Sleep after lid close and power indicator not functioning after PRAM and SMC reset My HDD corrupted, I reinstall macOS by using Internet Recovery and updated the macOS to Sierra and reset PRAM and SMC(to remove service battery message). Now,

Power indicator does not work.
Doesn't sleep after lid close.
Doesn't wake up after lid open.
Sometimes doesn't wake up for Any Key press or Power Button Press

MacBook Pro, Mid 2012, macOS Sierra

The process outlined in the article you linked to is incorrect for your MacBook Pro.

For your particular model of MacBook Pro, you really should follow this process to reset the SMC:

Shut down your Mac
Unplug the power cable from your Mac
For 10 seconds, press and hold at the same time the shiftcontroloption keys (on the left side of the built-in keyboard) and the power button
After 10 seconds let go of all keys and the power button
Plug in the power cable
Turn your Mac back on with the power button.

I would try doing this and testing to see if that resolves your issues.

[EDIT]

Since resetting the SMC didn't resolve the issue, it's also worth trying a few more troubleshooting steps.

Resetting the NVRAM

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). It may be worth you also resetting this. There's a couple of ways you can do this, but for your model I recommend the following steps:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then press the commandoptionpr keys. You have to make sure you press these keys before the gray screen appears or it won’t work.
Hold those keys down until your Mac reboots again (i.e. a 2nd time) and you here the startup chime.
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Now test the MBP for a change in its behaviour. If you're still experiencing problems, then try booting into Safe Mode.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your Mac into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your Mac
Restart your Mac
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Take a note of what happens (i.e. is the power indicator working, does it go to sleep when closing the lid, etc)
Now exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal
Test the MBP again to see if there's any change in its behaviour.

If the problem is still persistent in Safe Mode, then we should test your hardware with Apple Hardware Test.

Run Apple Hardware Test

Your model MBP uses Apple Hardware Test. To use this, follow these steps:

Shut down your MacBook Pro
Restart your MacBook Pro
Press and hold the D key before the gray startup screen appears.
After a while, Apple Hardware Test (AHT) will start.
When prompted, select your language and click the right arrow.
When the AHT console appears, you can choose to run Basic tests by clicking the Test button. However, I suggest you select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox before you click the Test button.
Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.

Note 1: that the extended test will take some time. Take a note of the results and report back.

Note 2: If pressing and holding the D key at Step 3 doesn't work, start again at Step 1 and, at Step 3 press and hold both the OptionD keys instead. This will try and run diagnostics from the internet instead, so you will need to allow more time for it to complete.


Disabling iMessage while travelling I will be travelling overseas without mobile data. International SMS will be set up, but I have iMessage linked to this mobile number. I have other iPhones, iPads and Macs which also receive iMessages on this account.

Do I have to disable iMessage on all my devices before I travel to ensure when people send a message to my mobile number, I will receive it as an International SMS?

Thanks in advance.

Simple answer, yes.
If you want SMS to arrive at your phone there must be no other device left active that can possibly pick up the iMessage.

Otherwise Apple considers that if any device received the iMessage, it is considered delivered & will not try again as SMS.

Related question - How to tell Messages "I'm not at home"? which remains unanswered, despite the great efforts of one member; but shows promise for Yosemite, if not Mavericks.


How to convert a HEIF/HEIC image to JPEG in El Capitan? So, here’s the thing. I have a new iPhone and an old Mac. iOS 11 (still in beta as of today) and El Capitan (no more updates for this Mac). I use iCloud photo library in both devices. When I take a photo in the new format with my iPhone 7, is there any way to use it right away in my mac, without having to convert it in my iPhone first? I mean, can I get those photos synced through iCloud and converted locally on my Mac?

I have tried to find a third party software that could do that kind of conversion, but was not able to find any that would work on El Capitan. Any idea?

You can use the command line tool imagemagick to convert HEIC images to JPG.

# install imagemagick
brew install imagemagick

# convert a single image
magick convert foo.HEIC foo.jpg

# bulk convert multiple images
magick mogrify -monitor -format jpg *.HEIC


How to manually restore a iTunes and iPhoto Library? I recently moved to OSX Mavericks from Snow Leopard. I made a copy with Time Machine, perform a clean install and restored some data with the Time Machine backup.

I first tried to recover everything. The SO was a little bit buggy so I wanted to make a better clean installation, so I format again and restored only data and settings. The system is now even more buggy.

So I decided to perform a completely clean install and manually recover all the data I need. To do this I have to manually save all my data. But how can I backup my iPhoto and iTunes libraries? I want to have all the same information I have now, in the new clean system.

Your iPhoto library (by default) is located in ~/Pictures as a package (.photolibrary).
Your iTunes library (by default) is located in ~/Music as a folder.

Copying the entire library will copy all the data (unless you are using referenced media). Your app settings are located in ~/Library/Preferences.


How can I erase hard disk if SuperDrive is broken (OS 10.6.8)? I have an old MacBook running OS 10.6.8 which I want to recycle, but its internal SuperDrive doesn't work, so I can't use the install disk to do it.  I tried plugging in Apple's external USB SuperDrive which I bought when I upgraded to a MacBook Pro which has no internal SuperDrive, but the external SuperDrive doesn't accept the disc; it's as if the old MacBook doesn't recognize the external drive.  I'm thus at a loss as to how to proceed to wipe the hard disk.

You should try to create a bootable USB stick with some kind of recovery LiveCD (Ubuntu, BackTrack, ...)

I recommend using Ubuntu because it is the easiest to create.

There is a little tutorial on Ubuntu's website: http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-mac-osx
(If you Have trouble be sure to ask a question on AskUbuntu)

After you have a recovery usb wipe the disk using your favorite tool. I found a nice tutorial on 'How to geek', but it's a bit outdated.
(Tip: download wipe from the software center, not from synaptic)


iPhone 7 Plus, Access to Messages I have a new iPhone 7 plus, purchased last week on my personal Verizon account. I have dialed and received calls and messages from only 1 phone number. I do not have an Apple ID or email or anything else setup on this phone.

How would I receive a text message from an unknown number, which would indicate that this person could read my texts?

It appears you simply received spam. This, in itself, does not mean that this person has been reading your text messages. In fact they might have simply sent a generic message to random numbers, and one of them happened to be yours.

So unless that spam text referred to things you’ve said in private conversations, the spammer is NOT reading your texts. You are safe to delete the spam message by swiping left from your list of messages and tapping Delete.

If you want to go the extra mile, long-press that spam message. When the menu appears, tap More… followed by the arrow in the bottom-right corner of your screen. Forward that message verbatim to 7726, which is the number for reporting spam texts in the US. Verizon will then ask you for the number that sent you the spam. Respond with it and they’ll take care of it.


Facebook Birthdays in Notification Centre I'm a big fan of the Facebook integration in iOS 6, but it brings with it birthdays for all my Facebook contacts. I've figured out how to remove it from my calendar (de-select the calendar) but it still shows above my regular entries in notification centre. Any suggestions for getting rid of it?

I disabled the contacts synchronization and I don't receive birthdays notification anymore. However I'm still able to receive other notifications (e.g. posts, pictures, ...)


How to stop Chrome’s "Google Chrome wants to use your confidential information stored in your keychain." question? Whenever I use Google Chrome to access a login page in which I have the username/password saved in the Keychain (via Safari) Chrome would pop up a dialog box that asks "Google Chrome wants to use your confidential information stored in {some domain name} in your keychain?"

There are a few problems.
1) I'd prefer Chrome to save the credentials in its own storage, instead sharing one with Safari.
2) If not, I'd rather it to not ask me about that.
3) Failing that, it should at least give me the right credentials. This is more of a problem when I have multiple logins in the same site, and it rarely gives me the one I'd want the first few time, because it doesn't try to match the path portion of the url's (only the domain portion is matched).
4) At the very least, Chrome should give me an option to say "Deny all", instead of popping up a new one after every time I click "Deny".

Note that I use Safari and Chrome for different purposes and I don't want to delete the Keychain items. How do I stop Chrome from doing this?

That is many questions all in one. In order to manage our search engine, we prefer to have 1 question at the time.

  1) I'd prefer Chrome to save the credentials in its own storage,
  instead sharing one with Safari. 2) If not, I'd rather it to not ask
  me about that. 3) Failing that, it should at least give me the right
  credentials.

To prevent the pop up is done with granting the Access Control in the key-chain.

Here is a sample:

Open the relevant key chain item and click on access control.

Add and allow Google Chrome to use it.


How to display the current mapping for keyboard shortcuts in realtime? Is there an app / script which will listen for keyboard events and display the action that is triggered?

I use Better Touch Tool, and want to run a script on Cmd+F1 but I got the message:

  The key combination "Command + F1" can't be used because it's already used by a system-wide keyboard shortcut. (If you really want to use this key combination, most shortcuts can be changed in the Keyboard & Mouse panel in System Preferences.)

I couldn't find the triggered action until I did a text search on http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343, and now I'm curious!

In Sublime Text, it's possible to open Sublime's python terminal and sublime.log_commands(True) to log commands triggered as the keys are pressed… is there something similar for system wide key events?

This program shows all keyboard shortcuts that use the ⌘ (command) key, just by pressing and holding command.
http://www.cheatsheetapp.com/CheatSheet/

It does not show shortcuts that do not include command, but is quick and easy to use.


Cannot differentiate between LEFT ⌘ (0x37) and RIGHT ⌘ (0x36) keys I would like to swap the right-⌘ key with the right-⌥ key.

KeyRemap4MacBook's EventViewer shows that Alt Gr key acts as the left-⌘ (Command_L in EventViewer), whereas I'd like to be the right-⌘ (Command_R).

This is what it look like in EventViewer: first 2 lines are from left-⌘, next 2 lines are from right-⌘ (with the same 0x37 code):

How can I get the right-⌘ key to register as Command_R (0x36) instead of Command_L (0x37)?

About the keyboard

It's the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 with its drivers installed and setup like this:

I'll try my luck with uninstalling the drivers (which don't cause kernel panics anymore, as described here).

