automatically, is there a cache file or folder I can save before the install/dig up afterwards to restore the windows? Should I just bookmark all the tabs?

I wouldn't count on it. Specifically, I had several machines not rejoin WiFi after the upgrade, so the tabs didn't load with no network. I would save all open tabs to an HTML document and save it just in case if you really can't afford to lose your workspace.

http://brettterpstra.com/2015/09/04/share-browser-tabs-in-one-link/

Bookmarking is overkill and this tool will be useful going forward without needing to clean out your bookmarks after the update.


Anyone know a super easy .mp3 cutter? I am looking for a super easy app for cutting .mp3 files, and setup fadeout at the end. Like Ringer, but this is for ringtones. plus the time is limited and I can't export mp3 files with it. But you get the idea. It's really easy to use.

Audacity, Garageband are way too complicated and big. Any tips?

I know you said that Audacity is too complex, and I agree that the interface is both overwhelming and difficult to figure out.

That said, trimming and fading out an audio file in the app is actually very straightforward and you get a lot of additional power that's still easy to use (see the bit I added on normalizing down at the end). Here's my walkthrough:

Open the File

Select the Area to Keep

Just drag the cursor across the waveform area. Press the spacebar to play/pause, or click the waveform at any spot and press the spacebar to play from there.

(Instead of selecting the "keep" area and trimming you can select the areas to remove and just hid the Delete key.)

Select Trim from the Edit Menu

Or press CmdT

The trimmed file:

Select the Area to Fade

Select Fade from the Effects Menu

The now-faded result:

Export as MP3

Choose mp3:

Edit or enter file metadata:

Done!

Normalizing the Audio

Because you're in a more powerful editing app, you could also take a moment to Normalize the file. This brings the audio levels up to "full", meaning the file is as loud as it can be without clipping or distorting anything.

Normalizing is generally great for podcasts and other spoken tracks, though isn't always recommended for music (sometimes the fact that it's quiet is intentional).

Here's how to normalize it while it's still open:

Select the Track

CmdA for Select All is quick, or just double-click the waveform area.

Choose Normalize from the Effects Menu

Use the default settings:

The resulting normalized audio:


MacBook pro 2017 touch bar model.. Horizontal Lines on screen While logging in initially the screen doesn't show problems but soon as time moves after some minutes horizontal lines start appearing in the bottom of screen of black or multi colored that progresses till the entire area corresponding to the app dock is obfuscated... So when I shut down at this time and reopen it.. Some lines still remain and it increase like earlier and results in same... Only when I shut down for a long time.. The screen becomes normal after logging in.. But still after some minutes same issue is reproduced... Using Screenshot and analyzing the picture shows that the defect is not reproducible in Screenshot and is visible in direct display only.. Please advice

The LCD is failing, sounds like. You've essentially already proved this by taking a screenshot that does not display the issue you are seeing (the artifacts). This happened on my SO's 2013 MacBook Air. I believe it's a fairly common issue, sorry to say.


Writing to NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems with defaults The following command reads the NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems. The keys are called Text Shortcuts in OS X.

defaults read NSGlobalDomain NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems

I want to create new shortcuts using the defaults command, because plists in Mavericks are now cached (and for various other reasons). As you can see from the output of the command above, it lists other keys and values. How would I access the keys and values within the main NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems key? The man page for defaults doesn't say how (or if) that can be done.

Different ways to add a replacement:

defaults write -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems -array-add '{on=1;replace=a;with=b;}'

defaults write -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems -array-add '<dict><key>on</key><integer>1</integer><key>replace</key><string>a</string><key>with</key><string>b</string></dict>'

Different ways to replace the whole list:

defaults write -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems -array '{on=1;replace=a;with="b \"\\b";}' '{on=1;replace=c;with=d;}'

defaults write -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems '({on=1;replace=a;with="b \"\\b";},{on=1;replace=c;with=d;})'

defaults write -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems '<array><dict><key>on</key><integer>1</integer><key>replace</key><string>a</string><key>with</key><string>b "\b</string></dict><dict><key>on</key><integer>1</integer><key>replace</key><string>c</string><key>with</key><string>d</string></dict></array>'

Quit and reopen applications to apply changes.

