VLC on iOS: Sharing via WiFi doesn't work anymore? Since a week or so, the "Sharing via WiFi" option in VLC on my iPad has stopped working.

I used to be able to browse (from my laptop) to my iPad's IP address, and I could drag & drop videos there to play in VLC. Doesn't work anymore, there is no connection at all (as if the iPad is simply not there).

I went through a series of troubleshooting steps:

Wifi and internet are working fine on both the laptop and iPad.
I have rebooted both my laptop and the iPad
I have tried switching off and on the WiFi on both laptop and iPad
Also tried from a windows 10 laptop, same result
iPad is running iOS 10, laptop is macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra (VLC wifi sharing has been working on these just fine)
VLC version on iPad is 3.1.2 (latest available)
No chromecast or anything is involved
Both are in the same LAN subnet: laptop = 192.168.145.24, iPad = 192.168.145.29
When I try nmap 192.168.145.29 (optionally also with -p 80) from the laptop, it says "host down".

Anyone would have any suggestion to get VLC's WiFi sharing working again?

Had same problem. I power cycled everything. Unplug everything.
Plug in modem and router and let them settle. Then power up computer.
The IP address for Ipad got the same response...BUT....
Chrome kept trying the address and it connected!
I closed chrome and reopened to try again. Same. It did not connect immediately- but within a few minutes (and chrome continuously retrying) it had connected again.
As long as it finally connects - that works for me!


How to extend window to all edges in macOS? How to extend the window size to the edge of the screen on macOS Catalina?

Go to System Preferences/Dock and use this setting


Two page continuous view in Lion Preview? Is there some way to get back the side-by-side page view from Snow Leopard with the continuous scrolling? From the View menu in Lion Preview, it appears they're mutually exclusive now. I can't help shake the idea that Lion was designed by someone without a desktop Mac.

This is one of those things that really makes me wonder "If it's not broken why fix it?".

Other than switching to another application that might give you back the lost functionality, I only have one suggestion at the moment. This is how I've been able to use Preview (5.5) and still get two page (side by side) continuous scrolling:

  Open up your pdf, document, etc. in Preview.app
  File > Print or ⌘P
  In the Print Dialog Box click  Preview > Change to Layout [ 2 pages ]
  Lastly, click PDF > Open PDF in Preview.

You should now see your document layout as two pages and you can scroll continuously. I realize it's far from ideal, although it is a way to still use Preview exclusively, yet still have similar functionality as before. I hope they will fix it; I shouldn't have to be thinking of ways like this to use it like it could have been. ;-)


How to fix mounting problem with external drive? I have a USB external hard drive with AC adapter that works fine with an Ubuntu machine. But when I plug it into my MacBook Air it lists one partition on the finder, and does not mount the other.

Even though it is listed on the finder, it shows that there are no files on the drive (even though there are).

Tried both USB ports with the same result.

Disk Utility does not see it.

How to fix?

OSX 10.7.5

The answer to your questions is in the "Disk Utilities" application: just type this in the search box on the top-right corner of your screen, and launch the application.

For every device connected, you will see much information. Relevant to analyse your problem is the "format" information: HDFS, Mac OS Extended, ExFAT, FAT32, ext3, ext4...

I guess because your harddisk comes from Ubuntu, it must be ext3 or ext4. If that is the case, please read the following answer for further help: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/29914/44080


MBP 2016 + iMac 21 (mid 2011) using a thunderbolt 2->HDMI cable and an HDMI->type C adapter? I was wondering if that would work? I've found out this to be the cheapest option for me, albeit an awkward one.

Both of these adaptors are design to output to a HDMI TV or monitor. The idea of going backwards and have the HDMI converted as input to a Mac is invalid.

Also, there is more going here than just using the Mac as a display. Each Mac gets access to the to the drives on the other Mac. You can also share the screen on the Mac being used as a display. For example, below is a image of what is was shown on the display of a 2013 iMac. This Mac was in Target Display mode. In other words, the 2013 Mac was being used as a second monitor connected to a another Mac. In the image, you can see the other Mac was using the Screen Sharing application. The Screen Sharing application window is showing the desktop of the 2013 iMac.

P.S. Before you run out an buy the correct adaptors and cables, you might want to read my answer to the question Can I use an iMac 2014 as a display for a Mac mini.


Migrate Google Authenticator to new iPhone 7 Just got a new iPhone 7, but when it restored it lost all my Google Authenticator two factor auth codes. I still have them all in my old phone, how can I port them to my new iPhone 7?

This is quite frustrating.

First, two things.

Keep your backup codes
Keep your old phone

From what I have found, you will need to use the "change" option on each of your 2-step verification enabled apps/sites. This will most likely require you to log into each account using your current 2-step verification process first (hence the use of backup codes or your old phone).

If you have trouble transferring the authenticator application over, try the following tutorial.
https://www.brianckeegan.com/2016/09/how-to-transfer-googles-2-factor-authentication-to-a-new-iphone/


Can I use my MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015) with 4k (3840x2160) LG 40" ub800t TV @ 60Hz refresh rate? As the TV only has HDMI 2.0 ports, I am considering to buy a thunderbolt to HDMI 2.0 adapter. but I want to know that whether this combination will give me the 60Hz refresh rate at 4k resolution.

No, while the LG 40UB800T TV claims that it can run at up to 100Hz as a TV. It does so through internal interpolation which adds latency and is unsuitable as a computer display.

When you run this LG TV as a computer monitor you will only be able to get 30Hz out of it at full UHD (3840x2160) resolution across an HDMI cable. To drive the LG display at UHD@60Hz you need HDMI2.0 with HDCP2.2 support.

Apple does NOT support the HDMI2.0 or HDCP2.2 standard at this time. As of late 2015 the HDMI connector from ANY Mac will only drive a UHD display at 30Hz max according to Apple. To drive a UHD or true 4K (4096x2400) displays at 60Hz (with full color resolution) you MUST use DisplayPort with a monitor that supports 60Hz.


What does an "X" in a black circle in the status bar mean? Just to the left of my battery percentage, there is a x inside of a circle in the status bar. I've never seen this before and was hoping someone could explain this! Thank you!

Edit: Here is an screenshot:

Sorry for the late reply, but thank you to everyone for your help! I found the problem was a theme installed called 'Veexillum' and the actual icon is just orientation lock! Thanks again to everyone!


Any other major difference between iPhone and iPod Touch except telephone function? Any major difference between iPhone and iPod Touch except telephone function?

What does the iPhone have but the iPod Touch doesn't have and vice versa?

The differences aside from design, size, glass back cover and weight is that the iPod touch has:

No cellular data
No GPS, cell tower, or other non-WiFi Location data
The iPod touch is not available with a 16Gb HD, only 8, 32, or 64.
No Digital Compass
Display is not fingerprint resistant
Video is 720p on iPod and 1080p on iPhone
Still photos are .6 megapixels in the iPod and 8 megapixels on iPhone
No image stabilisation in video mode
No Siri
256Mb RAM compared with 512Mb
£330 more in your pocket.
previous generation CPU (A4 vs A5)
less support (1 free support phone call vs 3)
no LED flash for camera
no vibration function
USB power adapter not included
headphones have no remote/mic

This compares the most upto date iPod Touch (4th gen) with the most upto date iPhone (4S) at time of writing

12-17 were added after Ken suggested more. +1 to Ken for spotting the additional differences.


Swap X and Y axes in Numbers? I'm taking an economics course, and for whatever reason economists create graphs with the independent variable (price) on the Y axis and not the X axis. If I only have 1 dependent variable to graph, it's pretty easy just to swap the two, but I need to create a graph with price as the independent variable on the Y axis with multiple dependent variables on the X axis. Is this possible in Numbers?

I’ve noticed a button you don’t have. What version of Numbers do you have? (I have 09)

Look at this:

That swaps the columns in the graph (exactly like you describe). I’m not really very good at Numbers.

Do you have that? One thing I’ve done, is used the price as a “column” but maybe that’s why you don’t have it?

My graphic looks awesome (sarcasm)…

(btw I hadn’t saved it and had to do it again)


Is it possible to have two computers that save to iCloud independently with the same Apple ID? I have a MacBook Air 8GB, 128GB and I just bought a MacBook Pro 16GB, 1TB which I have signed into with the same Apple ID.

I have Air dropped two files to the Pro but everything from the Air seems to have transferred to the Pro.

I set the Pro up as a clean start but didn't realise that they were linked until I sent things to the bin and found they disappeared from the Air too.

I wanted to keep the two desktops different. Is this possible? If so, can you please tell me what I missed when I set the Pro up as a new without backing up.

The answer to your question is "no". It's not possible to have two computers, both using the same Apple ID, to save files or data to two independent instances of iCloud storage.

However, there may be more to your question. "iCloud" consists of several different features, including iCloud Drive, iCloud Photos, Contacts and Calendar sync, etc. You noted that "everything from the Air seems to have transferred to the Pro" and "I wanted to keep the two desktops different". It sounds like you are talking about the "Desktop and Documents" feature of iCloud. This syncs your Documents folder and your Desktop between devices, and it can be controlled independently of the other iCloud features. To turn it off:

Go to System Preferences > iCloud
Click the "Options" button next to "iCloud Drive"
Uncheck the "Desktop & Documents Folders" box
Optionally, uncheck any other app that you don't want to use or sync with iCloud

In this way, you can still have benefits of iCloud, such as Calendar and Contact sync, Mac App Store purchases, and a shared iCloud Drive space for files and selected apps, without having your Documents and Desktop folders synced. If you don't want any of those things, just sign out of iCloud on your new device, create a separate Apple ID, and sign in with that.


Is it possible to ditch OS X and install BSD on my 3rd Gen Macbook Pro I would like to run BSD on Mac hardware. I'm unable to locate a version of BSD that runs on any MacBook Pro.

I'd like a native install, replacing OS X entirely and not doing a Boot Camp setup or virtualizing over another OS.

Of course it's possible: Your Mac is just a generic Intel machine (albeit one running EFI instead of a traditional BIOS unless you set up BootCamp). Grab your favorite BSD install CD, stick it in the drive, and have fun.1
1 - Because Apple is deprecating the optical disk you may have to make a USB install stick, or plug in an external CD/DVD drive.