Why didn't it try this before? Removing Microsoft's drivers was the solution! Right-ALT now acts as Option_R out-of-the-box (and isn't affected by swapping CMD/ALT with OPTION/Windows key on the left side).


Test a USB-drive/SSD for bad sectors/blocks? A pretty expensive (Samsung) USB-drive I have causes weird errors. The problem might be a computer I have connected it to (this computer's SSD broke down in a similar way) but to rule out that it is this USB stick that is broken I would like to perform a hardware test on it. How can I do that on a Mac?

Open the Terminal.app in Applications/Utilities.

Cut and paste this inside to install Brew:
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Install e2fsprogs with brew:
brew install e2fsprogs

Type diskutil list to find your device (/dev/diskX)

Run badblocks on your device: (replace the X with your device number)

/usr/local/Cellar/e2fsprogs/1.44.3/sbin/badblocks -v /dev/diskX


How can I switch to/from dark mode depending on "darkness" instead of sunset? On BigSur the Sunset-Detector works but it doesn't make sense, because in the real world darkness arrives a bit earlier than sunset. It hurts my eyes, because I stay focused on my work and don't notice that it's dark already.
How can I have macOS toggle dark mode earlier/later than sunset/sunrise for whatever location I'm currently in?

Basically you (and third party developers) don’t get to automate this since it’s a private API. This article explains the situation in great detail and offers three tools to get you close to customizing it.

https://setapp.com/how-to/use-night-shift-for-mac

First, turn the night shift off under “Schedule” in the night shift menu. This disables it schedule from activating, but doesn’t disable the feature.

I wonder if your setup is the ambient light sensor changing and not the schedule, though.

It will activate when it notices your environment is darker than normal, and disable itself when you’re back to daylight or bright environments.

Keep in mind this option will trigger automatically, which can be frustrating if you’re in a spot where the light fluctuates.

Short of using an automation tool to define your own preferred schedule or just automate toggling this manually, you can use Apple’s implementation or just take breaks and manage your lighting external to the display.
Some excellent automation tools include

https://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html
https://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/


Can I use the screen (and keyboard) of a separate laptop with a Mac Mini? At the moment, I really need a Mac to run Logic Pro, and I reckon my cheapest option is getting a Mac Mini.

It would be very convienent if I could use the screen (and optionally keyboard) of a current working Windows laptop with the mini.

Can I do this?

(Update maybe like Apple Remote Desktop on Windows?)

There are many VNC applications that could accomplish this, and OSX has VNC support built in.

However, I really think you're better off buying a monitor, mouse, and keyboard for the Mac Mini.  Get something used if necessary.  You don't need to buy them from Apple - any standard monitor, mouse, or keyboard will work fine.


How does one add boarding passes to Apple Wallet? I have been trying to add some boarding passes to wallet. I have downloaded the airline app and logged in. I have tried to "scan the code" as suggested in wallet, but the only code is a QR code and nothing happens when I try to scan. This should be that difficult but I cannot figure it out. Is there an easy way to get this done? Please explain to me how to do it. Thanks.

If your airline is Delta

Check into your flight with this page of Delta's website on your iPhone/iPod Touch (have your flight's confirmation number ready). When you complete your checkin, you will be given an option to add the pass to your Passbook (aka Wallet app). Tap into that, then press the Add button to add the pass to your wallet. Then you can skip the check-in kiosk at the airport if you have your phone and the pass handy.

Any other airline

Download the airline's app (yep, only Delta lets you use the mobile site to add a boarding pass to Wallet) and open it up. Here are some apps from the major carriers (though don't fret if your airline is not on this list, it's rather incomplete; just search for it in the app store):

United
JetBlue
Alaska
American Airlines
RyanAir

Proceed into the app (have your confirmation number or loyalty account info ready) and choose the Check in option (location of this button varies between apps). Follow the instructions to check in, and at the end, you'll see a button to Add to Passbook or Add to Apple Wallet. Press that, then press the Add button in the Navbar and you'll be set.


Stop Desktops from Reordering Possible Duplicate:
  Why do full-screen applications change their order in Mission Control?

Say I'm on desktop 1 and a click an app in the dock for a window on desktop 3.  It will reorder my desktops, moving 3 to 2.  How can I keep it from doing this?

The setting to turn that off is in your Mission Control preference pane.


Buying used iPhone5c - need to know about iCloud I am supposed to buy the phone off someone. She says she does not have the iCloud email, but has the password (she says it was her ex's).. She told me there is something online that I could do to get the old iCloud credential off and use mine.

If that's not possible... The password does work for the email on the phone.
Would I be able to use it for getting online, downloading apps and such? Any major things I would not be able to do with it?

Thanks in advance!!

There are two possible scenarios:

The device is up and running, and you can unlock it with the four digit code. If that's the case go to Settings -> iCloud and choose logout at the bottom of the page. Then you only need the password of the account.
The device was restored to factory settings. In this case activation lock would be active and you need to know the AppleID and the matching password. If you don't know these you need the original receipt and an appointment at your Apple Store to unlock it. The receipt needs to contain your name, otherwise you need help from the person whose name is on the receipt.


Using clamshell MacBook with external monitor with no speakers - will there be sound? If I connect my MacBook to a monitor with no speakers, and use it in clamshell (with the lid closed) will there be no sound / volume? Or will any sound be muffled becaused the lid is closed?

How will I hear error noises or new mail sounds or music? Will I also have to buy speakers? Or only buy a monitor with built in speakers?

Just tested. It will play through the speakers with the clamshell closed and is very audible. It does change the sound quality so music might be a bit different (I din't play any music), but notifications will be easily discernible.

Tried some music and it comes through quite clearly, just a little quieter than with the lid open.


Use iTunes credit to purchase items I have redeemed several hundred dollars of iTunes money to my Apple account. Is there any any app(s) in the store that allow you to pay for something (at a high price of course, due to Apple’s fees) that can be shipped to your door (and potentially re-sold) with iTunes credit?

Is this allowed in Apple’s App Store Terms of Services, or are all In-App Purchases intended to cover some digital artefacts?

If so, do apps allow you to buy currency which is in turn redeemable for something tangible or exchangeable?

iTunes Store credit can be used only for purchasing content sold on the App Store/iTunes Store, or for upgrading iCloud storage. Official instructions can be found here:

Redeem App Store & iTunes Gift Cards, Apple Music Gift Cards, and content codes

Selling of physical goods is not permitted on the App Store as per the App Store Review Guidelines. Refer specifically to the Business section of the document:

  3.1.5 (a) Goods and Services Outside of the App: If your app enables people to purchase goods or services that will be consumed outside of the app, you must use purchase methods other than in-app purchase to collect those payments, such as Apple Pay or traditional credit card entry.


Are the Carrier IQ daemons installed on iOS devices other than iPhones? For iOS 5, are either of the Carrier IQ daemons installed as part of the base software on any non phone device image such as the iPad, iPod Touch or Apple TV ?

On iPhones (iOS 5) these programs are /usr/bin/awd_ice2 or /usr/bin/awd_ice3

If yes, what causes them to run and to where does their data get stored or forwarded?

I am aware of the work @chpwn is doing and publishing on the chpwn blog but that is iPhone specific so far. I'm looking for hard evidence that the software is or isn't on the base OS for non-phone devices as well as if they actually generate local log files (presumably only when the collect diagnostic data switch is turned on since on iOS that is an opt-in service that does let you know data will be collected).

I just did a quick check on my iPod4,1 running iOS 5.0.1. Those two binaries are not present in that folder. However, I have seen mentions of IQ in other parts of the system such as var/wireless/Library/Logs/awd (empty) and var/root/Library/Logs/awd (empty) and com.apple.iqagent.plist in var/mobile/Library/Preferences. The only value in that plist is DiagnosticsAllowed = false. I would conclude that Carrier IQ is not present on 4th Generation iPod Touches running iOS 5.0.1.


Flashing question mark, low hard drive space When I booted my Mac last night I got a flashing folder against a gray background. The computer started fine this morning, but when I closed the lid and opened it up again I had to reboot, and now it's persistently in this flashing folder state.

Booting while holding down ⌘ Cmd-R brings me to OS X Utilities. Running "Repair disk" from disk utilities indicates there's no problem, but I did notice that it also says I only have 16 MB free on a 110GB hard drive.

Might this be the problem? If so, is there some way to delete data from my computer while in this state, to clear enough space to boot correctly?

Though the following should be valid for non-encrypted volumes and unlocked encrypted volumes, it doesn't help much because the main volume here is encrypted and locked. So skip to FileVault2-encrypted volumes

Non-encrypted volumes

Almost no free space on your start volume is a problem. At least 10 % free space are recommended.

It's indeed possible to remove files & folder in Recovery Mode but if you have an external disk/thumb drive (hfs+ or fat32-formatted) you may move them instead:

attach your external device (if you have one).
If FileVault2 is enabled on your main volume start Disk Utility, right click the volume and unlock it
Quit Disk Utility and open /Utilities/Terminal in the menubar
enter cd /Volumes/NameOfYourMainVolume/Users/accountname to change to your user folder (example: cd "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Users/ausername").
To get the names/mountpoints of your main volume/external disk enter diskutil list or df.
enter ls -la to show all files and folders

Example:

drwxr-xr-x+ 56 ausername  staff   1904 20 Feb 23:45 .
drwxr-xr-x+  7 root       admin    238 15 Jun  2012 ..
-rw-------   1 ausername  staff      3 21 Nov 16:11 .CFUserTextEncoding
-rw-r--r--@  1 ausername  staff  43012 20 Feb 23:35 .DS_Store
drwxr-xr-x+  3 ausername  staff    102 15 Feb 17:41 .TemporaryItems
drwxr-xr-x   4 ausername  staff    136  2 Nov 23:22 SomeFolder

now move further with cd SomeFolder
enter ls -la to show all files and folders

Example:

drwxr-xr-x+  7 ausername  staff        238 15 Jun  2012 ..
-rw-------   1 ausername  staff 4736527884 16 Okt 22:33 BigFile.mov
drwxr-xr-x   4 ausername  staff        136  2 Nov 23:22 UnwantedFolder

to move BigFile.mov to your external device enter
mv BigFile.mov /Volumes/ExternalDevice/
or to move UnwantedFolder to your external device enter
mv UnwantedFolder /Volumes/ExternalDevice/.
if you don't have an external drive remove folders and files with rm -dr UnwantedFolder to remove UnwantedFolder and all its content or rm BigFile.mov to remove BigFile.mov (4.7 GB in the example above). rm *.mov removes all .mov files in your working directory.

rm is a powerful command to delete a file or directory without confirmation by default. Because of this behavior, users should really be sure before deleting files or folders. So double check where you are  - enter pwd to print your working directory - and what you want to delete!

