Recovery partition in the middle of the file system I have a problem with my recovery partition. Before update to the el-capitan I had both osx and windows on the same ssd disc created with Boot Camp. The problem is that something went wrong during the upgrade to el-capitan, and I decided to remove the windows partition through Boot Camp. My disc has 250 GB, but for my system is available only 180GB, and I'm not able to find how I can extend the size of my partition. Below I'm attaching the screen from Disc Utility.

Do you know how can I use my free disc space? Probably I have to move my Recovery partition to the end of my disc, but I'm not so sure about that.

And here is the print screen from diskutil list command:

To fix:

Boot into the OS as normal.
Open a terminal and type: diskutil list
Repair the disk: diskutil repairVolume /dev/disk0s3 (where disk0s3 is your recovery disk)
Verify the disk: diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk0s3
Resize the partition: sudo diskutil resizeVolume /dev/disk0s3 650M (and enter your Mac passcode)

If successful, restart your Mac and after open disk utility and resize your core partition. Done.


Why does iOS need to refresh when I come back to a page? Is there any way to not have an app (browser, gmail, Facebook) refresh when coming back to it?
I don't understand where this behavior comes from or why it would be desirable.

This is caused by low amount of available RAM on iOS devices (iPad Air 2 might be better with this) . You may try to lower RAM usage somehow (for example cleaning Cookies/Data in Safari, killing apps running in background, closing unused Safari Tabs etc.).


Alternative to musikcube on Mac OS X Lion I like music to be played on the background and changing tracks by keyboard shortcut like in musikcube: http://www.musikcube.com/wiki/Preferences.
Is there an alternative for musikcube on Mac OS X Lion ?


How do I restore the tab to Increase Indent Level in Keynote '13? As of Keynote '13 for Mavericks, it seems Apple disabled ⇥ Tab to increase indent level (and ⇧ Shift+⇥ Tab to decrease it).

Is there any way to re-enable this? I tried using the Keyboard Shortcuts control, but you cannot set ⇥ Tab as a keyboard shortcut (it instead just moves you to the next control).

After a great deal of testing, I have come to the conclusion that tab works to increase indent, but ONLY if your master slide is configured to have bullets. My solution (since I did not really want bullets on my slides) was to turn on bullets and set the color opacity to 0.


Remove beta profile without wiping phone? I participated in the iOS 10 beta, and now that it's release is imminent, I'd like to remove the profile and continue on with regular public releases, but I'd like to not have to wipe my phone. Is this possible at all? Looking at Apple's site, it states to put the phone into recovery mode, but I've always sort of associated that with wiping the phone.

You can also connect your iPhone to a Mac and use Apple Configurator 2 to remove the profile:


What is the best free FTP server for Mac OS X Server? I'm running Mac OS X Snow Leopard server on a mac mini and was wondering what the best free FTP server was? I hear okay things about pure-ftpd but I'd like something with an easy to manage UI as well etc...

Unless you’re planning on running an extremely heavy loaded FTP server (which the mini won’t be able to handle anyway) the built in FTP Server should be enough.

Pure-ftpd is a classic in the Unix world and I’m sure you can of course make that run under OS X, but it doesn’t have a “UI”, it’s all command line. (But very easy to configure anyway).


How to change Time Machine settings of a partly broken OS (e.g. by manipulating configuration files) I have a broken Mac OS 10.6.8 here.

Startup is normal, login works, but most programs can't be started
Repair of OS with install disks fails
Backup via Time Machine is working
System Settings cannot be accessed

So I have a working backup and want to erase the harddisk to make an installation of 10.7 possible. The problem is, that the backup does not incorporate all files and folders I need. This is due to the settings excluding some folders. Is there a way to change the excluded folders manually?

I'm fine with a hint where to find the configuration files for Time Machine, so I can change them with an appropriate Editor.

The folders or paths excluded from the Time Machine backup are stored in /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist

To include them again modify the file with an editor (TextEditor will not work) or sudo nano /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist and remove all entries in the SkipPaths array. In the example below you'd have to remove line 19 to include the (excluded) /Applications folder again.

You then probably have to restart the backup daemon.

If you don't have access to Terminal or an appropriate editor, copy the files and folders manually with the Finder to the backup volume and copy them back after installing the new operating system.


Can I turn off my Guest account and still use Find My Mac? I understand that turning on Find My Mac also turns on a "Guest" account (in "login only" mode). For a variety of reasons, I would prefer not to have an enabled Guest account at all.

Does Find My Mac still function with the Guest account turned off? Is its functionality limited in some way by the absence of the Guest account. Or will the Guest account be re-enabled by Find My Mac when I reboot?

Yes, it will still function without the guest account.  However, in order for Find my Mac to locate your Mac, the Mac needs to be connected to the internet.  If your account is secure and your Mac is stolen, presumably the thief would not know your password, and so wouldn't be able to login and join a WiFi network.

Leaving guest access enabled allows them to login without a password, in the hopes that they then join a WiFi network and your Mac is located (and immediately locked/wiped/etc).


TV tuner streams low quality TV video I've bought EyeTV Hybrid from Elgato, an USB TV tuner to watch television on mac.
I've plugged to the USB stick my tv antenna cable (free air-broadcasted analog television).

It works, but the image is a bit pixelated, not very good quality, like in the normal TV.

I've tried to unplug/plug cables and the USB stick, restart the mac,  but it is the same.
In the settings I can see the strength of the signal is 100% and its' quality is between 90 and 95%.

I've also tried all things they mention here:
http://support.elgato.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=3046

I don't get why I can't get the same quality I get on my normal TV.
Thanks

I would definitely use the EyeTV software. Now for the signal - over the air broadcast are great, but you have to triangulate the signal. So, if the nearest tower is on the opposite side of the building you're in, then the signal has to pass through the building before it gets to your antennae. I would look up the nearest tower on the web, get your Hybrid as close to that direction as you can, and/or add an actual antennae to the Hybrid - the device by itself is basically just a converter/tuner. I've also been able to plug in a cable or sat coax to it and gotten even better results. I'm still tweaking that setup.


Looking for a GUI Subversion client for iOS I'm looking for an iOS app, preferably for iPhone, that can browse Subversion repositories.

I have found a few on the iTunes store—Code Viewer, iVersions, iRepoEditor—but reviews are either non-existent or swing wildly from one to five stars. All I'm looking for is a way to view secured repositories and copy content out of the files. I don't need to do editing or subsequent check-ins. Syntax coloring would be nice, but not necessary. I'm not looking for an ultimate-do-everything-under-the-sun here, just something that is reliable enough to use while on the road for a quick look at the latest project iteration here or there.

Does anyone have any experience with any of them, and what were your impressions?

UPDATE: Even though no one has answered the specific question, I've still gotten some great feedback that I think could be useful. Based on the responses, here are a couple things that I think will help guide edits...

The repository is stored on a third-party SVN hosting site, projectlocker.com I'm not sure there is a way for me to SSH in to their servers, but they do use Trac as part of their hosting package.
The imputes for doing this comes from my using my svn repository to store and manage my homework and handouts for class, and also for answering questions about work projects in meetings. So, I'm looking for a relatively easy way to access these documents in a pinch if need be.
I am open to options outside of simply getting an app that can read SVN repositories as long as the alternative is relatively easy. I use a GUI SVN client for a reason. ;-)

Excuse me for not answering your question, but IMHO it's better and more robust to follow the development via web, not via app.

You should be able to read the whole repository via http/https if your SVN is hosted via the apache svn module.

Another great way to monitor changes is to use some web-based frontend, which follows repository changes. A great tool (which I use and recommend) is Trac.


Responsive icon solution when changing icon sizes in OS X Finder I rarely use the Finder outside of list view, but sometimes I need to view a large folder of images to select from. By default, the icons/image previews are not large enough for my needs, so I increase the size of the thumbnail icons in the bottom right of the finder window to determine which image to use. Easy peasy.

When I do this, however, the icons don't cascade down. Instead, I get a scrollbar with icons out of view to the right. This is so Windows 2000.

My solution is to go to View > Clean Up By > Name and all icons are shown with only up and down scrolling and are the size I want.

Is there some way I can have it so when I increase icon preview size in the Finder, that all images stay inline?

I don't need to set a default size for all icons to load. I prefer the default size for most use cases, aside from this one.

See below for an example showing my workflow issue.

tl;dr I want responsive design applied to my finder icons!

You can have the folder contents auto-arranged in icon view via a few settings in View > Show View Options (⌘ Cmd-J).

When you select the files to be Arranged By the criteria you prefer and select Use as Defaults, the icons are automatically re-organised on-the-fly. Note that you don't need to select Always open in icon view, as in the example image below.

These default settings will be used for all folder that don't have folder-specific settings applied, before or after setting the defaults.

You have to restart Finder, e.g. by killall Finder before the new defaults are used.

(Image borrowed from a SuperUser answer)


MBP Retina, 13-inch, Late 2012, with MacOS 10.13.5 What's Web Sharing and why incoming connection to it are blocked and mark as severe security risk by Norton?

Web Sharing, also known as Internet Sharing, allows you to share your Mac's internet connection with other computers.  It can also provide you with the ability to share web pages from your Mac.

This could be considered a security risk by many security software applications because if it's not configured correctly, you could allow others to access to your computer.  I will not go into details about the pros & cons about that here because it's outside the scope of your question.

If you don't have a reason to share your connection or deliver web pages, you disable this feature from within System Preferences.  I'm assuming you're using macOS v10.14.2.

Open System Preferences.
While it's open, go to the View -> Sharing menu item.  This will bring-up the Sharing preferences.
Uncheck Internet sharing


Key Combination for Restart During Boot My Mac gets stuck during bootup quite frequently recently (no entry sign and flashing folder). Every time it happens, I have to press the power button to shut it down and press the power button again to turn it on.

Is there a software reboot key combination like Window's Control + Alt + Delete?

Although Apple publishes a list of OS X keyboard shortcuts for startup, there is not one for forcing a reboot.

However, your problem seems to be indicating a failing hard drive, so make sure that you create a full backup of your data (if you don't have one already) as soon as possible.