Most of the hardware should work "out of the box", but you'll probably need to do some tuning. The FreeBSD folks have a somewhat outdated Wiki page with information on getting FeeBSD running on a MacBook, either under BootCamp or as the only OS on the machine.

I do have to object to calling OS X "Nothing more than a watered-down version of BSD" though. First off, it's Mach under the hood (the kernel) - they just borrowed the userland utilities from FreeBSD, and they've diverged pretty far since OS X 10.0.0 ; Second it's goal isn't to be a Unix development platform - it's a workstation.

Personally I find doing (unix) development on a Mac painful, and I wouldn't recommend it for serious, down in the muck unix programming, but as a workstation it's quite adequate (and you're not going to get a GUI like that from any of the open-source *nix systems without spending a pretty substantial amount of time working on it).
The amount of work required to get a useful desktop/workstation with any of the open-source *nix systems is substantial compared to running OS X. If you need a BSD (or Linux, Windows, etc.) environment any of the desktop virtualization programs can be used to run it on your Mac, while retaining OS X as the primary operating system.

You should also bear in mind that despite what some of us consider questionable design choices (I want to bludgeon the people who came up with the lousy disk I/O scheduling in OS X) Apple builds OS X to run on their hardware. It's about as optimized as you can get, and much like the Star Trek franchise, Even-Numbered OS X releases (10.2, 10.4, 10.6, 10.8) are pretty good.

So bottom line?

Yes, you can do it. No, I wouldn't personally recommend it.
There aren't enough benefits, and you lose a lot of functionality (or have to spend your time making things work, rather than being productive).


Twitter Revoke 3rd-Party Permissions from iPhone & iPad iOS9 I know similar questions have been asked, but I couldn't find an answer to mine.  Is there any way to control Twitter permissions to third-party access from an iPhone / iPad?

I've tried to do it through the app & it seems impossible.  I've tried to do it from the website, but it seems constructed to keep users on the mobile site - from which it also appears impossible.

Is there a way to access the Twitter desktop site from a mobile iOS device (I'm just remembering that my iPad not iPhone had a desktop function in the recent upgrade.  I'll try that next ; )), or a way to access 3rd party permissions in the Twitter mobile app ... or any other app that makes up for this mobile access issue?

Thank you!  ; )

Joy

You are on the right track with the desktop mode as it seems you cant do this from within the app.

As long as you can bypass that and go directly to www.twitter.com you should be fine.

To do that...
On Android, you hit the 3 dots near the address bar, scroll down, select "Request Desktop Site"

On an iPhone (currently at least!), Go to Twitter and scroll a little so you get the add new tab icon etc appear. Then, scroll across until you see the "Request Desktop Site" icon. Select it.

Now if you go to www.twitter.com and login you should be able to see the "apps" option in your settings and be able to revoke access.

I hope that helps!


MacBook Pro: OK to update to 10.6.3? I have a MacBookPro5 with OS X software version 10.5.8  -  is it OK to update it to 10.6.1 or higher?

Assuming by "MacBookPro5", you mean one with a model identifier starting with "MacBookPro5" (they run from 5,1 through 5,5), it's one of several models released in 2008 and 2009. They all support operating systems from Leopard (10.5.x) through the current version of Mountain Lion (10.8.2).

If you want to verify exactly what model you have (a good idea just in case something got mixed up or I misunderstood you), read EveryMac's identification guide.

You will be fine upgrading to 10.6.8 (the newest release of Snow Leopard), but if you want you can go right up to Mountain Lion.

However if you haven't already, you should upgrade the RAM in your system. All of these machines support 8 GB, which is actually fairly cheap these days. 4 GB should be fine for casual usage, 2 GB is getting a bit tight, particularly if you want to run 10.8.


Is there any differences in what will be backed up between an encrypted and unencrypted Time Machine Backup? I do make encrypted Time Machine backups to my Synology NAS which works exactly how I want it. But I recently had to restore from that backup and it's obviously very slow.
Since this was a planned restore I thought next time I'll do an unencrypted backup to my external SSD right before restoring and will have a much faster restore.

Am I right that restoring from an unencrypted backup will be faster?
Is there anything that Time Machine does not include into an unencrypted backup which would be included into an encrypted one?

The restore time is not significantly different in my case between the two backups.
My old Synology was actually the bottleneck when compared to local USB 2 and USB 3 drives - LAN use was around 70% of max on the console (80%+ of max LAN speed is about the best I could ever get out of the Synology and I think that was fluke).
If speed is key then look to use something like Carbon Copy - I find both backups and restores faster with this than TimeMachine.


iPad repeatedly asks for WiFi password although unchanged Sometimes our Internet service (terrestrial wireless funneled through our router to all devices in our house) temporarily stops working, but comes back up within minutes. During and after the outage our Windows and Android devices never report a problem with the WiFi password, just network issues, and never require the password to be re-entered to re-establish connectivity.

On the other hand, our iPad Air 2 (Version 11.2.6 (15D100) Model MH182LL/A) frequently requires the user to re-enter the WiFi password, on some occasions many times. This despite the fact that the Internet interruption has nothing to do with the WiFi password. Once I "Reset Network Settings" on the iPad, and naturally I expected to have to enter the WiFi password once more, but as before I must enter it again and again.

The router is an ASUS RT-N66R and I have changed little of its defaults other than of course the password, but I changed the password shortly after buying the router and haven't changed it since.

How can we avoid having to re-enter the WiFi password on the iPad every time there is some kind of Internet interruption?

To those who experience Apple products 'forgetting' (temporarily or indefinitely) a WIFI password, this is AN APPLE FAILURE - not yours.

Equally failing are the responses you'll get to 'reset network settings' that will delete ALL of your saved WIFI passwords. This is a totally unacceptable response and should be avoided. Same goes for completely restoring an Apple device to resolve some mundane issue that renders your Apple product less than useful and lacks a true 'fix' from Apple.

No other product line outside Apple has this chronic problem that has made it through every generation of OS and iOS.

Since the issue has never been resolved for the end user, one can only surmise Apple has good reason to inconvenience users with this.

Not amused.

Solution: other than resetting network settings and losing all logins... one can (usually) find success by turning off WIFI and waiting some time before allowing your device to re-login. Or, one can reset (turn off and on again) all devices (including modem/router/etc) EXCEPT network settings on the Apple device and that should clear the problem. It is an inconvenience, but it should work.

And for the few that will be forced to reset network settings, and lose everything, I'm surprised you haven't sued Apple for the loss of business - if taking a chance using an Apple product for your business.


How to retrieve data from my old Apple ID? I want to retrieve data from my old Apple ID. I have signed in my iPhone with my old Apple ID, but iTunes displays an error:

"We cannot complete your iTunes store request. An unknown error occured (0x800B0101)"
"There was a error in the itunes store. Please try again later"

I have tried this many times only to get the same results.

First try changing your iTunes account password via your computer.

Then try logging in again.

If that doesn't work, then try changing the date on your phone temporarily. Go to Settings > General > Date and Time > Set Automatically > Off. Set the date one year ahead. Then try and see if it accepts your password.

If you still can't sign in, contact Apple Store Customer Service at 1-800-676-2775.


Upgrade from Windows 7 to 10 using VMware fusion 8.0 I'm having difficulty (=it doesn't work) to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

This is the situation:

I use a 2011 MacBook Pro running OSX 10.10.05 and VMware fusion 8.0.0 (I have it set to run W10 x64)

Currently W7 is installed all up to date

When I use the normal upgrade procedure (clicking the icon in the right bottom corner) it tells me my SVGA is not good enough and I don't have enough memory (I've got 4GB allocated to VMware).

Yes it had to be SVGA.

I have tried the solution that VMware suggested, but that didn't work. I've mounted the .iso W10 file from my Mac and from a USB stick.

I'm not sure what the difference is between running W7 in a VM and boot-camped W7 through VMware fusion.

What else can I try and do to upgrade?

The following article: Upgrading to Windows 10 using Software Update in Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 virtual machines fail with the error: Unsupported SVGA driver (2126929) at vmware.com should solve your problem.

To preserve readability I don't quote the article.

Details
Upgrading to Windows 10 using Software Update in Windows 7 and Windows 8/8.1 guests fails
You see the error:

Unsupported SVGA driver

Solution
This issue occurs because, in certain circumstances, the Microsoft validation tool used to assess a system’s readiness for Windows 10 misrepresents the capabilities of the VMware SVGA drivers, preventing the upgrade.

Note: The issue affects all virtualization platforms, including those not from VMware.

To resolve this issue, upgrade the virtual machine:

Note: VMware recommends to take a backup before upgrading the guest operating system in the virtual machine. For more information, see  Best Practices for virtual machine backup (programs and data) in VMware Fusion (1013628) and Best practices when backing up a VMware Workstation virtual machine (2006202).

Uninstall VMware tools from the virtual machine.

For Workstation, see the Uninstall VMware Tools section in the Creating Virtual Machines Guide.
For Fusion, see the Uninstall VMware Tools section in the VMware Fusion help Guide.

Shut down the virtual machine (not suspend).
Change the virtual machine's operating system type to Windows 10.

For Fusion: Click the Virtual Machine menu and click Settings > General. Change OS type to Windows 10 or Windows 10 x64
For Workstation: Click the VM menu and click Settings. Click the Options tab. Change the Guest operating system version to Windows 10 or Windows 10 x64

Note: If Windows 10 is not available in the list then ensure that you are running the latest builds for VMware Fusion/Workstation. You can download the latest versions from VMware Download Center. For more information, see Downloading and installing VMware Fusion (2014097) and Downloading and installing VMware Workstation (2057907).

Download the Media Creation tool available at the Microsoft Software Download Center. Ensure to select the appropriate version and edition (32 or 64 bit) while downloading.

Note: The preceding link was correct as of August 14, 2015. If you find the link is broken, provide a feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.
Run the Media Creation tool and select Upgrade this PC option.
Follow the Windows 10 installation prompts to complete the installation.
Install VMware Tools on the virtual machine after the installation is complete. For more information, see General VMware Tools installation instructions (1014294).

Additional Information:

If you are performing an upgrade using an .iso image and a valid Windows 10 license key, perform these steps:

Mount the Windows 10 .iso file in VMware Fusion/Workstation.

To mount the .iso file in Fusion:

Select Virtual Machine > Settings.
Click the CD/DVD drive.
Select Choose Disc or Disc Image and then select the .iso file you downloaded.