FileVault2-encrypted volumes

started to Recovery Mode open Disk Utility

If you had one partition spanning your whole hard drive and encrypted it with FileVault2 it's completely normal that you have only some MB available space left. That's unallocated free space on your hard drive. In the example above 12,7 MB are left.
highlight your FileVault2 volume and unlock it.

enter the FileVault password

if you succeed and the encrypted volume isn't corrupted your FileVault2 volume will be mounted. Check the available free space. In the example below the availbale free space on the volume is 52,8 GB

If the unlocking fails - using the correct password - the FileVault2 volume probably is corrupted. The only possible solution then is completely erase/repartition the hard drive and restore a backup.


How do I get the Mail app to use its configuration settings? The Mail app is configured to send the downloaded attachments to my downloads folder, yet it keeps burying my downloaded attachments in my library. I've tried resetting the download location in the app settings several times but can't get it to save to the correct location.

What I did is quit Mail and make a shortcut of the Mail Downloads in Library to where I want it in the Downloads folder, from there I can just delete what I don't want and maintain the folder to my liking.


Mac pausing bluetooth headset used by another device I try to use my bluetooth headset (Jabra Elite Active 75t) with both my Macbook (MacOS 10.15.5 19F101) and my Android phone. If I pause all the sounds on Mac and try to play any music on the phone, the reproduction will stop immediately as if pause signal is sent.
This can also be reproduced with another bluetooth speaker.
Any idea how can I work around the bug?

Any sound your computer makes  whether a system sound (i.e. an alert) or something from media will cause the media to stop playing on your other device.  What you have to do is temporarily disconnect from the device you're not listening to.  In macOS, just click on the Bluetooth icon in the menu bar, select your audio device and select Disconnect.

It's only temporary and you and reconnect any time by going to the same menu and clicking Connect.
This happens to me all the time on my iPad and iPhone.  It's not really a bug, but a limitation.  The computer/iPad/iPhone isn't stopping the music, it's the headphone - it's assuming that the "new" sound coming from the device is what should have priority so it sends a pause signal (like you hit the button on the headset manually) to the app playing the music/video/whatever.
I also suggest having all system sounds play through the internal speakers and not the audio device you listen to for videos, music, etc.

I got this information from Sennheiser  support because any small noise my iPhone made would pause the music or podcast I was listening to on my iPad.


How to get installers not to hang on "Waiting for other installations to complete..."? As I got a new computer recently, I've been trying to get back the stuff that I need for work. However, a few applications (Hotspot Shield is one of them) that requires an installer to install it doesn't seem to work. It gets stuck midway through installation, saying "Waiting for other installations to complete..."

I've enabled Gatekeeper to allow any applications, but it's still stuck.

Why is this and is there a workaround?

Edit: Here's the output in console:

1/9/12 5:08:07.575 PM coreservicesd[33]: Application App:"Installer" [ 0x0/0x338338]  @ 0x0x7f9b686baff0 tried to be brought forward, but isn't in fPermittedFrontASNs ( ( ASN:0x0-0x33c33c:) ), so denying.

"fPermittedFrontASNs" points to the new Gatekeeper Function Apple introduced in 10.8 and which changes the way background processes behave and are able to launch child processes that interact with the user interface.

The Gatekeeper-Rule "Allow Applications downloaded from: Anywhere" still has some restrictions, as an example at this Apple Support Page points out:

  "Anywhere – Allow applications to run regardless of their source on
  the Internet; Gatekeeper is effectively turned off. Note: Developer
  ID-signed apps that have been inappropriately altered will not open,
  even with this option selected."

I don't know if that specific note applies to Hotspot Shield, but i have seen similar Problems with other VPN-related Software.

I suggest you deactivate Gatekeeper completely for the Installation of HotSpot Shield. You can do that in the Terminal with:

  sudo spctl --master-disable

After that a restart might be necessary. You can activate Gatekeeper after the Installation with:

  sudo spctl --master-enable

For more Options look at 'man spctl' in the Terminal. Please tell if that solved your problem.


OS X: Is there a built-in scheduler program? I would like to schedule a task to execute with parameters at a specific time/date in the future.

Does OS X include any such tool (even if it's command-line)? If not, are there any free or relatively cheap tools out there to accomplish this?

While KeithB's answer is correct, actually, cron is being deprecated in favor of the OS X specific launchd.

Commands to be run via launchd are described in Apple "plists", or property lists, which are really just XML files:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.
com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.apple.periodic-daily</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/sbin/periodic</string>
        <string>daily</string>
    </array>
    <key>LowPriorityIO</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Nice</key>
    <integer>1</integer>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <dict>
        <key>Hour</key>
        <integer>3</integer>
        <key>Minute</key>
        <integer>15</integer>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

Having said that, it's not a very user friendly (nor Mac-like) way of scheduling commands to be run. This question on SuperUser lists a few GUI alternatives, including:

Lingon (http://sourceforge.net/projects/lingon/) (Free, may not work on 10.6)
Lingon (http://www.peterborgapps.com/lingon/) (Not free, works on 10.6)

launchd Editor ($5 Shareware)


Will the Mac Mini drive 2 different displays I want to switch my windows machine with a mac mini.  I have 2 monitors:
A VGA driven display
A DVI driven display

My pc graphics card can handle these outputs.

The Mac-Mini has a HDMI display and a thunderbolt display.

Would I be able to get a converter that would drive:
The HDMI to DVI?
The Thunderbolt to VGA?

I'm already spending £700 on the mini, I don't want to spend an extra 300 on monitors

Yes it will, exactly in that configuration.

HDMI to DVI you can use any cheap converter it does not matter. Mini Displayport (aka Thunderbolt) to VGA i suggest buying an apple branded converter, i've had trouble with third party ones.
You can probably get both, apple branded for cheap from ebay as long as you make sure they are in good condition.


Command Not found upon opening Terminal When I open a new terminal, I get the following:

Last login: Sun Jun  1 16:39:07 on ttys000
-bash: Setting: command not found
NAME-OF-COMPUTER-MacBook-Pro:~ name$

I am used to seeing the first and the third lines, but the second seems new. How do I fix this?

EDIT
 After executing bash -x -l as Ian C. requested, this is the output:

+ '[' -x /usr/libexec/path_helper ']'
++ /usr/libexec/path_helper -s
+ eval 'PATH="/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin";' export 'PATH;'
++ PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin
++ export PATH
+ '[' /bin/bash '!=' no ']'
+ '[' -r /etc/bashrc ']'
+ . /etc/bashrc
++ '[' -z '\s-\v\$ ' ']'
++ PS1='\h:\W \u\$ '
++ shopt -s checkwinsize
++ '[' Apple_Terminal == Apple_Terminal ']'
++ '[' -z '' ']'
++ PROMPT_COMMAND='update_terminal_cwd; '
+ Setting PATH for Python 2.7
bash: Setting: command not found
+ PATH=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin
+ export PATH
+ PATH=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin
+ export PATH
+ PATH=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin
+ export PATH
+ PATH=/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.4/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin
+ export PATH
++ update_terminal_cwd
++ local 'SEARCH= '
++ local REPLACE=%20
++ local PWD_URL=file://Conner-Pikes-MacBook-Pro.local/Users/connerpike
++ printf '\e]7;%s\a' file://Conner-Pikes-MacBook-Pro.local/Users/connerpike

Also, Do I need those four long lines for something that has to do with python? It looks unnecessary. Any help on that would be much appreciated also.

Something in your startup files is trying to call a command called Setting which isn't a command that exists. You can debug your start up files by running:

bash -x -l

and watching the output -- you'll see all the commands that are being run on startup and hopefully spot the line where Setting is trying to be used as a command. If you want to post your startup files more help might be possible.

  What do you mean by "startup files"?

When your bash shell starts, it reads and executes a bunch of standard startup files to setup your environment. It usually starts with /etc/profile and then everything in the /etc/profile.d/*.sh directory. Then it moves on to the user-level ~/.bash_profile and ~/.bashrc files.

Based on the output you posted your problem is here:

++ '[' -z '' ']'
++ PROMPT_COMMAND='update_terminal_cwd; '
+ Setting PATH for Python 2.7
bash: Setting: command not found

You have the literal line:

Setting PATH for Python 2.7

in one of the startup files. It should either be prefixed with echo or commented out with a # character.

Try and find the file by running these commands in a Terminal:

grep -H Setting /etc/bashrc /etc/profile ~/.bash_profile ~/.bashrc

From the depth marker, the single + in that output, it's in a top-level file, not something being sourced from one of them.

If that grep command matches it'll print the file name. Find the line and add a # to the front of it to comment it out. For example, change:

Setting PATH for Python 2.7

to:

# Setting PATH for Python 2.7

in the file where grep reports the line.


Is there a way to switch virtual desktops on my monitors SIMULTANEOUSLY? I have my laptop (M1, Big Sur 11.3 Build 20E5186d) and a second monitor. I split up my virtual desktops into "topics" so I can better handle the big amount of open windows and applications.
On my laptop, I have virtual Desktops 1,2,3,4,5.
On my second monitor, I have 6,7,8,9,10.
The virtual Desktop topics are kind of "paired" with topics, so e.g. when I am working on coding tasks, I use Desktop 1 (on the laptop) and Desktop 6 (on the second monitor), which both have relevant apps and windows open.
Now, when I want to switch to another topic, e.g. to Desktop 2 (where I have coding-related but not task-necessary windows open) I also want the second monitor to simultaneously switch to Desktop 7 (basically one virtual Desktop to the right on each device).
Is there such a possibility/feature?

