How do I know if my mac's Terminal has been hacked? I was using Terminal just now and realized that I was seeing something different on the screen than I have in the past. I can't remember what it used to be, but I know for a FACT that I have never seen "integrativeasheville:~" in Terminal. What is going on?

Last login: Thu Aug  7 23:25:09 on ttys000
integrativeasheville:~ pbishop$ pwd
/Users/pbishop
integrativeasheville:~ pbishop$ whoami
pbishop
integrativeasheville:~ pbishop$ hostname
integrativeasheville.us8.list

This:

 integrativeasheville:~

is called the shell prompt. It's presented to you when you open a shell in a Terminal window and it can be customized. Some people like their prompts to show lots of information like the hostname their currently logged in to, the user they're running as, the current directory they're, etc. For example, I like:

/Users/ian/code/packer-config |ruby-2.1.1@vanilla| [git::master]
>

That's a two-line prompt that shows me the directory, the version of Ruby loaded by RVM and the gem bundle as well as the git branch I'm working on and the clean/dirty state of the local repository.

The prompt is completely customizable via PS1 environment variable in bash (the default shell in OS X). Out of the box, OS X has PS1 set to:

PS1="\h:\W \u\$"

This says: "display the host name, followed by a colon, then the current working directory followed by a space and then the name of the user and the default prompt character."

For a standard user this evaluates to something like:

> bash
bash-3.2$ PS1="\h:\W \u\$"
ianchesalsimac:~ ian$

As you can see, my prompt looks an awful lot like your prompt when I use bash (I use zsh by default in my environment so I had to switch to bash to show this to you).

That is to say, in a very long winded way: your prompt looks exactly like the default OS X bash prompt. Nothing odd about it all.

The integrativeasheville part is your machine's host name. the : is just a separator. And the ~ means you're in your home directory -- ~ is shorthand for "my home directory" in shell path language.


Handing in macbook with root access - protecting data There is a macbook with a badly swollen battery that will have to be replaced. The macbook itself is out of warranty, and even though the public Apple site lists an option to get it serviced out of warranty anyway, that option disappears when logging in with the associated Apple ID.
There is a Premium Reseller nearby that can replace the battery, but they require, aside from the laptop itself (obviously) full root access in the form of the password of an active administrator account.
Are there any tips for protecting the data on the laptop? Just erasing all data isn't quite enough on an SSD as all data can easily be retrieved if I'm not mistaken. The laptop doesn't have a T2 chip, if that makes any difference (2014 model). Are there any tips on this matter?

To my knowledge, it is not easy to retrieve data deleted from an SSD. If TRIM is turned on (and it will be on a MacBook in most situations), there is no way for the operating system to retrieve the contents of a block that has been erased. Specialized forensic analysis software can read deleted blocks that have not yet been overwritten, but this is only possible with certain SSDs.
If you wanted to be very careful, I would suggest the following:

Turn on FileVault and wait for the volume to be fully encrypted.
Boot into recovery mode and erase the disk.

An article about recovering data from SSDs: Afonin, Oleg. Life after Trim: Using Factory Access Mode for Imaging SSD Drives. ElcomSoft Blog, 2019.


Carbon copy cloner to image OS X lion and restore from disk image Is it possible to create an image of my 64gb 2012 Macbook Air using Carbon Copy Cloner so that I can recover from that image (if my Mac does not boot) even if I am not connected to the internet?

The getting started section of the CCC online documentation will get you on your way.

For Carbon Copy Cloner support, please post questions to the Bombich Software Help Desk


How to install Filemaker on my iPad? I am not familiar with the iPad but my MacBook died and I can't afford a new one. How can I install software that is not from the Apple Store on my iPad? I have the software .ipa file, but how do I install it?

You can’t install software that’s not from the App Store except by compiling it yourself from source code (but you need a Mac to do that). And iPads can’t just run Mac software even if Apple would let you install it. They have different CPUs and a different operating system, and can only run software designed to run on iOS. There’s no iOS version of FileMaker (though there’s a client app available).


Is there a command line utility to perform common Wi-Fi operations? I would like to manage my Mac's Wi-Fi on the command line, but there are lots of different built-in Mac utilities that need to be called (airport, ipconfig, networksetup, netstat, security), with various options. I'd like a simple way to do the most common operations. Is there anything like that out there?

I just released a command line utility, mac-wifi, hosted at https://github.com/keithrbennett/macwifi, which meets these needs (at least for me, at this time, feel free to offer suggestions). It is a Ruby script, and can be installed in either of these ways:

gem install mac-wifi
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/keithrbennett/macwifi/master/bin/mac-wifi -o mac-wifi && chmod +x mac-wifi

For interactive use (it has a shell to keep it open to more simply type multiple commands) you will need to install the pry gem:

gem install pry

Here is its help output:

mac-wifi version 1.1.0 -- Available commands are:

ci                      - connected to Internet (not just wifi on)?
co[nnect] network-name  - turns wifi on, connects to network-name
cy[cle]                 - turns wifi off, then on, preserving network selection
d[isconnect]            - disconnects from current network, does not turn off wifi
h[elp]                  - prints this help
i[nfo]                  - prints wifi-related information
lsp[referred]           - lists preferred (not necessarily available) networks
lsa[vailable]           - lists available networks
n[etwork_name]          - name (SSID) of currently connected network
on                      - turns wifi on
of[f]                   - turns wifi off
pa[ssword] network-name - shows password for preferred network-name
q[uit]                  - exits this program (interactive shell mode only)
r[m] network-name       - removes network-name from the preferred networks list
s[hell]                 - opens an interactive pry shell (command line only)
t[ill]                  - returns when the desired Internet connection state is true. Options:
                          'on'/:on or 'off'/:off
                          wait interval, in seconds (optional, defaults to 0.5 seconds)
w[ifion]                - is the wifi on?
x[it]                   - exits this program (interactive shell mode only)

When in interactive shell mode:
    * use quotes for string parameters such as method names.
    * for pry commands, use prefix `%`.


Two-part AppleScript key sequence? I am trying to assign a keyboard shortcut to the screenshot app window feature (if you didn't know, it is ⌘⇧+4, then Space, which allows you to take a screenshot of a single app window).

I have been trying to code it as an AppleScript for almost an hour, but there is something I am missing; I am only getting the standard screenshot selection feature.

The code I have so far is:

tell application "System Events"
    key code 21 using {shift down, command down}
    key code 49
end tell

Does anyone know how to code the key sequencing that I am trying to do above? Or have a resource that describes how to do it?

Found it! Was missing a delay.

tell application "System Events"
    key code 21 using {shift down, command down}
    delay 0.1
    key code 49
end tell

Then assign to a keyboard shortcut using Alfred, Quicksilver or other similar application.


iCloud restore "Enter Old Passcode" An iPhone 6 Plus' Touch ID stopped working and the user couldn't remember the passcode and, after many failed attempts, was forced to choose between setting up as a new iPhone or restoring from backup.

The iPhone 6 Plus was frequently backed up by iCloud and never backed up by iTunes.

Directly (from the initial setup) or indirectly (once setup as a new iPhone), attempting to restore from iCloud  prompted for and accepted Apple ID authentication (username, password, and phone number-based TFA) then prompted as follows and rejected all given:

  Enter Old Passcode

  Passwords, home and other data are protected by the passcode
  previously used to unlock this iPhone.

  Your passcode is encrypted and cannot be read by Apple.

I wasn't able to find anything online regarding this scenario, hence this post.

I contacted Apple's technical support who said:

  At this point then we won’t be able to get past the passcode unless you manage to remember it at a later point in time

  The only way around this would be use the phone as new, and then sync with iCloud contacts, calendar and Photo library if you use those.

Personally, I have restored from iCloud and I was never prompted for my passcode so I guessed that it was prompting from a verification point-of-view, rather than an encryption point-of-view.

On an iPad, I enabled iCloud and signed in using the same Apple ID.

On the iPhone, restoring from iCloud prompted for a verification code from the iPad and succeeded.

Apple's technical support said:

  Oh perfect, you should be working here, haha


Changing Apple ID on iPhone 5 How can I change my Apple ID on my iphone 5 to match the Apple ID on my iPad Air? I have an old email from school that does not exist anymore attached to my iPhone5. I am trying to get the same Apple ID on both devices so that they will communicate with each other. I will be getting a new iPhone 6 this week so I don't know what to do first because I will be trading in my iPhone 5.

From the Apple Support Site

   Use these steps to reset your Apple ID:

  Sign out of iCloud, the iTunes Store, App Store, FaceTime, Find My Friends, Find My iPhone, and iMessage on each device that uses your current Apple ID for these services.
  Go to My Apple ID.
  Select Manage your Apple ID and sign in. Forgot your password?
  Select Edit next to Apple ID and Primary Email Address.
  Enter the email address that you want to use as your Apple ID, then select Save Changes. Apple will send a verification email to that address.
  Open the email from Apple, then click Verify Now. Didn't receive the email?
  When the My Apple ID page opens, sign in with your new Apple ID email address and password. When you see a message that verification is complete, you can start using your updated Apple ID.
  Update the features and services that you use with Apple ID, so that each one is using your updated Apple ID.

  If you need to change the Apple ID that's signed in to your iOS device, use these steps to sign out, then back in with a different Apple ID.


Spotlight makes repeated http requests I'm running Little Snitch and every time I open Spotlight to find something it makes a bunch of http requests out to various websites, some I've visited in the past some I've absolutely no idea about.

I've no idea what Spotlight is doing and why it should be reaching out, but in anycase I'd much prefer if it didn't.

Is there any way to restrict Spotlight to the local machine and not have it make these requests?

System Prefs > Spotlight
I'm guessing 'Bing Web Searches' might be the one you want rid of… or perhaps Spotlight Suggestions...

It may also be somewhat interactive with Safari Prefs - Search [though I've not tested this, I've switched mine all off anyway]


Is it possible to script what applications should open certain file extensions? I have a new Macbook Pro and I'm reminded that my development environment isn't tailored to what I setup on my previous Macbook. I was curious if it's possible to create a script in either AppleScript or Bash that I can run which I can define what file format should be designates as the Open with application, for all applications I usually use.

For example, when a file is right clicked, Get Info, Open with for HTML it's set as Safari. I know I can manually go to Open With and choose Visual Studio Code but I'd like to write something that will change all files throughout my system.

