Thunderbolt Ethernet Bridge; Very slow outbound packets to LAN and Internet My 2012-era MacBook Air is connected to a 2012-era iMac via a Thunderbolt cable. The iMac contains a Thunderbolt-Ethernet bridge which in theory should allow the MBA to (1) participate in extremely fast file transfers with the iMac and (2) access the Internet and LAN without the use of additional ethernet cabling or WiFi.

Both operations work as expected, but with a catch: Sending TCP/IP traffic from the MBA to any computers on the LAN other than the iMac, or to any computers on the Internet, is incredibly slow. Receiving traffic works just fine. Sending a file from a server on the LAN to the MBA, for example, is very fast, and downstream speed tests initiated on the MBA via SpeedTest.net max out my Internet connection at 60Mbps. But all traffic originating from the MBA in the upstream direction is ridiculously slow; Traffic from the MBA to machines on the LAN or the Internet moves at around .08Mbps. A test via SpeedTest.net confirms. (Traffic between the MBA and iMac is very fast in both directions.)

Any ideas?

Have you looked carefully at Firewall permissions on both computers? You may be blocking outbound connections from the MacBook Air on the iMac.

If you are protected behind a router, I'd try these tests again with all Firewall and networking limitations turned off. I'd also try turning off Little Snitch if I had it installed, while running these tests.

Apart from the lightning fast file transfers (SSD speeds I imagine), between MacBook Air and iMac, you could try adding a local 1000 BaseT switch and plug both machines into that switch via ethernet. For the MacBook Air, you'd either need a Thunderbolt to Ethernet adapter which you have for something like 1000 BaseT speeds or if you are willing to live with 100 BaseT speeds the simple Apple USB Ethernet Adapter.

You could also try plugging the iMac directly into ethernet so you are not crossing ethernet to Thunderbolt with Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt as Apple Network Sharing works less reliably between two identical protocols (Thunderbolt-Thunderbolt) than two different ones (wifi-ethernet, Thunderbolt-ethernet).

Please let me know how you get on with your network sharing issue.


Installing MacOS 11.3 creates a Relocated Items.nosync with changes to private/etc/group I just installed MacOS 11.3. I now have a folder on my desktop called Relocated Items.nosync. It contains a file called group.system_default inside Configuration/private/etc which the docs says is the default Apple would normally have installed but it left my modified file in place.
I compared the two files. The difference is that the system default file Apple would have installed includes one additional line: _trustd:*:282:_trustd
I have read that this process relates to security certificates and so this causes me a little concern.
Does anyone have any insight what the best course of action is? Install Apple's recommended file including the trustd line? Or leave my modified file without that line in place? Do something else?
Related thread on MacRumors:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/newly-assigned-objects-nosync-folder-on-desktop-after-updating-to-11-3.2293368/

After few months realized there is an extra item on desktop which I didn't create (called Relocated Items) so I guess machine was running even when this was not merged into /etc/group anymore. So I deleted it.
The only thing came up on my Filemerge was:
LHS: /Users/Shared/Relocated Items/Configuration/private/etc/group
RHS: /etc/group


Unable to connect to TP-Link wireless router with iPad 2 I work in an office of 3 developers, all of whom own an iPad. Two of the developers have an iPad 3, and I have an iPad 2.

I am the only one that cannot connect to the TP-Link TL-WA801ND Wireless Router.

I have tried the classic troubleshooting technique of turning the router and iPad off and back on again, but to no avail.

My iPad 2 model number is MC769B/A and I am running iOS 7.0.4 (11B554a).

I can connect to the building's Wifi network fine, and also when i'm at home I can connect to my own router and extender without any problems.

What could be the reason that I can't connect?

Despite going through the TP-Link support channels I ended up resolving this problem by using the 'Forget this network' option in iOS and then manually connecting again by entering the AP name.


Adding a new printer (of the same model) to my MacBook Pro I bought another Epson SC P600 printer. I currently own the same printer that I have been printing from my MacBook Pro. The older printer is going to be donated.

Do I have to uninstall the original printer's software and install software for the new printer?

The new printer is the same model.

The short answer to this question is no, there is no need to reinstall the software. If its the same printer and the same model, the existing software will work perfectly well.

The longer answer is maybe. I am not familiar with the Epson software itself but if there is an autoupdate feature you should be perfectly fine . Should there not be, I would, personally, reinstall the new software to include the latest updates.

If you have any doubt, reinstall the software just to be sure.


Visibile App Windows Minimize when I click on dock icons So if i have "Program A" open and click on "Program B"... "Pro A" windows minimize and i get "Program B"... if i click on the "Prog A" dock icon... "Prog B" windows minimize!  Please help.  I have tried changing the Mission Control settings but this is infuriating.

So what happened was.  In Onyx I mistook "Single Application Mode" in the Parameters/Dock area as the setting to make the windows minimize to the dock icon.  This option only allows one application to be viewed at a time.


Deleting a suspicious malware (imklaunchagent) in Mac I have a MacBook Pro (macOS Mojave) laptop and have recently noticed a suspicious process in Activity Monitor with this name : imklaunchagent

I checked this folder:
/System/Library/Frameworks/InputMethodKit.framework/Versions/A/Resources/imklaunchagent and it seems imklaunchagent and its related files cannot be removed. I tried to remove it via Terminal and this message showed up: "Operation not permitted". However, in "Security and Privacy" of "System Preferences", I chose Terminal to have full disk access, still can't delete the file and the same message appears.

I installed the free version of Combo Cleaner and it detected other viruses, none of which are imklaunchagent. Is imklaunchagent a malware? How can it be deleted?

You can't (see † below) remove that file because MacOS doesn't let you (or anyone) alter the contents of /System. Only Apple can write to that location.

MacOS does that to ensure the integrity of the OS. In other words, if it's in /System, it's part of the OS.

† By 'can't', I mean in the normal running of your computer, unless you yourself follow a particular procedure which no active software can perform by itself as a means of corrupting your system.


Can't take photos but space available! My phone says I have 494gb available (I just spent $9.99 for cloud space!) but I'm not able to take any photos!! What do I do?

I suspect you have run out of space on your phone. While you may have 494GB of space available in iCloud, your phone needs a place to put them before they can be uploaded. Try deleting some existing photos, videos, music, or apps to free up some space on your device.


GUI Firefox, Safari and other apps freeze after 10.11.3 update Some apps seem to freeze when they were started at login. The apps are still responsive, but the GUI does not update. Did anyone else experience this problem? What can be done to solve it?

I'd start with the standard 'troubleshooting toolkit'..

Fix permissions, Verify & if necessary Repair disk, using Disk Utility.
Reset Home folder permissions & ACLs using OnyX  - Maintenance tab/permissions, tick the box at the top then Execute. (Make sure you get the right version for your OS.)
Reset the SMC (instructions depend on Mac model)
Reset the NVRAM

At the boot chimes, hold  Cmd ⌘   Opt ⌥   P   R
Keep holding all 4 keys until you hear the chimes again, then release

Start in Safe Mode

Start or restart your Mac.
Immediately after you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key.
Release the Shift key when you see the Apple logo appear on the screen.
Leave a few minutes after login for caches to rebuild, then reboot normally.

Update to 10.9.5 using the 10.9.5 combo update, not the delta from App Store


Charging Magic Mouse 2 when the device is turned off… Simple question.

Can I turn off my Magic Mouse 2 when I'm charging it's battery through the cable?

Yes, you can turn it off while charging.

However, according to Apple:

  For the fastest battery charging performance, be sure your device is
  switched on when connecting the Lightning to USB cable.

Source: Recharge the built-in battery in your Apple accessory


Assign the launchPad hotkey to another Application I'd like to set the launchPad key :

to the Application windows (See all) function but I can't manage to do it. Any clue ?

This isn't an ideal answer, but might be good enough:

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard
Check "Use all F1, F2, etc. keys as standard function keys"
Go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts
Set F3 to "display application windows"
Set the other functions on the f-keys to their default (e.g. whichever f-key your keyboard has for play/pause, mine is F8 will be set to iTunes Play/Pause)

This will let you set the F keys to the functions you want and you won't have to press fn to access them.


Is there a way to display an instance of BezelUI (brightness HUD, volume HUD) using BASH or AppleScript? Long story short, I've written a simple BASH script to control the brightness of a non-Apple external monitor using ddcctl. It works, with a couple hacks.

It would be really cool if I could display a notification when the script is called, so the end user can be aware what the current setting is relative to min/max. I just found out about AppleScript's display notification function, which is cool—but the notifications don't go away on their own. I also found this essay on BezelServices, which is also neat—but I'm trying to do simple scripting, not creating an entire application.

Someone has created a solution to this problem: OSDisplay on GitHub.


Stop motion movie with iMovie11 How can I make a stop motion movie with iMovie.
I just want to play around, so I don't want to buy iStopMotion.
All tutorials I've found are with iMovie09 or older.
I have some 50 pictures in a folder, that I d'like to use for that...

There is a really cool video tutorial on YouTube that shows you how to make stop motion movies with iMovie 11 from photos in your iPhoto library (although can be any folder source).

Check it out here.

Hope this helps.


How to restore my keyboard to default settings? I was using Google Colab on my web browser and was trying to set some keyboard shortcut on Google Colab.

After that, my keyboard keep showing weird letters when I am typing. You can see it in this image:

I tried to solve this by going to system preferences > keyboard. Then setting shortcuts and input sources to defaults. But it is not working. I tried various other approaches from articles on the internet but I still couldn't fix it.

Can anyone help me to fix this problem?

Mac version - macOS Mojave version 10.14.5

Web browser - Firefox version 74.0

Just to clarify, the problem is not totally related to the Firefox browser. It is also happening when I am using any other applications on my system like the text editor for writing code etc. It is a system wide problem.

The default behaviour in macOS since 2011 is to display a menu of accent characters when holding down keys on the keyboard.

If you don't like this behaviour, you can go into the Terminal and disable it:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

  Once you’ve executed the command, log out and log back in to your user account. When you log back in, the accented characters will be disabled. Pressing and holding down a key on your keyboard will only repeat it.

This tip originated from https://www.addictivetips.com/mac-os/disable-accented-characters-on-macos/


High Sierra upgrade does nothing at all when opened I downloaded the High Sierra upgrade a few weeks ago and have tried to launch it now and then since, but it does nothing. Not even report an error.