Update
So far I only tested the solution of changing the Mission Control settings (see the accepted answer). However, it has a quite annoying drawback:
When the Displays do NOT have separate Spaces, every time I start the Mac and it wakes up from sleep mode, all windows are rearranged back on my laptop (not on my second monitor anymore). This is caused due to the Display Port automatically being disconnected every time the Mac goes into sleep mode. This means I have to rearrange my windows every time I start my Mac, which becomes tedious quite fast.
So far, I did not find a satisfying solution that also is relatively simple to do. The second solution to the accepted answer seems like a good workaround, but I do not feel comfortable disabling the system-integrity protection for that. The issue is simply not big enough for me...but this is just my personal cost-benefit calculation. I can imagine, that if someone has more than two monitors and want to switch spaces on specific monitors simultaneously (e.g. when switching spaces on monitor 1, it should also switch on monitor 3, but not on 2) it definitely be worth doing it.
Feel free to add an answer if you find another (more simple) solution.

Option 1: Mission-Control Setting "Displays have separate Spaces"
I'm not entirely sure if this is what you're looking for:
If you go to "System Preferences" ➝ "Mission Control", then uncheck "Displays have separate Spaces":

This will couple the spaces of all screens. So if you swipe or switch to another space on one screen, the other screens will also switch to the corresponding space.
Option 2: Use a window manager
If you would like to configure the behaviour and the keyboard shortcuts exactly the way you want and you are willing to spend some time to configure it, consider using a window manager. A nice window manager for macOS is yabai.

yabai is a window management utility that is designed to work as an extension to the built-in window manager of macOS. yabai allows you to control your windows, spaces and displays freely using an intuitive command line interface and optionally set user-defined keyboard shortcuts using skhd and other third-party software.

Install the homebrew package manager
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Install yabai
brew install yabai

For switching spaces to work, you might also need to disable the system-integrity protection: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai/wiki/Disabling-System-Integrity-Protection -- Maybe have a look at the wikipedia article to decide whether you are ok with that.

Make sure to install and load yabai's scripting addition
sudo yabai --install-sa
sudo yabai --load-sa

Depending on whether you would like to use window tiling, window-focus features etc., configure yabai in the ~/.yabairc file.

In order to bind window-manager commands to keyboard shortcuts, install skhd:
brew install koekeishiya/formulae/skhd
brew services start skhd

Configure shortcuts in ~/.skhdrc. For example, to bind Command+Ctrl+1 to switch to spaces 1 (on screen 1) and 6 (on screen 2), and to bind Ctrl+1 to switch to space 1 (on screen 1) only, use this configuration:
# ~/.skhdrc
ctrl - 1 : yabai -m space --focus 1
cmd + ctrl - 1 : yabai -m space --focus 1 && yabai -m space --focus 6


50% SSD Space lost issue on MBA I have an MBA 2009, model A1304. The Hard drive system information says its an "Apple SSD SM128". But when I look at the available and total space, I have one partition 28.8GB (bootcamp) and one 38.8GB (Main MacOS). Those are the total sizes. They come to 67.6GB. Now I read many forum posts complaining on 5GB lost here, 10 there. But this is like half the SSD drive. Could it be that its going bad and half of it was marked off limits or something.
When I boot the machine to MacOS, it shows a similar state.
When I look at the Admin tools > System management > Storage > Disk Management screen in Windows, it shows a 45GB "Unallocated space" partition, which is invisible under MacOS. I guess this is the missing space. Can I format it and use it under Windows? can MacOS or BootCamp be using half the SSD drive for its housekeeping usage?
Bootcamp 3.2, OSX 10.6.7
Interestingly, the Mac OS partition utility also shows a 45GB area unused between the partition, which it lets me use to expand the Mac HD partition. (I didn't do it yet, only on the interface then cancelled). But its very strange - this Mac Air started as an MacOS only device; presumably (I don't remember ever checking it then) the Mac HD partition originally used all of the SSD space, as factory configured by Apple. I then installed Bootcamp. Could Bootcamp have thrown away half the hard drive space in to an unused partition, and for what purpose would it have done that?
I would like now to format this partition to be used by Bootcamp (i.e. Windows) not the Mac OS. So there should be no harm to the MacOS if I go to windows and format it?
I would appreciate any help in tackling this.
Screenshot of MacOS Partition info:

General SSD info:

Partitions with unused area in gray:

Mac OS X allows expanding OS HD with usused area:

I would back that drive up and then erase it entirely.

You should get a clean single partition out of Disk Utility and then be able to tell if the hardware needs to be servicesd or it was just a problem with partitioning or data corruption and fixable by a clean start.


Why won't my iPad apps sync when connected to my computer? I have always updated my application on iTunes and then let them sync to the iPad.

Since I installed iOS 10.3.3, the apps no longer sync. I have rebooted the device. I have attempted to sync many times.

The App Store on the iPad shows pending updates, but they never install.

What am I missing?

The obvious thing to try first is to reset your privacy and location preferences. You will then be asked to trust the iTunes/computer drivers (and asked to set privacy settings elsewhere as they come up).

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202778

At that point, the issue is almost certainly on the computer end with iTunes or iTunes settings or the os/usb hardware and drivers. Starting with a review of iTunes settings and looking for specific sync errors would be good to start.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201253


Sending mouse to different monitors for all sides So I have external monitors set up like this (one vertical)

And as you can see I am only able to send a mouse to another screen via lower half of each sides. I want to be able to send mouse not just the bottom half but upper half as well.
Is there a way to this? I understand there is a keyboard shortcut approach but I'd prefer to be able to move mouse straight to another monitor.

I think it is a system limitation when arranging monitors of different resolutions. You can change the arrangement to be top aligned instead of bottom aligned, but when moving from the larger monitor to the smaller one you can only cross at the portion of the edge aligned in System Preferences: Displays: Arrangement.


Is there an app that will notify me (in notifications center) if a process is using up a high percentage of CPU for a specified amount of time? The other day, I was sitting in a coffee shop working, when I looked down to find that 25% of my battery was left.

I looked at my Activity Monitor and saw that the time machine process was going at 90% for a while (as long as I was watching it).

Are there any apps that can notify me if a process is at a certain level for a certain amount of time?

You could run a script like this every minute with cron or launchd:

#!/bin/bash

cpulimit=50
prefix=${TMPDIR}cron_cpu
current=$(ps -erco %cpu,command | tail -n+2 | sed 's/^ *//')
echo "$current" > $prefix$(date +%s)
a=($prefix*); for ((i=0;i<=${#a[@]}-3;i++)); do rm "${a[i]}"; done
[[ $(awk '{s+=$1}END{printf "%i",s}' <<< "$current") -lt $cpulimit ]] && exit
averages=$(awk '{cpu=$1;sub(/[^ ]+ /,"");a[$0]+=cpu;c[$0]++}END{for(i in a){printf "%.1f %s\n",a[i]/c[$0],i}}' $prefix* | sort -rn)
if [[ $(awk '{s+=$1}END{printf "%i",s}' <<< "$averages") -ge $cpulimit ]]; then
    terminal-notifier -title "CPU use" -message "$(head -n5 <<< "$averages" | paste -sd / -)"
fi

If the average CPU use in the last three samples is over 50%, it uses terminal-notifier to display the processes that used the most CPU.

You could also use MenuMeters to display total CPU use in the menu bar:

Or run a script like this with GeekTool:

for i in {1..4}; do ps -erco %cpu,command | tail -n+2; sleep 1; done | sed 's/^ *//' | grep -v GeekTool | awk '{cpu=$1;sub(/[^ ]+ /,"");a[$0]+=cpu;c[$0]++}END{for(i in a){printf "%.1f %s\n",a[i]/c[$0],i}}' | sort -rn


"Libraries" (a la Windows 7) on OS X? There's one feature from Windows 7 that I sort of like (yeah, yeah, I know...) and would like to implement (differently) on OS X.  It's what they call "Libraries".  It allows you to have the contents of multiple on-disk directories show up in Windows Explorer (their version of the Finder, for any who've had the pleasure to never need to use Windows) as though they were one directory.

The way I'd like to use this is to have directories from multiple drives browsable as though they were all on one drive.  So, for instance the following directories:

~/Resources/
/Volumes/Portable Library/Resources/
/Volumes/FreeNAS Server/Resources/

would all be visible together as a single "Resources" directory.   Ideally my ~/Resources would display the contents of the other two, but it wouldn't kill me if I had to use a different path, such as /Volumes/Combined/Resources/.

Is this possible to do somehow?  Maybe using something like the mhddfs command?  (That is mentioned here, but it is unclear from the answer whether it can be used in the way I'm describing: I want to merge directories across several drives, not the entire drives themselves.  It also may not exist for OS X.)  Also, when any given drive or file server is unavailable, it should handle it gracefully and not treat it as a failure, since my FreeNAS server will only be around when I'm home, and I won't always have various external drives plugged in.

(If you're wondering why I'd ever want to do this, take a different example: iTunes libraries.  It would be nice to have the bulk of it on a file server, but have the most-played songs available on my MacBook Air.)

Can this be done?

I was looking into doing this also today, and so far the only solution I've found is to use a smart folder, hacked to search multiple locations:

What you want to do is open one of your folders (eg. /Volumes/Portable Library/Resources/) hit CMD+F and then set your desired filtering. eg. I set mine to Kind > Folders.

Save the search as a smart folder (it doesnt matter where) then open up that smart folder in TextEdit and look for the following:

/Volumes/Portable Library/Resources/`

There will be multiple instances of the above string, you want to replace them all with new strings that contain the paths you want to search.

In your case it would look like this:

<string>~/Resources/</string>
<string>/Volumes/Portable Library/Resources/</string>
<string>/Volumes/FreeNAS Server/Resources/</string>

Save the file, then when you open the smart folder it will display search results form all three folders.

If you use the column view in Finder you can move through these folders as if they are all together.

Unfortunately the downside of this is that its searching resursively, so you will get all the folders within your first three, plus any folders in those. I'm yet to find a way to disable recursive search yet...


Where do I find my user folder in the OS X folder hierarchy? In Terminal, how do I go from Macintosh HD to places such as johnsmith that contains Downloads, Desktop etc. In a Finder window, it seems they are independent of each other.

From Macintosh HD, I see Library, Applications etc. but under User I couldn't find johnsmith.

The Mac file tree is rather confusing for a Windows user like me who are used to "My Computer" then all files are managed by root drives and folders.
What is consider as root on my Mac? Is it Macintosh HD or johnsmith? It is possible to do a partition on Mac like that on Windoes?

You can find the location to your home directory by looking in the "Users & Groups" System  Preference pane.

Open "System Preferences" application
Click "Users & Groups"
Click the padlock to unlock it, if it is not already unlocked. Enter user name and password for an Admin user.
Right click on the User name you want to find the home directory for, select "Advanced Options..."
Observe the path as noted next to "Home directory:"

Now, once you see where OS X thinks your home folder is located then you can work on un hiding it if it is not showing up where it is suppose to be.

Make sure its name does not start with ".", Additionally you can use the SetFile -a v /pathToHome command to make it visible if it appears to be hidden for no apparent reason.


Is the iPhone always using Wifi (instead of cellular data network) when connected? When I'm in range and connected to particular Wifi, having cellular data transmission enabled at the same time, will the iPhone always use the Wifi connection?

Or can the app developer choose which network has priority (e.g. always use cellular data transmission and not Wifi)?

I believe you cannot chose programmatically whether to use the WiFi or the cellular data connection.

If the iPhone has a WiFi network available, it will automatically use it, otherwise, it will fallback on the cellular data connection.


Genius feature doesn't work on iPhone I purchase all my music through iTunes, yet I can never get the genius feature to work on my iPhone 4S.

Whenever I press the genius button in the music app it says "This song does not have enough related songs to create a Genius Playlist."

But with 15 GB of music all from the iTunes store, I'm doubting this.

For example, it says this with Skrillex's new EP, but there are at least half a dozen other albums in the same genre that it should easily be able to find.

Refresh your Genius results in iTunes and then re-sync your phone with iTunes. Then you should be able to generate Genius playlists on your phone.

To refresh your Genius results:

Open iTunes
Sync your phone with iTunes so all your purchased music is in your current iTunes library.
Make sure Genius is on. If you select Store from the menu bar and it says "Turn off Genius" you're all set. Otherwise select Store -> Turn on Genius.
Now select Store -> Update Genius

iTunes will think for a while and eventually the status area at the top of the main window will say "Delivering your Genius results...".

When it's done delivering your Genius results sync your phone with iTunes. You should have Genius playlist capabilities on your phone now.


How to change safari search engine Mac OS I want to change safari default search engine by native app or safari extension however it's possible.
I have tried to change preference (com.apple.safari.plist) file but there is no key to related safari search engine.
I also change in .globlerpreference.plist but no effect on safari browser is there any file appear in finder thats content safari default search engine.

You might find this Stack Exchange Answer provides a solution:

There are two places to select the search engine. Setting the search engine from Safari's URL bar overrides whatever's set in Safari > Preferences > Search. My Safari had Google set from the URL bar, and whatever I set in Safari Preferences was immediately reverted to Google.

To reset the default search engine in Safari's URL bar, click on the magnifying glass icon, which appears at the left side of the URL bar when no page is displayed. A dropdown appears. Then select which engine you'd choose. Luckily, I was content with DDG, one of the only four choices presented.


Jailbroken lockscreen crash I have the iPod touch 4th generation running jailbroken iOS 6.1.6.

The iPod is working fine except for when I lock it. When I try to wake it back up again, it doesn't come on. If I leave it for like a minute after trying to turn it on, it restarts the whole iPod for some reason.

Any ideas?

Boot into Safe Mode by holding the volume up button on boot. If the problem doesn't occur in Safe Mode, it's a substrate tweak causing the problem. Still in Safe Mode, go to Cydia and uninstall any lock screen related tweaks until the problem is fixed.


iPhone 5s aware of location even with no cellular service? I live in USA and took my VZW iPhone 5s to Scotland; I never purchased a SIM card to use there. I noticed that my iPhone pictures uploaded to Flickr have accurate location data associated with each picture. Example, I was walking around Edinburgh and taking pictures without WiFi/cell connection, but the images still display accurate location of where I took images.

How is that possible?

an iPhone has GPS - see Understanding privacy and Location Services on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch with iOS 8

About location precision or accuracy
Depending on your device and available services, Location Services uses a combination of cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS to determine your location. If you're not within a clear line of sight to GPS satellites, your device can determine your location using crowd-sourced Wi-Fi5 and cell tower locations or iBeacons.

Apps that can show your location on the screen, including Maps, show your current (approximate) location using a blue marker. If your location can't be determined precisely, you'll see a blue circle around the marker. The size of the circle shows how precisely your location can be determined—the smaller the circle, the greater the precision.

When Location Services is active, a black or white arrow icon appears in the status bar.

Maps, directions, and location-based apps depend on data services. These data services are subject to change and might not be available in all geographic areas, resulting in maps, directions, or location-based information that might be unavailable, inaccurate, or incomplete. Compare the information provided on the device to your surroundings and defer to posted signs to resolve any discrepancies.


Always boot windows, unless option is held down I have a 2012 Retina Macbook pro I use for work, with software that is windows only.

I'm getting a bit tired of having to remember to hold down the option key every time I reboot.

I know I can tell bootcamp to "reboot into windows", but that only sticks for one reboot.

I want to always boot into windows, unless I hold the the option key. How can I do this?

From: Boot Camp: Set the default operating system

  After installing Windows, you can set the default operating system.

  Set the default operating system in OS X

  In OS X, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Startup Disk.
  Select the startup disk with the default operating system you want to use.
  If you want to start up using the default operating system now, click Restart.

  Set the default operating system in Windows

  You can’t change your startup volume to an external FireWire or USB
  drive while you're using Windows.

  In Windows 7, click the Boot Camp icon in the system tray, then choose Boot Camp Control Panel.
  In Windows 8, move the cursor to the upper-right or lower-right corner of the screen, then click Search. Search for “Boot Camp,” click
  Settings, then click Boot Camp.
  If a User Account Control dialog appears, click Yes.
  Select the startup disk with the default operating system you want to use.
  If you want to start up using the default operating system now, click
  Restart. Otherwise, click OK.

  Restart in OS X using the Boot Camp icon in the system tray

  In Windows, click the Boot Camp icon in the system tray, then choose
  Restart in OS X. This also sets the default operating system to OS X.

  If you don’t see the Boot Camp icon in the system tray, click the
  triangle to show hidden icons.


How can I find color codes on Mac? I used to find color codes which I want to use for texts or background colors on htmls with color edit tool of MS paint which pre-installed on Windows.
But now I use Mac instead of Windows.
How can I find color codes with Mac?
Is an software like MS paint pre-installed on Mac?

There is a utility (in Applications/Utilities) called Digital Color Meter, which shows the color code of whatever you're hovering at the moment. It's a bit more lightweight than Preview. There are also shortcuts for copying the color value as a string (⇧+⌘+C) or image (⌥+⌘+C).


Family sharing - ask to buy I'm unclear what the default setting is regarding 'ask to buy' settings for family sharing and a child’s AppleID.
If I do NOT enable 'ask to buy' am I right to assume that my daughter will be unable to buy anything at all?

The best write up for setting up children accounts is here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201084

If you turn off Ask to Buy, your child can buy content with your payment method without asking you first.

Your daughter can spend down your default payment method using your money if you turn off Ask to Buy.


Why is the system dictionary not available from .pdf files containing text within Safari? How can one use system dictionary ^+⌘+D in .pdf's opened in Safari 6 (using Acrobat Reader)? Is perhaps Adobe Reader at fault (i.e. does the dictionary work with Safari's default .pdf reader)?

The program that draws the text needs to use one of Apple's standard SDK for drawing text for the shortcut dictionary to work. Since safari is handing the PDF over to Adobe to render - they apparently are not using a standard text field but have implemented their own code/class to do the drawing.

This is very common for web browsers like Chrome and other programs that desire to avoid being a Mac program and instead be more cross platform.

In your case, simply ditching the Acrobat plug in will restore the PDF handling using the native tools and your dictionary shortcuts will work again.
Simply delete the AdobePDFViewer.plugin from /Library/Internet Plug-ins.


how to access Macbook Pro hard drive after network boot (OptCmd-R) My mac won't boot.
I need to re-install OS.
But hard disk is too full, so I need to delete some files.
I boot Opt-Cmd-R then open menu > Utilities > Terminal

but bash shell only shows boot partition files.

How can I access the main hard drive, so I can delete some files.

Based on this question

NOTE: I am assuming you are in recovery already.

Commands are like this.

Open Terminal from the menu bar (under Utilities)
Change directory: cd /Volumes
List all volumes: ls
Change to the volume you want to access. For example, usually the Mac disk is called "Macintosh HD". So, you would do, cd "Macintosh HD". Replace "Macintosh HD" with the name of your drive
At this point, you can see all files like you would normally.


In Catalina, set default for saving files to show extension In macOS Catalina I know that under Finder -> Preferences -> Advanced I can check "Show all filename extensions" and it will do that, but I do not want that. For example, I want to keep hiding all the .app extensions.

However, it used to be that by default, when I saved a file from an application, the Finder would show that file's extensions. Maybe this was a setting I set that I forgot about, or maybe that was the default for the OS, I don't know for sure, but I do know that is the way it worked across all applications.

Now, under Catalina, the default is to hide the file's extension. To get the extension to show, I either need to add it to the filename when saving or save it and then go to the file's Info and uncheck "Hide extension".