Is this possible? How do you target the Open With application?

As far as I know, all file associations are defined on the launchservices.secure.plist file.

For macOS Mojave/Catalina this file is located at:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist

You can read the file contents using:

defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist

This command will output on terminal the file contents, which has each associated application with the corresponding file types.

Sample output:

$ defaults read ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices/com.apple.launchservices.secure.plist

{
    LSHandlers =     (
                {
            LSHandlerContentType = "public.3gpp";
            LSHandlerPreferredVersions =             {
                LSHandlerRoleAll = "-";
            };
            LSHandlerRoleAll = "com.colliderli.iina";
        },
                {
            LSHandlerContentType = "org.7-zip.7-zip-archive";
            LSHandlerPreferredVersions =             {
                LSHandlerRoleViewer = "-";
            };
            LSHandlerRoleViewer = "com.aone.keka";
        },
                {
            LSHandlerPreferredVersions =             {
                LSHandlerRoleAll = "-";
            };
            LSHandlerRoleAll = "com.apple.dt.xcode";
            LSHandlerURLScheme = xcpref;
        },
                {
            LSHandlerContentType = "public.html";
            LSHandlerPreferredVersions =             {
                LSHandlerRoleAll = "-";
            };
            LSHandlerRoleAll = "com.apple.safari";
        }
    );
}

I cannot fully answer your question now, but this is the starting point to look at and understand how those parameters works, and after testing and figuring it out we can expand this information with complete details and some examples of edited working versions.

But for the specific situation, considering the case of making a kind of template to just to replicate, (or to have it stored as a backup):

I suggest you could manually customize one system the way you want it, by traditional Finder file associations methods, and once it is fine, you save that .plist file, then you can replace that .plist file on the new system, or on the new user profile, and [reboot?, logout?, or kill finder?] and login again, and this should be enough for the associations be replicated and ready.

[Comments and edits are welcome]


How to move Mail data to an SD card? I have MBA 128 GB, and my local Mail cache is too large to be stored on the HD.
Now, I have the external 16 GB SD card plugged in via compact Nifty adapter.
It's always mounted.

How can I set up the Mail app to store its data on that SD?

Mailboxes are stored in ~/Library/Mail. You can move this to your SD card then symlink the new location back to the original location.

Move ~/Library/Mail to your SD card.
Symlink the folder:

ln -s /Volumes/SD/path/to/your/Mail ~/Library/Mail


APFS: fsroot tree is invalid after Time Machine backup - how to recover and avoid in the future? System

MacBook Pro, late 2013, 1 TB SSD (brand new, recently replaced by Apple), APFS (no journaling, case insensitive), High Sierra 10.13.2, Time Machine to network HDD.

What Happened

Mac stopped working, no space left on device.
Reboot failed.
Tried to boot into recovery mode with Command-R and run First Aid from Disk Utility - failed, because apparently the recovery system also resides on the same disk which seems to makes fsck on APFS impossible.
Tried to manually delete some files via rm, got no space left on device
Tried to truncate some files manually via cat /dev/null > somefile, got no space left on device
Booted into recovery mode with Shift-Command-R (downloads the system from Internet) and ran First Aid again. This time with limited success:

** Checking volume.
** Checking the container superblock.
** Checking the EFI jumpstart record.
** Checking the space manager.
** Checking the object map.
** Checking the APFS volume superblock.
** Checking the object map.
error: invalid dstream.size (10730881024), is greater than dstream.alloced_size (71151616)
error: xf : INO_EXT_TYPE_DSTREAM : invalid dstream
error: inode_val: object (oid 0x16309a1): invalid xfields
** Checking the fsroot tree.
   fsroot tree is invalid.
** The volume /dev/rdisk2s1 could not be verified completely.

So apparently the fsroot tree is invalid. I've searched, but wasn't able to find any usable advice on how to fix this (except of course, reformat and restore from backup, which I'd like to avoid).

Additional Background Info

On the system is a Parallels Windows VM with a virtual 100 GB harddrive (yes, one big file), which was recently used (so a backup was needed). The last time I have used the computer, roughly 20 GB were still free on the macOS SSD. For a day or so, Time Machine backups have not completed, but no error message was shown. When the problem happened, I had left the machine turned on over night to complete an incremental Time Machine backup. The connection here is, that Time Machine is apparently using APFS snapshots. I suspect this is the root cause of why this mess happened.

Questions

Is there a way to fix this (without reformat and restore from backup)?
What's the best way to avoid this in the future (especially with regard to Time Machine)?

Thanks.

Update

When running fsck_apfs with the debug flag -d, the output contains a bit more information:

** Checking volume.
** Checking the container superblock.
** Checking the EFI jumpstart record.
** Checking the space manager.
** Checking the object map.
** Checking the APFS volume superblock.
** Checking the object map.
error: invalid dstream.size (10730881024), is greater than dstream.alloced_size (71151616)
error: xf : INO_EXT_TYPE_DSTREAM : invalid dstream
error: inode_val: object (oid 0x16309a1): invalid xfields
obj-id: 23267745 type: Inode
private-id: 23267745 parent-id: 12896552 cr/mtime: 1515089959653928186/1515090145416398252
def-prot-class: 0
uid/gid/mode: 0/0/0x8180 bsd_flags: 0x0 internal_flags: 0x8280 name: NO-NAME
** Checking the fsroot tree.
   fsroot tree is invalid.
** The volume /dev/disk2 could not be verified completely.

I just ran into similar issue. Likely you would have found that the problem was in one of the files for the Parallels VM - at least that was the culprit in my case. Your fsck_apfs -d /disk/<disk> check returned:

obj-id: 23267745 type: Inode

If you had opened terminal you could have gotten the path to the file (or files) using that inode using the following command:

find / -inum 23267745

From there you would have known which file(s) needed to be restored instead of doing a full restore.

In my case the VM file was only available in the snapshot as I exclude my VMs from TimeMachine. I restored just that file from an earlier snapshot and I got further through fsck_apfs - it got through the disk to checking snapshots and then bombed on same file in the 2nd snapshot. Luckily snapshots are only kept for at most 24 hours so it should clear up after that point.

Your mileage may vary however as it could be as "simple" as one file or just the tip of the iceberg.


How to get 4 external monitors to work a macbook pro (late 2013)? I'm wondering whether or not having 4 external monitors on a Macbook Pro is possible? I know that Apple states that the limit is 2. But as seen on The Verge and Cnet it's possible to go further. On both links I see that the Macbook Pro is also displaying it's own screen.

So my question is, if that were to be turned off (lid shut), would I be able to drive another monitor? (In total, four 27" 1920x1080 monitors)

With a Retina (as stated in the tag) you can use both displayports to hook a normal (non Apple) external display. This makes two. If you want more, you can use USB display adapters.

Similar questions have come along quite frequently. Check out: Two Monitors Setup On a MacBook Pro


How can I mute audio using external non-Apple keyboard? I tried several combinations, but I have not found any way so far to mute audio (playing in any application, system wide) using a normal PC-Keyboard (Cherry G80) connected to my Mac Book Pro (2011).

On the built-in keyboard of the MacBook Pro this is simply done by pressing F10 (or Fn-F10, depending on the Pref settings).

I would like to get the Fn+F10 functionality working on the external keyboard. Apparently Apple keyboards have an explicit Fn key and there is seems to work.

What I tried is:

I remapped the Windows Menu key (Application key) to Fn using KeyRemap4MacBook
I made it so that F10 does not show the current Application Window, so F10 is free
Still, when I press F10 or Fn+F10 on the extrenal keyboard, nothing happens

To me it seems that the audio mute functionality is pretty low level in the keyboard stack.

Any thoughts welcome.

The only thing I could think of is making two services (mute + unmute) through Automator and then assigning these services to two different shortcuts from the settings panel.

First open Automator and choose service, then add a shell from the actions menu
Next write the shell script to mute/unmute and save them

To mute : osascript -e "set volume with output muted"

To unmute : osascript -e "set volume without output muted"

Finally go to Settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Services, find the two services you created and assign the shortcut you want.


STRANGE: After saving a file named BD.jpg, a few minutes later it got renamed to: Good morning -darling ...!...-).jpg. WTH? Yesterday a really strange thing happened to me. I exported 3 files via PhotoShop from the same .psd file: first CA.jpg, second HK.jpg than the third BD.jpg to a website's src project folder (loaded into Visual Code).

When I refreshed the browser (Chrome) to see the 3 images on the page I was currently working, the third image was missing from `/src’.

Went into /src to see what's up to realise that "BD.jpg" got somehow renamed to "Good morning -darling ...!...-).jpg" (in my native language).

How could this happen. Could this be the work of an intruder? I use my mac for dev. purposes only, haven't downloaded any other than the necessary apps for my web/coding projects.

Any ideas?

Have a look under "System Preferences" -> "Keyboard" -> "Text" and look if there is BD as a shorthand for a longer text. Might be this AND an error on Apple side I guess. :)


How can I reset the camera roll to photo IMG_0001.jpg on iOS? I just restored an iPhone 5 backup to an iPod touch both on iOS 6.1.3 (10B329) to rapidly load every app and setting, yet I'd really like the camera roll to start over with 0001.

I've gone in and deleted all the photos that restored onto the iPad using Image Capture, but the counter is stored on the device in a manner I can't figure out how to access

Is there a way to clear this counter and get the next photo I take to be IMG_0001.jpg without needing to erase all content and settings and start without restoring the backup?

With an Application such as iExplorer navigate to PhotoData / MISC where you'll find a file called DCIM_APPLE.plist which contains the following:

<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>DCIMLastDirectoryNumber</key>
    <integer>100</integer>
    <key>DCIMLastFileNumber</key>
    <integer>251</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

The DCIMLastFileNumber parameter is quite self explanatory. Set the number at which you want the counter to start at and restart the iPhone to apply the changes.


Low-resolution icons displayed in Dock and Launchpad Since about a week I have some icons in the Dock and in the Launchpad (e.g.: AppStore, Mission Control) with low-res icons.

However if I start the app (in this case App Store), the correct (high-res) icon is displayed:

After quitting the application, the low-res icon will be displayed again.

