Organising wallpapers in subfolders What is the simplest a way to have the desktop wallpaper cycle through images that are in subfolders?
This is not possible using the normal way of setting a wallpaper in

System Preferences --> Desktop & Screen Saver

The format of the images:

>Wallpapers
-> Folder one
--> one 1.jpg
--> one 2.jpg

-> Folder two
--> two 1.jpg
--> two 2.jpg

It looks like selecting multiple different folders for images for your Desktop or Screen Saver is not a native function. In other words, if you have a hierarchy of a main folder, Pictures, then underneath you have folders (for example) Family, Vacation, and Wedding, and you only want to display Family, and Vacation, there would be no way to do that. I think the simplest would be to create a folder with all the images you want on your Desktop/Screensaver.


Tiled window switcher I'm a big iTerm user with 3 split panes on a 30" monitor. The only issue is that I sometimes want to add a Safari window as the left most pane. I can achieve this by using any of the window sizers out there and setting the window to float on top. However, this means that I have to Command ⌘-Tab to get to the Safari window while I ⌘+arrow to switch between the panes.

Is there a program that not only uses a grid for positioning/sizing, but also provides directional navigation between panes?

I found Slate which might fit the bill. I've tried out the following ~/.slate and it does directional focus. Will check back after playing with it before selecting this answer.

# Focus Bindings
# NOTE: some of these may *not* work if you have not removed the expose/spaces/mission control bindings
bind right:cmd    focus right
bind left:cmd     focus left
bind up:cmd       focus up
bind down:cmd     focus down
bind up:cmd;alt   focus behind
bind down:cmd;alt focus behind


Use Applescript/Automator to select a window highlighted in the Finder I have an applescript which extracts the name, associated process and and other information about a target window.  As of now, the script selects the target window via a "choose from list" dialog that contains all open windows from all processes.  It would be much better if I could select the target window by highlighting it in the Finder. For example, this can be done for files and folders:

tell application "Finder" to set this_file to the selection

Question: Is there an equivalent method to do select windows from the Finder (using Applescript or Automator)?

Well you can ask Finder for its windows. The order returned is topmost to bottommost.

If you have a specific window you want, and know its name then just ask it to activate...

tell application "Finder"
    set w to (name of every window)
    set i to (id of every window)

    tell window named "Desktop" to activate

    get front window
end tell

And the results...

tell application "Finder"
    get name of every window
        --> {"Desktop", "Development", "Downloads"}
    get id of every window
        --> {16267, 16290, 16265}
    activate window "Desktop"
        --> Finder window id 16267
    get window 1
        --> Finder window id 16267
end tell

Hope that helped...


Unexplained difference in photo count in iCloud, iPad storage, and Photo.app iCloud says I have just over 600 photos. On the iPad's storage it says there are just under 300.

However when I go into Apple's Photos.app apparently I have 1800.

I count 900 though. Why are these numbers different and where are the other 900?

Check www.icloud.com and make sure that the 1800 amount is in the Photos section. If so then your iPad may have "optimize storage" turned on.

If the photos arent on there then you need check and see which devices you have and the full amount of photos on them all: Mac, iPhone, iPad & iPod.

Lastly if neither of these situations helped, then contact Apple Support and let them know that there is an inconsistency with whats on your iPad and your Mac vs the iCloud. They may refresh your iCloud account.


Upgrade OS X with Windows already installed using Boot Camp - will it break anything? I've got a late 2010 MacBook Air that came with OS X 10.6.6 installed; I have never upgraded it to 10.6.8 Snow Leopard or to 10.7 Lion.

I dual boot with Windows 7 installed using boot camp. I use rEFIt as my boot loader.

Disk Utility in OS X shows:

Macintosh HD is partition 2
partition 3 is an empty FAT partition
Windows HD is partition 4

I don't know why partition 1 doesn't show up there. In Windows under Disk Management it shows up as 200 MB (GPT Protective Partition)

When booting, rEFIt gives me these options:

Boot to Mac OS X
Boot to Windows on Partition 4

If I upgrade OS X to Lion, is there any risk of breaking my Windows install, messing up my Windows partition or the boot loader or anything like that?

If you're doing just a straight upgrade and not a complete rebuild, then it should be absolutely fine. OS X upgrades are aware of other partitions so it shouldn't break anything.

By the way, I know this is not question, but I used to use Boot Camp, but find Parallels a much better experience overall. Disclaimer, I'm a .net developer.


applescript: Appropriately escape input in script invocation I have the following snippet in an applescript:

          tell current session of current tab of current window
              write text "watch -n1 'kubectl get pods | grep -i"  & input'
              split horizontally with default profile
              split vertically with default profile
          end tell

But this does not work given that I am getting the following error:

  script error: Expected end of line but found unknown token. (-2741)

I want the end result, given that I will be invoking the script as

myscript appname

To be

watch -n1 'kubectl get pods | grep -i appname'

Any suggestions?

edit: I have also tried this without success:

write text "watch -n1 "\kubectl get pods | grep -i & input\""

Here is what worked for me:

assuming that you grab input by having as a first line in your script the following:

on run {input}

Then you can perform within an iTerm window:

write text "watch -n1 " & "'"  & "kubectl get pods | grep -i " & input & "'"


Does downloading big files reduce my SSD lifetime significantly? I love downloading movies from the internet, and download files with sizes usually around 600 MB - 1 GB.

I have a MacBook Pro with a Retina display, which comes with an SSD. Will downloading and saving it to directly to my SSD reduce my Mac's SSD lifetime significantly? Should I buy an another external HDD for this hobby?

No, not at all. People underestimate the lifetime of SSDs. They can write a lot (usually around 700+ TB before clunking out).

This is a good place to find out more about how long SSDs actually last..

In fact, if you'd like to see more stats on your SSD, this tells you how to install smartmontools to get an idea of your drive's status.

As for your second question, I would say that's entirely up to you. If you'd like to avoid having large files cluttering your limited SSD space then go ahead with the HDD purchase.


Why is MT65xx Preloader a network interface on my Mac I've been trying to figure out why my network adapter kext is chewing up so much memory and just noticed this in my settings > network interfaces

MT65xx preloader

Anyone know what this is?  Looks like some sort of Android interface, but I don't use anything like that.

Could this be related to, or possibly an indication of a system compromise to a virus, etc?

MT65xx preloaded is related to MediaTek/Android devices Drivers,,seems like you where tethering an Android device of which is likely to be of MediaTek chipset of which won't work on Mac, but you can still use the HoRNDIS driver as an alternative.

You can just Delete it and it will bring no problem


Can I locate my iPhone 4 using Find my iPhone if the setting is disabled on the device? My iPhone is lost.
I tried using Find my iPhone but I realised I turned off the setting that is required for this. What can I do?

No, Find my iPhone requires that the relevant service (namely iCloud → Find my iPhone) is enabled so that the device can be tracked and communicated with. If this service is disabled on the device, the device can't be tracked by you using iCloud.


How can I open new Chrome window with different arguments? I want to have a new Chrome window with same origin policy (CORS) disabled for development, while keeping the existing one open for browsing. I already have tried the CORS plugin but it does not work for local files.

Apparently, this can be done on Windows. Can it be done on OSX (10.8) ?

nohup /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --disable-web-security 2>&1 &

nohup lets you quit Terminal without killing the process.
Arguments are added as normal before the 2>… redirection.

Alternatively, you can try:

open /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app --args --disable-web-security


New mac - installed tmux but can't use mouse in for pane switching I have the required setw / setg setting for mouse in my .tmux.conf but they aren't working.

I've done tmux source-file .tmux.conf

I can use tmux and split windows with my remapped keys and other settings that I have such as remapping the power key ARE working.

Turned out I was using tmux with the basic mac terminal app.

It mostly worked but a few things didn't.  The mouse functionality is an example.

The answer was that I needed to download and use iterm2 as the actual terminal app to use tmux with.

Once I did this my tmux mouse settings worked fine with it.


How to throttle usage of individual computer with Apple Airport? There are a bunch of kids in our house using wifi. When one is watching HD video on Youtube, everyone else can hardly load a webpage.

How can I customize the Apple Airport to throttle usage for all machines using the wifi?

Apple's hardware doesn't perform Quality of Service  - so you'd want to install a router that has QOS between the AirPort and the internet connection.

http://www.howtogeek.com/75660/the-beginners-guide-to-qos-on-your-router/

If all the children are on Mac or iOS - you could install a network link conditioner, but that is generally harder to administer and less effective at letting faster access when there isn't contention on the connection out of the house.

How to simulate slow internet connections on the mac

Before you select a new router, you'll want to determine what the total network speed is for the house. Optimizing for 10 users on 6/1 ADSL service is going to be harder than 4 users of 100 MB or fiber. The tools are the same, but the decisions you make and the end results will vary.


Where did these creepy google/gmail icons come from? I just noticed them, I suspect/hope Chrome somehow placed them there, they are not removable by normal methods, they only open Chrome when clicked and nothing else

Google is getting pretty creepy, when a new thing appears that I didn't put, I generally suspect malware

(Photos icon kept for context)

After slightly more digging, I see that Chrome now (it's a new behaviour, likely 2-3 months old) bundles them with new installs, since I use the chrome command separately to create new instances, it added those icons just now, for that instance specifically, so when I click them, they just open the main Chrome and not the webpages

Still pretty creepy tho, they seem to be only removable from ~/Applications - and a restart is probably needed for a refresh

Edit: After a while the icons disappear after removing the files


Is there a macOS utility that lets me assign a keyboard shortcut for switching to a particular window? I usually have a lot of applications open with lots of windows in each. Let's say I'm working on several documents in a word processor, while having several web browser windows open for reference. I need to switch back and forth between my different documents, and a particular web browser window, which is a Wikipedia article.

Currently, to switch to the Wikipedia article, I need to

⌘ Tab a random number of times (depending on how many applications I have open) to Chrome, then
 Cmd ⌘   `  a number of times (depending on how many Chrome windows I have open) to reach the window with the Wikipedia article.