The High Sierra icon with apparent stalled download indicator in my Applications folder

It does seem to start. I'm pretty sure I can see it when I run top in a terminal.

My machine is officially compatible. It's a mid-2013 11" MacBook Air.

It doesn't have an SSD, just a USB 3 external hard drive. But this didn't stop the last few OS upgrades from working.

I can't seem to find this specific problem mentioned anywhere on the net when I Google for it.

Is this actually a known problem with a solution?

Update

I thought I should try to run it from the terminal and see if it outputs an error there. But it is not a regular executable file. It is some kind of magical directory in fact that is associated with the App Store. So I don't know of a way to launch it from the terminal. Doubleclicking on it does something in the background using the App Store, since the App Store does not open or tell me anything.

Depending on when you downloaded the installer precisely, this answer may provide a clearer reason for the issue.

I have noticed that their have been one or two system updates for macOS High Sierra in the past weeks. The fact that you are encountering this issue is most likely due to the fact that your version is older than the currently available and up-to-date one in the Mac App Store today.
Please try downloading the latest version.

Then let me know how you get on with the install. This would be the only logical reason for it not working on a supported / compatible system.


Recovery Mode not Normal I am working on my macbook pro (2012). I let a colleague borrow it for some work, and they did some weird things with it, but it looked ok when I shut it down yesterday. When I tried to boot it up this morning, it did not load my admin profile for me to log in to, but after about a minute a picture of a file folder with a question mark appeared and was blinking on the screen.
After rebooting it several times and then trying safe mode with the same results, I tried to start it in recovery mode with cmd-R (and eventually three other key combinations for recovery mode, but it would only start in internet recovery mode). I can’t use internet recovery right now because my only source of internet is on my phone hotspot, and it won’t even allow me to connect to my phone.
Please help.

Reset your NVram
BTW the recovery partition downloads the OS from online, so you're going to want an Internet connection
From apple: How to reset NVRAM

Shut down your Mac, then turn it on and immediately press and hold these four keys together: Option, Command, P, and R. You can release the keys after about 20 seconds, during which your Mac might appear to restart.
On Mac computers that play a startup sound, you can release the keys after the second startup sound.
On Mac computers that have the Apple T2 Security Chip, you can release the keys after the Apple logo appears and disappears for the second time.

Also, the blinking question mark means that the drive needs to blessed, which can be done with this tool.
Unfortunately, this requires you rebooting onto an external macOS drive, or connecting to your computer from another mac with firewire 800 and rebooting into target disk mode.
Frankly, soneone you're working with shouldn't be doing anything that screws with your computer up this much, so when you have a chance make sure SIP is enabled (type into terminal csrutil status). If this is disabled (and you didn't disable it) I'd be concerned.
I hope you have a fairly recent backup in case.


How Should I Correct the Owners and Permissions in an OS X User Folder? My issue is that I've seriously busted all of the owners and permissions on my user folder and subfolders and it's causing lots of issues using lots of applications.

The initial cause was that I had renamed a user by following the Apple support instructions at http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1428

After the new user was set up, Mozy backup wouldn't backup any more and lots of my applications couldn't update themselves automatically. The application usually started working again if I deleted the offending program and reinstalled it. I thought it was because the permissions were wrong and I found some places where GetInfo indicated that permissions were referencing the old user. Sometimes the dialog just said "Fetching" for the username and never updated to anything else.

I ran Onyx "fix permissions" and Disk Utility "Repair Permissions" with no results. With "Repair Permissions", it keeps throwing some info warnings about unexpected ACLs, but the info I could find online didn't think those would be causing issues like this.

I tried to recursively run some command line scripts on the user folders (both logged in as root and using sudo). chmod got lots of errors about the owner of the files being wrong. chown after that gave me other errors (I can't remember exactly what they were). In a fit of panic, I right-clicked the entire user folder and chose to apply it's permissions to all children.

From what I can tell, when I did that, I set everything to Read&Write for that user and Read-Only for "everyone" and "staff". Now, I'm worse off than before. Firefox crashed and it can't even update it's own settings so it brings up the "Do you want to restore these tabs" every single time it launches, even after repeatedly saying "Start New Session".

Basically, everything in my user folder is broken with regards to owner and permissions and I need to know what they are supposed to be. Who is the owner of the files in each directory supposed to be (Downloads, Applications, etc.) and what should the permissions be? Given those permissions and owners, what is the best way to go about setting those all right?

I saw a question similar to this at Resetting user permissions to their default mode but it only addresses permissions, not owners, which has been an issue already.

I'm not sure if reinstalling the OS over the copy I have right now would fix anything and I'm close to calling Apple Support if I can't figure anything out in the next few days. Thanks for any help.

The first step I would recommend is to try resetting your home folder permissions with the Reset Password utility in Lion Recovery. (Despite the name of the utility, you won't actually be resetting any passwords.)

Resetting the home folder permissions with the Reset Password utility will reset both the owner and the permissions.

Restart your Mac holding ⌘+R to boot into Lion Recovery, which will bring you to the Repair Utilities screen.
Open Terminal from the Utilities menu.
In Terminal, enter resetpassword to open the Reset Password utility.
Choose your hard drive icon at the top, then choose your user from the drop-down menu below. Do not reset the password here.
At the bottom of the window, under "Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs", click the "Reset" button. This may take awhile if you have a lot of files in your home folder.

This should solve your permissions problems for most apps. However, it's possible you may have a few apps which had saved files with special permissions that are different from the user's default permissions (like preferences or application support files). For those apps, you may need to delete their preferences or reinstall the app.

If resetting your home folder permissions doesn't work, then you may need to try restoring from a backup or transferring your data to an external drive.


macOS (Big Sur) Internet installation fails near the end Buying used mac mini 2018 I decided to do a clean system install to be sure that it is clean.
I followed the steps from the Apple docs: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201065

signed out of everything
reset NVRAM
erased disk

then I followed the reinstallation procedure:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904
Command-R failed with some 2008F error or something so after some reading and thinking I used Option-Command-R which should install the latest OS available and compatible and that installs Bug Sur.
First it says I will have to wait for some 40 min for the process to finish and everything seems to go fine, but then around 11 mins before the end some problems start and the installation is cancelled with a human error saying: An error occurred installing macOS. You can try again to complete the installation.
Of course I've tried not once not twice, always ends with the same message and in a similar way when checking the logs. And talking about logs I managed to copy them so if anyone can read something useful from them and recommend any action that could solve the issue - here they are:
https://gist.github.com/piotrku/ae887b38ffcb25fad6810d3a7e4c5465
I'm using an Ethernet connection and the Internet connection is quite good (I event connected directly to the modem to bypass the router to be sure that no built in firewall causes the failure) and I tried on different hours for the past 3 days. I also read many pages describing similar problems but didn't found any real solutions.
Installing Bur Sur from USB fails (I think the same way as when installing from internet but fails). Installing Catalina from USB fails at the beginning with error 1008f. Doing Shift-Option-Command-R fails with some error like 1008f or 2008f at the globe stage beginning the process.
I don't know if there are any options left than sending it to Apple repair :(
[edit]
Is this disk erased enough to creat new volume and proceed with the installation?

Below are the steps to install Big Sur from a flash drive when the Startup Security Utility disallows booting from external media.

Use your Mac or another Mac to create the USB flash drive Big Sur installer. See the Apple website How to create a bootable installer for macOS.

Boot to Big Sur Internet Recovery. In other words, start or restart the Mac mini and immediately hold down the Option+Command+R key combination until the spinning globe appears.

When Recovery Assistant window appears, select one of the following options.

Choose an account and enter a password.

Choose Recovery Assistant→Erase Mac… from the menu bar.

Proceed until you reach the image shown below.

If necessary, use the Disk Utility to erase the internal drive. When finished quit the Disk Utility.

Select Utilities→Terminal from the menu bar. This will open a Terminal application window.

If you have not already done so, plug in the USB flash drive Big Sur installer.

Enter the command below to launch the Install macOS Big Sur application from the USB flash drive.
"/Volumes/Install macOS Big Sur/Install macOS Big Sur.app/Contents/MacOS/InstallAssistant_springboard"

Install macOS Big Sur to an internal drive volume.

References
HT208198: Startup Security Utility
HT201372: Create a Bootable Installer
HT211983: Use of InstallAssistant_springboard


What's the best server/client combo to remote into your Mac (10.6) from a windows machine? I have a Mac OS X 10.6 computer at home, which I like to remote into from my work laptop from time to time. I've tried using RealVNC and UltraVNC with the built-in VNC client, but I can't get them to accept the adaptive compression, so I can either do

8-bit color that is low bandwidth
Full color that takes up too much bandwidth for my home's upload speed

Is there a VNC client that supports the adaptive compression on the built-in vnc server for Mac OS X? Some other things I have tried are

Using custom VNC server (Vine Server) to get higher color with acceptable bandwith
Logmein.com - which seems to have it's own adaptive compression, but is only free for use w/one computer

You could try TeamViewer.

Like Logmein.com, it is a full software and one based one Mac OS X vnc.

By the way, it also works from an iPad or an iPhone or from a web browser under Windows.


Lock every object across entire keynote deck using applescript? I'm trying to use an applescript to lock every object across every slide of a keynote deck, with only partial success. I've provided the code I'm using below. So far it works, but it seems to skip any objects that are grouped. Is there any way I can tell the script to also include grouped objects?

tell application "Keynote"
    tell document 1
        tell every text item of every slide
            set locked to true
        end tell
        tell every shape of every slide
            set locked to true
        end tell
        tell every image of every slide
            set locked to true
        end tell
        tell every movie of every slide
            set locked to true
        end tell
        tell every line of every slide
            set locked to true
        end tell
        tell every item of every slide
            set locked to true
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

The intention is make it so that the content of every slide is locked, with the exception of the presenter notes. I'm not even sure if this can be done, so I'd appreciate any help on this. Thanks in advance!

If you look at the Keynote AppleScript Dictionary you will see that the "group" element has no property for the boolean "locked". It seems that the only things that can be locked are the individual elements of the slide, but not a group on the slide, nor the slide itself.

If you can, I'd suggest going through and ungrouping the groups in your slide, re-run your script to lock all of the individual elements on each slide, then go back and group them again (If you can group locked items, which I do not know). Depending on how or why the elements are grouped, this might have a negative visual impact on the group itself (They might not look right).