I have the same symptoms for a handful of apps (mainly Apple applications).

What's the cause of this, and how can this be fixed to ensure high-res icons are shown?

Cheekily adding this as an answer based on a comment above as the commenter didn't include it.

The cause appears to be a mystery, but if you remove the icon from the dock (just drag it away until you get the vanishing smoke animation), and re add the icon (run the app, right click on the dock icon and click Keep, or drag the icon back in from the finder) to get the full resolution icon for any app that is doing this.  It's a workaround that doesn't explain the issue, but should be good enough.


How to get Pages in Mac Yosemite 10.10.05 to recognise different languages for spelling? How do you get Pages on Mac Yosemite 10.10.05 to recognise different languages for spelling? When I write in German, everything has a squiggly red line under it and there is no option to change the language when I go into Spelling...

When I go into System Preferences > Keyboard > Text, in the dropdown list under Spelling I’ve chosen Automatic by Language. I even tried changing it to Deutsch, still doesn’t work.

Under Language and Region on System Preferences, my Primary Language is English UK, followed by German followed by Spanish. Nothing changes in Pages even if I make German my primary language.

Also, I've tried to change my region in Language and Region preferences, and it keeps changing back.

In Pages 5 or 6, go to Edit > Spelling and Grammar > Show Spelling and Grammar and set the dictionary to the language you want (not Automatic).

In Pages 4, go to Inspector > Text > More > Language and do the same thing.

If you want to try Automatic, which may or may not work very well, be sure to go to system preferences/keyboard/text/spelling/setup at the bottom of the list and check only the boxes for the languages you want.

(The OS version doesn't matter)


Upload iPhone HD videos to YouTube Modern iPhones capture full hi-def videos with 1920x1080 resolution. When I download the MOV file to my computer and then upload it to YouTube, it only shows as 360p resolution.
How do you upload iPhone videos to YouTube keeping their HD resolution?

hmm... turns out YouTube shows HD options for the video only some time after the video is uploaded. My guess would be that YouTube continues processing the video in the background and exposes the various resolutions only when they are done processing.

So the answer is: just upload your HD videos, it'll retain the resolution after a while


How do I unmount a drive with a script? I installed sleepwatcher to run ~/.sleep before my computer goes to sleep.

I need to unmount /Volumes/Backup before my computer falls asleep. If I forget to do it, I get a message telling me that I unsafely unmounted the drive, etc. when the computer resumes. It's a rare external Seagate drive glitch. Lucky me.

So I am trying to remedy the problem with Sleepwatcher by unmounting the drive before the system sleeps. Obviously sudo and the password it requires is standing in my way.

Any ideas?

I can't use the echo "password" | sudo -S xx xx method because my password contains a dollar ($) sign,  So I need another form of injection.

If I remove the password requirement from /etc/sudoers, the system becomes very insecure.

So any creative ideas?

You don't need sudo to unmount a drive.

Use diskutil

The following command ejects the volume Backup:

diskutil eject /Volumes/Backup

This should do it, although (IIRC) you might want…

diskutil unmount /Volumes/Backup

…to make it easier to re-mount without having to physically disconnect/reconnect the drive.

Ejecting All Disks

If you want to make sure you have ejected all of your disks, you can try this:

osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to eject (every disk whose ejectable is true)'

Third Party Tool: Mountain

There is also Mountain which will automate this for you.

Third Party Tool: Keyboard Maestro

Above all other ideas, I would recommend Keyboard Maestro which can do all of these things on sleep, and remount your drive on wake, plus 1,000 other things.


What could cause two different iphones to incorrectly show my address as their location? Two different people have come my door today looking for their lost iPhone. Both seem to show the exact same location, the middle of my backyard. Both said they lost an iphone 5, one on tmobile, the other on sprint. Besides being annoying, it got me thinking - What could cause this?

Pure guess, but …

The geomapping for the local WiFi connections is incorrect.
Somebody recently moved house & took their router with them, or bought one from someone else, etc, etc & the locations database has not been updated to reflect this.

Find my iPhone relies on already 'knowing' the position of all available WiFi APs [irrespective of whether or not it can or has ever connected to them] to triangulate the current location.

See How Google-and everyone else-gets Wi-Fi location data for a background story.
& HT5467 Updating WiFi router location in Apple's database? for some ramblings on what happens when the database doesn't get updated.

As far as a guess on why two different people had the same issue, that has me stumped, unless the 'owner' of the out-of-position WiFi is also the source of the vanishing phones.


Macbook Pro w/ retina display connected to Dell U3011 monitor via HDMI - periodic error message about audio I have my retina MacBook Pro running a Dell U3011 monitor via the HDMI port. Periodically, the monitor shows an error message:

  Unsupported audio format
  Please set the audio output on your audio player to Pulse-code modulation (PCM) if available.

People have suggested to use some other method of connecting the monitor to the Thunderbolt ports as a solution and this would work but in my case, I want to run this monitor from the HDMI port. Anyone have any suggestions?

Go to the Utilities folder in the Applications folder and open the Audio MIDI Setup application. Select the HDMI Audio Device connected to the Dell U3011 monitor. Configure the audio format to "44100.0 Hz" and "2ch - 16bit Integer". As far as my minimal testing shows, this should fix the issue.


Automator Action/Bash Script for selecting files from a list As a part of my workflow, I often face this scenario:

I have a folder with let's say, 100 files named 1.mov to 100.mov
I have a list of valid files let's say, files 1.mov, 2.mov .... 15.mov (These names can be random)

Now I want finder to separate the valid files from the heap of original files by either marking them or creating a new folder and copying them recursively.

How can I achieve this with automator?

Given a text file, filelist.txt, containing the files enumerated, one per line, the following command will move those files (and only those files) found in the current directory and beneath it, to a directory, destination, located in the user's Documents folder:

xargs -J % find . -name % -exec mv {} ~/Documents/destination/ \; < filelist.txt

xargs: accepts the files listed coming from stdin (or in this case, filelist.txt), replacing their path into the % variable in the following find command

find: locates those files if they exist, then executes the following command on each file

mv: moves the found file, represented by {}, to the destination

Incorporating this line into an Automator workflow is left to the reader.


Why does iChat launch itself whenever I wake my monitors? I'm using OS X Lion. Whenever I wake my monitors, the iChat screen below pops up:

When I let my Mac idle, iChat was NOT open. I never use iChat and would really like this dialog to go away permanently. I don't want to use iChat, period. And I certainly don't want to have to quit iChat every time I wake my monitors. iChat is not in my login items, all of the accounts have been removed or disabled, and I don't know of any other setting that might be causing this.

I thought I had licked this problem before, in fact I was so proud of myself (after searching for a solution for hours) that I blogged about it. But alas, after I restarted my Mac, the problem returned.

I don't have Chax installed (this question asked how to get this behavior, the opposite of what I'm looking for).

I'd be quite happy to uninstall iChat completely, if there were a way. I've considered some of these software removers like AppZapper but I suspect they will be unable to remove iChat for the same reason I can't.

My menu bar looks like this.

Do you have webcam on those monitors? Integrated or attached to USB or FireWire hub on the monitor?


How does my iPhone (iOS 9) know that I'm about to drive home? Since iOS 9, every time I get in my car and start it, I receive a notification that I can expect an x minutes drive to my home. How does the phone know that I'm driving my car?

Does it detect motion without footsteps? Does it know I just drove to that location and assumes that if I move away from it, I'm in my car again? Does it recognize that it has connected to my car's phone system via bluetooth?

The reason I'm suspecting the latter is that I got such a notification when my wife got into our car (which both of our phones are connected to) and drove away (while I walked away from that location). Anyway, I'm curious about how Apple pulled this off...

Does it recognize that it has connected to my car's phone system via bluetooth?

This. Precisely this.

It also works if you connect the device to your car system over USB (not just charging, but actually connected to receive phone calls), or start CarPlay if supported by your car.


Putting Mountain Lion in the Applications folder I recently upgraded from Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion, so I could put it on a bootable USB using a program. When I tried, it said that Mountain Lion was not found in applications, and I could not move it into applications because it was not found.

From the description of your problem I'm going to guess you are trying to use Lion DiskMaker.  If that is the case then this hopefully will help with your issue and if it is not the case, here is another possibility for making a bootable USB drive.

Lion DiskMaker looks for the install image you downloaded from the App Store when you upgraded.  The problem is that when you upgrade the install application removes the install image once it is complete.  Good news is you can go into the App Store and download the install image again.  Once the image is downloaded it will be located in /Applications.  Now Lion DiskMaker will locate the image when you go to create the USB device.

Below are a couple of links for more information and clarification on the software.

Lion DiskMaker

Cult of Mac Instructions


Using a Campark ACT74 action cam as a webcam in macOS 10.12 I recently got a Campark ACT74 action cam, with the intention of using it as a camera with which to live-stream stuff to Twitch and the like. Upon plugging it in to my Macbook Pro (2015, 10.12) --- nothing happens. It doesn't appear in OBS, PhotoBooth or QuickTime, despite selecting the "PC Camera" option when prompted by the camera upon plugging it in. I tried getting it to work with the open-source "macam" software, but that didn't recognize it either.

How can I make this camera work with macOS?

According to the User Manual available here this actioncam cannot be used as a webcam. The prompt you get upon connecting the device via USB lets you probably choose between Mass Storage (UMS) Protocol and Camera (usually abbreviated PTP - Picture Transfer Protocol).

Both protocols let you transfer pictures from the actioncam to your Mac/PC but neither of those allows the camera to be used as a webcam. That's the reason why it will not show up in any of the mentioned applications in your question.

However, if you have a HDMI capture card or a device to capture HDMI input, you could theoretically capture the output of the actioncam using the HDMI output of the camera on the side. If you don't have such a card you are probably better off just buying a webcam supported by macOS since those HDMI capture cards are more expensive than a webcam.


Macbook pro, disk utility and external hard drive I have a Macbook Pro running on Lion.  My external hard drive is a Buffalo and used as data backup only, and is formatted to Macs.

I have used the ext. hard drive for two years with no issues. I am considering running "disk utility" (specifically "verify disk") to check its health.  Is there a minimum or maximum amount of times you can run it on an external hard drive?  I am aware of the different types of software you can buy, but running "disk utility" on an external hard drive is my only option right now.