Edit: the changes made with defaults are lost if you open the Text tab of the Keyboard preference pane. To prevent it, use a script like this:

date=$(date +%s)
while read -r replace with; do
  plist+="{on=1;replace=\"$replace\";with=\"$with\";},"
  sql+="INSERT INTO 'ZUSERDICTIONARYENTRY' VALUES($((++i)),1,1,0,0,0,0,$date,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL,NULL,\"$with\",\"$replace\",NULL);"
done < <(sed 's/\\/\\\\/g;s/"/\\"/g' ~/replacements.txt)
sqlite3 ~/Library/Dictionaries/CoreDataUbiquitySupport/$USER~*/UserDictionary/local/store/UserDictionary.db "delete from ZUSERDICTIONARYENTRY;$sql"
defaults write -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems "(${plist%?})"

The replacements are saved to ~/Library/Dictionaries/CoreDataUbiquitySupport/$USER~*/UserDictionary/local/store/UserDictionary.db even if iCloud is disabled.


How do I type the typeset "space" character? I've used the Keyboard Viewer a few times, and disappointingly have never seen the "space" character: ␣

Is it possible to type this character directly via some combination of meta keys (option/shift)?

There doesn't seem to be any way to insert it using the default U.S. input source or other normal keyboard layouts:

$ grep -r '&#x2423;' /Volumes/Ukelele\ 2.2.4/System\ Keyboards/
$

Unicode Hex Input is the only keylayout that uses multipliers. If you use Unicode Hex Input, you can insert ␣ by typing 2423 while holding option.

Or create ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and save a property list like this as DefaultKeyBinding.dict:

{
    "~S" = (insertText:, "␣"); // option-shift-s
}

You could also make a new keyboard layout or add characters to the press and hold popovers. I'm currently using an AppleScript (posted in this question) to insert special characters and plain text snippets.


Mention an outside payment system for subscription in an iOS app According to Apple's In-App Subscription Rules,

  Apps can read or play approved content (specifically magazines, newspapers, books, audio, music, and video) that is subscribed to or purchased outside of the app, as long as there is no button or external link in the app to purchase the approved content.

The questions are:

If I don't link my webpage (where the user would be albe to subscribe without going through iTunes) directly but I just mention that it is possible to subscribe via my website (and perhaps I write my website down but I don't make it clickable), would Apple reject my app?
What if I also mention that if you subscribe via the website you'll get a free month of subscription, but again, I don't provide any automated way to go to my website?
What if I mention that if you subscribe via website the price will be lower?

What you suggest will get rejected very quickly. I read a quote from the guidelines somewhere (sorry, can't pin it down) that included a phrase about not being allowed to induce users to use another, external, payment system of any sort, which would apply to your various mentions. This is exactly what Spotify ran into recently, they removed the ability to subscribe from inside the app, and put in a page mentioning that there was a way to subscribe outside (with no direct "go here, do this"). They also (separately?), asked for an email address (to which they could eventually send subscription offers, though they made no mention of that). Apple shot it down, Spotify complained very publicly, Apple's lawyer responded publicly.


Old GarageBand had a legit drum roll; can't find it in 10.0 I've written quite a few tunes with older versions of GarageBand, and I always use the MIDI editor / piano roll (or whatever that note-by-note editor is called) for creating drum tracks. In the older versions of GarageBand, there was a legitimate, real, snare drum roll. It was a plain old regular note in the MIDI editor, just like a regular snare hit or bass kick. But I can't find any such thing in GarageBand 10.0. When I google for how to make a drum roll, all I see is people cramming together regular snare hits, which sounds ugly and electronic to me. For an example of what I'm talking about, listen to my tune here, at about 2:40 and 2:45. I used rolls like these throughout the tune, but these two are longer and more noticeable.

Does anyone know how to do this in GB 10.0?

