Mouse scroll stopped working with Less in Terminal For a few years now, Terminal.app in MacOS has supported mouse-scrolling with the less program, but today I noticed that it is no longer accepting mouse scrolls, and only works with the Up and Down keys now.

What's not working:

less and all other programs that use it are not accepting mouse scrolls. Instead, it scrolls the terminal window. These 'other' programs are:

man
git log
diff

Previously, less would also clear the screen when closing it (q), but now the text remains on the screen.

What I've tried:

Tested other programs: vim for example, still accepts mouse scrolls
Used other Terminal emulators: less is not accepting mouse scrolls on Hyper either
Tested on another machine over SSH: Connected to one of my VPSes, and used less there within the Terminal app. Mouse-scrolls are working with it.
Used a newer version of less: Installed the latest version (530) of less using Homebrew, but it's not working with mouse scrolls either.

So I'm not sure what's wrong. Would greatly appreciate any help to make less accept mouse scrolls again.

After going through a few other answers, I've realized there is a $LESS environment variable that contains default flags.

It's empty on my other Mac and Ubuntu system, but for some reason it's equal to -FRX on this machine, and that's causing these issues:

-X caused it to NOT accept mouse scrolls
-F caused it to automatically exit for small files

Which is weird, since I never changed it, so it must've been modified by some other program. Anyways, manually setting it in my .rc files fixed the issue:

export LESS="-R"

Sources:

Unix & Linux: Neither 'less' or 'less -X' clear screen on exit
SuperUser: Less command clearing screen upon exit


Address Book: Is there any way to move the fields up/down? Is there any way to move the fields within Address Book up or down? I like to have order on my address book and it looks really bad when the phone number fields are all over the place.

I'm afraid you cannot change the order they appear in, you can only change what fields are shown in the Template Section of the Preferences.


How do I check an iOS device's battery health? I am looking for a way to check the current health of a battery for iOS devices, similar to how coconutBattery works for OS X.

How can I check the battery health for an iOS device?

There are apps that you can use to assess battery health, but I recommend a Mac/PC app called iBackupBot. Tether your device (non-jailbroken works) to your computer, navigate to the lower left window pane, select the device, and click the link for ‘More Informations’. The top portion of the resulting window will look something like this:

From Check iPad iPhone battery charge cycle count without jailbreaking - iCopyBot:

  Connect your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch to computer, then launch iBackupBot.
  Select your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch in Devices window, then click More Informations in right side window
  iBackupBot will pop up a window to show many informations about your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, include the battery charge cycle
  count, battery campacity and more

The best iOS app I have used to provide this info is BatteryLogger Plus. However, it requires a jailbreak. Non-JB apps seem to provide optimal operating information, but not cycle count information. This may be a function of App Store limitations, which is why BatteryLogger Plus is a Cydia store app instead.


generate e-mail messages from MS-Word 2011 using Mail app. I get down to Step 6 in the MS-Word 2011 mail merge manager, Complete Merge, and the generate e-mail messages option is greyed out.

In MS-Word the File>Share> E-mail attachments is active and will connect to and email using Mail app.

I am using Excel as the data source for the Word template which is a donation tax receipt I need to issue for a charity with 100 donors.

Thanks for any help you can offer and this is urgent.

Erin

Unfortunately, MS Word 2011 requires you to use MS Outlook 2011 as your default mail application for the mail merge email feature to work.

You will either have to use Outlook as your default email app (even if it's only temporary) or use another solution.

I have heard good things about SerialMailer although I haven't used it personally. It's not free but you may be able to download a trial. There are versions that work with Mac OS X Snow Leopard and above.

Otherwise, you could search for Mail Merge in the Mac App Store (assuming you have it installed - you didn't specify your OS) for other options.


Why doesn't SMS spam go to the Unknown Senders tab on iPhone Messages? On iPhone Messages, SMS text messages come through from political groups and all kinds of other nonsense.  These are not phone numbers I interact with.  Some of them are short codes?
Why don't they all go to the "Unknown Senders" tab, since I have that setting turned on?

From Apple documentation:

You can filter iMessages from people who aren't saved in your
Contacts.

There is difference between iMessages and SMS/MMS. You can read about it in Apple documentation: About iMessage and SMS/MMS
Based on that it is relatively safe to assume that if you have SMS (text in green bubbles) then filtering doesn't apply.


iPhone 4 requires recalibrating the compass almost every time I use it My iPhone 4 asks me to recalibrate the compass by using a figure 8 motion almost every time I use it.

I'm wondering if this happens because my phone is defective, or if other people are having the same issue.

According to an Apple support article:

  After updating or restoring your device, you may notice that the recalibration alert appears more frequently. This is expected behavior, because the calibration database is being recreated. The frequency diminishes over time as you calibrate the device for various locations.


Are there any cool free 3D games on the OS X platform? I've been recently playing Urban Terror, which is a multiplayer FPS game built on Quake 3 engine, and runs across Mac/Linux/Windows. Are there more such games that are

free
run on immersive 3D engine [not a Flash/HTML5 game]
belong to action-adventure/RPG/RTS/[insert your favorite] genre
possibly multi-platform [not must-have but a nice-to-have]

Thanks!

No discussion of free FPS games on the Macintosh can be complete without a link to Aleph One.

And of course, there's that recruiting tool, America's Army. Version 2.5 was available for Mac OS X. I guess version 3 isn't being developed for Macintosh yet…


How to recover from deleting Xcode CoreSimulator devices from disk? By mistake I deleted ~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices from my Mac so all my Xcode simulators were deleted.

Now none of my Xcode projects run. When I try to, an alert shows that no simulator is selected in select device.

To get back to a vanilla state, quit Xcode, Simulator, Instruments, and any other CoreSimulator clients that you have and run:

sudo killall -9 com.apple.CoreSimulator.CoreSimulatorService 2> /dev/null
rm -rf ~/Library/*/CoreSimulator


How to close Messages.app? I'm unable to quit or close Messages.app.

Even if I do Command+Q, I still see a popup message telling me that I received a message.

I don't want to disable notifications at all, I just don't want to receive messages while the application is closed.

I haven't been able to do this? Is there any special/hidden setting to do it?

You can disable the notifications using Notification Center. Please note that they will be disabled whether the app is opened or closed.

Open System Preferences, then select Notifications (upper right corner). You will then see a list of Apps which use Notification Center. Find Messages in this list. Set the "Messages alert style" to None.


Does charging to 100% damage an iPhone battery I have an XR and as I am indoors a lot of the time, my phone does spend a few hours charging at 100% (although I unplug at night).  It's rare that I let the phone run past 80% and even rare that it goes past 60%.

Is this likely to damage the battery?

This Macworld article says isn't optimal, although it won't necessarily damage your battery. However, I've seen other people stating that charging to 100% is very damaging which is why Ios 13 will have measures to prevent it. Further still, I've seen articles state that iOS 12 already is designed to cope with charging at 100%, and the iOS 13 improvements are more to do with overnight charging.

What's the correct answer?
Also, as should I shut down the phone at night if it is not charging?

No it doesn’t. Any 2018 or newer hardware and iOS can handle kiosk mode / constantly charged batteries much better than the old controllers so you should just keep it charged if you like that.
Your XR can be kept 100% topped off without any long term harm.
I disagree with Mac World and only think you should shut down the phone if you don’t regularly do that from time to time (you should do that weekly IMO) and it’s no problem to connect to charge and then power it off. The charging runs without the OS but there’s no benefit to being off while charging in all but some weird edge cases (where the software is so broken it’s running CPU constantly).
Also - some older questions here have old advice for the previous design, when this was in fact a problem if you didn’t care about having a fully charged battery and only cared about years and years between the battery being consumed.

What are the best practices for battery longevity?
Is charging my iPhone all night harmful?

Those above questions should probable be locked as “historical” and not used for the iPhone X and newer and corresponding new MacBook / iPad / Apple Watch and more smartly engineered devices that preserve the battery longevity much better than could be accomplished in the past.


Start screensaver/ lock screen on screen sharing disconnect Is there a way with an AppleScript or shell script to start the screensaver when you disconnect from a screen sharing session?

For example, I connect via screen sharing from Mac A to Mac B. When I disconnect my remote screen sharing session I would like to start the screen saver on Mac B thus locking that screen.

ScreenSharing will post several distributed notifications during a screen sharing session. It is necessary to listen to those notifications to be able to act on them. I attempted to find a command line executable that is included with Mac OS X to perform this function. Although there is a notifyutil executable in Mac OS X, it does not act as an observer to the NSDistributedNotificationCenter. I also looked at the terminal-notifier project, but it appears to only post User (GUI) notifications.

I've created a Foundation executable that can be run in the background to detect when a screensharing session ends (and start the ScreenSaverEngine as mentioned by @Lauri Ranta above). I have posted the source for this executable on GitHub. You can use Xcode to build the project, and then launch the software as you'd like (via a launchd job?)


How to securely `shred` a file in Mojave/APFS? I just came across this thread about securely deleting files:

  If, by stroke of misfortune, you're on a magnetic medium, have
  journalling disabled and, for some reason, can't encrypt the disk,
  you're options are:

* Use rm -P which overwrites files with 0xff, then 0x00, and then 0xff again

And this contradictory superuser thread. Apparently it's not easy to securely delete files using Apple's older HFS+/Journaled file system.

Without the use of third-party software, is it possible to natively wipe a file in macOS Mojave (or High Sierra) that's using APFS and FileVault encryption?

I understand macOS makes it difficult with all of its journaling and backup functionalities. But I'm looking for a shred or srm type of solution that's built into macOS already.

The answer Apple implies:

You don't have to worry about that, since each file's data is not stored contiguously in the drive, but spread out across several physical and logical blocks. Removing a file from the file table makes it nearly impossible to read with forensic software/hardware.

Sources: About Apple File System | Apple File System Reference

The answer that may or may not work:

brew install coreutils
shred Secrets.txt

The documentation for shred doesn't explicitly call out APFS, but from what it says, it might be the case that the data is not necessarily overwritten.

If you wish to engage in determining this, there are contacts and other related links here: http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/


Is there a firmware upgrade for the Macbook6,1 from MB61.00C8.B00 to B02? This question is directly relevant to my failing attempts to upgrade the RAM in a Late 2009 White Unibody MacBook (MacBook6,1) to 8GB, and the question may be better asked in that context.

