How can I download free music from the internet to itunes on the iphone/ipad without using a mac/pc? There are loads of bands on the internet offering their music as free downloads on their websites. Either as zips or direct mp3 downloads. What ways are there for iphone/ipad users to get the music playable via itunes without taking the mac/pc detour and without jailbreacking?

There are no ways to download an .mp3 using only your iOS device for later use by the Music app on said iOS device.

You have two options:

Download music via the iTunes app on your iDevice.
Download music on your Mac/PC and synchronize with your iDevice.


Disable Notification for specific Account in Messages Is there a way to disable the Notifications for a specific Account in Mountain Lion's Messages App?

There isn't a way to accomplish this at the moment.


Share sound output to other macs via wifi/bluetook/magic Possible Duplicate:
  Playing the same music on multiple computers

Is there any way to share the sound output of a mac to other macs nearby either by wifi, or bluetooth or something?

At work we want to all be able to listen to the same playlist, but through headphones. There's three of us sitting in a pod and we can get a headphone splitter, but its a bit tedious.

So I wondered if anyone knows a way to share the sound output to other macs so that we can each listen through our own sound card?

Many thanks

There are certainly multiple ways to accomplish this, but what I figured out is the simplest free approach I know of: use SoundFlower (a free download from Cycling 74) to pipe your system audio to iChat, and use iChat to send the audio to another computer.

In your System Preferences go to Sound and set SoundFlower as both Input and Output. Note that this will make your system sound not go through your speakers, so to turn that back on also run SoundFlowerbed (the front end that comes with SoundFlower) and set SoundFlower's output to the speakers.

Now launch iChat and go to Preferences. In the Video/Audio preferences you can set what input to use; it'll probably be defaulting to your microphone but you can set that to SoundFlower. Now when you do a voice chat with someone else they will hear your computer's audio.


MBP Mini-DisplayPort to USB-C Monitor I have an "old" MacBook Pro (MBP) that has a Mini-DisplayPort connector.

I have a newer MBP with 4 USB-C connectors that I use with an LG UltraFine 5K Monitor (aka. LG 27MD5KA-B).

I wanted to know if through an adapter, I could connect the old MBP from its Mini-DisplayPort to the USB-C of the monitor and have a video signal.

This Apple StackExchange question does not really answer my question because it is about USB-A to USB-C. This Apple KB (section System requirements and compatible Mac models, paragraphe before the last one) says no, but does not specify Mini-Display Port. Finally, the answer to this Apple StackExchange question says no but then says that "Thunderbolt is a protocol for combining PCI express data with DisplayPort video protocols" (this web page explains the differences and similarities between Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C) and then says "DisplayPort embedded over USB 3.1/Type-C".

I am therefore a bit confused: Mini-DisplayPort (a video protocol) uses a Thunderbolt connector and DisplayPort is embedded over USB 3-1/Type-C…

My question: What happens if I buy a cable like this and connect it between my old MBP and my LG UltraFine 5K Monitor?

That cable won’t work.

First, the monitor doesn’t have a DisplayPort input nor does it have a USB upstream port.  It has a Thunderbolt 3 port that uses the USB Type C connector.  The USB-C down stream ports are supplied by the Thunderbolt connection.

Secondly, even though TB is backward compatible, it’s one way.  So, a laptop with a TB 3 port can work with a TB 1 or 2 device, but a TB 3 device can’t work with a TB 1/2 laptop port.  The adapter can’t add capabilities to a machine that doesn’t already have.


My Mac Mini doesn't wants CD I had a Mac mini. Then the HD broke. So I took an HD from an old Windows notebook. I moved this HD from the Windows notebook to the Mac mini. Now Mac mini correctly starts with Windows XP (what a mess).

So what I want now, is to replace Windows XP with an OS X, but as soon I insert the original Mac mini install disk, my device will spit it out. The same DVD is read on the other Windows computer. Why? What happened? And above all: what can I do????

Your DVD drive is probably done.
It's usual so what you can do is

use external DVD drive or
find a friend with a Mac and restore you DVD to 8GB+ flash drive (partitioned as GUID) through Disk Utility or
buy the latest Mac OS X (check if your Mini support it though) and restore it to USB flash drive.
You can also install Mac OS X on your HDD while put it in external box and using another mac.

Use option key to boot from flash drive.


Can iTunes reveal which songs are currently on a device? How can I get iTunes to show at a glance which items are already on my iPhone.

I'd like to add some new tunes to my iPhone, but find myself adding songs that are already on the device.  I start looking through my collection, but I can't see what's already on my iPhone. I'd like to be able to see what's not currently synced to my phone, so I can focus on adding them.

On my Zune, all synced items were marked with a little icon so you could see if it was already on the device. Like so:

The only place where summary information of what has synced is this following screen. (But obviously, it's a really ugly and unpleasant way to browse your music!)

As I understand your desired functionality, iTunes does not adjust the main library view based on a connected device. You have to select the specific device and see what it contains.

The closest you can get is to plug-in your iPhone into your computer so it appears under Devices in iTunes. If you click on the little arrow in front of your iPhone's name, you can browse its content easily.

In addition you can also see which playlists, artists, genres and albums get synced in the  Music section of the syncing window.


Stop access to the iCloud notes app on a lost iPad, but keep my notes on the iCloud website? My iPad is lost.

I was using the notes app.  I've changed my Apple ID password to stop someone logging in.

I want to keep my notes and access them by logging into the iCloud website on my laptop.

I want to stop anyone accessing my notes using the app on my lost iPad.  Is this possible please?

Did you enabled the 'Find my iPad' option on your lost device? If so, you can go to iCloud.com and remotely delete all data on the iPad without losing your notes in iCloud.
If not, did you use a passcode? All data on the iPad is encrypted and it is highly unlikely that someone evil finds your (locked) device and tries to hack into your notes.

Another workaround would require you to use the Notes application on an OS X computer. Set up your iCloud device and another email account that supports notes (most IMAP accounts do). Then open the Notes application and move all of your notes to the new account. This will eventually sync with your lost device, but you would have to access your notes in the new account.

I do not think that there is a perfect answer to your problem, everything left to do is some damage control.


Is it possible use USB tethering feature of ios devices as similar to andriod? Connecting device over WiFi through WiFi-router and using that connection in another machine with USB tethering by not using mobile data.This is possible in android devices.

Just to make it more clear, I don't want to use my mobile data but I have a working internet connectivity by WiFi router, So I wish to use the internet connection in my laptop through my iPhone 6 plus which is connected to internet via WiFi (NOT BY MOBILE DATA),

However in android devices if device is connected to working WiFi connection it is possible to use that connection in any other machine through USB tethering(100% tested).Just need to if I can do this using my iPhone too.
Hope I am clear with question.

The main motive is to get the WiFi connected ios device connection to a machine just in case if the machine having a WiFi issue and Ethernet port problem.This is possible with android device through the USB tethering which doesn't uses the mobile data Only it uses the connection of the router and provides to the machine

No. You cannot do that with an iPhone. If an iPhone is on wifi, it will not share an Internet connection with another entity in relation to tethering. In fact, if you turn on tethering while connected to a wifi, it will disconnect from the wifi automatically before sharing Internet.

I recommend that you instead pickup an inexpensive USB wireless adapter. I saw another one for as little as $20 (presumably not including shipping).


I want all applications show their title bar, how do I achieve this? I do not want the titlebar to disappear. Is there a solution to have it always visible? Here is the opposite wish:

Is there a way to hide the title bar of applications?

Anyone using TinkerTool? Does it achieve what I want?

Don't use Fullscreen. Maximise instead.
 Opt/click the green dot, top left, instead of just clicking it.

Or double-click the title bar.


Extract files from a .exe file on Windows we can extract files from an .exe file pretty easily but I couldn't find any terminal command to do similar things. I imagine this is because some .exe are compressed in such way OS X cannot interpret. Did anyone find a way to do it? I can of course do it easily through a VM or on a Windows OS, but I like to know if there is an quick method that I am just not aware of.

Okay, I think I need to note this is not for compressed zip files that has an extension of exe.

Try the Keka program. It's free and on the website says it can extract EXEs
Keka


Is it possible to skip a file rename when it's not there in Automator? I have written a little Automator script that does the following tasks:

Get Specified Finder Items - to get one file
Rename Finder Items: Name Single Item - to rename that to .old
Get Specified URLs - to pull a plugin down from a GIT repo
Download URLs - to save the resulting URL to a file
Get Specified Finder Items - to find the renamed .old file from step 1
Move Finder Items to Trash - to remove .old file

The purpose is to grab the latest copy of a TernJS plugin and place it in the correct location for Atom Ternjs plugin for Atom.io.  It works well when the file in question is already there, but if it's not it blows up on the Rename step. So, it it possible to either tell the Rename step to never fail OR somehow skip the step in the case where no files were found?

I wrote a small JavaScript for Automation program that may be able to accomplish what you want to do. It checks for and deletes the existing file, then proceeds to download the desired file from the GIT repository:

// Get Finder application
finder = Application('Finder')
finder.includeStandardAdditions = true

// Create path to the location of the existing file
path = Path("path/to/destination")

// Check to see if the old file exists
if (finder.files.length > 0) {
    oldFile = finder.files[0]
    oldFile.delete()
}

// Use curl to download the new file
current = Application.currentApplication()
current.includeStandardAdditions = true
theURL = "http://url/to/git/plugin"
current.doShellScript("curl -L " + theURL + " -o " + path.toString())

Alternatively, you could take some portion of this code (such as the conditional that determines whether there is an existing file) and put it into an Automator "Run JavaScript" action in your existing script.


My mac laptop randomly plays music and won't stop My mac randomly plays my iTunes music while I'm watching a movie or just using my laptop. I can't stop it because iTunes is never actually open. I've tried opening iTunes and playing music but they both seem just to play over the top of each other. The only way to stop the music is to restart the laptop

Are you wearing Apple EarPods/Earphones with an inline remote? If you press the center button on them anytime it will play a song from iTunes.


Outlook notifications keep coming in spite of uninstalling app I was running Outlook as my main mail app, and while doing that the notification alerts were showing with just the generic 'app' icon.