If you go to “Orchestral > Percussion > Orchestral Kit” and go to C0 and hit H you’ll get a good drum roll. I found it by going down and holding down each key until I found it.


remove music from my device in Itunes only I just want to remove all music from the my device file in Itunes. I do not want to change anything in my Iphone, just the content of the my device file.

iTunes on the computer is the 'Master' device.

Anything you discard from there will be removed from your iPhone the next time you sync it.
- unless it is purchased through the iTunes Store, allowing you to re-download directly to the iPhone at a later date.


Fastest way to get picture from iOS camera to desktop "file upload" dialog? When I'm on OS X and on a website see a [File upload] button, half the time what I want to upload is a picture, which I would like to take right then on iOS camera. Currently this means doing the following:

click [file upload] button
open up iPod
go to camera app
snap the picture
connect iPod to Mac with USB cable
open iPhoto
import the picture
click on the imported picture
choose "show in finder"
drag the image from finder to the file upload dialog

Is there some way I could just somehow upload from iOS camera directly? So that it would go something like this:

click [file upload] button
choose "upload from iOS camera"
open up iPod
go to camera app (or even have it start automagically)
click "snap & send to Mac open dialog"

If you enabled photo stream on iPhone and have iPhoto/Aperture on your mac, you can try enabling photo stream on mac. If you didn't install iPhoto/Aperture,  maybe you can try MyPhotoStream.
I strongly recommend flick., which is really easy to use and covered all platforms. It's free and cool!
Share to iMessage and send to yourself after taking the photo if your iMessage on iPhone is synced with mac.

the geeky way: If your iPad has been jailbreaked, try sshfs in Mac's homebrew. Assume that you have installed homebrew and got root privilege of iPad. Just type

  brew install sshfs

in Mac's terminal, and then

  mkdir /Volumes/iPad  && ln -s /Volumes/iPad ~/Documents/iPad && sshfs root@youripad:/var/mobile/Media/DCIM/100APPLE /Volumes/iPad

(I tried to directly mkdir in Documents and mount iPad's photo directory there but failed. It just didn't appear in the open_file_dialog.)

Last, just choose the photos you want from the open_file_dialog->Documents->iPad.

If you want to unmount your iPad from mac, type

  umount /Volumes/iPad

in your terminal.

Enjoy!


Graphics performance drop after waking from sleep in Catalina (MacBook Pro) I installed MacOS Catalina last week. I restart my MBP and everything's great, then at some point I either close the lid or just lock the screen for a few hours (sometimes not even a full hour) and after that, graphics performance seems to have dropped.

Symptoms include slow vim (e.g., moving the cursor around), sluggish animations in Safari (e.g., opening and closing tabs), slow transitioning between workspaces, choppy animations when minimising applications.

I've seen some people suggest to reset the NVRAM, but I'd rather not do it until someone confirms that to be the solution.

I had first described this issue in this post in the Apple Support Communities: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8614302. Sometimes a minor MacOS update would seem to fix it, and then another update would seem to reignite the issue.

Here are the specs:

Product:
  Model Name:   MacBook Pro
  Model Identifier: MacBookPro11,4
  Processor Name:   Quad-Core Intel Core i7
  Processor Speed:  2,2 GHz
  Number of Processors: 1
  Total Number of Cores:    4
  L2 Cache (per Core):  256 KB
  L3 Cache: 6 MB
  Hyper-Threading Technology:   Enabled
  Memory:   16 GB
  Boot ROM Version: 195.0.0.0.0
  SMC Version (system): 2.29f23

Mac OS:
  10.15.1

EDIT: after searching around some more I found this Reddit post and as the user here shows his GPU performance drops to 0.2 GHz. I installed Intel Power Gadget and behold I'm also at 0.2 GHz after having the "bad wake from sleep" problem. Maybe this can be fixed by somehow bumping performance back to the regular value?

EDIT2: my problem is different from Serious Performance Problems using Expose in Catalina because the issues in the other question seem much more severe and include symptoms like extreme temperatures and unusable UI. The other question's issue seemed to be centered around overheating due to dust and bad thermal paste.

Start with:

Reset NVRAM / PRAM
Reset the SMC

If your Mac has a double GPU:

Disable the Automatic graphics switching located under System Preferences -> Energy Saver.