It is widely referenced (most authoritatively on everymac.com) that this model can support 8GB (despite Apple saying the max is 4GB), but in the "System Information: Hardware Overview" screenshots of every successful upgrade, the Boot ROM Version is shown as MB61.00C8.B02 while mine is at MB61.00C8.B00. While it's possible that I got bad RAM, I'm wondering if the earlier firmware version doesn't support 8GB. I did find one other person on a forum with the B00 firmware having the same problem I am ("3 beeps and won't boot with the RAM installed"), but no resolution; he did RMA his RAM at least once.

Apple doesn't show any firmware updates at all for the MacBook6,1 model, so there's nothing official for me to try and re-flash.

Has anyone managed to get 8GB working under B00, or upgrade it to B02?

My 6,1 B02 has 8G RAM and works fine.  It also runs in 64 bit mode, which I enabled some time ago with the help of a simple hack (can't remember all the details, just google macbook, 64-bit, boot.efi, boot64.efi).

You could try to manually upgrade your firmware with the fw-upgrade of the macbook pro 5,5.  It has been done successfully by several people:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-release-notes/+bug/774089/comments/110

BTW: By doing this, you will probably also fix the MCP79 bug that makes MCP79 negotiate SATA1 with newer SATA3 drives (instead of SATA2).

System Profiler:

Note, that with 8G RAM, hibernation ("safe sleep"?) will make WindowServer crash if you're still running 10.6 (Snow Leopard).


Spotlight search returns no results on iOS 9 The bug mentioned in this question continues: Spotlight search on iOS 9 returns no results.

I've tried

Sending myself an e-mail (yes really; this occasionally works for a few minutes)
Toggling off all entries in the settings for Spotlight (takes forever)
Restarting
Rebooting
Toggling contacts on and off (suggested in several places, at least of iOS 8)
Re-enablining only Contacts in Spotlight search settings (said to work for iOS8)
All of the above in every possible pairwise combination

None of these work for more than a few minutes. Most do not work at all.

Basically, for practical use, especially "in the field", this effectively bricks my iPhone.

Has anyone had reliable success with iOS 9 fixing this issue?

I've tried

sending myself an e-mail (yes really; this occasionally works for a few minutes)

Toggling contacts on and off (suggested in several places, at least of iOS 8)

Both of these, the only specific attempts you've made to solve your issue (and the only two that seem to be reported as effective) both involve accounts.
My best guess for why your issue is occurring (based on this connection) is that something with your email accounts is screwed up, giving Spotlight a format of information it can't handle, effectively crashing it. The idea that your accounts are causing it is one uncommon thing that isn't changed by a  factory reset, given that you probably re-signed-in to at least one of your accounts immediately after a reset.

How should you stop this issue from occurring?

Sign out of your email accounts (in your mail settings) and delete all of the contacts, emails, calendar events, and notes from your iPhone.
Sign out of your iCloud account and remove any information associated with that account from your phone (this might involve a factory reset without restoring from a backup and without signing into your iCloud account).
Turn off Siri (which has access to and can control your accounts).

Once you delete all email/account related data from your iPhone, I suspect this issue will cease to occur to you, and Spotlight should start working again.

Other tips from other forums:
Make sure you're not hiding contacts in the Contacts app.
Shut down everything from appearing in Spotlight then only enable Contacts.
Reset your network settings in Settings->General->Reset

The only official suggestion from Apple
Make sure you're in a country that supports Spotlight Search, that your language is set to a language spoken in one of those countries, and that your device region is set to one of those countries.


How to organize/receive emails on one account while sending from another I have had a Yahoo account for a number of years and recently got a Gmail account. Since my Yahoo account has all my emails since forever saved into folders that are helpful for me to keep organized, I have set up my Gmail to forward all emails Gmail receives to my Yahoo account, so that I can continue to use the Yahoo system while giving people my new Gmail address.

So, in my Mail app I use Yahoo. But I would like the emails that I send to appear as being sent from my Gmail address.

I have tried adding the Gmail account and then setting Gmail as the default account. That didn't work. I have also tried clicking on Yahoo in the settings and then going to the outgoing server setting and entering in smtp.gmail.com. That didn't work either. I also tried deleting my Yahoo account and re-adding it, in case the order that the accounts were added had anything to do with it.

Any advice on how I can continue to use Yahoo to organize my emails, but have them send AUTOMATICALLY from my Gmail address?

Thank you very much! :)

If you want all email send from one account (i.e. gmail) you can set that up in Mail preferences.

Open Mail Preferences then select Composing:

Now select your gmail in the "send new messages from:"

Obviously in Mail you will need Yahoo and Gmail accounts.

Alternatively you can use the "Reply to" in Mail app.

For that Start a new mail and go View - "Reply to Address Field" or simply use shortcut alt+cmd+R. Then enter your reply to address. Now when you send new emails or you reply to emails it will use the selected email.

The third option: if you are really serious with that, you can use the Terminal app located in your Utility folder.

Type "defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '{"Reply-To" = "reply-to@address"; }'" (excluding the outermost quotation marks) and replace reply-to@address with the address you want to be used for replies.

Read more here


Recent calls suddenly changed to add +1 for US calls, which messed-up all my contacts I do not know if this has anything to do with the problem - I recently returned from a China trip and all my call history got changed so the phone numbers are now displayed with "+1" in front of them. More importantly, when my existing contacts call me the Caller ID does not display their name anymore, but only a number with "+1" and in a small font below "Maybe: [Contact Name]".

Of course, I can select "Add to Existing Contact", but do I have to update all my contacts now? The form with +1 is inconvenient to me and I would like to change it back. Is there a simple fix?

My wife fixed it - told me to turn the iPhone OFF and then back ON. Apparently this procedure should be done before attempting to resolve any issue with iPhone.


In Catalina, Can Fingerprint Replace Password Requests on Preference I am running 10.15.2 in a MacBook Pro15,1 (6-core, I7) and I was curious if the fact that you cannot use fingerprint authentication to gain access top Settings panel is by design or if this is a "personal problem". I am able to use it for the other typical uses such as in Safari or the App Store, but it is tedious that you need to type your password whenever you wish to make preference edits.

Yes, you can replace a password request on System Preference with Fingerprint also.

You can also use Touch ID to unlock these features on your Mac:

•   Password-protected Notes

•   The Passwords section in Safari
preferences

•   System Preferences

Note: If you have FileVault turned on, you must type your password to unlock the Security & Privacy pane and the Users & Groups pane.

•   Just make sure that you have enabled all the checkboxes to select the Touch ID features that you want to use on your Mac.


Is it possible to change the user's shell system-wide without using chsh? Using chsh in Catalina is annoying because during a system update /etc/shells is reverted back to the default content. I use Fish as my shell and I don't want to keep an eye on that file. Is there a way to set the default shell system-wide (so I don't have to touch my terminal emulator preferences) for a given user without using chsh? Something like Linux's usermod would be nice

You should be able to use
sudo chsh -s /usr/local/bin/fish USERNAME

to change user USERNAME to a shell which isn't listed in /etc/shells.
PS: Might be worthwhile to create a second admin account first so you won't get locked out if the behaviour changes with future releases.


Outlook sporadically stops checking mail I use Outlook 2011 (14.4.3) to connect to my organization's exchange server from my Mac (OS 10.9). Normally I receive mail shortly after it was sent, but on occasion Outlook will refuse to check my mail for periods ranging from minutes to hours.

By "refuse to check my mail" I mean that:

When I click the "send/receive" button, the button responds with a click animation, but it does not check my mail.
If I open the "progress" window (cmd-7) I can confirm that no activity is shown.
No error messages appear in the "errors" window (cmd-8).

During these times:

I can log in to webmail and confirm that there are messages that haven't been downloaded.
My mac has full connectivity otherwise
Outlook is able to send emails, which are received by others right away (but my sent mail box isn't updated either).
The status message in the lower-right still says "connected to [account name]" and accurately displays the last time it connected to the server.

The problem sometimes resolves spontaneously, and I'll get a bunch of old mail at once.

Quitting and restarting usually fixes the problem. But that requires me to notice that it's happening, which sometimes doesn't happen for several hours, during which I can miss emails that required an immediate response.

Does anyone have any suggestions or diagnostic steps?

I have experienced the same issue with Apple Mail since updating to Mavericks.  I was hoping Outlook would be better, but it sounds like it has the same problem.

My understanding is that this occurs occasionally when checking mail hosted via Kerio or Exchange.  My workaround is to use Thunderbird, which has not had the problem.  I actually have Thunderbird running simultaneously just for the alerts, and if there is an alert but Mail hasn't received new mail, I know to quit and restart.


Organically learning or creating shortcuts and gestures for arbitrary actions Keyboard shortcuts across OS X and applications are an amazing productivity booster that have proven to be worthwhile, notwithstanding the sometimes arduous task of first memorizing them.

Is there a setting, app, or hack of some sort that would allow me to go about my business as usual and display any extant key combination as actions I perform match mapped shortcuts? This would stimulate passive learning of keyboard shortcuts -- and for ones most relevant to the user no less! Keep track of my actions so that I could assign shortcuts to series of actions would really be something.

What aspects of the OS libraries available could a developer use write such software?

Something like seeing the shortcut next to the menu item, only when the menu isn't used...  e.g. something that would flash "Command + L" each time I click the address bar of a browser, or "Command + Shift + D" each time I clicked "Send" on a mail message.

Menu items contain shortcut information

Mightbe a bit obvious, but most of the menu items contain shortcut information. And if no shortcut is visible for a specific menu item, it is most certain that none is available.

When you use a menu item, do not click, but use the shortcut instead.

You can also create you own shortcuts, but that is something different.


Why is my boot partition listed as Unmounted in Disk Utility? I recently experienced a kernel panic ("your mac must restart...") due to an issue with Macfusion, so after the reboot I loaded Disk Utility in an attempt to verify the disk in case something was left in a bad state. Disk Utility claims that my main partition is unmounted, though it's clearly not.

Is there something amiss here or am I just suffering from post-crash paranoia? The system appears to be running properly.