Note: The file name is similar to Win10_English_x64.iso.

To mount the .iso file in Workstation:

Select VM > Settings.
Click the CD/DVD drive.
Select the Use .iso image option.
Browse to the .iso file you downloaded.

The Autoplay process should now begin within Windows. If not, double-click CD-ROM from the This PC shortcut on the left side of the File Explorer window.

Follow the Windows 10 installation prompts to complete the installation.
Install VMware Tools on the virtual machine after the installation is complete. For more information, see General VMware Tools installation instructions (1014294).


In Mac OS X application software development, do you have to use Objective-C when compiling and linking an executable format? I mean is Objective-C the only language available, or can you use a standard C compiler/linker that is optimized for the sufficient executable format(Mach-O/PEF)?

My basic question is, can other languages be used to generate the equivalent object, binary, or otherwise shared library file format of code parsed and loaded by Mac OS X-like versions?

(E.g., C, C++, D, etc.?)

You can use C or C++ too to compile binaries and executables.  Objective-C is mainly the source for developing for the MacOS user interface (Cocoa), but even there is still the old school interface (Carbon) available, just for the latter sample projects and docs are hard to find these days.

But if you want to create a tool that works like classic unix tools (stdin/stdout) or a shared library, C or C++ are absolutely viable solutions. E.g. you can download Xcode and from the Gui or command line (gcc) you can easily compile a simple int main(int, char**) { printf("Hello World!"); return 0; } program.

Also, Objective-C is just a C-extension, so you don't have to use its features.


Installing Elf on Mac through homebrew I am trying to compile an Android kernel on my Mac (El Capitan). It needs to include a certain "elf.h" header file. It is not clear to me yet what this file exactly is, and I apologise for that; anyway, what I ask now is: how to install it?

I tried brew install libelf, but this only installs a gelf.h, and had a look at elflang on github (https://github.com/elflang), but there are two options in this repository, none of which seems to include an elf.h

Try the one from dtrace that apple ships

https://opensource.apple.com/source/dtrace/dtrace-96/sys/elf.h


What "configurable" means in Apple I purchased a MacBook Pro:

It says that:

  8GB of 1866MHz LPDDR3 onboard memory
  Configurable to 16GB.

What does configurable means here? Can I upgrade the memory to 16GB?

This term configurable refers to the fact that when you order a Mac from Apple you can choose to configure it with more RAM. You cannot do this after purchase yourself, as the RAM is soldered on during the manufacturing process.

Other configurable options when buying a Mac usually include the size and/or type of storage, the processor you wish to have, bundled software, and so on. The choices you get also depend on the model of Mac you purchase.


How to auto-adjust the resolution of a Windows 7 VM using VMware Fusion? Recently, I have acquired a MacBook Pro Retina. Previously, I had always used Windows, and I still need it, because of Visual Studio. Hence I installed VMware Fusion and Windows 7 as a virtual machine.

The problem is that whenever I launch the VM, VMWare automatically sets the resolution of the guest to the maximum available on the Mac (that is 2880x1800). So I changed the resolution from Windows and set it to 1440x900, but, when I restart, on the login screen, it automatically reverts back to 2880x1800. I thought it was due to the VMware Tools, so I uninstalled them. It now works correctly, however I lose a lot of features without the Tools installed. How can I solve this?

I'm using VMWare Fusion 5.0.3. With vmwaretools installed, it's very easy to change the resolution on the Windows VM:

go to Virtual Machine > Settings > Display
there is a checkbox Use full resolution for Retina display
uncheck it and the vm changes back to normal resolution.


Partition type for boot drive FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF and more I was trying to install Ubuntu onto my MacBook Pro 2011 (Catalina running via Catalina Patcher) which already had Windows 10 with bootcamp. When I tried to run Windows again, I couldn't so I decided to delete Windows 10 and Ubuntu and just keep MacOS. I deleted the partitions but couldn't get the deleted space to combine with the MacOS partition. When I checked the type, it said unknown type. So I rebooted my computer but when it turned on it started flashing the question mark file. I found a previous question that matched my problem so I followed it.
Data Not Backed Up, Partition Type: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF
I got to the step where you do gpt remove then I realized I needed my original numbers to be able to do gpt add. Is there any way I can get my boot, data and settings back?

This is my first time posting, I usually read other questions and the answers a few times over but this time I really messed up. Any and all help is very much appreciated. Thank you in advance.
TLDR: Forgot to note down the size and starting before gpt remove.
output from the commands export LC_CTYPE="ASCII";dd if=/dev/disk1 count=1 skip=409640 | vis -c

After running the gpt command that @David Anderson said below. I was able to boot using an external drive and see my MacOS partition. I restarted and was able to boot into my original drive. The only problem is that there seems to be 187.85GB of memory available rather than the full 240GB.
Edit: I was able to remove the "free space" partition from Disk Utility and now have access to all 240GB.
Thank you so much @David Anderson, you saved 4 years worth of my data and settings.

Note: This answer assumes the missing partition on disk1 was not part of a fusion container.

The answer you posted shows the string NXSB\0\^P\0\0+\M-L\M-;\^B\0\0\0\0. This can be converted to hexadecimal and ASCII values by entering the commands given below.
export LC_CTYPE="ASCII"
echo -nE "NXSB\0\^P\0\0+\M-L\M-;\^B\0\0\0\0" | unvis | hexdump -Cv

The output from this command is given below.
00000000  4e 58 53 42 00 10 00 00  2b cc bb 02 00 00 00 00  |NXSB....+.......|
00000010

The string 2b cc bb 02 00 00 00 00 when byte reversed is the hexadecimal value of 2bbcc2b, which is 45,861,931 in decimal. This means the APFS file system contains 45,861,931 blocks, where a block is 4096 bytes in size. In your case, this can be converted to 512 byte sectors by multiplying by 8. The result is 366,895,448 sectors. In this case, the commands to add the APFS container partition are given below.
diskutil unmountdisk disk1
gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 366895448 -t 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk1

Note: If missing partition is part of a fusion container, then the value of 366895448 needs to be reduced by the byte size of the other partition after dividing by 512.


Minimum partition size for normal osx usage? I want to set up a linux/osx dual boot on a mbp with a shared zfs pool for data and /home. My question then is, if /Users is on a separate partition, does anyone have any recommendations towards how large the osx partition should be?

There're a couple of threads that seem to indicate that it has to be at least 9-10GB (What's the minimum partition size for osx mavericks when dual booting with windows 8?), but this is obviously a bare bones minimum rather than a typical scenario for a normal laptop setup.

I know that I can easily get away with a <5GB /root in linux, but I have no experience with macs. Thanks!

You're on the right track with 9-10GB if you're doing a barebones OS X install.  See the OS X Mavericks requirements. However...

If you're keeping the root /Applications on the same volume as the OS, then you might want to leave additional space if you plan on adding applications to the system.  I've never tried to store /Applications on a separate volume from /System (the OS) and /Library (system-wide preferences, support files, etc.), but might be worth a shot if you have time to experiment.

My only concern would be disconnects between core OS X applications and their supporting frameworks.  A prime example would be something like "DVD Player."


What is the Correct 'pf' Syntax for an 'iptables' Port Redirection Rule I am looking to implement a rule like the following iptables rule on my Mac, to redirect traffic from my development workstation (hosting a development copy of a Ruby on Rails project) to another host on my LAN that is running the PostgreSQL database server. Without having to change the database.yml config file on my local copy of the code:

iptables -t nat -I PREROUTING -d 127.0.0.1 -p tcp --destination-port 5432 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.1.104:5432

After some brief googling, I came up with this, which seems to work great.

echo "rdr pass on lo0 inet proto tcp from any to 127.0.0.1 port 5432 -> 192.168.1.104 port 5432" | sudo pfctl -ef -

I am not sure that it is the best way, which is why I am posting here.  I would love to learn the best way to do this on Mac.

I did get this warning, though I don't know that it actually flushed any rules:

pfctl: Use of -f option, could result in flushing of rules
present in the main ruleset added by the system at startup.
See /etc/pf.conf for further details.

No ALTQ support in kernel
ALTQ related functions disabled
pfctl: pf already enabled

From the man page, -f is just telling it to parse the file, which I am sending in via stdin.

Any discussion, improvements, or hints would be great!


OS X: Spontaneous Application Appearance A friend of mine asked me to inspect her computer a while ago as she suspected that she may have some virus trouble.
In part of my initial check of her computer (MacBook Pro OS X, probably Mavericks) I found 3 applications in the Applications folder, which according to her: "spontaneously appeared".
These applications included Microsoft Silverlight, MacKeeper and some other arbitrary media player, and after a small amount of research, I found that they may in fact be malicious software (adware, spyware or malware) so I promptly uninstalled them:
Problem solved.

My question is:

Can Applications just "Appear" in the Applications folder without User interaction/authentication?

She insists that she did not install them or give any authentication surrounding them that she remembers, which is extremely unusual as I would not expect programs to have that degree of access without user interaction.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Silverlight is non-malicious, it'a a Microsoft 'plugin' similar to Flash [at consumer-level]. It will have been offered as the user hit a web page needing it & would require admin acceptance before it would install.

MacKeeper is not so much malicious as insidious. It's is an 'all in one fixit' app with dubious marketing strategy.
It often 'features' on any page vaguely relevant to Mac care & maintenance, with the idea that it is the most obvious button to click, instead of the one you meant to.
In that respect it is a 'PUP' [potentially unwanted program] although no-one appears to have actually credited it with being intentionally malign - opinions on it are loud & varied.

Neither of these could have just sprung into the machine of their own accord, they would need user complicity, even if it was unintentional/misleading.

You'd have to let us know what the arbitrary media player is, to comment further.


Can I switch off disk while disk encryption is going on I am trying to encrypt a disk which is taking approximately 20-30 minutes per every 1% .

Can I restart/switch off my Mac while the encryption is going on ?
Would the Mac automagically resume encryption after switching it back on ?

If you're using the Lion's built-in encryption, the answer is yes. You can just work with the disk as usual, and the encryption happens in the background, even if you restart the Mac.
In Terminal.app, you can check the encryption status with

diskutil cs list


How to eject a DVD without logging in my Mac? I can not log in my Mac and I want to eject CD/DVD.