App switchers like Witch, that can be configured to bring up a list of all open windows from all applications, and lets you switch between them, improves the situation slightly. But it still requires me to browse through a list in order to select a window.

My workflow would be much easier if I could assign a keyboard shortcut to that particular Chrome window, to bring it to front.

Ideally, it would work like this:

Activate the window you want to create a shortcut for ("window A")
Bring up the utility app
Assign a keyboard shortcut, say Ctrl Alt ⌘W, to "window A"
From now on, pressing Ctrl Alt ⌘W at any time would bring "window A" to front
When "window A" is closed, the keyboard shortcut is removed

Is there any utility application for macOS that provides this functionality?

Keyboard Maestro
Keyboard Maestro is a paid-for application that allows the creation of hotkeys (amongst many other types of trigger) and has a builtin function to target tabs within Safari or Google Chrome.
It references tabs by index number, e.g. tab 1 being the first tab, tab 2 being the second, and so on.
Here's a macro that took 2 minutes to create and assigns a group of ten hotkeys CmdAlt+0...9, each of which trigger their respective tab in Google Chrome, if the tab exists, and brings it to the foreground (0 represents tab 10 in this instance).

If you needed to be able to reference tabs by their title rather than a fixed index number (in case you changed the order of the tabs), you'd have to use a bit of AppleScript to achieve a similar result.
This piece of AppleScript is of particular value:
    tell application "Google Chrome" to tell its front window to ¬
        if exists (first tab whose title contains "IMDB") then ¬
            repeat until active tab's title contains "IMDB"
                set active tab index to ¬
                    (active tab index mod (number of tabs)) + 1
            end repeat

Alfred
An identical result can be achieved with Alfred, in a slightly different construction of its workflow to that of the macro used in Keyboard Maestro.  Alfred doesn't have a builtin command to switch to a specific browser tab, so a little bit of AppleScript has to fill that gap.
Here's the basic workflow layout:

On the left, I created just four hotkey triggers, but you can create as many as you wish.  I mirrored the CmdAlt+1,2, ... format I used in Keyboard Maestro for a direct comparison.
The superimposed orange-dashed window shows the settings for the second hotkey, specifically in supplying it a numerical parameter—2 in its case—that gets passed as an argument into the subsequent AppleScript.  Each hotkey has a similar numerical parameter it will deliver to that one script upon triggering.
Here's the AppleScript that performs the action triggered by these hotkeys:
    on run argv

        set n to argv as number

        tell application "Google Chrome" to ¬
            tell its front window to ¬
                set the active tab index to n

        activate application "Google Chrome"

    end run

It would be easy enough to add a few lines to include Safari as an option too, depending which browser was active last when the hotkey is triggered.
Alfred and Keyboard Maestro play quite well together, too, as each has the ability to trigger workflows/macros from external sources, including from each other.  So, an Alfred trigger can initiate a KM macro, and, likewise, a KM trigger can initiate an Alfred workflow.


Sync only Desktop folder, but not Documents, with "Store in iCloud"? (iCloud Drive) The Store in iCloud function that was introduced with macOS Sierra looks interesting to try out. It will store both the Desktop and the Documents folders in iCloud Drive instead of on the local drive.

I want it to store only the Desktop folder in iCloud, and not the Documents folder. Is this possible?

I noticed that by turning On and Off the Store in iCloud function, the files that had already been transfered to iCloud Drive (when the function was originally turned On) stayed there – and empty folders called Desktop — Local and Documents — Local were created in the user home directory.

So is it possible to make use of this circumstance, to keep only Desktop files in the iCloud? Will applications that make use of the Documents folder decide to use the iCloud folder or the local folder?

Update MacOS Catalina:

I don't think toxefa's answer below is working anymore with macOS Catalina. Upgrading the OS created a new empty Desktop folder in the user home directory. I tried deleting that Desktop folder via Terminal (rm -rf /Users/<yourusername>/Desktop) and then created a symlink per the answer ln -s /Users/<yourusername>/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Desktop /Users/<yourusername>/Desktop, but after reboot the symlink is gone and a new empty Desktop folder is always created in the home directory.

Doesn't look like there's a way to single out the Desktop via the 'Manage Storage' GUI.

However, you can always just symlink any directory from your iCloud drive; that way you can ensure that only the Desktop folder is being synced. This is with the caveat that while your Desktop files are being stored in iCloud, they're still taking up space on your HD before, during, and after sync. If you do it on every Mac then you'll keep your Desktop in sync between them all (files added, deleted, changed etc); this might not be what you're after though.

If symlinking isn't something you know how to do, instructions are below.

Backup (via TimeMachine or whatever you use).

Then fire up Terminal and run the following to move your Desktop folder into your iCloud Drive:

mv ~/Desktop /Users/<yourusername>/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/

Then just symlink it to the usual 'Desktop' location:

ln -s /Users/<yourusername>/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Desktop /Users/<yourusername>/Desktop

Now anything that you add to ~/Desktop (by dropping things onto your desktop etc) will actually be dropped into your iCloud drive. They are of course still taking up local space on your machine. When you delete something from your desktop then it's gone from the 'Cloud' as well. The benefits of this are more for sync between machines (+ access via your iPhone of course).

If you've got another mac, move anything you value from it's desktop folder into your iCloud Drive 'Desktop' folder first, then delete ~/Desktop on that machine and symlink again as above.


Move Apple Notes from Mac to iCloud I have all my notes on my Mac, and I want to move them to iCloud so I can use them on a different laptop. Using the image below as an example, how do I move all notes from "On My Mac" to "iCloud" so that they are stored on iCloud?

If you turn on iCloud after already creating notes in the Apple Notes app, those notes will be local to the device, and are not automatically added to iCloud.
To add local notes to iCloud manually you can select an item, and then move it to a new list by dragging the "Notes" folder under the "On My Mac" list to the iCloud list.
On macOS you may have a move all option as well.


Siri doesn't work in macOS Mojave I have a MacBook Pro 15 with TB. The problem is that Siri doesn't hear me when a click the icon in the touch bar. I check my microphone settings and it looks good. I have macOS Mojave 10.14.5.

But when I click on the icon as I say, nothing happens. It doesn't show the small color waves that are observed when Siri is listening to you. I try to restart the computer but doesn't work. Here is a little clip of what happened.

I tried everything, but I ended erasing my hard drive. I think is a bug of the version of macOS. So I suggest if Siri is not an important feature for you, just ignore this bug. On the other hand, the solution I find so far is back up your important stuff and reinstall the operating system.


Problem when updating using Software Update I tried to update Mac OS X using Software Update. But when I tap on software updates, it's checking software updates and listing the available updates.

I didn't see Mac OS X update available in the list. I am not able to do this. Can you guys please help ?

What is your current OS X version ??

The latest OS X is 10.6.7 - and if you can't get it through "Software Update", then you can download the whole OS X v10.6.7 Update Combo here: http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1361


iOS Mail Turns off SMTP Server if two or more are listed iPad iOS version 11.2 (latest update).
Two different email accounts on this device.  We use third party SMTP providers (mailgun/sendgrid) for email deliverability/trackability stats.  Each address should have its own SMTP credentials.  Am able to successfully set up SMTP for each address.

However, here's the problem:  Set up the first address SMTP, set to primary server (on).  Then, go to second email address SMTP, set up, when this is set to primary for that address, the first email SMTP is turned off.  Reversing the process produces the same result.

Even if no primary is designated for each of the addresses, and setting a alternative STMP ON to a corresponding email, the behavior still occurs.

SMTP accounts with identical credentials have been tested and working on Linux, Windows Outlook and Android with no problems.

Any workaround for this?  SMTP manager app?  Other ideas?

Rebooting the iPad mysteriously solved the problem.


Is there a technical reason why I cannot find a mini display port to hdmi (female) cable that's more than 6 inches? I've looked and looked and don't see one. Do they just not exist?

May I suggest that you not look for a cable with a "female" HDMI end on it (those would typically be called "adapters" and would be very short.  Instead, look for a full-length cable with mini-DisplayPort to HDMI.  Such as:

http://www.monoprice.com/Category?c_id=102&cp_id=10246&cs_id=1024603


Disable expanding scroll bars in Mountain Lion How can I stop the scroll bars in Mountain Lion from expanding when I move my curser over them?

Sometimes when I try to click on the bottom item in a finder window the scroll bar expands, covering the item, and not allowing the item to be clicked. I have to move the curser away, wait a couple seconds for the scroll bars to hide, then click the item.

In "System Preferences > General" There are three options for "Showing scroll bars". From your description, it sounds like you have the default settings of "Automatically based on mouse or trackpad"

You may find "When Scrolling" or "Always" more to your liking. I'm an old school Mac user, so I have it set to always. That setting solves this problem and other scrolling problems.

If scroll bars were meant to be hidden, then Andy Hertzfeld would have written them that way in the first place.


Do I need to buy Growl in order to use the iterm2 growl feature? Seems the notification is not working, or do I need to buy the Growl from App Store in order to use it?

First, make sure you've read "Growl Notification from iTerm 2" on using Growl. If that doesn't work, here's a short history of Growl:

The older versions of Growl came as a framework and preference pane and were free. Applications with Growl support could not use it unless you installed Growl. Recently (version 2), Growl became a paid application through the app store. When this occurred however, it was no longer necessary to install it to use it. Applications linking against the new versions can display notifications without the application installed, but you won't have any customization abilities.

Therefore, if you cannot get notifications, either iTerm2 is using a version of Growl before it was paid, or defaults to having no notifications enabled. It is much more likely that it is using an old version, which means you can install the old versions available on the Growl website (direct link for the most recent free version). If you install that and still can't get notifications, then yes, you will have to purchase the application.


Does Reinstalling Mac OS from Recovery Clears App data? I need to reinstall Mac OS from recovery since Disk Utility was unable to repair some disk errors.

I have few notes in the notes app and important Bookmarks/opened tabs in both Chrome and Firefox, Which I don't want to lose.

Does this kind of data remain after reinstall? or any other way to repair disk errors without losing on this data?