I would replace your drive manually (if your Mac has a user-serviceable hard drive) or take your Mac into an Apple Store for service.  In the long term, this should solve your issue.


How to download old version of Mac OS X that I own and App Store lists, but App Store refuses on newer Mac I own old versions of Mac OS X, Mountain Lion in particular. The old versions are listed in the "Purchases" list within App Store app on my Mac.

But when I hit the "Download" button a message appears refusing to start the download because my MacBook Pro is too new and does not support that OS.

Other Questions are similar to this but not quite the same.

Others say to use the App Store to download, but no mention of the App Store refusal that I encounter.
Others suggest using developer.apple.com, but even with a paid membership that download page no longer offers old versions. The Download page offers only 2 versions: the current version (Yosemite) and the future beta (El Capitan).

My goal is to install Mac OS X on a virtual machine, Parallels.

If you go to developer.apple.com/downloads you will find all downloads that Apple has available.  Limit your search to the "OS X" category and you'll see downloads for all versions of OS X from version 10.3 to 10.6.

I'm guessing that 10.7 and up are missing because starting with 10.7, the OS was only available via the App store. Unfortunately, that means that you'll only be able to get the installer from the App store, and the only way I know of getting older version from the App store is if you have previously "purchased" that version and wish to download it again.


Is there a comparison of networks and costs for iOS 4.3's Personal Hotspot? Is there a comparison of networks and their cost for the new Personal Hotspot feature?

Also, how does the hotspot feature differ from internet tethering in previous iOS versions?

The hotspot feature is, in essence, very similar to the Internet Tethering feature. The differences are that a) there's no cable required and b) you can connect up to 3* wifi-capable devices, so you're not restricted to tethering only devices that have USB or Bluetooth.

*See the below comments for the correct answer.


Which are the ways to access "Now Playing" in WatchOS 3? I make use of the Now Playing view on Apple Watch to switch between songs playing on my iPhone's Soundcloud app.

However, I haven't yet found a satisfying (fast) way to access this view.

In WatchOS 3, the only way I know of is to click the "Dock" button on the side, and then swipe through the active apps to the location of Now Playing, and then click it. I think it's cumbersome.

I was hoping that there would be a complication to access this view, but for some reason Apple hasn't included one.

There is a Music complication, and once in that app, there is a "Now Playing" button. But strangely it doesn't seem to be linked to what's playing on my iPhone at the moment, even when I've set the Source to my iPhone. Perhaps this "Now Playing" function is reserved for Apple Music only.

So, my question is, what are the possible ways to access the Now Playing view? Is there something I'm missing?

As of watchOS 4, you have a few options for accessing the Now Playing screen:

Set the Dock Ordering setting for the Dock (Watch App on iPhone > Dock) to Favorites and choose the Now Playing "app" as one of your Favorites
Add the Now Playing complication to a watch face (unfortunately, it's only available for Complication sections that are big enough to show the title of what's playing)

I actually included this in a roundup of things I think should work with Siri on the Apple Watch but don't.


How can I turn off 'Find My iPhone' after selling the phone? I just sold my old iPhone 4s, but it was still logged in to 'Find My iPhone'. How can I log it out without having the phone? I have changed the password and told the person who bought it to see if they can log it out, but it isn't working.

You can remotely remove the phone from your account using the iCloud website. Apple has a page with instructions on how to remove your device from Find My iPhone.


iMac with Apple USB Ethernet won't boot after latest Security Update We have a number of iMacs (models 14,1 to 16,2) running in a StorNext 5 environment as Distributed LAN Clients (DLC).
These machines have Apple USB Ethernet adaptors attached to provide a secondary Ethernet interface for the StorNext Metadata network.
We have updated three machines (one 14,1 model, and two 16,2 models) with the most recent Security Update (not the latest 10.12.3 update).

All three machines fail to reboot until the Apple USB Ethernet adaptor is temporarily removed.
All three machines stay on a black screen indefinitely until the Apple USB Ethernet adaptor is removed.
Once the Apple USB Ethernet adaptor is unplugged the Apple logo appears and the machines boot up as normal.

This behaviour is consistent across all three machines since the update.
Machine #1 is a 14,1 model running El Capitan 10.11.6.
Machines #2 and #3 are 16,2 models running Sierra 10.12.2.
All three machines rebooted perfectly before the latest Security Update was installed.

Though we are able to re-insert the Apple USB Ethernet adaptor during boot time (and therefore get our SAN volume mounted) this is not an ideal situation.
All three of these machines are managed remotely, and if they are rebooted while unattended they will not come back online.

We have had some success making the USB Ethernet inactive in System Preferences/Network before applying the update, but this does not work every time.

TL;DR, the most recent Security Update for El Cap and Sierra breaks our iMacs with Apple USB Ethernet adaptors attached.

Anybody else encountered this?

It seems the latest update (10.12.3) for Sierra clients has fixed this problem, I was able to start one of the affected Macs from cold and restart without it sticking on the black screen.


Internet sharing option "to computers using iPhone USB" Under System Preferences > Sharing, there is an option to share your connection from wherever "to computers using: iPhone USB":

At first glance, this looks to me like:

               [Mac]               [iDevice]
-->--(LAN)-->--˄   ˅-->--(USB)-->--˄

i.e. reverse tethering over USB.
However, according to these two answers, reverse tethering is not possible over USB with a vanilla iOS.
Three other sources describe a way to do it on a jailbroken iOS, but although stated otherwise, this seems to work only with a Windows PC.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the above option is neither "normal" tethering, like

                  [iDevice]               [Mac]
-->--(Mobile)-->--˄       ˅-->--(USB)-->--˄

which would be under "Network":

nor sharing a connection from an iDevice to something else, like

                  [iDevice]               [Mac]               [Whatever]
-->--(Mobile)-->--˄       ˅-->--(USB)-->--˄   ˅-->--(USB)-->--˄

which would be in the "from" field on internet sharing:

So, about the option shown in the first picture:
Evidently it cannot be used to tether to vanilla iDevices, and there's no way Apple would put it there for jailbroken devices, on which it also doesn't seem to work.

So what does it actually do, and what can it be used for?

I believe in Internet Sharing settings, OS X is just listing all of the network interfaces. iPhone USB is listed there for that reason, even though it's not a meaningful option.


How to merge two or more Safari Bookmarks.plist files together? I do not use iCloud to sync my Mac and I have several Safari Bookmarks.plist files that were manually backed up at different times. Thus each contain some of the same items while some contain items the others do not.

How can the contents of these Bookmarks.plist files be merged together?

Neither macOS or Safari provide a direct way to merge multiple Bookmarks.plist files so as not to contain duplicate items.

Some choices are:

Manually import each Bookmarks.plist file (Safari > File > Import Bookmarks...) and then manually arrange and reorganize while manually deleting duplicates.
Use a third-party utility to manage the Bookmarks.plist files so as to utilize any tools the third-party utility provides to remove duplicate items.

BookmarkApp: sort & delete duplicate bookmarks

Developer Website
Mac App Store Preview

URL Manager Pro : the bookmark manager

Developer Website
Mac App Store Preview

Safari Extensions - Search for: bookmarks - At the time of this search it contained "69 results found for 'bookmark'", and some may have the capacity to remove duplicates.
Google, or other Search Engine, for other third-party utilities to manage Bookmarks.

Write your own utility to manage Safari Bookmarks to remove all duplicates from a set of combined Bookmarks.plist files.

Note: I am not affiliated with, nor have used the utilities mentioned herein.


Send a new text without all the history for that recipient Whenever I start to compose a new text message on my iPhone 6 to send to someone, as soon as I enter their name in the To: field the last text that I sent or received from them appears in my message editing box.  I can add new material at the bottom but cannot delete what was exchanged previously.  This is causing my messages to people to keep building up in size with the total message being everything I ever sent to them plus what I'm sending as a new message.

How can I just send them a brand new message without the entire conversation with them over the past year being prepended to it?  I don't want to delete the previous messages from cache, just don't want them to be included in the new message.

The history is just for you. Only the message in the box is sent when you send a message, not the entire history. The recipient keeps their own history of messages which is unrelated to your history.

This is not email where a reply to a message includes a quoted copy of the original — each message is self-contained and it's up to the receiver to keep a historical copy of messages, which is what your device is doing for you.


iPhone is displaying weird time 9:41 My iPhone 5S with 9.1 is displaying 09:41 when it's actually 18:29 local time.

It doesn't seems to be a time channel problem 9:12 is a weird difference (I'm currently in GMT+1).

EHHHH was connected to my Mac with the video stream launched in QuickTime (my iPhone was the input).

9:41 is the "famous" time displayed during the keynotes :)

Quitting the video stream solves the problem.


Why are my guests in VirtualBox so slow? I have Mojave 10.14.3, running VirtualBox 6.0.4 and with Debian 9 (with XFCE) as the guest OS.

I have installed the guest additions, no errors. I can verify that the usual vbox modules are running:

vboxvideo
vboxsf
vboxguest

Everything works fine in Debian, except that the system is extremely slow.

Even the mouse cursor lags when moved around, on a clean system with nothing running. Moving around applications take seconds.

Interestingly, glxgears runs seemingly fine, but again, moving the window itself takes seconds and is extremely sluggish.

It seems like "Enable Nested VT-x/AMD-V" is not possible to select in the options for the guest. The option is grayed out.

I have four CPUs enabled, plenty of RAM. I have enabled 3D acceleration. VirtualBox claims 2D acceleration only works for a Windows guest, so it is disabled.

I have never experienced this slow performance before in VirtualBox, something is clearly wrong, but what is it? And how can I fix it?

This problem is not related to misconfiguration of the number of cores or memory for the guest. I have tried having 1, 2, and 4 cores enabled for the guest. I have tried having 4 GiB and 8 GiB allocated for the guest.

However, if anyone is curious, these are the specifications for my host hardware:

  Processor Name:   Intel Core i7
  Processor Speed:  2,6 GHz
  Number of Processors: 1
  Total Number of Cores:    4
  L2 Cache (per Core):  256 KB
  L3 Cache: 6 MB
  Memory:   16 GB

Are you sure it isn't a graphics configuration issue?