For various reasons, I switched back to Mail.app, but everytime I get a new email I get not only the (correct) Mail notification alert, but also the faulty Outlook alert. I use an Exchange account with push.

I have uninstalled Outlook, and rebooted my MacBook Pro.

Check your Internet Accounts in System Preferences in your Mac. Mac sure that it is deleted.


alternative to TotalTerminal that works with El Capitan Upgrading to El Capitan broke my dropdown terminal TotalTerminal.  Is there an alternative dropdown terminal to replace it that is compatible with El Capitan?

If you're willing to disable System Integrity Protection to continue using TotalTerminal, you can do that. If not, the developer of TotalTerminal says the reason he stopped working on it is that he switched to iTerm 2, which he says "offers similar functionality to Visor and comparable features to build-in [sic] Terminal.app." I've never used either, but another question on this site explains how to set up iTerm to work in a similar manner.


What can I do to increase the performance of my Mac Pro? I have a stock early 2007 Mac Pro (8GB RAM, 2 x NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT (256 MB). It has a RAID0 bootdrive and is running Lion. I've had it for >5years and I really love it.

However, recent attempts to do stuff, including running WebGL demos, has led to a realisation that its actually now quite an old machine. This isn't a problem for me day-to-day - its still a monster able to rip CDs, play DVDs, run a Windows VM simultaneously without breaking a sweat - but as a developer I'd like to stay abreast of current tech like WebGL and whatever other else.

I'm not prepared to spend thousands on a newer machine, mine is just fine for day-to-day purposes, but I would like to soup it up. Upgrading GPUs has been mentioned, but I was wondering if other parts of the system could be swapped out with newer ones.

Does anyone have any experience of upgrading older Mac Pros?

You have few options:

CPU: Now you have two two-cores XEONs. You may upgrade them to two 4-cores XEONs. Here is a crowd-sourced experience on this. AFAIK the best you can add is X5355 or even X5365. Here is a good discussion on this matter. And these are pictures.
SSD: Just put in the place reserved for second ODD(Can't remember if your model have wires in place already). Or buy 3.5" adapter like IcyDock 2.5" to 3.5" SSD & SATA Hard Drive Converter or OWC's MountPro. Yes, it is much faster for boot drive than conventional HDD, RAIDed or not.
GPU: look at this blog and forums there if you are interested in flashing cheap PC card for your Mac.
Memory: You may add as much as much as 32Gb with 240-pin PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM (FB-DIMM) (matched pairs) 4GB modules. If you need them.

Right now I would choose SSD. And then I would check if prices for those CPU are stable or keep falling and then decide on time and need for CPU upgrade.


Preventing desktop jump when window is open on another desktop? I have setup 2 Desktops in Mavericks (Mission Control).

On "Desktop 2" there are some programs that need to run, but which I use rarely, for example a Terminal with some server tasks.
Then on "Desktop 1" I want to run more Terminal instances, but when I click the icon in the dock, it jumps to the Terminal instance on the second desktop.

I tried disabling this setting, but then clicking the app icon does nothing (second click jumps to desktop 2):

System Preferences > Mission Control > When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application

Any ideas or tools to solve this problem? Basically I want Mavericks to treat every Desktop separately.

At least on El Capitan, it is (apparently) necessary to restart the Dock after setting the value of workspaces-auto-swoosh

On the command line:

defaults write com.apple.dock workspaces-auto-swoosh -boolean NO
killall Dock


Emacs key bindings on other programs I am a heavy Emacs user and would love to have some of my Emacs keyboard bindings when editing text on other apps.

I understand I could program these macros with Keyboard Maestro manually, but I was surprised I could not find any pre-defined macros for this. Before I reinvent the wheel, are there any repositories of keyboard maestro macros out there? Does Keyboard Maestro come with any set of macros that facilitate this process?

Keyboard Maestro macros often have noticeable delays and it's not really the best method for keyboard remapping.

You could create ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and save a property list like this as DefaultKeyBinding.dict instead:

{
  "~b" = moveWordBackward:;
  "~f" = moveWordForward:;
  "~F" = moveWordForwardAndModifySelection:;
  "~B" = moveWordForwardAndModifySelection:;
  "~d" = deleteWordForward:;
  "~u" = (uppercaseWord:, moveForward:, moveForward:);
  "~l" = (lowercaseWord:, moveForward:, moveForward:);
  "~c" = (capitalizeWord:, moveForward:, moveForward:);
  "~v" = pageUp:;
  "~V" = pageUpAndModifySelection:;
  "^V" = pageDownAndModifySelection:;
  "^ " = setMark:;
  "^w" = deleteToMark:;
  "~<" = moveToBeginningOfDocument:;
  "~>" = moveToEndOfDocument:;
  "~/" = complete:;
  "^l" = selectParagraph:;
  "~h" = selectParagraph:;
  "^_" = undo:;
  "^/" = undo:;
  "^x" = {
    "^x" = swapWithMark:;
    "^m" = selectToMark:;
  };
}

DefaultKeyBinding.dict doesn't work in some applications like Xcode or Firefox. Key combinations that enter dead key states (like ⌥U in the U.S. keyboard layout) can't be reassigned. There are also methods like performClose: and openDocument:, but they don't work in all applications. See http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/KeyBindings/Emacs%20Esc%20Bindings.dict or http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jrus/site/selectors.html.

Another option is to use a private.xml like this with KeyRemap4Macbook:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>test</name>
    <identifier>test</identifier>
    <not>{{EMACS_MODE_IGNORE_APPS}}</not>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::P, VK_CONTROL | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_UP</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::N, VK_CONTROL | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_DOWN</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::B, VK_CONTROL | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F, VK_CONTROL | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::P, VK_CONTROL | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_UP, VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::N, VK_CONTROL | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_DOWN, VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::B, VK_CONTROL | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F, VK_CONTROL | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::B, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_OPTION</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_OPTION</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::B, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_LEFT, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::CURSOR_RIGHT, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::D, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::FORWARD_DELETE, VK_OPTION</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::V, VK_OPTION | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::PAGEUP</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::V, VK_OPTION | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::PAGEUP, VK_SHIFT</autogen>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::V, VK_CONTROL | VK_SHIFT | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::PAGEDOWN, VK_SHIFT</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

The key codes have to be changed for keyboard layouts like Dvorak or Colemak. EMACS_MODE_IGNORE_APPS includes terminal emulators, Emacs applications, and VMs, but you can also add custom appdef elements.

There is also a predefined Emacs mode group, but for example the setting for changing ⌥F to ⌥→ also changes ⌥⌘F to ⌥⌘→.


How can I setup different "environments" I want to create different environments on my mac, for example work 1, work 2, and at home. The environments have different icons in the doc, different desktop background images etc. Is that possible? I do not want to create different users, because some files are used in every environment.

In "Computer -> Users" there's a folder called "Shared Folders". You can put shared files for all users in there (including the iTunes library etc.). With fast user switching enabled it's very easy to handle multiple environments.


How do I Install macOS Sierra from Terminal in Recovery? I tried installing macOS High Sierra but it failed. Probably because I have  WD Black2 Dual Drive (120gb SSD + 1tb HDD).

I would like to reinstall macOS Sierra, and I have the installation file on another Volume on my system.

Is it possible to install it using the terminal from Recovery? If yes, please tell me the command(s) to start the installation.

(I have already formatted the target Volume - named "Macintosh HD" - back to HFS+ from APFS).

(Note: I tried installing using "Internet Recovery" but it said downloading and installation of Maverick will take 7+ hours! The other option it offers is it to install macOS High Sierra, which, as I said fails for me. So I am not interested in these options).

If you already have the Install macOS High Sierra.app application bundle, then the easiest way to install macOS is to create a macOS USB Installer and boot the Mac with it and install from there.  Have a look at: How to create a bootable installer for macOS

The startosinstall command that is within the e.g. Install macOS High Sierra.app application bundle is what you need to use:

$ /path/to/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --usage
Usage: startosinstall

Arguments
--applicationpath, a path to copy of the OS installer application to start the install with.
--license, prints the user license agreement only.
--agreetolicense, agree to license the license you printed with --license.
--rebootdelay, how long to delay the reboot at the end of preparing. This delay is in seconds and has a maximum of 300 (5 minutes).
--pidtosignal, Specify a PID to which to send SIGUSR1 upon completion of the prepare phase. To bypass "rebootdelay" send SIGUSR1 back to startosinstall.
--converttoapfs, specify either YES or NO on if you wish to convert to APFS.
--installpackage, the path of a package to install after the OS installation is complete; this option can be specified multiple times.
--usage, prints this message.

Example: startosinstall --converttoapfs YES
$

Note: The Arguments shown above I believe are when the --usage was done when running macOS normally, not from Recovery HD, so there may be some additional Arguments shown when run from the Recovery HD.

Here is an example of the command I used on one of my systems when booted from a macOS USB Installer with a separate copy of the Install macOS High Sierra.app application bundle on it:

/path/to/Install\ macOS\ High\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall --agreetolicense  --volume /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD'

Note: The startosinstall command used was the one in the copy of the Install macOS High Sierra.app application bundle that I copied to the macOS USB Installer after it was created, not the one that gets written to the macOS USB Installer when it's created.


"Verify Contact Information" in Apple Pay I am trying to use ApplePay for the first time. I have a link set up with my debit card, and verified that with the bank.
Now in the web page of the vendor from whom I wish to make a purchase, I clicked the Apple Pay option to display a Apple Pay dialog. That dialog shows my credit card info. But it has a red error message at bottom saying "Verify Contact Information". The "Contact" field has red letters "PHONE NUMBER REQUIRED".
I have no idea whose phone number it wants, nor what I should do next.

The support link doesn’t spell this out well, but in my experience this has always been about the billing address no zip code / postal code or other oddities where the data you enter for Apple doesn’t translate perfectly to the seller via API.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204506

You want to add your phone number like a courier service (FedEx) would ring for delivery issues. Examine any odd characters in your address or postal code (in the US, Apple wanted zip+4 but I had to get them to remove it since many vendors couldn’t handle a - or more than 5 digits.
Sometimes you can add the info as a one time override right before paying. I’ve found that unreliable and fixing my info with Apple was more reliable of a fix.


macOS Disable mouse acceleration in certain apps Is there a way to disable mouse acceleration in certain apps? For instance disable in Team Fortress 2 but re-anable when the app doesn't have focus?