Internal or external makes no difference. it wont damage the disk in any way, it does not use up "write-cycles".
the only useless option would be running verify permissions if you dont have an OSX installation on it.


Remove Safari web inspector ruler How do I disable the rulers in Safari's WebInspector?

Apparently there is a hidden button in the elements tab that toggles the rulers.


iPhone asks 'Trust This Computer' again (I am on macOS 10.14.6 and iOS 12.4)

I am certain that I have trusted my Mac before.
Without the latter trust, I can also access the phone in iTunes.

I have tried reset "Location and Privacy" on my phone. Then

When connecting the iPhone with iTunes running, it asks for the trust and I trust it.
Reboot my Mac and the phone asks for another trust.

Is there some known malware mimics system behavior and steal data from an iPhone?

(I do have installed some pir*ted software recently. That's my fault.)

Personal Hotspot being "on" while connecting the USB (tethering) seems to be the issue. Turn it off, connect the cable and turn it back on if required.
If you just need to use the hotspot and not bother about syncing iPhone using iTunes/Finder, then enter passcode once, & tap "cancel" or "Don't Trust" second time onwards and you will not face any problems.


How can I install template from 3rd party to Keynote? After downloading a template for my Keynote program, I can't seem to install it correctly so that I can utilize the 200+ slides that are included when I wish to add a new slide in the presentation.

I have the latest software of El Capitan and the latest version of Keynote installed.

This is what I have done so far:

Purchased "Eureka - Minimal Keynote Template" from this site (http://graphicriver.net/item/eureka-minimal-keynote-template/15099332) and downloaded files.
Folder downloaded is split up into different sub folders: 1 Documentation, 2 Presentation, 3 Vector Icons, 4 Double Exposure PSD.
From folder 2 there are two files named Eureka - 16x9 - MAIN.key and when opening them in Keynote, on the left sidebar 200+ slides are displayed (these are all the slide templates that I wish to utilize when creating new presentations).
So I choose "Save Theme" and add it to the "Theme Chooser", but when opening it from the "Theme Chooser" I only get the two master slides - one white and one black" to choose from when clicking "add slide".
So I go back and check the Eureka - 16x9 - MAIN.key that I first opened, and see that when clicking "add slide" in this one, I also only have the two options of the black and the white slide here.

So this is where I am puzzled - should not the template I have purchased when saved give me the opportunity of finding all the 200+ template slides in the slide navigator when I click "add slide"? This is what I want - so I can choose between the 200+ of them when creating a new presentation based on the template. So how can I do this?

Do I have to save all the 200+ slides as master slides, and if so how do I do this?

Or are there another solution?

I have been googling for hours now, and all I can seem to find are that I have to add the downloaded file to /library/application support/Keynote/templates , but there are no /keynote/templates to be found in my library.

The specific location where the files are stored is:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iWork.Keynote/Data/Library/Application Support/User Templates

OR

You can just use the Save Theme > Add Theme to Chooser option to achieve the same result.

However, you will need to add the missing slides to your set of Master Slides manually.

Adding New Master Slides

To do that:

Go to a unique slide that came with the theme and copy the unique elements
Under View, Select Edit Master Slides
Make sure you can view the Navigator on the left
Right-click (two-finger click) over the Navigator and make a new Master Slide
On the new Master Slide - clear out any default elements if it's not blank
Paste the unique elements from the slide copied into step #1
Rename the new master slide to something memorable about the content
Exit the master slide editor (Done button)
(Repeat for as many slides that you want to use with the template)

When finished you should be able to save and use the updated Keynote template normally.

Keynote used: version 8.0.1 (5579)

  Missing fonts - Lots of 3rd party templates come without the fonts.
  You'll need to install these or choose substitutes and then reboot to
  have Keynote recognize all the fonts.


How to use Macbook pro in clamshell mode with lid open on macos mojave? Due to heating issues, I would like to use macbook in clamshell mode with lid open, but all the commands mentioned on the web are for older versions of OS X

You can fool the Mac into thinking that the lid is closed by placing a very weak magnet on the sensor that is normally triggered when you close the lid.

The exact position of that sensor varies, but it should be somewhere at the very edge of the laptop, just behind the trackpad.

Of course you must be extremely careful bringing magnets near computers, but if you use one that is weak enough and small enough, you should be able to reproduce the effect of the magnet that is in the display portion of your laptop.


Is there a way to force iPad to show a mobile version of a website? I'm trying to access an internal website to view CCTV cameras with an iPad. It will only show the desktop version. I want it to show the mobile version, as it serves the camera streams in JPEG as opposed to the desktop version which uses ActiveX (which obviously doesn't work on an iPad). An iPhone views the mobile version and it works fine.

I know on Android tablets there is an option to "Request desktop site" and when unchecked will fetch the mobile version. I couldn't find anything within safari or in settings.

How might I get the iPad to be seen as an iPhone and retrieve the mobile layout of the CCTV web page?

In the URL, instead if "www" you can type "m".
For example, http://m.google.com/

**This does not apply to some websites.


Can't open a file in sublime text using bash_rc My bash_profile function looks like:

function st() { /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /Users/ishan/workspace/nltk_engine/index.py;}

However, when I do st in terminal, it just opens up a sublime text window without opening the file. I copied the line in terminal and it is working. Its not working through bash_profile.

The st function which is working when you type st is an old one which you defined interactively within Terminal.
If you enter:

type st

you will see that this definition is not the one you entered within your
.bash_profile.

To execute the definition entered within your .bash_profile, you have to load it within your actual shell:

. ~/.bash_profile

or

source ~/.bash_profile

And you will be able to check that from now on your definition of your st function is correct with:

type st


How can I fix my partition table? I think I severely ruined my partition table.

I had a BOOTCAMP partition, a macOS APFS partition, and an exFAT partition. I believe I also had 17GB of unallocated space.

I tried to shrink the BOOTCAMP partition, and I think that ruined the partition table. The BOOTCAMP partition errored on startup, and the macOS partition wasn't detected. From Internet Recovery, I reinstalled El Capitan from a USB drive onto another partition, while deleting the BOOTCAMP partition(I had a fairly recent backup). I'm currently using that, updated to High Sierra. It still does not see the older macOS partition, or the ~50GB of unallocated space(although I feel like most of that might be the missing macOS partition).

Furthermore, the Windows entry still shows when pressing alt/option on boot, although it errors like before. It doesn't show in startup disk or anywhere else.

I assume my BOOTCAMP partition is unrecoverable, which I'm mostly fine with. However, if possible, how can I recover my older macOS partition?

And mainly, how do I simply fix the partition table? Esp. the supposed Windows/BOOTCAMP partition that is there(although I'm sure it isn't) and the missing ~50GB

This is what Disk Utility says I have right now. Extra and Common are just empty partitions for now.

Below is the output from the command sudo gpt -r show disk0.

The partition table of disk0 is not ruined at all - all changes made are rather unintended.

All partitions and volumes (EFI, Common, macOS and Extra) are properly marked and a diskutil verifyVolume disk0sYwill probably exit with no error.

A ruined partition table would miss the secondary partition header and table, or the primary and secondary header/table are different, or the CRC-32 checksums of the header and partition table entries are invalid.

Your partition table looks like this:

    start      size index contents
        0         1       PMBR
        1         1       Pri GPT header
        2        32       Pri GPT table
       34         6
       40    409600     1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
   409640  91672536
 92082176 168686104     2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
260768280    262144
261030424 177477424     3 GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
438507848  51464720     4 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
489972568    262151
490234719        32       Sec GPT table
490234751         1       Sec GPT header

The first partition with a size of 209.7 MB - the standard EFI partition - is followed by unallocated disk space with a size of 46.94 GB.

The second partition is a standard HFS+ partition with a size of 86.37 GB followed by unallocated disk space with a (standard) size of 134.2 MB.

The third is a APFS container partition with a size of 90.87 GB. The fourth partition is another standard HFS+ partition with a size of 26.35 GB.

A default SSD partition layout would probably look like this after installing High Sierra (APFS) and a BOOTCAMP partition though:

     start      size index contents
         0         1       PMBR
         1         1       Pri GPT header
         2        32       Pri GPT table
        34         6
        40    409600     1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    409640         X     2 GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  X+409640    262144
  X+671784         Y     3 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
X+Y+671784       ...     ...

The second unallocated disk space (262144 blocks) may be smaller or larger.

Consequently it depends on the size of your old macOS partition if parts of it were overwritten or not.

If X was equal to or smaller than 91672536 (blocks) your old macOS partition can be recovered completely.
If X was larger than 91672536 (blocks) and smaller than 260358640 (=91672536+168686104) (blocks) parts of your old macOS container partition were overwritten by creating the Common volume. Creating a new empty volume usually requires about 120 MB - 500 MB to write some file system metadata. Depending on the size of the APFS system/preboot/recovery volume parts of them may have been overwritten.

If the first block of your vanished APFS container (including your old macOS APFS system volume) wasn't overwritten you can detect its former size:

Boot to an external drive with macOS installed
Open Terminal and get the usual disk related details (below I assume the internal SSD has the disk identifier disk0):

diskutil list
sudo gpt -r show disk0

Unmount the SSD

diskutil umountDisk disk0

dd/hexdump block 409640:

sudo dd if=/dev/disk0 bs=512 skip=409640 count=1 | hexdump

which will yield something like this (example only!):

1+0 records in
1+0 records out
512 bytes transferred in 0.001917 secs (267067 bytes/sec)
0000000 b9 e9 ff cb a4 6d fc f3 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000010 fc da 09 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 80 00 00 00 00
0000020 4e 58 53 42 00 10 00 00 29 ea 22 01 00 00 00 00
0000030 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
0000040 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 d8 36 06 fb 2f 1f 42 7a
0000050 b2 90 f5 cc 5c 85 9f 36 13 6f 08 00 00 00 00 00
0000060 fd da 09 00 00 00 00 00 18 01 00 00 18 6c 00 00
0000070 21 3c 06 00 00 00 00 00 28 c9 05 00 00 00 00 00
0000080 70 00 00 00 18 0f 00 00 6e 00 00 00 02 00 00 00
0000090 bc 0e 00 00 5c 00 00 00 af 6b 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000a0 69 ad 04 00 00 00 00 00 01 04 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000b0 00 00 00 00 64 00 00 00 03 04 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000c0 a4 6b 00 00 00 00 00 00 a6 6b 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000d0 a6 0d 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
00000e0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
*
0000200

the third line is the important one:

...
0000020 4e 58 53 42 00 10 00 00 29 ea 22 01 00 00 00 00
...