You mentioned both that the GLXGears window moves slowly and that the mouse cursor lags.

Try disabling all forms of graphics acceleration.

Is the "guest" running slowly or just the graphics?


How do I have both custom show tv art and custom episode thumbnails? I have a homemade tv show that I want to add to the Apple TV app on my Mac. I've imported the show, added all the metadata I want to, and I want to add thumbnails for each individual episode, as well as a different image for the show as a whole, just like every other show in the app. When
I set the individual thumbnails, and it looks good, and then I add the show artwork, and it overrides the episode artwork. So I try it the other way around: add the show artwork, then the episode artwork. When I do that, the show artwork is replaced by episode 1's thumbnail. How do I have both custom show art and custom episode thumbnails?
Big Sur 11.0.1

It looks like an episode can have multiple artwork attached. I'm not sure how TV.app determines what to show for the show's thumbnail, but I've been able to Get Info for an episode, go to the Artwork tab, and select Add Artwork to add more than one image to an episode.
I haven't tested this thoroughly, but I set all the episodes to have the series thumbnail, then added an individual thumbnail to the first episode and it works as desired so far (TV shows screen shows series thumbnail and episode list shows episode thumbnail).


Bash Terminal keeps showing "No such file or directory" at startup -bash: /Users/MarksMac/Library/Enthought/Canopy_64bit/User/bin/activate: No
  such file or directory

Basically, how do i remove the above error? I am using a mac 10.9.1
I have tried looking up for answers but i still can't solve this. Although it's very simple. Sorry, I'm new to terminal.

Check the contents of your ~/.bash_profile, or ~/.bashrc, for anything regarding this.

You can try renaming all three files to something else, then relaunch Terminal. If the problem goes away, put each file back one by one and test each time to find which file contains the 'bad' line.


Can I remotely force a locked Mac to sleep or shutdown? Is there any way to remotely make a Mac which is powered on – but locked – to go to sleep and/or shut down? If so, how?

E.g. can I use another Mac B to login via screen sharing to Mac A even if it's locked, and shut it down? Or can I use some other tool, like a remote Alfred script that can execute in the background even if the target computer is locked?

For this question, we are assuming that I am an administrator and have the login details to the target computer.

In order for a user on a remote computer to shut down another computer whether it's a Mac or a PC, they have to have access to it first.
Whether you are using screen sharing or doing this via terminal, regardless of the computer's state (locked or unlocked), if the user has access and the requisite privilege , they can log in and initiate a shutdown.
It's very important to recognize that to shutdown a Mac, you don't need another Mac.  You can do it from Windows, FreeBSD, or Linux.

In terminal
Using an SSH client (Terminal on a OS X) you would log into the remote machine with username/password and machine IP/DNS Name
ssh username@foo.bar
Password:

If you have the appropriate credentials, you would issue the command
sudo shutdown -h now

You could issue these commands regardless if the system was locked or not, even if someone was logged in and working at the time.
Screen Sharing
By using another Mac and it's screen sharing capability or via VNC, you could easily connect to the remote screen, and shutdown the machine even from the lock screen (notice the bottom icons):


Mac stuck on "The wine configuration in /user/... is being updated" That's what we're looking at right now. I've tried to download Wine Bottler but when i tried to run an MSI file with wine bottler for the first time this is what i get

how do i fix this?

Found this question on Super User:

https://superuser.com/questions/1318059/wineboot-hangs-and-does-not-complete

According to the answer it is a known bug with the Homebrew version:

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/issues/26384

The workaround is to use the official version:

https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/macosx/download.html


How can I disable the 2nd hard drive in my 27" iMac? I have an 2010 27" iMac with an SSD and a regular hard drive. Now that I've been using the machine for some time and have not come close to filling the SSD, I'd like to disable the spinning hard drive completely. Why? It makes a loud humming sound when it runs, and I don't use it for anything. Anything I can do short of taking apart this monster and ripping it out?

UPDATE: As of 3-Apr-2012 and OS X 10.7.3, the solution below works. Some programs occasionally spin up the drive, but it only hums for about 5 minutes then goes back to sleep.

I don't know if it'll work, but try going into the Energy Saver section of System Preferences and select "Put hard disk(s) to sleep whenever possible". Then go into Disk Utility and unmount the hard drive. With no way to access the drive, I would assume Mac OS X would put the drive to sleep.

This is a temporary solution though, and it won't persist across reboots (Mac OS X automatically mounts all available drives at boot). If you're really not using the drive and don't have any data on there that you want, my suggestion would be to go into Disk Utility, repartition the drive, and for the format select "Free Space". Once done, Mac OS X will be unable to mount the drive and should put it to sleep.


Parallels Desktop - 1 Apple ID, 2 Macs I've tried to search the Parallels Desktop website, but did not find any information about licensing in this case:
If I use the same Apple ID on two Macs, is it then possible for me to install Parallels Desktop on both machines, or would I need to purchase a second product (key)?

You'll need two product keys, applications are not tied to your Apple ID unless you've bought them through the Mac App store, and most applications ship with the general terms of license that it's one key per person/per machine. Not used Parallels for a very long time so not sure if they've changed it but it used to be one key per machine.


Itunes smart Playlist with reference to Apple Music favorites won't sync to Iphone I have created a Playlist (pl1) and favorited some of the tracks in it.
But because I want to filter (the heart symbol in Apple Music) only the tracks which are favorited from pl1 I created a smart playlist with following settings:

contained in pl1 AND
marked as favorite

My Problem now is that the new smart playlist won't sync over to my iPhone...
pl1 and the favorites sync normally and even the favorited tracks from pl1 show up in favorites on the iPhone but as I said the smart playlist won't show up.

I tried the following:

Restart the iPhone
Re-Enable Apple Music
Relogging from icloud
Recreating both pl1 and the smart playlist

I also found these two questions:

ITunes Match: syncing smart playlists that reference other
playlists
iTunes smart playlist not syncing to iPhone

But the first one is about itunes match and the second one said that it worked again after some time

Unfortunately you are not able to sync Smart Playlists that contain a rule referencing another playlist with Apple Music tracks.

In some cases you may be able to get around this by making a normal playlist and putting Smart Playlists in that (for example my top 100 played tracks and my Loved tracks), but as you are trying to get just the intersection that wouldn't work.

Can only suggest giving Apple feedback at:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html
http://www.apple.com/feedback/apple-music.html


Management of security questions in AppleID authentication I have my AppleID, password and access to the email account registered to the ID. But I don't have the answers to the security questions. I have not used the account since it was set up in 2014 and I'm 99% certain that I didn't set up security questions at the time because if I had I would have used my password manager to create and store random strings as answers, and I have nothing saved. I can reset my password easily enough but I actually can't login. The option to reset security questions requires you to answer a security question!! Like doh, if I could do that I wouldn't need to reset them.I do think this is ridiculous. I got Apple support to phone me and the best they could suggest is change the password to a strong random one (it is anyway) and abandon the account! Anyone have any other ideas?

You can go to iforgot.apple.com and then enter your Apple ID email address and then the captcha code there. Then choose continue and reset security questions. Next you choose how you want to reset it (get an email with a link or enter the password). Then you can change the security questions.

Apple Support can reset the password for you. All you need to do is to get verified. You need to attempt to sign in to the Apple ID site. When it asks for your security questions there is an option there that says Get Support PIN. Apple Support needs that PIN as 1 way to verify you. Then all they need next is one of the following:

At least 1 correct security question
Text you a code to your iPhone or the phone number
Enter in some of your credit card info that is on file.

After that they can reset the questions.

Best of luck.


App crashing because of cache issue Our app is in development and currently in test flight. The latest version release crashes when the calendar feature is engaged. Our dev agency says it’s a cache issue and instructed us to delete the app, restart the device and redownload the app from test flight. While this works to solve the crashing issue, it’s not an ideal solution. Does anyone know of a solution to this issue that will solve for the cache issue without having to delete app/restart device/reinstall app in test flight?

The caching issue is specific to your app, not a generic iOS problem. The solution would have to be internal to your app, and thus implemented by your developers.


On iPhone 5s, can the battery itself be the cause of fast draining, even after a brand new U2 chip is installed? My battery was draining very fast even when UNUSED and in LOW POWER MODE. This was happening even in AIRPLANE mode (i.e. overnight, unused, in Airplane and Low Power Modes both enabled).

I got the phone services and the service guy told me the problem was the U2 chip, so I paid to have it repaired. But now it should have the new U2 chip, but it still drains the same (i.e. very quickly).

Can the battery be the problem of fast draining too?

The guy that repaired the U2 chip now tells me the battery is the problem, but now I doubt everything he says.

Short answer

Yes, a battery's condition can most definitely explain why it is draining fast. iPhone batteries are consumable components that become less effective as they age. They have a limited lifespan and their capacity will decline over time, eventually leading to lower performance for your iPhone.

Long Answer

You will get lots of opinions on batteries, so when it comes to Apple products I always encourage users to read what Apple has to say on the topic.

Apple also recently published iPhone Battery and Performance.

To partially quote Apple:

  All rechargeable batteries are consumable components that become less
  effective as they chemically age.

  As lithium-ion batteries chemically age, the amount of charge they can
  hold diminishes, resulting in shorter amounts of time before a device
  needs to be recharged. This can be referred to as the battery’s
  maximum capacity—the measure of battery capacity relative to when it
  was new.

I would encourage you to read the entire article.


How do I install a .dmg file without being a sudo user? I am on macOS Sierra version 12.10.16. I downloaded an application. This app has .dmg extension. I would like to install it without using sudo or without being one of the sudo users.

When I do hdiutil attach <image>.dmg from Is there a command to install a dmg, it doesn't work.

If I do it using GUI I get this error message:

  Modifying “Applications” requires an administrator name and password.

How do I install a .dmg file without being a sudo user?

.dmg is not an app, it is a disk image. If you double-click the file, it should mount a virtual disk in the Finder. From there, you will be able to drag and drop the image into your applications folder.

Since you don't have admin rights on the computer you're using, you'll need to drag it into your user Applications folder (/Users/yourname/Applications/, needs to be created manually)


Black screen when booting into Mac , external monitor works I've Macbook Pro (Reina Mid 2016) , Graphics: Iris Pro .