You can globally use the following command in Terminal (you must log out to take effect):

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling -1

To know what the current acceleration is, use this command:

defaults read .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling

For most mice in macOS, the default is set to 3 or 2 but some users may find values as low as 0.25 or 0.12, it generally depends on what type of mouse you are having and the current version of macOS. The moderate value is 0 to 3.

defaults write .GlobalPreferences com.apple.mouse.scaling 0

Look at this useful AD post: How to disable mouse acceleration in Yosemite?

Also, for TF2 game you can definitely use Apple Automator: How to Use Automator in macOS

  ¡Hope this helps!


Looking for deleted files on Photos I deleted photos and then looked for them under Photos, File, Show Recently Deleted, but the message says "no recently deleted." Where are the deleted files??  Thanks!

Depending on how many photos you deleted and the age of your Mac, it may take a moment or two to populate the list.  In the meantime, the dialog does show "No Recently Deleted". Also, photos auto delete after 30 days so keep that in mind. (In your original post, you don't specify when you deleted the photos.)
I hope this helps.


Time capsule with Samsung Galaxy Note 8 I just bought a Galaxy note 8 and I am trying to access my files on my apple time capsule.  I just got my macbook air last christmas so I am not to familiar with how to use everything just yet.  I can access my files on my time capsule through my macbook and my husband can through his pc.  Is there a feature that needs to be enabled on the time capsule or my note for this connection to work?

The only feature that needs to be enabled on the Time Capsule is the file sharing feature.

This will activate AFP and SMB Filesharing which allows your Mac, PC and Android Device to access the Time Capsule and use it as a NAS (basically the Time Capsule is a glorified NAS).

To access your file on the Time Capsule you need a SMB client for Android such as ES File Explorer:

Access the menu and select the LAN tab.
Perform a network scan and after a few seconds the time capsule should appear:

Select the computer and enter the login credentials to access your Time Capsule (username and password for the Time Capsule). You should see a folder that is named after the partition you see in the AirPort Utility when enabling the file sharing feature.


Finding Peak Memory Bandwidth on MacBook Pro I am required to find the peak memory bandwidth for a 2016 MacBook Pro. Where can I find this information?

Your 2016 MacBook, depending on the model, uses either 1866 or 2133 DDR3 memory (1866 is used by the non-touchbar model, the others use 2133.)

This number refers to the data rate of the memory, in MT/s (millions of transfers per second) per channel. DDR3 specifies a 64 bit wide bus, and MacBooks utilize dual channel memory: thus, the total memory bandwidths are 238.848 Gb/s (29.856 GB/s) and 273.024 Gb/s (34.128 GB/s.) Note however that all of these computers use LPDDR3, which may result in lower than advertised bandwidth. In practice, you probably won't seem these speeds, but it provides an upper limit.

If you'd like to test the bandwidth, Novabench offers features to test the actual bandwidth of your machine, though there seem to be mixed results based on reviews (Novabench reported 15.6% of my theoretical speed, which seems suspiciously low.) You may have better luck with Bandwidth, though you'll have to install dependencies and compile it yourself.

Primary source.


Anyone else having issues with the weather app? So I jail role with the new evasi0n tool and now I can't launch my weather app. Anyone else experiencing similar problems?

This has been noted on a couple of blogs.
The jailbreak screwed up some files. There is a fix which requires you to:

( taken from cult of mac

Open Cydia and install Open SSH and MobileTerminal
Load MobileTerminal and type “su root” (no quotes). Then hit enter.
Enter your password. It’s probably “alpine” if you haven’t changed it yet.
Copy and paste the following script into MobileTerminal

#!/bin/bash
chmod -x /usr/libexec/mobile_installation_proxy
killall -9 mobile_installation_proxy
rm /var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.mobile.installation.plist /var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices-045.csstore
launchctl stop com.apple.mobile.installd
launchctl start com.apple.mobile.installd
while [ ! -f /var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.mobile.installation.plist ];
do
sleep 1
done
while [ ! -f /var/mobile/Library/Caches/com.apple.LaunchServices-045.csstore ];
do
sleep 1
done
sleep 10
chmod +x /usr/libexec/mobile_installation_proxy

sync

reboot
5. Wait for your iPhone to reboot.
6. Have fun, you’re done.
For info on how to jailbreak your iPhone the right way, check out our video.

Read more at http://www.cultofmac.com/214443/heres-how-to-fix-your-ios-weather-app-that-was-broken-by-the-evasion-jailbreak/#xR7kVryBZBXPmMAd.99
)


Has any Macbook ever had a lightning port? I seem to remember a Lightning port being on a Macbook (probably the 12-inch ones) but cannot find mention of it anywhere. I "remember" a YouTube video (not from who though) that mentioned the lightning port, but people were irritated that it was only able to charge it, not do anything else. Am I just remembering stupid, never-true stuff, or was this real?

No. Apple laptops have USB-C and Thunderbolt ports (the 12” MacBook has a USB-C port), but Lightning ports are only found as charging and data ports on Apple’s mobile devices.


In OS X 10.6 how do you mount an AFP share at boot or before user login? Is there a way to mount an AFP share at boot so it is accessible to the system without a user logged in?

I would like to run scripts via SSH or as a daemon on boot that check files on my AFP share. Unfortunately, the shares don't mount until a user logs in.

Not sure that you can.  I would think for security reasons a user has to be logged in, so that a set of credentials can be used.  There's probably some scripts that are run pre-login though, so I suppose if you specify your credentials in there it would be fine.


How do I revert Gmail back to normal after I switched to HTML by mistake? I accidentally switched my Gmail to HTML. I want to go back but don't know how on my iPhone 6s.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and select "Standard".


How to create "Drag to Applications Folder" in dmg? I wrote a piece of software and I host it online as a downloadable dmg file. When the dmg is mounted, you can open it like a regular folder. The user then needs to drag the software from the dmg folder to their computer (their Desktop or the Applications folder)-- simply double clicking on the software executable while its inside the dmg does not work.
Many users do not read the install instructions. They tell me the software does not work, because they did not drag it onto their computer.
I have noticed that a lot of polished software comes as a downloadable dmg, but when you mount it the dmg, it specifically asks you to drag the software to your Applications folder, like in the image below.
How can I do this? I am currently using Disk Manager to create my dmgs.

Here is a roadmap:

Create an empty folder.

Give it a good name.

Put your app in the folder.

Create an alias of /Applications in the folder.

Change the name of the alias to " ".

Resize the folder to your taste.

Give a suitable background image to the folder. See these instructions for instance.

Create the dmg from the folder.


Apple Script - send (insert screenshot from clipboard?) & theTime to imessagebuddy I have an automator workflow starting with "Take ScreenShot" to take screenshot and paste to clipboard.

Following that I have

set theTime to time string of (current date)

tell application "Messages"
    set iMessageService to 1st service whose service type = iMessage
    set imessagebuddy to buddy "imessagebuddy@domain.com" of iMessageService
    send theTime to imessagebuddy
end tell

I want to include the screenshot in the message with the time.

Here is a way to take the screenshot from the clipboard and send it in Messages.

Example AppleScript code:

if ((clipboard info) as string) contains JPEG picture then

    set jpgData to the clipboard as JPEG picture
    set fileName to "/tmp/IMG_" & (random number from 1000 to 9999) & ".JPG" as string

    try
        set thisFile to open for access POSIX file fileName with write permission
        write jpgData to thisFile
        close access thisFfile
    on error
        close access thisFile
        return
    end try

    set theTime to time string of (current date)
    set thePicture to POSIX file fileName as alias

    tell application "Messages"
        set iMessageService to 1st service whose service type = iMessage
        set imessagebuddy to buddy "imessagebuddy@domain.com" of iMessageService
        send theTime to imessagebuddy
        send thePicture to imessagebuddy
    end tell

    tell application "System Events"
        delete alias fileName
    end tell

end if

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not employ any other error handling then what's shown and is meant only to show one of many ways accomplish a task. The onus is always upon the User to add/use appropriate error handling as needed/wanted.


CPU and RAM usage statistics for iPhone/iOS (similar to Activity Monitor)? Is there any (preferably free) way to view CPU and RAM usage by process (e.g. app) on iPhone without jailbreaking the device?
Activity Monitor on macOS displays

Process Name
% CPU (per core I believe)
CPU Time
Threads

and some other CPU statistics, as well as these RAM statistics:

Process Name
Memory (GB)
Threads

It would be great to know how to view similar statistics on iPhone.

I use CPU-x Dasher for this. It displays :

CPU usage, frequency time
RAM usage (free/used/reserved…)
Benchmark took (not that much features but it’s still a benchmark)
Networks/Sensors data
And all of this can be integrated on a widget

It’s still limited compared to some Android apps and it has a lot of ads but it’s the best I could find yet.


How to remove partition on SD card using a Mac? I got Raspbian on a SD card, and then accidentally wiped it. Now I have 2 visible partition. How do I get rid of the partition on a Mac.

The diskutil command on macOS is incredibly powerful and can do all that you need. (You can run the following in the Terminal app.)

Find your SD card:

$ diskutil list

...or:

$ diskutil list external physical

On the right, under IDENTIFIER, you'll see your disk labeled like disk2 or disk3, etc. You can use that label to reference your SD card from now on. I'm going to use disk2 for my example commands, but make sure you use your actual identifier.

For a board like the Raspberry Pi, you'll want FAT32 with MBR (Master Boot Record). Run:

$ diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 RASPBIAN MBRFormat disk2

...making sure disk2 is your SD card identifier from earlier. RASPBIAN can be anything. It'll name the Volume, which is what you'll see once it's mounted. The eraseDisk command will handle unmounting and remounting of the disk, so you don't need to worry about that.

That should be all that you need. You will end up with one FAT32 partition. It will look something like the following if you run diskutil list external:

/dev/disk2 (external, physical)
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *15.8 GB    disk2
   1:                 DOS_FAT_32 RASPBIAN                15.8 GB    disk2s1

You can then copy over the Raspbian NOOBS files to the SD card.