If this does not solve the issue:

Boot in safe mode

If the problem persists also there it could be caused by an installed software. At that point you can proceed by exclusion.


bash: brew: command not found I am new to mac and was following a video and typed export PATH="$HOME/opt/git/bin:$PATH" I believe this messed up my path and I am not able to install MySQL now. When I tried to install homebrew I get -bash: brew: command not found.  I tried restarting the terminal and I am still getting this error.

Restarting the terminal should have solved the problem since you didn't append what you have typed to a bash start-up file.

Also, even if what you have typed was directed to a bash start-up file it wouldn't affect where bash would find brew since you're prepending to the original path and not overwriting it.

Your problem lays in something else you've done that has changed the settings for your path in a bash start-up file or have deleted/altered the location of the executable.

Why aren't you able to install MySQL? What errors do you get? What form of package are you installing? Is it from the MySQL official site?

Recommended installation of brew makes it reside in /usr/local/bin/. Do you have that in your echo $PATH output? Also, normal brew installation is a simple command that doesn't need brew to start with. So do you mean you get -bash: brew: command not found after attempting the installation of brew?


Deleted /usr/local/bin and /usr/bin on OS X Guys yesterday i asked my brother to delete python 2.7 and install python 3.5 but rather than delete parts of python, he deleted all /usr/local/bin and /usr/bin.

At this point /usr/bin is empty and /usr/local/bin just has the python files that i downloaded today. Terminal is not working (e.g. i can't even clear ,it says command not found.

And btw he told me about 2 files called 'IDLE' and 'BuildApplet' we can't delete them what's about that files i know they were in the python 2.7.

I'm not sure what to do to fix things up - can I undelete or recover these specific files?

/usr/bin is where most of the Terminal commands are stored (e.g. clear). When your brother deletes everything in /usr/bin, he basically deletes most of the executable files that the Terminal and the system use. So the only way to get them back is to reinstall the OS. To do that, boot into recovery mode by holding cmd+r during startup, then after it boots up, select Reinstall OS X and follow the steps to reinstall OS X. It will not erase all of the files that you have. It only writes some system files (all the files in /usr/bin for example) back to where they belong.


Is there any difference between zooming and cropping on iOS? iOS devices with cameras allow the user to "zoom" into the image being captured. This does not move any lenses or anything; it is a digital zoom and is conceptually equivalent to cropping in post.

However, I would like to know if there is any (however small) difference in output between an image that is captured while zoomed in and one that is only cropped after the fact.

About the only thing I know is different is that when the photo is cropped after the shot is taken, it will take up more space than if the camera was zoomed in when taking the picture. Why? Because in iOS, photo editing is non-destructive. The part that was cropped out will always be there, you just can't see it. However, when zoomed in, that part of the photo was never taken, so, obviously, it doesn't exist.

Also, currently (iOS 9), one can't edit a Live Photo and retain the Live part of the photo. Though, I believe iOS 10 allows one to edit Live Photos.

Aside from that, there's really nothing. Like you put in your post, it's just digital zoom and basically is retroactively zooming the camera in.


Seagate Slim 2TB Not Recognized I recently purchased a Seagate Slim 2TB external HD.  I connected it to my 2010 iMac, formatted it as exFAT, and moved a bunch of files.  I don't remember exactly what process I went through with disconnecting it, but I have never been able to retrieve the files on a mac.
I connected it to my Windows 7 PC at work, and can access everything just fine.
I am currently on a 2014 MacBook Pro running Yosemite 10.10.2

The drive shows up in disk utility, but it wont verify or repair the drive.

Plug it into the PC, make sure it mounts and you can read and write to the drive, make a note of the drive letter.

Open a command prompt as administrator and issue this command

chkdsk x: /F /X

the "x:" is the drive letter of your drive. /F tells it to fix any problems and /X tells it to dismount the disk so it can work on the drive.

When that is done try it on the Mac. If it still fails to mount, plug it back into the PC, copy all of the files off of it and delete the old partition and add a new one and format it as desired.