Is there a way to make it the system-wide default to save new files with their extensions showing in macOS 10.15 Catalina?

This was annoying me too.
Today I found a solution.
You can now set save with/without extension in every application.
As soon as you get the Save screen you can change this and it will be saved for that application


Apple Script - How do I check if the bounds of a window are equal to specific values? I know that the following code can adjust the bounds of a specific window

set bounds of (front window of application "Notes") to {0, 0, 540, 300}

But how do I check if the bounds of a window are equal to specific values?

(macOS Catalina)

The following example AppleScript code uses the value of the bounds for Note in your OP to check if the current bounds matches the given list:

tell application "Notes"
    if (bounds of front window) is not equal to {0, 0, 540, 300} then
        set bounds of front window to {0, 0, 540, 300}
    end if
end tell

It can also be written like:

tell application "Notes" to ¬
    if (bounds of front window) ¬
        is not equal to {0, 0, 540, 300} then ¬
        set bounds of front window to {0, 0, 540, 300}

Or using a variable assignment:

tell application "Notes"
    set checkBounds to bounds of front window
    if checkBounds is not equal to {0, 0, 540, 300} then
        set bounds of front window to {0, 0, 540, 300}
    end if
end tell

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not contain any error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors.


Desktop wallpaper changes only apparently I've followed all the solutions proposed to make the desktop wallpaper change, as it apparently it doesn't, but the only solution I can achieve is getting the default wallpaper after rebooting.

However my issue is slightly different than the one other users have reported.

When I change the desktop, I can see in the system preferences that it has changed, and even when using mission control, or switching from a space to another, I see the new wallpaper, until I go back to the desktop (either the current one or the new one).

So it seem that the wallpaper actually changed, but is "overlapped" by the default one, as it's using multiple layers.

I'm not sure if I've made the issue clear.

I don't have any application playing with the wallpaper (I use to have Kuvva (www.kuvva.com) installed, but then I've removed using a specific uninstaller).

Oh, and my system is a Mac OS X Mountain Lion.

Anyone has a possible solution?

UPDATE
When changing the wallpaper, the system log doesn't show anything in particular, except, sometime these two lines (but this is not a constant):

Sep  6 13:05:36 new-host.station System Preferences[23804]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.
Sep  6 13:05:36 new-host.station System Preferences[23804]: *** WARNING: -[NSImage compositeToPoint:fromRect:operation:] is deprecated in MacOSX 10.8 and later. Please use -[NSImage drawAtPoint:fromRect:operation:fraction:] instead.
S

The uninstaller I've used has been provided by the Kuvva support team: this is the only feedback I got from them. Further question never got answered.
And no, I didn't install it from the App Store.

I had problems with my desktop wallpaper after uninstalling Kuvva as well. In my case, removing the desktop plist file solved the problem.

To do this, run the following command from the terminal:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Desktop.plist

Then log out and log back in. Be aware that this will also return any other desktop settings to their defaults. If you're uneasy about just outright deleting this plist, you can always make a backup copy first.


Screen Flash Behavior I have an annoying new behavior on my MBP 13" running Lion (10.7.4) that I don't know what I did to provoke.  I am familiar with so-called visual bells in terminals, but I've noticed a similar effect happening in any window in my OS X session - not just in Terminal.  I've researched this and there appears to be a setting in System Preferences -> Universal Access -> Hearing where you can enable a screen flash in place of an alert sound.  However, this is unchecked on my system.

Any ideas how I can correct this?  I'm going to seize out soon if I can't figure out how to disable it...ugh.

EDIT:  In response to the comments/questions below, I have confirmed that the plist also shows this setting disabled.  I'm not sure what the advantage to removing the plist file and logging out/in would be.

plutil -convert xml1 -o - ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.universalaccess.plist|grep -A1 flashScreen
<key>flashScreen</key> <false/>

Do you have your system sound muted or volume turned all the way down?  Even for the non-hearing-impaired the Mac will use visual bells (at least some of the time) when sound output is turned off.


Apache doesn't recognize a local zone (BIND) unless restarted frequently Apache does not recognize the local zone .dev -- returns 404 Not Found. If Apache is restarted it will recognize the local zon. If inactive for ~1hr it no longer recognizes the local zone -- returns to 404 Not Found.

Configurations

# /etc/named.conf
...
zone "dev" IN {
    type master;
    file "dev.zone";
    allow-update { none; };
};
...

Used wildcard subdomains to enable this feature.

Your issue probably is in named.conf.  Check for errors with named-checkconf and look at your logs in var/log/* (depends on distro).  Additionally, look at /etc/syslog.conf for logging options.


Can macOS High Sierra write to NTFS external drives? I have updated my MacBook Pro to macOS High Sierra 10.13. I previously used Paragon NTFS but now it's not working so I uninstalled it. However I noticed I can still read and write to my external hard drive without any other app.

Does this mean macOS High Sierra natively supports writing to NTFS external drives?

You actually can, and I just did it.

In short:

note the label of your NTFS volume.
edit /etc/fstab even if it doesn't exist, e.g. with sudo vi /etc/fstab
Add this line for every NTFS volume: LABEL="VOLUME_NAME_WITHOUT_QUOTES" none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse
Re-plug your drive.

You will not see the drive in Finder's "Devices", because this option requires nobrowse to work, but it is mounted in /Volumes/<ntfs_label>


Applescript automate double keystroke I need to emulate a keystroke using applescript for double time shift press.

Adding Part of snippet..

tell application "System Events"
    keystroke shift
    keystroke shift
end tell

Even tried

keystroke shift
delay 0.1
keystroke shift

still doesn't work. Any ideas?

You need to key down followed by key up:

tell application "System Events"
    key down shift
    key up shift
    key down shift
    key up shift
end tell


After interrupting an iPhone update, can I avoid connecting to iTunes? I was updating my iPhone and I accidentally pressed the home and lock button together thus interrupting the update. It has directed me to a link where I was instructed to connect the iPhone to iTunes and download the update. how can I recover my phone without connecting to itunes?

Depending on the state of the update it may not be possible to restore. Hold Power and Home until the device reboots. If the device reboots back to the Connect to iTunes screen, then you will have to connect to iTunes and follow the instructions.


Is it safe to install youtube-dl on my Mac? I recently came to know about youtube-dl to download YouTube videos. My Mac is the main computer I use. I want to ensure I don't download any malicious script or software.

Is youtube-dl totally safe to download and install?

Yes, it is totally safe to install youtube-dl for downloading YouTube videos. See this answer.

It is recommended to install it via Homebrew.


Can I develop apps on an iPhone 5 without service? The company I am working for wants to develop iPhone apps. But we don't want to have to pay for service on the phone. Is is possible to purchase a used phone and use it to develop apps without hooking it up to a provider? There is an older post about this, but I wanted to check and see if anything has changed in the last two years with doing this.

Are there any special considerations when doing this?

There should be no issue with this, the iPhone would just act as an iPod you would just have to install the app with a USB cable or over Wi-Fi if you choose to put it on the App Store.


Get script/language for fonts via terminal I would like to get the language support / script of any fonts I have in my computer with terminal command.
There is a way to see it through Font Book...

fc-scan

You can use the command line tool fc-scan to list the properties of a font, including supported languages. The languages are reported under lang: as ISO two-letter country codes:

fc-scan /Library/Fonts/Arial\ Unicode.ttf

fc-scan is part of fontconfig, which is available through the brew project using:

brew install fontconfig

See also Mac Terminal: Get list of Chinese fonts from a given folder


Communicate between two local Mac machines when one is on VPN? I'd like to directly connect (be able to use ping/ssh or other common commands) two local Mac machines as one sometimes is on VPN. The two Mac normally are connected via a wireless router when none of them are on VPN. The VPN does not allow split tunnel. Once a Mac is on VPN, it can not access the other Mac behind the router.

The only solution I can think of is to directly connect them without using the wireless router. I'd prefer not to use a wired connection. However, it seems that this can not be done wirelessly, as via wireless a Mac can either connect to the wireless router or connect to a local network set up by the other Mac but not both.

Could anybody let me know a good way to solve this connection problem when one local Mac is on VPN? Thanks.

Click on wireless icon, then Create network, edit name and confirm.
From 2nd machine connect to this wireless network.


External Harddrive is showing in System Information but not Disk Utility My harddrive crashed last night and since then I have not been able to access it on my Macbook Pro. I've restarted both my computer and hardrive multiple times and I've experienced the same result. It does not show up on my desktop (yes, external disks is checked in finder preferences) nor in Disk Utility but it shows up in System Information. The harddrive is also still blinking its light per usual and has not made any abnormal sounds.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

So I know this was asked a very long time ago but for the sake of people landing on this page, here's what I know:

If it shows up in system utility and your drive is spinning (as mine is), that means your hard drive enclosure is functioning and the logic board inside is working as well. However, if it's not showing up in the disk utility then there is still an internal problem with the hard drive. Since it is at least partially functioning, it may be possible for a professional to be able to recover some or all of the data from the drive but you'll probably need to invest in a new one for future use. Sorry.


Error when downloading Window support software under Boot Camp Currently, I have already upgraded to Mac OS X Lion.

But an error occurred(Progress to the last 99%) that when I trying to downloading Windows support software via Boot Camp 4.0.

It says "Can't install Windows Support Software because it is not currently available from the Software Update server".

How can I do ? thanks

I had that exact same problem. I don't have an easy fix for it but what I did was just keep retrying and it eventually made it to 100% and worked fine.


iOS 10 remember to "not trust this computer" I have a 2015 MBP for work, which I connect my iPhone (6 plus, iOS 10) to charge, and I don't want to trust the computer, ever. However, I must click "Don't Trust" every single time I connect for charging. This is asymmetric to the "Trust" selection, which remembers my decision.

Does anyone know if it's possible to stop the 'Trust/Don't Trust' modal from appearing every time, and have the machine not be trusted?

If possible, can you please tell me how?
If not possible, can you please provide proof or evidence that lead you to this conclusion?