4e 58 53 42: magic string of an APFS container
00 10 00 00: APFS block size: 4096
29 ea 22 01 00 00 00 00 APFS container size in APFS blocks: 19065385 (=152523080 512-blocks)

After re-arranging the Bytes 29 ea 22 01 00 00 00 00 > 00 00 00 00 29 ea 22 01 > 00 00 00 00 01 22 ea 29, you can get the decimal value here:

The size of the old APFS container in 512(blocks) is then APFS block size x container size in APFS blocks. In the example this is 4096/512 * 19065385 = 152523080 blocks.
depending of the former size remove the 2th partition:

diskutil umountDisk disk0
sudo gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0

restore the old partition (here with the size of the example: 152523080 blocks(512) - don't use this one accidentally!):

diskutil umountDisk disk0
sudo gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 152523080 -t 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

check the APFS container

diskutil verifyVolume disk0s2

check the APFS system volume

diskutil list #get the device identifier of the APFS system volume and use it below (probably disk2s2)
diskutil verifyVolume diskXsY

If you have problems analyzing the hexdump or other results and error messages please leave a comment!


Use independent scanner and printer as one (specifically for photocopy) I have a Canon Lide 110 (scanner) and an Epson L120 (printer) which I want to combine to achieve the feature set of an off the shelf all-in-one printer-scanner. Is there a software that I can use to do this on my MacBook Pro?

You can import an image from a scanner and print it in Preview, though this is not completely scriptable, but will only take a few clicks.

PDF Pen can import from a Scanner and Print the results, and is fully AppleScriptable.


Energy impact from terminal Is there a command available that displays the Energy Impact from the terminal?
Top doesn't display this info.

Top will do it. However, this is not documented in the man page.

Example:

  top -stats pid,command,power -o power -l 0

And of course you can grep the process of your choice

You can also use the powermetrics command to get some general info.

See documentation via man or here

A nice example can be found here

  powermetrics -i 1000 --poweravg 1 | grep 'Average cumulatively decayed power score' -A 20


Block sites at specific times When at college I sometimes find myself looking at website such as Stack Exchange and Mac Rumours. Is there a way how to block sites like this on Yosemite every 1.5hr with 30min break?

What I mean is, is there an application to block specific websites at time such as 9:00-10:30 then again 11:00-12:30 etc?

This would help me to do more work at college and not get distracted. I would like an application that blocks the sites for ALL applications, however a Safari extension will work too (I only use Safari so Chrome extensions will be useless). I know editing the hosts file could work however I want it to change at certain times (I may try and make a script if no applications work :) ).

WasteNoTime is a Safari browser extension which should have the requested features according to the website:

WasteNoTime is a browser extension which is designed to help you manage your time spent on the Internet more efficiently.
Time Tracker feature gives you reports on what web sites you spent most of your time.
Instant Lockdown feature allows you to focus on your work for a period of time with limited Internet access.
Time Quota feature automatically block selected web sites when you have spent a preset amount of time on them each day.


Open an Application after minimized to dock with shortcut? Is it possible to open a minimized Application in dock with a shortcut? Or maybe something like: Open last minimized Application in dock with shortcut?

This should do the trick:

Navigate to the minimized Application by doing
Command+Tab
While still holding Command press Option
Release both keys. Or just Command for that matter.


Multiple apple products with 1 account I started an account on Game Center when I was the only one with an iPhone. When my oldest got an iPhone, he got his own log in account to games Center. When my youngest got an iPod touch, I logged him into my account so I could better monitor what was being played and downloaded. But now I have an iPad and want to play Clash of Clans with my kids. So the three of us play together on different devices. Oldest with his own account! Youngest and I are playing off the same games Center account from different devices.

Each time I log into the game, it asks me if I want to sinc it with my games Center (which would erase my game and load my youngest's onto my ipad) erasing my game. How do I get the games Center to leave this game alone on my ipad?

This may be possible by opening the "Game Center" app on your youngest son's device and logging him into a third Apple account, or possibly just logging him out of Game Center. Depending on the game, if you are playing over wifi at the same time he may not need to be logged into the Game Center account for the others to see his activity.


Move pictures to albums and shared albums in iOS 13 I used to be able to select pictures, hit share and then be able to put them in personal or shared albums using the iOS Photos app. Now in iOS 13, I can’t see the Photos link anymore.

How can I do this in iOS 13? I know I can go to the album and hit +, but this workflow is reversed and I would have to find my photos again.

I now see the ”Edit actions” link. Don’t know if that came with the 13.1.2 update or if I just missed it before. But from there I can add the missing actions. I don’t know why they went away after the update but I now added them back and everything works as expected.


Mac repair USB Drive I would like to make a bootable USB flash drive with Diskwarrior, techtool pro, and some other utilities. Does anyone have any suggestions as to the best way to go about doing this?

I was hoping to keep the total image unter 8GB, but I could do 16.

There's a utility called DasBoot which allows precisely this:

http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=200&products_id=193

However, I'm not sure whether it is Lion compatible.

If DasBoot doesn't work, there is another, sure fire way of achieving this.

Simply install Lion (or Snow Leopard) onto your USB drive. You should be able to do so with a 16GB, since the minimum disk space requirement for Lion is only 7GB, and it may even work with a 8GB.

Instructions here: http://www.maciverse.com/install-os-x-snow-leopard-from-usb-flash-drive.html

Then you can simply install the things you need. AFAIK this is what the Geniuses in the MacStore do, and probably how I would do it myself.


How can I get my 13" MacBook Pro to detect the NVMe m.2 drive that I installed? Today I installed a Samsung 970 Evo 1TB on my 13" mid 2014 MacBook Pro. I used an adapter that is not the small sintech one that everyone else seems to be using but is a different sintech similar one with a full length pcb.

Once I went into the system recovery mode (Command + R), and went into Disk Utility to detect and recover my backup onto the new SSD, but it didn't show up.

Things I have tried:

Moving SSD around in adapter.
Moving the adapter around.
Adjusting both connections.
Using the Apple provided screw and different combinations of pressure.

I might be, but hopefully didn't, mess up the adapter choice or installed it wrong, but I just want to fix soon to dual boot since I only have 128 GB.

Make sure in disk utility you have shown all disks/drives/volumes and not just volumes as is the default view.... A bare unformatted drive is usually not shown especially in High Sierra+ where they introduced APFS because of the new file structure. Click on the gear or down arrow and show all devices in the left side are of disk utility and see if you can then see the nvme, click on the very root of the drive not a volume and format it to apfs. If you don't see it to do this, then you have a bad adapter probably and should buy the one that's most recommended. Nvme support isn't as great as I'd hoped on my 2014 MBP either. I fixed the slow to restart and sleep issue but the system still doesn't recognize it at boot for almost 20 seconds (even after selecting it as the startup disk as many have suggested, that didn't help a thing for me) it simply takes several seconds to see it unless I boot and hold option key and then select it which is much faster to show it but still a pain to have to do. I actually pulled mine and use it in my m. 2 slot on my Windows Z390 Mobo instead as I restart and or sleep the Mac alot in my work (I'm in and out of car a lot) so it really wasn't practical for me. But try showing all devices in the left pane.... It should be there if you don't have a bad adapter.

the attached is what you want to see in order to do the proper formatting etc.


Is it possible to dual boot Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Fedora 17? Has anyone attempted this before? Are there any installation guides to follow?

I attempted to install before but I wasn't able to boot into the fedora partition when i was done.

If you've successfully installed Fedora on a free partition, the rest is easy. Just download an ISO  copy of rEFIt and burn it with Disk Utility to a blank DVD.  Then, while booting, hold down C after the chime to boot to rEFIt.  It will give you the option to boot to Linux (this is indicated by a Tux icon).

Additionally, rEFIt is able to install itself to your system without a DVD boot every time, but I couldn't recommend it as I had some issues with this personally.


Make FileVault password different from user login password? In macOS Catalina, I want to specifically set a different (and longer) password for unlocking FileVault (e.g. when I first turn my MacBook Pro on) vs. a shorter password to use in more casual contexts like unlocking after sleep or when prompted for the admin user password.
Is this possible?
Usually, people have wanted the opposite. But in Catalina I've tried changing it to be different in both System Preferences > Users & Groups > Change Password... and System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Change Password... and it makes them both sync up in either case.
I remember in older versions of macOS I would have to enter a different password for FileVault vs. your user password (if they were different). I'm wanting this distinction back.
My user account is the default and only administrator in the system.
Is there a Terminal command to specify user password as distinct from FileVault password?

No. However, you can set up a second admin account.
Any admin user/password can be used to authenticate graphically so you could do something insecure like make an account user and password with me/me.

Shift tab, change your name to me, then tab and enter me again for the password and press enter.
What I’m doing is using fingerprint or devices like yubikey or my Apple Watch to unlock but what I have nearby as opposed to what I type.

https://www.yubico.com/us/store


I installed rEFIND Boot Manager, got mysterious Legacy OS thing that doesn't work Is there a detailed way to fix and prevent this?
and how do you completely install the 0.11.2 version of rEFInd?
for further detail, it was installed on USB flash drive a few months back. and even now I still can't figure out how to completely install it the right way and keep having uninstall it to reinstall it because I'm honestly lost.
 here is a screen shot after hitting disk util list.

can you see it at bottom?

first thing I tried doing was following and doing these steps here in screenshot. and I got a message telling me at bottom copying sample files and to edit the file to configure refind. I forgot to take screenshot of that but oh well.

but that got nowhere so thought I try mountESP script right after doing step 4 because I didn't get a installation message or, nothing like it, I don't remember seeing one at all. and ESP wasn't mounted after I typed mkdir /volumes/ESP and typing sudo mount -t msdos /dev/disk0s1 /Volumes/ESP

and still didn't mount. I have screen shot showing message telling me /volumes/ESP is not currently mounted when I tried to unmount it.even tried using mounts script and that didn't even get job done, it didn't mount.I even use a MacBook Air and it's version 10.13.6 because I just a short while ago updated my OS X firmware.