Yes, reinstalling macOS under these circumstances1 may erase app data.

If you don't have a Time Machine backup (and you really really should), then the other options you have are:

export your bookmarks from Firefox as a html file
export your bookmarks from Chrome as a html file
ensure your Notes files are synced to iCloud

You would then just copy the HTML files you exported onto an external USB drive for importing back later, and your Notes files will be available to your other Apple devices (or via the web) assuming you have other Apple devices with iCloud enabled.

Finally, you could also use Chrome's and Firefox's built-in syncing services to save your bookmarks.

NOTE: If you don't use iCloud, you could always just copy and paste your Notes into another app from which you can save them onto an external disk (e.g. TextEdit, Pages, MS Word, etc).

Further reading

Export Firefox bookmarks to an HTML file to back up or transfer bookmarks
Google Chrome Help: Import or export bookmarks
iCloud: Notes overview
Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac

1 It's unclear what you mean by 'disk errors', but if these are such that your startup volume needs reformatting then your data will be lost.


Mac Mail - move IMAP message to Exchange folder In Mac mail I have most of my email accounts set up
Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, and Exchange (office365 hosted).

When I try to move any of my messages from the first 3 (all IMAP accounts) into my Exchange Folder (where I archive everything), it gives me the error can't move message.

Is there any solution?

I don't know what is causing the error, but I can tell you where on the filesystem you can find your messages. Perhaps you can move them manually in Finder?

The default location for mailboxes is:

~/Library/Mail/V2/

in Finder, choose Go To Folder from the GO menu or use the shortcut ⬆⌘G and paste that path into the dialog box.  That folder should contain folders for each of your mail accounts, each containing mailbox folders with labels like INBOX.mbox which are simply folders themselves. You'll likely have to traverse down several levels of folders with arbitrary names before you reach a Data folder containing a Messages folder which is where you will finally find your email messages. Hope that helps you out.


How to not let the system sleep when putting display to sleep with Ctrl+Shift+Eject in Mountain Lion? In Lion I always used Control ⌃+Shift ⇧+Eject ⏏ to put my display to sleep when I walked away from my computer. The system would continue running and not go to sleep.

Now in Mountain Lion when I put the display to sleep, the system sometimes decides to go to sleep as well.

It does not happen all of the time, it has been rather unpredictable. Some times I walk away for 2 minutes and come back and it went to sleep entirely. Other times I walk away for hours and come back and it did not go to sleep.

Very odd. Any ideas?

EDIT

Screenshots for both Power Adaptor and Battery Energy Saver settings.

Also I just experienced the issue again. I walked away for about 3-4 minutes and came back and WiFi was disconnected so it does not seem like the Energy Saver settings are being respected.

Unless... Energy Saver is considering the 15 minutes have elapsed being that my Display has gone to sleep and is therefore kicking in the computer sleep Energy Saver setting? I will up the Computer Sleep and see what happens.

Realised I answered a dupe of this here: How can I download something with display turned off (Ctrl+Shift+Eject)?

My answer to that question below:

I always use this combo as well, however this does not immediately sleep my machine in ML.

I believe this is a separate issue at play here. According to Siracusa's ML review, unlike in previous OS X versions, in 10.8 your system is eligible for sleep immediately upon "user inactivity" (the inactivity delay being set in your energy saver settings) unless the currently running apps make "power assertions".

In this case, that key combo is signalling to the OS that "user inactivity" should be triggered right away. In such a case, if your particular app that's downloading stuff does not make power assertions, your system will sleep.

I have come across the same issue generally (not necessarily related to triggering the screen sleep combo). See: Mountain Lion sleeps too aggressively


How can I prevent MacBook Pro from connecting to Wi-Fi while it is asleep? My MacBook Pro connects to my mobile phone when it is in sleep mode. If my hotspot is enabled it begins using data and I'd rather not have to remove the paraphrase for the hotspot every time I make it sleep. How can this behavior be disabled or prevented?

Go to System Preferences, select the Energy Saver pane, uncheck Enable Power Nap on both the Battery and Power Adapter tabs.


How to check if photos are already in Photos on MacOS? I have a rather large Photos library (> 100GB).

I am in the process of tidying up a few USB hard drives containing, among others, a bunch of photos.

How to check which photos on these drives are already in Photos and can be safely deleted?

If you don’t use iCloud to sync your library, it’s super easy to archive off a copy of your Photos database (in addition to your normal backup) and then just run the import and see how bad or good a job Photos does at not importing duplicates.

Many situations, you’ll have a great import and be done.

Before I cared about the faces metadata, I did also validate you can detach the library from iCloud and then do an import like above, but now that I have my face data set up amongst my various iCloud synced devices, I am loath touch anything in iCloud relating to large changes in photos. (As that implementation is too opaque, fragile and lacks tools to fix in 2019 IMO)

So, for me, I would import the photos into a second library and then use the smart merge function or a third party tool Power Photos to avoid duplicates and keep the peace in my ~180 GB cloud synced library of photos.

https://fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos/

This software is so powerful and worth it if you spend maybe a dozen hours a year cleaning duplicates or just love having a tidy library. There’s no harm in letting Photos try to import and detect duplicates if your time budget has tons of time to clean up and your money budget is tight, but I recommend a tool that’s designed to do a better job than Photos.

This tool will let you split your large library as well easily, so it has tons of features in addition to just merging.


df hide ifree, iused, 512 blocks (customize column format, don't show inode info) My default df invocation prints way too much information for my needs. I can't find a way to hide this in the man page. It says use the -i flag to include it. But when I execute /usr/local/bin/df I get this:

Filesystem                                512-blocks       Used Available Capacity  iused    ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2                               975093952  719904648 254677304    74% 90052079 31834663   74%   /
devfs                                            368        368         0   100%      637        0  100%   /dev
map -hosts                                         0          0         0   100%        0        0  100%   /net
map auto_home                                      0          0         0   100%        0        0  100%   /home
/dev/disk3s1                               242555008  206423680  36131328    86%        0        0  100%   /Volumes/SERIALS
map -static                                        0          0         0   100%        0        0  100%   /Volumes/ubuntu
map -static                                        0          0         0   100%        0        0  100%   /Volumes/Large_backup
map -static                                        0          0         0   100%        0        0  100%   /Volumes/Large
map -static                                        0          0         0   100%        0        0  100%   /Volumes/Unsorted
map -static                                        0          0         0   100%        0        0  100%   /Volumes/Record
map -static                                        0          0         0   100%        0        0  100%   /Volumes/Documentaries
192.168.1.2:/                              115345392   86998112  22441976    80%   421924  3249100   11%   /Volumes/ubuntu
192.168.1.2:/media/myusername/Documentaries  488397160  446990432  41406728    92%    15979 20720153    0%   /Volumes/Documentaries
192.168.1.2:/media/myusername/Record         625121216  625121216         0   100%   125517    38323   77%   /Volumes/Record
192.168.1.2:/media/myusername/Unsorted       625137280  604966376  20170904    97%   346496 10099404    3%   /Volumes/Unsorted
192.168.1.2:/media/myusername/Large         1953520000 1949403312   4116688   100%  1379836  2218604   38%   /Volumes/Large
192.168.1.2:/media/myusername/Large_backup   115345392   86998112  22441976    80%   421924  3249100   11%   /Volumes/Large_backup

How do I hide all these extra columns? (come to think of it, how do I get rid of those useless map -static rows too?)

Extra info:

uname -a output:

Darwin myusername-Mac-mini.local 15.3.0 Darwin Kernel Version 15.3.0: Thu Dec 10 18:40:58 PST 2015; root:xnu-3248.30.4~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64 i386 Macmini6,1 Darwin

The standard macOS df supports an -P option (which suppresses most of the things you don't want) so you could run

df -P | grep -v 'map -static'

Explanation of option (from man df):

-i  Include statistics on the number of free inodes.
    This option is now the default to conform
    to Version 3 of the Single UNIX Specification
    (``SUSv3'') Use -P to suppress this output.

-P  Explicitly  use 512 byte blocks, overriding any BLOCKSIZE specifi-
    cation from the environment.  This  is the same as the -b option.
    The -k option overrides this option.


Is there any command line alternative to Activity Monitor that would yield the same results? I know there's top and htop commands, but they lack a lot of information. For example there is no way to list processes from Energy tab. Or is there at least some kind of API for Activity Monitor which could be used to develop the desired command line tool?

A good reference giving insight on the energy tab is given here.  It relates it to the Power column of the top command which you can generate by using top command as such: top -stats pid,command,cpu,idlew,power -o power -d  The power column is not usually displayed due to width of monitor.


OS X Automator “Take Screenshot” Issue I need to automate a screenshot task, so I thought why not use automator?

I found the "Take Screenshot" Action and started to play with it. The problem is is that is sets the file name and when the workflow is ran again it overwrites the prior screenshot. I tried selecting this and renaming it but it won't work.
Essentially what I want is the normal function of Command + Shift + 3 where it will date-stamp it or something, anything but overwrite!! Any ideas?

I've been trying to set "Save To" as a variable. But I can't set the path as well as the file name var like current time.

Try it like this:

This one has a loop built into it, make sure you set 'Timed' to 1 second and the 'Format' of the 'Add Date or Time' step to Hour Minute Second


Mac disk free space automatically decreases I am running Snow Leopard (10.6.8) on MacBook Pro. A few days ago I found my free disk space is too low, so I tried to clean un-necessary files form disk myself and using some programs like CleanGenius.

There was 1.7 GB free, but after a while I found the free space is again zero. Again I cleaned up some other files and had 1GB free, but after a few hours I found the free space is again a few megabytes.

During this time I have not installed new program, downloaded new things, or copied any files to my computer.

This is not new to me, once before I cleaned up 7GB of my disk and after a few hours I found my free disk space is close to zero.

Do you have any suggestion why this happens and how can I prevent it? I have up-to-date registered anti-virus.

I found my problem to be from Mail application. When it was open, the disk free space was reduced every minute.

I just removed my Gmail account from the Mail application and about 40GB was recovered back to my free space! Also the automatic decrease of free space is stopped now.


How well does Apple Remote Desktop work over the Internet? I have a few family members with Macs that I'd like to be able to help if they have questions or get stuck, and I've been looking into various solutions to be able to remotely connect to their computers over the internet. In the past I've mainly used iChat, but it sometimes just doesn't work (and I do have a few members in my family that have a bit of trouble accepting the screen sharing invitation). My typical fallback is Skype which nearly always works, but I don't have any control over the screen so I have to walk them through what they need to do.

Now that Apple Remote Desktop is available in the Mac App Store for $80, I'm wondering if it does what I need. Namely, I'd like to be able to automatically connect and control a remote computer over the internet without having to configure the router it's connected to. Does Apple Remote Desktop have this capability?

Apple Remote Desktop will involve either having a VPN or open ports and static IPs. I think you will be much better off with LogMeIn.com's free version, which will require zero intraction from your family members and open ports are not necessary. You will need to know a user's credentials on their computer. If they require more privacy they can disable LogMeIn from the menu bar item, as it will always be on as long as they are connected to the Internet. I suggest adding a user to each computer with your name and one password—that will be one less thing for you to remember and if they change their password or don't remember it you can still help them.

I use both ARD and LogMeIn daily, but ARD is more than you need.


Access Jumpcut archives? I have jumpcut on mac and it is set up to "remember" 40 items, but only 15 items actually show in menu. How can I access the other 25 items?

You can access them from the bezel window (shown by control-option-V by default) by holding the right arrow key.


Disable iPhone 1.8 GHz radio transmitter? Is it possible to turn off the 1.8 GHz transmitter on an iPhone via software?

I would like to use WiFi calling only.

No. Apple doesn’t allow control over specific radio frequencies. You could jailbreak and try installing / modifying the baseband software or avail yourself of the normal controls to turn on or off WiFi, cellular data, airplane mode and Bluetooth. Note, turning many of these off doesn’t disable the radio, but disassociates them from the active connections. Based on what you intend to do, that might suffice.

Keep in mind, you don’t need a SIM or even a registered phone to dial 911 (in the USA and other emergency numbers globally) so the radios stay running independent of the cellular data and service working.


Is there a way to configure user account for different uses? I am a marketer by profession and am currently learning to program in AngularJS. I also like to make music using various programs.

For marketing I need Evernote, Skitch, and TextExpander running in the background.

For development I use a pomodoro timer, Transmit and a few others.

During music production I want everything off to save memory / battery life.

Then there are times I'm traveling and have to turn everything off while traveling.

Without having to create separate user accounts, is there a way to quickly turn on / turn off all the required apps for each use case?

You could set up Automator applications to do just that. For instance, you could go to Automator, select Application from the "Choose a type for your document" menu, and then use the Launch Application action to open all the apps you want. Once you've set up "Launch Application" actions for all the apps you want for a specific use case, you can save your application with the name of the specific use case, drag the newly-created application to your Dock or desktop or wherever is convenient for you, and then all your apps are just a click away!

You can also make applications to quit all of the apps in a specific use case. Automator has a "Quit Application" action too.


After disabling iCloud Photo Library, cannot re-enable due to insufficient iCloud Storage In an attempt to troubleshoot an apparently "stuck" upload process with iCloud Photo Library, I tried a suggestion I read about in Apple's own forums: Disable and then Re-Enable iCloud Photo Library.

Unfortunately, after doing so, I've apparently run into an unforeseen edge case from Apple. My iPhone refuses to re-enable iCloud Photo Library due to insufficient iCloud storage. The assumption from iCloud seems to be that all my local photos would be "new" to iCloud. In reality, my iCloud storage is adequate, since all my local photos should be detected as duplicates and not actually added to the iCloud Photo Library.

At the moment, it appears my only option is to upgrade my storage just for the purpose of re-enabling this feature. Am I overlooking any other clever solutions?

A suggestions I've seen on other Q&A forums is to use another device with iCloud Photo Library enabled and wipe the Library so there is enough space for all your photos to be re-added.

If you don't have another device with iCloud Photo Library, I believe you can delete the files from General > iCloud > Storage > Manage on an iDevice.


How can I save a Pages document as .docx? I've tried to save a pages document as a *.docx for Microsoft Office.

Pages is able to open, edit and (auto-)save existing *.docx documents.
However, there is no option to export or save a duplicate as *.docx?

Is this a missing compability feature and are there plug-ins for pages to add that functionality?

This does seem to be a missing feature. As I see it, you have two options:

Export as *.doc using File -> Export. While not ideal, I imagine almost everything that supports *.docx also supports *.doc.
TextEdit is able to save as *.docx. Of course this is only really an option if your formatting is simple.


Why do images with the same dimensions have different size icon previews? Why is the preview icon for one image larger and the other smaller?

The images should be the same size. Css_cursor_pointer.png was opened in Photoshop and saved as cursor.png.

I know that problem. It's probably because your "DPI" is different on both of them. Had this a lot of times...


macOS Mojave: createinstallmedia: command not found I'm following the official Apple guide to create a bootable installer for macOS Mojave:

How to create a bootable installer for macOS

when I execute the command:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Mojave.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

I receive the error:

command not found

I followed all similar posts like this:

createinstallmedia: command not found

but I cannot find a solution.

It appears that you do not have the installer for macOS Mojave downloaded on your system. Follow the steps listed in the section Download macOS in the linked Support document, How to create a bootable installer for macOS, to download the installer locally on your Mac before running the command:

  Download macOS

  Download a macOS installer, such as macOS Mojave or macOS High Sierra.

  To download macOS Mojave or High Sierra for this purpose, download from a Mac that is using macOS Sierra 10.12.5 or later, or El Capitan 10.11.6. Enterprise administrators, please download from Apple, not a locally hosted software-update server.
  When the macOS installer opens, quit it without continuing installation.
  Find the installer in your Applications folder as a single ”Install” file, such as Install macOS Mojave.

The installer is typically around 6GB in size. You can verify it by going to /Applications directory, selecting the app bundle and using Command + I keyboard shortcut to view info.

After you have the installer available locally, you can connect an external USB drive, run the mentioned command and create a bootable installer.

Note: The macOS installer can be placed anywhere on disk. Adjust the path of the createinstallmedia command accordingly to create the bootable media.


Software to losslessly optimize batches of image files I frequently work with large numbers of image files to be used in websites.

I'm currently using Photoshop's 'Save for Web' tool to find the most efficient way to compress images, but that takes some time and isn't always perfect.

I'd love to find a nice utility that can automatically go through my images and optimize each one.

Requirements:

Compression should be lossless.
Utility should be able to chug through a batch process automatically (i.e. without me interacting with it for each image).
Should support JPEGs* and PNGs, and ideally GIFs.

The app does not have to be free, as long as it's good.

*By JPEG support I mean reducing file size without making the compression any more lossy than it already is (throwing out metadata, etc).

ImageOptim?

ImageOptim optimizes images — so they take up less disk space and load faster — by finding best compression parameters and by removing unnecessary comments and color profiles. It handles PNG, JPEG and GIF animations.
ImageOptim seamlessly integrates various optimisation tools: PNGOUT, AdvPNG, Pngcrush, extended OptiPNG, JpegOptim, jpegrescan, jpegtran, and Gifsicle.


iOS App Advertisement choice : iAd or AdMob ? what will you choose , iAd or AdMob ? and what is the reason behind ?

I'm now using iAd, as I think Apple may block AdMob anytime, as Apple wants to protect its iAd. Is it true?

It is easy to combine both in the same iOS app.
This URL will provide you more information about this issue.

Summary:
You try to load iAd, if that fails to load or something else happens - you can fall back on AdMob.


Credentials popup keeps popping up after El Capitan upgrade Display of problem here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU_d1P-qX1s (10 seconds long)

I'm a developer and have all sorts of programs installed, including SourceTree and GitHub's desktop app.  Unfortunately, in the last few days, since upgrading to El Capitan this continues to happen to me.

When I'm working, or just using the computer at all, a credentials question pops up front and centre, asking me if I want to allow git-credential-sourcetree access to github.com in my keychain, full message

git-credential-sourcetree wants to use your confidential information stored in "github.com" in your keychain.

Do you want to allow access to this item?

Always Allow | Deny | Allow

My first click, and preference is Always allow, but if I click that, or Allow, nothing seems to happen.  Only when I click Deny does the prompt seem to take on board what my choice is.  After I click Deny, the popup disappears, but always pops up once more, and only stays away if I click Deny again, as shown in the clip.

It's really distracting and irritating, especially given that I really do want SourceTree to be able to access that login information (SourceTree was the original program I inputted my login information for Github).

I've received the answer to my problem from finchr's post at https://discussions.apple.com/message/29270520#29270520,

  In my case the problem was with MagicPrefs, a utility that lets you define additional mouse and trackpad gestures.  Disabling MagicPrefs allows Keychain to see Allow/Allow All mouse clicks.

Which was the very same for me.  I haven't permanently disabled, or uninstalled MagicPrefs, I just disable it when I need to click one of those boxes.  Hopefully they or Apple will come out with an update that fixes this.


Samba Troubles With My Mac - Password Never Accepted I've been tinkering with my router and have flashed it to use DD-WRT (a Linux distro that can provide me with some extra functionality).  This in turn has allowed me to create a Samba server to share the USB drive connected to my router.

It appears to be working fine and I can connect to it, modify files etc. from my Windows 7 box.  But I'm having trouble connecting from my MacBook (running Snow Leopard).  What I'm doing is:

Switching to Finder
Hitting Command + K to bring up the "Connect To Server" dialog
From here I try to connect to "smb://share@192.168.1.1/public".  192.168.1.1 being the router, share being the username and public the folder I wish to access.
This then provides me with a username & password box, with share populated in the username field.  I enter the password for the share account but it tells me it's invalid.  I've also tried different username/passwords just incase and using guest access.  All no good.

Does anyone have any ideas on what else I can try?  I'm definitely getting the right username & password combination.