If you want to fully zero out or randomize your SD card, you can run:

$ diskutil unmountDisk disk2

...and then:

$ diskutil zeroDisk disk2

...or:

$ diskutil randomDisk disk2

(The zeroDisk/randomDisk command seems to prefer an unmountDisk command beforehand.)

Afterwords, you'll need to run that eraseDisk command from earlier to format it in order to be able to use the SD card.

Many other commands are available. Run man diskutil to see them all (q to quit the manual page).


Transferring files between two Apple ID accounts I am currently in a joint Apple ID account and I'd like to transfer the files and data in my iPhone to a new individual account I created. My iCloud storage is completely full up on the joint account.

Q: Is there a way to transfer my data onto my Mac or a new iCloud server so I can put them onto my new Apple ID account?

I guess each Apple ID has a dedicated iCloud account.  Login and logout with each individual Apple ID from your MAC and use terminal to access all the documents belong to each Apple ID that are stored in the iCloud . After you access the iCloud account you can move files from the iCloud account to your personal Desktop or anywhere you want.

Try the following Terminal commands:

cd ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs
mv fileName.ext folderName


How do you get a list of all your Game Center accounts? I need to know what the original account was for my Clash of Clans is so I may transfer to another device. Any suggestions? I have tried multiple times trying to find through my emails with no luck. Can Game Center email a list of my CoC account?

The Gamecenter tokens are saved in your keychain.

Open it in search for it (Game). It will list all accounts you have.

com.apple.account.AppleID.appleid-token-gamecenter


Can I stop migration from my PC to new MacBook Pro without loosing what has already migrated? Can I stop migration from my PC to my MacBook pro without loosing what has already migrated? I did not unplug my external drive and it is now migrating the backup.

Since Migration Assistant tool has no pause / suspend button (and in the past when it did, it deleted the files and cleaned up if my memory is correct) you might get unexpected results on one or more files if you abort things.

Cancelled wireless Migration Assistant... best way to start over?
iMac-to-iMac Migration was interrupted; Now, source iMac is reading as 0.0GB
Migration Assistant moved files to inaccesible new account, how to get to my old files?

As you can see, even Mac to Mac transfers which are supposed to survive a disconnect are sometimes not resilient. I believe a PC to Mac transfer is much simpler and akin to copying files, so you might only have one file that got corrupted if you interrupt things.

If you abort the transfer, all the files will be copied, but there is no guarantee they left a workable user account. In almost all cases, you can then log in and get to the files that have transferred, but you will want to clean things up / hand move things to the correct location.

Since Migration Assistant doesn't move an entire PC user over, you might be fine with what transferred, but you have no way of knowing what has been transferred without puling the plug (so to speak).


Cinch doesn't work | How do I enable access to assistive devices in OS X 10.9 Mavericks? Cinch requires us to "Enable access to assistive devices". However this option is not found on OS X Mavericks > System Preferences. Where can I find it?

Open System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility > "Click the lock to make changes" > Select "Cinch"


How to bypass Touch ID provided access to the iCloud account? If a user has Touch ID on. Then he loses his finger, or dies. How to unlock the phone? Provided he or his family know the iCloud password.

Since you have the iPhone password you can unlock the iPhone.

Without the iPhone password (or the finger...) (even if you have the Apple ID password) you will not be able gain access to the phone. You can however wipe the phone and use the Apple ID to unlock the phone from Activation Lock.

Since you have both you can you can wipe the phone and start from new.


Very small type size upon starting evince pdf viewer I use evince as pdf viewer but when I start it running, the type is very small (about 10%) although 100% is written.

Looking at  Configure Evince to open maximized with 100% zoom level?, I tried the following commands to solve the problem without success:

the following command does not change anything

gsettings set org.gnome.Evince.Default zoom 1.5

the following command is not a valid command

gsettings get org.gnome.Evince zoom

You can set defaults from within Evince ("Hamburger" menu > Save Current Settings as Defaults)
Settings are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/evince.plist, so defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/evince.plist "/org/gnome/evince/default/zoom" 1.5 does the same as gsettings does on Linux.

Setting the zoom level to 200% and then saving the current settings will lead to evince to open with 200% the next time. Window size isn't preserved though so it may or may not be helpful.


Backup and Sync has encountered a fatal error, and will now terminate. Mid 2011 iMac - High Sierra I recently updated my 27in Mid 2011 iMac to a 1Tb SSD HD and to High Sierra. Now I don't have access to my Google drive :(

I've been looking everywhere and have found no solution to this. Can anyone help?

More details from the error:

"An uncaught exception was raised during execution of the main script.

This may mean that an unexpected error has occurred, or that you do not have all of the dependencies for this application.

See the Console for a detailed traceback."

Two errors I can see in the Console:

[ERROR] - Unknown CGXDisplayDevice: 0x41dc9d00

volume validation failed for <<(null)>>

Any ideas?

Had the same problem, now solved. ~/Library/Application Support/Google belongs to root. Either change privileges:

sudo chmod a+wx ~/Library/"Application Support"/Google

Or change owner:

sudo chown NameOfMyAccount ~/Library/"Application Support"/Google


Changing Preview.app's default View state in Lion One thing I dislike about Preview.app in Lion is its defaulting to Continuous Scroll as the view option when a new PDF document opens. My recollection is that previous behaviour was for the last-used view state to be honoured subsequently, and I would prefer if this applied in Lion also (my personal preference being for Single Page), or if the default could be changed.

Elsewhere, I have seen reference to a Terminal command which was stated as addressing this, but it does not work for me. The command in question is defaults write com.apple.Preview PVPDFDisplayMode 1 (with a suggested variation of defaults write com.apple.Preview PVPDFDisplayMode -int 1), which is supposed to change the default to Single Page. As I say, this does not work for me, and Preview stubbornly continues to default to Continuous Scroll.

Can anybody help?

A preference for changing the default view mode was added in 10.8:

I don't know any way to change the default view mode in 10.7.


Does an iPhone throttle its CPU under heavy load? I noticed some Android devices clock down after a while. So they only may perform at peak performance for a single benchmark. Is this also true for iOS devices? How do they behave under heavy load, like exporting a 4K video? Does the performance decrease?

I know that under high or low temperatures the iPhone will shut itself off. But does it also throttle itself before reaching that point?

Ars Technica has run some extensive tests on iPad Air and iPhone 5s finding that:

  The iPhone 5S throttles sharply after about two minutes, while the iPad Air maintains more consistent CPU performance.

This is likely due to the greater thermal capacity of the iPad Air, given the same CPU.

Similar tests on iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ demonstrate that the A8 greatly improves on the A7 with respect to maintaining its rated clock speed, while also throttling less aggressively than the A7.

It’s still nothing like the straight line Phil Schiller highlighted during the big reveal, however:

Tests on the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s+ reveal that the A9 improves even further upon the A8:

Generally, the iPhone+ model throttles later than the standard model due to the larger heat dissipation surface:

Sadly they didn’t run similar tests on the A10 Fusion, but it stands to reason that they would follow the same trend, especially thanks to the small cores allowing the big ones to idle more frequently. This of course would not be reflected in intensive tests, but would have an impact in daily use. Since they get more idling time, the big cores also get more opportunity to cool down, and therefore run at peak performance whenever called upon.

Finally, Ars Technica discovered that Apple’s chips throttle far less aggressively than Qualcomm’s (used in many high-end Android devices):

  The Nexus 4 couldn't even make it through our entire benchmark suite
  (though it's worth noting that later hardware revisions improved this
  somewhat—a Rev 1.1 Nexus 4 purchased in May throttled less and ran
  cooler than our Rev 1.0 Nexus 4 from last November).

Not only that, Qualcomm’s chips have been shown to jump down to the LITTLE cores when throttling, which degrades performance even further:

  When it throttles, it will occasionally switch from the “big” ARM
  Cortex A57 cores to the “little” ARM Cortex A53 cores. Even though the
  little cores could generally run at higher clock speeds than the big
  cores while the test was running, they can process fewer instructions
  per clock, making them slower overall.

  The 810 throttles so quickly that the 805 and even the 801 can beat
  the 810 when performing sustained workloads.


Catalina's zsh and its .zshrc file I am trying hard to wrap my head around zsh "upgrade" from bash in macOS Catalina. Most of the things are great, actually. However, I cannot figure out why I am experiencing difficulties, like accessing Anaconda rather than built in Python despite the fact that I put the path to it:

# Anaconda3 2019.10
export PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/anaconda3/bin:$PATH"

But if I have this too, under Anaconda's path, then the system does not "see" Anaconda anymore (I've commented it out, for now):

# Local path:
# export PATH="/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

Also, I have some odd line added to gcc (again, I commented out the odd line):

# Setting gcc compiler
export PATH="/usr/local/gcc-9.2/bin:$PATH"
# export CC="/usr/local/gcc-9.2/bin"

With lines commented out things are working now. But can anyone explain what is wrong in them and what, specifically, export CC should to on top of the export PATH line?

Thanks!

Since the variable setting you want to achieve are both to be run
once only per session and not for every subshell, you have to place
their initialisation definition within .zprofile and not within .zshrc.

Here are the fixed version of your settings which should work:

# Anaconda3 2019.10
export PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/anaconda3/bin:${PATH}:/usr/local/bin"

Here my explanation is I bet you have 2 versions of anaconda the older one being located within /usr/local/bin.

# Setting gcc compiler
export PATH="/usr/local/gcc-9.2/bin:${PATH}"
export CC="/usr/local/gcc-9.2/bin/gcc"

Here my explanation is that the CC variable should contain not the PATH
where to find gcc but the exact pathname of the compiler.

If you want to check the correctness of your modifications, don't exit your session. Just enter in any terminal:

. ~/.zprofile


The Download Preview window in the Dock - how to change sequence Since 10.11, the order of items in the Downloads folder in the Dock has changed to alphabetic. Is it possible to change it to show by date?

Thanks

Yup! Control+click on the folder on the dock, and select Sort by Date Added.


localhost loads default apache page I'm setting up a localhost and everything looks like it should work but whenever I go to site.local it loads the default Apache localhost page (It works!).