Reboot your Mac and immediately hold the (left) mouse button or the trackpad until the CD/DVD is ejected.


Is it possible to run three versions of Google Chrome? How might I run 3+ versions of google chrome so I can log into to 3 different google accounts.

More specifically I am looking to have separate icons in the dock for the 3 separate running applications.

How might I run duplicate and or copy versions of the same application.  The following linked question on SuperUser by Mark works for a lot of applications but not for Google Chrome.

It appears the following might work link.

Google Chrome Canary is a bleeding-edge version of Chrome which uses its own profile, so it can be run in parallel to a regular copy of Chrome. The Canary browser is the least tested version of Chrome in their development pipeline (Canary → dev → beta → stable), but contains the newest features. For this reason it may not always work as expected, or sometimes not at all. It receives updates every single day. This SO post describes it in more detail.


How to set up ZEVO / ZFS on an internal disk while maintaining full disk encryption? It seems that it's currently impossible to have the entire boot drive converted to ZFS.

How would one go about converting a single disk HFS+ Filevault 2 setup into a setup which has full encryption and most of the advantages of ZFS?

I imagine that there will have to remain a boot partition which is HFS+ and all user data would have to somehow live on an encrypted ZFS partition that will get auto-mounted and perhaps symlinked to /Users ...

I'm on 10.8.3 and with CE Zevo (1.1)

Short answer … two Core Storage logical volumes, both encrypted:

one LV, HFS Plus
the other LV, give to ZEVO.

You'll need ZEVO Community Edition 1.1.1 (1.1 is outdated).

In the answer to the linked question there's a note about Mountain Lion; OS X 10.8.5 makes things a little more difficult.


Mac equivalent to iOS Colour Filters (Tritanopia) I have Tritanopia (Blue / Yellow) colour blindness.

In iOS I can use Settings > General > Accessibility > Display Accommodations > Colour Filters > Blue / Yellow Filter to boost the relevant colours on the display.

I looked around but apart from applications hacks and messing with monitor calibrations I couldn't find anything easy.

Is there an equivalent on Mac?

I've used the xSCope app to do this using their loupe tool (so it's not for full screen use) for several years and it's a workhorse of other design and measurement goodness. You might check out f.lux as well but that seems to be more bio-perception for decreasing blue hues on a circadian cycle that tracks sunrise and sunset.

http://xscopeapp.com
https://justgetflux.com

I don't think this full screen feature is embedded in macOS High Sierra (yet) and it's not explicitly enabled on older Mac OS versions in as usable a format as iOS 11 does. Perhaps later in the year or next year this would come natively.

In the mean time, you could use a third party app or try setting a custom color calibration / display profile for some light correction. I don't think either of the above is as powerful as iOS accessibility, though.


How to move through words and break on punctuation on terminal? I changed laptop and I cannot configure my Terminal the way it was.
I had this shortcut to delete words, and when deleting ab-cd.ef_gh, it would go ab-cd.ef_ then ab-cd. then ab- then nothing. So it would break on hyphens and on other such characters. But the behaviour now is to delete the full sequence ab-cd.ef_gh instead of doing it "one by one". How can I do that?

I found an answer on Super user
The issue was that Mac went from bash to zsh. There is nothing about a shortcut to "delete part of a word". The solution is to use the common "delete word" shortcut and define what a word is: bash defines a word to be a-zA-Z0-9 but not zsh which defines words as anything in between spaces (so ab.cd or /ef/gh/ij).
for the sake of completeness, add to your .zshrc:
autoload -U select-word-style
select-word-style bash


Can I disable saving passwords in Safari 8? I just upgraded to a new Mac and a newer OS X release than I previously was running and have encountered some different behaviour in Safari 8 that I can't turn off around offering to save passwords.

In Safari 7 you could disable auto-fill for passwords which would stop Safari ever prompting you per How to completely disable password saving in Safari which is what I had done in the past.

However with Safari 8 the preferences pane looks slightly different and frustratingly enough the relevant option is greyed out and there is no obvious way to disable it:

Any idea how I can disable this behaviour under Safari 8?

Your Mac or settings are broken for Safari to be locked like that.

This is likely an issue with your user account settings since all the Macs I have allow you to uncheck those marks. First, try going to the Passwords tab and turning off all check marks there before returning to the AutoFill tab.

Before wiping your user settings and preferences, can you verify that making a new user on the mac and logging in to that account, you are seeing the same issue?

If it's a system issue the steps to fix it are radically different than if it's a user level issue.

See Isolating issues in Mac OS X and Mac OS X: How to troubleshoot a software issue


Mavericks installation stuck at 18 minutes mark I am trying to reinstall Mavericks an 27 inch, Mid-2011 iMac

The hardisk has been reformatted, and I have created one partition Mac-HDD in it.

I have created a Mavericks usb installer using this command:

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia \
--volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Mavericks.app --nointeraction

Can you suggest anything I can try?

You can show the install log by pressing cmd-L. Make sure you're showing all messages and look at the bottom of the log. This may give you a hint as to what's happened (or happening).


Periodic Backups to a remote Windows Server folder with OS X I need a tool that will allow backups of specific folders to a remote Windows Share. The Macs connect via SMB or CIFS, meaning AFAIK rsync is out of the question.

I only need it to backup on folder, but having it automatic would be preferable.

If the remote (Windows) filesystem is mountable in the Finder than any application that does file level backups should work. I use SuperDuper and have used Carbon Copy Cloner and Chronosync in the past with good success.

Note that CCC backs up to either a Mac filesystem or a DMG (disk image) file which may be problematic on a Windows PC with no Macs around.


My Launchpad organization was reset with Mountain Lion. How can I recover it? I had neatly sorted the applications in Launchpad when I was running Lion. But after upgrading to Mountain Lion, none of my custom folders are there any more, and it seems Launchpad is back to the default layout (the first page being all Apple apps).

Is there a way to restore the layout I had in Lion? Is this something I could take from an old Time Machine backup? How would I apply it without breaking Launchpad (such as making some apps permanently disappear, or other such undesirable results)?

According to this article, you can force a Launchpad reload by removing a .db file in ~/Library/Application\ Support/Dock. This file is the SQLite database for Launchpad. Theoretically, you should be able to recover the file, which has a name something like: 5187B29E-A5A8-4CD6-A688-28D426B923F6.db and move it to the correct place. Note that you should backup the current .db file before doing this.


Reattach magsafe connector on logic board I accidentally removed the dc connector socket  while cleaning the logic board of my macbook. I can no longer put it back (it doesn't stay on or falls off immediately). Is it possible to reattach or do I need a replacement part?

Here's the part I need (It used to be soldered on)

You may be able to salvage the component; it is possible that you can continue to use it because it's not damaged.

If you can hold it down with tape (just for testing) and it powers up properly, chances are good you can resolder it back on to the logic board.  However, you can't do it with a typical soldering iron.  You will need a reflow gun that blows hot air so you can solder all contacts simultaneously.

If you don't have the skills to do this or have (or want to invest in) the proper equipment, your best bet is to send it in for repairs.


How do I extract the contents of a specified text field within a webpage using applescript? How can I use Applescript And Safari to extract the answer from this site: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=whats+the+meaning+to+life%3F

I'm attempting to extract the answer in copyable plaintext. That is, .txt format.

I get this error:

"Can’t make text items 2 thru -1 of "missing value" into type text.

When implementing the following script:

to getInputByClass(theClass, num)
    tell application "Safari"
        set input to do JavaScript "
        document.getElementsByClassName('" & theClass & "')[" & num & "].innerHTML;" in document 1
    end tell
    return input
end getInputByClass

to extractText(searchText, startText2, endText)
    set tid to AppleScript's text item delimiters
    set startText1 to "x"
    set searchText to ("x" & searchText)
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to startText1
    set endItems to text item -1 of searchText
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to endText
    set beginningToEnd to text item 1 of endItems
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to startText2
    set finalText to (text items 2 thru -1 of beginningToEnd) as text
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tid
    return finalText
end extractText

getInputByClass("popup ui-draggable", 0)

set theText to getInputByClass("r", 0)

set theResult to extractText(theText, "<pre>", "</pre>")

Although the page you supplied is returning an image of the answers which means you cannot return text from it.

The source of the page holds the answer in text form in a javascript function.

This applescript is using one of my old methods to get the text between pattens.

I would probably now do this using ApplescriptOBJC but thought it better to keep it in Applescript with a dash of shell. As it may be more understandable.

tell application "Safari" to set theString to (source of document 1)

(* Strip the text and only return the last line*)
set input to do shell script "echo " & (quoted form of theString) & "|sed -n \"/stringified/,/mInput/p\" | sed '$!N;$!D'"

global answer

set offSet1 to "\"stringified\": \""
set offSet2 to "\",\"mInput\""

my strip(offSet1, offSet2, input)

return answer
on strip(offSet1, offSet2, thedata)
    (* Use the offsets of the pattens to match the text # thru # *)
    set textNumber1 to (offset of offSet1 in thedata)
    set theData1 to text -1 thru (textNumber1 + (count of offSet1)) of thedata
    set textNumber2 to (offset of offSet2 in theData1)
    set textString2 to text from word 1 to (textNumber2 - 1) of theData1
    set thedata to theData1
    set answer to textString2
end strip

Update.

The OP has pointed out that there is an option to have a popup show the answer in plain text.

This is not obvious to anyone who is not familiar with the site. The popup does not exist in the page source until you click this option, which is the reason I could not find the classes the OP was referring to in the page source.

The first script above does not need you to click any option or get the popup.

But if for some reason you do then you can use this script which will require you to have the popup on display first.:

tell application "Safari"
    set input to do JavaScript "theclass = document.getElementsByClassName('popup ui-draggable')[0]; theclass.getElementsByTagName('PRE')[0].innerHTML;" in document 1
end tell


Apple command file exits early I wrote an .command script that when I launch it, it just exits and it's to quick for me to see what's going on. How do I keep it open?

When you double click a .command in the Finder, the Terminal opens and runs /path/to/your.command ; exit; The exit at the end exits the shell, and you have Terminal's preferences set to close the window when this happens.

Go to Terminal -> Preferences -> Settings -> Whichever Theme is marked as the Default -> Shell -> When the shell exits: and choose "Don't close the window".