Note: I'm running OS X Lion and am using File Vault. If (because of FV) this is expected behavior, how do I run a Verify/Repair?

The best option is to reboot with the option key held down.  Boot from your Recovery HD and first repair the volume containing the partition you indicated, then repair the partition itself.

It is unusual, but not unheard of for the verify function to not be available since the design is to be able to self-verify but nor self-repair the boot volume.


What leads to Windows thinking I pressed the Insert key on a MacBook Pro? Note: This question is how to send an Insert keypress to Microsoft Windows running directly on Apple hardware. This is not about how to use Insert in OS X or through OS X to Windows running in a VM. See here or here for non-Windows Q&A's.

Somehow in my code editor and command line I keep toggling the Insert key, but I'm not sure how.  I can toggle it by clicking on OVR/INS in the status bar, but what is the key combo that I'm magically fat fingering?

Apparently, for Windows running natively on Apple hardware fn + return creates an Insert key press.


Delete iCloud bookmark only from a specific computer I have iCloud Safari bookmark syncing set up on two Macs and an iPhone. Is it possible to delete a bookmark (or set of bookmarks) from one machine only, so that they continue to exist on the other two devices?

As any changes performed to an iCloud-Sync service will  be pushed to all other iCloud-Sync devices, your only option would be to unsync the desired device form iCloud's Safari and then delete the bookmarks.

Bear in mind that once you re-enable the Safari's Sync, all of its data will be merged together.


How to prevent 'sudo rm -rf /' A few times I have accidentally executed the command sudo rm -rf /.

Is there a way how to prevent me from running this command? For example can I somehow disable it using the sudoers file?

You can add a line like

%admin ALL = !/bin/rm -rf /

to your sudoers file to prevent the execution of the command with the specific options.

Or, if you want to exclude several commands, you can work with command aliases

Cmnd_Alias DANGEROUS_CMNDS=/bin/rm -rf /, /bin/rm -fr /
%admin ALL=!DANGEROUS_CMNDS

You can also try to play it safe by using

Cmnd_Alias DANGEROUS_CMNDS=/bin/rm -rf /, /bin/rm -fr /, /bin/rm / *, /bin/rm * /, /bin/rm -rf / *, /bin/rm -rf * /, /bin/rm -fr / *, /bin/rm -fr* /
%admin ALL=!DANGEROUS_CMNDS

but there still might be other ways you can shoot yourself in the foot with rm so be careful anyway.

But keep in mind that all matching is done on the full string of the command, so sudo rm -rf /Volumes would still work (as would cd /; sudo rm -rf .).

PS: By all means, use sudo visudo to edit the sudoers file and NEVER edit it directly

PPS: I obviously didn't test this with rm (only with /bin/echo instead)


Where can I get a case that is also a battery for the iPhone 4? I have seen ones for previous versions of the iPhone - is there one for the new iPhone though?

Not yet, but I found a couple that are soon to be released:

iPhone 4 Fuel Max
EXOGEAR iPhone Battery Case


How to get list of all Wi-Fi networks available in iPhone 5 My laptop is showing 4-5 wifi networks available in my area. But my iPhone is just showing 1-2 wifi networks. Even when I'm trying to add/search manually, then it is showing error couldn't find network. Anyone have any idea why?

Download the Airport Utility app from the app store and then in the settings app enable Wi-Fi Scanner.

You get a searchable list and export capabilities of the results. Once you have a scan, you can post those results in a new thread to ask what to do in your situation once you have concrete data.


Various random website cannot be reached (cannot allocate memory) With process of elimination and testing the problems on 2 different Macs, 4 different networks, and many different browsers, I have isolated the cause of my network issue to be the actual Mac.

Certain sites, even though they are up, are completely unreachable by one of my Mac. Visiting on Chrome says:

Error code: ERR_OUT_OF_MEMORY

Safari says:

The operation couldn't be completed. Cannot allocate memory

ping says:

ping: sendto: Cannot allocate memory

I have no idea what to do next. I check my Network setting and no proxies are on. Is there any way to reset my network settings? Or any commands to provide more information to allow more diagnostic?

Thanks.

What fixes it for me for wireless connection is this:

Go to network preferences
Open the connection data
Open "Advanced..." properties
Go to "TCP/IP" tab
Set "Configure IPv4" to off (remember the previous setting)
Click "OK" and then Apply
Wait for the connection to be reset
Go back to TCP/IP and re-enable IPv4 to the previous setting
Click "OK" and then "Apply" again

After the connection restores, the memory errors are gone. Still no idea why it happens or why this fixes it, but seems to work for me and is much faster than rebooting.


How to set up Touch Bar to show function keys in a specific VirtualBox virtual machine macOS allows you to change the Touch Bar to traditional function keys when you run specific applications. I have tried to do so with VirtualBox, and it works on the main VirtualBox window properly. The only issue is that when I launch a virtual machine, those settings lose their effect. The reason is that VirtualBox launches a differently-named executable file (from within its app bundle) in order to run the virtual machine in a separate process.

So, the question is: Is there a way to set up macOS to show the function buttons when running a virtual machine in VirtualBox (e.g. Linux or Windows)?

http://www.mastropaolo.com/2016/12/16/how-to-have-function-keys-in-virtualbox-guess-with-macos-touchbar/

  Open a Finder window to the /Applications folder. Right click on VirtualBox.app and click “Show Package Contents”.
  Find the Resources folder, and drag it into Finder’s favorites sidebar.
  Using the Resources folder you put in favorites, add vmstarter.app and VirtualBoxVM.app to the list of exceptions.
  Now you can remove the Resources shortcut you added to favorites.


Xcode - Can I develop for iOS 11.1 in El Capitan? I'm a software development student and I'm building an iOS app for a class.

The thing is I have a MacBook Pro Mid 2009 with El Capitan 10.11.6 (15G17023)
and an iPhone 5s running iOS 11.1.2 (15B202).

The latest version of Xcode compatible with El Capitan (I think) is 8.2.1 and it is not compatible with my iOS version.

The app I'm trying to make does not require ARKit or anything that advanced and I would like to know if is there a way I can make this work with my actual devices?

I really don't have the money to upgrade my MacBook for a newer one nor for an older iPhone.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Edit: I no longer have this problem but obviously the question will stay open because we haven't found a solution nor a proper answer.
What I did was install This High Sierra Patcher and from there update Xcode and everything necessary to develop.

I do not recommend this: you are making modifications to your computer that can result in unexpected behavior and you know, all that anti-piracy speech... and also Xcode runs terribly slow (there is a reason why this computer model cannot be updated anymore.)

I hope you get a better answer, because this is not ideal but is all I have:

You could develop using the latest version of Xcode that will run on your Mac using the simulator for day-to-day testing. Then when you really need to test on a real device, upload a beta to the App Store, configure yourself as an Internal Tester and use TestFlight to download the app to your 'phone.

Edit: This may also require a full developer account!


I'm a little confused about my disk utlliization My daisy disk shows my disk utilisation like this. I have a 128 gb disk. Why does it show as ~72gb.

The number after "Macintosh HD" and in the centre of the circle in your image is how much space on the disk is used - not the entire capacity of the disk. Clicking an area in the chart will navigate into that folder and show you how much space that folder is taking on your drive.

If you go back to the start view by clicking "Disks and Folders" you will see the actual capacity of each disk.


iOS - Replace Siri with Google Assistant I have been using both Siri and Google Assistant. Between the two, I find latter to be more smarter and prefer it over the former.

Is there a way to replace Siri with Google Assistant? If yes, how do I do so?

Siri and Google Assistant are similar offerings from Apple and Google and are deeply integrated in their respective mobile OS. It is not possible to replace one with the other.

While Siri is exclusive to iOS (along with other OS by Apple macOS, watchOS and tvOS), Google provides the Google Assistance app for iOS.

Google Assistant app for iOS can be downloaded on iTunes App Store.

On an additional note, as Siri is deeply integrated into iOS, there are various features exclusive to it, which Google Assistant cannot perform on iOS.


Can't reset PRAM and reinstall OS! I have a problem with my MacBook Pro 2010 13 inch, 2.4 GHz. Originally I had Snow Leopard installed on my Mac, then I was trying to upgrade it to Lion (official version from App Store).

During the installation, an error occurred and I got a kernel panic. But that's not exactly the problem. I found out that the laptop had had a firmware password set by somebody (not me).

None of the boot modifier keys (except option) appear to work. When I press option, it asks me for a password. Some people told me to switch the RAM slots or take one out and then turn on the computer holding ⌘+⌥+P+R. That didn't work either. Still see the password prompt.

Any ideas how to reset it?

Not sure if this is too late of an answer. I know you've already attempted to disable the password, but try these steps exactly:

You can remove the firmware password by changing the RAM configuration, booting up to the startup menu, shutting down and changing it back. Basically, if you have two 1GB chips of RAM in there now, you can remove one of the chips, start up holding alt/option, shut down and put the other chip back in. This will remove the firmware password.

Now, you can follow these instructions for doing the erase and install.

Good luck!


Moving files (manually in Finder, via terminal MV, or via script) appears to leave a 'ghost' file in search results that cannot be deleted Scenario:

I use plex with a DVR and torrents to download tv shows and the accompanying files.
The DVR files save to DRIVE_1, and the permanent storage for PLEX is DRIVE_2.

Issue:

When the files are moved, it appears that many (some, not all) files are 'ghosted'. Essentially, the files that have been moved still 'appear' in the search results of smart folders, but they aren't real files. They cannot be edited, deleted, etc. I cannot seem to remove them from the search, even though they do not physically exist on the drive being searched.

Layout:

They are both physical drives.
DRIVE_1 is OSX Journaled, and DRIVE_2 is EX_FAT.
My script is an applescript 'app' that uses "do shell script" to run a series of BASH commands to mv the files that are relevant. They are also being renamed using "A Better Finder Rename" call out before the MV command.
I use MV, and not CP, because DRIVE_1 needs to be free for other files.