Cheers for any help
Lee

I finally found the answer on the DD-WRT forums and it's annoyingly simple but I would never have guessed it in a million years.

The username has to be entered in UPPER CASE.  So while smb://share@192.168.1.1/public didn't work, smb://SHARE@192.168.1.1/public did!

Just wish I hadn't spent a day trying to get find that out!


How do I create a profile in Apple Configurator 2? I'm trying to create a device profile with certificate settings for an iPhone. I have read the docs on profiles for Apple Configurator 2 but still can't figure out how to create a new / default profile. All the non-Apple documentation seems to be for the old version of Apple Configurator.

All I seem to be able to do in the UI is open a profile file, but I don't have any existing profile files.

Is there some folder that contains default profiles, or some way to make a profile from scratch?

This is actually in the menu, just not the toolbar. File > New Profile


Google Drive doesn't appear on my Finder I can see Dropbox but I can't find Google Drive on my Finder. If I want to sync a file to GDrive, I have to open the folder GDrive by click on the symbol of Gdrive. It's very inconvenient.

I'm wondering if there is a way to display GDrive on the Finder, just like where Dropbox is?

It's most definitely in your home folder(username), that's where Google Drive folder is found just like Dropbox.


How do I disable iCloud for just one app? I want to restart one of my games on my iPad, so I uninstalled it, but when i go to reinstall it and start over, it just shows me the cloud option to continue from where I left off. Please help?

Assuming your running iOS 8.1, on your iPad, go to Settings -> iCloud -> Storage -> Manage Storage. Once your there under Documents & Data you should see your game. Just tap on the game you want to delete (reset) and click Edit, the the Delete All button will appear. Tap on that, and your game should be reset (you may have to Quit and/or delete the app to make the changes take place).


How do you EXIT full screen mode in Yosemite? I just discovered the new green button behavior in Yosemite that causes the window to go to full screen instead of maximizing it.  That's fine, and I can live with option+click to get the old behavior, but I can't figure out how to exit full screen mode.  I'm doing it in Chrome 38.0.2125.104, if that makes a difference.

The Esc key certainly doesn't work, and there's no longer the blue double arrow when you move the cursor to the upper right hand corner.

How do I exit full screen mode after entering it by clicking on the green window button on the upper left corner of the window?

Click the minimize/maximize button a second time or press Control-Command-F simultaneously. The button can be green or grey depending on how you have configured the appearance under the General pane of System Preferences.

To resize window, simply double-click window bar.

The best way to do this that I have found is to put the cursor in the upper left hand corner and wait a second. The green button reappears (you also get the top bar back in case you want to do other things than change the view.) and you can click on it to get back to normal view.


MacOS after change of Motherboard If I want to change the motherboard of a MacBook with a new one and I install on it the same SSD I had on the previous motherboard that has installed the OS and everything.

When I boot the Mac with this new motherboard, do I have to re-install the OS from scratch or all my datas remain on it?

The OS is installed on the SSD. Most installations are non-specific: they will run on any Mac that the OS supports.

In any case: reinstalling the OS normally leaves your data intact on the volume. And you've got a backup in the event of something going wrong and your files being accidentally deleted. Of course you have.


How to copy files on Mac that fails to boot? I moved some kext files from /System/Library/Extensions to ~/DisabledExtensions and now my Mac doesn't boot giving me "kernel panic" error related to some ATAPI driver.

I want to copy these kext files back on their place. How do I do this?

Is there some kind of Live-CD or Live-USB which will allow me to copy files?

Note:

This is on macbook, so removing HD would be troublesome.
I don't have another mac nearby
Internet recovery doesn't work giving -2002F error
There is no Recovery Partition on this macbook
Single user mode and verbose mode doesn't work giving same panic error
There is no Mac Os X installation DVD

Macbook Pro 15 Late 2011

I solved this using Mac Os X Lion install DVD.

Boot your Mac from Mac Os X Lion install DVD by holding Option key at startup
When a window appears go to menu and find Terminal and run it
From inside terminal you can copy any files ( I used commands: df, ls, cd, mv )
This works for Macbook Pro late 2011 but will not work for 2012 and later models because Apple prevented them from being able to boot from install DVD or USB. Thus all recovery tools like DiskWarrior Boot DVD, Drive Genius and similar will not work on 2012 and later macs.

The other option is to ask a friend with Mac to make a Recovery USB using OS X Recovery Disk Assistant v1.0 and make a DMG file from it using Disk Utility and send you over internet. Then use the TransMac application under Windows and burn DMG on your USB stick. You will be able to boot from this USB stick into Recovery Mode and from there you can run Terminal to copy\move files or do whatever you need.

Apple should distribute some bootable ISO or DMG image which can be downloaded from their website and burned on disk or USB and used to recover Mac offline.


Disk Space requirement for Xcode on a Solid State Drive (SSD) I have a question on the storage requirement for running Xcode and working on Application development.

I am planning on upgrading my Macbook Hard disk to a Solid State Drive (SSD) for an increase in speed. Would it be enough if I have a 128GB SSD , or should I go for the 256GB SSD (which is more expensive) ? Could anyone help me with this ?

Thanks.

Xcode and iOS SDK takes up around 10.5 GB of hard drive space. Depending on how much other space you plan to use up, I suppose a 128 GB hard drive is enough.


Key cover replacemets My Macbook Pro has just lost it's warrenty 1yr and 2months old and I've had to get the entire keyboard replaced, the hard disk replaced and now one of the new key caps has fallen off and can't be popped back like others have when they've fallen off...again.
Can I order a new cap cover in the store?
If so how much will it cost?
and before you ask I don't have an amazon account or any online shopping account for various reasons so would rather just buy the key cap in store if possible.

Since online shopping is out of question the local Apple Store might help you with the parts,

the instructions you can find at iFixit

or youtube


Will iTunes Match let me "upgrade" existing tracks to higher quality or bitrate? I want to pay the $25/year for iTunes Match specifically to get my thousands of low-bitrate tracks "upgraded" to high-bitrate.

Will I be able to invoke the service, get high-bitrate tracks downloaded to my Mac, and sync it with my iPod Classic?  Or is it only for iOS/iCloud streaming?

Yes, this is possible. Once the cloud has matched your lower bitrate song, make a final backup and delete that song from your iTunes library. You can then re-download the "standard" version from Apple's servers.

Jason Snell has a great writeup on an easy way to keep track of the songs by using the power of smart playlists:

Make a Smart Playlist Create a Smart Playlist with the following attributes:

Bit Rate is less than 256kbps
Media Kind is Music
Any of the following are true: (to create this conditional, option-click on the plus button in the Smart Playlist window) iCloud status is Matched, iCloud status is Purchased

Delete all those files Select all the tracks in your playlist, and then hold down the option key while pressing Delete. Be sure to not select the box that would delete them from iCloud!
Bring ’em back All those tracks should still be [in the playlist]—but now they’re marked as being available only in iTunes Match. Select all of them again, then control-click on the selection and choose Download.


name of my secondary iCloud email account I have set up an email account on iCloud on our shared macbook but when I send a message it comes up with my wife's name (primary account) and then my email address(secondary).   This is for work and I need my own separate account without her name being attached to it.  Does anyone know how I do this?

You should be able to change your name when you log in to 'manage my apple ID' and explore the options down the left hand side: https://appleid.apple.com


Double-clicking a window’s title bar to minimize it in Mavericks After upgrading to Mavericks I’m no longer able to minimize a window to the Dock by double-clicking on its title bar. How do I get this functionality back?

Go to the Dock section of System Preferences and check “Double-click a window’s title bar to minimize”.


Why is the Mac OS volume button grayed out while connected to an external device? At the moment I have my Mac mini connected to my amplifier through HDMI.  The volume button is grayed out so I can only adjust through my amplifier.  The problem is the mini is significantly louder than TV, BluRay etc so I need to constantly adjust the volume when switching between devices.  Is there any way to turn the volume of the mini down when connected to an external device?

Data, including video and audio, is sent over the HDMI cable in digital form, not analog.  The only way you could adjust that would be to adjust the content of the digital data, which is a destructive operation.

Depending on the software used it is also possible that your machine is sending compressed data, such as AC3 or DTS audio, directly to the receiver which decodes it.

Generally the solution is on the receiver side, which often has a "source volume" adjustment option.


Developer account under 18 I'm 16 and I've learned to develop iOS apps recently.

I've finished my first app yesterday and I want to upload it to the App Store.

I've tried to register with my name and my father's credit card and I got the verification code from Apple. But when I'm trying to sign in to my account I get this error message:

  We are unable to activate your Apple Developer Program membership.
  We have received your purchase information and will email you shortly to verify additional details.

Additionally, I'm trying to reach Apple Developer Support for over an hour but they don't answer the phone.

Any idea what can I do with that?

You need to wait for the activation email — there's nothing else you can do and trying to contact anyone else until then may cause confusion. You used a different name than the name on the card used to purchase the membership, so you will need to complete another activation step. This seems to be manually initiated and you need to wait for the email, which may take up to two weeks.

You will be given further instructions which may include information on cancelling the membership and being instructed to pay using a card with your own name, which was the final resolution in my case.


Can't reclaim empty space on main macOS partition [macOS Mojave] A while ago I made a linux partition on my MBP (2017), but it didn't work so well so I needed to delete the partition.  After a lot of trouble trying to delete it, I found this answer; I used the second part to free the space on the old linux partition, and then I resized it to 0.  Only, it didn't actually resize.  The partition is still there (though it is no longer showing up in Disk Utility):
$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         276.5 GB   disk0s2
   3:                        EFI NO NAME                 629.1 MB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +276.5 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            246.9 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 45.9 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                510.8 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      1.1 GB     disk1s4

I think it is this line that is the culprit, though I am not sure:
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         276.5 GB   disk0s2

As I say, I have run
diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0

As per the linked answer, but nothing changed.  Even in recovery mode, Disk Utility will only show the ~277 GB I have available on the main partition.
How can I reclaim this space, which is no longer actually showing up?