I would have posted this as just a comment, but Stack Exchange won't let me comment yet. So here is your "Answer", not that it solves your problem.


Can I get non-iBooks Store ePub files into my iCloud iBooks library? I buy quite a few ePub e-books from sources other than the iBooks Store.

I used to use iTunes to sync these to my iPad and iPhone. However, I’m trying to set up my iPad and iPhone to purely sync through iCloud, as syncing with both iCloud and iTunes gets a bit confusing.

Can I get non-iBooks Store ePub files into my iCloud iBooks library, so that they live there? (i.e. so that if I do a restore on my iPad or iPhone, I’ll be able to download them from iCloud again.) If so, how?

You can email yourself the files, then from Mail, open the files in iBooks.


Is it possible to delete a customer review that contains wrong information? We have an iPad app in the app store. Someone wrote a review that contains some false information about the app.

What can I do about this? Can I flag the comment so that Apple takes a look at it?

As of January 2015, you can in Itunes Connect:

Sign in to Itunes Connect
Go to "Contact Us"
Choose "App Store Questions"
Choose "Customer Reviews"
Choose "Specific Removal Request"
Click on the 2nd "contact us" link. A form should appear.
Fill in the form and push "Submit"
Wait for Apple to contact you.


How to run Windows 10 from USB on my Mac? I need to create a portable windows To Go workplace for my job and make it runs on a Mac computer, i tried WinToUSB tool and it didn't work, it keeps stucking at 0% when creating Windows to Go with a USB 3.0, so, is there any other way or tools that can create a WTG drive that can be boot and run on a mac?

I don't think this is an ideal situation to answer your question, but we run Windows 10 in VMware fusion and you can store the files on external USB. It's easy to set up, clear support path, but you have to install software and have a license for it so it's not something you can show up to the Mac and boot - leave no trace behind.
Check out the personal use license for VMware Fusion Player to get started while you wait for someone smarter than me to weigh in with how to do precisely what you ask or explain why it won't work.

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=fusion-player-personal

Maybe a solution like this would help?


how much traffic iOS Maps using while in turn-by-turn navigation mode? I'm trying to estimate necessary data plan for a Euro trip, and my main concern is: I'm going to use an iPad mini native Maps app for turn-by-turn navigation being there. Was unsuccessfully trying to find out how much traffic driving let's say from Prague to Berlin (it is a 3-4 hours trip) might use.

I understand I can pre-load/cache some maps for the route while I'm still on wifi at the starting point. But I feel that is very unreliable approach, and it's better to be able to have cellular data plan activated for the entire trip. AT&T (my device is used with AT&T in the U.S.) sells 300MB of international data plan for $60. If let's say I'm considering not buying local SIM with local data plan in Europe, is there a way to predict/estimate how much data plan traffic a 3-4 hours trip through Europe might consume? And how much driving time those 300MB will buy me.

Apparently, not much:

  My 20min 6 mile commute this morning used up about 150KB. Which could have been just traffic.

Source: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=15684662&postcount=6

This is without flyover and using standard maps (without satellite view).


How do I use iCloud to sync Pages documents from iPad to iPhone? I use pages on my iPad for documents. Apple says that I can have everything that is in Pages on my iPad shared on my iPhone using iCloud.

How do I configure that?

Make sure iCloud is turned on.
Open Settings > iCloud, and turn On "Documents and Data" if it is off.
If you are on iOS 6 on your iPhone, and not connected to wifi, open Settings > General > Cellular, and make certain "iCloud Documents" is On.
Verify that you are signed into the same iCloud account on both devices.
Install the Pages app on your iPhone, and on your iPad.
Open Pages on your iPhone. If you have created documents on your iPad, it may take a few moments for your iPhone to download them.

In addition, you may find this how-to resource helpful in setting up iCloud.


Can I lock my app until user give me a permission (like location permission)? I am developing an app and I am highly in need of location services and without that my app is not working. Can I block users from using my app (showing a page to them) until they go to settings and give me needed permission?

Technically it is no problem to "block" the user by for example showing a page with instructions to give permissions for location services to proceed.

Legally, it is not so simple. You should read through Apple's App Store Review Guidelines for detailed instructions.

Especially they point out that the developer must not arbitrarily block the user from using the app, if they haven't given permissions for locations for example. If at all possible, the app should allow the user to use the app without giving the permission - for example by entering an address or position manually. However, if the entire purpose of the app is defeated by not having access to location services, then it is okay to tell the user that the app is not usable until permission is given.

Note however that it is not permitted to restrict access to the app based on the actual location. I.e. you cannot make an app that works in Washington, but automatically shuts down when in Houston.


iCloud sync phone contacts How do I sync my phone contacts with icloud?
I will change my iphone so I need to sync my phone contacts on ICloud and then I want to recover the contacts on the new Iphone, what I have to do?

Settings ---> iCloud ---> enable "contacts".
All your contacts will be save on iCloud. And every apple device with your Apple ID will have your contacts.


SMB3 support on Mavericks Does anyone know if Mavericks supports SMB3? My work server uses it, and it's been buggy as hell and never keeps connected. If it keeps connected I lose write permissions to files I'm working on. Hoping if I use the SMB1 protocal cifs://

Link about it here:  http://www.tuaw.com/2013/10/27/did-mavericks-kill-your-network-drive-access-heres-a-fix/

Hope this helps someone out too with this issue. Thanks

Mavericks just introduced support for SMB2.

http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html#core

SMB3 is a planned feature of the next version of OS X, Yosemite.


Error: "Failure to find application" on launch This morning I got the following error message on launch. I have not removed any applications since last launch. Google did not help.

OK, seams that I have resolved it myself.

I have installed Mountain Duck, but forgot to move it to the applications folder. So the helper app for the launch on login was not able to find it and showed up this unspecific error message.


Automating pfctl to block incoming connections and IPs I get a lot of unwanted traffic from Chinese IP addresses. I'm using an old Mac with OS X 10.7.5 (my Mac is ancient, so I cannot update further), so I imagine it's more vulnerable than a newer Mac would be.

This page gave an excellent tutorial about how to use pfctl to detect sshd "attackers" who violate certain rules and add them to a blacklist. In my naive understanding, this applies only to sshd connections.

How can I generalize that tutorial to block other kinds of traffic as well? In particular, I have unwanted traffic involving sshd, sshd-keygen-wrapper, and screensharingd, though I'd love to block any traffic that has too many simultaneous connections or too many attempts within a certain amount of time.

You can simply replace:

table <attackers> persist
block log quick from <attackers>
pass in quick proto tcp from any port ssh flags S/SA keep state (max-src-conn 3, max-src-conn-rate 5/60, overload <attackers> flush global)

with:

table <attackers> persist
block log quick from <attackers>
pass in quick proto tcp from any flags S/SA keep state (max-src-conn 3, max-src-conn-rate 5/60,  overload <attackers> flush global)

If you want to restrict this to single ports use: ... port {22, 443, 5900:5902} ... instead of ... port ssh ....


Can I pay for an upgrade to Lion and get Mountain Lion free later? I currently have Snow Leopard and do iOS development. I'm wanting to play with the new iOS 6 SDK, but I need to have Lion installed. Is it possible for me to pay for a Lion upgrade now and later get a Mountain Lion upgrade for free later?

No, but you can upgrade right from 10.6 Snow Leopard to 10.8 Mountain Lion when Mountain Lion ships next month (for $20 USD), without having to spend the extra $30 USD to go from 10.6 Snow Leopard to 10.7 Lion.


How can I run an application which is outside Applications folder? Suppose that I move a.app outside /Applications to somewhere like ~/Downloads/MyApp (Note that I drop the extension). How can I run it from there using terminal?

I tried open -a but it says ... cannot be opened because its executable is missing.

It's not quite that easy.

Typical structure of an app:

MyApp.app
  Contents
    _CodeSignature
    Frameworks
    Helpers
    info.plist
    MacOS
      MyApp <<<<<<<<
    PkgInfo
    Resources

So in terminal you would open

/Path/To/MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS/MyApp

This doesn't work for all apps, but will work for most that are installed by a drag and drop.

If you want to launch them from finder, and associated them, but you just don't have the room  then in a terminal window:

sudo ln -s /Path/To/MyApp.app /Applications

This constructs a symbolic link in /Applications to where MyApp.app really lives.

Indeed if you are booting from a small disk, you may be able to move some applications off of the boot volume and put them on an external disk, replacing them with symbolic links.

Some applications install stuff into /Library.  To get these apps to run in different places takes a lot more work.

Be cautious doing this with anything required for routine running.  You can get your mac into an unusable state.  If you want to play around with in a serious way, install Virtual Box on your mac, install another copy of MacOS in your virtual box, and play there.  (Give it half your ram)

The performace is pretty sucky, but it's a safe way to play.


Cannot Access Existing Recovery Partition - Early 2011 MacBook Pro I have an Early 2011 Macbook Pro. I need to access the recovery partition for several reasons, such as turning off "SIP". Until now, every time I pressed
CMD+R during booting, it went directly to the internet recovery mode. That has never been a problem for me until now.
As you can see from this picture the partition exists :

However, not only it doesn't start with CMD+R. It also doesn't show as an option when I press opt . So I went in disk utility, run first aid and got the following output :

So I followed the instructions, went to (internet) recovery mode once again, and tried to fix it. Now this is the interesting part, according to the disk utility on internet recovery mode, there are no problems.

However, when I tried to mount the recovery partition (disk0s3) it failed. I also tried to reset the PRAM, but nothing changed.

I'm trying everything I can that doesn't involve reinstalling the OS, as last time I did that it took forever to copy my backup. However, I'm running out of ideas at this point.

If you have any suggestion and if you think you know what might be causing this, I would really appreciate it if you could let me know.

Thanks in advance!

At this point you've ruled out all of the basic things. Reinstalling macOS, even from within the Macintosh HD should reinstall or repair the Recovery HD.

Additionally you should be able to disable SIP from Single User Mode in the meantime.


Change background image through terminal on macOS Sierra I though of a random python program to take a URL and download the photo, then making it the Desktop background. People have had success with this before, but as of the macOS Sierra update I've been unable to do this. I've tried multiple ways, including those listed in this thread to no avail.