Process:

Either manually using (Command down) Drag and Drop, OR via the MV command in terminal in the script, the system will find the *.mp4/mkv/etc file types, rename them, and then MV them to the TV_Shows directory.
Here is an example:
do shell script "find /Volumes/DVD_Scratch/Downloads -iname '*.mp4' -exec open -a /Users/MYName/Documents/xHelper_Apps/DVDNameFix.app {} +;"
do shell script "find /Volumes/DVD_Scratch/Downloads -iname '*.mp4' -size +90M    -exec mv -v '{}' /Volumes/DVD_Music/TV_Shows/_Unsorted_TV/ \;"

As you can see, this basically finds all mp4s, sends them to the Renamer App, then 'qualifies' if they are over 90mb, and MVs those to a folder.
I think this is where the issue comes in. Some of those files, after the MV, the filenames in the original location are still showing as 'ghosts' in the system.
I can't explain it any other way, because:

They DO show up in a Smart Folder/Search
They do NOT show up in Terminal
They do NOT show up with a file path.

See in the image below. in the smart search, I am simply looking at 2 things: Location=DRIVE_1, and KIND=Movie.
You will note that "The Munsters" and "Smallville" are selected. The Munsters is a 'ghost' file, in that:

It has no file location (no "where" in the info)
It has no Edit or Read Access
I cannot drag it to the trash
I cannot CMD-Delete it
I cannot drag it to the terminal (it does nothing)

What I've Tried:

Rebuild Spotlight
Reindex via terminal (sudo mdutil -i on /)
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V100 AND sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight-V200
Repairing Permissions from Disk Utility
Running Daily/Weekly/Monthly from Terminal
Running diskutil repairvolume /Volumes/MYVolume/
Recreated the search.folder
Deleted /Library/Caches for Finder
Deleted /FinderPreferences

What does work:
I know that if I reformat completely, this does go away; but that is not a regular solution; at least, it shouldn't be.
Looking for ideas on next steps, or at least the cause.

So, the solution is that the EXTERNAL drives, for whatever reason, were not re-indexing Spotlight.
I ran this command directly pointed to the DRIVE itself, and this cleared the results.
sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/DRIVE_1
So, the takeaway is: Spotlight re-indexing (sudo mdutil -i on /) is only for the main HDD. Which, is weird, but that's what did it.


Displaying full screen video on only 1 monitor I have a multiple monitor setup. I'd like to be able to play a video full screen on only one of them. It could be Quicktime or a Safari video (mostly Safari/YouTube). Is there any setting to control this at all? Right now the video takes over the screen and the others go black. (Have seen other older answers but no solutions recently.)

Try to disable mirroring in System Preferences > Displays and move application which play video to the screen you want.


Unable to convert dmg to encrypted dmg on Yosemite When I try to convert a regular (internet downloaded) dmg file to an encrypted dmg (256-bit AES) using Disk Utility on Yosemite it gives me this error message:
 How do I get this to work on Yosemite? If not via Disk Utility, is there a way to convert it using Terminal commands? I was aways able to do this on Mavericks, but after I upgraded to Yosemite I get the above error message. I'm sure that the dmg isn't corrupted as I downloaded AirSquirel's Reflector trial dmg, tried to convert and I got the same error message. If it helps I'm using a Mid-2013 MacBook Air.

I've figured it out! Though still appears that converting a dmg file to an encrypted one using Disk Utility is still broken as of OS X 10.10 (Yosemite), I've figured out a way to do it via terminal using this:

hdiutil convert /PATH/TO/FILE -format UDZO -encryption AES-256 -o /OUTPUT/FILE

This converts a dmg using AES-256 encryption and uses zlib compression. I hope that Apple fixes this in Yosemite soon though. I got some inspiration/help from this Super User question: Further compressions of disk image files


iPhone: Set recurring reminder to get off an app Instagram has become a major distraction for me. I will spend hours upon hours mindlessly scrolling, allowing what little time I could have spent doing things I enjoy to slip away. I don't want to delete the app since I sometimes use it to message people. Is there a way, perhaps using Shortcuts, to check if I'm on Instagram, if so, set a reminder (e.g. "Get off!") to pop up every 10 minutes, and once I'm off, delete the reminder?

You could activate Screen Time (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208982) with a limit set to ten minutes per day which would give you a full screen overlay when your time is up, with the opportunity to extend your usage by one minute, fifteen minutes, or for the rest of the day.
Tine limits can be managed on a per app basis.


I want my Mac running Sierra, to stop hiding dock when I enter "Command+Option+D" I want my Mac (running macOS Sierra), to stop hiding Dock when I enter Command  + Option + D.

I need to use that key command for InDesign.

Click on the Apple menu
Open "System Preferences"

Select "Keyboard"

Click "Shortcuts"
Select "Launchpad & Dock"
Uncheck "Turn Dock Hiding On/Off"


My Finder file detail headers looks weird My Finder's file details header looks weird.

It looks translucent and not clickable :(
I used many command-line tools on this Temp folder, so I could be happen from accidental deletion of some system file. But I can't figure out what actually happen in there.

How can I fix this?

You used View » Arrange By or a ctrl+⌘+[number] shortcut. It's new in Lion. Remove it by selecting View » Arrange By » None (or pressing ctrl+⌘+0).

Hold down ⌥ while opening the View menu to get the older Sort By… menu, or press ctrl+⌥+⌘+[number] instead.


Is there any free screencasting software? I am searching for an OK and free screencasting app to finally start LP-ing.
The app doesn't have to record sound because I can do that sort of stuff with Audacity. Recently  tried out "Copernicus", a screencasting app; I set the frame rate to 30, hoping for a good result, but it didn't turn out that well. In fact, it was horrible, the 8 second video I captured using this software turned out to have 2 frames per second.

If you happen to know of any good, free software for screencasting, please post some links.

I don't do a lot of LPs, but the last time I did I used QuickTime Player.app (Quicktime Player X); you'll find it in /Applications. To record your screen, select File > New Screen Recording.

The results were pretty good; recording Minecraft 1.7.3 gameplay on an about a year and a half old MBP, but I have a lot of RAM, so that certainly helps.

Edit:

It's worth noting that QuickTime Player X does not support loopback sound; meaning that the only sound recorded will be from the microphone, or virtual sound device providing loopback sound.

This may or may not be a good thing, depending on what you are doing.


Safari behavior - strange url - adware or what? During last few days, when I click on certain web pages and this strange URL comes for a second and then website gets opened.

http://203.94.248.63:3000/noti/?tm=1503169905239&fingerprint=c2VwLW5vLXJlZGlyZWN0&json=%7B%22url%22%3A%22%2F%22%2C%22referer%22%3A%22%22%2C%22host%22%3A%221blocker%2Ecom%22%2C%22categories%22%3A%5B0%5D%2C%22reputations%22%3A%5B1%5D%7D

http://203.94.248.63:3000/noti/?tm=1503167584314&fingerprint=c2VwLW5vLXJlZGlyZWN0&json=%7B%22url%22%3A%22%2F%22%2C%22referer%22%3A%22%22%2C%22host%22%3A%22me%2Ecom%22%2C%22categories%22%3A%5B0%5D%2C%22reputations%22%3A%5B1%5D%7D

Is my safari browser infected with something, any steps to avoid this irritating url behavior. Happened on chrome once too.

Edit: lengthy/detailed post on security.stackexchange , proposed solution is to modify hosts file.

I read from this post, that it gets redirected to an Indian domain whenever you go to a website.

I'm not sure  if this would work, but just make sure that there are no VPNs running or block this domain in your router's configuration page: mtnl.phozeca.com


can't mount an encrypted Volume on an M1 Mac. Works fine on Intel Macs. Known Issue? Is this a known issue with M1 Macs and encrypted drives?
What steps should I attempt to mount this volume?
Encrypted drive will not mount on M1 Mac. Mounts on my intel Macs no problems.
It’s Extended (Journaled, Encrypted) format and I used Disk Utility to create the volume using standard Apple encryption.
It hangs DU when I ask DU to mount the volume, sometimes even just plugging it into the M1 Mac causes DU to hang.
On the rare times Finder asks for a password for the volume, it beachballs the Finder/Mac. When I try and mount it using DU or Terminal it doesn’t work, in DU it hangs DU and I have to force quit DU. Apple support senior advisor still cannot get to the bottom of it. Seems to be an M1 Mac and/or Big Sur issue. I’ve already allowed 3rd kernel extensions on this Mac so that’s not it.
This is not a Time Machine drive. (people often assume it might be). On the Intel Mac I can connected with a USB3 cable into a USB2 hub (older Mac) or via a OWC TB2 hub in one of the USB ports. ON the 13' M1 MBA I'm going directly into the USB3 port via an adapter (TB3 to USB/HDMI adapter). The M1 Mac can see the drive but not mount it from terminal, disk utilities or in Finder. If I ever get to the point of being able to enter the encryption key, it hangs the app doing it, or the Mac entirely.
  $ diskutil list external
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *960.2 GB   disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage magic-carpet            959.9 GB   disk2s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk2s3

/dev/disk3 (external, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS magic-carpet           +959.5 GB   disk3
                                 Logical Volume on disk2s2
                                 F37357F2-53C0-4926-BC59-431301F9A208
                                 Unlocked Encrypted

/dev/disk4 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        +49.1 MB    disk4
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk4s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS AnyMP4 Screen Record... 49.1 MB    disk4s2

There's no known, general issue with encrypted drives for the M1 Mac.
The symptoms you're describing sound very much like a corrupted file system. Together with bugs in the operating system's file system code, it can lead to these issues. I would run a file system check on the drive when unmounted. You can do this from your Intel Mac.
You can run the file system check from the Terminal like this:
sudo fsck_hfs -f /dev/disk3

Note that this assumes the file system is HFS+ and that it is mounted as /dev/disk3 (as in your screenshot). Use Disk Utility first to find the actual disk number.
The problem could also be of a hardware nature. I would suggest trying to connect the disk using the exact same adapter to another PC/Mac and see if that works. As you're using different methods of connecting the disk currently, it is difficult to know if it could be a hardware issue or not.


mid-2011 27" iMac won't turn on A couple hours ago, my faithful 2011 27" iMac suddenly locked up hard.  Only way to bail out was a hard shutdown (hold power for 5 seconds).  I did that, and tried to reboot again to no avail.  No signs of life at all on pressing the power button.  No fans, no beep, nothing.

I unplugged, waited 15 seconds (pressing power during that time just to make sure all juice was drained) and plugged back in.  Still no signs of life at all.