I tried to install windows 10 using Boot Camp , it seemed to work. I was able to boot into windows.It worked for about 30-40 minutes and suddenly black screen. I figured it's graphics driver for windows failing. I did hard reboot and was able to boot again. After a while resolution changed and got notification graphics driver failed. I got black screen rebooted couple of times and same thing happened and after a point never recovered. I thought , it's corrupted graphics driver so uninstalled Bootcamp windows altogether. Nothing , still black screen tried following to no avail.

1) Reset PRAM , NVRAM
2) Reset SMC
3) Drained battery and reset again
4) Able to see , on external monitor so not an issue with setup.
5) Can't see backlight , Apple logo at back not lighting up. Nothing on screen , not even Apple logo loading same can be seen on external monitor though.

Please , let me know if something can be done. I would greatly appreciate that !

I know this may sound bizarre but have you checked your native screens settings? Such as brightness controls etc?
If they are all correct, have you tried running the MBP with power plugged in and the battery removed?
Otherwise, have you tried re-seating the ribbon connector for the screen? You can find the guide here: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+17-Inch+Unibody+Display+Replacement/3438
However, if this is a mid 2016 model, then I wouldn't hesitate to go the warranty route with apple and opening it up could invalidate your warranty.


Cannot find/download/install the iOS 13 Beta profile I have a paid membership for Apple Developer Program, but for some reason cannot find a way to install the new iOS 13 beta profile.

Am I doing something wrong? This is what the page looks like when I open it on Safari. (there's no download/install button)

The iOS 13 developer betas are available as device restore images and not in the form of beta profile (which is generally made available when a public beta is released). You'll need to download the full restore image and restore it onto a device.

Go to Apple Developer - Download and log into with your Apple ID registered in the Apple Developer Program to access the developer betas. This is how the webpage looks like currently:

The restore image is available for all registered developers irrespective of whether they are enrolled in a developer program. Apple will release the public betas a month later.


How to get error status back to bash from osascript Inside a bash script, I'm closing the front window of whatever application is foreground.  I'd like to know if the command failed (when the foreground application doesn't have a front window.  I tried this, but even though the warning beep is heard indicating the cmd-W failed, the script always prints "Command Succeeded".  What's the easy way to detect that there's no front window?

 osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to keystroke "w"
    using {command down}'
 if [ $? -eq 0 ]  ; then
     printf "Command succeeded\n"
 else
     printf "command failed\n"
 fi

Here is a bit of a different approach that does not use System Events.  The following AppleScript code will get the name of the front most application, then that application will check to see if it has any open windows.  If that application does have an open window, it will be closed.  Also, for example, if the front application has an unsaved document as window 1, and you want to be prompted to save that document, just remove the "without saving" part of the command.

This works for me using the latest version of macOS Mojave.

delay 5 -- GIVES TIME TO TEMPORARILY SET FOCUS ON ANY OPEN APP.. FOR TESTING PURPOSES
tell application "Finder" to set appName to name of (path to frontmost application)
tell application appName to if windows is not {} then close window 1 without saving


Moving individual Mailbox to external drive Does anyone know if it's possible to move a "Mailbox" in Apple Mail to an external drive? I have a relatively small SSD drive, and I'd like to create an Archive mailbox on an external drive.

I don't want to move the entire ~/Library/Mail folder - just the Archive mbox.

If I create a MailBox called MyArchive, I can see the .mbox structure in ~/Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes/MyArchive.mbox.

Is what I'm trying to achieve do-able? I know there's "proper" mail archiving utilities, but if I could just store the native emails on an external disk, it'd be good enough for me ...

EDIT: As discussed below, I've tried moving this folder to the external drive and creating a symbolic link to it, but with this in place Mail.app doesn't see the mail content in the folder -  I can see the list of mail items in the mailbox, but opening any mail in the folder results in a "blank item".
I also see the error

kernel[0]: Sandbox: Mail(99229) deny file-read-data /Volumes/External HD/MyArchive.mbox/ (followed by the path to the .emlx)

in Console.app.

Is there any way to "override" Mail.app's sandbox settings to allow it to read mail from the external path?

Q: Do you want this archive to show up in mail, or just be available should you need it?

If you just want to store the messages "offline" but have them around if needed at a later date you can select the mailbox in Mail, then select Mailbox -> Export Mailbox... (make sure you select "Export all subfolders") and save the Archive. Then you can delete the mailbox from mail and pulpit back in when needed.


How can I update the firmware in my router via tftp? I'm going to flash my wifi-router with alternative firmware by following these instructions on my Mac but I'm struggling with the step

Set Your server's IP-Address to 192.168.1.15/24

I can't understand, what is this server. Is it DNS-server?
I fI try to change address of DNS-server, than it gets cut to 192.168.1.15.

How do I need to set up my Mac to allow the router to fetch the new firmware via tftp?

192.168.1.15/24 is a so-called slash notation, which specifies both the IP address and the network mask at the same time. It's an alternative but shorter notation, which says: your Mac's IP address should be set to 192.168.1.15 and the network mask to 255.255.255.0.

In addition to that, you will need to enable the tftp server on your Mac. To do that, look for /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/tftp.plist file. If you find it, you need to edit it, to enable launching the tftp server. Edit the file with your favourite editor (sudo vi or sudo nano should do - this is all best done in the Terminal.app). Inside the file, you'll find the following lines:

<dict>
    <key>Disabled</key>
    <true/>

change these to be:

<dict>
    <key>Disabled</key>
    <false/>

After you make that change, you'll need to run the following command in Terminal.app, to start the tftp service:

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/tftp.plist

You will then need to put your firmware file into /private/tftpboot, make sure it's world readable (in Terminal.app run chmod 644 /private/tftpboot/filename where filename is the name of the file containing your firmware) and finally point your router to the location of the file, according to your router's instructions.


How to merge an external audio source with my iPhone's audio out? I would like to be able to combine an external signal (available only via headphone cable) with the the audio out of my iPhone and listen to both of them using headphones. I know this is possible with an external mixer, but I'm hoping the folks here my have a better way to do this. Maybe the phone can take audio in via the lightning connector or bluetooth and merge it? Or maybe there's a tiny purpose built mixer for this two headphone-level input use case. I care only about the music player on the iPhone, or possibly streaming music like Pandora. I don't need actual phone calls or anything.

Yes, it's called Audiobus, in the Appstore you can find multiple AudioBus compatible Apps, you can choose multiple source and let them stream in compatible apps or on the headphones or other outputs available on your iPhone.


Is it possible to control a digital camera from an iPad2? My 15 yr old daughter has cerebral palsy and has limited control of her hands which makes physical control of a camera difficult.

Is it possible to connect a digital camera to her iPad 2?

This would allow her to control the camera remotely from the iPad which she manages very well with the touchscreen. The built in camera is good however very limited due to difficulty holding it whilst taking the picture.

There are applications for remote triggering more advanced DSLR cameras.

Like this one DSLR Camera Remote HD for iPad

Here is one more example: Remote Shutter


Can I add the 2nd monitor with Apple Cinema display I have a MBP 2017 13" connected to a cinema display. Right now I'm looking for a 4K 60hz display with USBC for charging my MBP. In that case, can both monitors work? I connect to the Cinema Display with an adapter.

Yes this usually does work. Connecting another monitor with PD (Power-delivery) should not change the behaviour on your other ports. Your MacBook's specs specifically mention the ability to support two 4K monitors @60Hz, so one with a lower resolution will be no problem. I myself have been using a 4K PD (USB-C) LG monitor and a 2K monitor connected through a hub on a 2017 15" MBP.
However, your graphics card needs to push many more pixels, i.e. other graphics related tasks may slow down depening on your usecase.

Just to clarify:

Connecting another monitor [..] should not change the behaviour on your other ports

Of course your MacBook is limited at some point, i.e. connecting daisychained TB (Thunderbolt) devices and using an integrated USB hub in a monitor (many monitors using USB-C have this) will at some point lead to lower performance on these devices. However, you should only see decreasing speeds e.g. for external drives connected like that but the video output should generally be prioritized, i.e. not limited due to more connected other devices.


Is the upgrade to 4.1 worth it? I currently have a jailbroken 3Gs iPhone running 4.01.

I've really used the jailbroken part, but it's good to know that I can tether my laptop to the phone should I ever need to.

Having said that, is it worth it to upgrade the phone to 4.1 (which hasn't been jailbroken yet)?  Does it fix the sluggishness issues that were caused by the upgrade from iPhone OS 3.x to iOS 4.x?

There have been no reported issues with sluggishness on the iPhone 3GS.
The issues with sluggishness relate to the iPhone 3G. The update to iOS 4.1 resolves these issues.


Video player for macOS with jumping by subs and speed control I'm looking for a video player for macOS with the function of jumping from one subtitle phrase to another with video following the text.

For example, the video jumps to the beginning of a phrase when I press the button Left.

It's good to learn languages with such function. So I could repeat each phrase as many times as I want.

I've found such player for Windows. It's PotPlayer. Now I'm looking for one for macOS.

I suggest you to check IINA. It's free and open source video player for macOS.

Stepping forward/backward through subtitles by default is with Shift+Left/Right,

but you could customize these keybindings in preferences.


iTunes music available from iPad iTunes to iPhone iTunes? I used iPad 2 a long time before getting iPhone 4S so all my music is on there. Now I cannot get the music from iPad to iPhone. How can I do it?

It depends on where you got the music from.

If you purchased it through iTunes on your iPad, then you can open iTunes on your phone, select the "More" tab, then tap "Purchased", then download the music onto your phone. "Purchased" is an iCloud feature. iCloud must be enabled, and configured correctly on all your iOS 5 or later devices. The navigation in getting to Purchase history has changed slightly, I believe, between iOS 5 and iOS 6, but the idea is the same.
If you ripped CDs, then transferred the content over to your iPad, you will have to use the computer that you ripped them to to sync the songs onto the iPhone.
If you downloaded them from somewhere such as Amazon on your computer before transferring them to your iPad, then you will need to connect your iPhone to your computer to sync those purchases.