Does anyone know what Apple has changed their Desktop picture system to now? It's a tad frustrating when that's the only thing you set out to achieve and it's no longer the method people use.

How about if you setup your preferences to use a photo from a folder. Then your script can just drop the picture into that folder and the system will pick it up.

If you set your preferences to switch every 5 seconds, then you can change out that image whenever you script wants, and it'll be picked up within 5 seconds.

Just did a quick test moving images in and out and it works.


Will "backup -> factory reset -> restore" free up space? According to iTunes, on my iPhone 6 I have 6 Gb Photos, 2 Gb Apps, 1,4 Gb Documents & Data and 1,6 Gb of Other. I have no idea what Other is and what makes 1,4 Gb of Documents.

I want to free as much space as possible without deleting photos and apps.
If I backup my iPhone using iTunes, make a factory reset and then restore the backup, will Documents / Other be completely restored too or will I gain free space?

Your suggested backup/restore process will only provide a temporary respite. Caches will be cleared, but they will regenerate.

In iOS 11 Settings > General > iPhone Storage will give you recommendations as to how you can free up some space.

You can offload apps (delete the app but leave it's data, settings and icon) and you can store your photos in iCloud.

You can process your photos using something like JPEGmini or Half.app and regain some space.

But really you're fighting a losing battle. I recommend you upgrade to a larger capacity iPhone so you don't have to waste time and energy on keeping things just below capacity.


Are there any keyboard shortcuts for using El Capitan Split View for Mac? This question is about Mac El Capitan SplitView

I am a fan of using splitscreen views as in i3 for linux.

Or when I am on Windows I use snapping

With the new feature is there a way to use it without touching the mouse?

So far I've only seen that you can use it by setting it to fullscreen-mode and then use Mission Control for it. new-split-screen

No shortcuts for Split Screen in El Capitan as far as I am aware.

However ShiftIt (completely free!) is amazing for this! Like just unbelievably brilliant.

Been using it since Mountain Lion.

https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt/releases

Can also be installed via HomeBrew:

$ brew cask install ShiftIt

FYI I am in no way associated with this software's development.


OS X Keychain keeps prompting me for my SSH passphrase even though I save it (OS X 10.6.8) Every time I log in to a remote server with SSH, OS X keychain prompts me to remember the SSH passphrase. I type in the passphrase and check the box to remember it. I then connect ok to the server but then the next time I get prompted again and so on...

I have a private key to ssh into my server and the connection works. In my hosts file I have:

Host myhost
    HostName xxx.xxx.xxx.xx
    GlobalKnownHostsFile ~/.ssh/known_hosts
    port 22
    User myuser
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/mykey_dsa
    IdentitiesOnly yes

.. and then I type ssh myhost

This is only a recent problem so I suspect and issue with Keychain? To be clear, I can 're-add' to keychain every time and connect but this defats the purpose. The permissions on my dsa key are set at 600 or -rw-------@

I tried repairing disk permissions but that did no good. My Google-foo is also failing me, nothing of use came up. So I am not sure if this an OS X / keychain issue or an SSH issue.

update:
When I try ssh -vvv myhost, I think it reveals the issue:

debug1: Trying private key: /Users/danny/.ssh/mykey_dsa
debug1: PEM_read_PrivateKey failed
debug1: read PEM private key done: type <unknown>
debug3: Not a RSA1 key file /Users/danny/.ssh/mykey_dsa.
debug1: read PEM private key done: type DSA
Identity added: /Users/danny/.ssh/mykey_dsa (/Users/danny/.ssh/mykey_dsa)
debug1: read PEM private key done: type DSA
debug3: sign_and_send_pubkey
debug2: we sent a publickey packet, wait for reply
debug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey).

... and after that I get connected. I think this crux of the matter is:

PEM_read_PrivateKey failed

Update 2:
After trying the same key and settings on another Mac with 10.6.8 as well, everything worked fine so I think this is a Mac specific question, possibly a permissions keychain issue.

Update 3
I also tried a clean install of Mountain Lion (10.8.1) and alas the same issue which I totally don't get.

Possibly related:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3518441?start=0&tstart=0

Update 4
This is the answer

Answer copied from https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/26252/17690

Make sure you have a corresponding id_rsa.pub or id_dsa.pub in your ~/.ssh directory.

When I had an id_rsa but not a corresponding id_rsa.pub, Mac OS X kept popping up the dialog and remember passowrd in my keychain did nothing.

cd ~/.ssh
ssh-keygen -y -f id_rsa > id_rsa.pub

generated the appropriate public key file for me.

If you already had your public file there (rename it to another name) and generate the public key again using the above command, you'll notice that the generated and the old one are not equal. Somehow the older versions of Mac OS X generated a public key that Lion does not like anymore, generating it again fixes that.

For the curious, the key is exactly the same, the part that changes is that there is no "comments" section after the key on the file any longer.


Dropbox + Mac Mini Server = Syncing Issues In our office, we use Dropbox business as a cloud; All of our files exist on a Mac Mini Server we use inside the office as a local repository for all of our Dropbox files. We then have Dropbox sync all of the files to and from the server. From there all of our macs selective sync files from Dropbox.

The issue? The Mac Mini Server seems to stop syncing randomly and then our files are scattered between Dropbox and the Mac Mini Server. Which makes it not a viable solution.

Does anyone know how to resolve these issues or what may be causing them?

When it stops syncing run the utility "Activity Monitor" and check that both 'Dropbox' and 'dbfseventsd' are running.

Note that Dropbox runs on a per user basis so someone with Dropbox installed has to be logged in to the computer or Dropbox will not do its thing.


MacOS and Kindle file Location Changed? MacOS Kindle version 1.12.0 no longer seems to keep downloaded books in the My Kindle Library location, no new files are showing up there. Does anyone know where they are being stored now? Without these files to find and remove the DRM for use on other non-kindle readers I'll probably just go back to finding my books on DRM free sites 8(

Using Kindle v1.17.0, Kindle content is stored in the location set under Kindle menu > Preferences > General tab > Content Folder. (The default appears to be ~/Documents/My Kindle Content.)

If you are using Kindle for Mac from the Mac App Store, it has not been updated in nearly a year, and you should switch to the version downloaded directly from Amazon.

You can download or update Kindle for Mac by getting it directly from this Amazon site: https://www.amazon.com/gp/kindle/mac/download. (Note that clicking that link will initiate the download.)


Trying to share a contact group on iPhone? On my laptop, using my iCloud account, I have created a Contact Group for my iPhone.

I'm trying to make it easy to send text announcements to the Football Team.

How do I share or export that Contact Group with another iPhone user?

This doesn't work on Chrome for Mac, so it may be the same on Windows & require that you use a different browser to achieve it...

Go to https://www.icloud.com/#contacts
In the left column, select your required group
Gear menu, bottom left -
Select All, then
Export vCard

The exported file contains all the contact details for that group of contacts.
This can be shared.

Whether that data can then be used to send a single text may be dependent on your carrier.


MacBook Pro keep on "unplugging" battery and need SMC/PRAM reset I recently brought my 2015 13" MacBook Pro to an Apple center to get a screen replacement for Staingate. They did it for free. Before this replacement my MacBook was doing really good actually.

After that, battery issues started. Sometimes MacBook doesn't boot-up or doesn't wake-up from sleep saying that battery is dead. That is not true obviously, when I get to that point I need to plug it to the MagSafe, or do a SMC reset, or if none of the previous work, a PRAM reset. Then it will work perfectly for a few hours (or days, randomly).

CoconutBattery states the battery has a good health but I noticed (before doing an SMC), that battery was disappearing and reappearing suddenly from battery, as if it doesn't exists. I did a few hardware checks at boot ant they always looked perfect but one time in which I got PPT001 error (battery not detected).

I can't get to have a permanent fix and I wanted to ask someone else before bringing it back to the Apple center as it's a bit far away from my home.

Check if your charger might be dying.

I recently had to change the charger of an old MacBook, after experiencing very similar issues and eliminating all sorts of other possible problems. I even bought a new battery (yes, it was that old). I was about to give up on the device, thinking the motherboard was dead or something.

As a last resort I went to a local store and asked to try charging it with a new MagSafe charger. The device has been happily working again ever since.

Try doing the same; it's basically free to try if they have a relevant charger in stock.


How do I recover lost photos from iCloud. They are not in recently deleted My sister has lost upwards of 400 pictures in an accidental deleting spree. She deleted the photos from her iPhone and it chose to delete it from iCloud too, which is not a big deal in itself, but they are not in recently deleted. We have 10 days to figure it out, please help!

Did your sister try logging into iCloud.com to check whether there are some deleted pictures? Use the Apple ID and Passwords to login the website to get it.

If you can't get it from the iCloud.com and the "recently deleted", it's hard to find them back unless you've ever created an iPhone backup. You know the photos that you don't sync to iCloud can be saved to iTunes Backup or iCloud backup. Just restore your device will bring them all back.


Strange characters in APPLE Software License Agreement I have been getting notifications to do a software update. The Software License Agreement has some strange characters. I am not sure if it would be ok to accept it.

Try going to Applications > Font Book and doing File > Restore Standard Fonts and restarting.


Are there any car holsters for the iPhone 4 like the one that came with my first Android phone? I'm looking for a holder like the one that I got with my first Android phone. It must hold the phone in landscape.

I'm not familiar with the Android dock you refer to (was it for the G1?), but the dock I personally use is a Belkin TuneBase:

As you can see, it can hold an iPhone landscape (though it will also pivot into the vertical position), powers/charges the phone, connects to your stereo either through a 3.5" headphone cable or an FM transmitter, and has a button that acts like the in-wire headphone button on the Apple iPhone headphones so I can play/pause music, go forward and back, and answer calls without needing to touch the device.

My only complaints are that the dock connector is only used for charging the device (I have to plug in my headphone jack manually) and that the audio quality on the other end of a speakerphone call isn't that great.


How to find "file-release" in OS X El Capitan 10.11.6? I can not find file-release through command line on OS X El Capitan Version 10.11.6. On my virtual machine in Ubuntu I can do "ls /etc/*release" and it shows me two files with all needed information:

$ cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.0 (Maipo)

$ cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server"
VERSION="7.0 (Maipo)"
ID="rhel"
ID_LIKE="fedora"
VERSION_ID="7.0"
PRETTY_NAME="Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 7.0 (Maipo)"

No idea how to find the file with release information on Mac. Please give me a hint or a hint how to search it?