P.S., this is what I had before I ran those commands:
$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         276.5 GB   disk0s2
   3:                        EFI NO NAME                 629.1 MB   disk0s3
   4:                  Apple_HFS Untitled                222.7 GB   disk0s4
   5:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s5

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +276.5 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            249.7 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 45.9 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                510.8 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      6.4 GB     disk1s4

/dev/disk3 (disk image):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            NO NAME                +10.7 GB    disk3

NO NAME was just a USB drive, by the way.

You need to first remove the second EFI partition. Enter the commands given below.
diskutil erasevolume free none disk0s3
diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0

Explanation:
The disk0s3 slice occurs after the disk0s2 slice. The free space exists after the disk0s3 slice. The command diskutil erasevolume free none disk0s3 will remove the disk0s3 slice from the partition table, thus increase the size of the free space. The diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0 command can then be used to add the free space to the disk0s2 slice. In other words, disk0s3 is in the way and is preventing you from adding the free space to disk0s2.


Need Help Saving iTunes Preferences I have just bought a new iMac. I have iTunes installed on my new computer. All my iTunes preferences are set perfectly on my old iMac. I now want to move my external hard drives to my new iMac. This is where all my iTunes music stored. There is one slight problem... I can easily connect the hard drives to my new iMac... One thinks that just locating the names of the hard drives and taking your mouse and sliding the folders into iTunes will all arrange the albums and all the tracks with all the album names and artists and everything goes in it's right place... Wrong... Doesn't work that way. There is a way to copy your iTunes preferences so that when you attach your hard drives the first time your iTunes program knows exactly where to find everything and everything is in it's place. Someone out there must know. I used to do it all the time but now I have not done it in like 3 years... Someone help!

Generally, even when the actual song files are located on another drive like you state yours is, the iTunes library is still in the ~/Music/iTunes folder on your main computer drive. You can usually get there in Finder by clicking on Music in the sidebar.

Copy the above folder (iTunes) from your old computer to your new one, making sure to put it in the same place. If you already opened iTunes on the new computer, there will probably already be an iTunes folder there, and it's okay to drag it to the trash.

Once you've copied the folder over and you plug in your external hard drive, open iTunes while holding the Option key on the keyboard. When you see a message that asks you to Choose iTunes Library, click Choose Library. Navigate to the Music folder and select iTunes. At this point it may take a few minutes for iTunes to load, depending on the size of your library, but everything should be in place.


Get rid of trending searches in Apple Music (iOS) Is there any hidden preference or other technique that could make "trending" searches to not be displayed in Apple Music in iOS? I couldn't care less what others are interested in.

I certainly don't see any possibility in settings.

Any ideas?

Apple doesn't let you change things like that.

It's common now to engage users when they're searching for something (think Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) and it's really not that invasive compared to the other platforms.

While they aren't competing for ad dollars, more engagement means you're more likely to resubscribe as you get deeper into the product.


Apple Pencil life span Recently I bought Apple Pencil (1 with lightning charger) for my iPad Air 3. My question is relating to the life span of this pencil.   I use it about 5 hour a day usually.
Do we know how many years I could expect my pencil to work?

The pencil should last several years if you're careful with it. The two ways it will fail are physical damage and eventual consumption of the batteries. One way you won’t get long life out of a pencil is if you don’t use it and keep it charged monthly.

Avoid hard drops to the hard floor.
Avoid never charging it or letting the battery go totally flat

Things you can fix are overuse, the tips wear out in a year or so of moderate to heavy use. Apple sells replacement tips for your pencil at 4 tips for $19.  Apple also offers battery service for $30.
This link will describe how to tell if tip is worn. You may want to check it out.


How do i fully delete an old account so that it stops asking for updates? My ex-partner had an account on my Mac. When we broke up, we deleted his account. However, some of the applications that he has downloaded keep asking for updates. I cannot delete these apps, as it wants him to sign in but I do not have his log-in details. How can I delete these apps and stop the computer from continually asking for updates!?

By the general term "app", you ostensibly mean App Store? And if you did delete his Apple ID, then it wouldn't ask for updates.

You can either use a third-party program to remove those apps, or first delete them from the applications directory, then from Application Support located at ~/Library/Application\ Support/. If you cannot find it, then go to Terminal, located in Applications/Utilities  and execute:

open ~/Library/Application\ Support/

Then you can just delete the folder under the name of that app
Then, simply logout of his Apple ID if you failed in deleting it, and login your Apple ID


How to assign latitude & longitude to a photo "Location" in Photos 6? I have a specific latitude and longitude that I would like to assign to a photo that does not otherwise have any location information.
eg.  (18.352185, -64.792505) aka 18 deg 22' 26.46" N, 64 deg 45' 37.46" W
When I paste any formatting of these coordinates I can think of into the Photos (version 5.0 and 6.0) info panel "Assign a location",
Apple Maps does some sort of regional search and replace.  In this case, it populates "Caribbean Sea" and a pin hundreds of miles away from the actual coordinates position.
Arrg. this is maddening.
How can I assign a specific location?

Maybe the location is stored but not displayed.  You can open Photos and click on the photo of interest. Then from the menu bar click on View and about halfway down the menu the is a metadata line. Click on metadata and at the bottom of the displayed list is location. Make sure the location is checked.  Then go to the Window menu and click on info.  The location should be shown.


Where do the Windows applications go when Windows 7 is removed from Parallels Desktop 7 I adore Parallels on the Mac. I forgot my password to Windows 7, so I hunted for advice on web & found that password is essential - so I 'removed' Windows. Tried to reinstall but told onscreen that something was missing. Uninstalled Parallels & reinstalled, then reinstalled Windows 7 successfully.

Where does the Windows software go when Windows is removed? Is it also removed? …or is it still there somewhere - if so where would it be?

Anything you install in Windows (on a Mac with an emulator) goes into a Virtual Hard Drive. That means a file (more exactly a disk image) containing your Windows installation AND programs.

When you erase a virtual machine, you should be prompted to choose whether to erase the virtual drive as well. But since you don't have the password, that hardly matters.

The answer to your question is: if you erased your Virtual Machine because you couldn't remember the password, your programs are gone. You might be able to recover a copy of your Virtual Machine (and the Virtual Drive) from a Time Machine backup, but again, it will be unusable without the correct password.


How to download contacts from iPhone to Mac? I was able to do a backup of the phone using iTunes, but how do I see and access the contacts?

Do I need to import them into Address Book?

Is there a better way to download contacts from iPhone to Mac?

The best solution *IS* iCloud sync.

Simple and without any fuss

But a simple syncing over USB or Wifi to iTunes should ask you if you want to merge your contacts when contacts syncing is enabled (iTunes>iPhone>Info>Sync Contacts)


To what extent is system integrity protection affected if the attacker knows your Mac account password? In the cast that malware and/or a trojan has infected macOS, can an attacker disable system integrity protection and inject code and do other harmful stuff? Can an attacker even discover your admin password before disabling sip as keylogging software would be needed? If he can't discover the password that way then lets say he guesses it because the passcode is really simple.

SIP itself is not an issue, since that requires physical presence to disable (to wit: rebooting the machine into recovery mode and running a terminal command). At no point during the process of changing SIP settings is your account password required.

However, there's an old adage in computer security: If someone has physical access to your computer, it isn't your computer anymore.

If a remote hacker has your account password, they could access various network services if they can reach the ports, get an SSH shell, impersonate you, and so forth.

If a hacker sitting in front of your keyboard has your account password, the hacker having your account password is the least of your worries.


Suspected adware infection of Mac I have an Early 2015 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.11.6 (the latest version of El Capitan) that as of late had started randomly opening a website with the link fastlauncher.xyz [Thanks John Ramos: wouldn't be a good idea to try going to the link.] It does not happen often.

I have tried:

to use the latest version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware for Mac; it did not detect the adware.
checking the browser extensions for Safari and Chrome, the two browsers I use; but do not see anything suspicious.
checking for Login and Startup Items, nothing suspicious
restarting (I'm getting a bit desperate and maybe it'll work - it didn't)
using BitDefender (30-day trial); solved the issue

I have not tried:

using only one browser and seeing whether the adware will go away (hence I am unsure whether it is a system virus or isolated to a browser)

So far, the link has only been opened in Chrome. I would prefer manual removal over a program. Will update this list as I go.

If you suspect your Mac may have malware or adware installed on it, I would recommend trying BitDefender, a lightweight antivirus app for Mac (available for free on the Mac App Store), which I have found to be especially good at detecting both adware and malware and then removing it. BitDefender scans your machine when prompted (good for an ongoing issue) but does nothing in the background.

If you want constant protection in the future (that promises to block malware from being downloaded onto your Mac in the first place, and has fulfilled its promise twice for me) you can try Avast, which is also free (but not available from the Mac App Store, just their website).

Hope this helps, let me know if your problem reappears in the future.


Select font when converting .txt to .pdf from command line I often need to convert text files to PDF from the command line. I currently use enscript, a2pdf, cupsfilter, etc. The feature I'm missing is the ability to use an OS X font instead of one of the "standard Unix" fonts. I'm particularly interested in the AmericanTypewriter font. Is there an existing tool to do that or perhaps an Apple Script? If not, are there any other ideas?

The solution is to create an afm version of the font you want to use which is American-typewriter for the enscript program to create with.

What you need to do is grab a copy of the  AmericanTypewriter font. Which is located at /Library/Fonts/AmericanTypewriter.ttc

Next obtain and run the program ttf2pt1.  Copy the output file that you can name atw.afm to enscript's afm directory located at /usr/share/enscript/afm.

Edit the "font.map" file located in /usr/share/enscript/afm

Add in the AmericanTypewriter font to the list.

AmericanTypewriter         atw
AvantGarde-Demi            agd
...                        ...

Lastly re-run the enscript and choose the new font, process as you would normally after that but now including the AmericanTypewriter font.

enscript -f "AmericanTypewriter12" -p postScriptOutputfile yourFile.txt


Using an Android phone with a Mac's messaging App Several of my friends have their iPhones hooked up to the iMessage app on Mac.
If you're not familiar, it lets you check your phones messages as well as send messages on your Mac via your phone.