Here's a copy of my hosts file:

##
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting. Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1    localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1 localhost
fe80::1%1o0 localhost

#####
 DEV
#####
# SITE
127.0.0.1    site.local
::1          www.site.local

and my vhost:

<VirtualHost *:8080>
    ServerAdmin test@test.com
    ServerName site.local
    DocumentRoot "/Users/me/site"
    ErrorLog "/Applications/MAMP/logs/site.local-error_log"
    CustomLog "/Applications/MAMP/logs/site.local-access_log" common
    <Directory "/Users/me/site">
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Things I've done to make sure it isn't a user error:

uncommented the line in the httpd.conf file to include my vhost file
used apachectl configtest to test my file (came back saying syntax OK)

Things to note:

I use port 8080 and 3307 for Apache and MYSQL
If I go to site.local:8080 it loads but doesn't render the elements as it should (instead loads the elements of the html in a list format)
this is off a FRESH install of MAMP
OS: OS X Yosemite version 10.10.5
MAMP Version: 3.5

I just don't see what's going wrong... any ideas?

UPDATE

localhost works as it should with port 80. 8080 = the default apache page, but 80 loads the site pages...

Based on your comment that when you go to site.local:8080 you get a white page with the words "It Works!" similar to the screen capture below

What you are seeing is the webpage based on the global server configuration where the DocumentRoot is whatever default MAMP is set for.

You mention in your OP that

  If I go to site.local:8080 it loads but doesn't render the elements as it should (instead loads the elements of the html in a list format)

Apache isn't going to render your webpage as a HTML list (unless you tell it to).  More than likely what you are seeing is a directory listing similar to this:

You get that listing because of the line Options Indexes FollowSymLinks in your httpd.conf file.  If you want to disable this, remove the word Indexes from that line and the listing will no longer show up.

Your Virtual Host Configuration

First, we need to understand how Apache handles virtual host requests.  From the Apache documentation:

  When a request arrives, the server will find the best (most specific)
  matching  argument based on the IP address and port used
  by the request. If there is more than one virtual host containing this
  best-match address and port combination, Apache will further compare
  the ServerName and ServerAlias directives to the server name present
  in the request.

  If you omit the ServerName directive from any name-based virtual host,
  the server will default to a fully qualified domain name (FQDN)
  derived from the system hostname. This implicitly set server name can
  lead to counter-intuitive virtual host matching and is discouraged.

If you notice, your host that is defined the global server configuration is the same as the virtual host.

This is probably where you are getting your error.

Now, my fix for this is a bit more involved initially, but infinitely more efficient because I try to avoid turing my machine into both a client and a server.  I do all my development on a Mac with a Virtual Machine running my AMP server.  This way I can mirror my production environment much closer and I don't have unnecessary services (like Apache and MySQL) running on OS X; they are all relegated to the VM.  The VM has it's own IP, own server name, everything so when I point my browser to it, I know what results to expect.

I have a write up on how to install a FreeBSD VM on VirtualBox running on a Mac that has autostart enabled.  If you are interested, I can share it with you.


update programs installed by other user (other appleID) I use a mac install before by another user. This user installed some application like iphoto with this appleID.

Now this user does not use this computer, and I want update the applications he install before. I have my own AppleID. when I ask to update application the system say me I can't do that because this application was install by another appleID.

I dont want to uninstall the programs, because than I will have to buy them anew. Do I have any other way of updating accept asking for the old user for his password time and time again? Cant I somehow "move" these programs from his ID to mine?

Thanks

I had the same problem, and it worked: Apple App Store: Grayed out Aapple Id Explained - Valiant:

  Go to the app listed in the App Store as needing an update (usually in the /Applications folder).
  Right click the app then click “Show Package Contents”.
  Go into the “Contents” folder, then into the “_MASReceipt” folder.
  Delete the “receipt” file (you may need to enter a local administrator 5. username and password).
  Please note that the app will still work as intended.


Does Time machine backup apps data and OS configuration? Does Time machine backup apps data and OS configuration or just apps and files?

Coming from Windows with a 3rd party full disk image backup(Note :I mean a disk clone, not the Windows' default backup an restore and functionality) , I would expect to be able to use time machine to restore the mac as it was in the moment I made a time machine backup.

I am honestly not aware how apps store data on MacOS though

Simple answer is yes.

Time Machine essentially creates incremental backups from everything. Can roll back folders and files to previous points - a more detailed explanation can be found on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Machine_(macOS) or setup a new Mac or reinstall Mac OS from a time machine backup detailed at Apple Support page here https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203981


Hide new "play" icon in menu bar after upgrading to Big Sur I recently upgraded to Big Sur and I now have a media player icon which I don't really use or need. Is there any way to hide it?
It's the far left icon in the screenshot below:

You can hide the "play" icon in the menu bar as follows:

Launch System Preferences.

Open Dock & Menu Bar.

Scroll down and select "Now Playing".

The "Show in Menu Bar" option controls whether the "play" icon is displayed

Unselect it to hide it for good, or change the value to "when active" to only display it when playing music.


MacOS - Where is Terminal themes/profiles utilized by Terminal.app on disk? I know i can export a profile, i can then use it, but if I modify it, i have to export it again, to have a proper backup.

I'd rather have a symlink to the actual file in use by terminal rather than an exported version of it I have to constantly re-export when i wish to backup my system.

However, I can not find the location where Terminal uses the imported themes. Where does it put them?

Anyone?

The properties of themes and profiles are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist in the key Windows Settings/[Name of the Profile]:

Obviously only diffs to a hidden default profile (it's not the Basic profile!) are stored.

In the example above I made a copy Basic 1 of the Basic theme and arbitrarly disabled and enabled settings in the various tabs.

The initial settings for the various default profiles (Basic, Man Page, Ocean etc.) are stored in the app itself:

/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app/Contents/Resources/Initial Settings/

The *.terminal files are basically XML-files. They are imported into the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist as sub-items on the first launch of Terminal.app.


How do I enable SSH server on startup through Terminal? Curious as to how I can enable the sshd to start on startup solely using terminal. The GUI is great and everything but it doesn't go well with my bash scripts.

The short answer on how to enable sshd from the terminal is doing this:

sudo systemsetup -setremotelogin on

The long answer on how to execute daemons or scripts on startup is a bit longer. There are two ways (that I know of) to do this:

The first one is through Startup Items, which are executed at the final phase of bootup, these are deprecated and shouldn't be used unless you need compatibility with Mac OS X 10.3 or earlier. You can take a look at how to do it this way in here.
The second one is launchd, a replacement for init and rc (among others). This is the recommended way and it's a bit trickier than just putting a script on a folder like in Linux. There are several ways to launch daemons, the preferred way it to launch them on demand (so they will be ready to launch but you won't see them in a ps for example, unless you are using them). The explanation is a bit lengthly and the list of options is long, you can take a look at the documentation here. You can take a look in /Library/LaunchAgents for examples, if you have Chrome installed, there is a file in there for the Google Software Updater called com.google.keystone.agent.plist, that runs at load time, you can start there.


Shortcut of zooming out in Notes I am using a french keyboard in MacBook Pro. The followings are shortcuts in Notes. Zoom In works perfectly, whereas Zoom Out by Shift + command + , does not work.

Does anyone know what's wrong?

This is because of a bug, shift + command + , is equal to the command that checks grammar/misspelled words (command + ;).
To fix it, follow this link to a guide, but as Application, select Notes, and as Menu Title, type Zoom Out, and in the Keyboard Shortcut field, do any key combination you like, log out of your user account, log in again, and you’re done...


How to use AppleScript to launch three scripts, each in new Terminal tab? I'm trying to launch 3 tabs and run a script in each with AppleScript. So far I haven't been able to get this done.  Currently I have:

tell application "Terminal"
    activate
    do script "ping google.com"
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke "t" using {command down}
        do script "ping yahoo.com"
    end tell
    tell application "System Events"
        keystroke "t" using {command down}
        do script "ping msn.com"
    end tell
end tell

This will launch three tabs but the pings don't execute in the last two tabs.

I'm probably missing something basic here.

"System Events" doesn't understand what you want to do with do script, use the do script command outside of the tell application "System Events" block.

You must specify a window or tab when using the do script command, otherwise a new window will open.

tell application "Terminal"
    activate
    do script "ping google.com" in front window
    my makeTab()
    do script "ping yahoo.com" in front window
    my makeTab()
    do script "ping msn.com" in front window
end tell

on makeTab()
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "t" using {command down}
    delay 0.2
end makeTab


How to create a recovery key for an encrypted disk image? FileVault 2 is computing a recovery key when I decide to activate this security mode. This recovery key is a mandatory safety belt when someone wants to use serious cryptography.

Is it possible to create a recovery key in the same way for a crypted disk image created with Disk Utility or hdiutil?

I'm searching a solution around hdiutil for Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks and which could stand on future versions of MacOS X.

It is possible to do this using hdiutil and openssl.  The essence of the solution is to use the -certificate option of hdiutil.  This field expects a DER formatted certificate that will be used during the encryption.  The certificate can be used later to decrypt the volume via the -recover option of hdutil.

10 year duration is used on the certificates below, you could use longer terms if desired.  I haven't tested the effect of an expired certificate on the ability to decrypt the volume.

Fully test that you can decrypt using the recovery certificate before entrusting the encrypted volume with your data!

The steps are:

Create a Certificate Authority (CA) that will be used to sign your recovery certificate.  You will be asked for a password.  This should be unique for this signing key.  The CA created can be used to sign many certificates.

% openssl genrsa -des3 -out ca.key 4096
% openssl req -new x509 -days 3650 -key ca.key -out ca.crt

Create a password protected certificate signing request (csr).  The password requested in this step is your "recovery key".

% openssl genrsa -des3 -out recovery.key 4096
% openssl req -new -key recovery.key -out recovery.csr

Create the signed certificate in PEM format.

% openssl x509 -req -days 3650 -in recovery.csr \
-CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -set_serial 01 -out recovery.crt

Convert the signed certificate to DER format

% openssl x509 -in recovery.crt -inform pem \
-out recovery.der -outform der

Bundle the PEM certificate and private key into a PKCS#12 package. This package can be later imported into the keychain on a mac where a volume needs to be recovered. Protect this package as it can be used to access any volume encrypted using the contained certificate. For example, put it onto a thumb drive that is kept in a secure location.