I also tried these commandlines from the answers to a person's question post asking "How can I completely remove rEFInd from my Mac?" before getting that message telling me it's not currently mounted, then I decided to try LibreBowski YouTuber's method afterward thinking I got refind completely removed and uninstalled, I didn't, ran the command lines the youtuber recommended and then drag and dropped the refind-install script and got this:

Messengers-MacBook-Air:~ messengerm$ sudo mkdir /volumes/efi
Password:
Messengers-MacBook-Air:~ messengerm$ sudo mount -t msdos /dev/disk0s1 /volumes/efi
Messengers-MacBook-Air:~ messengerm$ /Users/messengerm/Downloads/refind-bin-0.11.2/refind-install
Not running as root; attempting to elevate privileges via sudo....
ShimSource is none
Installing rEFInd on OS X....
Installing rEFInd to the partition mounted at /Volumes/efi
Found rEFInd installation in /Volumes/efi/EFI/refind; upgrading it.
Copied rEFInd binary files

Notice: Backed up existing icons directory as icons-backup.
Existing refind.conf file found; copying sample file as refind.conf-sample
to avoid overwriting your customizations.

Messengers-MacBook-Air:~ messengerm$

also by the way, I did Install refind directly on OS X and still got legacy os zipper icon with an extra real OS X boot icon with small bootable disk logo over OS X(it appears as bootable X icon)

and I should add I mistakenly corrupted my internal apple hdd on Mac mini I previously used. I got other stories about it but I'm not going to mention it in this post.

I honestly used somebody's youtube video for removing refind boot manager utility then after... dumb ol me I got curious, typed
cd /volumes;ls and cd ./efi;ls just to see a minimal text editor pop up because I never saw it before.
sorry.

so my question is how can I truly completely wipe rEFInd off of OS X so I can get it installed completely and successfully so I can add things to it(optionally) and move on to installing another OS?
]9

You can follow this tutorial even if you don't know how to use a terminal.

If you don't want to scan legacy operating systems, do the following:

The reason this is happening is because rEFInd scans for legacy operating systems as well by default. These steps will help you disable legacy OS scan.

Open Terminal. Search for it in spotlight.
Type diskutil list, press enter and identify your EFI partition. By default it is disk0s1, but if it is different for you, then you should use the right identifier.
Type diskutil mount disk0s1 and press enter. The EFI partition should be mounted now.
Type cd /Volumes; ls and press enter. A list of mounted partitions will appear. If you see "EFI", then continue the tutorial normally. If not, look for "ESP", "Untitled" or "Untitled X" where X is the highest number possible. Use that for the next step instead of "EFI".
Type cd ./EFI; ls and press enter. From the list, find the folder that has the word "refind" in it, and use it for the next step. It can just be "refind" too.
Type cd refind; ls where you replace "refind" with the right folder name if it is different. You will now see the files inside the rEFInd folder. Search for refind.conf. If you can find it, type nano refind.conf. If you can't find it, then there is a problem and you should reinstall rEFInd.
You will be presented with a minimal text editor. Press Control+W, type scanfor and press Enter. It will find the nearest scanfor. If the cursor is at the first or the second character of a line now, continue to the next step. If not, repeat this until the cursor is at the beginning of a line.
If the first character is #, press Backspace once.
Using the Right Arrow Key, move the cursor to the end of the line, and delete everything with Backspace key except scanfor and the space after it.
Type the following: internal,external,optical,manual.
Press the following key combinations one at a time: Control+o, Enter, Control+X.

Try rebooting now. Legacy should be gone!

(Edits are appreciated, I might not be clear enough)


What causes Time Machine to perform a non-manual verification? Since verification takes a LONG time, I am naturally curious as to what the criteria are that causes it to occur.
Time since last verification?
Amount of data added since last verification?
Failure of some data validity check (parity bits or the like)?

I have not witnessed a Time Machine verify process in many years. If you have your Time Machine icon showing in the menu bar, you can click it while holding the Option key and there's a Verify Backups option.  I've never had this run on its own unless the disk I was using for Time Machine backups was potentially faulty.  In which case, I would run Disk Utility Verify/Repair on it and watch out for any S.M.A.R.T errors being reported. Then I would manually kick off the Time Machine verification. If the disk reports errors in S.M.A.R.T then the disk is dying and urgently needs to be replaced.
The only other time I have seen verifications is when you mount a DMG or Sparse Image the Finder will attempt to verify the integrity of the image(s).  This can take a long time because it has to scan every bit of the file and these backups can be quite large.
I have been using Time Machine over a network to a NAS where the Time Machine data is stored within a disk image called a sparse image.  That means it's one large directory where the data within is split into bands with binary chunks of 134MB each.  If it wasn't a sparse image it would be very similar to a DMG disk image single file with a large fixed size.
One way to bypass the verification step is to mount the disk from the Terminal command line instead of using Finder. If the file resides on network volume, you need to mount the share first either via Finder or command line. You can eject the disk from Finder as normal after mounting from the command line.
hdiutil attach path/to/image/filename.sparsebundle

It should then be mounted under /Volumes and otherwise accessible in the Finder.
If you are mounting from an Apple Time Capsule, then the disk might be failing. If you are sharing this Time Machine backup on a NAS the file might have been damaged in some way. Causing Time Machine to detect a problem that needs to be repaired.  If it's a soft error then it can be repaired. If it's hardware failure like bad sectors on the disk then you need to replace the disk.
It would be strongly recommended that you check the integrity of the storage medium. i.e. Disk and that it's not having problems indicating an imminent failure.


Alarm clock for iPhone/iPad which permits me to choose custom sound track without apple music, exists? I seek a simple alarm clock that permits me to choose an arbitrary soundtrack (mp3 file) from iPhone/iPad without messing with Apple Music/iTunes/etc..

If a built-in HTTP server that can be used to upload the soundtrack from pc via browser, I will believe that this world still has hope for uncluttered apps that do one thing well.

Does this exist?

The salvation came from Reddit.
You can use the beautiful iMazing, it can sync items back and forth between devices without using Apple's iBloat


Where is Photostream data stored? I don't have to be connected to the internet to view them on my phone. Is it storing the current ones on my device?

They are stored on your iPhone. You can find them in the Photos app.
It's a smart album filled with photos taken in the last 30 days.

Comment by Jaberg: (thanks!)

  The Photo Stream smart album on an iOS device will contain the 1000
  latest photos. The main "cloud store"will contain the photos from the
  last 30 days and those photos will all be viewable/downloadable from a
  computer.


iPhone iOS 5 showing incorrect time zone Recently (and only while at work) my phone has started to claim that its 8 hours ahead of the correct local time (e.g. it is currently  a little after 1230 and the iPhone is showing a little after 2030).

If I disable automatic time setting (Settings > General > Date and Time > Set Automatically) and manually confirm my location, all is well and the iPhone shows 1230. (Location services are switched on.)

Of course, this isn't sustainable because I'd like my phone's time to be kept in sync.

From researching a little it seems as though this is a carrier related problem, can anyone confirm that?

Update: After discussing the issue with my carrier's helpdesk they confirmed a problem with one of their cells which they subsequently fixed and which caused my timing issue to go away.

Moral of the story: it's not always something that you can fix by yourself!

You should see the Location you are in under the set automaticly button. As below. It is greyed out, as this is taken from your current location, so you must have location service enabled.


Google Featured Photos on mac stopped working I've been using Google Featured photos screensaver, and it was fine, until recently ( I guess after upgrading to High Sierra)
Right now, it comes up, it shows the photo taker's name on left down corner, but photos are all blank (just dark screen)!
Do you have any idea what's happening?

UPDATE: Works in Mac OS Mojave!

This has been a known issue for months (since High Sierra beta came out). Hopefully the Google+ team is working on a fix, feel free to send them feedback directly to encourage them.


Windows 7 reports mDNSResponse.exe caused a problem with Bonjour Windows 7 Action Ceenter reports:

  Address a problem with Bonjour

  Bonjour has stopped working properly.

  The name of the file that caused this
  problem is mDNSResponse.exe.

  For information about possible
  solutions to this problem, go online
  to the following Knowledge Base (KB)
  article:

  Click to go online to the Apple Inc. website for the KB article

When clicked, the browser opens to the Bonjour Print Services for Windows download page.

One could infer this means "Download and reinstall Bonjour Print Services for Windows."  Is that what we are supposed to do?

All messages in the Event Viewer where the source is Bonjour Service are of severity Informational.  They alternate between Service Started and Service Stopped(0).  My guess is the (0) is the return value.

I am asking here rather than some other stack because the malfunctioning software is a Windows executable authored and controlled by Apple.  When an application experiences a problem, it is the application which has the first responsibility for diagnosing and reporting the problem.  The operating system is responsible for faithfully executing the services the application requests, but it is unreasonable to expect the operating system to explain to a user why exactly an application ended abnormally.  Thus, this is an Apple issue, not a Windows issue.

After reinstallation of Bonjour, the problem was no longer reported.  However, that does not mean the reinstallation was fix; it could be that the problem is transient.

I cleared the problem on my system by reinstalling Bonjour.


Retina resolution in macOS guest in Parallels Desktop for Mac Is there some way to enable Retina Display resolution on my MacBook Pro inside the macOS (Mac OS X) virtual machine (“guest OS”) on Parallels Desktop for Mac?

I am disappointed every time I switch from the beautifully crisp fonts and lines of my native “host” Mac screen to the fuzzy blurry type of a macOS VM.

Yes, now in Parallels Desktop for Mac version 12. This new version released 2016-08 is the first to support Retina resolution within a macOS VM.

Per this page, Parallels Desktop 12 for Mac: Updates Summary…

  Retina resolution support for OS X virtual machines

Previous versions of Parallels, as well as the competitors VMware Fusion and Oracle VirtualBox, provided some support for high-resolution resolutions in VMs of other OSes such as Windows & Linux, but none did so for macOS-as-guest VMs.

Here are screen shots of the three new settings. The first was the only behavior in the previous versions without Retina support.

This next shot shows the new Retina support. Zoom into these images to see the difference at the pixel-level. You will see the icons in the next image are much more detailed than seen above, and the edges of fonts and lines are much more fine than seen above.