Alternatively, if you don't want to change Terminal's preferences:

If your command outputs something to STDOUT that you want to read after the command exits, you can pipe the command's output through less, which will then stay open allowing you to scroll around through the output with the arrow keys until you quit it with q. Just add |less to the end of the command in your script.

EDIT:

Found a more flexible option. If piping something through less isn't practical for whatever reason, or your script is too complicated, you can add a last command that waits for input from the user before completing. I used

$ read -n 1 -p "Done. Press any key to exit. "

(Wait for one character of input while displaying the prompt.)


Resizing a window to a specific size, for screen recording? I want to record an application window for a demo/tutorial, and I'd like the video to be a particular resolution.

Is there a trick/tool already installed in Lion that allows me to take a window and resize it to a specific resolution? For instance, take a window and resize it to 1280x720 in preparation for a HD 720p video recording?

If not, is there a tool I can get from the internet that will do this for me?

It just occured to me that perhaps Automator would help me here, but I'm not able to find an action to resize a window. An Automator script is OK as well.

Basically, any free/cheap tool/trick/script that would do this.

You could try an AppleScript like this:

  set the_application to (path to frontmost application as Unicode text)

  tell application the_application
      activate
      set bounds of window 1 to {1, 1, 1281, 721}
  end tell


Cannot change IPv6 Mode on my Airport Extreme (5th generation) using Ariport Utility 6 My provider recently added support for IPv6 and I wanted to configure it on my side. Unfortunately Airport Utility does not allow me to select appropriate IPv6 mode and I'm stuck with the tunnel mode which my provider does not support:

In this mode Airport Utility keeps telling me about "IPv6 Rely Error".

Seems like the problem is that Airport Extreme still does not support delegating IPv6 prefixes over PPPoE.


How to view Adobe Photoshop PDFs on my iPad I'm attempting to deploy a PDF I created in Photoshop on my iPad using the PDF Pro app. When I view a text PDF, everything works flawlessly - however, when I put my image-loaded PDF on the device, it fails to load (and, if it matters, displays a completely wrong file size next to it). I'm willing to use other means, but I need to be able to view PDF's with images ASAP for a company meeting tomorrow.

How am I able to get this to work?

Photoshop PDFs are a bit wonky even outside the iPad, and I have found it best to flatten and place them in InDesign and output a PDF from there. Even so, the iPad's PDF support is limited and searching the web for "iPad PDF viewing" yields a lot of reviews for PDF-reading applications.

In the end, however, it would be best here to have a Plan B (i.e., laptop and projector) if this so important. PDF support for the iPad still has a long way to go.


How to disable Private Browsing in Safari on a 10.8.3 without Xcode I am trying to delete Safari Private Browsing on a 10.8.3.  It requires the Xcode App that is only available for 10.9.4 or later.  Is there another App I can use or some other way around this that will allow me to disable the Private Browsing?  Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I use OS X 10.8.5 and have Xcode Version 4.6.2 (4H1003) installed.  I just checked the available downloads at Apple Developer in the Member Center and many past versions of Xcode are available for download, as far back as version 2.3.  If you don't have an account I believe you can still create a free account. Although you'll not have access to all downloads like a paid account nonetheless you can download Xcode and related Command Line Tools and much more.

BTW If you're wanting Xcode to edit the MainMenu.nib, don't waste your time as it's compiled and not editable.


How to disable all notifications in MS Office 2008, Entourage? The subject says it all, but for further explanation, MS Office has this (what I consider annoying feature) of notifying me of pretty much anything that happens in Entourage—emails, calendar events, and the like. This is similar to the new "My Day" feature but the notifications pop-up in the lower-right corner of the screen.

I use one particular installation for developing scripts and I don't need to notifications. I don't even need Entourage, for that matter, but the install is managed by my IT department, not me. I've looked through everything I can think of to turn off all of the notifications, and the only way I have managed to completely stop them is to zip up the Entourage application. But that results in every other application in the Office suite to state on start up that there is a problem with the Office database (but then they work normally otherwise) and the update application won't allow updates to happen because it can't find the correct installation.

Does anyone know of a way to completely turn off all the little pop-up notifications that Entourage seems to foist on me?

If you remove the Microsoft Database daemon from login and do not open Entourage you should receive no notifications.


What is the minimum sized wrist the Apple Watch can fit? I am interested in getting the Apple Watch, the only problem is I have small wrists so I am not sure if the Apple Watch will fit my wrist even if I choose the 38mm (small) one.

What is the smallest sized wrist the 38mm Apple Watch can fit? (I presume the 38mm is the largest wrist the watch fits?)

As specified on Apple's Watch Case and Band Sizes page, the smallest band (therefore fitting the smallest size wrist) is the Classic Buckle, which fits a 125mm wrist circumference.
The next size of bands, are the ones that fit 130mm wrist circumferences:

Milanese Loop (130-180mm)
Classic Buckle (125-200mm)
Sport Band (130-180mm and 150-200mm)
Woven Nylon (125-195mm)

Keep in mind these are sizes for the 38mm Apple Watch. 42mm band sizes are a bit larger, starting at 140mm for the Link Bracelet and Sport Band, and 145mm for Woven Nylon.


Free iOS app in Pending Contract I recently renewed my iOS developer membership and noticed that my free app, which has been available in the store for a year, is now in Pending Contract status. There is no information whatsoever of what conditions have changed and what I need to renew/enter/accept. Note that my app is free, so I shouldn't need to enter bank details, tax information, etc.

On the Agreements, Tax, and Banking page I can see that the "iOS Free Applications" contract has expired but there is no button to renew it. Has this type of contract been discontinued? Do I really have to enter my bank details and tax number even for a free app?

I found the solution:

My Apps -> Click on on the app -> Pricing

Choose the Price Tier and dates and Save.
The status of the app immediately changes from Pending Contract to Ready for Sale.

Still not clear why I had to redo it.


Lost partitions after a botched Windows install attempt via Bootcamp I tried to install Windows 8 using the bootcamp assistant, but when I got to this screen,

The BOOTCAMP partition created by bootcamp wouldn't accept the windows install. Meaning, I reformatted it, and normally the little sun button "New" would then allow me to proceed with the Windows install.

I thought it was very weird so I instead deleted the partition, which turned into a 47.3Gb of Unallocated Space.

I tried formatting said unallocated space which created a bunch more partitions, but ultimately the same problem persisted: Can't install Windows.

In OSX, the Disk Utility wouldn't let me actually delete or remove the partitions so I went back to the Windows install menu and turned all the undesirables into unallocated space.

Here's what my Disk Utility looks like now:

As you can see there's some purple stuff at the top and some dark-grey stuff at the bottom, which I imagine represents free space?

Finally, here's a diskutil list readout:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         121.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         948.5 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3
/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *1.1 TB     disk2
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2, disk1s2
                                 A952E93D-0902-4BEC-B4D2-93A8BB1CDDD0
                                 Unencrypted Fusion Drive
/dev/disk3
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *16.0 GB    disk3
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 WININSTALL              16.0 GB    disk3s1

Questions:

WTF happened?
How can I reset everything to the way it was so I can
try bootcamp again?
More specifically, how do I add unallocated space
to my primary OSX partition?
List item

Please help!

Thanks in advance.

I don't know what exactly happened, usually it works.

To get back to your original disk layout, just format the unallocated space with the Window installer (FAT32 or NTFS), boot to OS X and open Bootcamp Assistant.
Skip building an installation medium or downloading any drivers, just remove the Windows Partition.

If that doesn't work give me a comment. There are several solutions to restore the original disk layout.

Item List:

Actually you have a Fusion Drive.

To build a Fusion Drive several physical disks are combined to a CoreStorage Logical Volume Group.

Disk0 is your physical SSD
Disk1 is your physical HDD
Disk2 is your logical Macintosh HD volume (CoreStorage Logical Volume) which resides in a Logical Volume Group spanning over disk0s2 and disk1s2. Disk2 is no real physical disk like disk0 and disk1 but in the Disk Utiliy context an own "logical" one.
Disk3 is your thumb drive containing the Windows 8 installation environment.


How can I create a script with multi command I tried to create a script on OS X. I do something wrong.
I want to execute 2 command:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true

and

killall Finder

I saved and chmod the file but I got some errors:

/Users/max/Desktop/visible.command ; exit;
MacBook-Pro-de-Maxime:~ max$ /Users/max/Desktop/visible.command ; exit;
/Users/max/Desktop/visible.command: line 1: {rtf1ansiansicpg1252cocoartf1343cocoasubrtf160: command not found
/Users/max/Desktop/visible.command: line 2: syntax error near unexpected token `}'
/Users/max/Desktop/visible.command: line 2: `{\fonttbl\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Menlo-Regular;\f1\fmodern\fcharset0 Courier;}'
logout

Thank you for your help!

You have saved your file as a Rich Text Format file (.rtf)

In TextEdit.app

Open your file and use the Make Plain Text menu to change it to the correct format for coding.

Using anything other than plan text will mean that the file includes formatting code  for styles and such that is visible to the shell layer but not to the user when viewing the file.

For example.

Rich Text Format file with the extension changed is still a rich text file

Reading it from the command line.

$ cat foo.command

{\rtf1\ansi\ansicpg1252\cocoartf1344\cocoasubrtf720
{\fonttbl\f0\fnil\fcharset0 Menlo-Regular;}
{\colortbl;\red255\green255\blue255;\red43\green39\blue19;\red234\green234\blue234;\red37\green127\blue159;
}
\paperw11900\paperh16840\margl1440\margr1440\vieww10800\viewh8400\viewkind0
\deftab720
\pard\pardeftab720

\f0\fs26 \cf2 \cb3 \expnd0\expndtw0\kerning0
defaults write com.apple.finder \cf4 \expnd0\expndtw0\kerning0
CreateDesktop\cf2 \expnd0\expndtw0\kerning0
 -bool true}

Change to plain text and re saved.

Read from the command line.

$ cat foo.command
defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true

( examples are for illustration only and not how to do the actual coding)


Increase font size in pop up dictionary window in OS X Sierra On my Macbook Air running Sierra 10.12.5, there is no longer a Dictionaries directory under /Library, so the below suggested fix no longer seems to apply:
Dictionary lookup wider and taller (pop-up dictionary lookup styling) in OS X

Is there still a way to do this?