The file(s) /etc/*release contain OS specific informations like distribution name and version mainly in Linux distributions.

One of the purpose of the file(s) is to help software to detect the distribution type.

A file which contains similar informations doesn't really exist in OS X/macOS but can be mimicked with the following shell script:

#!/bin/sh

OS=`uname -s`
REV=`uname -r`
MACH=`uname -m`
if [ "${OS}" = "Darwin" ]; then
    OIFS="$IFS"
    IFS=$'\n'
    set `sw_vers` > /dev/null
    DIST=`echo $1 | tr "\n" ' ' | sed 's/ProductName:[ ]*//'`
    VERSION=`echo $2 | tr "\n" ' ' | sed 's/ProductVersion:[ ]*//'`
    BUILD=`echo $3 | tr "\n" ' ' | sed 's/BuildVersion:[ ]*//'`
    OSSTR="${OS} ${DIST} ${REV}(SORRY_NO_PSEUDONAME ${BUILD} ${MACH})"
    IFS="$OIFS"
fi
echo ${OSSTR}

Executing the script in my system will yield:

Darwin Mac OS X 13.4.0(SORRY_NO_PSEUDONAME 13F1911 x86_64)

In OS X/macOS the file is not needed because the requirements of a software package are determined by other means:

Info.plist in an installer app (e.g. Install macOS Sierra.app requires LSArchitecturePriority=x86_64 or LSMinimumSystemVersion=10.7)
preflight scripts in an installer packages which use sw_vers or similar commands to determine the OS version.


8 A Letters in Boxes next to OS X Logo in Overview Panel When I opened Mac OS X overview panel to check out how much storage I have left, I saw this strange thing. It doesn't affect the performance by any means, but it is not aesthetically pleasing. How can I get rid of it?

This looks like some sort of typeface issue, have you changed any system fonts around? If you have, restoring the fonts, then rebooting should fix the problem.

Open Font Book, go to File > Restore Standard Fonts. Read the warning carefully, then click Proceed.


Chrome on macOS Sierra automatically jumps to desktop with fullscreen video When I have video in fullscreen on one desktop and switch to another Chrome window on a different desktop it automatically switches back to the desktop with the fullscreen video. How do I stop this behaviour?

This isn't typical Chrome behavior.  Try resetting Chrome, by clicking on the vertical ellipse (three dots) at the right-most edge of the address bar, then Settings, then (at the bottom) Show Advanced Settings..., then at the bottom "Reset settings" to restore settings to their original defaults.

Failing that, remove then re-install Chrome.


How to iterate items of the window with dynamic title I am trying to get all rows from a table of the application.

set ProcName to "AppName"
tell application ProcName to activate
tell application "System Events"
    tell process ProcName
        tell tab group 1 of window 1
            set items to every row of table 1 of scroll area 1
            set itemValues to {}
            repeat with aRow in items
                set itemValue to (value of text field 1 of aRow)
                log itemValue
                set the end of itemValues to itemValue
            end repeat
        end tell

    end tell
end tell

However when I run the script it prints out only several items because the window title is constantly changing and I get the following error.

 "System Events got an error: Can’t get window \"App name window title"

Is it possible to tell the script to use other identifiers other than title?
Or please suggest how to solve the issue.

Thank you.

The simplest way is using the Application's bundle identifier. This can be found from reading the Info.plist file within the application package, or with some simple AppleScript such as:

get id of application "TextEdit"

This returns com.apple.TextEdit.

Then, one could run the following AppleScript:

tell application id "com.apple.TextEdit"
    activate
end tell

So, your revised could would look like this (note use of process id since you're using System Events).

-- set bundleId to id of application "AppName"
set bundleId to "com.apple.TextEdit"

tell application id bundleId to activate
tell application "System Events"
    repeat with theProcessId in (processes whose bundle identifier is bundleId)
        tell process id (id of theProcessId)
            tell tab group 1 of window 1
                set items to every row of table 1 of scroll area 1
                set itemValues to {}
                repeat with aRow in items
                    set itemValue to (value of text field 1 of aRow)
                    log itemValue
                    set the end of itemValues to itemValue
                end repeat
            end tell
        end tell
    end repeat
end tell


How can I display my ipad screen on my PC? My company has several ipads standing in public places around town running our app. Sometimes the app crash and I have to go out to reboot it. Is there a way where I can sit in my office and log on to the ipads to check that the app is running?

if you had an iPad 2 or above, you could use Airplay Mirroring, and then setup an airplay server on your Mac which will allow you to receive a live video feed of the current display.

See this answer, which is actually from a question about recording iPad screen output, which has most of the technical details.

It's not quite the same as "logging in" to your iPad, but the end result is the same.  The difficulty you will probably hit is in being on the same LAN which is a requirement of Airplay, but you could perhaps fix this with VPNs.


How to watch/run videos served by KA_Lite server on iPod touch? I am running KA Lite(Khan Academy Lite) on my PC and I can access the local server, log-in, browse and play the videos from it.

This same server is accessible via WiFi on my iPod touch. However, I'm unable to play KA_Lite videos on my iPod touch 4th Generation( iOS 6.1.3).

The KA_Lite video's are stored in MP4 format and I can play them on iPod( with iTunes file transfer). These same video's are being streamed( by KA_Lite Server) but somehow become unplayable. I'm sure this is not a Wifi Band-Width problem as I have done Wifi file transfers before and played HD videos( via VLC Streamer).

Has anyone successfully played KA_lite server streamed videos on their iDevices ??

try installing the Khan Academy iOS app on the iPhone instead.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/khan-academy/id469863705

You should be able to play the video streams right from within the app instead of using the Safari or Chrome apps.


How do I use UTC with NTP? Looking at:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH9069

How do I set the clock to use UTC with NTP?

(This is in the context of synchronizing the Mac with the Linux server, both should be using UTC and, preferably, connect to the same NTP server.)

OSX has NTP built in, and enabled by default already.

From the Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Date and Time

Make sure that Set Date and Time Automatically is checked. That's NTP. You can pick a default Apple NTP server, or set your own, eg. pick one from here: http://www.pool.ntp.org/zone/north-america

For UTC time zone, click over to the Time Zone tab, and enter "UTC - United Kingdom" as the Closest City.


Lowest Audio latency achievable I am a PC user, I like to mess around with audio production software (Albeton Live, Friuty Loop, etc.) On my pc (not an high end one at all) I can achieve around 3ms audio latency when playing a single virtual instrument. Obviusly increasing CPU load will increase also  minimum sustainable latency.

Are latency figures on Mac the same or is it possible to achieve lower latency? Can someone provide data form his own experience?

Thanks :)

This is entirely achievable.

OSX has been capable of sub-3ms latency for the past decade.

CoreAudio and CoreMIDI are built right into the OS for low-latency audio and MIDI support.

That being said, latency is a function of your entire system/signal chain. As you well know from your Windows experience, some tuning and configuration with respect to your specific audio hardware will be necessary to get the very best performance.

But even without tuning, OSX provides great latency performance out of the box. I've been using Logic and Live regularly since I switched to Mac about 7 years ago, and never had a complaint even in the early days when I just plugged things in and didn't tune any of the default settings.

As Apple users are wont to say, "It just works." But it works a little better if you spend some time optimizing the performance.


How to get iPhone to forget old Mac? My 17″ Macbook Pro died last November. I have a new Macbook running 10.9.3 but my iPhone 4 won't sync wirelessly because it's still looking for the old Mac. I cant find a place to make it forget the old one and sync via wifi with my new one?

You need to sync your iPhone with your new Mac using USB. After you've done so, there is a check box to sync using WiFi in the iPhone's tab in iTunes.

Be careful though, if you sync with your new Mac, and you haven't transferred your media to your new Mac from your old Mac, you will lose the media on your iPhone.


How to log in to a Mac OSX desktop with no user account password? My mom was nice enough to give me her boss's old Mac OS X desktop. The issue is I have no information about login names or password. I can turn it on and off and that is all.

How can I login and get my account set up?

Resetting User Account Password (10.7 +)

1) Boot into your Recovery Partition holding down command + R at the startup chime

2) Select 'Terminal' from your Utilities Menu Bar

3) Type the following command in:
     resetpassword

4) From the window that appears, select your boot volume and the appropriate user account

5) Type in the new password and confirm the new password

6) Click Save, close this pane and quit Utilities

7) Select your boot volume when presented with choose startup disk and reboot your machine


No ringtone for Face Time I don't get a ring tone when I get a face time call. In addition when i charge the iPad I used to get a ting sound. Now I don't get that either. Are both the problems connected?

You're probably in the Silent mode. Try to put side switch in the initial state. Here is the picture of the side switch location:


Can you really upgrade the RAM in the M1 2020 Mac Mini to 64 Gigs? Several Sites Claim to sell Mac Mini 2020 M1 Ram Upgrades to 64gb
--but--
Everymac.com and the Verge.com both claim the RAM limit is 16gb and is not upgradable.
Why are the answers to this question so variable?
What is correct?

Memory on the Apple Silicon M1 chips is part of the chip. There is no slot to add memory on the M1 based Air, Pro or mini.
I would not mistake an 8 GB RAM Air, Pro or Mini for anything but a beast of a workstation for many tasks. Real world benchmarks are showing them doing tasks dramatically faster than 12 core Mac Pro with 32 GB of RAM.

https://twitter.com/cocoalabs/status/1330199233090244615

Pick any ten apps you want to start and race the entry level Air with any Mac of your choosing - iMac Pro, Mac Pro, or an 8 core MacBook Pro - there are only few specialized tasks where the Air is slower.


Firewall: Add command-line tool to rules (mosh-server) How can I add a command line tool I've installed manually to the system firewall? The tool is Mobile Shell (mosh) installed via the excellent Homebrew)?

Specifically, I want to add a rule for /usr/local/bin/mosh-server that allows incoming UDP traffic on 60001-60999.

I've tried using System Preference's Firewall pane and the "+" button, but I cannot seem to browse to /usr. I've configured Finder to display hidden and system files using TinkerTool, but that seemingly has no affect on the selection dialogue, which still hides /usr.