One thing to note: you cannot transfer songs from your iPad to your computer with iTunes (unless it was purchased from iTunes, and the computer is authorized). So, in other words, if you no longer have the computer that had all your songs on it, and just your iPad does, you will want to look for third party software (maybe like this? I haven't used it, but just did a Google search) to transfer your media to your computer, then to your phone.


SD Card: Read-Only file system A follow up to my earlier question about the Mavericks installation from an SD Card.
I am running this in Terminal:

mv Packages /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System\ 2/System/Installation

The response is: Read-only file system. In Diskutil, the SD Card isn't greyed out.
According to this, I have to copy data from the Install ESD image to the SD Card to make it work.

But unfortunately, Terminal gives me this error. I also tried changing the file permissions with chmod en chown, which resulted in no change.

I had a similar problem after installing Windows 10 IoT for raspberry pi on an sd card and it managed to make the card and file have no +w on directory/file. This was mistake number one as it turns out me managing to write this to a card on a Mac was never going to work on the pi. So the problem remained of how to reformat, as erase in disk utility would not work and no use of chmod would change the bits. Tried to change on an ubuntu box with the same problem "Read-only file system".

The only (hacky) way I managed to do reformat the card was to put it in a camera and reformat there - and bingo - done.

I'm sure there is a legit way to do this (maybe on windoze but I don't have one of them), but the camera trick worked like a charm. It was a fujifilm x100s in case not all cameras can manage it.


iPhone 4s stuck at apple logo in boot My iPhone 4s 64GB was recently updated to iOS7.

The battery was completely empty so I had to charge it.
However, the iPhone does not boot anymore and it's stuck at the Apple Logo.

I went to a service center and they say it's on recovery mode and I have to re-install the software, but data will be lost.

I have a lot of important data, how can I save these?

If it doesn't boot and the device isn't jailbroken, you can't get the data off it.

Hopefully you have an iCloud backup that you can restore to after restoring iOS (using recovery/DFU mode).


How to sync voice memos with itunes over air How can I sync my voice memos on iphone with my macbook over air?
It works with cable but I want to work over air. Is that possible?

If with "over the air" you mean iCloud I'm sorry but it's not possible. The only way is to use a third party application that use iCloud to store the memos, like this. Instead if you mean WiFi it is possible to do that using iTunes and the normal WiFi sync.


Running Mavericks. Need to return to Snow Leopard I am running Mavericks 10.9 on my imac.
It does not have the same ability of
slideshows with music in Garageband
as I had in Snow Leopard 10.6.
Is there any way I can return to Snow Leopard?

First I backed everything up on time machine, and I made a manual backup of photos, music, downloads, and documents to another HDD.

Next I put in the install disk from OSX Leopard 10.5.. Mavericks will let you enter the install process right from the desktop on Leopard 10.5, but nothing past 10.5. (If you don't have leopard you can probably get one off ebay, or find it on the internet somewhere.

The computer will restart into installation mode from which I erased the HDD. Then I installed 10.5 Leopard.

After the Leopard install you can upgrade to any version you want to. I used snow leopard because it only uses 1 gig of RAM.

My computer runs much faster again, like when I bought it. Sure there are some apps that don't work, but I have everything I need here.


Can I set a different default browser for localhost sites? I'm a web developer and I want to use Brave as my browser for the normal stuff, and Firefox Developer for Web Development.

Currently Brave is my default, but when I do npm run serve or whatever my web dev sites open in it too, whereas I'd like those to open in Firefox Developer.

The difference is basically that webdev sites are always pointing toward localhost, so is it possible to get localhost to open in one browser and everything else in another? (MacBook Pro, Mojave)

There are a few apps that I think might be able to accomplish this.

The first that I would recommend is Choosy ($10, trial available). That's the one that I use. I recommend it first because you can download it and try it before you pay for it.

There's also Browser Fairy which is $5, but it's in the Mac App Store, and there's no trial version available. I own it also, and I think it's good, but I have had Choosy for ages and it continues to work for me, so I've stuck with it.

I would recommend checking out Choosy, and see if it does what you want. You can easily set a default browser and then set exceptions for specific sites, building criteria similar to how you would make a Smart Mailbox in Mail.app.


35 "Flash Player" in DiskUtility from sudo diskutil list I get 35 of these

/dev/disk35 (disk image):
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        +17.9 MB    disk35
1:        Apple_partition_map                         32.3 KB    disk35s1
2:                  Apple_HFS Flash Player            17.9 MB    disk35s2

sudo diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk35 gives a hopeful Unmount of all volumes on disk35 was successful, but if I list it is still there.

Any idea why this happens? and how to get rid of these Flash Player images?

Cheers,
Roberto

The disk "Flash Player" is still attached to the filesystem. Go into /Volumes, and you should see it there. There are two ways to proceed, the GUI method, or the command line method. Use whichever you are most comfortable with.

GUI: Navigate to /Volumes and press ⌘ Command+E. This will eject the volume.

CLI: diskutil eject /dev/diskx, in this case disk35. This will also eject the volume.

The difference between diskutil unmountDisk and diskutil eject is that unmountDisk only ceases disk-IO between the disk and the filesystem, but keeps it attached so that it can be mounted later. However, eject effectively 'removes' it from the filesystem, and remounting it may involve physically reconnecting the disk. Think of them as "stand by" and "shutdown" respectively on a computer.

From man diskutil:

  diskutil eject

  Eject a disk.  Media will become offline for the purposes of being a data store for file systems or being a member of constructs such as software RAID or direct data.  Additionally, removable media will become eligible for safe manual removal; automatically-removable media will begin its physical (motorized) eject sequence.

whereas

  diskutil unmountDisk

  Unmount an entire disk (all volumes).  Force will force-unmount the volumes (less kind to any open files; see also umount (8)).  You should specify a whole disk, but all volumes of the whole disk are attempted to be unmounted even if you specify a partition.


"Cycle Through Windows" Menu Item is Missing I recently noticed that the normal cycle through windows command was not working in many of my applications — Terminal is about the only one left that would work. I went to go check, and the Cycle Through Windows item in the Window menu is gone in multiple applications.

I attempted to assign a cycle command ( Command + `, as is normal ) via the Keyboard preference pane (in some vain hope that the missing menu item would have just been invisible), but that did not work either.

I am completely at a loss here, especially as cycling through open windows is part of my normal workflow.

Most applications have never had a menu item for it. I don't know why Finder and Terminal do though.

⌘` should cycle through windows by default, but if it doesn't, check if the shortcut has been disabled or changed in System Preferences.


What differences are there between a new and a refurbished iPhone? My iPhone's lcd is crashed last night and I want to get a new one. I just wanted to know what people's though are on normal iPhone vs refurb iPhone. What's the real difference?

If you get a refurb from Apple then it will come with the same warranty as a new phone. It is not a scratch n dent type phone, but will look and feel new.

Not 100% about getting one from a provider like AT&T or Verizon, but I think they will also provide a full warranty.


Where are ssh login attempts logged to on jailbroken iPhone with OpenSSH? I know in Ubuntu they are in /var/log/auth.log but I can't find where they are logged on the iPhone. Ive made sure logging is enabled and have looked in /var/log and /var/logs as well as pretty much everywhere. Still cant find where the attempts are being logged.

I just found the answer to this

you have to manually edit /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.openssh.sshd.plist

change this part:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/usr/sbin/sshd</string>
    <string>-i</string>
</array>

to this:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/usr/sbin/sshd</string>
    <string>-E /var/log/auth.log -i</string>
</array>

then reboot or restart sshd


How can I connect two DELL monitors to macbook air 2014 I have a macbook air from 2014. I connect one monitor to it through thunderbolt to HDMI connector. If it's possible, how could I connect 2nd monitor as well? (it doesn't seem to have mini-DisplayPort only 2 other usb ports.

This link from EveryMac.com will help you:

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/macbook_pro/macbook-pro-unibody-faq/macbook-pro-air-how-to-connect-a-second-external-third-display.html


Accessing events on external drive in iMovie '11 on Lion I have my iMovie events stored on my external harddrive (located in a Synology NAS). It worked like a charm with iMovie '11 on Snow Leopard.

I then received my new MBP with Lion and the external drive is not showing. I cannot thus access my events which is pretty annoying as it prevents me from using the application...

Here is what I see in iMovie:(see edit 2 for new state)

I previously had my external drive below the Macintosh HD one.

My external drive is correctly mounted before launching iMovie:

It has the iMovie Events folder at root level (and as I said, it was correctly detected under same iMovie version on Snow Leopard).

I tried mounting it using afp: but result is the same.

Any help appreciated as I don't get what could have changed between SL and Lion for this.

edit: Same with volume now mounted using NFS:

The list in iMovie stays desperately empty...

edit 2: something new!
My NFS mounts are now visible in the list (probably coming from an update of iMovie inbetween).
Problem is that they are still empty and with a yellow warning sign, without any tooltip on it...

Lion turned off an older and less secure method of authenticating AFP connections, which a lot of third-party vendors of NAS devices were using, including Synology. Synology have made available a beta release of their new firmware which fully supports Lion (as long as your Synology device was made in 2008 or later).


OS X Lion not available in U.S. Store I recently had my computer brought to the the Genius Bar, and they installed a copy of OS X Snow Leopard onto my computer. However, I was previously running Lion. So I went over to the Mac App Store to try and reinstall Lion, and it keeps telling me that the item I've requested is not available in the U.S. Store. Is there any way I can resolve the issue? I've tried switching stores and had no luck.

Unfortunately, Apple no longer sells OS X Lion in the Mac App Store. It's not even available in the US Mac App Store and there is no way that you can get OS X Lion from Apple. You can always ask around for a copy, or torrent it (I very well advise against this), but other than that, there's nothing that you can do but to upgrade to OS X Mavericks.


MBP 15" not sleeping when closing lid My MBP 15" (end 2016) on macOS Sierra 10.12.6 have a strange behaviour when I close the lid. It goes to sleep (I hear the fans becoming quiet) but after ~20 seconds it returns to work and then the cycle starts back.

In the future the behaviour I would like is to have the MBP to sleep for something like 10/20 mins (2/3h when on charger -c) and the go in hibernation mode (hibernatemode 25), but that's another story.