% openssl pkcs12 -export -in recovery.crt -inkey recovery.key -out recovery.p12

Use hdiutil with both the -agentpass and -certificate options to create the encrypted volume.

% hdiutil create -type SPARSE -encryption aes-256 \
-certificate ~/recovery.der -agentpass -fs HFS+J \
-volname "Secure Docs" -size 20g ~/Secure

More discussion on this topic can be found at: http://thelowedown.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/data-encryption-for-mac-osx-sparse-images-with-enterprise-recovery/

The directions above are a combination of my own notes on creating certificates for websites plus instructions at the site above.


Force stuborn drive to unmount I have a single partition disk whose filesystem will not mount properly. I don't care about the data and I would like to try reformatting the disk but I keep getting errors related to a failure unmounting the drive. I have tried the following in both normal and recovery mode:

reformatting in the Disk Utility GUI
sudo diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk3 GPT JHFS+ New 0b
sudo diskutil unmountDisk force /dev/rdisk3
sudo fdisk -i -a hfs /dev/rdisk3
sudo gpt destroy /dev/rdisk3

All of these attempts have yielded errors either saying that the "drive can not be unmounted" or that the "resource is busy". Is this indicative of a hardware issue in the drive as opposed to just a corrupt file system? Is there anything else I can try?

The issue persisted across multiple macs but Windows 7's Disk Management tool didn't seem to have any issues creating a new partition table. Afterwards the drive worked as expected on OS X.


Remove file icon from toolbar I don't know how the shortcut file icon got stuck on the toolbar

Any idea how to remove it?

Right click the toolbar and select "Customize toolbar", then drag the icon away from it.


safari IOS menu bar conflicts with buttons in lower 10% of the screen I am building a web-portal which has to be functional and pretty on multiple platforms.
One of the platforms is IOS Safari, and this is were I encountered a problem.
In my code I align two floating buttons to the bottom of a div with a width and height of 100%
This all works fine and my buttons show up exactly like they are supposed to on the bottom of the page.
However when I click the buttons the compact view from mobile safari switches to full view and my buttons are hidden behind the bottom nav bar!

Is it normal behavior for safari mobile to show the expanded menu when the user taps in the bottom 10% of the screen?
How can I avoid this?

In this gif you can see the problem on the IOS simulator:

As you can see the problem only occurs when a button is in the lower 10% of the view. This is just a normal button, My code was triple checked by several developers and it has no errors.

I think I may have found an answer. Setting your content to have the following styles:

height: 100% (allows content to fill the viewport and go beyond the bottom)
overflow-y: scroll (allows you to scroll below the viewport; the default value is visible)
-webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch (to smooth any scroll behavior)

appears to force the iOS menu in Safari to always appear. That way, button clicks will actually work instead of opening up the Safari menu. Hope this helps!


Can Siri play a recent iTunes Radio station without an Apple Music subscription? I have an old iPad 2 and an iPhone 4s. It's about time for me to upgrade from iOS 7, so I started with the iPad. I saw that the Music app has changed, and the Radio section doesn't show my stations like it used to, it just has them in a big "Recents" list. I currently use Siri on my iPhone 4s to play from my stations. Would I still have this ability with iOS 9?

Note: This was originally asked prior to Apple ending iTunes Radio for non-subscribers.

It looks like you still can play your iTunes Radio stations from Siri. From what I understand, you're correct in your observation that you no longer can view all of your stations outside of the "Recently Played" section, but Siri can both create new stations and play existing ones on command.

I tried playing/creating stations through Siri a few times on my iPhone 6+ running iOS 9, with these results:

When I tried to play an Owl City radio station I had previously created, and told it, "Play my Owl City station on iTunes Radio," it played Beats 1. But this worked (and created a new Owl City station instead):

To make sure that things were working the way I thought they were, I also tried playing a Taylor Swift station I had recently created. This time, it played the station without creating a new one.

Unfortunately, you can't just say, "Play my most recent radio station," and expect it to play your most recent station. Instead, in my experience, it jumps to Beats 1, what Siri calls its "favorite radio station." You can see the Music app cueing it up in the background thanks to Siri's translucent new appearance.


High Sierra - The path /System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg appears to be missing or damaged Got the following error

  The path /System/Installation/Packages/OSInstall.mpkg appears to be
  missing or damaged

while upgrading Mac Mini (Late 2012) to High Sierra. The only option on the screen is to restart, after which the same error pops up. Tried some suggestions from google search and none of it is working

Tried booting to recovery and using disk utility to repair/firstaid
   but disk utility is struck in discovering state spinner for one hour
Using terminal in recovery mode to check the disk and repair permissions and SMART status all are reported fine
Tried diagnostics and it reported all good
Internet recovery stuck at globe 3:30 remaining time for past 5 hours
Tried booting to safe mode which is stuck at apple logo for past 7 hours

What is the next setup in this case, I have Time Machine backup but it was 1 week old and there are some important unbacked files that I cannot afford to lose

Same error happened to me when I received an update from 10.13.1 to 10.13.2.

If you boot with shift button pressed, you will be able to enter safe mode and try to download and reinstall an update.
It did not help to me so I booted holding Option key and chosen regular Mac HD (not an update volume). Booted to my Mac without safe mode and tried to reinstall this update. Somehow it worked out in several reboots.


How do you delete the Apple ID of a dead person? I need to delete the Apple ID of my dads iPad. He died and I don't know his password.

As far as I know the only way to remove an iCloud password is to contact Apple with the relevant documentation.

This link has some contact details

https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT204169


Can I copy a recovery partition from an HD to an SSD? I installed an SSD in the optical bay of my mid-2009 MacBook Pro. I formatted it and copied most of the files from my HD and it works fine but wound up having no Recovery partition. I followed the instructions at How can I create or recreate a Lion recovery partition? but at the end of the process I get this error:

Error (async): File system check on boot helper partition failed (-69840)

diskutil list shows me this:

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *240.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS SteveBook2 SSD          239.2 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot                         650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS SteveBook2 HD           749.3 GB   disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3

So it looks like the SSD has a partition, but the Recovery HD is not installed. Is there any way to copy the Recovery partition from the HD to the SSD? I tried using Carbon Copy Cloner but got this:

I'm really hoping to be able to activate Find My Mac.

Ok, I figured it out.

What are the purposes and safety to enable the hidden debug menu in Disk Utility?
Mount both recovery partitions
Select the HD's recovery partition and use Disk Utility's Restore function to copy it to the SSD's recovery partition
Boot from a USB drive and use the gpt remove/add commands as described at Dmitry Dulepov's blog to change the recovery partition's type from Apple_HFS to Apple_Boot. (Since the partition already existed at the correct size on my SSD I was able to skip the Create a new partition and Fix recovery partition size steps.)

   /dev/disk0
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *240.1 GB   disk0
       1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
       2:                  Apple_HFS SteveBook2 SSD          239.2 GB   disk0s2
       3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD (SSD)       650.0 MB   disk0s3
    /dev/disk1
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *750.2 GB   disk1
       1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk1s1
       2:                  Apple_HFS SteveBook2 HD           749.3 GB   disk1s2
       3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD (HD)        650.0 MB   disk1s3

Find My Mac is now enabled on my MacBook Pro.


Finder window does not remember size. Yosemite Window Finder periodically receives the default size . I updated to Yosemite clean and updated, but it is repeated. Removes p.list, D_Store: sudo find / -name ".DS_Store" -depth -exec rm {} \; contents of folders Preference, the result is 0 the error persists . Who has this bug , is there a solution? Thank you all .

Do a backup in case you mess up. (For experienced users who understand what the next steps do, this can be skipped.)
Open the Finder
Press SHIFT+CMD+G and enter ~/Library/Preferences/. This will open the Preferences folder inside your personal library.
Find the file com.apple.finder.plist and move (drag) it to your desktop.
Re-launch the Finder: Click the Apple icon in the top left corner, select  Force Quit, select Finder and kill it. You can restart, but this is quicker.
If it works okay, delete the plist from the desktop. If not, return the .plist to where you got it from, overwriting the newer one.

This worked for me.

Credits


How do I clear the Diagnostics & Usage data from my iPhone? Settings > General > About > Diagnostics & Usage > Diagnostic & Usage Data

I've elected not to send this data to Apple, so is there a way to clear or delete it?

They are usually deleted when you do a sync.


Dock - Remove spacer? Is there a way to remove the spacer between the downloads stack and apps?

As far as I know, this is not possible through normal means. And by that I mean I doubt you could change this without hacking the OS.

I know you can add spaces:

Adjust width of spacer between Mac OS dock icons

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type"="small-spacer-tile";}' && killall Dock

or

defaults write com.apple.dock persistent-apps -array-add '{"tile-type"="spacer-tile";}'

Those are the only space customizations I am aware of.

I know this is not the answer you were hoping for but I believe it to be the correct answer.


Where can i find and clean up partially downloaded content? Say your download of 17gb application is interrupted and can't continue since you are out of space.

Knowing the application name, where can you look to find parts of what has already been downloaded so you can remove it?

The temporary location that stores downloading files varies between computers. Here's how to find it:

Start a rather large app store download
Open Activity monitor, and select the storedownloadd process. (storeagent for 10.9 and below)
Open the Inspector (press the "i" button, or ⌘+i)
Select the Open Files and Ports tab, and scroll to the bottom
Select the path that starts with /private/var/folders that contains com.apple.appstore from the beginning, up to and including com.apple.appstore
Open Terminal and type open [paste path here] and hit return
From here, you can see all the temporary files the Mac App Store has made. You can get info on each one to see their sizes, and dispose of them accordingly.


What does an "All" nested group do in a "Match All" Smart Playlist? When creating a Smart Playlist, what does placing a "All of the following are true" nested group when the playlist is set to "Match all of the following rules"?

I've tried reading through it logically a few times, and I always end up with it not actually contributing to the flow of the smart playlist. If all the items in the nested group have to be true, and all the items directly under parent must be true, it seems that this configuration would only serve as a way to group similar items to a user's preference.