The last shot is if you want to use every physical pixel as a logical pixel in the display, rather than take advantage of Retina smoothing. So you get the most usable visual space but at the price of making everything tiny and harder-to-see. Notice how the Finder window becomes zoomed-out, showing much more content but shrunken.

Bug

I have encountered a bug where after adjusting for Retina, when using the VM on an external monitor (not Retina) the resulting image is shrunken, not re-scaled for non-Retina. So text and graphics are squished with too few pixels to represent their true detail.

See the following screen shot of part of screen when running Parallels 12.0.1 on an external monitor. The monitor is a plain full-HD Acer brand monitor, non-Retina. Notice how the Apple logo on the menu bar is smaller than the Apple logo on the host Mac, and the menu labels too are shrunken.

While on the non-Retina screen, the scaling options disappear. So I cannot find a way to return to conventional scaling within the VM.

Workaround is to open the laptop, move VM back to Retina screen, access the Configure panel, choose the third Retina option "Scaled", move VM window back to conventional external monitor. You may then close the laptop.


Limit wifi network access per-user with user switching I have a machine running Mavericks shared between two users. One user "Foo" should have access to a network, "Private network A" and another user "Bar" should not. Both users may access "Trusted network B".

I have removed the stored password for "Private network A" from the system keychain and moved it to "Foo"'s keychain.

However, when "Foo" switches to "Bar" using user switching, the connection to "Private network A" is maintained. Is there a way to force the network to disconnect on user switch?

Edit: This happens if user Foo logs out first and then user Bar logs in.

You may be able to disconnect and reconnect using an AppleScript firing a shell command such as this: http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031206194417678


How can I get iOS to stop changing asterisks (*) to capital "I"s? I do a lot of writing on iOS: mostly email (in Outlook for iOS) and plaintext drafts (in Ulysses) using an iPad Pro with a keyboard. My writing style happens to include:

Lots of bulleted lists
Seriously, like way too many
Sometimes even when they may not totally be needed

Here's the problem:

Sometimes, when I type:

* Blahblahblah

...it changes to:

I Blahblahblah

What I've determined - this problem occurs:

Inconsistently - I can repro it regularly, but not all the time
After some (variable) amount of additional keystrokes happen - the text appears as typed (an asterisk) at first, then sometimes changes after I add more chars later - sometimes one later, sometimes a bunch later, sometimes not at all.

Putting it together, I'm thinking it's caused by some form of autocorrect in the OS.

Can anyone confirm if that sounds like the culprit, or how to determine if it is?
If so, how can I teach autocorrect that I like bullets (and markdown), thank you very much, without just turning AC off entirely, robbing my loved ones of a regular source of humor?

You can set iOS to not autocorrect something by adding it as an autocorrect shortcut. This also lets you see if autocorrect is to blame without disabling it.

Unfortunately, iOS doesn't let you set text replacements of less than 2 characters. OS X is supposed to not either, but you still can, and iCloud will sync the settings over.

Go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Text and click the + in the lower left.
For both the ‘Replace’ and ‘With’, type an asterisk.
Wait for iCloud to sync the settings over to your iOS device. Your new text replacement should show in Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement.

If the asterisk still changes, there's likely something else going on here, and I would suggest disabling autocorrect entirely just for testing purposes to establish if it is the root cause of the problem.


How to show phone number instead of email address in Messages? On a iPhone 4s my text messages show my email address not my phone number . How do I change it everything I have read is telling me how to do from a newer phone

This is a common problem after setting up a new iPhone.

Open the Settings app.
Scroll down and select the Messages subsection.
Tap Send & Receive.
Scroll down to "Start New Conversations From", and select your phone number instead of your email address.

Here's an article I wrote a while ago with a discussion on this topic: https://deciphertools.com/blog/2014_06_20_stop_sending_imessage_from_email/


Applescript - activate background application doesn't work Why doesn't this work

tell application "System Events"
    set AppName to name of every process whose background only is false
    tell application (some item of AppName)
        activate
    end tell
end tell

while this

works

global AppName
tell application "System Events"
    set AppName to name of every process whose background only is false
end tell

tell application (some item of AppName)
    activate
end tell

Obviously, it has something to do with scope but I don't understand why or what.

I think the problem is..  Telling an application to activate, is handled by "Standard Additions", but you are asking "System Events" to handle that action.

tell application "System Events" to set AppName to name of ¬
    every process whose background only is false
tell application (some item of AppName) to activate


Can I automatically arrange the icons of the home screen according to the frequency of use? Is there a possibility to arrange the icons automatically according to the frequency of use? Top left: the most important, then the 2nd most important, etc.

No, Apple doesn’t support changing or replacing the homescreen layout from within any app, including Shortcuts as of iOS 13.2.

I do however hope that they’ll open this up at some point in the future. Stuff like this is possible on Android or a jailbroken iOS.

Perhaps, the Siri shortcuts widget might help you with this though. It won’t do exactly what you want, but it’ll show some apps that it thinks you’re most likely to open next. You can also get to that by swiping down on your home screen to reveal spotlight search. There, you could then search for any app that Siri doesn’t auto-suggest.


Will my old messages appear on a newly synced apple device? If I sync my icloud to another apple device, such as an iPad - Will the messages that are already on my iPhone appear on the iPad or will it only be newly received or outgoing messages that appear?

Also if it is the case that my messages on my iPhone already will appear, will texts that I have deleted from the iPhone appear on the iPad once synced.

Hope that makes some sense!

"synced" can mean differnt things and is slightly ambiguous.

However if you "backup" your phone via iCloud or iTunes, then you can restore the backup to another device and your iMessages and SMS texts will have been transfered.

More info here: iCloud: iCloud storage and backup overview


The iPhone could not be restored. An unknown error occurred (9) This is an issue that occurred to my iPhone.

What is the recommended general fix for this?

I was able to fix this issue by plugging my iPhone into another Windows machine, then placing the iPhone back onto the original machine, then doing a restore on the iPhone.


Why are the insert options grayed out when I open a PDF? in Preview, I opened up a PDF containing an image. I need to combine it with a portion of another such PDF. When opened, it was locked, so I duplicated it. However, the insert sub-options remain grayed out, so I can't add a page. Is there a way?

The files I was opening were JPG, not PDF, and even though my intention was to create PDF files, apparently I'd need to first save one as a PDF and then open it to insert another page.


How do I remove the 'Quit' action from an application on OSX I'm looking for a way to remove the 'quit' action from an application, so I personally cannot close it manually (except by force closing (Cmd+opt+esc).

Case
I've got Wunderlist as my personal To-Do list and use it on Full-screen on a second workspace on my Mac. I simply swipe (4fingers) to the left to quickly access my tasks. Too bad I've got a second habit: quitting/closing an application (Cmd+Q) when I'm done. This often results in closing Wunderlist and having to restart the application. Although this ain't a hassle, I think it can be solved

So I'd simply repeat: Is there a way to protect an application from being closed (perhaps except when force closing, but at least prevented from closing via CMD+Q)?

Perhaps this could be done by removing the keyboard-shortcut from a specific application via Application services via the menubar, but than i'd also be looking for the context of the function name I've to input.

In system preferences you can go to keyboard/shortcuts.

 In the list on the left side click: app shortcuts and create a new shortcut.
Pick Wunderlist and for menu item pick stop or close wunderlist just type it exactly like it is typed in the menu in wunderlist.
in the last field put a custom key code and save.
Like I did for safari
this should do the trick


Iphone usage awareness Hi I´m an OT working in a high school in Iceland and we are doing a project on internet usage and how we use it in our lives. I have been looking for a app that lets my kids monitor their app usage time so that they can analyze how much time each day they spend on different apps such as Facebook, Instagram etc. I can´t find any for Iphone except a Cydia app (we can´t use that) but I found a great one for Android called App usage tracker which gives me exactly the info I need.  Does anybody have any ideas on similar apps for Iphone?

In iOS 9 or newer, you can head into Settings and then Battery on their iPhones for a list of all the apps that are using the students' batteries. Tap anywhere on the list of apps that appears in settings there to reveal exactly how long each app has been open in the last 24 hours or the last 7 days.

No need to install an app, no need to configure anything. Make sure you go into battery settings once on each phone before your trials begin so that it starts recording battery usage data per-app.


How do I rebuild the music library on my iphone? Using iTunes, I updated album names and track numbers on my iPhone. But the music library is stuck using the old values. What gives? How can I get the iPhone music library to update?

I'm on iOS 5

Most probably the music library on your phone got confused.

Remove the music from your phone and re-add it by

either removing it manually (if you are managing manually)
or unchecking music syncing in iTunes

Then sync once to clear the iPhone music library, add your music again and re-sync to relead.

If that doesn't work, backup your phone, restore to defaults, restore the backup, sync the phone. That will completely clear any cached data on the phone and allow it to sync "fresh" to iTunes.


Apple id security questions not allowing me to download apps I bought an iPhone 4S. I am trying to download apps from the App store but it is not letting me do it. Every time I try to download an app, a window pops up asking me to type in my Apple ID password. When I enter my password another window pops up asking me to answer to three security questions. If I click on continue it keeps on asking me to enter the password. I have already answered one security question (as there is only one question) by going on appleid.apple.come manually. It still is not working. Any advice appreciated.

Have you tried resetting your phone? Otherwise known as Powering Off ... and then, like, On again.

"Hold down Sleep/Wake button and Home button for at least 10 seconds, until the Apple logo appears."

(Direct quote from Apple graphic, as seen on Gizmodo, in an attempt to thin down the Genius Bar crowds.)


How much does it cost to service a MacBook Pro battery? I have a mid 2009 MacBook Pro and I just got a message saying that I should service my battery.

I tried to reset SMC and NVRAM but the problem persists and I fear I'll have my battery replaced. How much is Apple going to charge me?

My Mac is out of warranty and I see that the battery capacity is less than 80% than it was originally but apart from that it is working fine

See Replacing the Battery in your MacBook Pro for pricing information in various countries. In your case (Italy) it's 130 or 180€ depending on screen size.


Removing the iCloud back up message I've been getting messages of the form

iPhone Not Backed Up
This iPhone hasn't been backed up in 141 weeks. Backups happen when this iPhone is plugged in, locked and connected to Wi-Fi.