Copy the backed up files back to the drive and plug it into the Mac. If it still fails to mount, return the drive for another.


How to make Safari remember my password for sites where autocomplete=off? Safari will remember my password on most sites, if I ask it to.  However, some "high-security" sites disable this functionality.  I want to override their override, and have Safari remember my password on that site -- even though the site doesn't want me to.

These "high-security" sites specify autocomplete=off in the HTML.  Most browsers will honor this and decline to remember your password, in that case.  For some browsers, like Firefox, folks have discovered ways to change this aspect of browser behavior and force the browser to remember your password, even on a site that uses autocomplete=off.  I know how to do it on Firefox, but that doesn't work on Safari. Yes, I do understand the security implications of doing this.

How do I make Safari remember my password for sites where autocomplete=off?

References:

http://randosity.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/stupid-security-measures-autocompleteoff/
http://www.howtogeek.com/62980/how-to-force-your-browser-to-remember-passwords/
http://lapcatsoftware.com/blog/2010/06/10/safari-extension-autocomplete/

The "autocomplete" extension in the third link works for me.

Here is a step-by-step recipe on how to install it, for others who may run into this:

Launch Safari.  In the menubar, click on Safari >> Preferences.  Under the Advanced pane, tick the box labelled "Show Develop menu in menu bar" at the bottom.
In the Safari menubar, you should now see Develop.  Click on Develop, then click on "Enable Extensions".
Download the extension from here: http://lapcatsoftware.com/downloads/autocomplete.safariextz
In your downloads folder, click on the file that you just downloaded.  Safari will ask you whether you want to install this extension.  Say yes.

Now you're good to go!


Lost hard drive space. It’s disappeared I tried to bootcamp my Mac. Ran into some issues which left me with two partitions, my main partion and the extra one create for bootcamp installation. Tried to merge it using the bootcamp programme, but didn’t give me the option. Went to disk utility and tried to merge them through the GUI, wasn’t working. The minus button was not highlighted. Then went into terminal and tried to delete the partion as free space and then merge to one partion. This worked in part, the second partion is deleted but I can not restore the main partion back to it full volume size. I’ve lost space, where I had over 1TB free I know have only 750GB. I have no idea how to get it back. Any help would be appreciated.

You can not recover 300 GB of free space because the small 104.9 MB EFI partition is between the APFS container and this free space. The command below will remove the EFI partition and add the 104.9 MB to the 300 GB of free space that already exists.

diskutil eraseVolume free none disk1s3

The next command will expand the APFS container to occupy the free space.

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk1s2 0

If you still feel the "Macintosh HD" volume (disk2s1) is occupying to much space, you may want to ask a new question to address this problem.


Open Mail Attachment with Unix-standard programs I use emacs as my standard text editor.  When someone sends me a mail attachment that contains text (for example a LaTeX file *.tex), Mail does not know how to open it and asks me to select an Application for opening.  A Finder window pops up listing all the Applications installed, some of which are text editors, e.g. TextEdit.

The emacs program lives in /usr/bin/emacs, but the /usr directory is not visible by default in Finder.  After some Google searching, I found that executing a

sudo chflags nohidden /usr

will make the /usr directory visible in Finder.  I can then navigate to /usr/bin and see emacs in that directory, but it is grey'ed out and not selectable.

How do I select a non-Applications (i.e. /usr/bin/emacs, /usr/bin/vim, /usr/bin/gs, etc.) program to use for opening Mail attachments?

You cannot as the process is controlled by LaunchServices

When an application e.g. Mail.app wants to open a document it launches (or relaunches) the application that reads it and sends information to the document by Apple Events as described in Open Operations

thus the handlers have to recognise these Apple Events which are managed by the Cocoa or Carbon libraries.

So to use emacs, vi etc you need to use one wrapped up as an app e.g. Aquamacs, Cocoa or Carbon version of emacs, MacVim etc.

Another way of thinking about this is if there is no terminal open how woul the Unix command write to the GUI?


Can't install WordGrinder on Yosemite Recently, I have been trying to install WordGrinder on Yosemite. First I tried getting the latest tar packages from the developers' website and using them, but I ran into some library linking errors with lua and ncursesw. I tried using MacPorts because I assumed that it would do all of that for me, but it turns out that the problems I encountered first were just confusion left over from some earlier dirty MacPorts installs - I ran port selfupdate and those went away. After yet more difficulty with MacPorts, I decided to reconsider building from source. But now, when I use make, I get the following series of errors:

Maat:wordgrinder-0.5.1 Matt$ make
CC .obj/release/src/c/arch/unix/cursesw/dpy.o
error: unable to open output file '.obj/release/src/c/arch/unix/cursesw/dpy.o': 'Error opening output file '.obj/release/src/c/arch/unix/cursesw/dpy.o': Permission denied'
1 error generated.
make: *** [.obj/release/src/c/arch/unix/cursesw/dpy.o] Error 1
Maat:wordgrinder-0.5.1 Matt$ sudo make
CC .obj/release/src/c/arch/unix/cursesw/dpy.o
src/c/arch/unix/cursesw/dpy.c:164:8: error: use of undeclared identifier 'KEY_EVENT'
                case KEY_EVENT: return "KEY_EVENT";
                     ^
1 error generated.
make: *** [.obj/release/src/c/arch/unix/cursesw/dpy.o] Error 1
Maat:wordgrinder-0.5.1 Matt$

First, I have to use sudo to get the compiler to access the output file (I don't think I am supposed to have to do that, but not the main issue), and then, when I do, I run into the other one, about the "use of undeclared identifier 'KEY_EVENT'". I went over the makefile and the README.Unix several times, but I can't make head nor tail of it. I read in another, unrelated issue with installing WordGrinder on OS X that "building on Mac is a pig," and now I can't help but agree. What is going wrong, and how can I get WordGrinder to install properly on OS X?

EDIT 3:
In the end, I wiped my convoluted /usr/local and /opt folders and reorganized a large portion of my filesystem. I installed Homebrew on the clean slate I had created, then installed lua and Homebrew/dupes/ncurses using Homebrew as per the steps Alistair listed in his answer. I then downloaded wordgrinder-0.5.2.1 instead of wordgrinder-0.5.1, because 0.5.2.1 had added Homebrew installation support. No more issues with the backspace key. At this point, wordgrinder-static would run, but wordgrinder wouldn't (again, as Alistair reported). Installing luafilesystem allowed wordgrinder to run, as I predicted in an earlier revision of this answer. I used Homebrew to install luarocks in my Cellar (brew install luarocks) and then used luarocks to install luafileystem in my /usr/local/lib/luarocks/rocks directory. wordgrinder now runs perfectly well, with no issues.

Many thanks to Alistair for all the help. I did learn a lot more than I already did in the process of trying to get this to work, and may be able to take on the rest myself - as I said earlier, I will document my results here as I come up with them.

UPDATE: As pointed out by Matthew below, the recently released 0.5.2.1 has better support for OS X and brew now, so downloading, extracting wordgrinder-0.5.2.1.tar.bz2 from http://sourceforge.net/projects/wordgrinder/files/wordgrinder/ and running make should work. The only dependency you need to install through brew now seems to be lua, so brew install lua first if you don't already have lua installed.

ORIGINAL: Here's how I got it to work with the previous version...

Downloaded and extracted the wordgrinder-0.5.1.tar.bz2 file from http://sourceforge.net/projects/wordgrinder/files/wordgrinder/
Used brew to install lua: brew install lua
Used brew to install ncurses from homebrew-dupes: brew install homebrew/dupes/ncurses
Made the following modifications to the Makefile. You can download the modified file here.

added a definition of z_crc_t
modified LDFLAGS so it can find libraries installed through brew
modified CPPFLAGS and INCLUDES so it can find include files installed through brew
modified ldflags because it is looking for "lua5.2" but the library on OS X is called "lua.5.2"

Ran make which runs okay with these changes. bin/wordgrinder crashes right away but bin/wordgrinder-static seems to run okay.
'sudo make install' fails, so I just copied wordgrinder-static to /usr/local/bin and it appears to work successfully there.


Connect both Cinema Display and Thunderbolt Display to a 15" Macbook Pro? Here's what I have:

2011 15" Macbook Pro (with Thunderbolt)
27" Apple Thunderbolt Display
27" Apple Cinema Display

From what I've read, I cannot connect both displays by daisy chaining:

MacBook Pro -> Thunderbolt Display -> Cinema Display

What are my options for connecting both displays to a 15" Macbook Pro?

From what I've read, the inability to connect a mini DisplayPort device to an Apple Thunderbolt Display is because of a bug in the Apple Thunderbolt Display. If you connect another device in between the Thunderbolt Display and the Cinema Display, they both should work along with your MacBook Pro's internal screen.


Can I compress SMS content to free up storage? My SMS on my iPhone is growing everyday. According to my iPhone's Usage function, I have about 1.2GB of SMS data. My phone has been running on low storage and any megabytes are precious.

Is there anyway to compress my SMS data or archive them to free up space on my phone? Although I don't refer to my old SMS messages all the time, I would still want to be able to search for them when I need. Perhaps this could be done either on my phone or on a computer or even over the cloud.

Otherwise, how do you usually manage your SMS data to keep them within reasonable storage space?

The app iExplorer can export one, several, or all messages from your iPhone and save them in a number of ways. Once you have exported and archived the conversations onto your Mac or PC, you can delete them from your phone & reclaim space.

The easiest takes each conversation and exports PDFs out of them with images attached in-line:

Other options let you save images & other attachments in a variety of ways:

Lowest price point is US$35, and well worth it.

[Full Disclosure: I'm just a happy customer who has no financial stake in Macroplant.]


How to create an APFS-formated volume on an external drive using Terminal I want to create a case-sensitive encrypted APFS formatted Volume on my external drive using only the CLI. I had a look at man diskutil already but this doesn't seem to have all the details required. So I'm kind of stuck right now, any help appreciated.

Use newfs_apfs(8) to format a partition with a new APFS filesystem, i.e. to create a new APFS container. For example:
sudo newfs_apfs -e -v "My APFS Container" disk0s2

With diskutil, I find that just entering the diskutil command itself and reading the help that it outputs is more accessible than the manpage. You can do this for subcommands, too; eraseVolume is the subcommand you're interested in, and you can enter diskutil eraseVolume to get help on how to use this subcommand.
The eraseVolume subcommand will overwrite a partiton with a particular filesystem — it will use the relevant newfs_* command behind the scenes, thus serving as a general interface to all of the newfs_* commands — or leave the partition unformatted. diskutil listFilesystems will show you the valid filesystems you can specify. For example:
diskutil eraseVolume APFSX "My APFS Container" disk0s2

Alternatively, if you wish to reformat a partition that has an existing filesystem, keeping the same filesystem type and filesystem label / volume name, you can use the reformat subcommand instead. For example, if disk0s2 is already a case-sensitive APFS container with the name My APFS Container that may already contain data or is broken, and you just want a clean slate, then the above eraseVolume command is equivalent to:
diskutil reformat disk0s2

(Note that diskutil needn't be run with sudo.)


Can I access my iCloud account even after resetting my phone? I am switching from an iPhone to an Android. I dont have the time to transfer everything right now but am letting a friend borrow my iPhone. If I reset my phone, can I still access all my info from iCloud even if a new iCloud account is set up on my old device?

Yes, the content on iCloud is separate from any particular device (except Backup) and can be accessed from a different device regardless of what happened to the original. You won't be able to access all your iCloud data without an iPhone or Mac though (e.g. Safari History and other app data).


Mail.app on Lion with Exchange doesn't get updates I've noticed since upgrading to Lion that Mail.app doesn't seem to update the mailbox and synchronize properly with Exchange.

Before on SL, or using Outlook now, they always maintained correct state, matching with my iPhone, or webmail. Now, it seems that Lion gets lost. I have to force a sync, open and shut it, or change folders to get it to resync that folder contents.

Is this just me, or is this a known issue?

Is there a work around?

Thanks.

Try the rebuild utility through the app, I had a very similar problem and this resolved it for me. Best of luck.