I was hoping there was a Android - Mac equivalent of this?

I have a Macbook but also love my Nexus 6P. I was looking for the same thing and I found iMessage for Android which does exactly what you are looking for.


How do I prevent my iPod nano's screen from going to sleep? I have broken my desk clock and am trying to use my square nano to show me time instead.

The problem is that when I set the screen to show time and leave it for some time the screen dims and eventually shuts off after which I have to get the screen back again by going to the menu.

Is there a way to make sure that the screen does not turn off? Dimming should be okay to save power, but it should at least show the time when I touch the screen.

Go to the stop watch and press start, now slide back to the watch face and it should stay on.


Why can't I run `su`? (and how should I do?) Whenever I try to issue su I get this:

$ su
Password:
su: Sorry

Needless to say, I'm entering the correct admin password which does work with sudo. What I want is not having to enter sudo each time.

In MacOS X, the root user is disabled by default, therefore su will not work. As others have stated, it's best to use sudo.

If you must enable the root user, see Apple's technote: Enabling and using the "root" user in Mac OS X.


Can I boot my mac without pressing the power key? Back in the day you could start a Macintosh using the power key on the keyboard (like the Apple Extended 2 has one in the top right).
These days we have many (more) input options like: Power, USB, Ethernet, HDMI, Thunderbolt, Audio in/out, SD card reader, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth.
I have a MacMini (2011) which is under the desk. Is it possible to boot a mac (or my Mini) after a shutdown WITHOUT pressing the power button?
I tried the 'Start up automatically after a power failure' but after a cold shutdown, a power cord disconnect/connect did not boot my computer.

shutdown -u

I tried the 'Start up automatically after a power failure' but after a cold shutdown, a power cord disconnect/connect did not boot my computer.

The automatic power on only works if the power was cut. You can induce this behaviour using the command shutdown -u now. According to man shutdown the -u flag does the following:

-u: The system is halted up until the point of removing system power,
but waits before removing power for 5 minutes so that an external
UPS (uninterruptible power supply) can forcibly remove power.
This simulates a dirty shutdown to permit a later automatic power
on. OS X uses this mode automatically with supported UPSs in
emergency shutdowns.


Any iPhone apps to test the touchscreen? I've been playing an iPhone game for about a week and today the phone didn't detect some of my swipes.  It still detected most of my swipes, but on a few occasions I swiped and nothing happened.  I did drop my phone on a carpeted floor yesterday so I wonder if that has anything to do with it.

Are there any apps that let you test the iPhone touchscreen?  I would think someone has developed an app that lets you touch/swipe anywhere on the screen and it gives you visual feedback that it detected your touch/swipe.  I searched in the App Store and didn't see anything.

I found this answer that said there are a few utilities that let you test the responsiveness of your iPhone, but it didn't mention the names of those utilities.  It also mentioned a web site named Sparky, but I went there on my iPhone and couldn't do anything there.

I have an iPhone 4S running iOS 6.1.3.

Sparky works for testing multitouch, so you can try different areas of the screen by holding one finger in a place you know works and move the other elsewhere. If the line breaks, then the second finger is in a location that doesn't work. You can test it full screen (without the Safari UI but the status bar is still present) by adding it to the home screen.


Any nice, stable ways to keep a window 'Always on top' on the Mac? I am looking for a stable way to keep any window 'always on top' on OSX.

Afloat, an app that does that requires SIMBL/easySIMBL, which it seems is not very stable.

Are there any better solutions? It's actually surprising that there is no native way to implement this.

I'll note that the iOS Simulator has the option Stay On Top (formerly called Stay in Front). Extremely useful functionality, and proves that there are Apple-supported and sanctioned ways to achieve this behavior.
Might be worth opening a radar, especially for adding to Terminal.
You can duplicate my radar:

Bug ID 27430873: Add "Stay in Front" option to Terminal windows.

Apple's Activity Monitor app similarly has the option Keep CPU Windows on Top that floats the small CPU graphs on top of all other apps' windows:


How do I make subtitles / captions in Final Cut Pro? I got Final Cut Pro to make translated subtitles for a short 18-minute video, but am having a lot of trouble with it. I create a bunch of Titles but seems like I have to reposition that title to the bottom of the video manually for each Title and it's very cumbersome. Am I doing it right?

Thanks

There are two different ways to do this - the way you are doing it, and the other is by using a text track in QuickTime.

The advantages of the way you are doing it:

You get more exact control over the font
You can ensure they show up
It works 100% of the time.

The advantages of doing it the other way (with a text track in QuickTime):

The captions are optional, and can be turned on or off by the viewer.
A single video file can be captioned in different languages, and those captions can be selected by the user.


How long should diskutil resetUserPermissions take (Catalina)? I am following this article because of this issue.
The Terminal has been going on for about 2.5hrs and I do not know of a way to see a progress bar or know if it is stuck or if something else is happening.

What can I do?
My SSD Home folder is about 280GB big so I understand it may take a while but, how long?
I am on a 2016 MacBook Pro (15") with macOS 10.15.1.

2.5 hours. No way. It’s stuck, or lost.
Open activity monitor in utilities and look for the running process. Put resetUserPermissions in the search bar.
Or in The activity monitor, if you find it, stop the process.


Want to delete UBUNTU 18.04 LTS from MacBook Air 2017 model I'm completely new to using a Mac, and recently installed UBUNTU by following some YouTube videos and it worked fine. I added 50GB for the UBUNTU partition and 8GB for the SWAP partition. I now want to restore my 58 GB back to the MacOS partition and want to delete UBUNTU.

Can someone please give me a detailed step-by-step process on how to delete UBUNTU and reFInd and retrieve my MacOS back completely. Since it's a new Mac, I'm not worried about data loss and there are no important files.

Just perform an erase install. Boot to macOS recovery and then repartition the whole drive and the installer downloads from the internet.

How to completely reinstall Mac OS X?

My answer here works best if you use internet recovery so you don’t need to mess with making a bootable usb and then get to recovery.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/315885/5472

In addition, there is no benefit to using a bootable USB or local recovery partition over just using internet recovery unless you already have the installer downloaded or a bootable Mac spare and handy. See About macOS Recovery for details.


check if storage is available and if it is execute a backup routine with passwordphrase i installed restic backup program with homebrew and tested its performance. Its great. So i wold like to set up a automated routine.
I tried to do it in automator with a workflow but because of the password check it aborts.
Maybe you wold solve different please let me know...

What im trying to get:

1. check if storage is available (usb storage attached)
2. execute restic -r /Volumes/usb-storage-name/restic-backups backup /Users/user/data
3. prompt the encryption key (or get it from keychain account restic?)
4. check again a day later...

what i have tried:

Steps 1, 2 and 4 are relatively straightforward and can be performed using launchd (or cron) to call a script.

My solution involves some setup, taken from this blog post:

Open Keychain Access (⌘Space Keychain Access), click on Password, then + to create a new password. User restic for the Keychain Item Name and for the Account Name. Enter the password you intend to use in the Password field (i.e. enter the same password you used when you ran restic init). Finally, click Add to complete the set-up process.

launchd (or cron) job runs every 24 hours and simply calls a shell script restic-backup.sh
restic-backup.sh checks if /Volumes/usb-storage-name is mounted, and halts if it isn't. If the drive is mounted it then checks for the existence of the /Users/user/data directory, and halts if the directory doesn't exist (it can't backup a non-existent directory!) If the backup volume is mounted and the source directory exists it then moves on to step 3...
If the environment variable RESTIC_PASSWORD is set Restic will use its value instead of prompting for a password. restic-backup.sh will set RESTIC_PASSWORD using the security command and some ruby magic:

RESTIC_PASSWORD=$(security 2>&1 >/dev/null find-generic-password -ga restic |ruby -e 'print $1 if STDIN.gets =~ /^password: "(.*)"$/')

With RESTIC_PASSWORD set the script can now execute the backup:

restic -r /Volumes/usb-storage-name/restic-backups backup /Users/user/data

The launchd/cron job from step 1 should run every 24 hours, covering step 4 as well.

restic-backup.sh:

#!/bin/bash

# USER CONFIGURATION:
resticuser=restic
srcdir=/Users/user/data
backupvolume=/Volumes/usb-storage-name
backupdir=${backupvolume}/restic-backups

# Script vars:
longname=$0
shortname=$(/usr/bin/basename "${longname}")

printf '%s %s (%s) running...\n' "$(date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")" "${shortname}" "${longname}"

if [[ ! -d "${srcdir}" ]]; then
    printf '%s %s does NOT exist.' "$(date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")" "${srcdir}" >&2
    exit 1
else
    if [[ $(mount | grep "${backupvolume}") ]]; then
        # See: http://blog.macromates.com/2006/keychain-access-from-shell/
        # Parse output of 'security' and set RESTIC_PASSWORD:
        export RESTIC_PASSWORD=$(security 2>&1 >/dev/null find-generic-password -ga ${resticuser} |ruby -e 'print $1 if STDIN.gets =~ /^password: "(.*)"$/')
        # Run backup, capturing output in case of error:
        output=$(restic -r ${backupdir} backup "${srcdir}")
        error=$?
        if [[ "${error}" == "0" ]]; then
            printf '%s Restic backup completed successfully.\n' "$(date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")"
        else
            printf '%s Restic backup failed: error code: %s, error: %s\n' \
                    "$(date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")" "${error}" "${output}" >&2
        fi
    else
        printf '%s %s is NOT mounted.' "$(date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")" "${backupvolume}" >&2
        exit 1
    fi
fi

printf '%s %s ended.\n' "$(date -u "+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")" "${shortname}"


Smart cropping of images and add border I need to perform batch cropping to approximately 3000 images. Each image is for a different item.

What I need is a crop tool that can define the item from the background and add specific amount of pixels to the top, bottom, right and left of it.

For example, see the image below. Can I use Automator?