In macOS High Sierra the location of the files has changed. And maybe also the structure too. The files are now under:
/System/Library/Assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_DictionaryServices_dictionaryOSX/

The directory structure has changed in more recent versions of OS X but the same approach linked to above works.


Internet Sharing: I just need a WLAN I need to create a local WLAN using my MacBook Air's built-in network card (I need an IP network on this, with the MacBook being the router and WLAN clients being able to talk to it with its respective IP, etc.).

Basically, I need to turn my MacBook Air into a hotspot. I do not need any internet access on this network. All I need is a wireless LAN.

I've been looking into the Internet Sharing feature in System Preferences → Sharing. However, I've run into the following constraints:

"Internet Sharing" will not work if I do not have another interface to share "from". E.g. I need to have an ethernet cable plugged in (and working) or something similar for Internet Sharing to agree to create a hotspot. I don't need Internet on this network, I just need a LAN.
It's not doing DHCP. When I do get the hotspot to work (with another interface present, see point above), the LAN clients get self-assigned IPs such as 169.254.203.23, so it's just not handing any IPs out. I've tried messing with /etc/bootpd.plist, but it didn't help.
I can't figure out how to enable all this mess programatically. Not only do I need to create an Internet-less WLAN with only my Wi-Fi interface and do DHCP, but this also needs to be done programatically (AppleScript, shell script, anything works). I have no clue how to do this.

So, how do I create a WLAN that:

Runs (preferably) out-of-the-box on any MacBook.
Does not need another interface to work, just my Wi-Fi interface.
Can be turned on programatically.
Does basic DHCP (I can figure this out myself, I've found a node-based dhcpd server).

I am running macOS 10.14 Mojave.

This is not a programmatic but a manual solution.

Go to System Preferences → Network and check Show Wi-Fi status in menu bar.

Now click on the Wi-Fi icon shown in the menu bar and select Create Network....

Supply network name in the dialogue box shown (the default name assigned is the computer name set under System Preferences → Sharing).


Applescript to automate drop-down selection in Mozilla Firefox I'm trying to automate the selection of a value from a drop-down box in Mozilla using an applescript. What I want it to do is to tab to the drop-down box and enter down twice to select the third item in the drop-down.

Here is what I have so far:

  tell application "Firefox"
          tell application "System Events" to keystroke tab
          tell application "System Events" to keystroke down
          tell application "System Events" to keystroke down
  end tell

But, as far as I can tell, when I run the script nothing happens.

What do I need to do to make this script work?

EDIT: I have also tried entering the key code 125 for down in case the keystroke command was wrong.

Try this

tell application "Firefox"
    activate
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke tab
        keystroke (key code 125)
        keystroke (key code 125)
        keystroke (key code 125)
    end tell
end tell

You might not need to activate Firefox if it's the current active app. Them you just need :

tell application "System Events"
    keystroke tab
    keystroke (key code 125)
    keystroke (key code 125)
    keystroke (key code 125)
end tell


List failed login attempts on Mavericks I want to see if somebody has tried to log in on my computer, which is running Mavericks. I am primarily interested in tracking ssh log in attempts, as well as tracking people physically typing passwords on my keyboard to try to log in.

Related

I have seen How to log login and logout on Mavericks?, but last seems to list only successful logins, or at least it mostly shows successful logins.

I have also seen an answer about looking in system.log or "all messages", using the console utility, but those files/messages seem very cluttered.

Related Q&As for older OSX versions

How do I detect failed remote login attempts and block them?
Where do I find the logs for OS X authentication attempts?

You can use this Terminal command:

cat /private/var/log/system.log | grep "Failed to authenticate"

Feb 11 16:48:04 g authorizationhost[15313]: Failed to authenticate user <grgarside> (error: 9).
Feb 11 16:48:06 g authorizationhost[15313]: Failed to authenticate user <grgarside> (error: 9).


Is there anyway to play MP4 file on my iMac from a iPad Pro wirelessly? I have an iMac and I have some mp4 videos in it. I'd like to play it from my iPad Pro remotely. Is it possible?

If you want to leave the videos on the iMac but display it on the iPad, you could put them into iTunes on the iMac and then turn on Home Sharing on the iMac. This will allow iTunes to make your iTunes library available to any Apple device on your home network. (The videos will be in "Home Videos" in iTunes. In iOS 10.2, you use the TV app to play iTunes video content.)  You must also be signed into the same AppleID on both devices, and the iMac must be turned on.

If you don't want to (or can't) use iTunes, Plex can do something similar. Plex offers many additional features, but it is also more complicated to set up.


Download entire iTunes purchase history as CSV file (MacOS High Sierra) Has anyone found a way to download iTunes Purchase history into some type of csv or text format?

The closest thing I could find was this StackExchange answer of a great applescript that could automate this task, but the script doesn't work with High Sierra and the newer versions of iTunes.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/229240/288140

The following works on currently latest macOS I'm using (High Sierra 10.13.5 Beta) and latest iTunes (12.7.4.76).

I've written an AppleScript that is using UI Scripting and compiles a list of purchased songs on iTunes. The script will open a new TextEdit document and fill in the songs in a comma delimited format and will contain the sequential number, song name, artist, album and song duration. The output will be similar to this:

"Nr","Song Name","Artist","Album","Duration"
"1","Badinerie","Lucero Tena","Lección de castañuelas","1:03"
"2","El colibrí","Lucero Tena","Lección de castañuelas","1:07"
"3","El relicario","Lucero Tena","Lección de castañuelas","1:36"

Here is the script:

tell application "iTunes" to activate
tell application "TextEdit"
    activate
    make new document at the front with properties {name:"iTunes purchased.txt"}
    delay 1
    tell application "System Events" to click menu item "Make Plain Text" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Format" of menu bar 1 of application process "TextEdit"
end tell
tell application "iTunes" to activate
tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "1" using {command down}
    set w to window "iTunes" of application process "iTunes"
    click radio button "Store" of radio group 1 of w
    delay 2
    set webarea to UI element 1 of scroll area 1 of group 1 of group 1 of splitter group 1 of w
    click static text 1 of UI element 1 of group 6 of list 2 of webarea
    delay 2
    click radio button "All" of tab group 1 of group 2 of webarea
    delay 3
    click radio button "Songs" of tab group 1 of group 5 of webarea
    delay 5
    set allRows to UI elements of table 1 of webarea
    set entireContent to quote & "Nr" & quote & "," & quote & "Song Name" & quote & "," & quote & "Artist" & quote & "," & quote & "Album" & quote & "," & quote & "Duration" & quote & return
    tell application "TextEdit" to activate
    repeat with aRow in allRows
        if class of aRow is row then
            set gr to UI element 1 of group 1 of UI element 2 of aRow
            if class of gr is group then
                set songNum to value of static text 1 of group 1 of UI element 1 of aRow
                set songName to value of static text 1 of group 2 of UI element 2 of aRow
                set songArtist to value of static text 1 of group 1 of UI element 1 of UI element 3 of aRow
                set album to UI element 1 of UI element 4 of aRow
                set songAlbum to ""
                if (count of UI elements of album) is greater than 0 then
                    set songAlbum to value of static text 1 of group 1 of album
                end if
                set songDuration to ""
                set dur to UI element 5 of aRow
                if (count of UI elements of dur) is greater than 0 then
                    set songDuration to value of static text 1 of group 1 of dur
                end if
                set aLine to quote & songNum & quote & "," & quote & songName & quote & "," & quote & songArtist & quote & "," & quote & songAlbum & quote & "," & quote & songDuration & quote
                set entireContent to entireContent & aLine & return
                tell application "TextEdit" to set text of front document to entireContent
            end if
        end if
    end repeat
end tell

The process is not fast, on my computer it takes about 1 second per song so be prepared to wait a while. Also, if you start getting some "out of index" errors try, while the script is running, scrolling the iTunes song list in the background to make sure the entire list content is loaded before being accessed by AppleScript.


Lower than usual screen resolution on MacBook Pro My MacBook Pro screen has a lower than usual screen resolution. How can I fix that?

Turns out someone has just messed around with my System Preferences.
Going to System Preferences >> Displays >> Display >> Resolution and changing it to Default for display did the trick.


Hard disk default icons This is just a curiosity: what's the reason I ended up having two different icons for two external hard drives?

In my case in the Finder I have:

The information panels for these two are:

On what basis did OSX choose these icons differently?

Long story short: the white drive represents a "removable disk", and the orange drive represents an "external disk".

Think of a removable disk like a thumbdrive, something small that people would usually throw in their pockets or carry around on a regular basis, or in your case, an external SSD.

An external disk is usually the exact opposite of the removable disk: it's usually something that sits on your table that rarely ever gets moved like a hard drive bay or a RAID rack, or in your case, an archive HDD.

I'm not too sure how the system determines which one to associate with which file, though I am fairly certain the icon is chosen based on the drive's capacity. If you'd like to see where these icons come from (or their names which give clues on what they are associated with), you can find them in /System/Library/Extensions/IOStorageFamily.kext/Contents/Resources, or for your sidebar icons they can be found under /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources along with many other system icons.


How splash-proof and knock-proof is the iPod nano? I'm looking at buying an iPod Nano with a watchband to use as a watch.  My concern is that as a watch it will have to take a certain amount of incidental knocks and splashes.

I don't want to have the iPod die after every little tap, or a splash of water when I wash my hands.

Has anyone had any experience with the durability of the iPod Nano?

The iPod Nano can be knocked around pretty good and still keep going, but getting them wet is another story. The units have moistures sensors (much like nearly all of Apple's handheld line) are not to be got wet. The phone strap would provide some protection against this, but it doesn't make it water resistant or turn the device into an actual wristwatch capable of getting weathered. Washing your hands with the phone attached to your wrist would certainly get water in the unit (potentially leading to damage and inoperability) or at the very least, trigger the moisture sensors.

An iPod Nano is still an electronic device that should be kept clear of all water and as much perspiration as possible. If the moisture sensor is triggered, your warranty is void. With that said, the units are sealed quite well and would typically only allow water in the headphone jack and the proprietary cable connection port at the bottom (these are were the moistures sensors are located).


Need to force an iOS update Hi my iPhone 3gs is currently operating on 6.1.6.
I'm trying to load an app & when I push install a window comes up telling me I need to update to iOS 7 or later.
My software updates say I'm up to date.... Is there a way to force an update???

