How to update my weight in the Activity app I want to change the weight that I originally used to set up the Activity app, but I cannot see a way of editing the setup.

The Activity app uses the info stored in the Health app.

To change your weight:

Open the Watch app on the iPhone
On the My Watch tab, scroll down and tap on Health
Tap Edit in the top right corner
Scroll through the weights and select the correct one

You can also do this on the iPhone in the Health app under Body Measurements.

Once that is done, Activity will use the updated value.


Can I upgrade MacOS X 10.4 to 10.7 Lion? I want to upgrade my OS to a new level so that I can download Google Chrome. My computer is pretty old and is running Version 10.4.11. The Mac store won't let me download Lion because I need a higher version than I already have. Where can I find that intermediate version so that I can then upgrade to Lion?

You can buy Snow Leopard in the online Apple Store, install it and then upgrade to Lion via the Mac App Store.


Per application VPN settings I use a VPN tunnel to connect to a remote network on Snow Leopard. I set it up with the system settings for VPN and it works fine. Unfortunately, the VPN tunnel is used for all connections. Some ports (like the one I use for IMAP) are not open in the remote network.

Can I use VPN for some applications (like Firefox and Terminal) and my regular connection for others? Is there a third party app to fine tune the VPN settings?

Cheers

In general, the network settings are global, and apply to the whole machine, including all applications.

VPNs will work great to access machines on a known network (eg: 192.168.1.x = home,
10.1.1.x = work via VPN)

What kind of VPN is it? It's possible that the VPN has grabbed the default route, meaning that all network traffic that isn't on your local network will go via the VPN.

You can run netstat -nr in Terminal to see your routing table.

You can use sudo route change default 10.1.1.1 to change the default route to your local network's router (eg 10.1.1.1 for me) so that it will route external connections. Connections to your VPN network should still go through the VPN.

Hopefully this helps!


Use Apple Watch as a handheld Keynote remote? I have to give a 5-minute Keynote presentation from my MacBook Pro in a few days, and while I'd love to not carry my phone around as a remote, I'm also not a fan of the idea of tapping my wrist every time I need to change slides. Is there a way to use my Apple Watch as an always-awake Keynote remote that I can hold in my hand rather than needing to keep on my wrist?

You'll need to set up the iOS version of Keynote on your iPhone to be a remote control for Keynote on either another iOS device (such as your iPad) or your Mac. To do this, perform the following steps:

On the device that you'll be using to present from, open the remote control configuration:
On iOS, this feature is located in Remote | Devices | Add a Device
On OS X, this feature is located in Keynote | Preferences | Remotes (Ensure that the Enable checkbox is checked)
On the iPhone paired with the Apple Watch, open Keynote and select Remote | Devices | Add a Device
On the Mac or iOS device you'll be presenting from, select the Link button beside the remote device that you wish to use to control presentations
Verify the code shown on the screen, then complete the setup

Once this initial setup has been completed, open the Keynote app on your presenting device and begin a presentation.

On the Apple Watch, launch the Keynote app. Once the app launches, it will search and connect to the paired Mac or iOS device used for presentations. You'll get a Ready message (Figure A) when you're ready to control a presentation. When you see this message, it means that you can open the presentation on your Mac or iOS device that you'll be presenting.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/pro-tip-how-to-use-the-apple-watch-to-control-keynote-presentations/


iMac 27" Mid 2011 external monitor GPU (ODD) Fan control I recently installed an SSD into my iMac and downloaded "Macs Fan Control" which works perfectly fine.

However, when I plug in my external monitor via Thunderbolt, the GPU temperature increases for 10°C (50°F) to about 55°C (131°F) or something which I think is normal. Due to the temperature increase, the RPM of the ODD fan (which I use to cool the GPU) also increase to a hearable amount. (about 2000 RPM)

I use following settings for the ODD cooler:

Sensor based value from GPU Diode
Temperature that fan speed will
start to increase from: 45°C (113°F)
Maximum temperature: 70°C
(158°F)

Can or should I tweak my settings (increasing the temperature that fan speed will start to increase) without the risk of damaging the GPU?

55c is not really going to hurt your gpu or your iMac but cooler is always better some people have added a sensor... The other thing is the thermal paste apple used was terrible on all those older iMacs... If you haven't replaced I would definitely do that as well, some of the machines I've played with, the thermal paste was no longer doing anything...It's not really complicated and there are a lot of video guides available if you need them...I would redo cpu and gpu at the same time... That will give you a noticeable reduction in temps...Then when you get your fans set up properly, you should get another drop in temp plus a drop in noise, and probably add a few more years of life to your system. I use Kryonaut thermal grease just a personal preference but there's lot of good stuff out there. the other thing that will help is a good cleaning if it hasn't been opened in a few years... I hope this helps, I really hate typing.


What's the minimum partition size for osx mavericks when dual booting with windows 8? I used boot camp to setup dual booting between windows 8 and mac osx mavericks.

To get the most possible space for Windows 8, should I have formatted my computer first?

I was able to partition my drive as:

205 GB OSX
18 GB Available 295 GB Win8

It is a 500 GB hard drive.

If I formatted it first, could I have made the OSX partition smaller? If so, how much smaller?

OS X Mavericks requires at least 8 GB of free space to install to. At least 15% of free space is recommended for updates and other such things.

Therefore, the minimum space for OS X is 9.2 GB, or to be safe, 10 GB.

So yes, using Disk Utility to partition before you installed Boot Camp would have meant that you could have made the OS X partition smaller.

You can repartition now with software such as iPartition, which specifically works with Boot Camp partitions.


How do I enter "ř" (small R with caron) and other unusual special characters on the iPhone? I have a Czech friend whose name is Jiří, and I want to add his name to my Contacts.  Pressing and holding R on the iPhone keyboard does not show any special character versions (and similarly on OSX, holding R doesn't show anything.  I found the character in Special Characters on OSX.)

How can I add his name to my iPhone contacts?  More generally, how do you get access to general special characters on the iPhone?  I don't know of any Special Characters equivalent app or functionality accessible through the keyboard, but I would guess there must be a way somehow.

That character is not accessible from the English iPhone keyboard. You can, however, enable other keyboards on your iPhone.

Under the Settings app, go to General then Keyboards and select the Keyboards control. You can then touch Add New Keyboard… and add the Czech keyboard as an option.

When typing, if you want to access theř key, hold down the globe key on the bottom row of the keyboard, select the Czech layout, and then when you press and hold r, you get the menu wherein you can select the ř.

If you frequently need Czech accents, keep the Czech keyboard installed. If this is a rare occurrence, you can then uninstall the Czech keyboard from Settings » General » Keyboards » Keyboards.

The easier way to access the ř character on a one-time basis would be to visit this page with your iPhone, copy the ř character, and then paste it into your friend's Contact information.


Mac wouldn't start up after I tried to fix a Mac App Store issue I have a MacBook Pro (13 Inch, End 2010) running OS X El Capitan.

I had a bug with the Mac App Store, searched on the Apple forum, and got advice to remove a folder var/folders/zz.  I moved it to the Trash and then the Mac was blocked on the start-up loading bar.

I used Time Machine from Recovery HD to solve my problem, it perfectly reinstalled everything.


What is the Unknown (0) process with 232 threads on my iPhone? Here's a list of the processes on iPhone, obtained with help of Activity Monitor in Xcode instruments.
Is the Unknown(0) process with 232 threads owned by root malware?

pid 0 is always kernel_task in xnu. Further corroborated by being owned by root and having a lot of threads. It’s a synthetic process structure that represents the kernel. It isn’t malware.


App Store Update cannot change account I am on MacOS Sierra 10.12.3. I have several updates pending in the App Store app. When I try to load them, I get asked to log in. However, the e-mail address that is pre-populated and not editable is an old one that I do not use anymore as my Apple ID. I have a new Apple ID and I am even logged in with that one on the store.

What happened is that I setup this machine using a backup which still had the old Apple ID. For several reasons, I could not log in to the old Apple ID account anymore and created a new one. It seems my machine cannot forget about the old one. I deleted it in the accounts system preferences already.

Even when I log out of the App Store app, it still asks for the password for my old ID. Is there any cache file which I can delete to completely remove the old one?

There is no way round this.
The apps (& even the OS itself) belong to the Apple ID, not the 'computer' or even the 'human' operating it.

You would do better to try get the old account back into shape - start at https://iforgot.apple.com -  then set up Family Sharing  which would then allow both accounts access to the full purchase history.


second hand ipad needs apple id from original owner? I bought this ipad second handed I already disabled it bt after connecting it to a wiffi its says "This iPad is currently linked to an Apple Id sign in with the Apple ID that was used to set up this ipad" is there anywway i can get pass through that.

Contact the previous owner and have them release this device or get your money back from the seller.

This is an anti theft feature so you won't be able to simply bypass it.


How much space is left on my hard drive? Where do I have to go to find out how much space I have left on my hard drive?

As you can imagine from the question I am new to Apple and don't know where to look.

I used a program called "Cleanup" on my old Windows machine which did what the name says, great little program, is there anything similar for Apple, something which cleans up files like cache and cookies?

 Menu > About this Mac

Then the Storage tab

For cleanup, CCleaner exists for Mac; there's also CleanMyDrive & a whole raft of others. I wouldn't particularly recommend any of them, as they've all been known to throw out the wrong bit, just like on Windows.


How to export books from Ibooks when using iCloud Drive Aloha,

I would like to turn off iCloud Drive.
But I activated in iBooks iCloud Drive.
Now I don't see any "official way" to export all MY books out of iCloud drive.

The only way I currently found is to use terminal and make a

cp ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/ibooks~apple~com/ ~/Documents/MYbooks/

You can always drag-and-drop your .epub and .pdf files from iBooks.app onto your Desktop or any other folder.


iOS 10 my clock alarms only play twice In iOS 9 my clock alarms repeated for an hour but in iOS 10 only play twice. My iPhone 6plus is so big and heavy it pulls my pants down if I wear it in a belt holster, so I often set it on the table.

I have a critical health condition requiring different medications every 3 hours. If I am out of the room or more important when I am asleep,  I don't always hear the first or second play of the alarm. It repeats but only one time, and when sleeping, that is often not a long enough play.