You can use Imagemagick, available on Homebrew.

convert /path/to/in.png \
  -trim \
  +repage \
  -bordercolor White \
  -border 100x100 \
  /path/to/out.png

The image is trimmed using -trim operation which removes the border from the image.

  This option removes any edges that are exactly the same color as the corner pixels. Use -fuzz to make -trim remove edges that are nearly the same color as the corner pixels.

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/command-line-options.php
A +repage is performed on the virtual canvas to ‘flatten’ the crop.
The -border is added, in White.


Problem Updating Xcode 4.1 to 4.2 I had installed Xcode 4.1 on Lion and recently I saw the update for Xcode in the appstore. It was to update my current Xcode 4.1 to 4.2 with iOS5 SDK. It's around 1.8 GB of download and I did update it through app store. But at the end of the update, the update download restarted and I let it happen. But even after second download it restarted the download and started the updates downlad for third time.

I'm sure there is something wrong with something; either with OS or App Store or Xcode. Is anybody facing similar issue?

Downloading Xcode from the AppStore actually downloads an installer package. I can't remember exactly where this downloads to since I've already moved mine to a backup drive in case I need to reinstall, but it's most likely /Applications.

Once this is downloaded, you need to run the installer to actually update your Xcode installation. It should be titled something like "Install Xcode.app". Run that and you should be OK.

You've likely downloaded that package 3 times already though, so check your /Applications folder before downloading it again. :)


How to open/use/enable Spotify Desktop Web Player on iOS? Is there any trick to use the Desktop version of Spotify’s browser-based web player on an iOS device (e.g. iPhone)? On a Mac you can access it for instance using Chrome at open.spotify.com/browse. On the iPhone however you'll always get an "Unsupported Browser" warning regardless on whether you try Chrome, Firefox or Opera.

According to my knowledge iOS is forcing those browsers to use Apple’s Web Kit, which is probably the reason for the incompatibility, due to the fact that Spotify has dropped Safari support long time ago.

Explicitly requesting the Desktop view via iOS’ share sheet (or using the Puffin web browser) gives you a slightly wider layout, but there’s still no login option and no full-fledged web player.

So the question is, whether there is any workaround!? Preferably with included support for uBlock Origin... ;)

Try iCab http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/icab-mobile-web-browser/id308111628?mt=8

It will allow you to set the "User Agent" of the browser to pretend that you are using a different web browser, so you can tell Spotify that you are using the "desktop" version of Safari on the Mac, or Firefox on the Mac, or even Chrome, etc.

You can check your browser's User Agent at http://ua.luo.ma/ too. If it says anything about "iPhone" then Spotify will probably give you the "Unsupported Browser"


How To Fix “Application Is Damaged, Can’t Be Used To Install MacOS” Failure on older Macs I hope this post will solve the issue if you run into it.

If you trying to install macOS High Sierra / El Capitan on an older like 2010 / 2011 or older.
You get the Failure-message mentioned above and if you try to create an macOS-USB-Stick and run the installation from it the message is like “MacOS could not be installed on your computer”.

Please check the following, did you redowload the macOS App? So the certificate issue is solved.

If so you should download the macOS App onto a current Mac Model fresh from AppStore and create a macOS-USB-Stick from the newer Mac, this should solve your issue with the AppStore Authentication, so you will be able to run the installation on your older Mac.


Password not working on time machine restore after clean install So I recently wiped my computer clean because it had some problems, and did a clean install of Lion from a flash drive. I then restored my user from a time machine back up originally made from my laptop. When I transferred the account over, my password didn't work. The same password I used to log onto this account on this computer I'm using (my laptop) did not work on the account on the desktop I restored this laptop to.

This is the second time I have gone through this process and I am thoroughly frustrated. There is a single account on my computer that I cannot log into. I don't know what to do, any and all help is appreciated.

Boot from the recovery partition (hold cmd+r while the system starts up).  Once you get to the options, there should be a utilities menu.  Open terminal, and you'll be given a command prompt.  Type "resetpassword".  You should be able to figure it out from there!


How do I install a specific release of a Homebrew formula on GitHub? I am trying to install a specific version of Buck using Homebrew. Facebook provide a formula on GitHub.

I have added the tap:

brew tap facebook/fb

I can then install Buck using:

brew install --HEAD facebook/fb/buck

However, I would like to install a specific release, for example v2017.05.02.01.

What is the syntax for installing a specific release from GitHub?

I am looking for something like:

# This does not work!
brew install --v2017.05.02.01 facebook/fb/buck

Note: other questions do not seem to be about releases on GitHub.

Not sure whether this is a good idea or not, but it does seem like you can install from an older commit.

So for example the following command seems to work to download, build and install version 2017.05.02.01 of buck. Note that it will try to download and compile from source because the binaries have been deleted from the repo.

brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/facebook/homebrew-fb/7511722fd58e999e5d8c3a415d4e8cd1deee8f21/buck.rb

I got to this by:

Going into the commit history of homebrew-fb
Clicking on the <> button for the "Update buck.rb to v2017.05.02.01" commit to take me into the repository as it existed with that commit
Selecting the buck.rb file
And lastly clicking the "Raw" button to get the url directly to that specific version of the buck.rb


How to change Home / End behaviour on Yosemite I want to change the Home and End keys to work like Windows/Linux.

CHANGE:

Home to Command-Left Arrow.   // Beginning of the line

End to Cmd-Right Arrow.  // End of the line

I tried using Karabiner app known as KeyRemap4MacBook. But it doesn't work on Yosemite while I write code on editors like Sublime Text, PhpStorm, WebStorm, etc.

I also did create a DefaultKeyBindings.dict file (with proper settings) inside ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and OSX/Library/KeyBindings/.

So, is there a way to remap the Home and End keys for glabally on my mac. I could use Terminal command too.
I don't want an app for that.

You might have to change the custom settings in the Terminal app. But it's quite straight forward. See here: http://fdiv.net/2007/05/12/keybindings-in-macosx-terminal-app

I also changed it for my Sublime Text 2:

   { "keys": ["home"], "command": "move_to", "args": {"to": "bol"} },
   { "keys": ["end"], "command": "move_to", "args": {"to": "eol"} },


Some PDFs do not snap to the window while using Preview I have a ton of college textbooks in PDF form, and I use Preview hours on end, every day; so this little problem becomes quite annoying:

Some of my PDF files "snap" to the size of the window when I open them, and will stick to the size of the window as I resize it to my desired level of zoom (below, left).

However, some PDF files do not adhere to this behavior, and I will have to resort to manually adjust the zoom level. This also becomes annoying since if I manually choose a zoom level, even though the file still fits in the window, both scrollbars become active i.e. as I scroll up and down the document, my scrolling skews to the left and right constantly (above, right).

I have Acrobat Pro on my computer, and I have tried to find the right property to change, but to no avail. Does anyone have any fixes for this/ or knows what property I should be hunting for in Acrobat?

The problem is the document.

Typically, documents are set at 100%, so no matter the size of the window, it will automatically resize to fit the window.

However, the actual page size may be set to a different value when it was created so, when opening, it starts at that value.

From Adjusting PDF Views

  The actual size for a PDF page is typically 100%, but the document may
  have been set to another magnification level when it was created.

Since you have Acrobat Pro, try creating a new PDF document and set the page properties to be at 100%.


How to add another integrated dictionary to iOS9 I am learning Russian language and I was wondering if I could add a Russian-English dictionary to built-in dictionaries of iOS. I want to be able to look up Russian words in iBooks app without leaving the app.

I use Yandex.Translate by Yandex LLC
https://appsto.re/us/Vr50I.i

Get it from App Store
Set in the settings Russian
In Safari, Chrome, iBooks or somewhere else select word or phrase
Press Share, and choose Translate

Sorry, but I can't add more images because I'm beginner


Python IDLE from MacPorts can't start I tried installing the python27 and python32 packages via MacPorts in Mac OS X 10.6.8. It includes the standard IDLE, Python Launcher, and Build Applet applications. However, when I start them, their icons would bounce briefly in the dock then disappear.

Does anyone know how to troubleshoot this problem so the IDLE (and other applications) installed via MacPorts can start and function correctly?

Thank you!

BTW, having only one Python version installed by MacPorts didn't help.

IDLE requires TK to work. You need the tkinter package for your version of python in order for IDLE to work. You probably want py27-tkinter and py32-tkinter. Unfortunately, you'll probably have to go with the default xll version, the +quartz variant is not well maintained upstream. It won't build in x64 on Lion+ or with Xcode 4.4+ because it uses deprecated QuickDraw APIs which don't exist in the 10.7+ SDKs. Xcode no longer includes a 10.6 SDK, but you might be able to get it to work on 10.6.

https://trac.macports.org/ticket/32329


How can I view iTunes U videos via Home Sharing on iPad with iOS 6? Before upgrading to iOS 6, I can just watch iTunes U videos with all other videos from my Mac's iTunes library in the Videos app on my iPad via Home Sharing. However, the first time I open the Videos app on iOS 6, I was told I should watch iTunes U contents in the iTunes U app. But I see no videos in the iTunes U app.

I could resolve the issue by removing the Podcasts and iTunes U apps from the iPad. Afterwards the shared items are visible in the Videos app.


how to assign keyboard shortcut to buried command? In Chrome, if I do cmd+P to print, and click Print Using System Dialog, then click on the PDF dropdown button, I get a command called Save PDF to DEVONthink Pro.

In System Preferences > Keyboard > App Shortcuts, I created a shortcut named Save PDF to DEVONthink Pro. But pressing that keystroke has no effect.

How do can I call this command using a single keystroke?

Here is the code :

tell application "Google Chrome"
    activate

    tell window 1 to tell active tab to print
    tell application "System Events" to tell process "Google Chrome"
        delay 1
        tell window "Print"
            click menu button "PDF"
            delay 1
            try
                click menu item # of menu of menu button "PDF"
            end try
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

Just replace the #with the index of your script in the menu.  (FYI : 1 is Open PDF in Preview, 8 is Save PDF via Messages