The iPhone 3GS is only upgradeable up to iOS 6.1.6, released February 21, 2014. [Wikipedia]


Facebook app won't load newsfeed when using Wi-Fi on iPhone I am having a problem which has driven me mad for months. When I am connected to my home Wi-Fi the Facebook app's newsfeed won't update. If I turn Wi-Fi off and use the mobile 3G it works fine so I guess its something to do with my Netgear router.

I have an iPhone 4 on iOS 6 and my router is a Netgear N150.

Any ideas?

Here are a few suggestions I could think of off the top of my head

Restart your wifi radio (Settings > Wi-Fi > OFF. Leave off for 1 minute, then slide back to ON)
Reboot your phone
Reinstall Facebook app

Try those one at a time to see if any of them fixes your problem.


Automator treating App Packages as folders Automator treats .app files (Application Packages) as if they were folders. This might be useful in some instances, but for what I want to do - Periodically make a list of the contents of my Applications folder - it is extremely frustrating.

I just want a list of all the applications I have. I made a two step workflow, with "Get Folder Contents" and "New Text File". This would work perfectly, if not for the fact that I have a number of subfolders in the Applications folder with apps in there (for organization/sanity purposes).

In theory, this would be solved by checking the "Repeat for each subfolder found" option in the "Get Folder Contents" Action, but this gives me a huge problem: it lists every single file in each App Package, which I'm sure you'll understand is totally useless for my purposes.

Any Ideas?

Try this AppleScript:

tell application "Finder" to get name of every file of folder (path to applications folder)

Carlos figured this part out himself:

set appsPath to (path to applications folder)
tell application "Finder"

set appList to name of every application file of entire contents of folder appsPath
    end tell


Enable All HiDPI Modes I want to know how to enable all HiDPI modes, particularly the 1280x800 mode for my 1440x900 MacBook Air. How can I do this?

The answer is that it is not possible, when the  13" MacBook Air's higest native resolution is 1440x900. It simply does not support 1280x800 or 1440x900 HiDPI modes, since it does not have a retina display or a display with enough pixels to do HiDPI. For the MacBook Air in its current form, it would need to have a LCD display with at least 2880 X 1800 pixels to enable HiDPI modes.

To do HiDPI 1280 x 800 you would need a display with resolution of at least 2560 x 1600, again, not possible on the 13" MacBook Air's display.

As noted in Signs in Mountain Lion point to "retina" display MacBooks sooner than later retina displays and graphics require 2x the resolution of normal graphics and displays.


Are the two cores of rMPB enough? I am thinking of purchasing a 13" rMBP. It has two cores. My question is, are two cores enough ? there are other laptops with 4 cores at much cheaper rates available. How does apple seem to pull it off with only 2 cores ? will the performance of a rMPB and a quad core(similar specs) have the same performance?

and, is it worth buying the 2 cores ?

It depends on how you're going to use it.

If your daily MacBook usage only consists of stuff like websites browsing, watching movies on VLC and creating a Word or Excel document from time to time, then, I would say, 2 cores are surely enough.

But if you're using software that requires more resources like audio/video processing (Adobe products, for example), graphic excessive games, etc. then go for 4 cores.


How do I access LastPass Passwords on iOS/iPadOS from web browser? Unlike macOS, there are no browser extensions to integrate LastPass on iOS or iPadOS in the web browser.

Although I've installed the LastPass app on my iPhone & iPad, How do I access my passwords from a web browser?!?!?

Chrome Users:  Please note that LastPass has problems in iOS/iPadOS and as of 13.3.1, the fault is still present. All is not lost however as LastPass in the below example is tested and known to work correctly with Firefox as of iOS/iPadOS 13.3.1.

iOS/iPadOS Settings

Open Settings
Choose Passwords & Accounts
Select AutoFill Passwords
Check the box next to LastPass
Uncheck the box next to iCloud Keychain.

LastPass App

Before you can access any passwords, you must have the LasstPass app installed on your iPhone/iPad and be logged-into the App with your LastPass Master Password

Web Browser

Although this example uses Firefox, the process is almost the same for Chrome users.

Step 1

Select the password field.
Open the share dialog by tapping on the 3 dots (Chrome users tap the share icon).
Choose "Share Page With..." I did say the process was counter-intuitive...

Step 2

Tap LastPass

Step 3

Tap the password offered in the LastPass dialog.

That's it.

Conclusion

Although not a very intuitive process, using LastPass with a browser on iOS/iPadOS it's still pretty easy to use.


How much current/power can be drawn from iPhone 30-pin connector? How much current/power can be drawn from iPhone 30-pin connector by external devices?

I googled it and failed to find some definitive answer for this. some say 50-100mA.

Update: I am aware of MFi program from Apple. Does it mean one must register before getting the official hardware specifications regarding 30-pin connector?

Somewhere around 160 mA.

Kineteka sells a 30 pin breakout board and pin 18 supplies the 3.3 volts. I just connected a 500 ohm pot between pin 18 and ground and lowered the resistance while measuring the current. It tops out around 160 mA. Try it!

EDIT:

Kineteka has closed but here are some similar 30 pin breakout boards with which I have no experience: http://www.pc-mobile.net/iphone.htm


Extending Warranty - AppleCare Protection Plan I have a problem with the phone screen.

I set up a repair with apple today and I noticed that the warranty expires in just 3 days.
Would the repair be handled as a warranty or am I expected to purchase the AppleCare Protection Plan to ensure that the repair is treated as within warranty

thanks for your help

as long as your case is documented by the Genius before your warranty expires it will be covered under warranty (as long as there are no signs of physical or liquid damage.)  in some cases a Genius will cover items under warranty even a few days after it has expired.


What exactly does pressing a character key in a Finder window do? Back when I was a Windows user in another life, I faintly remember a nice shortcut when browsing a directory: type the first letter of the file name you want to be highlighted, and keep pressing to iterate through the rest of the files that start with that letter. So for example if 10 files were listed that all started with the letter 's', I'd just keep pressing 's' to go through each file.

However, something else happens when I do the same in Finder on Mac. It looks like it's almost about to do that same thing Windows does, but when I press 's' repeatedly, it only finds one or two files out of say the 40 I have in the current directory that start with an s. So I'm not exactly sure what kind of behavior that is, if it's a type of shortcut of it's own, but for now it just seems random to me.

Any idea how to do the Windows-like trick, and what Mac currently does when I try that?

I believe it allows you to perform two-character combinations to select other files.

So typing s - s would select a file starting with ss...

If you want to go through the files starting with s I would hit Control-Command-1 to sort by name then hit s once to move down to the s section.


Optimal Mac setup for web designer/developer? I’m ready to upgrade my hardware but in a dilemma over what to buy, since I’m not completely sure what I need. I have a feeling that I’m going to throw money at a setup which will end up being serious overkill. I’m a web/graphic designer and web developer with a view to possibly get into iOS development in the future.

Typically, I have open the following apps simultaneously:

Safari (10-20 tabs)
Chrome (5-10 tabs)
Mail
OmniFocus
Evernote
Coda 2
Fireworks and/or Photoshop CS6
MAMP Pro
Sequel Pro
Xcode (possibly and without Chrome/Coda/FW/PS/MAMP)

And these are my current choices (13” for portability purposes, since it will be used at least for commuting):

First:

iMac Retina, 4GHz Quad-core i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
13" MacBook Pro Retina, 2.7GHz Dual-core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD
~£3600

Second:

iMac Retina, 3.5GHz Quad-core i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
13" MacBook Pro Retina, 2.7GHz Dual-core i5, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD
~£3350

Third:

13" MacBook Pro Retina, 3.1GHz Dual-core i7, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD
27" Thunderbolt Display
~£2630

The biggest factors for me are the relevance of the processor in my situation (quad- vs dual-core), and the actual benefit felt from the 5K display.

I’m not particularly concerned about the cost but I definitely wouldn’t say it is not a factor - hence the £1000 difference between the former and latter setups really tempts me! So, my ideal option is the third one, although I'm not this setup would be sufficient for my needs.

Many thanks in advance for any replies to this exhaustive question!

I believe that your third option will be easiest to work with, since you have the mobility that you desire (i.e., 13" model), which can be connected to the 27" display when in the office. In particular, the system should be responsive when hooked to the external display, even with all the windows and applications that are running simultaneously.

One thing I'd suggest is to get 13" model that can be upgraded to 1TB storage. You'll be getting years of usage out of the macbook, and you don't want to be starved for storage when undertaking new types of projects in the future, such as the iOS development that you mention (not to say there is huge overhead with iOS, just that you want to be prepared for something that wasn't anticipated).


Alternatives for XQuartz? XQuartz was always the goto for running X applications on a MacOS desktop. It's been a couple of years since the last version of Quartz and there is no activity on the github, so we may assume that the XQuartz project is dead.
Are there any alternatives for running X application on a MacOS desktop?

There are really no strictly better alternatives.
XQuartz is usually the best option for running an X server on a Mac.
If you're running older OS X versions, you might prefer X11.app from Apple.
If you're using older Mac hardware with PowerPC CPUs, you can also run XFree86 in the Darwin/PowerPC port (note that Xorg.org is originally a forked XFree86).
If you simply looking for alternatives - you could also take a look at WeirdX. It is old, it is slow and doesn't have as many features as Xorg - but it is an alternative:
http://www.jcraft.com/weirdx/
Besides that - there's always the option of running for example Linux in a virtual machine on your Mac, and then run your X server in there (for example Xorg).
Also you could look at alternative ways of connecting to your Linux desktop. For example you could use Xpra:
https://xpra.org
There's a macOS client - but there's also a HTML5 client for accessing the desktop through a browser.
Another alternative would be to use VNC instead of the X protocol.
UPDATE January 2021: An XQuartz 2.8 beta has just been released with support for Apple Silicon!


Disable Upgrade to El Capitan I have Maverick and the option to Upgrade to OS X El Capitan pops up.
I don't want to do this. Ever.
How do I disable this notification?

In System Preferences go to App Store and disable Automatically check for updates.


How to stop throttling How could I improve the performance of my MacBook and stop throttling?

Although the CPU load is not by 100%, the CPU cores heat up to 100 degrees.

Try using an application called Mac Fan Control , its very helpful.
The site is https://www.crystalidea.com/macs-fan-control.