In iOS 9, it played up to an hour and I found that necessary and extremely useful. When we went from iOS 7 to iOS 8, the same thing happened and a lot of people complained and it was fixed in the first iOS 8 update.

Can you fix it in the iOS 9 update so it repeats many more times. People usually use this to wake them and twice is not enough if you are in a deep sleep then.

Which version of iOS 10 are you running? I believe it is fixed now in 10.1 - which hasn't been released to public and is still in beta.


Safari stopped remembering what is usually stored in cookies. What might have happened? For the last few days Safari has simply stopped remembering thing, like my login id for several Web sites (but not all, not StackExchange for example) and form data that is stored in cookies (like my name and address on the pizza delivery site I use).

Private Browsing is not active.

What might have happened and how can I fix it?

This is Safari 5.1.2.

Saved forms and cookies are not the same thing. Cookies (for example) keep you logged in to a website, instead of having to re-log-in every time you visit. Saved forms are Safari's way of keeping text in a login form, so when you are logged out you don't need to enter your credentials again.

It sounds like you're talking about saved forms. To make sure this is working, go to Safari > Preferences > AutoFill and make sure "User names and passwords" is checked.


Printing Error - Stopped - The file '/private/var/spool/cups/tmp/...' could not be opened When trying to print a PDF document using Preview (as well as printing any other document from any application), I'm getting the following error about how Stopped - The file '/private/var/spool/cups/tmp/0076a5fa0ea54 could not be opened.
Every time I print a new document the last section of the path changes.
I went into Terminal and listed the contents of that directory (/private/var/spool/cups/tmp) in sudo mode, and the file doesn't exist. Only one different file with a different name.
Tried restarting the computer, printer, and deleted the printer from macOS and re-added it.
Any ideas on how to fix this? I'm running macOS 10.15.7.

There is a current problem with HP since they asked Apple to disable their software and then re-enable it.  You can change the driver to AirPrint and know it you need to apply updates and reinstall your print drivers if that works.
See my answer here for how to manually install a fix if you don’t want to let Apple software updates fix your HP.

HP Easy Scan - "HP Scanner 3" will damage your computer
https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Installations/Essentials/hp-printer-essentials-S-5_14_8_4.pkg


Extern drive is owned by everybody? How do I fix this? We have a MacOS X Lion server with a 140TB external RAID array mounted via a Fibre Channel interface. Whenever anybody logs in, it appears that they own all of the files. How do we set it up so that the partition is mounted by the system on boot and ownership doesn't change to whomever is logged in?  We also see this strange behavior when people "ssh" into the server:

08:58 jjj:/corp$ ls -l
total 15104
drwxr-xr-x+ 3 candy7  candy7       102 Mar 12 21:52 junky/
drwxrwxr-x+ 9 candy7  candy7       306 Mar 12 15:43 mist/
08:58 jjj:/corp$ sudo bash
root@jjj:/Volumes/Active01/corp# ls -l
total 15232
drwxr-xr-x+ 3 _unknown  _unknown       102 Mar 12 21:52 junky/
drwxrwxr-x+ 9 _unknown  _unknown       306 Mar 12 15:43 mist/
root@jjj:/Volumes/Active01/corp# su alex
alex@jjj:/Volumes/Active01/corp$ ls -l
total 15104
drwxr-xr-x+ 3 alex  staff       102 Mar 12 21:52 junky
drwxrwxr-x+ 9 alex  staff       306 Mar 12 15:43 mist
alex@jjj:/Volumes/Active01/corp$

I think that this has something to do with the 'no owner' mount flag, but I'm not sure.

The thing that has me confused is that we have another system where this isn't a problem, but it's running XServe RAID and this is a RAID from another vendor.

Select the disk in the finder and go to File > Get Info. At the bottom of the panel, in Ownership and Permissions, is "ignore ownership on this volume" checked? If so, uncheck it.


How do the cliclick and MouseTools command line tools differ? I would like to perform double-clicks via AppleScript.

Two tools that I understand are suitable for the job (since AppleScript contains no built-in mechanism to do this) are cliclick and MouseTools.

These two tools are very similar, sharing many features. Do they differ? Is one more reliable than the other?

cliclicl is the easiest one to automate your work.
However too simple.
for example, In your terminal cliclicl dc:. will do double click.

I recommend using cliclicl If your purpose is just double click.
Mouse tools is relatively complex.

Try cliclicl.
If you need more powerful tool for automate, then use Mousetools.


Why do only some images received via iMessage have GPS data? I've noticed that only some of the images I receive from a friend of mine (who also has an iPhone 5) have GPS data.  (I test this by saving the picture and using a photo app to read the metadata.)

I can't figure out why some do and others don't.  My friend is not changing his settings or doing anything weird.  This is all through iMessage.

Thoughts?

If Location Services are on for the Camera.app, EXIF data will include GPS data. If it is not, it will not for photos that are taken with Camera.app. Location data can be inserted on an app by app basis. I tested, for example, Camera.app, and Camera+. The former had Location Services disabled, and the latter was enabled. As expected, the former had no GPS data, while the latter did.

Furthermore, photos that are downloaded from other services may or may not contain location data. For example, Facebook strips GPS data out of photos, while Photobucket does not.

Any testing I have done has been with an iPhone 5, and also an iPad mini.


Strange circular USB icon in Finder I've got a minor problem which has been irritating me for some time. Whenever my Mac has a USB storage device mounted in Finder, it shows a circle instead of the usual USB icon.

I'm not sure when this started (Mac is running 10.14.4 at the moment), but it is consistent with all storage devices and it's strange because the icon appears normally both at the top of Finder and on the Desktop.

Please see the images below for clarity:

Does anyone have any idea why it is the case that this strange circle appears as the icon in the side bar for all USB storage devices?

If so, is there a way I can restore the standard USB icon you would expect (and can see at the top of the Finder window)?

I have those now, too. I assumed the sidebar icon had just been changed to those circles in a recent update.

As far as I know, the default sidebar icons are still located here:

/System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/

You should be able to swap any or all of them out for any icons you want. Just give your new icon the same name as the one you are replacing and make sure it is a .icns file. You will probably need to disable SIP in order to do this.

EDIT: On closer look, I don't see any dots amongst the default sidebar icons in CoreTypes. I wonder if it may have something to do with disk permissions....


Uninstall python 2.7 from 10.8 I've made the tragic mistake of downloading and installing python 2.7 from http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7/ instead of using homebrew. Now vim won't launch, all kinds of things are screwed up, and I can't get rid of this mess.

How do I uninstall this nonsense? I'm on 10.8, so pkgutil --unlink no longer works.

if you can use pkgutil on a file you know for sure came from the python 2.7 you installed you can do

pkgutil --file-info /path/to/the/file

Copy/paste the pkgid in

pkgutil --file pkgid

That will spit out a list of files that came with python 2.7 -- you can now go ahead and remove them (with all due care not to remove any unrelated file in the same directories etc).


Duplicated pdf larger than original I have a pdf which, when I duplicate it in Preview and save it, is substantially bigger afterwards:

Before:

$ pdfinfo manuscript-EditorComments.pdf
Title:
Subject:
Keywords:
Author:         Rainer M Krug
Creator:        LaTeX with hyperref package
Producer:       pdfTeX-1.40.14
CreationDate:   Fri Jan 24 13:59:56 2014
ModDate:        Fri Jan 24 13:59:56 2014
Tagged:         no
Form:           none
Pages:          39
Encrypted:      no
Page size:      612 x 792 pts (letter)
File size:      1715794 bytes  <<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Optimized:      no
PDF version:    1.5  <<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Afterwards:

$ pdfinfo manuscript-EditorComments\ copy.pdf
Author:         Rainer M Krug
Creator:        LaTeX with hyperref package
Producer:       Mac OS X 10.9.1 Quartz PDFContext
CreationDate:   Fri Jan 24 13:27:14 2014
ModDate:        Fri Jan 24 13:27:14 2014
Tagged:         no
Form:           none
Pages:          39
Encrypted:      no
Page size:      612 x 792 pts (letter)
File size:      2673770 bytes   <<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Optimized:      no
PDF version:    1.3   <<<<<<<<<<<<<<

I highlighted the relevant differences. Now is this only caused by the different pdf version?

Even reducing the size with the quartz filter does not change the file size:

$ pdfinfo manuscript-EditorComments\ copy\ reduced.pdf
Author:         Rainer M Krug
Creator:        LaTeX with hyperref package
Producer:       Mac OS X 10.9.1 Quartz PDFContext
CreationDate:   Fri Jan 24 13:35:43 2014
ModDate:        Fri Jan 24 13:35:43 2014
Tagged:         no
Form:           none
Pages:          39
Encrypted:      no
Page size:      612 x 792 pts (letter)
File size:      2428897 bytes   <<<<<<<<<<<<<<
Optimized:      no
PDF version:    1.3   <<<<<<<<<<<<<<

OK - no really heavy images in the pdf, but is the difference really only because of the pdf version?

The size difference of a few hundred kilobytes can be attributed to the PDF version and encoding.

Recent versions of PDF introduced features to reduce the file size. These features included compressed object streams in v1.4.

A PDF file can look identical but be stored on disk in nearly infinitely different forms. The application responsible for creating the PDF is critical to getting the smallest possible file size.

Most applications, such as Preview, will call out to a general purpose PDF framework or library to deal with the file format. This will result in well formed files with minimal effort by the application's developers.

Other applications may create PDFs highly-tuned to their content and needs. The PDF specification allows for creative reuse of content, de-duplication, and optimisations that require knowledge of the document's purpose and intention. This requires significant effort and is increasingly rare.


Is intermittent high ping an issue in my Macbook or my router? Every 20-30 minutes, my internet seems to be unresponsive for about 10 seconds. I can easily see this if I'm running the ping command while it happens:

Now, I have two routers on my network, both broadcasting the same network (with a different SSID).

I have this problem since a few months.

My /etc/hosts file only contains a few 127.0.0.1 mywebsite.dev entries.

I'm using Yosemite.

So, is this an issue that must be resolved on my Macbook Air 2014 or on the router?

In my case it turned out to be the router. It was an old 802.11g router that I replaced with a 5GHz 802.11n router. It works great now, no problems whatsoever.


Installing VMware on MacBook - Free version I need to install Windows 8 on my MacBook. So I am hoping to install VMware and then install Windows 8 on top of it.

I need to know if I need to install VMware Player or VMware Fusion? I am using this for non-commercial use so I require a free version.

Note: VMware Fusion is a licensed version, and I don't want to use it.

VMware Player is only avaiable for Windows and Linux, not OS X. To install Windows 8 on your Mac, you will need to purchase VMware Fusion.

From VMware Workstation Player (formerly known as Player Pro):

  VMware Player is the easiest way to run multiple operating systems at the same time on your PC.

You do have a couple of free options:

Virtualbox is a free program that will allow you to install Windows 8 alongside OS X in the same way that VMware Fusion works (you can run both OSs concurrently).
Apple's own Boot Camp software will allow you to install Windows in a separate partition. The downside to this is you have to reboot your computer to switch between OSs, but the upside is that you can run more graphically-intense programs (i.e. games) at native speeds.


NetBoot Server Alternatives for macOS 10.14 Mojave? Apple has removed, among many other things, DHCP serving and NetBoot Serving from their 'server' app in conjunction with the new OS. This won't affect 99.5% of people but I'm in the minority. I fix Macs for a living and have been using Netbooting for 10 years as my faster, better version of booting a customers Mac off a USB utility disk. I use NetInstall images too for installing the OS but I primarily use Diskless NetBoot images to diagnose and repair disk problems. I run this on my laptop, plug into someone's network, and BAM. Or what is more often the case, on wifi-only networks, I just plug in directly mac to mac and use DHCP service also running on my laptop.

Well both services are gone. DHCP is easy enough to replace I'm sure, but NetBoot serving doesn't seem as straight forward. I did some googling but only found solutions that support NetInstall, and not diskless-NetBoot images. I need the latter more than anything.

I know Apple may be working towards killing NetBooting entirely, but it's not dead yet. And I tend to work on older computers more than new, so I still need NetBoot for years to come. I am currently playing around with running 10.11 in a virtual machine on my laptop. But that's not an ideal solution, i'd rather run a direct, native server.

BSDPy does not support diskless netbooting, so that option won't work.
I was eyeing DeployStudio but its not clear if that app IS it's own NetBoot server, or if it just works with Apple's NetBoot server?

What about a netSUS server?

https://github.com/jamf/NetSUS

Just a thought, but I've run one and it works great


How to batch download and process camera roll My camera roll is taking up way too much space on my iPhone, but I like having all my pictures.

Every time I connect my iPhone to my computer, I would like to download/save new photos on my Mac, batch downsize the images to something much smaller and then append them to an album.

How can I do this?

Apple has Photo Stream for this purpose. As long as you launch iPhoto once every 30 days (at least) it will get all your photos from iCloud. You can then delete them off your phone once you know they've been imported into iPhoto.

Alternatively, you can set up Google+ Auto Backup on your phone. As the name implies, it will auto-upload everything you take to G+. If you let it resize the images to 2048px it won't cost you anything either. Auto backups default to private so nobody but you can see them.

Both of these options will automatically create albums based on the date.

For quickly deleting everything on your phone, launch Image Capture on the Mac. (It's in Applications, comes with OS X). You can set it to automatically open iPhoto, import and delete when the phone is plugged in.


How to deny the user the ability to upgrade the latest iOS version on iPad? I have 20 iPads I gave to 20 clients. How I can I deny the users the ability to upgrade to the iOS version when available?

So my question: is there a method to disallow the user to update the iOS version on the iPad?

In a word, no.

It is not possible, either with Apple Configurator, or other MDM solutions, to restrict users from updating iOS when new versions are released.

Being able to update iOS without simultaneously being able to update apps (as can be set up using supervised iDevices in Apple Configurator) can lead to big problems, such as incompatible apps and lost data.


Does Time Machine take 2 backups or 1 (on 2 external drives)? Question; Does Time machine takes 2 backups (each on one hard disk) or 1 back up distributed on both hard disks. (when using 2 external hard drives.)

Because if I select 2 different external hard disks in TIME MACHINE preferences, It says "Time Machine will take turn backing up to 'disk 1' and 'disk 2'"

They are two separate backups.  Time Machine will back up to whichever drive is currently connected.

I make use of this to alternate two Macs in my household between two Time Machine disks.  Each drive contains a complete copy of each Mac as of the last time it was connected, as well as all past snapshots made to that drive that haven't been deleted to make space.  Either one is thus useful on its own for restore purposes, even if the other is destroyed or corrupt.

If you connect two drives simultaneously, the same result occurs (each drive is a complete backup); Time Machine will alternate backing up to each.


Clean up file names using Automator I’m fairly new to Automator, in that I’ve used it only once before. What I’m trying to do is clean up a bunch of Android app assets, which are named like so:

01_something
1_something_else
002_something_too

What I want to do is remove the leading digits + underscore, i.e. any leading non alphabetical characters. I imagine this can be done either by having a script that’s smart enough remove them, perhaps by some manner of regex, or by having a prompt that asks me how many characters I want to remove, if Automator even supports that.

Secondly, I’d like to add a prefix to the files, like tile_ or ab_. Again, if I could select some files in Finder, and choose ‘Add Prefix’ or something, and enter some text into a prompt, that’d be optimal.

There is no need for dedicated file renaming software to do such relatively simple batch renaming operations – Automator will allow you to create services that do what you want.

Your first task (removing a numerical prefix followed by an underscore form file names) can be solved like this:

create an Automator service (choose “Service” when prompted what kind of workflow to create by Automator). Set it to take “Files or folders” as input.
add a “Filter Finder Items” action and set it to filter on the condition “none” match “kind is Folder”  to make sure you have only files.
Add a “Run Shell Script” action and make sure it runs /bin/bash and takes its input “as arguments”. Insert the following code:

shopt -s extglob
for f in "$@"; do
    fpath="${f%/*}"
    fname="${f##*/}"
    mv "$f" "$fpath"/"${fname/#+([[:digit:]])_/}"
done

– see the Bash Reference Manual’s chapter on Pattern Matching for an explanation of how this works (recommended reading for this kind of operation anyway :)).
save to the default location as “Remove Prefix”.

– you will now have a “Remove Prefix” in the Service menu of Finder (and the context menu of files and folders) which will rename files so a numerical prefix followed by an underscore is stripped from the file name.

The second task (prefixing the files with a selectable string) is even easier to achieve, using a Standard Automator action:

create an Automator Service as in the steps 1 and 2 above.
add a “Rename Finder Items” action. Set it to “Add Text”, enter a default prefix in the text box (if you like), set the string to be applied “before the name”. Select “Options” in the bottom row of the action and tick “Display this action when running” (disclaimer: I’m on a German system – all translations approximative).
save to the default location as “Add Prefix”.

– when you run the service on one or more files, you will see the following dialog:

(or rather, its equivalent in your system language), where you can edit the prefix you want to use before applying it.

Happy renaming with OS X’ on-board abilities :).


What does Mail.app use to decide if an email is Junk Mail? Does anyone know how Mail decide junk message, in addition to trusting spamassassin header? For example, if I mark a message as junk, what criteria does Mail create?

Mail.app uses more than one approach to junk mail.

Some spam gets reported by other users.

You can forward your junk mail to spam@icloud.com and it gets added to Apple's filtering system.

Mail servers sometimes mark messages as spam.

When a tool like spam assassin has marked an incoming message as junk, Mail.app respects that and passes it to the junk folder automatically.

Mail.app also supports custom filters.

You can make your own filters that will direct junk mail into the junk folder.


MacBook Air Display Color Temperature Changes After Logging In Since I can remember, my MacBook Air's Display has been behaving strangely. Every time I log in, the color temperature of the display changes to a warmer tone and it's very noticeable and annoying. I tried to fix it by reinstalling macOS High Sierra, but the problem is still there so the problem is at a system level, instead of my settings, maybe?

I'll inset two photos where you can see the before (bluish tone) and after (yellowish tone).

How can I prevent my display from changing to that warmer tone?

[

This is normal.

When macOS is booting it will access your settings and see if you have specified the color temperature. Or enabled Night Shift.

If you have enabled FileVault this change will happen after you are logged in.

I think you need to put Color Temperature on Less Warm instead of in the center. And/Or turn off the Night Shift option.


How will Apple's switch to ARM (Apple Silicon) affect compatibility with Linux / Unix tools and APIs? At the moment, a huge argument for using Macs in academic and research settings (and possibly quite a few other use cases) is the compatibility with the Linux/Unix ecosystem, through Homebrew, Macports and similar projects, and of course the classical terminal (nowadays using zsh) that allows control over system internals. Users in many areas would not be able to work with a "plain" macOS without access to specialized applications which are generally only available on Linux.
Is there already information available as to what Apple's move to the ARM CPU architecture ("Apple Silicon") is going to mean for this compatibility? Will it still be possible to compile programs from source on macOS? How about graphical Linux tools, will there still be a possibility to use X / Wayland / whatever on the Mac?
I do understand that it is possible for Apple to arbitrarily restrict the OS in order to make it as hard as possible for users to do that. My question is aimed more at the practical / technical side of things: Is it enough to say "compiling for ARM is easy enough, no worries" or are there hidden issues?

The betas of Big Sur (on Intel, at least) have the all the same Unix underpinnings and other components as before. (Even python 2.7, which was widely expected to be removed!)
You would hear a lot of noise it if Apple ditched its 'certified Unix™' status.
Xcode isn't going anywhere either, so you can compile any Unix code you've got source for.
As for X11, that hasn't been updated for years, so will have to run in emulation until someone recompiles it (hopefully fixing the Retina display issues while they're at it).
There may be teething problems, particularly in the early days. But I'd say that recompiled code is likely to have fewer problems than Rosetta emulated stuff.


When would upgrading the processor of the top of the line Macbook Pro make sense? As seen here, the top of the line MacBook Pro Retina  (with NVIDIA graphics card) has an option to upgrade the processor from 3.7 Ghz to 4.0Ghz via a "Turbo boost".

I am generally wondering what kind of use would warrant this upgrade?

More specifically, I am wondering if it would be of any benefit to web browsing with hundreds of tabs open, 3D rendering performance, or mass processing of images?

Turbo Boost is good for anything that uses a lot of CPU. It basically over clocks the CPU while it's needed and when it's not needed it doesn't run.

It would help with anything that runs weighs down the CPU. I don't believe that it does anything with the graphics card (but I could be wrong).


If I purchase an app for my iPhone can I download it for free on my iPad? If I purchase an app for my iPhone can I download it for free on my iPad?

Yes. Purchases are tied to your iTunes Account, not to the device.


Why are my FaceBook events not showing up in iOS Calendar? My FaceBook events are not showing up in my Calendar on my iPhone 4 running iOS 7. Sometimes I can get them to show up by going into Settings -> FaceBook and turning Calendar integration off and on. Then a while later, I'll find that new FaceBook events are not coming through again.

The Calendar has the FaceBook Events option ticked.

Why is it not working properly?

My iPad 3 running iOS 7 doesn't appear to have this problem.

I had this same issue. iPad (and Macs) showed the events, but iPhone did not. I finally went to Settings > Facebook and clicked on my account name, then cleared password and re-entered. After it verified, the events showed up in Calendar app.


How to merge MBR mapped external drive partitions using macOS High Sierra? Background: I got a new computer recently, a new MacBook Pro running High Sierra. My old computer was a 2011 MacBook Pro, and I used an external drive to back it up with Time Machine. The drive has two partitions, both Mac X Extended (Journaled), and one contains my backups (Mac Daddy) while the other is empty (007). I no longer need two partitions on the drive, and would like to merge them without losing my backups.

Problem: Disk Utility is being less than helpful, as you can see it won't give me an option to do any partitioning on them, and in fact it doesn't even recognize the two partitions as part of the same drive in the sidebar, though under "Device" info it does say they are both "disk2". I've already erased 007 and run First Aid on both just in case, but nothing changed. I imagine I may have to use Terminal, but I don't know how. Any help would be appreciated!

P.S. I know this is similar to other questions, especially this one which never got solved, but I figured I'd redo it with my specific info.

Thanks!

Results of "diskutil list":

/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         500.0 GB   disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +500.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            57.7 GB    disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 20.4 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                509.8 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
   1:                  Apple_HFS MAC DADDY               1.5 TB     disk2s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS 007                     499.9 GB   disk2s2

If you select the View and Show all Devices you should then be able to select the Physical Disk.

This will let you select the Partition and delete the unwanted partition.

The linked question is different because the drive is partitioned using MBR and recent versions of macOS refuse to manage these for reasons known only to Apple (even though this was previously possible).


Can't convert to APFS in Mojave Just bought a mid-2014 MBP from ebay and I tried to update to Catalina but it said I need APFS to do that. I tried disk utility but the option is greyed out. I NEED a way to do it non-destructively. I have no way to backup my stuff as of right now.

Current OS - Mojave

Trying to update to - Catalina

Tried - Disk-Utility -> Edit -> Convert to APFS (Greyed out), lots of googling. Tried using diskutil apfs convert command but gave the error -69546

You should be able to convert to APFS from HFS+ non-destructively through macOS Recovery - if your Mac has the required recovery partition. The usual method to boot to recovery is to hold down ⌘-R immediately after a power-up or reboot. Disk Utility will then become available through the Recovery mode GUI.

This site claims that the conversion will be non-destructive when done through Recovery mode. It covers High Sierra as the latest macOS because APFS was introduced with High Sierra and this was germane to users back then. I cannot find anything to contradict this assertion.

Your milage may vary.


How to get OSX to pick the strongest wifi signal with identical SSIDs? I have a Netgear wireless router in one room, and a TP-Link powerline adaptor with wifi in another room. I'm using a 2014 MacBook Pro with Yosemite 10.10.1

Previously I had separate SSIDs for each of the wireless access points, which meant that I needed to manually change the wifi network when moving around the house.

The advice at How can I get the same SSID for multiple access points? is to set the same SSID on both wifi APs, and the laptop should automatically pick the one with the strongest signal:

  Give both APs the same SSID, security type and wireless security
  passphrase... A client will scan all channels looking for APs publishing the SSID it wants, and will pick whichever one suits its needs best (usually that means whichever one shows the highest signal strength).

So I set identical SSID, security and password on both wifi APs. Unfortunately, OSX Mavericks isn't automatically switching between the networks when moving around the house.

While located near the TP-Link powerline adaptor, I connect to the network, as shown by the bolded first line in the Wifi Explorer window (this is the expected behaviour as that is the strongest network):

But when moving closer to the Netgear wifi router, Yosemite doesn't disconnect from the TP-Link access point and connect to the Netgear access point (even though that network is much stronger):

(I left the laptop on overnight and it hadn't changed after 12 hours, so it's not related to timing)

Is there anything I need to do in Mavericks to select the strongest network automatically?
Do I need to ensure that all properties are identical between the access points? eg Channel, Width and Mode are different - does that matter?

Edit: as per an answer at https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/144832/84752 I changed:

sudo /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/A/Resources/airport prefs joinMode=Strongest

but this has no effect when moving between rooms. I'm not sure whether that suggestion only applies to Airport products (given the name of the command).

I know this thread is old, but I'd like to leave here what solved the problem for me. You need to check if you have the same security in both access points. For example, I had one access point secured with WPA/WPA2 and another with WPA2 only. After changing both to the same, everything was fine.

To check your access points' security, you can do this:

While holding the option (alt) key, click the WiFi icon in the menu
bar
Click "Open Wireless Diagnostics…"
Go to "Window" > "Scan" (or press CMD-4)
Check if the security is the same for both your access points

Solution source: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/wifi-roaming-issues-two-aps-with-same-ssid.1208584/


"Unable to verify account name or password" in Mail app despite using correct info I had a problem with my Mac mail account and therefore I deleted some 4 keychain entries from my Keychain Access that were related to mail. I added a new one:

I tried to add my Yahoo account again, but this happens:

What can I do?

Yahoo has added more security and so does not work with a simple IMAP login by default.

Yahoo's information is here

I think to use MacOS Mail you need to follow step 3

  While changing or upgrading your third party applications, you can temporarily give them access.

  Sign in to Yahoo Mail.
  Go to your "Account security" settings.
  Turn on Allow apps that use less secure sign in.

  Caution - Do not use this setting as a permanent access method. It is intended only for temporary access while you switch or upgrade to a secure application. Remember to turn it off afterwards.


Tool that watches files / folders and upload on change on OS X? I am looking for an SFTP or rsync (?) tool (or script?) that watches a certain folder or certain files and uploads them to a remote server securely on change.

The background:

I've been using Sublime SFTP for that, it works quite well, but sometimes "forgets" its watching duties. Also, I'm giving Atom a go as an alternative editor and there are no tools that live up 100% to Sublime SFTP.

Most editor-based SFTP tools just upload files upon save, but that doesn't cover files built buy gulp or CodeKit.

We've been adding gulp-sftp to our build scripts, but that also has drawbacks.

So what I've been wondering: isn't there a standalone application that simply can watch files or folders for changes and upload them via SFTP, rsync or scp?

Try cron. It's a tool that runs commands at a specific time or interval. It may not be exactly what you're looking for (clone on build) but it works quite well.

To set up cron: from Terminal, type crontab -e.

This should bring up a text editor (depending on which text editor you set as default) and a nice header explaining what each field does.

minute, hour: does as it says
dom: day of month
mon: month
dow: day of week

Now, we'll take a look at your command to do regular backups. A great tool for backups is rsync. You'll need to set up SSH keys for it to work without a password prompt.

Here's the command I use:

rsync -vzhaPE --delete-after /path/to/local/file ip.address.of.server:/path/to/backup/location

Options used: -vzhaPE

v: verbose
z: compress (good for slow connections. Adjust compression level with --compress-level=<1-9>)
h: human readable numbers
a: archive mode. This preserves timestamps and practically clones everything over as it were.
P: progress bar.
E: keep partial files. This means that if the connection was interrupted, rsync will pick up on the partial files and continue where it left off. Good for copying multiple large files over a slow network.
delete-after: deletes files from the server that have been deleting from the sending side

Options v, h and P are more for human debugging, so we won't introduce them into our cron job.

So, to put it together in cron:
(run every ten minutes, for example)

*/10 * * * * rsync -zaE --delete-after /path/to/local/file ip.address.of.server:/path/to/backup/location

This command will back whatever files in are the directory specified to the server's specified directory every ten minutes. No duplicates will be made as rsync will delete the files it copies over.

Additionally, if you'd like, you can also run a script that moves the copied backup over to another folder if you're interested in a Time Machine-like versioning functionality. You'll need enough storage space though, and some minor tweaks to the backup command (rsync push to rsync pull). If this is what you're looking for, let me know and I'll expand on it.


Purchasing all instruments doesn't work in GarageBand 10.0.2 GarageBand version 10.0.2. I haven't upgraded since getting this computer because I keep reading nightmare reviews about incompatibility with earlier project formats and more recently in versions 10.1 and 10.2, removal of functionality. Apple appears to be ignoring the negative reviews and pushing ahead with ruining GarageBand in future updates, so I'd like to avoid updating to 10.1 or later.

Most instruments are grayed out. If I click on 1 of them it offers the complete collection for a 1-time purchase.

Except the "Continue" button doesn't work. Clicking it produces a loading spinner over the advertisement offer and then the window closes with no explanation of what happened.

The same thing happens with the purchase button off the main menu.

Apple have made all the instruments free to download. It appears older versions of GarageBand don't understand the server response after this came into effect, and therefore it's not possible to download them without updating to the latest version of GarageBand.

It may be possible to use another computer or virtual machine with a newer version of GarageBand to download them, then copy them to your own computer, but I haven't tested this.


Connecting from windows to my macbook gives access to all files Even though the only folder I have shared is my Public Folder, I just tried connecting from my Windows computer (windows 7) through my home network to my Macbook (running sierra). After entering in my username and password, I see three shared folders: Macintosh HD, User's Public Folder, and User.

In other words, even though I thought I am only sharing my public folder, the entirety of my hard drive can be accessed by the other computer.

The settings I have in Sharing seem normal. SMB and AFP are checked (default). I also have enabled "Windows File Sharing."

Why is so much access given away?

When you connect to your computer (presumably) as yourself you will see absolutely everything on the computer as you are the owner. If you want people to connect to your computer and only see certain folders you will have to create local users that only have access to the folders that you assign them rights to.

It works the same way on Windows and Linux: you control access to folders (and the files within them) by assigning various users specific rights to specific folders.

Let's say you have two folders on your Mac "Accounting" and "Pictures." You only want your sister to access the Accounting folder because she takes care of your finances and that is where you put the spreadsheets and receipts that enumerate your finances and expenses. So you create an account for "sister" on your Mac and add her to the list of users who have access to that folder (which will be you (the owner of the Mac) and your sister).

But you want your brother, mom and dad to view the pictures and only the pictures. So you create three accounts (called brother, mom, dad) and add them to the list of users that have access to that folder.

Each user needs their own password (which you assign when you create the account) and a username which can be as above or uses their name, your choice.

And then when they need to access the files they log in with their username and password and only have access to the folders that you assigned them rights to.

That is a "10 mile view" of file sharing. I've not gone into details as there are lots of tutorials out there (you will have to learn how to use Google for this) that tell you in detail how to do file sharing on the Mac. But this gives you an outline of the process.

For a newbie it is annoyingly complicated, for someone who does system administration for a living, it's second nature and easy.


Can I stop mobile Safari from opening my bookmarks whenever I start the app? Whenever I start Safari on my iPhone it insists on bringing up the last bookmarks folder I happened to be in. Is there a way to disable this behaviour and just have it present me with an empty page when I start up the app? I don't use bookmarks and the process of waiting for that bookmark view to show up and then dismissing it is surprisingly time consuming.

This is mobile Safari on iOS 4 running on an iPhone 3GS. The phone has not been jailbroken.

As of iOS 5.1 Mobile Safari no longer opens your bookmarks folder when you start it on your iPhone. It shows you the empty browser screen and you have to click on the bookmarks icon to bring up the bookmarks list.


Parallels 7 after El Capitan update I have Parallels 7 on my Macbook Pro. I just installed El Capitan onto my Macbook and now I can't open Parallels. What do I need to do?

You're going to have to upgrade to Parallels 10 or Parallels 11. See this Parallels knowledgeable article: Parallels Desktop and Mac OS (Host) compatibility

There is a free trial demo of Parallels 11. So you may be able to convert your old Parallels 7 file in advance of paying for it.

Next time you update OS X be sure to check its compatibility with the version of Parallels you're running. Parallels is a program that often breaks with an OS X update.


Safari in 10.10.4 completely non-functional after simple preferences change Pressed for time?: one simple question at bottom (thanks)

Safari in 10.10.4 has just become non-functional, immediately after I made a simple preferences change to what new windows displayed (I don’t recall exactly what that was, but I was trying to get new windows to display empty and without the sidebar being open).

I restarted twice, and used Disk Utility to do a Permissions Repair and Verify Disk (indicated OK), then restarted again.

I have zero extensions installed; in fact, I had turned off Safari Extensions completely.

Safari opens, but with no window; the spinning beach ball spins indefinitely, and I have no access to any of the top menu.

As Safari’s been acting sporadically odd anyhow since I upgraded from 10.6.8 to 10.8 to 10.10.4, I just installed Safari 9.0 (beta) per suggestion elsewhere here in late 2014;  no change, even after a restart.

No apparent problems except sporadic sluggishness with any other programs I use regularly (Mail, BusyContacts, BusyCal, Pages, TextEdit, Excel).

I had been experiencing sporadic weirdness (not just in Safari) since resolving the disaster of my 24 June upgrade from 10.6.8 > 10.8 (I wanted to stop there for awhile to clean up and export from an ancient contact management program that wouldn't work beyond 10.8), done by the local Apple Store (“We didn’t lose any of your data but we can’t find any of it.”; they found it all, but it took days).

Three days ago, because of such sporadic weirdness, as I usually do, I used Disk Utility to first do a Permissions Repair and then Repair Disk. Repair Disk failed, so I followed the recommendation to repair from the Recovery HD.

Still some sporadic sluggishness and occasional weirdness system-wide, and some of the symptoms matched those described in Apple’s instructions for reset SMC and reset NYRAM, so I did both (exactly as the instructions indicated, and in proper order).

Perhaps I'm down to one simple question:

I've never done this: What’s the worst that can happen if I re-install the system using the recovery HD (accessed by holding command-R at start-up) immediately after doing 2 Time Machine backups to two separate external hard drives?

I wouldn't expect reinstalling the system using the Recovery HD to cause any significant problems. Minor things that come to mind are reinstallation of fonts in /Library/Fonts if they'd been previously removed, and the possibility of needing to reactivate copy-protected software, e.g. reentering the Microsoft Office serial number. But you've no doubt faced these same issues with the previous upgrades.

You could do a trial run without making any changes to your system:

Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your boot drive to a new or empty external drive.
Reinstall OS X on the cloned drive.
If things look good, reinstall on the original drive, or clone back.


How does iOS Photos app know to group burst photos? When taking pictures using the front facing camera and a timer of an iPhone it automatically does burst mode.

When viewing the photos in the Photos app, it somehow knows to group the burst photos together.

If I connect the iPhone to a Windows machine, they are not grouped in any obvious way.

How does iOS know the photos are grouped? Is it metadata in the files?

All the photos that are taken in a burst sequence share a "BurstUUID" in their EXIF data. This is how applications know they are related.

For example I just took a burst of images, installed exiftool and ran exiftool -BurstUUID *.JPG against the directory with the burst images. This is the output.

======== IMG_0076.JPG
Burst UUID                      : 65A7DF0A-1F09-4600-917B-9572A16AD016
======== IMG_0077.JPG
Burst UUID                      : 65A7DF0A-1F09-4600-917B-9572A16AD016
======== IMG_0078.JPG
Burst UUID                      : 65A7DF0A-1F09-4600-917B-9572A16AD016
======== IMG_0079.JPG
Burst UUID                      : 65A7DF0A-1F09-4600-917B-9572A16AD016
======== IMG_0080.JPG
Burst UUID                      : 65A7DF0A-1F09-4600-917B-9572A16AD016
======== IMG_0081.JPG
Burst UUID                      : 65A7DF0A-1F09-4600-917B-9572A16AD016
======== IMG_0082.JPG
Burst UUID                      : 65A7DF0A-1F09-4600-917B-9572A16AD016
======== IMG_0083.JPG
Burst UUID                      : 65A7DF0A-1F09-4600-917B-9572A16AD016
======== IMG_0084.JPG
Burst UUID                      : 65A7DF0A-1F09-4600-917B-9572A16AD016
======== IMG_0085.JPG
Burst UUID                      : 65A7DF0A-1F09-4600-917B-9572A16AD016
======== IMG_0086.JPG
Burst UUID                      : 65A7DF0A-1F09-4600-917B-9572A16AD016
   11 image files read

For another application on Windows (or any other platform) to recognise and show these images as a group it will need to be rewritten to recognise this new EXIF tag.


Why doesn't Messages recognize my contacts? Ok, so this summer I was in Korea. I used a Korean SIM card in my iPhone 4S while I was there. I ended up losing my iPhone before I came back to the US.

I recently purchased an iPhone 5 and backed up all my stuff that used to be on my old phone. Everything works fine except when I text (for the first time) new contacts that I have recently added.

When I do this, their number shows up in the Messages App instead of their name even though I have their number and contact info saved in my Contacts. When I click on "add to contact list" in the Messages App and I choose the contact, it adds a +82 in front of the number. 82 is the country code for Korea. I don't know why it does this. Can someone please tell me how to fix it?

Go to Settings > Phone

Check that My Number is has been updated to your new number.

At times when changing SIM cards, the number does not update in this area.  This will cause issues like you have experienced.  I recently changed carriers (in the USA from AT&T to T-Mobile) and experienced a similar problem after swapping the SIM card in an unlocked iPhone.

See Apple Support for more information regarding swapping SIM cards.


Running a script with assets inside automator application So, I'm trying to write an automator application that runs a simple script.

python Contents/main.py

where Contents is the contents of the .app.

When the script is run it is run in ~ not in the working directory (wherever the file is placed on a system).

Is there a way to do this?

Note: I am not taking any input to the application, you just double click it.

Thanks,
Harry

You can get the path to Your executable from ps command. You need to know Your app name. Here's my code with EchoPath.app made in Automator:

DIR=`ps x | grep EchoPath | grep -v grep | cut -c 28- `

Sample output:

/Users/slozo/Desktop/EchoPath.app/Contents/MacOS/Application Stub

Application Stub is the default name of the executable created in Automator. Knowing this path You can get the path to Contents dir with dirname command.


Content of folders vanished when moved to Macintosh HD I tried to move some folders from my Desktop to my hard drive by dragging them. It would not let me copy them on the hard drive for an unknown reason (red not permitted sign appearing when hovering the external hard drive icon). Then I decided to move all those folders to Macintosh HD by hovering the icon, it looks like everything went great until I started to look into the folders and discover that they were all empty, all folders within folders are still there but every single file vanished!

What should I do ?

Go into Disk Utility, select your hard drive, and then select repair on the right, then select repair disk permissions.

Keep Calm and Repair Disk Permissions


MacBook Pro Retina screenshot in higher resolution than the native? I have a mid 2012 MacBook Pro Retina. The native (i.e. maximum supporter built-in display resolution) is, as far as I know, 2880x1800. So far so good. Then I went to resolution settings and slided it all the way right, to the highest offered by the system. No other resolution apps, just the standard OS X setting.

I took a screenshot (shift-command-3). Clicked on it and chose Get Info.

The resolution of the picture was 3588x2276.

The Photoshop shows the same resolution.

How can this be?

By selecting the far-right setting for resolution within System Preferences, you are seemingly increasing the screen resolution to a value greater than 2880x1800. This is exactly why you are seeing an image with greater dimensions.

What the display settings allow you to do is scale resolutions so words and images all appear larger or smaller on the display screen yet all fit within the physical display (through scaling).

That being said, any scaled resolution may not offer the same image quality as the "Best (Retina)" setting depending on the application etc.

Also, the fact that your graphics performance will vary when scaling the resolutions indicates that your computer is using system resources to compute/adjust/scale what your display projects. This is how the resolution appears to be more, or less, than what the hardware should support.

Each alternate resolution will be higher or lower in dimension but scaled down/up to fit the display window.


Installed additional python2.7 to Snow Leopard. What happens to modules I want to install? I recently asked if I should upgrade python 2.6 to python 2.71 on my Mac (Snow Leopard). I was told to install 2.7 without removing 2.6. Done!

Now I was wondering how the installation of new modules is handled:

Does both 2.6 and 2.7 access the same place where all new python modules are installed by pip, easy_install and setup.py? Is there something I have to take care of?

Another question occured to me: How do I tell a script that I have written to be run by python 2.7.2?

Install of python modules goes in x/Library/FrameworksPython.framework/Versions/2.6 etc where x depends on the install.

nothing for the one from Apple as port of OSX. python executable in /usr/bin

nothing for pythons from python.org. python executable in /usr/local/bin

/opt/local if installed via macports (as I do)

You have to look at easy_install etc to see the path to the python they use. e.g. /usr/bin/easy_install has /usr/bin/python so using this will install in /Library/FrameworksPython.framework/Versions/2.6.

You cannot choose to run under a minor version of  python e.g. 2.7.2 as only one major version at a time is set up normally e.g. 2.7.2 replaced 2.7.1
Each major version of python will have its own executable e.g. python2.7 s to have a script use that verstio make it begin with #!/usr/bin/env python2.7 pr the full path.


How do I permanently turn off updates? Every night my MacBook turns off and updates.

I've switched off every System Preference I can find but still, if I go to sleep and come back, it's either trying to restart on account of the Software Update and an app which has an unsaved state is blocking it, or it's off.

What can I do to disable any and every Software Update attempt?

If you open the App Store and under the App Store menu item click on preferences. This opens a panel where you can change or turn off updates. This is for High Sierra. It may be different in Catalina but I thought it was worth the effort to check.


Apple's DVD Player won't run (and why is hidden) I am selecting some old DVD's and CD's - to keep or garbage? Some old DVD's won't open in Quick Time neither VLC. So I decided to try the Apple's DVD Player since it seems burned to old dedicated DVD players. Is not in Applications list, is hidden, why?

Anyway, I tried to run it but it just shows up the interface and collapse. Here is the first part of the crash report...

Process:               DVD Player [6754]
Path:                  /System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/DVD Player.app/Contents/MacOS/DVD Player
Identifier:            com.apple.DVDPlayer
Version:               6.0 (5500.72)
Build Info:            DVDPlayerX-72000000000000~580
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           DVD Player [6754]
User ID:               501

Date/Time:             2020-03-26 16:33:42.965 -0300
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.15.3 (19D76)
Report Version:        12
Anonymous UUID:        5D622C4B-9B9A-1324-5B1E-10A7B6CBB1AA

Sleep/Wake UUID:       BC5508BC-7AFC-4870-A114-9C25B077134A

Time Awake Since Boot: 36000 seconds
Time Since Wake:       21000 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread:        0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

It is possible to make it work? Why it's hidden? Any third part suggestion for Catalina?

It sounds like those discs might be corrupted and therefore might not be able to be read by any application.

However, if you wanted to try one more thing before throwing it away, I would recommend either Handbrake or MakeMKV to "rip" the contents to your hard drive.

If they don't work, I would consider the data lost unless it contains something extremely precious or valuable.


What is this menu bar icon with three connected dots and a down arrow? It doesn't respond to clicks or right clicks.  I don't recall when it first appeared.

I'm running 10.11.6 El Capitan.

LibreOffice update icon.

Googling the image led me to MacRumours Forums

  It is the LibreOffice update dialog box that triggers this. Clicking
  that icon opens the LibreOffice update dialog box, but it does not put
  it in front of other applications. That is what is leading to
  everyone's confusion about this icon.

  To verify, I closed the update dialog, put LibreOffice in front of my
  other windows, and clicked the icon. The update dialog appears again.


If I plug my ipod to another computer's itunes, my musics will be deleted? I'm thinking about use Ubuntu's Rythmbox to synchronize music, but I need the iTunes from my windows to get some apps.

If I plug my ipod to a windows with no musics on it (to get my apps), my musics will be deleted from ipod?

In my experience, it asks you. You can say no. However, I'm not sure if this requires Manually Manage Music to be checked in the Summary tab.

As always, make a good backup just in case.


is there a slipcase for 17" MacBook Pros which opens at the side? I carry my 17" MBP in my laptop pannier, into which it just fits in portrait orientation.  I'd like to protect it with a slipcase, but I don't want to have to take the slipcase out of the pannier to get at the laptop.  Is there a slipcase on the market that opens at the side?

I've certainly seen them around the place, I've got a portrait one myself.

How about this?


iOS App Store gives me "Cannot connect to the iTunes store” error message After updating to iOS 6 certain tabs in my app store give me an "Cannot connect to the iTunes store” error message and the genuis tab is missing.

Various sites have figured out how to fix this error message:

  Go to Settings in your iPhone.
  Click on General.
  Go to Date and Time.
  Change Set Automatically to Off.
  Go to Set Date & Time.
  Click on Today’s Date.
  Move the year one year forward one year.
  Launch app store, should have no errors
  Go back to Settings, General, Date and Time, and change Set Automatically to on


Search Spotlight for a file of specific type between two dates I've had a hard time tracking down a way to search for documents of a specific type between two dates in Spotlight. Maybe it's not possible? I'd like to be able to type something like this in Spotlight:

kind:pages modified:>151120&<=151126

Which would then return Pages documents modified between November 21st and 26th, 2015. I've tried various date formats and searching for (Spotlight) alternatives, but no luck yet.

The date format needs to be same as the one that you set in system preference

If your date format is same as the screenshot attached, then the search will become:

kind:pages modified:>11/20/15 modified:<=11/26/15

Otherwise, you'll need to change the date format to the one that you have set in your Language & Region (screenshot)


Format, clean install, & restore iPhone 3GS I have been using iPhone 3GS for almost 3 years now, and the phone has got pretty slow. I understand that there are many reasons for the phone getting slow, but I want to try to improve its performance, even if it is by a meagre amount, by formatting it completely and installing the latest iOS it can support, i.e. 6.x.x.

However, I don't want to lose important data like messages, contacts, notes, internet/network settings, etc. by doing a format and clean install. I have the latest iTunes installed, and would prefer iTunes for this process. I know how to update iOS using iTunes and restore from backup, but I am not sure about format + clean install AND then restore all the important data.

Can anyone please advice me how should I do this task?

Connect the device to iTunes and click Back Up Device.
Once the backup is complete, click Restore iPhone and follow the instructions to restore iOS on your iPhone.
Once this is complete, iTunes will prompt you to restore your backup which will restore all your data back to your device. All your data will be restored to your device except account passwords unless your backup is encrypted.


PPC emulator to run Tiger This might seem like an odd request: There are some classic and early OSX apps which I really enjoyed using and I would like to revive. Is there an emulator which can run the versions of MacOSX Tiger created to run on computers with PPC architecture?

It is now possible to emulate PowerPC for Mac OS 9.2.2 through 10.5 via QEMU: https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/GuestOperatingSystems/MacOS10.4 and https://wiki.qemu.org/Documentation/Platforms/PowerPC.

You'll need to install homebrew, a package manager for Mac OS X/OS X/macOS. Then run brew install qemu (which already contains the PowerPC part).

To create the a hard disk image, run

qemu-img create -f qcow2 example.img 100M

replacing

example.img with the path you want to store your disk image in
100M with the size you want (at least 3.0GB to install Tiger according to Apple, probably about 10GB to be safe).

You could also use a sparse (bundle) disk image with QEMU (you'll then be able to natively mount it within the host) but that requires a bit of setup and a script.

You can run then Tiger with

qemu-system-ppc -L pc-bios -boot d -M mac99 -m 512 -hda example.img \
    -cdrom <iso file of installation media> \
    -netdev user,id=mynet0 -device sungem,netdev=mynet0 `

where  is the ISO of a Tiger install disk (you could also use the disk directly as well as dmg images using the same method for a sparsebundle)


How many different images are there in a dynamic wallpaper? I just started using mac OS Catalina (just switched from Windows) and I love the dynamic wallpaper feature.

How many images make up the dynamic wallpaper? Does it change every 24 hours and is therefore composed of 24 different images?

The number of images can vary depending on which dynamic wallpaper is chosen.  You can see how many images there are, for yourself.  In Finder, go to the “/System/Library/Desktop Pictures/“ folder, select whichever file you are interested in, and open it in Preview.  The dynamic wallpapers all have a file extension of ‘.heic’.


My MacBook Air is automatically connecting to a password protected network that's not mine! I'm starting to think I've been hacked because my Macbook Air is frequently jumping to a neighbors password protected network on its own!

I see the network in the "preferred network" list and I don't know how it got there!  I also don't know what that network's password is but my macbook does!  To make matters worse I've also seen my iPhone on the same network!  Anyone have any ideas as to what's going on?

Wi-Fi passwords are synchronized via iCloud keychain. That's why your iPhone also knows the password. Try deleting this network from Preferred Networks.

Also delete item from your keychain.
In Keychain Access.app select iCloud keychain, find the item with the SSID (network name) of your neighbor's network and remove it (Right click -> Remove).


Third Party Time Limiting software mac Is there a time limit software for mac that does exactly what the "Bedtime" feature in Parental Controls does, except separately from the System Administrator framework?

Here's what I want to do: I want my Mac to lock me out during a certain time-frame every day, say 10pm to 6am. And I don't want to be able to bypass this. But I don't want to lose my System Admin privileges (install/uninstall, delete apps, etc). If I set up the Parental Controls I have to give that password to someone else.

Is there a software that will allow me to set a 'curfew' for my mac with a password protection separate from my System Admin?

Watcher is not free, however, it allows setting of a curfew, and some other features that may help you work more productively.


Is there any way to reproduce Windows' new "Sets" feature? For some time now, I have been looking for a macOS tool that allows me to group apps similar to the upcoming Sets feature in Windows 10.