Is there a logical precedence that I am missing where having a "match all" nested group on the first level of a "match all" smart playlist makes sense?

It appears to simply use Logical AND if you stack like that

eg

vs

Using Any switches it to using Logical OR, so you could, with a bit of juggling get a combination of the two, AND & OR

Edit - I found an example


Mouse not working correctly on Mac login screen For some reason when my mac is at the login screen, moving my external USB mouse will cause the cursor to only move up and down. Once I am logged in, the mouse functions normally. Does anyone know the reason/fix?

Steps I have taken:

Reset SMC/NVRAM
Reinstalled OS
Tried another USB Port

Late 2013 15" MacBook Pro running Yosemite 10.10.3

with iHome wireless USB mouse.

I tested it and mouse works fine without problems on my Windows PC.

I'm assuming this is a USB mouse with a cord? I have seen issues with those not recognizing properly until login when connected through the USB ports on a keyboard, or on laptops. I've always accounted it to the mouse needing more voltage than the USB port is delivering until the user is logged in. This seems to be the case with older mice more often than newer ones.


Is there a way to bring back search the web for spotlight? Spotlight use to be my one stop shop for typing anything that I needed information about. When it would fail, the result saying "search in web" would come up and that was a really nice fallback when that issue occurred because it generally sent me where I needed to go through Google.

Now, Apple has decided that's not going to be a listed item any more thus forcing me to select all, cut everything I had typed, type safari and launch that, possibly open a new tab and paste the search in there. While I would be proud of that little combo of keyboard shortcuts, the old method was five steps faster so I feel a little foolish needing to do this now.

My question: is there a way to re-enable search the web or a tool somewhere in homebrew or github that will give me that back?

Thanks in advance.

You can use Flashlight Spotight plugin and install Google Search plugin. Then You'll be able to search Google inside Spotlight (just add g as a prefix). When You'll want to see the results in web browser, press ⏎ return. Here's an example:


Convert bash script to a compiled standalone binary executable, not text I want to make a Bash script executable by the kernel. I have already used the chmod +x command and #!/bin/bash to make it executable and it works, but that I want to do is make it an executable without an interpreter, like an executable from a compiled app.
Is there any way I can do this? All I need is a way to make by Bash script executable from the macOS kernel itself and I do not need to specify a shebang. I also do not want anyone to be able to open it with text edit or similar and be able to see the code.

I would take a look at a project named shc (Shell script compiler).
https://github.com/neurobin/shc
It takes a shell script and compiles it into C source code. The C source code can then be compiled with a standard C compiler into a binary executable.
This allows you to run the script you've made without the contents of the shell script being immediately revealed in clear text. It would be a binary executable like so many others.
It might take a bit of trial and error to get your specific script parsed by shc depending on how advanced features you're using in your bash script, but this should take you most of the way there.
Note that the program really just encrypts your shell script and integrates it within the binary. When the binary is executed, the script is decrypted and executed using ordinary shell again. For programmers it would be trivial to break this to reveal the contents of your script, but for hiding the script contents from the average home user it would perhaps be sufficient.
If you have HomeBrew installed, you can install shc by running the following command in the Terminal:
brew install shc

Then it's just a matter of running shc to convert your script into a binary:
shc -U -f myscript.sh -o mybinary

The mybinary command is then the finished product.


Activity Monitor No Longer displays columns I have a Mac Mini (late 2012) running Catalina (10.15.3).  I can't remember when I first noticed it, but for a while now, I cannot sort Activity Monitor's columns.  This is essentially what it looks like:

I've tried to find some way if I can perhaps reset its preferences, but google is not my friend.

Can someone help?

You probably can just go to the View menu (the one between Edit and Window), select Columns and add additional columns again (or switch to a simple process view and back to hierarchical).

If this doesn't work, you can remove preferences by

Quitting Activity Monitor
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.ActivityMonitor.plist*


What app to use for high res webcam photo capture? Photo Booth does 640x480. I know the HD webcam on the 2011 MacBook Pros can do better than that. What app can I use for taking full resolution stills?

Kinda roundabout, but you could try this:

Open Quicktime.
Choose File -> New Movie Recording.
On the little down arrow to the right of the record button, choose maximum quality.  Also drag the record button holder to least obtrusive location.
Command-3 to fit to screen.
Take screen shots with command-shift-(3 or 4).


Paste path from clipboard in file dialog I have a full absolute file path on my clipboard (ie: /Users/Noit/Pictures/Screenshot - Jul 9, 2018 3.27 PM.png)

I then go to say Skype or gmail in my web borwser, and click "attach". This opens a file dialog box (screenshot below). In Windows, I am able to paste the file path into the dialog box and it finds it (screenshot below). Is there anyway to do this in mac?

In any "file open" dialogue, if you have a file path name in the clipboard, click ... Command + Shift + G.  This will open the search for folder dialogue. Paste File path name from the clipboard into the pathname field then simply paste the path name from your clipboard

Alternately, you can drag files directly from finder into your open dialogue…

As defined in the "GO" menu using Finder.app, using any of the shortcuts shown in this image, in any file open dialogue, will bring you to that folder.


Developer Account Renewal - what happens if you don't renew? I'm a registered Apple Developer and I don't want to renew right now because I'm not currently working on iOS apps and may not be for the next year. I understand my apps will be taken out of sale, and that's cool with me.

My question is (since Apple don't clarify this themselves):
Are the apps also removed from iTunes Connect? i.e. If I decide to reopen my account in the future, will they be available for sale just by flipping a switch, or would I need to re-build and re-upload them?

Once your contract is over, the apps are removed from the App Store.

When you decide to renew the account, the apps are ready to be in the App Store, though probably you'll need to re-accept the contracts. So, after you accepted the contracts again, your apps are in the App Store again.


Safe to unplug external HDD that has spun down? I often can hear that an external HDD has spun down, and figure it would be safe to unplug since it won't be writing any data.

Am I wrong in this assumption?

Your best bet is to always eject (or unmount) the drive.

Basically, failure to unmount before disconnecting the device can result in loss of data and/or a corrupted file system.

If the external hard drive has in fact spun down, then unplugging it (accidentally or otherwise) is less risky than it would be if it hadn't spun down, but this won't remove the risk entirely. For example, in your question you refer to the fact that often you can hear that an external HDD has spun down, but this is prone to errors in judgment.

Also, not all external drives are the same. Some are USB powered, some have their own dedicated power source, some don't even use USB. What I'm getting at here, is that the only rule that can safely be applied to all external drives is to eject/unmount them first prior to unplugging them!


corestorage failure: missing disk, how to recover data? This morning, my iMac show me the prohibit sign.
After hours of struggling, I'm facing this: the Mac does not want to boot up.
I have a lot of recent files to recover, but have this issue:

root# diskutil info disk0s2
Device Identifier:        disk0s2
Device Node:              /dev/disk0s2
Part of Whole:            disk0
Device / Media Name:      iMac HDD
Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)
Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)
File System:              None
Partition Type:           Apple_CoreStorage
OS Can Be Installed:      No
Recovery Disk:            disk0s3
Media Type:               Generic
Protocol:                 SATA
SMART Status:             Verified
Disk / Partition UUID:    0F0B3B70-6807-47A4-BED7-0BD2B77E4F51
Total Size:               998.7 GB (998695010304 Bytes) (exactly 1950576192 512-Byte-Units)
Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
Device Block Size:        512 Bytes
Read-Only Media:          No
Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)
Ejectable:                No
Whole:                    No
Internal:                 Yes
Solid State:              No

This disk is a Core Storage Physical Volume (PV).  Core Storage Information:
PV UUID:                  4EBFF6EA-D253-4575-99C3-93FFD136543F
LVG UUID:                 F98A23E2-C1B9-499E-BC45-B971D2AE251F

then, the core storage info :

root# diskutil cs info disk0s2
Core Storage Properties:
Role:                       Physical Volume (PV)
UUID:                       4EBFF6EA-D253-4575-99C3-93FFD136543F
Parent LVG UUID:            F98A23E2-C1B9-499E-BC45-B971D2AE251F
Device Identifier:          disk0s2
PV Size:                    998695010304 B
PV Status:                  Checking

the list of dev for core storage :

root# diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group F98A23E2-C1B9-499E-BC45-B971D2AE251F
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Offline
    Size:         998695010304 B (998.7 GB)
    Free Space:   -none-
    |
    +-< Physical Volume DDD40234-2DC7-44B2-BE95-D9C0FA46F96A
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   (No properties)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 4EBFF6EA-D253-4575-99C3-93FFD136543F
        ----------------------------------------------------
        Index:    1
        Disk:     disk0s2
        Status:   Checking
        Size:     998695010304 B (998.7 GB)

and finaly, an attempt to check the partition :

root# fsck_cs /dev/disk0s2
   Executing fsck_cs (version 471.30.1)
** Checking volume
** disk0s2: Scan for Volume Headers
** disk0s2: Scan for Disk Labels
** Logical Volume Group F98A23E2-C1B9-499E-BC45-B971D2AE251F spans 2 devices
** Incomplete or inconsistent CoreStorage Physical Volume set

And I cannot remount the disk.

I've read some things about rewriting the MBR and/or GPT. Is this the way to recover my datas?

If I do a disk dump (dd) of this disk, then perform a fresh re-install, is there any change I'll can open the disk dump afterward?
I've seen things using Apple "ars" tool, but, I'm not sure it'll help.

Any ideas?

Note: from a hardware point of view, the disk is ok, I can do a dd if=/dev/disk0 of=/dev/null without any errors.

Your CoreStorage Logical Volume Group is missing a Physical Volume with the UUID DDD40234-2DC7-44B2-BE95-D9C0FA46F96A.

Your internal drive probably is (or worse: was) a Fusion Drive and the SSD part is missing. The SSD is either damaged or has to be reseated, if it doesn't show up entering diskutil list or if it shows up: the internal structure of the LVG got corrupted.