Those are the settings I currently have:

[ab:~]$ pmset -g assertions
2017-12-18 19:09:37 +0100
Assertion status system-wide:
   BackgroundTask                 0
   ApplePushServiceTask           0
   UserIsActive                   1
   PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep    0
   PreventSystemSleep             0
   ExternalMedia                  0
   PreventUserIdleSystemSleep     0
   NetworkClientActive            0
Listed by owning process:
   pid 116(hidd): [0x0000003e0009812e] 00:01:40 UserIsActive named: "com.apple.iohideventsystem.queue.tickle.4294968220.3"
    Timeout will fire in 296 secs Action=TimeoutActionRelease
Kernel Assertions: 0x1=CPU
   id=501  level=255 0x1=CPU mod=12/18/17, 7:24 PM description=IOThunderboltController owner=IOThunderboltController
Idle sleep preventers: IODisplayWrangler
[ab:~]$ pmset -g live
System-wide power settings:
Currently in use:
 standbydelay         0
 standby              1
 halfdim              1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 powernap             0
 gpuswitch            2
 disksleep            10
 sleep                5
 autopoweroffdelay    0
 hibernatemode        25
 autopoweroff         1
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         5
 tcpkeepalive         1
 acwake               0
 lidwake              1

The culprit was a yubikey that was checking something every minute so it interrupted the sleep and the fans continued to work.


How to use process sample in order to find high cpu usage in Chrome? I'm trying to figure out what the devil is wrong with Chrome getting 100% cpu once in a while. I sampled the process Google Renderer. Not sure where to go from here. any advice?

process sample: https://gist.github.com/hadifarnoud/2371a33a5c3f39ede034

You can view Chrome's page memory usage by pressing the button in the top right of the Window. There you will get this menu:

When you click 'View Background Pages' you'll see a window like this:

This obviously narrows down page and extension usage by memory and CPU. This should help finding out exactly what's going on with it.

The 'Stats for nerds' link sends you to chrome://memory-redirect/ which breaks down their memory usage even more.

Side note when I notice chrome using a lot of memory and open /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app I typically see it is caused by PepperFlashPlayer (Chrome Plug-In Host) which is Chrome's built in Flash player. It is known for hogging CPU


Jailbroken iPad stuck on black screen I was looking around on Cydia until it suddenly froze then after a few minutes the screen turned black. I know that it is on because when I press the lock button and home button at the same time, I can hear the camera sound from the screenshot but it's still a black screen. I tried everything I could think of but nothing works.

Hold Power button and Home button down, then once you see the Apple logo keep hold of Volume Up until it boots. You can then uninstall your last tweak and restart.


Backing up OSX and bootcamp for a new drive I'm getting a new larger size SSD for my MBP and I want to transfer my existing OSX and bootcamp partitions onto it...

In preperation, iI've used bootable USB CloneZilla to clone everything onto an external drive that I have.

What I'm unsure about is how to restore it all back.. Once the new drive is fitted, if I then use clonezilla to restore the images (assuming that works), I take it that won't restore the partition tables (EFI) stuff that I'll need in order to dual boot.

How can I sort that out? I'm using rEFIt at the moment, do I just need to install that onto the new drive or are there additional steps I'll need to do?

I personally wouldn't clone it and put it back that way.
Feel free to try, but I'd never recommend it.

Why, you ask?

You will always have more useless waste on your disk compared to a fresh install and  placing the items back you really need.
You have partitioned it and it might cause trouble
You're using an SSD, seeing you've bought a larger size SSD, I assume it was 128GB or 256GB max

But cloning is easier!

It might look easier indeed, but as stated - you have partitions and I don't see a right away guide using the exact same partitions you have. They might mess up, leaving you with copy everything one by one over and over.

Feel free to try it, but personally I wouldn't do it. Just my 2 cents..


How do I remove a certificate from Certificate Trust Settings if the profile doesn't exist? If I go to Settings > General > About > Certificate Trust Settings... I see several profiles installed under the "ENABLE FULL TRUST FOR ROOT CERTIFICATES" heading.

There is a way to toggle them off, but not disable them.

According to this website, it says that you can remove these certificates by navigating to Settings > General > Profiles. When I navigate there, I don't see any corresponding Profiles that are installed. They seem to have been deleted a while ago, yet the Certificates remain under Certificate Trust Settings.

Another site recommends to re-install the profile temporarily and then remove it. However, the profile is long gone and I don't know where to get it from.

How do I remove these certificates that don't have corresponding profiles on my phone?

I'm on iOS 13.3. I tested this using non-orphaned certificates in hopes of isolating the issue to see what is the minimum option you can use to remove these certificates.

Works:

Assuming you have the profile (i.e. non-orphaned): Settings > Profile > (Profile) > Remove
Nuclear option (deleting everything on your phone): Settings > General > Reset > Erase all content and settings

Doesn't work:

Settings > General > Reset > Reset network settings
Settings > General > Reset > Reset all settings


Making a command key for an option that already exists Introduction: Hello, my formatting may look weird but I'm hoping it will be more concise for you and easier to follow, I have ADHD so my writing sometimes goes from one thing to another without any transition. So I've attempted to avoid that in this question by leaving my outline in place for you. Thank you in advance for your time. I will truly appreciate it.

Problem Explanation:
I'm trying to find out how to create a command key for an option that already exists on my mac. The menu under "System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts" doesn't work because this command isn't one of it's options. The command I would like to create a shortcut to is "Right click (on text) > Transformations > Make Lower/Upper Case." I seem to be using this all the time and there is apparently not a keyboard shortcut option built into the mac for this.

Explicitly Stated Question:
How do I get the command which I currently access through "Right click (on text) > Transformations > Make Lower/Upper Case" to have it's own keyboard shortcut?

Other information (about me to help your answer help me): I'm not experienced in programing whatsoever. I would like to be but my few attempts at it have been fails. So I would like to avoid Applescript as much as possible, If you have to suggest Applescript in order to answer my question please be as explanatory as possible. Meaning, help me learn how to create the code myself don't just tell me the code to put in, where to look up the commands, what my code should look like, etc.

You were looking in the right direction… though you cannot actually do this easily for a right click item - so long as there is a menu item in the same app, it's simple.

I've only quickly tested this on Safari & TextEdit - whichever app you use must already have those 2 command options somewhere in their menu structure.

System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts

Select All Applications, then click the + button.

So long as you add the full, correct menu title [& that item exists in the app you are going to be using], the shortcut you ask it to use in the 3rd line will always find it. You don't need to enter any kind of menu hierarchy at all.


How to get full resolution for LG 27UK650-W with MacBook Pro? I bought a LG 27UK650-W monitor that has 4K UHD resolution (3840 x 2160). When I connect it to my MacBook Pro (2019, 16-inch, Big Sur), the fonts are huge. I had to switch from "Default for display" to "Scaled" and move it down a couple of notches. Once I've done that, the System Report under About This Mac shows:
Resolution:  5120 x 2880 (5K/UHD+ - Ultra High Definition Plus)
UI Looks like:  2560 x 1440 @ 30.00Hz
Framebuffer depth:  30-Bit Color (ARGB2101010)

It is listed as LG HDR 4K Display 27-inch (3840 × 2160) under Displays in About This Mac.
By comparison, my work laptop has a Dell U2719DC with 2560x1440 pixels and it works perfectly with the default settings (no scaling).
I tried both a UtechSmart 6 In 1 USB C Hub and a Belkin USB-C to HDMI Adapter (HKQ22ZM) with the same result.
Shouldn't Apple "just work"?  I expect to plug in a monitor and have all pixels available and the UI in some sane state in terms of font sizes.  What am I missing?

Some things aren't adding up here. You say the monitor is 4K, instead system report indicates some display has a 5K resolution.

However, I think you are misinterpreting the numbers. The scaling option still renders at the highest resolution of your monitor, it just enlarges the UI. What you are losing is space on your monitor, because UI elements will appear bigger, in order to be readable.

Imagine an app opening by default with a resolution of 1600x900. If your monitor only has this resolution, it will fill the whole screen. If you instead have a 4K screen, that app will only take some small space on the monitor. Now if these monitors were the same size physically, the app will appear much smaller on the 4K screen. Now scaling allows you to change the appearance, to match the app's size from the 1600x900 monitor on the 4K screen and will display the app fullscreen. The app ends up physically being the same size, yet rendered and shown at the high-res of the 4K monitor.


How to clean computer from recovery mode terminal? Stopped working after had about 33MB left How to clean computer from recovery mode terminal? Stopped working after had about 33MB left. Now is loading until middle and stuck, then shut down automatically.

In recovery mode I have a terminal, through which I could clean trash bin to have space so it can load? I was doing CD from / to different folder but couldn’t find home folder with all documents so I dont know where to look.

Also in recovery mode in disk managment in both whole disk and partition of OSX was veryfying disk fine, but was trying to restore something and then stopped on partition drive error fixing.

Booted to Recovery Mode your boot volume is a mounted base macOS image residing in a subfolder of the recovery partition. It doesn't contain a /Users folder and if so it would be the wrong one. So cd to your main volume instead.

To check and modify your standard boot volume you have to get its volume name and device name first. Open Terminal in the menubar > Utilities:

mount #get volume names and disks
diskutil list #get disk identifiers of internal disk and CoreStorage: usually disk0 and disk2 for CoreStorage Logical Volume
diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk0
diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk2 #CoreStorage
diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk0s2 #no CoreStorage

Try to repair any error by replacing the suffix verify with repair.

Now cd to the volume (example name here: "Macintosh HD"):

cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD
pwd

Now cd to the Users folder and your user folder:

cd Users
ls -la
cd username #with username: usually your short username

Remove dispensable user files. Other places to remove files from are /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/private/tmp, /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/cores or /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/private/var/vm. Replace "Macintosh\ HD" with the name of your main volume here.

Addition: if your disk is not automatically mounted in recovery mode (e.g., because it is encrypted), you can mount and decrypt it by quitting the Terminal utility and going to the Disk Utility. Select your drive in the left column and mount it using the mount button (in the window at top right). The system will ask for an administrator password to decrypt. After mounting you can quit the Disk Utility and go back to the Terminal again. The disk will stay mounted.