So far, my search has been fruitless and I have been considering diving into app development for macOS to see if I can build it myself, but I strongly suspect that Apple does not support 'wrapping' applications like this.

Does anyone know of anything similar?

I don't think an existing utility exists that is exactly like the upcoming Sets feature in Windows 10.

On the other hand, I cannot see why you suspect that Apple does not support "wrapping" applications like that. The Sets feature sounds like a window manager. You can find examples of open source macOS window managers, and use that as a basis for creating your own that essentially does tabbed windows.

Take a look at for example chunkwm:

https://github.com/koekeishiya/chunkwm


Disabling iMessage Reactions iOS 10+ Many teams I interact with use iMessage as part of their productivity suite for quick, secure communications between each other. The new features introduced to iMessage by iOS 10 and above are causing some interesting problems.

Is it possible to disable Reactions in iMessage so that inadvertent love hearts, etc are sent by those with the occasional sausage finger?

You can disable or "reduce" motion throughout iOS. Disadvantage: Not only iMessage will deactivate special effects, but Apps will also open in a "not so flashy" way.

To try it out:

  Open Settings.
  Tap on General.
  Tap on Accessibility.
  Tap on Reduce Motion.
  Tap the switch on the right side of Reduce Motion to turn it on and disable iMessage effects in the Messages app on your iPhone, iPad, or
  iPod.


OS X unknown ghost text expansion automatically! From yesterday, every time I type two characters "p" and "i" in serial, it will turn into "ssh pi@10.210.100.45", like this:

And I have checked my system settings System Preferences → Keyboard → Text, it's empty, also unchecked the Correct spelling automatically.

It really confused me, imagine that each time I type "ping some.domain" or some words contains "pi".
Does somebody know how can I turn this feature off?

As @Alistair McMillan commented, I post the EtreCheck Result in gist.

I think I've found the solution to your problem because I was experiencing something similar but with another string of text.  Are you using Dash?  It's an awesome tool but I didn't realise what it's snippet feature was doing.  If you have a snippet called "pi" then whenever that phrase is typed globally across your mac while ever Dash is running, it will substitute it with what is in your snippet.  See from the author's page here about a hint to put a ` on the end of snippets to avoid this accidentally occuring.

https://kapeli.com/dash_guide#snippets

Hope this helps!


How do I draw an arrow in Acorn? Yes, I know Acorn isn't Visio, but still let me ask the question:

How can you draw an arrow with Acorn?

I am talking about the kind of arrows that Skitch or Jing would draw, and that you typically add to a screenshot to take the viewer's attention to part of the image.

Acorn doesn't really have native support for complex shapes / arrows like Skitch does - however, you can make an arrow using the Bezier pen tool.  You'd select it from the vector tools palette, and click around until you got your arrow.  It'll be super annoying to rotate or resize however, and it probably won't look as good.

Adding something like this has been on the todo list for a long long time, so hopefully it'll happen in a future release.

-gus


Is there a Mac keyboard shortcut to "Select Current Line"? I am looking for a keyboard shortcut that selects the full line (i.e., the text of the line) of the blinking caret cursor in any editable, multi-line text field. Nothing more than just this one line should be selected.

I understand that one can use the following two keyboard shortcuts in succession to accomplish this:

shift + ⬆

shift + ➡

However, this does not work in all applications. That is, sometimes this combo highlights the current line plus the previous line, minus the first character of the previous line.

To select an entire line of editable text, assuming a left justified language...

If the insertion point cursor is at the beginning of the line, press:

Command–Shift–Right Arrow   ⌘⇧➡

If the insertion point cursor is at the end of the line, press:

Command–Shift–Left Arrow    ⌘⇧⬅

If the insertion point cursor is at any other part of the line, press:

Command–Left Arrow, Command–Shift–Right Arrow   ⌘⬅ ⌘⇧➡

Note that in this previous key sequence set, that you can keep the ⌘ key pressed while pressing/releasing ⬅ then press ⇧➡ so as to eliminate pressing/releasing the ⌘ key twice.

See the Document shortcuts section in Mac keyboard shortcuts.


Is there an app that lets me send email only? I'm looking for an app that will let me send email only.  Often in the course of my work I need to just fire off a quick email but don't want to get stuck firing up my mail client and reading new email.

The closest I've seen is QuickMailer, but it just fires up Mail.app and sends an email using that... then keeps Mail.app open.

I want a UI like QuickMailer's, but an app that sends the email right away without using Mail.app.

Does anything like this exist?

Command line will do the trick (with some configuration). You will need to set it up to use your Google account authentication (I noted you tagged the question with "gmail" so I am assuming that's your provider).

This site has the details on how to set it up. If you use two-step authentication with your account just create an application password for command line and use that token when adding in SASL password.

This setup works well but won't handle attachments. If you need to send a file, you'll probably have an easier time using the Mail GUI.

However, your problem is that you don't want to open a program to send a message, correct? Because this requires you to have Terminal open, or to open Terminal when you need to send. But it would be fairly easy to knock together an Applescript that will prompt you for destination address, subject, and text of email, then bounce that directly to the shell and exit. Throw this into your user scripts folder and make sure your Mac is configured to show Scripts in the menu bar for quick access.

Second Edit: Updated the applescript to work a little more efficiently; uses the code from here to write the message body to a temp file in your home directory, then simply uses cat to read the file contents into an email message, and finally deletes the temp file. I tested it and it works well even with characters that were mishandled by the original script.

try
    display dialog "Send email to:" default answer "email@domain.com"
    set theEmail to (text returned of result)
    if theEmail is "email@domain.com" then error "No recipient specified!"

    display dialog "Email subject:" default answer "Subject"
    set theSubject to (text returned of result)
    if theEmail is "Subject" then error "No subject specified!"

    display dialog "Message:" default answer ¬
        "Enter message text" & return & return & return & return
    set theBody to (text returned of result)

    set this_file to (((path to home folder) as text) & "message.tmp")
    my write_to_file(theBody, this_file, true)

    do shell script "cd ~/; cat message.tmp | mail -s \"" & theSubject & "\" " & theEmail & "; rm message.tmp"

on error theError
    display dialog theError buttons {"Quit"} default button 1
end try

-- this subroutine saves input as a text file
on write_to_file(this_data, target_file, append_data) -- (string, file path as string, boolean)
    try
        set the target_file to the target_file as text
        set the open_target_file to ¬
            open for access file target_file with write permission
        if append_data is false then ¬
            set eof of the open_target_file to 0
        write this_data to the open_target_file starting at eof
        close access the open_target_file
        return true
on error
        try
            close access file target_file
        end try
        return false
    end try
end write_to_file


SNB Framebuffer did not show up,unload - MBP won't boot I recently got a new MBP. My older MBP (early 2011, 13") has some stuff on it I would like to transfer.

I tried using migration assistant, but it appears that they need the same OS versions. I tried upgrading the old MBP to El Capitan... it seemed to go trough the process, but now the old machine will not boot.

I can get into single user mode; I ran fsck -fy and it said everything was OK.

When trying to log in, the progress bar chugs along slowly for 30 minutes or so then it reboots.

Booting with verbose set, it seems to hang at SNB Framebuffer did not show up,unload. Some googling turned up some hackintosh threads stating that this meant it can't find the graphics card.

I have not modified the machine in any way. One thing to note, though, is that the battery isn't charging and needs to be replaced (I have it plugged in to power).

Any suggestions or recommendations would be appreciated.

Turns out it was the battery.

I was having the dreaded kernel_task problem where the CPU was using between 300 and 1,200 percent. I assume this was what was causing the mentioned error (among other problems).

After disconnecting the battery, the laptop booted fine and I was able to transfer my data.


How to show desktop files on both screens? I have a dual monitor setup. Files in the desktop are shown on the first screen. Is there a way to have those files also appear (mirrored) on the second screen?

I do not want screen mirroring, I just want to mirror desktop files. Is that possible?

I'd like to do the same thing, but I haven't found a way. The best compromise I could come up with was to move the menu bar to my primary display. By moving the menu bar, I changed the display which shows my dock and desktop files.

You can move the menu bar by dragging white bar in the Arrangement settings from one display to another:


My MacBook Pro Retina freezes after connecting third external monitor After installing MacOS X El Capitan I'm unable to use my computer with three external monitors, after I plug third one independent of port ordering computer freezes, everything was working for quite a long time on Yosemite, how can I fix this problem?

I have the same problem when I connect only one external display, but perhaps that's because it is a 4K display. So far, the only thing I've found to work is to restart the computer with the display already connected. This allows me to use the display, but if I disconnect and try to reconnect the display, it will freeze up again.


Meaning of lines in "wcap" that don't have a MAC, and are not "beacon" or "wep" broadcasts? After creating a wcap file with Wireless Diagnostics I used vim to inspect this file:

  $ tcpdump -r 2017.98.14_17-33-49-EDT.wcap > output.txt

and then I removed all lines that had either of
(1) a MAC address.
(2) the "beacon" string.
(3) the "wep" string.

Here is a sample of what remained:

  17:33:51.074520 4185535295us tsft -51dB signal -89dB noise antenna 0 5785 MHz 11a ht/40+ 65.0 Mb/s MCS 7 20 MHz (L) lon GI mixed BCC FEC [bit 20]
  17:33:51.076525 4185537310us tsft short preamble 12.0 Mb/s 5785 MHz 11a -53dB signal -89dB noise antenna 0 BA RA:d4:b2:7a:39:f4:1e (oui Unknown)
  17:33:51.289354 4185750140us tsft -53dB signal -87dB noise antenna 0 5785 MHz 11a ht/40+ 65.0 Mb/s MCS 7 20 MHz (L) lon GI mixed BCC FEC [bit 20]
  17:33:51.611685 4186072156us tsft short preamble 6.0 Mb/s 5785 MHz 11a -79dB signal -87dB noise antenna 0 Action (a2:3a:de:12:fd:d5 (oui Unknown)): Vendor Act#0
  ....

Doesn't each line in wcap represent a packet?
If so, what type of packet is not a broadcast or does not have a MAC address?

Since I made the effort to inspect my LAN (for other reasons), I'm just curious. Not really a big deal of course.