I read about someone else having a similar problem and taking out and replacing the RAM fixed it.  So I pulled all the modules and tried to power up and see if I'd get any beeps or signs of life.  Nothing.

I put the RAM back in, still nothing.  Unplugged every single peripheral (Thunderbolt and USB), nothing.  Swapped the power cord, nothing.

I'm at a total loss.  Anyone have any ideas on why my machine just mysteriously died?  Any ideas what else I can try, to bring it back?

EDIT 2:  Very strange addendum here.  This issue began again a few weeks after posting this answer.  BUT, I just discovered that while I have inconsistent problems manually getting the iMac to boot, a scheduled startup works perfectly fine, every time.  Go figure!

So this is totally weird and I can't explain it but...

Unplugged the mac before I went to bed last night.  Came in this morning and tried firing it up before I remembered it was unplugged.  Spoiler alert - it didn't boot.

Remembered about an hour later that it was unplugged.  Plugged it back in and just like that, normal boot!

Plugged all my peripherals back in and it's like nothing ever went wrong.  I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what actually happened but, I'm back up & running.

So if by chance you're in my same boat, try letting it sit completely unplugged overnight and see if you have a similarly miraculous solution appear.

EDIT:  Some additional information I just figured out over a month later that is related to this:

Shortly after "solving" this issue originally, I realized my UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) was crapping out and no longer holding a charge.  I suspected this was related to my problems so I ordered replacement batteries, swapped them out, and all has been good.  Until this morning.

I woke up and once again, my machine was in a hosed state.  Wouldn't power up at all, no matter what I did.  This time even letting it sit several hours unplugged, changed nothing.

Finally out of desperation, I decided to unplug from the UPS (which was still running and showing 100% battery) and plug into the wall directly.  Immediately, the Mac booted up fine.  No problems at all.

I shut down, plugged back into the UPS, and... nothing.  No boot, at all.  So I shut off the UPS, waited 5-10 seconds, and turned it back on.  Just like that, the Mac booted up again fine!

Moral of the story here is, if your Mac won't boot and it's plugged into a UPS, try power cycling the UPS itself.  Might save you a lot of headache.


Best OS X for late 2009 MacBook I have a white 13" MacBook (late 2009) with 2GB memory.
It is currently running Mavericks.

The machine is too slow, probably because the memory is just 2GB.

I'm considering downgrading it back to its original OS, which was Snow Leopard.

I bought Lion from the App Store when it came out, but I can't find it now, only Mountain Lion and Yosemite.

What would be the ideal OS X for this machine?
If it is Lion, how would I go about getting another copy, given that I've bought one once already?
What if I upgraded the memory to 4GB? (But installing new memory requires opening the machine up, which is not so easy.)

You basically have two options:

If you don't want to open up machine then install Snow Leopard as leanest of them all. It will be fast though few resource hungry apps or web pages can bog it down.
Another minus of the path is that Snow Leopard being released July 25, 2011 is going to be unsupported soon if not already. At least latest NTP patch doesn't apply to it.
If you do to open it. And it is not that hard really with this machine see instruction. Then I would say add 8GB while you are there. It supports up to 2x4GB SO-DIMM DDR3-1066 modules(choose big names like Hynix, Samsung, Crucial for compatibility). Regarding OS X choice it is either 10.9 as more polished or 10.10 as the latest. Clearly 10.9 behaves a lot more solid on the machine. But if you need 10.10 it will also be fine. Safari is definitely snappier on it.

Regarding 10.7 Lion. It just doesn't make sense. It is no faster than Mavericks on 2GB but it is definitely slower than 10.6 Snow Leopard.

I put 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD in place of Superdrive in same machine recently, installed 10.10 and it will be fine for few more years for light to medium tasks. Good luck


osx Captive Portal with USB to Ethernet adapter I am trying to get the Captive Portal working on Mac osx. When using wifi to connect to my server, I get the expected wispr request to  http://www.apple.com/library/test/success.html - however, using an USB to Ethernet adapter, I only receive requests for http://init-p01st.push.apple.com/bag on my machine on the other side of the USB to Ethernet. No matter what I return or where I redirect, there is no poup automatically opening like it is for Wifi.

Is osx even capable of Captive Portal when using USB to Ethernet adapters? Or do I need a special apple adapter for that?

By the way, I already got it working on Windows machines with USB to Ethernet.

There's nothing special about "USB to Ethernet"-adapters regarding captive portals. Having a "special Apple adapter" will not help you in that regard.

You must find the error in your system somewhere else.

Actually I'm not even sure that Mac OS X looks for captive portals on wired networks. As far as I recall, the Captive Network Assistant is only activated for wireless networks. Your USB adapter would count as a wired network.


Keyboard Shortcuts/Modifier Keys I am new to Mac (from Linux/Windows background), I find the modifier keys very confusing. I have tried different combinations of modifier key settings but didnt get it to work as expected.

Managed to get Ctrl+C/P to copy/paste but how do I do Alt+Tab to switch Windows.

Also, I like how I can press the Windows button to enter the dashboard/launcher in GNOME 3. How might I do the same in Mac?

Generally the keyboard shortcuts you are used to will rely on the command key.
One nice thing about a lot of Mac OS X menus is they will list the shortcut next to the command in question, and you can type the name of the command in the help menu when using the application in question, hover or use the arrow keys to select the menu item options that appear, and see the keyboard shortcuts.

CMD Tab is application switching, CMD C is copy, CMD V is paste, CMD Space is spotlight, swipe up with four fingers is the launcher iirc.

Also if you are in the Finder, you can click help and type shortcuts, there are lists upon lists for various tasks.


How do you jailbreak your device on iOS 6? I am interested in jailbreaking an iOS 6 device that I have. Just recently I noticed that this looks like it is now possible.

Is it possible an iOS 6.x.x device? Also, what devices is it possible to jailbreak at this point?

Compatibility

Thankfully, this jailbreak is supported by all version of iOS 6, including iOS 6.0, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, and 6.1. It works on all devices that support iOS 6 and it won't magically make iOS 6 work on devices that can not upgrade to iOS 6. Some current devices that run iOS and are not compatible with this one jailbreak are the 3rd generation Apple TV and the 2nd generation Apple TV.

Evasi0n modifies the OS for the following hardware:

iPhone 3GS
iPhone 4
iPhone 4S
iPhone 5
iPod Touch 4th Generation
iPod Touch 5th Generation
iPad 2
iPad (3rd Generation) with Retina display
iPad (4th Generation) with Retina display and Lightning connector
iPad Mini

You need a computer to run the jailbreak. As for those operating system requirements, Evasi0n is compatible with Windows (XP minimum), Mac OS X (10.5 minimum) and Linux (x86 / x86_64).

Set Up

First, I suggest updating your device to iOS 6.1, as it is the latest version of iOS, and the most secure. Now, apparently you can not update via Wifi. You must do it in iTunes. If you already updated wirelessly,  you can [SHIFT + Update] on Windows or [Option + Update] on Mac OS X, in iTunes.

Some notes:

According to the official Evasi0n ReadMe file you should also ensure that you backup your device before Jailbreaking, disable the passcode lock if enabled and ensure iTunes does not launch during the Jailbreaking process.

Backup your device using iTunes (or iCloud) before using evasi0n. If something breaks, you’ll always be able to recover your data.
Those who use backup passwords in iTunes must disable them for now. After doing so, iTunes makes a brand new backup. Please wait for that backup to complete before proceeding! Feel free to re-enable your backup password after jailbreaking.
Please disable the lock passcode of your iOS device before using evasi0n. It can cause issues.
Launch evasi0n, plug in your device, and click “Jailbreak”. Just sit back and observe its progress. Watch for any steps you may be asked to perform.
Avoid all iOS and iTunes related tasks until evasi0n is complete.
If the process gets stuck somewhere, it’s safe to restart the program, reboot the device (if necessary by holding down Power and Home until it shuts down), and rerun the process.

Detailed Walkthrough
(From iJailbreak.com)

The first thing you will need to do is download Eavsi0n for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux. Just head over to evasi0n.com for that.
With Evasi0n downloaded you will need to extract it. On Mac OS X you will find a .dmg file that upon being clicked you will be able to drag the files to your desktop, but one Windows you will have a .zip file that can be extracted by right clicking on it and then clicking the extract to folder option.
After the Evasi0n Jailbreaking tool has been extracted find the Evasi0n app / .exe file. On Windows you will need to right click on it and then click the Run as administrator option. On Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and above you will need to hold down the control button on your keyboard, click the Evasi0n app and then the Open option to get past Gatekeeper.
With Evasi0n up and running you will need to plug your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad into your computer via the USB cable (upon doing this Evasi0n should recognize your device). Before you proceed any further you will also need to ensure you disable your lockscreen passcode if you have one enabled. This can be done by launching the Settings app, going into the General tab, followed by Passcode Lock and then tapping Turn Passcode off.
With your lockscreen Passcode disabled, iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad plugged into your computer and iTunes closed you can click the Jailbreak button. The process will now begin and you should see the progress bar moving forward.

Sit back and do not touch your computer until Evasi0n tells you to unlock your device and search for a newly created icon by the name of Jailbreak.
When you see this message simply follow its instructions.

Unlock your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad
Find the newly created Jailbreak icon on your homescreen
Tap this icon ONCE, it will launch and quickly close itself. This is normal.

You will then see the Evasi0n Jailbreaking tool start back up again and the progress bar should start moving. When the Jailbreak is complete you will see a “Done!” message displayed . This means the Jailbreak was successful! You will now just need to sit back until your iOS device automatically restarts, which might take a several tries.
When your device restarts it will display a white background with an Evasi0n logo. This is again part of the Jailbreaking process and you will see messages like Setting up Cydia, Clearing SpringBoard cache etc.

Once everything is finished being configured your device will be brought to the lockscreen. In which case you can unlock your device, find the Cydia icon on your SpringBoard and be on your way!
You should now have a Jailbroken iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. Congratulations! If you are experiencing troubles then my only suggestion would be to restart your computer, switch USB ports and try again. If you still don’t have any luck then a factory restore on iOS 6.1 may be necessary before reattempting. Also keep in mind that you cannot have a Passcode lock enabled.
Once you are Jailbroken you might be asking yourself, what now? Well, you will want to launch Cydia and install tweaks of course. Make sure you check out our Top Cydia tweaks and top Siri tweaks section to find some of the best tweaks available.