Finally, I am not concerned with arguments or opinions about this feature. Only what is outline above.

Unfortunately, iOS 10 cannot remember untrusted computers.

From Apple support document HT202778:

  If you choose not to trust a computer, you block its access to content on your device. You'll see the trust alert every time that you connect your iOS device to that computer.

There is a way to avoid the dialog every time you connect — blocking the data connection while still allowing the USB power connection. You can do that with either (1) a so-called "USB condom" (SyncStop, Juice-Jack Defender, PortaPow) or (2) a "charge-only" Lightning cable.


Is it possible to show the playlist and video for VLC at the same time? This was asked and answered a number of years ago, but it seems the old option was removed. Is the option living somewhere else now that I just can't seem to find or has it been removed entirely?

I am running VLC 3.0.4.

Prefs > Video > Show video within the main window

Uncheck for separate playback window


Is bootcamp 6.0 supporting Target Display mode of an Imac to a Windows 10 OS? I have a 2014 iMac with a Bootcamp version 6.0 installed. I want to use it as a display for a MacBook Pro running windows 10 via thunderbolt to thunderbolt cable. Is that possible? or only works from OS-X to OS-X? Can someone refer me to a official documentation that states that this is supported or has done it themselves?

Nope, this is not possible. Target display mode only works if both machine are in macOS, as mentioned in the Apple KB article Use your iMac as a display with Target Display Mode.

  If your iMac is currently started up in Windows, it won't enter Target Display Mode. Target Display Mode isn't supported in Boot Camp.


How to list the manual sections On my OS X Yosemite, when running man man I was excepting to see a list of MANUAL SECTIONS and their number, but I don't. As a Windows user until lately, I'm not familiar with the meaning of the different section numbers that are printed in parenthesis next to the command name.

So how do I list them?

Such information on OS X is instead located in man manpages, which is also available online here:

MANUAL PAGE SECTIONS
The manual is divided into sections. Each section covers a particular subject area. The major manual page sections are:
1      General User Commands
2      System Calls
3      Library Routines (*)
4      Special Files and Sockets
5      File formats and Conventions
6      Games and Fun Stuff
7      Miscellaneous Documentation
8      System Administration
9      Kernel and Programming Style
n      Tcl/Tk

Run man manpages in Terminal or open that link to read more in-depth information.


Editing iPhoto-specific metadata Perpetua:2011-01-16 ashley$ mdls IMAG0107.jpg

    ...

  kMDItemComment                 = "Cat with is tongue out."

So, here's my question.  xattr can be used to modify some attributes.  For example:

Perpetua:2011-01-16 ashley$ xattr -l IMAG0107.jpg
com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment:
00000000  62 70 6C 69 73 74 30 30 50 08 00 00 00 00 00 00  |bplist00P.......|
00000010  01 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000020  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 09                    |..........|
0000002a
Perpetua:2011-01-16 ashley$

But this isn't the attribute I want to edit.  I imagine this is because kMDItemComment is an iPhoto-specific piece of metadata.  My question would be, how do I go about editing it?

com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment is in binary property list format. Using xattr -p -l -x | tail +2 gives you just the hex dump of the attribute. You can then pipe that into xxd -r to turn that back into a binary file.

From there you can open that file in Apple's Property List Editor, assuming you have the Developer Tools installed. You can then edit the property visually.

You should then be able to reapply the edited value to the file using xxd -p -x and xattr -w -x.

This is all much more messy than one really wants for a single property that's just a string.


What is "useful location-related information" that "Frequent Locations" setting provides? The Frequent Locations setting explains itself quite vaguely:

I see the service polling my current location often*  but I don't see any concrete benefits having this option turned on. In another question it seems it can give you a daily estimate / driving instructions to your workplace (or similar daily-visited location) via the notification centre—is that all?

*) the location services icon briefly toggles in the status bar and no other app has the violet icon in settings

According to the 8th part in this list on mashable.com, the frequent locations setting can help your iphone collect information on where you have been most often, and then provide you with a map of those locations.

The information can be used to offer better predictive ideas of how long it will take to get from your current location to calendar events' locations.

The information could be used for anything else, however.

UPDATE:

I recently discovered that the iphone uses the location, time and day information to enable it to "guess" how long it will take for you to go from your current location to a location you normally go to at this time on this day.

Caution the next part is speculation
I would wager that this is Apple's answer to Google Now, and the functionality is roughly the same. E.g. It's monday morning, I'm at Location A, I go to work in Location B, my iPhone can now tell me that because it's X o'Clock, and I'm at Location A, it will take 30 minutes to commute to Location B.

I still can't see any benefit of using the frequent location data for any other reason, other than to link with maps and calendar events.


Recovering the ability to install an iOS app from macOS I read about an iOS app and click in Safari (on High Sierra) on a link that takes me to

https://itunes.apple.com/app/some-app-name/id-somenumber?mt=8

I'm expecting some link to install the app, but no such luck. The page says instead:

This app is only available on the App Store for iOS devices.

Searching further I find on the company's homepage a link that takes me to the app on iTunes. As soon as iTunes opens, the phone (iOS 11) starts to sync, but no option to install the app. Exactly the same message

This app is only available on the App Store for iOS devices.

appears again.

I am signed in to the Mac and the iPhone with the same AppleID. How do I recover the option to install an iOS app while I'm in front of my mac?

Update (following Nimesh's answer)

I don't necessarily want to initiate the buy/install action on my mac, but reading reviews and making the decision whether to buy/install is much easier done on the desktop. Afterwards, it would be nice if I don't have to go through the circuitous route of dropping the information (especially when I can't locate a permalink) into Notes/Reminder and pulling that note under iOS.

In any case, aside from all that, can someone confirm that downgrading to 12.6.3 from 12.7.x will not reveal incompatibilities in handling one's music collection?

You must have iTunes 12.7 or later installed on your Mac.

With the release of iTunes 12.7, Apple removed the ability to browse, download or install iOS apps via iTunes for macOS/Windows.

In case you wish to browse App Store on your Mac/Windows PC, you can still download the last version of iTunes with App Store built-in (iTunes 12.6.3) via the Apple Support article, Deploy apps in a business environment with iTunes.


What is a good 2D scrolling shoot-em-up for iPad in the style of Gradius V I'm looking for a shooter in the style of Gradius V, meaning futuristic, weapon power ups, frantic action. I'm not interested in a WW1/WW2 style shooter.

Google and the app store are not coming up with any relevant results; any ideas?

Also, iPad specific (can be universal binary of course!), iPad 1 compatible. I have an iPad 1.

You can try Space Tripper. It's well reviewed on touchArcade.


How to fix a Macbook that does not always draw its internal screen after waking from sleep and having unplugged external display while asleep? I have a 2012 MacBook Pro (Retina) which I mostly use on my desk. The computer is "docked" via a Thunderbolt display, and additionally a third-party DVI display, which I have hooked up via an Apple Mini Display Port to DVI adapter (the active one, doing 2560x1440).

I use the MacBook during the day with the lid closed. So I work on the two external monitors. Via the Apple menu I put the Mac to sleep in the evening.

Sometimes, later in the evening, I like to take it downstairs and use it on my lap, so I unplug everything while the Mac is still asleep. I take the computer down and open it up.

Sometimes, when I open the lid up (not always) the internal screen does not come on. The back light illuminates, but there is no display.

I know the MacBook is alive because I can SSH into it.

Plugging the external monitors back in, in this state, has no effect.
My only workaround at the moment is to wake it up and do my replugging while it's awake but I don't think I should need to do this.

So, what might be causing this how to resolve it?

I would pay attention to two factors:

1) Do you have an external keyboard attached?

2) The power situation - how/when sleep happens is affected by this

3) If the lid is closed at the time you move the mac.

A couple of examples will help illustrate this:

Recently I found that my external keyboard was not waking up the closed lid mac as I thought it should.  I found that this was because the power was unplugged and the 'lid closed' operation only worked with the power actually plugged in.

As another example I found that when my computer was asleep, in order to wake it up - without opening the lid! - the trick was to plug an external keyboard/mouse in and hit a key / move the mouse.  This then took the mac out of sleep (though again that may depend on whether you have power plugged in or not).


Is there a way to view Unicode values in the "Emoji and Symbols"? The emoji and symbol window is good for inserting into documents, but when I need the actual Unicode values, it isn't anywhere in the UI. Is there any way to get those information?

From the Emoji & Symbols panel, top left there's a gear icon. It looks greyed- out always but it's not.

Customise List... scroll right down, Reveal Code Tables & Check Unicode.

The unicode values will then appear in the preview pane for all characters


Does iPod Touch 5th gen 16GB (mid 2013) still have built-in Camera app for use with front-facing camera? Recall: At the end of May, Apple introduced a lower-cost iPod Touch (5th generation, mid 2013) with just 16GB of storage, in one color (silver), no hand-strap, and no iSight rear-facing camera – but the front FaceTime camera remains.  So:

Does this low-cost model of the iPod Touch 5th gen still ship with the iOS built-in "Camera" app, for use with the front-facing FaceTime camera that remains?

I'm asking because this is the first iOS device that has only a front-facing camera, and I'm not sure if it is for FaceTime only, or if the camera can still be used for stills and video (facing the user's direction, of course.)  Thanks!

The answer is yes — the iPod touch 5th gen 16GB does still have the Camera app. Here's confirmation direct from Apple's recently-updated iPod touch manual:

iPod touch User Guide - For iOS 6.1 Software (June 2013) [PDF]

In Chapter 9, "Camera", on page 54, it states:

  With iPod touch, you can take both still photos and videos, using the
  FaceTime camera on the front or the camera on the back (available on
  some models).

There's also an accompanying image showing the built-in Camera app's user interface, and notes indicating controls for the flash and to "Switch between cameras" may not be available on some models:

Finally, I've also learned that third-party apps that use cameras on iOS devices should continue to function provided they use the iOS APIs correctly — as demonstrated in Apple sample code — to query the device for camera capability and the available cameras.  (When a third-party app assumes a rear-facing camera is always available on a camera-supporting device, such an app won't necessarily operate correctly on the iPod touch 5th gen 16GB.)