I've read a bit about using ipfw, but that's no longer available in Yosemite (v10.10). pfctl seems to be the replacement. I'll use these if I have to, but I'd much rather add an entry to the system firewall UI, so the change is discoverable.

I knew I was being dumb: in the Finder dialog that pops up, press Shift+⌘+G and enter /usr. From there I can browse to the binary.

Turns out this is a completely ordinary Finder shortcut for "Go to folder".


ITunes 12.8.1.2 does not recognize devices nor see backups Running Yosemite 10.10.5 on MacBook Air (early 2014), with Safari v. 10.1.2, iTunes 12.8.1.2, iTunes updated dec 14 2018.
Devices (iPhone, iPad) do not register in iTunes. Are seen in USB device tree in System Information.
In iTunes, preferences, Devices: backups are blank - contains at least 10 for 5 different devices ....
Safari ‘cannot be opened because of a problem’ (no window comes up).

ITunes 12.8. will not install: ‘Newer version already installed’.
ITunes will not delete:’required by OSX’. Timemachine backup will not restore...

I need device connectivity, their backups and this OSX.
Any suggestions ?

Berthe

Dec 17: new iTunes build in App store appeared, it fixes Safari and Photo-connect to device. ITunes not tested yet, but I expect it, too, is fine....

Appears to be issues relating to the new MobileDevice.framework on Yosemite (I'm aware that the problem is slightly different, but the issues seem related.) I'd recommend upgrading macOS  if you can (it's good practice anyways), and if not, downgrading iTunes or waiting to see if Apple releases a fix.


Transferring PDFs from iBooks to your laptop/desktop There are a lot of tutorials on how to load PDFs into iBooks, but none say how to backup or transfer them back to your computer. I understand there is a button to email them, but I probably have accumulated 100 or so useful pdfs on my iPhone.

I worry if I click sync books, it will erase everything I have on my iPhone and only use what's on my computer the first time I do it right? I have never synced it before loading the books.

Is there any safe reliable (hopefully native) way to preserve books and PDF that were loaded natively from iOS? I do not want to risk losing them. I'm using iCloud, does that back them up as well? Either way I would like to have an extra copy of them on my hard drive.

Grab a copy of iExplorer (freeware), connect your phone, open iExplorer, select your device, and navigate to Media > Books. All your PDFs should be there.
However they all have cryptic names and there's no QuickLook in iExplorer, so you need to copy them all and then look which ones you need.


Energy usage when iMac not in sleep mode, but screen/HDD off/idle I have an iMac 21.5" from 2016. For several reasons I want to have the iMac available for logging in via Splashtop and some other over-the-internet access. Afaik I can't use sleep mode.

How much more energy will the iMac use when not in sleep mode, but assuming screen is off and hard disk is idle?

You can find the power consumption specifications for your model in the respective Environment Report from Apple at https://www.apple.com/environment/reports/

For your Model, it states "Idle—Display on 37.7W 38.8W 38.3W" for "100V 115V 230V" respectively.

To get a rough idea about the effect of turning the screen off : on 230V, my iMac runs at 0.85A at full brightness, at 0.465A at minimum brightness and 0.4A with the screen turned off. You will save some power when you disconnect all USB devices and the network cable, but it's rather irrelevant.

No, not using sleep mode does not have any other major consequences afaik. Furthermore, in my experience, light CPU activity does not influence power uptake significantly.


AppleScript: Get list of 15 most recent files in directory I need to build a string containing the filenames of the 15 most recent files (by modification date) within a directory. Delimited only by a space:

file1.jpg file2.jpg file3.jpg

I'm using ImageMagick via command line. Here is what I currently have, but get an error number -1728:

tell application "Finder"
    set imageItems to every file of folder wallpaperPath
    set imageItems to the reverse of (sort imageItems by modification date)
    set concatFiles to ""
    repeat with n from 1 to 15
        set imageItem to item n of imageItems
        set imageName to the file name of imageItem
        set concatFiles to concatFiles & " " & imageName
    end repeat
end tell
do shell script "cd " & wallpaperPath & "; montage " & concatFiles & " -tile 3x5 -geometry 500x500+1+1 ~/Desktop/final.jpg"

Change the line,

    set imageName to the file name of imageItem

to

    set imageName to the name of imageItem

and it should work.

EDIT:

Couldn't help but notice that you are not quoting your file names. If any of them contain spaces, then you will have problems. Best to also change

    set concatFiles to concatFiles & " " &  imageName

to

    set concatFiles to concatFiles & " " & quoted form of imageName


How to recover from "chown -R $USER /usr/"? I ran a 'chown' on everything under /usr to a non root user. Meant to run it for /usr/local/
Now I get the error below on opening terminal

login(89809,0x7fff7bac5960) malloc: *** error for object 0x7fc7cb500b40: pointer being freed was not allocated
*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

[Process completed]

If you can't restore /usr/ from a backup, you could first start up in single user mode (by holding command-S on startup) and run chown -R root /usr/.

On my installation, all files under /usr/local/ were owned by either root or me, a few files under /usr/ were owned by _uucp, and all other files under /usr/ were owned by root:

$ sudo find /usr/local ! -user root ! -user $USER
$ sudo find /usr/!(local) ! -user root -print0|xargs -0 stat -f '%Su %N'
_uucp /usr/bin/cu
_uucp /usr/bin/uucp
_uucp /usr/bin/uuname
_uucp /usr/bin/uustat
_uucp /usr/bin/uux
_uucp /usr/sbin/uucico
_uucp /usr/sbin/uuxqt
_uucp /usr/share/uucp

This would change the owner of the uucp files:

sudo chown _uucp /usr/bin/{cu,uucp,uuname,uustat,uux} /usr/sbin/{uucico,uuxqt} /usr/share/uucp

/usr/local/ does not exist on a fresh installation of OS X. If you only used /usr/local/ with Homebrew, you might delete /usr/local/ and then reinstall Homebrew.

Alternatively, you could use Pacifist to copy the default /usr/ from an OS X installer downloaded from App Store. Doing an upgrade install of OS X from the recovery partition or upgrading to 10.9 might also restore the owners of some files.


Syncing iPhone Contacts with an Exchange Server Happy new year!

I'm using an iPhone 4 with 4.2.1.

On the iPhone with Exchange Server, how do you get the group 'All On My iPhone' to sync with the exchange server? At present everything but that group is synced.

I'm using Google sync, which works like an Exchange server, so my experience may not be 100% the same as with a full Exchange set up.

I had to import all of the contact to the server (I did this through the Apple contacts app on my Mac) then synchronised them from there. I deleted all of the contacts from my iPhone to prevent contacts being displayed twice. So in short I'm not sure that it is possible to synchronise that group at all.

FWIW I also disabled synchronising contacts with my Mac through iTunes, leaving Exchange to handle all the contact syncing.


Machine name set to new-host-X instead of the name set in Preferences My machine name is set shiny in System Preferences/Sharing/Computer Name.

From another machine on the network, I can only use shiny.local to refer to this machine. In the past, I used only shiny.

In a terminal, I have new-host-7 instead of the machine name.

I don't know if this is relevant, but the computers are connected to an internet box, on which a DHCP server is activated. I assigned a static IP address to the Mac. The internet box can see the name I gave to the Mac.

Is there something I can do to refer to the Mac as shiny on the network ?

Try using sudo scutil --set HostName shiny and sudo scutil --set LocalHostName shiny then close your shell (Terminal window) and open a new one.


Can I use a Verizon iPad mini with Wi-Fi only? A friend just gave me his Verizon LTW iPad mini. I don't have Verizon.

Do I need to remove the SIM card to use it on Wi-Fi only? What problems will I encounter not having Verizon and trying to use this device? What settings do I need to turn off to disable Verizon's service on this device? How does this SIM card get removed?

You can use it with Wifi only. It may try to connect to cellular data automatically so in Settings you can disable cellular data.

You dont have to worry about the SIM card.


What's the port left to the audio output? I found a port left to the headphone output (the one plugged in with a cord with a green jack), right to the USB ports, and under the SD card slot. It has the same radius as the headphone output. What is it?

That's the audio in port.

Audio in/optical audio in port
The Audio In port accommodates both digital optical input and analog audio input.
Analog audio line input is accepted through a 3.5mm mini phone jack. The sound input port accepts line-level stereo signals up to 24-bit stereo 44.1-192kHz sampling rate. It also accepts a stereo miniplug-to-RCA cable adapter for connecting stereo equipment to the computer.
Optical audio input is SPDIF format and uses a standard TOSLINK cable with a TOSLINK mini-plug adapter, accepting up to 24-bit stereo and 44.1-96kHz sampling rate.

Source: https://support.apple.com/kb/HT202638


How do I forcibly shut down a specific application at a pre-determined time? I don't know if there's an available app or perhaps a terminal command, but I'd like to forcibly shut down a specific application at a specific time, without the option to cancel.

I'd like it so I can choose the time.

To make a long story short, there's a game that's incredibly addicting and if I don't force quit it, I can totally see myself getting lost in it for extra hours.

I'd rather just have the application quit, regardless of where I am in the game, so I make sure to follow through on my allotted time period for playing.

There's something similar, but not entirely applicable here (The info here could help in forming an answer):
How can I forcibly shut down my Mac at an appointed time?

You can quit apps with AppleScript, such as:

osascript -e "tell application 'Safari' to quit"

Therefore, you can add the following to your crontab (env EDITOR=nano crontab -e) to quit an app without saving at 17:30 every day:

30 17 * * * /usr/bin/osascript -e "tell application 'Safari' to quit saving no"

If you want to quit without saving, you can remove the saving no.
Alternatively, you can kill the process with /usr/bin/killall Safari.


Creating Automatic Period local backup of folder So I want to create automatic backups of my home folder without connecting an external disk. This definitely seems like a feature that the mac should have. I understand that if you have Time Machine set up, then it will make local backups as space permits. Well thats exactly what I want. But you need an external disk in order to activate time machine at all.

I don't have an external disk right now. What I can't understand is why I can't just have it make local backups as space permits without connecting an external drive? Since I don't own an external drive there is no way for me to "turn on" time machine. Does anyone know a way I can?

The best case scenario is that I could select one or a few folders to backup, not the entire file system.