Congrats:

You're done! Don't forget to install OpenSSH, as you might need it (In case of troubles). Instructions should be found on the Cydia Store. Have fun!

NOTE: This originally came from my blogpost, http://infinite-josiah.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-to-jailbreak-your-ios-6-device.html


Why does my Mac not see my external drive as a boot option unless connected via an Apple-branded dongle I'm running into this odd issue where my external drive (Windows 10, Bootcamp) will only appear as a boot option if connected via the Apple dongle, and not via my regular off-brand dock/dongle.

Odd thing is, it works even if I connect the drive to the Apple dongle, then to the off-brand dongle, but not if I connect it to the off-brand dongle directly.

I've managed to boot from it (holding Alt/Opt on start), but that was with it connected directly to the Mac with the Apple-branded dongle.

I'm on an MBP 16" 2019

Why does my Mac not see my external drive as a boot option unless connected via an Apple-branded dongle?

Low quality USB bridge.

Inside the dongle, there's an IC (integrated circuit) that bridges the USB bus on your computer with the peripheral device.  Off brand manufacturers look for every edge to increase their profit margin so they use components that aren't exactly up to par.

Personally, I'm very wary of plugging in an off brand, low cost peripheral device into what is the highest priced laptops/desktops on the market today.

There was a time when USB cables were being made so poorly they could actually kill your device.  This is why you go with reputable brands.  I'm partial to Anker (they make an equivalent to the Multi-Port AV Adapter) because they offer an 18 to 24 month warranty on all products.


Why does the diskutil shows I have two local hard drives? I was trying to get my NTFS drive to work today and I discovered that the diskutil thinks I have two local hard drive. This phenomenon is not occurred on my Macbook Pro. Do anyone know why?

Here is what it shows:

If you run diskutil corestorage list, you will get a more detailed list:

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 62933502-BEAA-43E6-BDFD-D061365F059D
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         222140432384 B (222.1 GB)
    Free Space:   0 B (0 B)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume F96E64AE-1ADD-46C6-A64B-2578D6DFE536
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     222140432384 B (222.1 GB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family 0BAEBD36-8C41-4D0F-A66B-1203DAD5649F
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Type:         AES-XTS
        Encryption Status:       Unlocked
        Conversion Status:       Complete
        High Level Queries:      Fully Secure
        |                        Passphrase Required
        |                        Accepts New Users
        |                        Has Visible Users
        |                        Has Volume Key
        |
        +-> Logical Volume B719B24B-31B2-4890-BE9F-5BD924723237
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk1
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          221803835392 B (221.8 GB)
            Revertible:            No
            Revert Status:         Reboot required
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS

There’s a Physical Volume (disk0s2) and a Logical Volume (disk1).

This sheet explains the situation quite well:

As you can see, you need a Logical Volume; a Physical isn’t enough.


I can't resize my macintosh HD drive on os X 10.9.5 I have checked similar questions but didn't find an answer that worked.
I have a macbook pro late 2013 with OS X 10.9.5.

I have the OS X on the Macintosh HD drive (Mac OS Extended (Journaled)), windows on bootcamp and another 13 or so GB as "free space" (at the bottom)

On disk utility I don't even have the option to drag and change my Macintosh HD drive, and I can't seem to add the free 13GB to my main Macintosh HD doesn't matter what I do.

I did this in the past, and now just can't resize it at all - an image of my disk utility is attached. I just want to add the 13 GB of free space in the bottom to the main Macintosh HD drive. could you please help?

Thank you

What partition were you running from when you took that screenshot? If Macintosh HD is your boot partition, you may have to boot into the recovery partition in order to modify it.


Preview.app: easily print current page only? When printing a PDF from preview, is there an easy way to only print the currently displayed page? Now, I look up the page number and enter it two times in the page range. But maybe there is a keyboard shortcut to do so?

In the version of Preview included in Lion, this is easy. Go to File-> Print...
Click the Show Details button to reveal extra options.
Under Pages, choose Selected Page in Sidebar.

That will print only the current page (and the live print preview will update to show you).
Note that the side bar does not have to be visible for this to work.


How many USB buses do Mac Pros have? I know how many USB ports the Mac Pros have, but what I can't find is an answer to how many dedicated USB buses they have. Reason being, I'm involved in developing an app that uses 3 Kinects to track motion, and each Kinect will require a dedicated USB bus.

Will a stock Mac Pro have 3 separate buses, or will I need to add an extra USB controller card?

My new Mac Pro has 6 "USB" busses, 12Mb/s, and two "USB High Speed" busses. 480 Mb/s.  One of the "USB" busses shows Bluetooth on it, but none of the others seem to be in use.  The external connectors belong to the two "High Speed" busses.  Buss 0xfd has one of the front and two of the back connectors.  Buss 0xfa has one of the front and one of the back connectors.


Backing Up and Restoring Contacts from Microsoft Outlook on iOS 6 I don't use Microsoft Outlook but when I backed up my iPhone 5 running iOS 6 on my laptop, it said the contacts from that application were backed up.

How do I find/check if the contacts are backed up and where are they stored?

Launch Outlook and click the "Contacts" tab. You should see the imported iPhone contacts.

Read more: How to Copy Contacts From iPhone to Outlook | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_5631494_copy-contacts-iphone-outlook.html#ixzz2J6aQOS5B


dont show unread mails from subfolders in Apple Mail when collapsed Expanded I see this:

When I collapse the account, it shows the total unread count next to it:

I don't want that. I just want to see the unread count of the actual inbox.

In outlook I can exclude subfolders when showing the count of a folder. Is this also possible in apple mail?

I don't believe that it is possible to change the way unread message counts are aggregated. However, you can change your folders so that they are not displayed under your Inbox. That way your Inbox will only show the count for unread message in your Inbox.

On many mail servers, mailboxes are created and stored underneath the Inbox which is what you are seeing.

INBOX
INBOX.Drafts
INBOX.Sent
INBOX.Trash
INBOX.Junk
INBOX.Todo

By changing your account settings in Mail.app, you can specify the IMAP Path Prefix so that Mail will ignore the first part (INBOX) display these folders independently rather than subfolders of the Inbox.

To do this go to Mail -> Preferences -> Account and select the account in the left column. Then select Advanced on the right and you will see a text box to change the IMAP Path Prefix. Typically, you'll want to change this to INBOX, but this will depend on your mail provider (e.g. Google uses [Gmail]) so you may need to check with your provider.


Replaced SSD drive on MBPr shown as External I replaced my internal MBPr SSD for an OCW Aura one.

It works great, but it's recognised as "External" (despite being installed internally), which means it shows up on Finder/Desktop as an external drive, and it even has the Eject button shown.

From a quick glance on the System Report, the issue should be that it's marked as "Removable Media: Yes". Any way to change that and have OS X see it properly as an internal drive?

I'm running the latest El Capitan version btw, and the drive is an OCW Aura 480.

Yes, having had the same issue myself you need to erase and setup the drive again from scratch. It comes from the factory setup as you describe for whatever reason.
After backing up all your data (or if you already have a good backup or don't need one), follow these instructions:

Power off your Mac. Power on then immediately hold the Left Command, Option and R keys

This will Boot to Internet Recovery Mode on your Mac.

Once booted, go to Utilities, Terminal.

Inside Terminal type the following:

diskutil unmountdisk disk0

gpt destroy /dev/disk0

Close Terminal.

Open Disk Utility.

Click your OWC Aura drive on the left side, then choose the Erase Button.
Once erased, close disk utility and then choose Reinstall OS X and choose the newly reformatted volume.

You should note it appears as a regular internal drive now.


Is there some way to automatically find and remove all the "broken referenced" in Apple's Photo App? I like apple's Photo app but I am not willing to let it manage my photos library for many reasons (eg I want to manage and edit the same files from different applications such as Bridge but I also want to access my photo library on other windows machines on the network etc).
So I'm looking into using the Photos app with referenced files, not consolidated ones. For the most part it's working fine; But when I delete files via the Finder, I have no way of gathering up and de-referencing these broken references.

If for instance I delete a 1000 photos, I have to manually go through each of the 100,000 photos in my Photos library to see which references ones are broken.

Is there some way to detect which ones no longer exist? I don't mind getting my hands dirty with SQL, scripting, or the terminal - so any guidance is helpful!

Buy PhotoSweeper. It can search photos in the library with many conditions, including referenced or missing:

After you remove these photos, they are added to the album named “Trash (PhotoSweeper)”.

ref: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7993327


renamed folder becomes a file with an extension When I create a folder and name it "test.tmp" the finder asks me if I want to add the file extension ".tmp" to my folder. When accepted, the folder changes to a document with an icon.

I then can no longer open the 'folder' by double clicking on it. There is no default application associated to open the test.tmp file.

If I run ls -l the file is still shown as a directory.

On another Mac I am able to create this same folder name, and the folder remains a folder.

Any idea why on my Mac adding the .tmp changes the folder to a file?

TIA.

Folders can have a suffix too. If your OS X System knowns the file extension, it will change the icon (after renaming) and link it to the App that can handle that extension (and is set as default App to open those file types).

The folder then becomes a package or container, where you cannot easily look inside by browsing in finder. But you can right-click on it and choose "Show Package Contents" to see what is inside.

Sometimes the (folder-) file extension is hidden by System Default (as for iPhoto Library containers).


Missing calendar events and can't create new ones All of my past and future events have disappeared from my Calendar, the only events left in there are birthdays and Facebook events. All manually entered appointments etc., are gone.

Also, I cannot add new events anymore: the + sign is grayed out.

I just noticed this yesterday afternoon when I tried to add an event. I'm almost positive that they were there prior to that! How do I get my events back, and fix it so I can add events again!?

Go to Settings and click iCloud and turn on Calendars.

If that doesn't work, while in your Calendar, look at the bottom - "Today," "Calendar," and "Inbox." Click on Calendars. Somehow my "Home" calendar (which is where I save most entries, as opposed to "Calendar" or "Work") was unchecked. I couldn't see any old or future entries, and when I added entries and hit save, the day would be empty. When I re-checked "Home," everything reappeared.