Max out Fans and test performance.

Have a nice day.


What is the effect of the choice to "set up as new iPad"? My daughter wants to rename her iPad mini, and I told her I thought the only way to do this was to connect it to iTunes on a computer, but when we connected it to my laptop, we got

This is disturbing, since obviously I neither want to set up the iPad as new again, nor do I want to restore over it with a backup from another device.  Both would wipe it, and would make absolutely no sense.

There is a page which claims this does not actually set up the iPad to be as new, but instead simply adds allows it to start syncing with iTunes.  I'm hesitant to believe this—normally Apple is not so careless in their choice of words, but since StackExchange site usually give more reliable information than other forums, I'm hoping someone can confirm or deny this claim FROM PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.  Thanks.

CONFIRMED BY MYSELF on my new iPad mini 4 and iTunes 12.

If you select "Set up as new iPad" and hit Enter you'll get a new window with "Sync with iTunes" message and a blue button with white letters Get Started.
After hitting this button you'll get a iTunes window for your attached device with all the relevant information, Backups and other Options.

In other words, if you select "Set up as new iPad" * NOTHING IS CHANGED IN THE ATTACHED DEVICE * it is only attached to iTunes for subsequent actions.


How can I share a link to a folder on a Time Capsule drive? We have a Time Capsule in the office.  I'd like to share a clickable link to a specific folder on the Time Capsule with my fellow employees.  Is there any way to do this?

Ideally, I'd like to be able to email out a link to people and they can click the link at it will open a Finder window in the specified folder on the Time Capsule.

Thanks.

Have you tried something like

afp://gator._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Data/Test

It's general with the following terms....

afp://TimeCapsule._afpovertcp._tcp.local/Data/Test

This would work for a Time Capsule with name TimeCapsule and a Folder Test inside the drive named Data (I added the emphasis for clarity - you'll want to simply send the link in plain text)

You can get this by dragging the folder to your Finder sidebar and then looking in the Info window for that item.


Is it possible to configure wifi to disconnect more aggressively when the signal is weak? Something that I notice a lot is my iOS device remains connected to the home network when in the backyard parking lot, about to leave the house. The router is on the other side of the house.

The LTE reception in the back yard is very good. The Wifi connection is weak and causes navigation apps to exhibit poor network performance.

Desired behavior: Poor network conditions are detected and wifi connection is dropped in order to enhance application performance.

Unsatisfactory workaround: Install network access point near the back yard. This is not a satisfactory solution because all this does is change the geometry of which areas near the house exhibit poor application behavior on account of wifi remaining in range but yielding poor throughput. The goal would be to eliminate the poor behavior happening within these regions, rather than changing the geometry of these regions.

Another parallel to this is what happens when a network is not configured properly and your phone connects on Wifi but gets a 169.254.x.x link-local address when DHCP fails. I don't currently have a good overview of how Apple is handling this on iOS, but it obviously needs to fallback to cellular promptly.

There is a setting in iOS in Settings > General > Cellular -> Wi-Fi Assist, which uses the cellular data when wifi is bad.

However, this is on by default, so it may not be helping in your particular case.


Trash directories on mac - How to find them and how to properly clear them So, I am writing a little piece of software in Go. It is a library that allows clearing the trashbin and moving files into the trashbin. However besides ~/.Trash there are other trash folders per drive. What would be the most correct way of clearing those?

Is it just iterating over /Volumes and deleting the .Trashes on every volume and recreating it afterwards?

Is there official documentation on it, if so I couldn't find it.

Spotlight can locate folders with a specific name on all mounted and indexed volumes (but it's not going to be the answer - bear with me):

mdls ~/.Trash/

This will show you that the kMDItemFSName is ".Trash" so you might try mdfind to do a spotlight search

mdfind "kMDItemFSName == '.Trash'"

Sadly, this won't find the trashes since Apple has made them invisible and probably excluded them entirely from the spotlight indexing. But, this is the best Apple way to search for general files.

So now, you need to crawl the filesystem:

find / -name .Trash -print

This will throw filesystem errors, so you'll need to engage root - be careful with sudo - you can ruin a system so you can't boot if you move or delete files (which is what you're about to do - find things and then delete them)

 sudo find / -name .Trash -print

Even without the sudo you'll find most of the trashes since your user should be able to write to Trash to store files there.

Now, there is a tool faster than find (it may take tens of minutes or perhaps hours if it starts crawling remote or connected drives)

locate .Trash

The locate database won't likely be built when you ask for it, so follow the instructions it prints if you don't have a pre-made locate database to consult. Happy scripting. Feel free to ask a follow on question on how to delete if you need that help too, but this answers how to find files specifically hidden system ones like the various trash files.

Or, you know - just tell Finder to empty the trash from the command line:

How can I empty the trash from the Terminal?

Boom, now you're done super fast no matter where or how the folders are named.

osascript -e 'tell app "Finder" to empty'


Use macbook inbuilt microphone with audio going through mic-less earphones I want to buy Sony Earphones for use with my MacBook Pro Mid-2014 edition. The earphones have no built in mic. Can my MacBook play audio through my earphones and use the inbuilt mac microphone at the same time e.g. during skype calls or will I have to unplug the earphones for 2 way communication?

I am using OS X 10.10

Yes, you will be able to use your internal mic and headphones. A useful shortcut is option click on the speaker icon on the menu bar.


MacBook Pro 2011 keeps booting the OS X Utilities and won't accept our Apple ID Before the issue became my headache, one of our relatives created a partition on my MBP to keep their files. Yesterday they deleted their partition and there might be important files that was delete and we don't know what it is.

Once we turn on the MBP it boots directly to OS X Utilities. Did some research and follow all helpful instructions that we found online, but seems it won't work.

Steps that we did.

We tried the internet recovery, internet recovery error 4403f always shows even if we use a different internet access.
NVRAM reset.
Tried Single user to reset. (fsck -fy)
Ran Disk Utility and found that the "volume..." something was fixed.
Date was changed to current date to install OS X since we encounter an error about computers compatibility and need to try again.
Tried to hold the option button and choose Macintosh HD, but still boots OS X Utilities.
We use 2 Apple IDs, but new problem encountered. The error message says: "Apple ID has not been used in App Store and the other is for US App Store only and will be redirected. The installation was cancelled."

Question:

Do we need to use the very first apple id that was used to update or install the OS?
Haven't tried to erase the Macintosh HD in Disk Utility since when we try to re-install OS X Lion, the Apple ID's are not accepted.

Yes, you do need to use the original Apple ID.
You did not ask a question.


Shrink Trackpad on Macbook running Mojave I am running mojave (10.14.2) on a 2018 macbook. I keep accidentally hitting the trackpad while typing. None of the solutions in this question still work. Does an updated solution exist?

The simplest solution I've found which works on any recent version of MacOS is turn off tap to click in System Preferences > Trackpad > Point & Click.

You can use this applescript to quickly toggle tap-to-click on and off. On MacOS open Applications > Utilities > Script Editor and paste the code from this script:

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "trackpadTab" of pane "com.apple.preference.trackpad"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    click checkbox 3 of tab group 1 of window 1
end tell
quit application "System Preferences"

Then select File > Export and save in Applications but also make sure to select File Format > Application before saving.

If you want to make it very easy to run the toggle on and off, you may want to add a custom keyboard shortcut which would just run the toggle application.


Vertical colored lines on broken screen -- is it just my screen? I cracked my iPhone 5S screen on pavement. It's currently not covered under AppleCare. I'm wondering, though, if it's worth it to take this to one of those companies that replace broken screens. From what I know, they just replace the glass -- am I wrong in thinking that it's not just the glass that's broken here?

The glass and screen are fused together at the factory. Replacement kits, such as those sold by iFixit, include the glass, LCD/digitizer (screen), and other parts. Cell phone repair stores/kiosks use this same type of thing when repairing devices.

It's possible that additional parts inside the device were damaged, but it's also just as possible (and probably more likely) that the screen is simply too heavily damaged to display anything.

Also of note - Apple will fix a broken screen for $129 out of warranty, so keep that in mind when comparing prices if you move forward with repairs.


Sierra Console.app show earlier data In previous versions of OS X the Console.app had buttons to allow you to see earlier or later in the logs.

In Sierra it seems to only show entries from when you start Console.app.

How do you get Console.app to show earlier entries?

e.g. I want to see the logs before my last reboot to see why it hung.

You need to first use the log command at the command line to collect the logged messages into a .logarchive bundle, then use Console to view the contents of this bundle.  For example:

sudo log collect --last 1d

…will collect all logged messages generated during the past day into a system_logs.logarchive bundle in the current directory.  Open this bundle in Console, and you can use the full power of the app to view, search and filter the log data.

Note that log has many other useful applications;  I suggest reading the log(1) man page.


Are all eBooks in the iBookstore DRM protected? A few weeks ago I bought a book in the iBookstore. The title of this book is "Der Aurora Effekt" (German). Then a few weeks later I bought the book "The Tributes of Panem" (German version).

The first title I can copy to my Kobo eBook reader and read the book. But "The Tributes of Panem" was not readable!

Is it possible that not all books are DRM protected?

Yes.

(Not all books are DRM protected.)

Per the official iBooks FAQ...

  How can I determine which books are copy-protected (DRM) versus those that are DRM-free?

  iTunes can show you the kind of book you have by selecting the book and then choosing File > Get Info.

  If the Kind is marked as Book, this is a book you downloaded from the Internet.
  If it is listed as Purchased Book, it is a DRM-free book downloaded from the iBookstore.
  If it is listed as Protected Book, it is a copy-protected book from the iBookstore.

Only "protected books" have DRM protection.


Multitasking on iPhone 5s while HDMI displays something else? How can I keep HDMI playing movies while using other apps on my handset?

I initially thought that the adapter merely mirrored pixel-for-pixel, but during movie playback it is possible to reveal the double-tap application menu without affecting playback; selecting an app results on its being displayed on both displays and halting movie playback.

iOS 7.1.2, Apple Lightning-to-HDMI adapter, HDTV, Netflix app.

I would prefer a factory setting or approved app to achieve this, but please do include jb solution if applicable.

Lock the phone, swipe to the left then back. Swipe up to bring up the calculator and then unlock the screen.
You should now be able to multitask.