Service to remove all white space from a string? I'm ultimately looking to create a service that will allow me to count all selected non-whitespace characters.  To get there though, I'm looking for a way to remove all whitespace characters from a string in a service that I can then use for other such purposes.  For example, I mainly want to use it to get quick DNA coordinates while looking at output in Terminal.app, but I can think of other uses, like counting code characters.

I have found applescripts to remove spaces, but nothing I've found appears to account for tabs, newline characters, carriage returns, or any other strange or weird character that doesn't display.

Note: I don't want to create a file or use or change the clipboard.

Side-question: Is there a way to display the result (briefly) in a bezel, like the way you can display phone numbers from the Contacts app?

In Automator, create a new Service with the following settings:

Service receives selected [text] in [Terminal]

Add a Run AppleScript actions, replacing the default code with the code below:

Example AppleScript code:

on run {input, parameters}

    set selText to item 1 of input as text
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {space, tab, linefeed, return}
    set selText to text items of selText
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {}
    set selText to selText as string

    display dialog ¬
        "The selection contains " & (count characters of selText) ¬
        & " characters." & linefeed & linefeed & selText ¬
        buttons {"OK"} default button 1

end run

Save the Automator Service as, e.g.: Count Selected Characters

Now in Terminal, select the wanted selection, e.g:

Right-click and select Count Selected Characters from the Services context menu.

Example output of the selection show above:

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


How to get a device back in Parallels? I'm using Windows 7 with Parallels Desktop.

When I open an instance of Windows 7, I see the 'Device' menu. I can choose which OS (Windows or OS X) can own a device within the menu.

The problem is, When I let Windows own my mouse, there's no way to get it back to Mac OS. The only way I found so far is to open a terminal then kill the instance of Parallels.

How do I get a device back within Parallels?

Is SmartMouse enabled for your Virtual Machine? If not, clicking inside the Parallels window will capture the mouse and you will need to use Ctrl+Option (Ctrl+Alt) to release it back to your Mac.


Updating OpenSSL in OSX I am using 10.9 with Server app 3, and right now i am using an obsolete connection with TLS 1.0, RSA and AES_128CBC with HMAC-SHA1 (that cames by default).

While i was trying to upgrade openssl, i notice that when i tried to upgrade it says that openssl is not installed but it is.

remote:~ root# port upgrade openssl
Error: openssl is not installed
remote:~ root# openssl version
OpenSSL 0.9.8zg 14 July 2015

So i would like to know how can i upgrade it, and why is not being detected as installed?

OpenSSL 0.9.8zg 14 July 2015 is the version installed by OS X 10.9(.5) (Mavericks) and resides in /usr/bin/.

MacPorts neither installs nor updates/upgrades genuine Apple (OK, OpenSSL is not Apple but it's part of their basic BSD package) system software. MacPorts' standard realm is /opt/...

You would have to install a newer OpenSSL version with MacPorts - if available.


Any way to enable File Vault for just one user? At the office, I use a machine which is used by several people.

Is there any way to enable File Vault ONLY for MY user folder?
(I.e., /Users/me)

FileVault 1 used to do just this but the current FileVault 2 is whole disk encryption. It is technically possible to use the Logical Volume Manager underpinning FV2 to accomplish this, but it's rather complicated and not supported by Apple or any GUI System Preferences.

You could consider using an encrypted disk image created with DiskUtility. This would give you an optionally mountable disk that is encrypted. It appears on the HDD as a large file (like most installer .dmg files) and mounts with a double-click and password. This is similar to what FV1 used to do with a user's home directory.


No exportfs CLI on OS X On Linux, there is exportfs CLI tool which can be used to export NFSs without modifying /etc/exports file. However, I can't find it on OS X 10.8.

Why is it missing? Is there any way to install it or simulate its functionality: dynamically (un)export filesystems?

There are no cli tools for this (not in homebrew, fink or MacPorts). Even the Apple documentation on configuring NFS exports talks about using a text editor to manipulate /etc/exports directly.

There is an older user created shell script for exportfs for Mac OS X. The download link on that page is broken, but the script is available on the archive.org page at mac exportfs. One issue that I noticed is that this script uses the outdated (and unavailable) niutil command for the NetInfo database. You could try using this script as a starting point and modify it to use dscl instead of niutil.


Installing Windows manually Here's the situation:

I've got three partitions on my disk - EFI, OS, and a Data Partition + 40 gigs of free space for a Windows partition. I already deleted the Recovery partition to avoid conflicts in Bootcamp and comply with Windows' 4 partition limitation.

Technically it should work flawlessly, but the Bootcamp Assistant is still having a problem with the current partition table and denies to automate the process. I can create a Windows installation USB drive and download the drivers, but the Assistant won't help me with the rest of the partitioning process.

Now the question is: If I create that bootable Windows setup drive with all the needed drivers via the Bootcamp Assistant and install Windows manually, will this work? I just don't want to cripple the rest of my stuff on that disk and render my Mac unbootable.

What you need is the refit tool.  Then on the Mac (via DiskUtil) shrink/resize your Mac partition and create a partition for Windows in the free space.

Then, via Refit (on the Refit boot menu under tools), sync the Mac partition table and MBR-partitions (this will create a windows-readable MBR type partition map that matches the partitions you created on the Mac).

Then just boot from a Windows CD and install in the new partition.  Do NOT modify the partitions (adding, removing, etc.) from Windows though.


Cannot add keyboard shortcuts in Mountain Lion As of an unknown moment, I cannot add custom keyboard shortcuts anymore. Isn't there supposed to be an add button somewhere here?

On the screenshot the panel with more choices is completely withdrawn (on the left). Once you pull it out, it makes it possible to select "Application Shortcuts" and then a "+" button appears which provides the sought functionality.

Bottom line: don't lose your panels!


Suddenly the fan of my Mac Mini starts to run as crazy - Possible reason / elimination? Just started my Mac Mini 15 minutes ago. Suddenly the fan started to work and the sound is clearly hearable. Normally the machine works quietly.
I took a look into the processes-table and found that there is a process "accountsd". The "Accounts daemon" perhaps ...

Might the "accountsd"-process be related to the annoying fan-trouble?
What can be the reason of the described behaviour, out of the blue?
What can one do against it?
Here are the OS-specs:

I found a solution for the problem, meanwhile.
Here's what worked for me: In the "System-Preferences" it was demanded to update the Apple-ID.

After doing so, I shutdown the machine. Then started it again.
The problem is now gone. The accountsd-process is still there in the processes-table, but the use of system-capacity is back to normal.


Close multiple Folders concurrently My computer opens many folders through obscure codes.
Instead of closing them one by one, I tried to force quit Finder.

However, there's only relauch option.

After relaunching, those folders still exist.

How to resolve such a problem?

Cmd ⌘   Opt ⌥   W  will close all windows.


Is there a formula or function for Numbers that returns the number of days or weeks for a given year I have a budget table with cost per week, fortnight, month, quarter and year. Some expenses are charged quarterly and others monthly or weekly, but I want to know what the value of a cell is for the week, month etc. using a more efficient, preferably inbuilt function to return the week in the formula.

For example, car registration is done quarterly but I break it down to week, fortnight, month and year using manual formulas.

Cost per week is =SUM(quarter * 4 / 52.14)
...

Of course this year (2016) is a leap-year so I had to go through and update all my formulas from 52.14 weeks in a year to 52.28.

There has to be a way to use a function or formula that works out the weeks in a year. I hope this question isn't to ambiguous but I'm just applying what I know about maths, not spreadsheets in general. I realise that it is a simple task to only do once every 4 years but I'd just like to know.

Try using the DATEDIF(start-date,end-date,calc-method) divided by 7 to determine number of weeks.

For example:

DATEDIF returns the number of days between to dates.  Dividing that by 7 should result in the number of weeks.  This can be rounded as desired and calculated against.

From the Formula reference:

  The DATEDIF function returns the number of days, months, or years between two dates.
  DATEDIF(start-date, end-date, calc-method)
  start-date: The starting date. start-date is a date/time value (the time portion is ignored) or date string value.
  end-date: The ending date. end-date is a date/time value (the time portion is ignored) or date string value.
  calc-method: A modal value that specifies how to express the time difference and how dates in different years or months are handled.
  “D”: Return the number of days between the start and end dates.
  “M”: Return the number of months between the start and end dates.
  “Y”: Return the number of years between the start and end dates.
  “MD”: Return the days between the start and end dates, ignoring months and years. The month in end-date is considered to be the month in start-date. If the starting day is after the ending day, the count starts from the ending day as if it were in the preceding month. The year of the end-date is used to check for a leap year.
  “YM”: Return the number of whole months between the start and end dates, ignoring the year. If the starting month/day is before the ending month/day, the dates are treated as though they are in the same year. If the starting month/day is after the ending month/day, the dates are treated as though they are in consecutive years.
  “YD”: Return the number of days between the start and end dates, ignoring the year. If the starting month/day is before the ending month/day, the dates are treated as though they are in the same year. If the starting month/day is after the ending month/day, the dates are treated as though they are in consecutive years.


Unable to use SSL or TLS to access OpenDirectory ldap server I am unable to connect with my openserver system using SSL/TLS connection.

There are no issues communicating without SSL on port 389 and can connect and retrieve directory information without issue.

However, when using port 636 and expecting secure communications the connection fails to connect.

The below openssl connection attempt details the trace which would indicate that no ssl connection is being established.

The following image is from ServerAdmin indicating that SSL is enabled and a certificate has been provided for the server connection.

The port 636 is open on the ldap server, and no firewall is between the two hosts.

sauce:Java frank$ netstat -an | grep 636
tcp6       0      0  *.636                  *.*                    LISTEN
tcp4       0      0  *.636                  *.*                    LISTEN

A telnet connection to port 636 on the server succeeds indicating that there are no firewall issues in play.

Can anybody provide any additional items to check to identify and correct the cause of this issue?

The following were the steps I took to resolve this issue:

Reboot the server in safe mode (hold down shift key whilst restarting)

Let it idle for a while (apparently it is cleaning out caches in this mode)

Stop the existing slapd server

 sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.openldap.slapd.plist

Set the correct certificate GUID in the file /etc/openldap/slapd_macosxserver.conf.  This can be ascertained from the contents of the /etc/certificates directory

sudo sed -e 's/oldguid/newguid/' /etc/openldap/slapd_macosxserver.conf >/tmp/conffile
sudo mv /tmp/conffile /etc/openldap/slapd_macosxserver.conf

Remove the configured TLS certificate values from the file /etc/openldap/slapd.d/cn=config.ldif

sudo vi /etc/openldap/slapd.d/cn=config.ldif
remove any lines beginning with olcTLSCertificate

Start the slapd server again

 sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.openldap.slapd.plist

Reboot the server again into standard mode.

Then from a client computer with linux or mac osx check that you can connect via SSL and that the certificates are correct using the command

openssl s_client -connect ldap.yourdomain:636 -showcerts

If successful you will get a dump of your server certificates as well as a connection detail description:

No client certificate CA names sent
---
SSL handshake has read 5209 bytes and written 807 bytes
---
New, TLSv1/SSLv3, Cipher is AES256-SHA
Server public key is 4096 bit
Secure Renegotiation IS supported
Compression: NONE
Expansion: NONE
SSL-Session:
    Protocol  : TLSv1
    Cipher    : AES256-SHA
    Session-ID: C8E0F4A4ED24021DB4D98ACF5A9ACDC2293BC3961BF2AE90026115D899369E73
    Session-ID-ctx:
    Master-Key:
    Key-Arg   : None
    PSK identity: None
    PSK identity hint: None
    SRP username: None
    TLS session ticket:
    ...
    Start Time: 1400140597
    Timeout   : 7200 (sec)
    Verify return code: 0 (ok)

Some other notes:

Apple suggests that you can use self-signed and own certificate
chains (http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3745).  I use a self signed
chain and it is successful.
Port 636 is the standard ldaps port and is the port used by OpenDirectory (slapd)
TLS1 is supported as can be seen from the openssl connection test
Differing DNS names and host names do not matter (I tried both ways with a reboot between)
Differing reverse DNS does not matter (I tried both ways with a reboot between)


RAID 1 with a Mac - how to avoid formatting one of the drives I have an iMac with an external 2TB HDD. I recently bought a second 2TB HDD in order to build a RAID 1 (mirrored) with the two drives.

The problem is that Disk Utility forces me to create a new RAID set, add both drives to the set and then format the whole set (every drive in it) in order to build the set.
I'm doing it this way, first because I have other disks where I can temporary put all the files that were on the 2TB disk, and second because I'm choosing the 256k block size (I'm dealing almost only with large files).

Anyway, if I want to add a third drive to the set in the future, should I repeat the process of dumping the contents of the RAID set, re-format all the drives and then put the contents back in place or there's an easier way out?

That's basically the only way unless you have one of the older mac pro's with the raid card. if I was you over usb id leave them as stand alone drives.


Bulk downloading PDF files in iPad I'd like to know whether there is an app or a service which allows bulk downloading of PDF files from a site page. More generally, is there an app that allows bulk downloading to iPad given a string pattern, like the file name or the file extension?

curl

You can use a curl client for iPhone/iPad to do this (e.g. iCurl or iCurlHTTP). Than you can use this client to download multiple files like this:

curl -L -O http://www.example.com/file[1-5].pdf


MacBook Retina with non-retina External Monitor has wrong resolutions I have just gotten a MacBook Pro retina Early 2015, which I want to connect with non-retina external display. I'm using a VGA to display port adapter to connect it and it does work. However the resolution is not correct. It's all blurry. I have tried to option click the scale button in display settings and tried them all. Non of them seem to fit the screen. When using HDMI instead it works like a charm. Am I doing anything wrong?

Try hold option while clicking 'scaled' radio button in external monitor Display settings. It will show you more options.


Shell variable PROMPT_COMMAND not working as intended? I want my bash prompt to change depending on external conditions.

Here is excerpt from the bash manual:

PROMPT_COMMAND: If set, the value is executed as a command prior to issuing each primary prompt.

PS1: The value of this parameter is expanded (see PROMPTING below) and used as the primary prompt string.

In my .bash_profile I have following:

export PROMPT_COMMAND="echo -n ┏━━━[$(date +%H:%M)]"
export PS1="━━[\t]━━━┓\n\$ "

Here is what I see in terminal:

┏━━━[03:46]━━[03:46:52]━━━┓
$ cd ..
┏━━━[03:46]━━[03:51:37]━━━┓
$

As you can see, PROMPT_COMMAND doesn't get executed more than once, and remains static forever.

How can I have it executed "prior to issuing each prompt", as stated in the manual?

I'm running Mac OS X 10.9.3
echo $BASH_VERSION
    3.2.51(1)-release

Your date call got evaluated when you set PROMPT_COMMAND so it is forever stuck at the  time that you ran:

export PROMPT_COMMAND="echo -n ┏━━━[$(date +%H:%M)]"

Try defining a function instead and assigning that to PROMPT_COMMAND:

function prompt_command() {
    PS1="┏━━━[$(date +%H:%M)]━━[\t]━━━┓\n\$ "
}
export PROMPT_COMMAND=prompt_command

You can also use \@ for the current time in 12-hour AM/PM format in your prompt. So:

function prompt_command() {
    PS1="┏━━━[\@]━━[\t]━━━┓\n\$ "
}
export PROMPT_COMMAND=prompt_command

Would give you:

┏━━━[06:17 PM]━━[18:17:57]━━━┓
$

And while we're talking bash customizations let me put in a plug for the excellent bash-it project -- it's a bash equivalent to oh-my-zsh and it comes with a bunch of helper functions for theme creation. You might find it makes this sort of thing a little easier.


This window keeps popping up and wont go away.. help? This window keeps popping up on my Mac ever since I updated the OS to Catalina.

I tried searching for the file and selecting "show in finder" but nothing is there? Can anyone help me fix this problem? Very irritating to have this little box on my screen all the time.

This is likely malware. Update your Apple software every week (or even every day) for a while in case Apple detects and blocks this specific app. It’s not behaving like a proper app should.

Any chance you can locate the file in finder and upload it to virus total?

“qnmqkmkrqwfq” is damaged and can’t be opened , even though i set Allow applications downloaded from: Anywhere

If you can get the finder window open, control click and show package contents and consider uploading the file to https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/upload if you’re not comfortable using terminal to type the command file and drag the bookmark “file” into the terminal window to check if the file is deceiving you - named like a text file but actually a program.


Does the `mdls` terminal command access metadata in resource forks? I always knew that Mac operating systems had a concept of "resource forks" but have just learned that this feature has in fact been deprecated since the arrival of OS X.

I also just discovered the mdls terminal command that lists metadata.

Does some or any of this metadata come from resource forks? If not, where is the metadata stored? Or is the metadata generated each time it's needed?

The meta data is stored in so called extended file attributes. The extended file attributes are stored in a named fork.

So in essence forks are still very much used on OS X. However, the specific "resource fork" as managed by the Resource Manager API is deprecated, as you describe.


How should I use Two Step and/or Two Factor authentication with many Apple accounts? I have the following accounts

A personal iCloud account that secures my keychain / Facetime
A personal iTunes account
A work developer account for the App Store (not shared, I exclusively use it)

Question

How can I enable Two Step, or Two Factor for more than one accounts above?

Background

I have a mid-2012 Retina, a 2016 MacBook Pro, Watch 2, and iPhone 7.

I use the same iCloud account on all devices, therefore I can only use two factor authentication for one account listed above.

When I try to reenabled "two step" authentication for the other accounts, I don't see the option anymore within the idmsa portal.

How do I enable either 2 step, or 2 factor in the above scenarios?

Two-factor authentication

Macworld has a great tip on enabling two-factor authentication for an iTunes-only Apple ID (or any Apple ID not being used as the iCloud account on an iOS device):

Add a new user account on your (or a friend's) Mac.
In the new user account, log into iCloud with your iTunes-only Apple ID.
Enable two-factor authentication (iCloud preference pane > Account Details > Security tab).

It may be a bit cumbersome to switch to this Mac user account though, if you need to manage your Apple ID often.

Macworld also has some tips on using your trusted phone number(s) to receive verification codes when you don't have a trusted device nearby.

Two-step verification

It may no longer be visible in the Apple ID web management interface, but you can still enable two-step verification if you want:

From the Apple Support page for two-step verification, under the section How do I set up two-step verification?, click the link "Set up two-step verification now."; or
Click this link: https://appleid.apple.com/manage/security/2sv/enrollment


Download iOS alarm tones I have an iPad Air 2 running iOS 11 and an Android phone. Now, I want to be able to access the alarm tones from the iPad on the Android phone (I find them to be more soothing). Is there an easy way to go about transferring them?

I could not figure out how to do it via iTunes (assuming there is a way).

The android phone is running Oreo (if that is of any relevance).

Apple provides no easy transfer mechanism for embedded alarm tones from iPad to another device. The things you are expected to transfer are exposed for syncing via iTunes. The audio files are proprietary and are not user accessible or even licensed for this.


How do you change the order that users appear on the login screen? How would I change it so that one account appears to the right of another in the login screen? I am using the latest software version on a Macbook Air.

Technically this isn't possible, since accounts are shown in alphabetical order by default and there's no option to change the sort order.

As a workaround, however, if you prefix the full name of an account with a space, it'll sort at the beginning of the list. So for example, if you want to have two accounts called "Hello" and "Test", but with "Hello" on the right, name the other account " Test" (note the space).


Prevent artwork synch in iTunes for iPhone I want to turn off my artwork synch!  I don't care if I have the artwork or not!  Is there a work around for doing this?  My phone always gets locked in a loop when synching and it is "stuck" on step 8 of 8 backing up artwork!

You can do a bit of a clumsy workaround.

First you have to select all your songs on iTunes, right-click and select Clear Downloaded Artwork. Than you can sync your library with your iPhone. After that you can download your artworks again. So you have your artworks on your computer, but not on your iPhone.