It just wasn't showing "Home" entries. I hope your problem is this simple because I know how you feel like you're losing your mind when something like that happens!


Mac OS X Orphaned files I was using hardlink (https://github.com/selkhateeb/hardlink) to point an important folder to my new google drive folder and my machine crashed. Right now I have no access to OS X so I connected my HDD to a Windows 10 machine with bootcamp drivers installed. I can see all files there, but my senstive folder looks a file, instead of being a folder.. So I can't enter the folder to get the files and I believe the files are still there. Orphaned.

Any suggestions? It could be applications and steps when using Windows or OS X as I'm trying to get access to a mac computer to try to recover those files.

It seems that a hardlink modifies the original folder, instead of just creating another folder(link).

I was able to use a friend mac and insided os x I was able to enter the folder and recover the data! Resolved!

Thank you everyone!


iPhone 4S and 5 freezes after not answering 2 calls I'm having some issues after receiving 2 calls from anyone. So this is how it happened:

(NOTE: This errors happens when my iphone is locked and the screen is turned off)

Sometimes people call me when I'm busy at work and I can't answer them. After receiving 2 or more calls from anyone, the iPhone freezes when it displays the message: "Do you to send a text message?"

At the first time I can press the "Cancel" option. However, after receiving the second call it displays the same message but it freezes immediately. I can't do anything unless I make a call using Siri. When Siri calls, the iPhone "unfreezes" itself. I tried making 2 calls to an iPhone 5 and an iPhone 5C and the same error occurs.

It seems this is an OS error. Have anyone noticed this? Does someone know how to fix this error?

Thanks!

After spending quite sometime trying to find out a definite solution to this annoying problem I am afraid this is a glitch we have to live with until apple comes up with a fix. In my case not even using Siri for a call helped out. Once the call is over the phone freezes again. The only walk around I have found is asking Siri to open any application I have in the phone (I usually ask for the calendar) and Siri will notice that the phone is locked and will ask for the four digit code to unlocked. Just plug the code in and magic, you will gain access to the phone without having to reset.


Fn+F6 misbehaving after Mountain Lion upgrade After upgrading from Lion to Mountain Lion, I find that the F6 key (which is really Fn+F6, as I have enabled "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys" under System Preferences:Keyboard) is not behaving as expected.

Under Lion, I was able to pass this key to an application (a bit complicated, but basically I pass it to Terminal which was passing it to a tmux session where I have configured F6 to switch to window 6).  But now after the upgrade, when I press F6 (or Fn+F6 for that matter) I am switched to a different desktop!  If I press it again, all the windows on that desktop disappear.  A third press causes the windows to reappear, and after that it just seems to toggle visibility of windows on my alternate desktop.

I have looked at Keyboard Shortcuts in System Preferences, but nothing appears to use the F6 key, and I haven't found anything in Apple's documentation which talks about what the actual function keys are supposed to do - only what the Icons do which is different, such as adjusting volume or screen brightness.  That is not what I am interested in, as I am using the Fn+ equivalent.

I am using an iMac with a fairly recent Bluetooth keyboard, and there is no "Num Lock" equivalent for F6 as apparently some keyboards have.

If you upgrade to Mac OS X 10.8.4 Mountain Lion and also have Parallels Desktop installed, you will be required to upgrade the latter to version 8.  This new version by default uses the F6 key to "Show and Hide the Parallels Desktop".  To disable this, use the menus "Parallels Desktop" : "Preferences", and click on the "System Shortcuts" tab. to show the above preference, which can then be unchecked or changed to a different shortcut key.


Enabling "Hardened Runtime" from outside of XCode This question is prompted by the new Notarization requirements that Apple will enforce for Mac Apps distributed outside of the Mac App Store targeting Mojave (in the near future.)

I maintain a suite of self-hosted, Developer ID Application certificate-signed apps, using a custom runtime (Excelsior JET for Mac Java JIT Compiler / Runtime); custom bash scripts (are used as part of the apps in the installation process) and automate the builds. Therefore, there are no XCod` projects per-se involved in this process.

After consulting the developer docs, I wasn't able to find a way to activate and customize this "hardened mode" (described here) by using any kind utilities from XCode, but from the CLI (instead of the IDE GUI). Is there any way to accomplish this?

Are you looking for codesign's --options runtime argument? I believe that's all you need to enable the hardened runtime.

Apple has a couple of documents that make it pretty easy to figure out your own notarization flow:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/notarizing_macos_software_before_distribution/customizing_the_notarization_workflow
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/notarizing_macos_software_before_distribution/resolving_common_notarization_issues


How do I uninstall the command line tools for Xcode? We have a bunch of Mac at work that no longer require Xcode or command line tools so we'd like to remove them so the compilers aren't hanging around and we don't have to keep updating them when updates arrive.
Before Xcode was in the Mac App Store, there ware install and uninstall scripts (perl in /Developer) to remove the tools, but now that Xcode is an app store app you are left with the tools if you ever install them.
Can we clean this other than wiping the OS for macs running 10.10 and newer?

Delete this one folder:

 /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools

This uninstall process is documented officially by Apple.

If you have installed these tools another way or have prompts to upgrade them, consider searching for files named like /System/Library/Receipts/com.apple.pkg.CLTools.bom since that may be a receipt for a past installation of the tools that needs to be removed. I have never seen one of these files, but wanted to link to this other answer in case it helps others. Note, these files do not remove the tools, they may govern the prompt that dev tools are in need of an update.

Removing uninstalled Command Line Tools from AppStore updates


Auto-lock never missing in IOS 9.2.1 Surprised I could not find this asked.

Is there a way to get Auto-Lock "Never" option back in IOS 9.2.1

Actually i also experienced this. I got this solved because I read a thread regarding this. It's happening because we install some certificate to our iPhone. For me I installed google something management certificate in order to use the google sheets. You can remove it by go to General>Profile.

Hope this can help you.


Safari not loading Gmail; Google/YouTube invalid certificate I've tried changing DNS servers to OpenDNS's, I've cleared my history and website data from Safari, and I've uninstalled all extensions… but the browser just won't load Gmail! Whether I click on Sign In at google.com or enter gmail.com in my address bar, the page just never loads.

Not sure if related, but when I try visiting YouTube, Safari says the certificate is invalid. I click to proceed anyway, and the page automatically redirects to https://ad.doubleclick.net/N6762/adi/mkt.ythome_1x1/;sz=1x1;tile=3;ssl=1;dc_yt=1;kga=-1;kgg=-1;klg=en-gb;kmyd=ad_creative_3;ytexp=931369,937426,900245,902410,924645,946201,936112,9405772;ord=1426347126252949? It's a blank page. What's up with the auto-redirection? When I try to visit youtube.com again, I get served a site with no stylesheet or images. google.com loads without a problem although Safari throws up the invalid certificate warning as well.

Gmail loads fine on the Safari-only guest account, if it helps. My hosts file is ok. I'm using OS X 10.10.1 and Safari 8.0.2.

A few things to check.

You said you uninstalled your extensions. Are they definitely gone? Check the following folder. It should be empty except for an Extensions.plist file.

/Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Safari/Extensions

You mentioned extensions but not plugins. Within Safari's preferences go to the Security tab and click on the button "Website Settings..." beside "Internet plug-ins". Uncheck anything you don't recognise there and try again. Especially, obviously, anything enabled for Google's sites.

Another thing to check is the proxy settings on your Mac. A quick way to access these is from the Advanced tab in Safari's preferences. There should be a "Change Settings..." button beside "Proxies" near the bottom of that tab that will launch System Preferences and take you right to the proxy settings. Hard to give you guidance beyond this, but look for any proxy settings that you haven't configured yourself.

One last thing to check for is malicious or buggy kernel extensions. While it's unlikely on Yosemite (as kernel extensions now need to be signed to load) it might be worth checking anyway. Open the Terminal application and type the following command it will list any kernel extensions that don't identify as coming from Apple.

kextstat | grep -v "com.apple"

Failing that a useful tool to help people diagnose problems is EtreCheck. Download and run it and paste the output into a Gist and update your question with the link.


macOS — What is the reason for a 6 Gb Dropbox folder to use 107 Gb of space? My whole Dropbox folder contains just around 6 (six!) Gb of data. It's the same amount of space on all my PCs, but on my MacBook these are 107 (hundred seven!) Gb for some reason. I'd like to find this reason as well as a some kind of a solution for this problem.
I'm using Dropbox 121.3.4266 on macOS Big Sur 11.2.3.
Update: I've uninstalled Dropbox client, deleted the local Dropbox folder and have reinstalled Dropbox again. At the moment du -sh Dropbox returns just 6,3G, so the problem seems to be solved.

Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud and other could sync programs often show different sizes on one file. You want to check a few files to look at the size on disk as well as the settings about saving space / dehydrating files / optimizing storage before trusting any one tool to measure on disk allocation.
I use ncdu on Macs where I have homebrew running or du -s /path/to/folder to double check things. Finder and even Apple’s system information don’t always tell the true story with cloud files.
You can also get a good measure by using Time Machine to back up the folder and checking size there.
Assuming you are actually that far off, the fix would be to boot to recovery and run disk utility one time on the drive to correct and detect any accounting errors, then potentially uninstalling the sync app to clean up the folder.


How to force Startup Manager menu to appear at every boot? Is there any way to force the Startup Manager menu to appear on every boot? Rather than me having to remember to hold down Alt if I want a different OS.

I'm not sure this is possible by default without holding down the ⌥ key at startup. You can make the Boot Camp partition always boot by selecting it in System Preferences → Startup Disk, but it sounds like this isn't what you want.

However, if you're not adverse to installing additional software, I think rEFIt may do what you need. The section on Getting into the rEFIt menu says:

  If you have installed rEFIt on your Mac OS X volume, it will be loaded
  automatically when the Mac starts up.

You should then be able to select whichever OS you want to boot from there.


Two copies of Lion installed on one computer, now the App Store won't install apps I have installed Mac OS X an additional HDD.  So my MacBook now has two copies of OS X, and I can select which one to boot when it starts – great.

The only catch is that, if all my hard drives are mounted, the App Store app doesn't work very well on the newer install – it thinks apps are installed when they are not (they are however installed on my old install).  Obviously it is seeing the applications on the second HDD.