Macfusion - how can I auto connect on boot? I have Macfusion automatically running when I boot, but how can I have it automatically connect to a server?  Can't find this anywhere..

Depending on your version of MacOS, you may be able to use Lingon to create a startup script that runs after you login to your mac.  You will likely need to figure out a command line equivalent to whatever you currently do in the finder to connect to a server.  Run that command in the terminal to verify it works, then create a script using Lingon to execute the command immediately after you login to your Mac.

The project used to be hosted on SourceForge, but "as of 2009-07-06, […] is no longer under active development". See new link above.


Create a Global Shortcut for a Single Letter The "w" key on my MacBook Pro broke due to water damage. Currently I am copy and pasting the letter whenever I need that, but I would prefer to be able to press a keyboard shortcut to type it.

The shortcut needs to be available no matter the app; I would prefer the shortcut to be control + option (just those two keys) but if that's not possible then I'll settle for something else.

I tried setting a shortcut through the settings app, but I couldn't figure out how to 1) bind a single letter and 2) have the shortcut available globally.

I'm running Yosemite 10.10.3

One relatively simple method is to assign a text input that is then converted into "w" when you type your sequence.

I have chosen to type "(v)" that is converted to "w", but you can choose what suits you best (and what you can remember).

Open Keyboard-Text pref in the System Preferences, as described in this Apple Support page.

Click on the + sign to add a new item.

Now first type your choice, then paste a "w" in the right column.

It will work on almost all OS X apps, but won't work on web pages like this one.


Dropbox public link video - downloading onto an iPad I'm trying to get this 70mb video, which I have uploaded to a public Dropbox folder onto this lady's iPad. She doesn't have a computer and I don't want her to have to do too much work to get this video into the camera. How exactly do i do this? The extremely useful Safari doesn't allow saving videos to the camera roll.

I should also add she wants to save the video to the camera roll, not anywhere else.

I'd recommend using the app called Documents (https://readdle.com/products/documents). You can save all kinds of documents on it and it's easy to use and organize files on.


How to change mouse speed when acceleration is 0? It looks like in mouse preferences "tracking speed" changes acceleration of the mouse. How can I set acceleration to 0 and adjust speed of the mouse?


Apache slow to find localhost -- how can I fix? I'm running XAMPP on my Mac, which is just an Apache and MySQL server running as my local host. When I set it up, I found port 8000 (the default) was already taken (maybe by the Apache that ships inside OS X?) so I just reconfigured the httpd.conf file to tell it to listen on port 8080.

Anyhow, it all works, and I even have put in some settings in /etc/hosts so I can just type "mysite.local:8080" into my browser.

Here's the ONLY problem: often when going to fetch a page from the local host, my Mac takes a while (1-10 seconds) on the "sending request" or "looking up" step of retrieving the page, and then finally the page loads and renders. It's actually faster for me to access my production server (that is several states away!)... obviously that's absurd and my local server, all right here on the same machine, should be lightning fast. Any ideas why it's so slow, and how I can fix it?

A few things:

Apache built into OS X runs on port 80. If XAMPP couldn't start the web server erroring because port 8000 is in use, something is listening on that port already. You did one of the right things in reconfiguring XAMPP's Apache port, the other would be to find what's running on 8000 :).
You're using the "Bonjour" name of your server, in theory. The mysite.local name. But if it's taking more than a second to resolve, then it is obviously browsing out to the internet in order to resolve the name to an address and come back inside.

If you know how, you can take the time to investigate your Bonjour settings. If you have Wide-Area Bonjour Browsing configured, but the server on the other end is not (or is no longer), these lookup delays are not completely impractical.

The quickest fix to this problem would just be to use localhost:8080 instead of mysite.local:8080, the longer one would be to trace where exactly your DNS lookup is heading too, and determining why a multi-second lookup is occurring.


Is it possible to output different audio to HDMI and built-in speaker simultaneously? After I connected my Macbook Pro to an HDTV with HDMI cord, I can choose to output audio to either the HDMI port or the built-in speaker. And I know that it it possible to create a "congregate" audio device so that the same audio can be outputted to both the HDMI port and the built-in speaker.

I would like to know if it is possible to output different audio to the HDMI port and the built-in speaker simultaneously? i.e. Play a movie on the HDTV and play its sound from there, but for everything else play the sound from the built-in speaker.

Thank you.

Hardware: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015)OS: OS X El Capitan

You could try using AirFoil. I use it on my Mac to send audio out from a specific application to multiple sources (which can include the internal speaker as well as any external audio output device).

My use case though is to allow Spotify to send its audio out to my AirPlay speaker while allowing the internal speakers to still play only system notification sounds.

Check it out here: https://rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/mac/

(note I do not work for AirFoil, just an awesome product).


How can I launch a daemon process as a specified user at boot without an interactive login? I'm trying to setup a TeamCity Build Agent on a Mac Mini Server running 10.7.3. I have successfully got it running and building but only if I login and launch the process manually.

We'd prefer to have the process kick off at startup which appears to be easily done by putting a plist file in the /Library/LaunchDaemon folder. Unfortunately this doesn't work for us as the process fires off as root rather than as our specified user. We really would prefer to keep things constrained to the user's folder and moreover need access to a keychain to handle the iOS code signing mechanics. Unfortunately, using ~/Library/LaunchAgents doesn't work as that seems to require someone visit the terminal and login -- this needs to kick off from boot and stay running when the user is logged out.

Is there a way to launch a process as a specified user on boot?

You can easily run as another user with sudo -u like so:

#!/bin/sh

UZER=jsmith

sudo -u "$UZER" /path/to/program/you/want/to/run

exit 0

Just change 'jsmith' to the appropriate short user name, and then save that as a script somewhere, and call from /Library/LaunchDaemons

Remember that all files in /Library/LaunchDaemons must be owned by root to be run.

(I think this is what bmike was suggesting)

Another option

However, I wrote up a HOWTO for making auto-login more secure:

Terminally Geeky: use automatic login more securely

The executive summary is this:

Turn on Automatic login
Put this launchd plist in ~/Library/LaunchAgents
Reboot

What it does:

As soon as you login, launchd will throw you back to the login screen using:

"/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession" -suspend

Note that is all one long line.

Considering that someone with physical access to your computer has a lot of potential exploits, I consider this relatively safe, but of course everyone has to make their own determination. I run this in my small office, but my iMac is in my private office which I can lock when I'm not there.

Also note that automatic login doesn't work with FileVault 2.


Can't download DOC or PDF from iCloud web app Possible Duplicate:
  Why won’t iCloud let me download Pages documents uploaded from a computer?

I recently updated Pages, Numbers and Keynote to the latest versions, and my OS to Mountan Lion. I went ahead and tried the "documents in the cloud" feature by saving a Pages document on iCloud.

As a long time user of the now shut-down iWork.com beta, I was surprised and pleased to find the following menu on the iCloud.com iWork web app:

iCloud appears to allow download in other formats but the options are disabled for some reason.
How can I enable this document to be downloaded in PDF and WORD formats?

It seems to be enabled after having opened on iOS, my thinking is that it's something to do with the message you get when opening an iOS version of something created on OS X, which lets you open copy or open, saying that it may look different. Anyway, after opening on iOS, you can download from iCloud.com in all three formats, however, after saving or editing on OS X the PDF and DOC options are blanked again.


Can I adjust iPad display size to make it fit the screen better? I have an iPad mini (original model) running iOS 8.4
Recently I have noticed many apps seem to be too large for the screen; usually the top or bottom is partly off screen.

When I press the button, the home screen displays normally for a few seconds, then seems to "grow" e.g. the iPad in the top left now shows "Pad" wth the "i" off the screen.

This may have been since a software upgrade, but I can't be sure.

Perhaps you have somehow turned on the Zoom feature of Accessibility?

Open the settings app
tap general
tap accessibility
turn off zoom

If you need more details, the following article might help

https://www.apple.com/ios/accessibility-tips/


Saving Voicemails from my iPhone 6s I have Voicemails on my iPhone 6s from my mother who recently passed.  Please advise the best way for me to save these.

One fairly straight forward way of doing this is to grab another iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad and use the Voice Memos app to record them while they're playing on your iPhone on speaker.

Once you've recorded them you can Share them from the Voice Memos app by sending them via email to yourself or using one of the  other options.


Startup disk doesn't show my windows partition Macbook Pro late 2011 running High Sierra (10.13.6). I have swapped my HDD for an SSD and placed my HDD instead of my optical drive.

I would like to install a Windows 7 partition on my SSD using bootcamp assistant. For that I have booted a windows 7.ISO on a USB (External physical volume), and successfully created a windows partition with bootcamp assist. Now during the restart I had a black screen saying "...no bootable disk found..." even though my usb was plugged in. I forced manually a restart pressing alt, i can only select my os partition.

Now on my start up disk in system preferences I only see Macintosh SSD. How can I get my macbook to force restart on my Windows Partition and read my usb stick?

PS: I downloaded my bootcamp drivers and have them on a separate USB + on my OS desktop

A previous answer, which will get Windows 7 installed on your Mac, can be found at Installing Windows 7 or 10 Pro 64 bit without DVD or Flash Drive.

If you have the Windows 7 product key, then you should make sure you have the latest Windows 7 iso download. You can get this from Download Windows 7 Disc Images (ISO Files).

I will point out that the Windows 7 product key can also be used to install Windows 10 for free. The latest Windows 10 can be found at Download Windows 10 Disc Image (ISO File). Instruction for installing Windows 10 can be found at How to install Windows 10 into a 2011 iMac without using the Boot Camp Assistant, an optical (DVD) drive or third party tools?.

Addendum

You could also probably install Windows 7 by first booting from a Windows 10 USB installer. This would then require using the CLI to install Windows 7 to an internal drive. The instructions would be similar to this answer. If interested, I could include updated instructions.