The reason for this is that I am programmer, and I move around a lot, and I'm always working on the command line. Working on code in specific work folders. Code files are generally not huge, and I am not wanting to backup every file on my computer, but only my important files that I've worked on many hours. While I try to be as careful as possible and use version control, sometimes I make a mistake and it would be great to just have a local backup of, say, yesterday's file system, or any recent backup.

Thanks.

Macbook Pro 2018 Mojave

If you want a local backup you can run a bash script that creates an archive of your home directory.

zip -r pathToBackup.zip /Users/username

This can be expanded upon with bash to:

Add password protection and encryption with the --encrypt option
Run automatically at certain times with cron
Append timestamps to name of backup file
Keep only a certain number of backups
etc...


Logic board replacement or repair (for booting issue)? I have a 2012 MacBook Pro 13 inch non-retina model .

The issue was ,from past one year I used to get service battery message but I still kept using without worrying about it.

The OS  would boot sometimes or else it would not boot at all showing flashing folder with a question mark. Then I upgraded the hard drive that came with the device with an SSD thinking I would solve this problem by updating the OS to Mojave which runs on APFS system which they said was good with SSD. The booting issues were still there. I upgraded the battery thinking it would solve the booting issues.But only after which it did not boot at all.

The battery was either always full or didn’t charge at all it was very confusing because the MagSafe cable was green all time the os was very slow even if it booted.

Took it to an Apple authorised service centre where they say even after changing the hard drive flex cable the booting issues are still there.

They can any time call me to take back the MacBook(as it was)as it’s been 2 months they’re working on it but no solutions found as I am being updated by them on a weekly basis.

I would trust the technician that opened the mac, replaced some parts and knows what they’re doing. Apple training is very good at fault isolation and repair skills and accurate quoting. They would likely have tested a battery or offered you a battery swap which is the typical part failing when the board won’t charge a battery.

The cost of becoming skilled enough to repair a logic board is why it’s almost always cheaper to get a service part from Apple (which you can’t do anymore due to this being vintage/obsolete) and having Apple rework the part and/or scrap it for a new logic board when it’s uneconomical to repair your board.

Unless you can get 5 Macs for scrap prices and try swapping and hope you hit the lottery, swapping the board for one that’s good is going to be the only chance you can get a cheaper repair than paying an expert to source your spare parts or perform some diagnosis on what’s failing on your specific board.


Why does macOS 10.13 suddenly asks for a PIN instead of password for login? When facing the lock screen to enter my credentials, my Mac running macOS 10.13 High Sierra asks for a PIN instead of my password. This has happened 4 times within the last months. The only solution is to force a shutdown and restart. Then my MacBook will ask for my password again. I have never setup a PIN and it's not the screen I would get if I lock my MacBook through Find my Mac.

Unfortunately, only search results regarding Find my Mac come up when searching for PIN and MacBook. I hope someone can help me by referring to the screenshot above.
What is this PIN and why is macOS asking for it? How can I prevent macOS from asking for a PIN?

You have your Yubi key in the USB port at some point, put the Yubi key in and enter your Yubi Pin this will unlock your screen


How to make aliases go away when main file is deleted? Is there a way to (automatically) delete all aliases when the file they are an alias to is deleted?

No - aliases are a combination of a sym link pointing to a place as well as a unique file ID to track that file if it moves so the alias won't be broken if the file still resides on the original volume. (the file ID changes across volumes and an alias will only remain valid if the relative path is correct if and when the file ID half is broken by a deletion).

So - for this to work, the system actively tries to reconnect the alias after a delete of the original file by design so automatically deleting an alias would ruin that chance to reconnect.

Even though your question makes great logical sense, it amounts to a re-design of what an alias is engineered to do.

A hard link is what you want to use if you want it to go away when the file is deleted finally.


What application is using a particular file? I have some FileMaker databases being served for dev purposes and I keep bumping into occurrences where the database/file is locked and I can't make changes to it.

How can I determine what application is touching/using this file so I can kill it?

Have you tried using the terminal command

  $ lsof 'Filename'

For a more detailed look at the file use

$ lsof | grep -f 'Filename'

Should give you the command that is using it and also the PID of that file


Building a small network in Apple environment? I have four Macs I want networked together so files can be shared between them without email. I want it to be a wired network and I also want to be able to access the files on the network away from anywhere. A backup on a portable hardrive and an online backup would be a plus. Is OS X server what I need and maybe a dropbox? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am not sure what to do!

There are several ways to accomplish this. Let's list your requirements:

Multiple Macs.
Shared files between them.
Wired network.
Backups either online or local.
Remote access to files.

While OS X Server is certainly useful here (especially if you wanted a VPN), it isn't necessary. Assuming all of your PCs are on the network, I would set up a NAS (network attached storage device) and locate my files there. Many NAS also have the ability to share files out remotely.

Alternatively, you could load Dropbox, Box.net, or some similar service on each device, and share specific folders to each user account. This would allow you to more easily integrate devices external to your network into your file sharing system. Each such service offers varying tiers of free space, and you pay as you add onto them. An added bonus would be the ability to roll back file changes, or recover deletions (at least DropBox has this feature.)

As with any setup, your mileage will vary.


IOS 14 - I stopped receiving text notifications while I’m on a phone call. How do I get that notification back IOS 14 - I stopped receiving text notifications while on a phone call. How do I get the text notifications back?

I ran into the same issue. I was on a phone call, looking away from my phone, relying on text sound notifications to alert me. When the sound alert stopped, I missed a bunch of text messages. I think I found the fix. Settings>Sound and Haptics. Move the Ringer and Alerts slide from left (mute) to right so sound is allowed.


How to separate and already established icloud account How do I separate my daughter's Apple ID and iCloud account from my own and still be able to keep a payment plan that covers 2 phones? I read that this is possible but can't seem to set up the new account name or passwords on either  phone. What steps do I need to take?

Thanks for your assistance.
G.

I would like to provide a more complete answer.

First of all, you should create an Apple ID (iCloud account) for your daughter.

Once it's done, you can activate on your phone what Apple calls Family Sharing. This will make you the family owner. You can find it in your Settings app. Here is the documentation to set it up.

Once done, you just have to pair her account through her phone to yours.

This feature will allow you to share bought application or media and give you additional features such as location... But you will also be able to share the payment methods with control options ("need to ask for authorisation before buying anything"...).


Stop Safari from appending ".download" to not fully downloaded files I'd like for files downloaded on (macOS) Safari to have the original file's name, without the added ".download". is that possible at all?

The idea is that I'd be able to use some files before they're fully download, like MP4's for example.

I don't know of a way to do it, and if I did, I would not recommend this at all. First, because trying to work with partially-downloaded files is a good way to get yourself into trouble. Depending on how the programs you want to use on the file work, they may or may not cope with having the file modified as they're trying to use it. A media player, for example, might check the file's integrity before playing it, and refuse to play a damaged file. Or it might note the file's length (when it opens it) and assume that's the length it'll always have. Or it might read the entire file into memory (as it exists when opened) and then play that without going back to see if it's gotten longer. Or... lots of things might go wrong.

The other problem is that that .download file is not actually the partially-downloaded file. It's a Finder package: a folder with hidden contents that the Finder treats as a regular file. You can see its contents by Control-clicking (or right-clicking) on the .download file, and choosing Show Package Contents from the shortcut menu. Inside it, you'll see an Info.plist file with information about the download (you can select it and press Command-Y to see the info in XML format). You'll also see the partially-downloaded file, under its regular name.

If you really want to do something with the partially-downloaded file, that file inside the .download package is what you want, and it's already going to have the correct name. But again, I don't recommend this for the reasons in the first paragraph.


How to access Shortcuts for Forward and Backwards in PhpStorm when using a German keyboard on a Mac I currently switched from a PC to a Mac. I'm working a lot in PhpStorm and there use the keyboard-shortcuts for Forward and Backwards - which on windows are Ctrl + Alt + Left/Right Key.
Now I read that this is on Mac Command + [ and Command + ]. Fine ... but since I use a German keyboard, ] is on Option + 6 and [ is on Option + 5. Pressing Command + Option + 6 does not navigate me Forward nor Backward.
Is there a ment-to-be solution for this problem? Or am I supposted to actually reconfigure my keyboard to find something that actually works? There must be more people than me having this problem, so I'm curious, what solutions exist.

I don't know for your exact situation, but very often this kind of command stays in the same physical location, even if the letters typed would be different - see Shortcut for toggling between different windows of same app? for a similar situation [that one, however, is compounded by the fact US keyboards are missing the key immediately right of the left shift key, to make it universally true].
I'd definitely try Cmd + the two keys to the right of P, which is where the [ & ] keys are on an English layout.
If you are running Safari, you can check for this visually in the History menu.
This is on a UK English system…


sandboxd for CUPS backends in Mac OS X Yosemite I am using a custom CUPS backend for printing on Mac OS X.  The backend works by forwarding the print data to another machine (using ssh) and feeding the data to the printer from there.  For this to work, the backend (implemented as a shell script), needs access to an ssh private key.  Problem: since I upgraded to Yosemite, the script can no longer access the file containing the key.  Instead I see the following error message on the console:

sandboxd: [...] deny file-read-data /

and

/usr/libexec/cups/backend/.mybackend-ssh/id_dsa: Permission denied

in the CUPS error log file.

How can I inject a file into the sandbox used to isolate CUPS backends?

While this doesn't answer the question, I stumbled across this - http://www.papercut.com/kb/Main/MacOS1010YosemiteKnownIssues - when trying to get Tea4CUPS working in OS X 10.10 (I was not able to achieve this):

  To get PaperCut working with Mac OS 10.10 in the interim, you’ll need to disable sandboxing. Edit the file /etc/cups/cups-files.conf to include the new line ‘Sandboxing Relaxed’. Then restart CUPS for this to take effect.

sudo sh -c 'echo "Sandboxing Relaxed" >> /etc/cups/cups-files.conf'
sudo launchctl stop org.cups.cupsd


Changing the keyboard layout (NOT language) based on the input language I have a Japanese keyboard Macbook running Yosemite.

The input languages (sources) are Japanese and English.

While the input language is Japanese, I want the keyboard layout to be Japanese (this is how it is by default, but I don't want to change this).

While the input language is English, I want to use a standard QWERTY layout (in other words, the ; key should be ;/: (like QWERTY), not ;/+ (like Japanese layout).  How can I change the keyboard layout when I change the input language?