I don't want to unmount the second HDD (which fixes this problem, but forces me to stop what I'm working on).  I've tried adding the second HDD's Application directory to my spotlight exclusions to no avail. What other ways can I solve this?

That the App Store application finds the apps installed on your other OS volume is a feature. It may not be exactly what you want in this scenario, but consider the far more common scenario of a user moving some of their apps to an external volume because their system volume is running low on space.

You could file a bug with Apple, but the team responsible is unlikely to be convinced add special support for such an uncommon use case.

I'm afraid you're likely stuck with unmounting the second volume.


Can I use my late 2013 MBP with Dell2515H? I'm thinking to get an external monitor for my MacBook Pro Retina display (late 2013 model).

What I would like to have is to get a 4K monitor or QHD monitor (Dell U2515H or P2715Q).

What I'm worried about is the font and icons size on the external monitor. Should I expect them to be tiny and hard to read text?

My graphic card is Intel Iris 1536 MB.

You can use 4K displays and Ultra HD TVs with these Mac computers:

MacBook Pro (Retina, Late 2013 and later)
Mac Pro (Late 2013)
iMac (27-inch, Late 2013 and later)
Mac mini (Late 2014)
MacBook Air (Early 2015)
MacBook (Retina, 12-inch, Early 2015)

So yes, your MacBook will support a 4K external monitor. You can decide how big you would like your interface/text etc. to appear in system preferences the same way you can on your internal monitor.

Source: Apple Support Documents


How to update App Store application from command line? I would like to force an update of App Store applications from the command line.

How can I do this?

Apple doesn't supply a command line helper or any scriptable cocoa classes you can latch on to for automation. Unlike the overall software update, which allows updates and installs out of the box, you can script the process of clicking buttons with a mouse using Automator.

However, the app store has been reverse engineered and released open source as well as a binary form:

https://github.com/argon/mas

The install is quick and it appears to be quite reliable on the current version of OS X 10.11:

brew install argon/mas/mas

With the source released, I would expect some other implementations of this tool to pop up, perhaps even one scripted with python.

If someone is logged into the mac (windowmanager is running), you can use Automator and the "watch me do" function to automate updates and storing your store password in the script fairly insecurely.

Here are two tutorials to get you started if this meets your needs.

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/01/19/mac-automation-creating-watch-me-do-workflows/

http://automator.us/leopard/features/virtual-user.html

Once you have a working script, you can use the command line open command to kick it off.

If the App Store app ever exposes that function to scripting you will have more options from the command line. It would be easy to use sdef, sdp and gen_bridge_metadata to dump the entire scriptable dictionary and script things using ruby from the command line, but at present the best option would be to use the mas command line tool.


Is there a quicker way to clear cache on Safari mobile? Is there a quicker way to clear cache in Safari on iPhone besides going to Settings -> Safari -> Clear Cache?

I have found that reloading a Web page in Mobile Safari twice clears the cache for the current Web page. Simply press reload, wait for it to finish loading, then reload again.


I restored my iPhone but it always says Activation Error, what should I do? I forgot my passcode so I go on iTunes to restore it, but after the restoration, it says Activation Error after I put in the Wi-Fi Settings. I have tried it many times but it still hasn't worked.

I didn't jailbreak my phone, just forgot the passcode so I restored it. I do not have any SIM card in the phone.

Is there something I can do to get the phone in working order again?

Is there any way that can avoid using SIM card?

**I fixed it ;)**

Activation through iTunes or Over the Air (OTA) is when the device checks to determine if it is factory or carrier unlocked or if it needs a SIM to be activated.

It's almost certain that your failure to activate is due to not having a SIM card from the proper carrier. You do not need to have an active contract or phone number associated with the SIM (I have a 3GS which has an old SIM without a plan), it just has to be for the correct carrier.


Can I search images on Safari using a text in the text field on a third-party app using shortcut? I would like to search a list of images (either on Safari or Google Chrome) on iOS, from a text that is in a text field on a third-party app.

In details:

Use a third-party dictionary app to search the meaning of a word. I type in the word on the text field and get a list of words.
I pick up the relevant word on the table.
If I find it hard to understand the meaning of the word, open the Safari and type in the word on the search bar to see the list of images on the word.

Now, I would like to make it automatic with shortcut app, if possible. The dictionary app shows the word on the textfield (UITextField I think). I think if you copy the word you could use the shortcut, but it is too cumbersome on iOS so I want to skip it.

So is this possible...?

One is welcome to invoke shortcuts or other automation techniques to do so, but here are my approaches:

Select the word: hold on it, and tap "select". Then the tooltip menu changes to "cut", "copy", "lookup", "share" and depending on the app, "speak", "highlight" etc.
Use "lookup". If you find appropriate meaning, great! otherwise, scroll to the bottom and tap "search web" and it will shoot to Safari.

If you know how to pronounce, tell Siri to get some images. Use a command that doesn't invoke photos app, rather "web search".


iOS 10 Control Center does not feature Music buttons What feels missing here are the music controls << || >>. They are on the lock screen before you unlock the phone. However, it happens a lot of times that I accidentally unlock the phone, even though I want to perform operations on the lock screen.

Having the music controls here is also an easy way to navigate through the playlist without having to switch to the Music app.

Is there any way to bring back these buttons, or is there a new way in iOS 10?

Swipe the Control Center to the side. The media controls are on a separate page indicated by the page icons at the bottom of the screen, accessible by swiping horizontally.

You are informed of this the first time you open Control Center after upgrading to iOS 10.


Resizing window offscreen I have a macbook pro running Mountain Lion. I have a problem with the maximum window height. It looks like all the windows have to be in between the menu bar and dock. I sometimes need to have simulators which runs for iPad retina size and doesn't fit in my widescreen. Is there any way I can let them resize to their full height and width without OSX forcing them to resize?

Thanks

You can usually just move a window to the bottom of the screen and then resize it by dragging the top edge up.

These commands don't usually resize windows so that they are outside screens:

tell application "SomeApp" to set bounds of window 1 to {0, 0, 9999, 9999}
tell application "SomeApp" to set size of window 1 to {9999, 9999}
tell application "System Events" to tell process "SomeApp" to set size of window 1 to {9999, 9999}


Update to macOS 10.12, but still keeping 10.11 in an external HD I am still running macOS 10.11, now I wanna update to 10.12, but since some apps must be running on 10.11, so I need to keep this system and here is my plan:

I use TimeMachine to backup my system 10.11
Update the system to 10.12
Restore the backup 10.11 from TimeMachine to an external HD, so I can boot it up there and I can use two versions of OS together.

Does this work? Will it cause any possible issues? License issue?

Yes, this can work but not exactly in the way you've planned. Let me explain:

Yes, you can use TM to backup your computer, but you're not actually backing up a bootable copy of the OS.
Yes, you can update the OS on your internal drive to macOS Sierra.
Yes, you can restore the backup from TM to another external HD and use it as a second boot drive. But, before you can do this you will need to install El Capitan on that external hard drive and then boot your Mac from it and migrate your data etc from the TM backup to that drive.
No, there are no issues concerning software licenses in doing this.

Now, whether this is the best way for you to go about things is up to you. Another option, if you're internal drive has the capacity, is to have two partitions and have El Capitan on one and Sierra on the other.

Yet another option is to use something such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to make a bootable copy of your current system onto an external drive. Once you've tested it and are satisfied all is good, you can then upgrade the internal drive to macOS Sierra. This way you still get the two bootable drives.

If it was me I'd make sure I had a new external drive (in addition to the TM backup drive) and then install a fresh copy of El Capitan on that first. Once that's done, I'd boot up from that and migrate everything across from your TM backup. Then I'd do the upgrade to Sierra on your internal drive.

Once you've got everything working ok on both drives, you'll then want to think about how you manage some of your data. For example, you won't want to maintain two Photo Libraries, two iTunes libraries, etc. So you'll need to think about how you reorganise your files for use regardless of what system you've booted into, which ones will be duplicated or not, and also ensure you have a TM backup of all your data!


Automator workflow / app to refresh a given tab in Safari (or even Crome) When I am coding my Rails app I am switching back to Safari quite often to refresh my local version of the site to see if my changes are correct.  It would be awesome to just hit one of the function keys and that would bring my Safari window to the foreground and manually refresh the page.

I can't seem to find an obvious example of this or anything along these lines fro the typical Google searches etc.

Any idea if this can be done and if so how (at least the Automator part)?

Paste this script into script editor and save it as a service. Map the service to a keyboard shortcut.

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    tell current tab of window 1
        do JavaScript "location.reload();"
    end tell
end tell

EDIT

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    tell window 1

        --options
        set myTab to tab 1
        set myTab to first tab whose URL = "https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/224393/automator-workflow-app-to-refresh-a-given-tab-in-safari-or-even-crome/224431?noredirect=1#comment272178_224431"
        set myTab to first tab whose URL starts with "https://apple.stackexchange.com"

        if current tab is not myTab then set current tab to myTab
        tell myTab to do JavaScript "location.reload();"
    end tell
end tell

EDIT 2
Select your tab and run this script to get its name

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    tell window 1
        get name of current tab
    end tell
end tell

Populate the name in this script:

tell application "Safari"
    activate
    tell window 1
        set myTab to first tab whose name = "insert name here"
        if current tab is not myTab then set current tab to myTab
        tell myTab to do JavaScript "location.reload();"
    end tell
end tell


Can I turn off the alternate keyboards in Messages When I rotate my iPhone while in Messages, a totally different input area appears. I never use this, can I turn it off?

Assuming you're talking about the Handwriting Input panel in iOS 10:

Rotate the phone to show the input area, then tap the keyboard icon, showing the keyboard, and it will keep the setting.

Image / info via: https://www.gottabemobile.com/how-to-turn-off-the-5-most-annoying-ios-10-features/


ipod touch apps won't start after update I updated my 3rd gen iPod Touch to 4.3.3, and now almost none of the apps will run - they appear to start, and then exit back to the desktop.

A double-tap on the home button shows them running, but switching to them produces the same results.

Is this a known issue?  Any way to fix it?

I would recommend following these steps to restore your iPod Touch: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1414

In short, when you connect your device, go to the device's Summary tab in iTunes and click the Restore button.  It should prompt you to back up your device first.