Those remaining lines are very important metadata measured from the radio/baseband software to help troubleshooting issues with wireless that can crop up in cases of interference, lack of signal and to identify the hardware / media access layers of the network connection between the radio on your Mac and the radio on the access point.

In these specific lines, you have 802.11a (a less common protocol), and very good signal to noise ratios, the exact channel you are tuned in to and the basic data rate / encoding rate for the link between your Mac and the radio at the access point.

These data would be very helpful if you were seeing large numbers of errors or retransmits or didn’t know which base station you were connecting to.


How to receive Apple ID TFA code if I logout of iPhone? I need to logout of my Apple ID on my iPhone.  I have Two-Factor Authentication (TFA) enabled, and according to Apple Support TFA can no-longer be disabled.

  Can I turn off two-factor authentication after I’ve turned it on?

  If you already use two-factor authentication, you can no longer turn
  it off. Certain features in the latest versions of iOS and macOS
  require this extra level of security, which is designed to protect
  your information. If you recently updated your account, however, you
  can unenroll for a period of two weeks. Just open your enrollment
  confirmation email and click the link to return to your previous
  security settings. Keep in mind, this makes your account less secure
  and means that you can't use features that require a higher level of
  security.

So if I logout on my iPhone, and want to log back in, how can I receive the TFA code to authorise the login?

You have multiple options:

You could in advance set a trusted phone numbers for your Apple ID. Then when you want to log back into the Apple ID, you can click "Didn't get a code" to have the code sent to your trusted phone number via text message or automated voice call.

Another possibility is to sign in to the Apple ID with a browser. There you can select to trust the browser. Then you will be able to sign in to the Apple ID using that browser on that specific computer without having to enter a 2FA code.

You will find Apple's guide for two-factor authentication here:

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT204915


Why are emails not updating on my iPad but are on my iPhone My emails are not updating on the iPad. They are ok on iPhone and on my pc. I have tried resetting, deleting account on iPad, turning on and off, resting broadband, nothing works.

Just had exactly the same problem ... BT mail worked fine on my iPhone and PC but NOT on the iPad.   Solved the issue by simply deleting the 'Mail' app and reinstating from the app store .. re-entered email and password and away it went fine.  I can only assume that there may have been a corruption in the iPad mail app.


Eject button in Finder does not work Every now and then (it seems to me especially after TM backups, but that is about the only reason I plug them in), I am unable to eject and external hard drive by clicking the eject button in Finder (it simply does nothing). It works when initially plugging it in, but not after the backup.
I can however eject it by right-clicking and choosing Eject, no problems.

This happens with two different drives I use for backup.

Has anyone else experienced this issue or can suggest what the problem might be?

My OS is 10.10.3

My OS is 10.10.3, and I have both external Time Machine volume, and a secondary external volume.

I also use multiple Spaces with Mission Control, and I sometimes have Finder windows on different Spaces that refer to locations upon my secondary external volume.

When ejecting a volume, I noticed sometimes that the file system will treat the volume as "being in use," apparently because another Finder window was open. However, this behaviour is not consistent.


Toggle Finder sort order with AppleScript under Lion 10.7? For years I've been using this AppleScript to toggle the sort order of a Finder window:

if sort direction of column id size column of list view options of window 1 is normal then
    set sort direction of column id size column of list view options of window 1 to reversed
else
    set sort direction of column id size column of list view options of window 1 to normal
end if

(You can replace size with kind, name, modification date, etc.)

But ever since Lion, this no longer works!

The little arrow in the column header DOES change, but the items do not re-sort.

Any way to get this working?

This is a bit hacky, but changing the sort column before and after changing the sort direction seemed to work on Mountain Lion.

tell application "Finder"
    tell list view options of window 1
        set sort column to name column
        tell column size column
            if sort direction is normal then
                set sort direction to reversed
            else
                set sort direction to normal
            end if
        end tell
        set sort column to size column
    end tell
end tell


Time Machine Icon on Desktop showing the yellow icon My Time Machine in Finder shows the correct icon, however, on my Desktop, it shows the Yellow icon that is used for normal external hard drives. It only changes on the desktop to the time machine icon when I either eject the hard drive or in terminal use, killall Finder. But ejecting it is kinda useless as I can't use it then, and if I then reconnect it, it shows the yellow icon again.

I'm running the latest version of OS X El Capitan.

Anybody else have this issue or know how to fix this?

To fix this I went into Get Info for the external drive and under the "Preview:" section it showed the TM icon, which I clicked and dragged to the top of Get Info and it overlayed the yellow icon.


Upgrading to El Capitan GM Candidate loses all Exchange folders in Mail I upgraded from current Yosemite to the El Capitan GM Candidate this morning. For work, I have an Exchange account with a bunch of folders in Apple Mail. Upon starting Mail after the upgrade, my folders were no longer present; Mail synced a few thousand messages, but it does not show the folders that are on the server.

I dug through the Exchange account preferences and the Mail preferences, but I haven't been able to find anything. Does anyone have a suggestion?

I fixed this by entering the passwords into Mail > Preferences > Accounts instead of Mail > Accounts (Internet Accounts in System Preferences) and it saved the passwords without any issues.


iMac 2011 startup issues & x8 beeps I've a iMac 27" 2011 i7 thats not been used for 2 years, recently plugged back into power and get from what I can make out x8 beeps on pressing power button. Then the iMac sounds like it resets itself and tries to boot again and continues the x8 beeps.

No new ram has been added, I've removed the ram and resetted ram but still get the 8 beeps. I've also powered on with no ram and get the x1 beep signalling no ram installed.

Could due to the iMac not being used or plugged into power for 2 years, mean the PRAM battery is possibly dead on the logic board?

I like to remove all RAM and then power up just like you did. If there are severe hardware issues - the system often won't give you the correct diagnosis. Now if this works, there still could be hardware issues:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202768

Then I put in one RAM stick and try rebooting. If that doesn't work - reset NVRAM one time (hold for two beep cycles) and then repeat the power off / power on. You've probably done all you can and will actually need to get the hardware repaired or just pieces reconnected internally. The clock batteries aren't needed for successful boot - then you can set the clock as needed - they're nice to have and not required.


Reboot and Reinstall OSx Lion with Snow Leopard currently installed on my Mac I have Snow Leopard installed and only have the original disk of Lion that came with the Mini Mac. The Mac won't boot and stalls during the reboot phase. Obviously I don't have a recovery partition with Snow Leopard.

My query is twofold. First can I just put the disk in the dvd drive and try rebooting from the disk. Second, will I lose data and apps? If so appreciate guidance on how.

To boot from the DVD:

  Press and hold the C key on your keyboard immediately upon hearing the startup chime. Your Mac should start up from the OS X installer CD/DVD media.
  (source)


How can I quickly navigate through man pages in the Terminal Is there any way to quickly scroll through text-heavy output in Terminal such as man pages ? Using the up and down arrows only move the screen one line at a time; is there any way to scroll faster?

If I understood you correctly, you want to skim through manual pages more efficiently.

By default, man uses less as its pager. In less, you can use:

Space or f or Control ⌃-f to advance one page
d or Control ⌃-d to advance half a page
b or Control ⌃-b to go back one page
u or Control ⌃-u to go back half a page

You can get the full list of less keyboard commands in its manual page. If you don't like the default pager, you can set MANPAGER or PAGER environment variables to specify a different program for controlling the pagination of man pages that are longer than one screen.


How do I list the plugged memory sticks on Mac OS How can I list all the currently memory devices on MacOS X?
I need to do this by command, because I have an Java application that needs this information.

Thanks

You can use the native OS X diskutil command as shown below:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            499.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             654.6 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *8.1 GB     disk1
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 LACI                    8.1 GB     disk1s1

If you're doing this from the command line the following command would list the Volumes currently mounted and their mount point in the filesystem:

$ df | grep ^\/dev\/disk
/dev/disk0s2                      487542528 377409836 109876692  78% /
/dev/disk1s1                        7879680   1128124   6751556  15% /Volumes/LACI

If you're just interested in the physical disks:

$ df | grep -i ^\/dev\/disk | awk {'print $1'}
/dev/disk0s2
/dev/disk1s1

Or the mount points:

$ df | grep -i ^\/dev\/disk | awk {'print $6'}
/
/Volumes/LACI


"# is not registered with iMessage" error Let me clearly establish that I am not trying to send a sms to a non-iPhone user. On my OS x Mountain Lion macbook pro I was sending iMessages from the Messages application just fine until all of a sudden my Messages application is claiming that all of my iPhone-using contacts are not actually iPhone-using contacts. On my iPhone my messages are being sent and received just fine, it is the computer I am typing this on that has the issue.

I floated through the apple forums and saw a few suggestions - signing in and out in Messages(tried and could sign in fine but my application still thinks it's everyone else with the problem), checking to see that my macbook still knows its own serial number (it does), restarting my computer (no effect), and changing wifi networks (no effect).

Has anyone else had this issue with their Messages app on their apple computing device and, if you have, how were you able to fix it? Did it vanish at random as suddenly as it appeared or are there some missing settings that I couldn't think of?

Thank you.

I've got several contacts that are offline in iMessage and they have gone through all the troubleshooting steps.

Everything points to this being a service disruption as opposed to something you or your contact has done wrong.

http://www.apple.com/support/systemstatus/


How can I cancel/delete unsent E-Mails from iOS Mail? If I'm off-line, and I send an e-mail, it stays as "unsent message".

Is there a way to cancel or delete or edit those unsent messages? (using the default e-mail app)

Go back as far as you can in the Mail view. There should be an Outbox folder.

The unsent mail will be in there.

Then you can use the "Swipe to delete method" or tap "Edit" button and delete away.


Show window dimensions in titlebar in iTerm2 In the default Terminal app the current width and height of the window are always displayed in the title bar, whereas in iTerm2 they're only displayed for a few moments when resizing.

How can I change it so that they're always visible in iTerm2 too?

Can't find the correct variable for the title. But if you go to iTerm2-> Preferences -> Profiles -> Session -> Configure Session, you can create a custom menu component with title as \(rows) x \(columns) and it will show the width. I know it's not the perfect solution but will do your job.

Make sure your status bar enabled is checked.