I have the basic, free 5GB iCloud plan. I've turned off the storage for many apps, including Photos. Making my iCloud use only 594MB.
Is there a way to make it stop?

You can disable iCloud Backup in Settings → Apple ID → iCloud → iCloud Backup by switching the switch off.


MBP w/ Retina won't connect to any Bluetooth devices In the last few days I've started to have recurring issues connecting to my Bluetooth devices. It hadn't happened since I've had the computer (several months) and then suddenly all of my Bluetooth devices (keyboard, trackpad, iPhone) would disconnect and not only can the computer not connect, but Bluetooth preferences won't even display any BT devices.

The first time the issue was resolved with a reboot+cleared PRAM, the second time that didn't work, but I was able to unload/reload the Bluetooth controller to resolve. It happened again today and now I haven't been able to resolve the issue. Any ideas?

OS: 10.10.2
Hardware: MBPw/Retina (2014), iPhone 5S, Apple Bluetooth keyboard and trackpad

Your bluetooth controller is probably kaput.  If your MBP is under AppleCare (hopefully still since it's a 2014), this should be covered under warranty.  I would take to the local Apple Store for service

If not, go to your local electronics retailer (Walmart will work here), get a usb bluetooth dongle, install and see if devices can connect.

If they can, then you have narrowed down your problem to the internal bluetooth.   You may be able to find a BT module on eBay for a nominal price.  They are fairly easy to replace.  But if you aren't handy with a screwdriver, a local "Geek" could handle this task.


Where are crontab files stored in OS 10.8 I've already looked at this question:

Where is my crontab file?

But there is no real answer except for 10.7.  I'm trying to migrate crontab from an old drive that I can't boot so using crontab -e is out of the question.  Just need to read the user crontab file to pull existing jobs to a new server.

My current version is 10.8 after check :

  /var/at/tabs

and name of file is value of logged => $user .

For my comp :

  /var/at/tabs/nikola

Don't change permission use vim or nano ...


Safari context menu search extension Does safari has an extension like this Chrome extension called Context Menu Search? It enables user to search highlighted text from the context menu.

It should be something like this:

I needed something similar too!

So look up: CustomSearch. It's highly adaptable by using the integrated CustomSearch Entry Editor.

"CustomSearch allows you to easily send the selected text to one of up to eight search engines — right from the toolbar or a contextual menu. CustomSearch includes search entries for Wikipedia, Google, Bing, and Amazon."


How do I keep a MacBook Air from connecting to a Bluetooth speaker when its lid is closed? The MacBook Air automatically connects to a (previously paired) Bluetooth speaker even when the lid is closed, which prevents the device I'm actually using at the moment from connecting to the speaker.

How do I configure the MacBook Air to not automatically connect to a bluetooth speaker when the lid is closed? I want everything to work as-is when the lid is open.

Building on other answers and giving most/all puzzle pieces but not a whole solution:

Make sure to check if you want to have Bluetooth devices wake your Mac

If you don't want that, uncheck it in system preferences and check if the undesired behaviour persist (It's in Bluetooth → Advanced… → Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer)

If you need/want to wake your Mac by Bluetooth devices or this keeps happening despite turning off the option follow these steps:

Install a helper program to check for system sleep (if you want to distinguish only lid open/closed without the Mac sleeping, it seems there is currently no easy way – i.e. I didn't find out how to detect that), and toggle Bluetooth depending on sleep/wake events.

Helpers to detect sleep/wake (check the various options in this post):

Possible to run scripts on sleep and wake?

See also this post about "Automatically turn bluetooth on or off depending on current network (MBP running Lion)" mentioning ControlPlane

Toggle bluetooth from scripts:

How to control Bluetooth wireless radio from the command line?

My recommendation: install blueutil via homebrew

Run blueutil power 0 upon sleep

And blueutil power 1 upon wake

Now about my contribution to this problem: If power nap causes a wake event try this script for wake to distinguish between other wake reasons and lid opening:

#!/bin/bash
limitSec=3
currentEpoch=$(date "+%s")
wakeEpoch=$(cat /var/log/system.log | grep LidOpen | tail -n 1 | date -j -f "%b %d %T" "$(cut -c1-15)" "+%s")
wakeSeconds=$(( $currentEpoch - $wakeEpoch ))

if [[ $wakeSeconds -lt $limitSec ]]; then
    logger "Enabling bluetooth again due to lid open"
    blueutil power 1
fi

It sets a timeout of 3 seconds (limitSec), gets the current time and the last time of wake with Wake reason: EC.lidOpen, and if that was less than 3 seconds ago it will re-enable Bluetooth


Mac OS X / iTunes not recognizing iPod? I've plugged in a iPod into my iMac. I've plugged it to the back of the mac where the USB Ports are. It does charge the iPod but whenever i want to add music or delete music i can't since iTunes / My Mac won't recognize my device.

Can anyone help me out here?

For anyone out there here's what a iPod Shuffle looks like :

It may be a format issue. In non-iOS products, there's something called a format. If you originally synced it to a PC, then it won't sync with a Mac (and vise versa). The only way to sync it with the other computer is to format it. This (hopefully) won't be a problem because of iTunes in the cloud, which syncs your music throughout your computers. I hope this helps!


How to view progress when encrypting a disk? Mountain Lion allows one to encrypt any disk by right-clicking on the disk in the Finder and selecting Encrypt  from the contextual menu.

Is there anyway to check on the progress of this encryption process?

Open up the Terminal and enter the command:

diskutil cs list

Or with APFS starting with 10.13

diskutil apfs list

With APFS the FileVault setup utility also shows health and this status:

fdesetup status

You will see an output listing at least one Logical Volume Group, with a Logical Volume Family and Logical Volume nested below.

There is be a Conversion Status item in the Volume Family entry that will tell you if it's converting to an encrypted volume or not, and for a progress indicator, look under the Logical Volume entry for Size (Total) and Size (Converted) entries, to see how many GB have been converted so far.

For an APFS volume, the output is simpler: there will be an Encryption Progress entry with a percentage as a value (such as 16.0%). This entry will turn into an Encrypted entry, with values Yes or No. As a complement to the value of either field, (Unlocked) may be present if the volume encryption is currently unlocked.

During encryption:

Encryption Status:           Unlocked
    Encryption Type:         AES-XTS
    Conversion Status:       Converting
    Conversion Direction:    forward
    Has Encrypted Extents:   Yes
    Fully Secure:            No
    Passphrase Required:     Yes
 Disk:                       disk6
    Status:                  Online
    Size (Total):            569869340672 B (569.9 GB)
    Size (Converted):        231454277632 B (231.5 GB)
    Revertible:              Yes (unlock and decryption required)
    LV Name:                 Heap
    Volume Name:             Heap
    Content Hint:            Apple_HFS

Encryption completed:

Encryption Status:           Unlocked
    Encryption Type:         AES-XTS
    Conversion Status:       Complete
    Conversion Direction:    -none-
    Has Encrypted Extents:   Yes
    Fully Secure:            Yes
    Passphrase Required:     Yes
 Disk:                       disk6
    Status:                  Online
    Size (Total):            569869340672 B (569.9 GB)
    Size (Converted):        -none-
    Revertible:              Yes (unlock and decryption required)
    LV Name:                 Heap
    Volume Name:             Heap
    Content Hint:            Apple_HFS

The actual Terminal output is nested and longer. Here, only the most important information is listed.

Apparently decrypting an external disk is very slow (or even paused) if you use a laptop which is running on batteries. So always make sure to plug it into mains power when performing this operation.


Problem with firmware password Some days ago, I opened my laptop, it was doing security update. After the update, the login screen appeared and  I enter my regular user/password but instead of login it asked the firmware
Any idea why it asked firmware password?

Why is the system has detected the OS as being new. Perhaps you reset the NVRAM and exposed this or disk has failed and the OS doesn’t match the stored fingerprint or the hardware just happened to fail coincidentally to what actions you took. Firmware passwords don’t prompt until you try to boot to a non-designated OS. As long as the designated disk is fine, no password is needed.
The passcode is stored in the machine cryptographically and the specific model year dictates what your options are now.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204455

As long as you have a screen different than the one above, you might have an activation lock, MDM lock or just FileVault situation and then you can use the normal erase and install or password reset mechanism which is much easier to recover.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202860


Use QuickTime synth as MIDI output device QuickTime apparently has a built-in MIDI synthesizer. I would like to send MIDI output to a virtual MIDI device that will use this synthesizer. Can this be done?

Quicktime 7 had Midi playback capabilities, but no method to generate its own data for output that I'm aware of.
It didn't sound very good anyway & almost no-one ever used it for anything even half serious ;)

Quicktime 7 is deprecated & will no longer work in Catalina. Newer Quicktime versions do not have Midi playback capability.

In Applications/Utilities/AudioMIDI Setup there is a routing device known as the IAC Bus [Window menu or Cmd/2 to show it]that can route Midi between any capable apps. It's always been somewhat under-used & tbh even as a sound engineer who's been using Midi for 35 years I haven't had occasion to use it since maybe the early 90s.. honestly, I've forgotten how you even wire it up these days.

I'm sure you'd be better off finding a cheap or freeware Midi sequencer app - Garageband comes with the Mac, but there are others.


Recover a file after hitting "replace" in copy dialog? Someone I know copied a file into a directory over another one and hit "replace" accidentally. Is there any way to recover the older version of the file on Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8?

EDIT:

Time Machine was not running at the time.

If there was no backup, then I'm afraid that file is gone.  That's exactly why you should always be backing up.


Ethernet Working but No Internet Connection In my office, nearly everybody uses Mac and we have just only one Windows 7 system. Just this morning, all the Mac systems (10.8.2) could not connect to the internet but could connect to the network, but the Windows 7 can reach the internet all connected to same switch.

When I tried pinging the DNS address, it replied but I can not ping www.google.com on any of the Macs. If I try creating a new location for the network and enter all the details manually instead of autoConfig, it connects to the internet for like 30 seconds and then shuts off again. The connection still shows green afterall and could still ping the DNS.

I tried killing the mDNSResponder but still same issue.

NB: We don't use any DNS/Mac Servers. We connect to the switch that connects directly to the router.

I had to state the DNS manually and only one of the two DNS was stated and with that, problem solved.

Thanks