Have you added the desired keyboards under System preferences -> Keyboard -> Input Sources? If yes you can change the layout of input source pressing: Cmd+Shift+Space.


Mixing 10/1000 Device w/ other Gigabit Devices to Apple Airport Extreme My Mac Minis (which support Gigabit Ethernet) are physically connected through Gigabit Ethernet to my current generation Apple Airport Extreme (which has Gigabit Ethernet switch ports).

If I add a Apple Airport Express (which is a 10/100 Mbps device does not support Gigabit) will it negatively affect network transfer speeds between the Mac Minis?  Because it's on a switched network it shouldn't right?  Will I experience flow control issues?

No - switches isolate things so you don't need to worry about hub-like limitations.


how to force an update with firefox 38 With the old firefox, one could force an update by clicking 'firefox' on the menu bar and then 'About firefox' etc. However, with the new firefox 38 this menu only contains the single entry 'Quit' -- there is no 'About firefox' or anything else.

So how can I force an update of firefox? (OS X 10.9.5).

When I go to firefox->menu->preferences->advanced->update->show update history, it says that 38.0.1 was successfully installed, but that 38.0.5 is 'pending'. How can I advance that state from 'pending' to 'successfully installed'?

There is something wrong with your FireFox.

On MBA 10.9.5 with FF 38.01 there is About FireFox, that also shows new versions available.

Right now it is showing a 38.05 as new version that can be downloaded by clicking on it.

If that for some reason does not work for you you can manually update choosing your language first.

Check your settings for FF updates:


Iphone 4 is acting glitchy.Should I update it? I've had my IPhone 4 since October 30th. Yesterday, it started acting funny.  I can't receive text messages and when I do receive calls they go straight to  voicemail. I'll get the voice mail several hours later. I can send texts AND make calls. I have reset everything on my phone and nothing has worked. I haven't updated anything on my  phone because it is jail broken and I do not want to lose my games. Is it possible that because I have not updated it's acting up? I know it isn't my account. Could there be anything else wrong with it?

I don't think having a slight outdated OS or Jailbroken device would cause those glitches to occur.  On my iPhone 4 it once acted funny in a different way by not responding to my finger taps correctly.  Try this, it helped me:

Hold the sleep/wake button on top and the home button at the same time.  When the "slide to power off" slider appears keep holding the two buttons.
When it appears to be off keep holding the two buttons still.
Finally, when the boot apple logo appears you can release the two buttons.

This isn't a jailbreak technique that turns the phone into DFU or Recovery Mode.  It's like a soft reboot that clears any lingering data on its RAM that might be causing your problems.


How do I stop emails 'pushing' to Apple Mail (macOS Sierra) I don't want Mail to automatically download new mail. I want to manually do this by choosing Mailbox > Get All New Mail.

I have tried setting the preference 'Check for new messages: Manually' in Preferences > General, thinking this would solve the issue. But email still pushes to my iCloud account!

Does anyone know how to change this behaviour so new mail only delivers when I ask the app to fetch it?

Thanks!

Andy

According to this topic:
Disable the Push IMAP (IDLE) email in macOS Sierra, Apple has removed that option.


How to automatically connect Mac's Wi-Fi to iPhone's hotspot I am searching for a solution to automatically connect my MacBook Air to my iPhone hotspot. I don't like to connect manually every time. Is there any way to connect automatically.

Can I write a shell script file which will try to connect to my Hotspot so that I can add that task to system startup? Does that work? Is there any command to connect to a hotspot?

After connecting to the iPhone AP you should go in Network Preference and enable "Automatically join this network", as shown in the picture. You may also want to click "Advanced" and move the AP to change its priority (for example if you are at home you want the Mac to connect to your home's WiFi and not to the phone. So you should put the iPhone AP below the one at home - and/or work if any).

I have enabled it myself, but for some reasons it didn't seem to stick. Right now, again in "Advanced", I have deleted the "RedPlanet" AP, applied the changes, connected my MBP to my iPhone again re-enabling the "Automatically Join" flag.

That should be it, hopefully, unless being a connection from a mobile phone (thus with a data plan) macOS treats it differently (or if it is bugged. It worked randomly in the last couple of days that I enabled it)


Stop zooming when I film I want to film myself with my iphone, when I'm drawing. The iphone is not moving, and are about 30 cm ≈ 11" above my desk. My paper is on my desk, I sometimes change paper. But when I do so, or even when my hands are moving, the camera "zooms in" on my hands, and then the drawing gets blurry for a second. That's not nice to watch. So, is there a way (or an app or jailbreak) to disable this?

By just holding my finger on the screen, it applies AE/AF lock.


Double clicking the trackpad is suddenly hard My trackpad became tough to double click, i.e., I had to apply extra force to double click, while the force needed to single click remained the same. The MacBook is not damaged in any way.

Restarting the computer solved the problem. I can now click as easily as I could earlier. Please comment if you know why this is happening or add an answer if you know of any other way to solve this.


Safe to change permissions/ACLs for `~/.ssh/known_hosts`? My initial problem: I am using git with SSH for authentication. Each time I push/pull, I get The authenticity of the host […] can’t be established, and after confirming to trust the host, I can connect successfully, but the confirmation is not recorded: Failed to add the host to the list of known hosts (/Users/peterlefanulumsdaine/.ssh/known_hosts).

The cause appears to be restrictive permissions/access control lists (ACLs) of the file ~/.ssh/known_hosts, as described e.g. here.

peterlefanulumsdaine$ ls -le ~/.ssh/
[…]
-rw-r--r--@ 1 peterlefanulumsdaine  staff  6795 18 Feb  2015 known_hosts
0: group:everyone deny write,delete,append,writeattr,writeextattr,chown

and the obvious solution, as suggested at that link, is to clear the ACLs with sudo chmod -N ~/.ssh/known_hosts.

However, I am wary of changing permissions without knowing something about the reasons for the existing settings.  So: why are the default permissions/ACLs for ~/.ssh/known_hosts restrictive, and is it safe to make them less restrictive by clearing the ACLs?

(I am on Yosemite, 10.10.5.  I haven’t ever tinkered with ~/.ssh/known_hosts by hand.  The only tools I directly use that I would guess might have affected it are ssh, git, and brew.)

It's perfectly safe. The unix permissions you have set there are enough. I don't have an ACL on my known_hosts file.


Is a FaceTime Proxy Possible? I'm wondering if it'd be technically possible to have someone FaceTime a bot and the bot serves as a proxy to FaceTime another number? Similar question with iMessage?
By Proxy I also mean calling the end user from a different number than the call came from.

It's pretty difficult, if not impossible.  You see, all the communications with Apple are obviously done with secured SSL APIs.   As difficult as it is to impersonate another user to Apple, it's even more difficult to impersonate Apple to the receiving user, Apple controls the whole software stack.
Obviously a nation state attack could conceivable achieve this but this would surely go via hacking the mobile device of the receiving user.


iTunes can not find music anymore after changing IP address of NAS I have a problem with finding my music again in iTunes after the IP address was changed of my NAS where all my music resides.

After switching internet providers, I changed the layout of my home network. Formerly my NAS could be reached on IP 192.168.0.12, but the new modem demands another IP range, so my NAS is now at 192.168.1.200.

I connect to my NAS (QNAP TS-410) through NFS to a folder called QMultimedia. I mapped the folder to Finder so I have easy access to it and iTunes uses that folder. Next to NFS, I use the same mapping via a Samba share and an AFP share through Bonjour.

After I changed the network location everything is working fine (XBMC, Finder, Time-Machine), except that iTunes cannot find any of my music anymore. If I open a track in iTunes, it will hang for a while (showing the eternal flame for a minute) and then display a message that is could not find the track because it cannot find the path (192.168.0.12, the old location) and if I want to search for it. I can, but I can only do that for a single track and with a few hundred tracks of music, it is an impossible job to remap my music this way.

Did someone experienced this before and how did you solve it? Is there a way to get it easily working again without reorganizing and relabeling all my music in iTunes again? Any suggestions are welcome!

I am experienced with PCs and networking, but a little new with OSX, the Terminal and Bash. I am running iTunes 10.6.3 on a mid-2010 MBP on Mountain Lion.

As I can't comment on post so it comes as an answer:

Are your iTunes library accessing the NAS as a shared library or as imported files?

If it's imported files the "file location" stored in your iTunes library still contain the old IP. Changing all of these will take forever and I do not know if there is any application or plugin that can batch-change them. Deleting all files and importing them again might be the easiest solution to your problem.

You can see the songs location in the Get info -> Summary -> "Where:"


Is there a Terminal command to open a Mac menu bar item? Suppose I want to open a specific app which has an icon on the menu bar tray, is it possible to do it using a shell command?

In my case, there is an app called "Quick View Calendar" (available in Mac App Store) which shows up in the Menu bar, which I would like to open with a Terminal command and to use that code to run an Automator service to

Since all that's required is a single click to the menu bar icon in order to open the app, AppleScript can achieve this very easily using GUI scripting, which requires the right accessibility permissions to be granted to whichever program you'll use to execute the AppleScript (e.g. Script Editor, Automator, Terminal, etc..).

So, first, grant the appropriate permissions via System Preferences.  This screenshot is from MacOS 10.13:

After this is done, open up Script Editor and run this script.  I don't have Quick Calendar View myself, but the principles for most menu bar apps are the same, so this will hopefully obtain a list of application names that have icons sitting in your menu bar:

    tell application "System Events" to get the name of ¬
        every process whose class of menu bar 2 is menu bar

"Quick View Calendar" or something appropriately similar ought to appear in the list that is returned by running that command.  This is the name that I've used in the following snippet, which is what actually does what you need, namely to issue a mouse click to the menu bar icon and open the application.  If the name is something different, you can change that yourself:

    tell application "System Events" to tell process "Quick View Calendar" to ¬
        click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2

You can paste this code into a Run AppleScript action in Automator (again, provided Automator has been granted accessibility permissions), which will then become part of your workflow in creating the service you want to create.

Your original request was to run a command from Terminal to perform this action, so you can simply open up Terminal (again, accessibility permissions!), and type this:

    osascript \
        -e 'tell application "System Events" to ¬' \
        -e 'tell process "Quick View Calendar" to ¬' \
        -e 'click menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2'

If you run into any problems, let me know.