A Fusion Drive works similar as a RAID0: 2 (or more) disks occur as one: The whole file system spans over two or more disks. One big difference of a Fusion Drive is that files often aren't sliced and therefore either reside on the SSD or the HDD. Depending on the file type and the access frequency or last access time the "less important" files are relocated to the HDD part. The file system files (e.g. catalog file) and most system files usually reside on the SSD part.

You may try to dd disk0s2 to an external drive (either as partition or as raw file to an existing volume) and inspect it with a decent file recovery tool. If you enabled FileVault previously the data can't be recovered.

Rewriting the GPT (or MBR) doesn't help at all or on the contrary: it makes things worse.

If you have further questions leave a comment.


remove shared drive from left bar How can I remove a "shared" drive from the left bar of MAC OS x mavericks?
I've tried all the suggestions I can find online, but nothing seems to work.  It is a drive called "psce8cef", and I do not know when I first saw it.

Thanks,

--Mike

Open Finder Preferences, under the tab sidebar you can uncheck what all files or folders youdon't want to be displayed.


Mac App Store updated an app, app doesn't know? A few days ago, I have seen the newly released version of Xcode (6.3) in the updates section of the store, so today I decided to update it.

Updating from 6.2, the process started normally (Xcode was closed during this time) all the way until I could see on launch pad that the download and installation are completed. In the App Store updates section, I can see in recent updates - Xcode 6.3

However, opening Xcode shows me that I'm on version 6.2! As if the update never happened, which means I can't run my projects on iOS 8.3 devices...

Now I know I could uninstall and reinstall, but I'm trying to avoid this painful process..

Do you guys have any idea about what might be happening here?

I found a similar question, unanswered, from Oct' 14' here

Reinstalling is a very easy process on OS X Apps. Delete the .app from the Applications folder and download it again. Preferences and data are usually stored in the Library-Folder of your System or User and are therefor left untouched when deleting the .app file.


What SSL VPN client do you recommend for the mac? I am currently using FortiClient. It would be nice to use the native MacOS VPN client (in the Settings) but I don't think it supports SSL VPN. I googled but did not find anything. Does anyone have a SSL VPN mac client to recommend? It has to support SSL VPN.

At our company we use TunnelBlick, free, customisable and very stable.
It support SSL VPN without any problem.


How to cd to a directory with a name containing spaces in bash? I tried cd "~/Library/Application Support/"
-bash: cd: ~/Library/Application Support/: No such file or directory

also cd ~/Library/Application Support/
-bash: cd: ~/Library/Application Support/: No such file or directory

You can use the Tab key after pressing the first few characters (this will then "fill in" the rest of the folder for you e.g. type cd ~/LTab fills in cd ~/Library/ then type ApTab and it will fill in the rest for you.

If there is a space between words and you don't want to use the methods above, put a \ (backslash) before the space, e.g. cd ~/Library/Application\ Support.


How to modify .GlobalPreferences.plist file? my objective is to create a keyboard shortcut to activate/deactivate the "replace with" on Mac.
The idea is to create an automation that can be activated with a shortcut trough services.
What the shortcut does is switching two similar .GlobalPreferences.plist files, one with "replace with" keys one without.
Here is my code:

The problem is that for some reason it doesn't switch the files. But on a regular folder it works.
In detail:
running mv ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferencesTMP.plist perfectly works, the proprieties are copied.
On the other hand if I run mv /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences2.plist ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist It doesn't keep the proprieties of .GlobalPreferences2.plist but instead I got exactly the same as .GlobalPreferences.plist which I started with.

In order to toggle the state of Text Substitutions by swapping the ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist file, you would need to have a way to update the cached copy of it in memory. If you are an Objective-C programmer and have Xcode you could roll-your-own app to update the file and what's cached in memory. Sans that, here is a method using a third-party command line utility, shortcuts, and a shell script that works for me.
The bash shell script I've written uses the shortcuts binary executable to backup, delete and restore the Text Substitutions. The backup and restore are simple and straight forward compared to deleting the Text Substitutions as shortcuts can only delete one shortcut at a time. It's relatively quick. I have 200+ items in my Replace | With list and the script takes ~4 seconds to delete them, and a fraction of a second to restore them.
This was tested under macOS Catalina and macOS Big Sur with Language & Region settings in System Preferences set to English (US) — Primary and worked for me without issue1.

1  Assumes necessary and appropriate setting in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy have been set/addressed as needed.

Note: First make a manual backup of your Text Substitutions by going to System Preferences > Keyboard > Text, pressing ⌘A to highlight all entries of Replace | With list, then click-hold with the mouse, then drag and drop to the Desktop, or any folder of a Finder window.
This will create a file named Text Substitutions.plist that can be dragged and dropped onto the Replace | With list in System Preferences > Keyboard > Text to manually restore.
The example shell script code in conjunction with the shortcuts command line utility does it own backup and restores from its backup, but always make the manual backup described above just to have if ever needed.

Install shortcuts by one of the methods mentioned in the link.
I downloaded the source code, reviewed and verified there was nothing ominous in the code, then built it using Xcode.
It's also available thru Homebrew, in Terminal brew install rodionovd/taps/shortcuts, or download as a pre-built binary.

Note: The following instructions and example shell script code are for use as an executable shell script in Terminal, and or can be used in a Run Shell Script action in an Automator Service/Quick Action and assigned a keyboard shortcut in: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services
I'd suggest testing as an executable shell script first to ensure that it works for you, then use the example shell script code in an Automator Service/Quick Action.
In Terminal, run the following compound command:
      Assumes the pwd is your HOME directory.
f=trw; touch "$f"; open -e "$f"; chmod +x "$f"

      Note: trw = Toggle Replace With (Had to name it something.)
In the opened trw document copy and paste the example shell script code into it, then save and close it.
Back in Terminal:
./trw

Will toggle the state of the Text Substitutions.
Note: After testing, move trw to a directory defined in the PATH to be available without typing: ./

Example shell script code:
#!/bin/bash

# set -e
# set -x

shortcuts="/usr/local/bin/shortcuts"
automator=false # true or false

message() {
    [ "${1}" == "xmissing" ] && msg=" The 'shortcuts' executable is missing!"
    [ "${1}" == "already" ] && msg=" The text substitutions deletion is already in progress!"
    [ "${1}" == "backedup" ] && msg=" The text substitutions have been backed up."
    [ "${1}" == "nobackup" ] && msg=" No text substitutions to backup or restore!"
    [ "${1}" == "restored" ] && msg=" The text substitutions have been restored."
    [ "${1}" == "deleting" ] && msg=" The text substitutions deletion is in progress..."
    [ "${1}" == "finished" ] && msg=" The text substitutions deletion has completed."
    [ $automator == false ] && printf '%s\n' "${msg}"
    [ $automator == true ] && printf '%s\n' "$(date -j) ${msg}" >> message.txt
    [ $automator == true ] && [ -n "${2}" ] && \
    osascript -e "display notification \"${msg}\" with title \"Toggle Replace With\""
}

backupdir="$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.$USER.shortcuts"
[ ! -d "${backupdir}" ] && mkdir -p "${backupdir}"
cd "${backupdir}" || exit
backup="${backupdir}/Text_Substitutions.plist"
lockdir="/private/tmp/com.$USER.shortcuts"
[ ! -e "${lockdir}" ] && mkdir -p "${lockdir}"
cd "${lockdir}" || exit

if [ ! -x "${shortcuts}" ]; then
    message "xmissing"
    [ $automator == true ] && message "xmissing" "notification"
    exit
fi

if [ -e ".lock" ]; then
    message "already"
    [ $automator == true ] && message "already" "notification"
    exit
fi

contents="$(defaults read -g NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems)"
empty='(
)'

if [ ! -e "${backup}" ] && [ "${contents}" != "${empty}" ]; then
    "${shortcuts}" read --as-plist | tee "${backup%.*}.$(date '+%s').plist" > "${backup}"
    message "backedup"
elif [ -e "${backup}" ] && [ "${contents}" != "${empty}" ]; then
    "${shortcuts}" read --as-plist | tee "${backup%.*}.$(date '+%s').plist" > "${backup}"
    message "backedup"
elif [ ! -e "${backup}" ] && [ "${contents}" == "${empty}" ]; then
    message "nobackup"
    [ $automator == true ] && message "nobackup" "notification"
    exit
fi

if [ "${contents}" == "${empty}" ]; then
    "${shortcuts}" import "${backup}"
    message "restored"
    [ $automator == true ] && message "restored" "notification"
else
    touch ".lock"
    message "deleting"
    [ $automator == true ] && message "deleting" "notification"
    while IFS= read -r line; do
        "${shortcuts}" delete "${line}"
    done <<< "$("$shortcuts" read | awk 'sub(/^"/, "", $2) sub(/"$/, "", $2) $1 ~ /^[0-9]+:/ { print $2 }')"
    sleep 1
    rm ".lock"
    message "finished"
    [ $automator == true ] && message "finished" "notification"
fi

Notes:
As coded, the example shell script code assume the shortcuts executable is located at /usr/local/bin/shortcuts, change as applicable. It is coded like this as /usr/local/bin/ is not in the PATH passed to a Run Shell Script action in an Automator Service/Quick Action.
The first time the shell script is run it creates a backup of the Text Substitutions to restore from, so it is imperative that there actually be some text substitutions to backup! A current backup is made each time prior to deleting them from the ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist file and is restored from the last backup.
The reason a third-party application is being used is in this use case it does something that the macOS default utilities cannot do, which is dynamically update the changes to the system. In other words, the defaults command as well as the /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy command in this use case does not update the system to the changes and has the same issue as swapping out the ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist file.
When using the example shell script code in a Run Shell Script action in an Automator Service/Quick Action, you need to set automator=true in the line after, e.g., shortcuts="/usr/local/bin/shortcuts"
Backups are saved to:
$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.$USER.shortcuts/Text_Substitutions.plist

The example shell script code when run as an executable shell script outputs messages to stdout and you see them as you go, however, when used in a Run Shell Script action in an Automator Service/Quick Action messages are displayed in Notification Center and also log to:
/private/tmp/com.$USER.shortcuts/message.txt

I will try you add comments to the code and or add additional notes here in the next couple of days.

Disclaimer Note: The example shell script code is just that and sans any included error handling does not contain any additional error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any additional error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted.