Open the same terminal without switching spaces I'm looking for an AppleScript (or anything, really) that will do the following:

If a Terminal window is open in the current space, bring it to the front.
If not, open a new one in the current space.

I don't want it to switch to another space if a Terminal window happens to be open there.

Using iTerm2 instead of Terminal is fine, if that makes things easier :).

I've been looking around for scripts that do this, but the closest I could find is one that opens a new Terminal every time. I don't want that, because I probably have a session that I want to return to.

I've been working at this for a while, and controlling spaces–with or without GUI scripting, which I don't use since it's inelegant and breaks–is really hard. AppleScript lacks functions needed to properly control spaces. What can be hacked together through shell scripts and writing to/from files can't even do what's needed.

Here's what I could manage:

tell application "Terminal"
    if not application "Terminal" is running then
        activate
    else
        if (exists window 1) then
            activate
        else
            do script ""
            activate
        end if
    end if
end tell

This script does:

If a Terminal window is open, bring it to the front.
If not, open a new one in the current space.

It does not:

Check only within the current space when testing for an open window


How to completely disassociate iMessage from my device? I have an older iPhone that I was thinking about selling soon in order to get a new one. I've set up iMessaging on the device.  Normally I would just erase the phone a couple of times and be done with it.  But recently, there has been exposed a glitch in iMessaging whereby users continue to receive other user's iMessages, even after the sim card is removed, and the phone is erased.

So I'm curious: is there any way to prevent this from happening?

Go into Settings -> Messages and halfway down choose Send and Receive.
Tap your AppleID on the top of the page, sign out, and let the new guy sign his or her self in.


Disk utility, shrink 1 partition, expand the other I have two partitions on my external HDD, I shrinked 1 partition (Macintosh Lion) in order to expand the other (Macintosh HD), but I can't drag the lower right corner to expand of the 'Macintosh HD' partition, I can only do it with the 'Macintosh Lion' one, ideas?

Yes, you are restricted in that sense, you can only modify the partition space "at the end" of the disk, as you have discovered.


Catalina - Video (& Audio) stop often and don't work for a while I have a 13" MacBook Pro with TouchBar, 2018.

Since some time I'm having video and audio problems. What usually happens is:

I'm listening music (Spotify/Youtube), watching a movie/serie (Netflix (Safari/Chrome)).
Suddenly the video stops. It seems paused, but I can still pause it (so, it isn't paused, but not playing either).
I can now try to play it again, which doesn't work. The video is stuck.
After a while (20 seconds) the video plays again, but the audio doesn't. After 30s-2min the audio comes back as well.

This happens every ~5 minutes. It seems to happen in different programs (browsers, spotify, VLC). I clean-installed the Mac. And if I remember correctly, it was there before Catalina.

Also, I noticed several times that the audio-control buttons on the TouchBar get greyed-out/disabled for a second, as well as the audio-icon in the top bar of the screen. This somehow makes me think that it's a hardware problem, but I haven't found people having this problem, only where the video stops but the audio continues.

Is anyone familiar with this issue?
With this information, is this likely to be a hardware or software problem?

EDIT: I have found users with the problem where the video stops, while the audio continues. And this apparently doesn't happen in a private (Safari) tab. I also tried this, but this doesn't solve it, unfortunately.

I don't know if this is an answer, writing here because I cannot comment yet.

I had the same problem since yesterday. within 5 mins, both my video and audio would freeze and would work fine within the next 2 mins. I tried a bunch of thing. Which might have fixed the problem.
 1. I was postponing my Catalina update. When I encountered this problem, I went ahead and updated it.
 2. I made sure I switch off my bluetooth while not connected to other devices.
 3. I figured Snap Camera was the real cause of this whole problem. The first time I encountered the problem was when I was on a call and tried to stop/quit snap camera that was running behind. So getting rid of it may have helped.
I will continue to test it and post any updates I find.


Macbook Pro not sleeping when left inactive with lid open My Macbook Pro Running 10.8.5 isn't sleeping when left alone. System prefs has everything set up to sleep but it isn't working. I used the command pmset -g assertions in terminal and I get

Assertion status system-wide:
   PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep    0
   PreventSystemSleep             0
   PreventUserIdleSystemSleep     1
   InternalPreventDisplaySleep    0
   ExternalMedia                  0
   UserIsActive                   0
   ApplePushServiceTask           0
   BackgroundTask                 0

Listed by owning process:
  pid 386(Google Chrome): [0x000000010000021a] 22:54:00 NoIdleSleepAssertion named: "WebRTC has active PeerConnections."
  pid 3791(helpd): [0x0000000c00000d34] 11:01:38 BackgroundTask named:
"com.apple.helpd.sdmbuilding"

So I'm assuming that this has to do with Google Chrome but I'm not sure what specifically. Anyone have any suggestions?

I resolved this problem. If anyone else runs into it in the future just go to chrome settings and then go to advanced settings and reset settings. It just brought me to default. Something in my settings was causing it. Honestly have no idea what it was.


Modifying `whatis` to return error code for missing commands Followup to "whatis" returns 0 for missing commands, I am trying to modify /usr/bin/whatis to return a non-zero exit code after an inappropriate command has been entered.  My approach to doing this is to add a return variable in the following segment, and return that variable after the end of the loop

while [ "$1" != "" ]
do
    found=0
    for d in /var/cache/man $manpath /usr/lib
    do
        if [ -f $d/whatis ]
        then
            if grep -"$grepopt1" "$grepopt2""$1" $d/whatis
            then
                found=1
            fi
        fi
    done

    if [ $found = 0 ]
    then
        echo "$1: nothing appropriate"
        **code=1**
    fi

    shift
done | eval ${PAGER:-more -E}
**return $code**

However, since the while loop is piped into eval, it is run in a subshell so code will not be assigned outside the while loop.  I have tried multiple different methods, however, these are all about piping a value INTO the while loop, not piping a value out of the while loop.

A workaround I found is simply removing the entire eval statement, but I would like a method that preserves the original extensibility of whatis

PIPESTATUS is an array. Since you only need $[PIPESTATUS[0]}, the subscript can be omitted.

(
    code=0
    while [ "$1" != "" ]
    do
        found=0
        for d in /var/cache/man $manpath /usr/lib
        do
            if [ -f $d/whatis ]
            then
                if grep -"$grepopt1" "$grepopt2""$1" $d/whatis
                then
                    found=1
                fi
            fi
        done

        if [ $found = 0 ]
        then
            echo "$1: nothing appropriate"
            code=1
        fi

        shift
    done
    exit $code
) | eval ${PAGER:-more -E}
return $PIPESTATUS

From man bash:

   PIPESTATUS
          An array variable (see Arrays below) containing a list  of  exit
          status  values  from the processes in the most-recently-executed
          foreground pipeline (which may contain only a single command).


Applescript to quit all active browser processes I am trying to quit all the active browsers using the below code, but am unable to get the list of all active browsers to quit.

tell application "System Events"

    set appList to every process whose visible is true

    repeat with thisApp in appList
        tell process browser
            quit
        end tell
    end repeat
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    set ProcessList to name of every process
    if "Safari" is in ProcessList then
        tell application "Safari"
            quit
        end tell
    end if
end tell

Repeat as needed


Set Finder arranging order by kind via Terminal I know I can easily do this via the Finder's toolbar but I'm currently writing a huge shell script that'll set my future Mac up exactly as I want.

So is there any command to do it like the one to set viewing style ?

To set a default view style use:

defaults write com.apple.Finder FXPreferredViewStyle icnv|Nlsv|clmv|Flwv

with:

icnv: Icon View
Nlsv: List View
clmv: Column View
Flwv: Cover Flow View

To enable this immediately (which probably is not relevant for your shell script) you have to kill the Finder with killall Finder. Some folders might have a different view style set already (via .DS_Store files) while installation. You have to remove those invisible files to adapt your preferred style.

To deal with the group/arrange/sort settings you have to use PlistBuddy and defaults. The relevant key/sub-keys are FXPreferredGroupBy and StandardViewSettings and therein IconViewSettings, ExtendedListViewSettings and ListViewSettings.

Examples:

Arrange by application:

defaults write com.apple.Finder FXPreferredGroupBy Application

Possible values for defaults are none, date, name, kind, Date Added, Date Created, Application etc.

Arrange by kind:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :StandardViewSettings:IconViewSettings:arrangeBy kind" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

Sort by date added:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Set :StandardViewSettings:ExtendedListViewSettings:sortColumn dateAdded" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

Possible values for PlistBuddy are  none, date, name, kind, dateAdded, dateCreated etc.

Some combinations of those settings (view style, arrange by, sort by) aren't possible or don't make much sense (depending on your OS).


Should I be able to run disk utility on my Time Machine Backups? Been having issues with Time Machine and backup so I ran disk utility on all my drives: iMac drive, iomega external HD and Time Capsule. When I run on Time Capsule I am getting a failure and this message:

  Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
  Unable to mount volume for repair.
  Operation failed…

Time Machine says "last backup Nov 25, 2015." Can't figure out what is going on. Does anyone have any suggestions?

TimeMachine is rock solid. I have used it extensively and exclusively since it came out at on many different machines and have never lost any data. Like any backup system, it is only as reliable as the person using it. You need to have multiple disks rotated at regular intervals. Time Capsule is just one Time Machine disk, so don't confuse the two. You need additional Time Machine backups on other disks. Unfortunately all disks fail eventually. If it says that the last back was a certain date then that is what you have.


Mac chooses wrong date/time which is 7 hours ahead of the timezone chosen I have chosen to set date/time automatically based on location:

The time now is 2:28 PM but Mac shows it as 9:29 PM:

On Terminal app, date command shows the correct time:

date
Sun May 31 14:29:26 PDT 2020

However, Mail, Calendar, Outlook etc., all show the wrong date which is 7 hours ahead.  How can I fix this problem?  The menu bar shows the wrong time as well:

I tried resetting NVRAM but that didn't help.

Check in System Preferences → Region & languages to see if "Region" is set correctly.

When the device has wrong date/ time, the location will also not get updated. (I don't know the correct reason, I've just seen this a few times.)

So the time will also be wrong since correct location has not been determined.

So to break the loop, you need to enter correct time at least once. Then verify that you can connect to internet in Safari and then set date/ time to auto.


Concatenate two videos recorded with Snapz Pro I've recorded two videos with Snapz Pro, and I'd like to concatenate them (i.e., have one immediately follow the other in a single file). What's the easiest way to do that? I have iMovie '08 installed, and I can use it to combine the two into a single movie. However, I can't get it to export the resulting video at the same resolution as the original video.

According to the QuickTime player inspector, the video formats of the two original videos are "Apple Animation, 1164x1153, Millions IMA 4:1, Mono, 22.050 kHz', FPS: 9.97 fps.

Becuase Apple Animation is an older QuickTime format, you should give QuickTime Player 7 a try, which has basic editing capabilities. If you're on Snow Leopard, it may not be installed, but you can fix that pretty quickly

If you need more than what QuickTime Player provides, it might be worth looking at QuickTime Pro.


External SSD Samsung T5 doesn't show up anymore After I had got a new Samdung T5 external SSD (2 TB) I had formatted it with DiskUtilit, created 3 partitions and could make it work:
1. TimeMachine Backup to partition 1
2. Some important data backup in partition 2
3. Start up with macOS Mojave in partition 3

The partition which came with the SSD (Setup utility) was untouched.

After my MacBookAir (early 2015) ran out of power and went to sleep mode,  restarted the computer.
Since then only the partition with Setup utility is visible. I am not able to mount any other partition nor can I see them in the diskutil in Terminal mode.

Can you help me?
What makes me frustrated is that the SSD was working fine for several days, but now all data seems to be lost or unaccessible.

Probably a format issue. There should be nothing left that was on the disk when new!
Format the drive completely in Mac OS Extended (journaled), completely, everything!
Then partition it in the three partitions.
Then install Mojave in one partition (the format will be changed only in that partition).


How to remove scratches from 5th generation iPod? I own a 5th generation iPod with a lot of scratches on its acrylic-like surface and display that I'd like to be removed (please note it's not a touch-screen iPod). What should I buy (preferentially on eBay) and how should I wipe all those scratches away to keep my iPod as polished as possible?

I found on this site Repair iPod Scratches yourself Cheaply that you can use something called Brasso to clean the back of it. It has a mild abrasive in oil. it will cost you about 5 dollars. Then to clean the face, either a microfiber cloth or a t-shirt.

EDIT:
You could try Ice Creme its designed for iPods and Macs (or so it says).


Is it possible for an iPad - or any iOS product - to get a virus? And if so, have there been any recorded instances of this?

(I'm excluding the so-called "jail broken" devices.)

Yes, security vulnerabilities that would allow people to hack or infect Macs and iOS products do exist, though they're not exploited very often.

Pwn2Own is an annual contest where competitors try to hack into machines to win them as prizes. Both Macs and iOS products are hacked most years.

Here is one more story about an exploit that was patched:

  Friday, Apple released an update to its mobile operating system (iOS 4.3.4) which patches a couple of vulnerabilities that left a door open for malware infections on the iPad, 3rd and 4th generation iPod touch, iPhone 4, and iPhone 3GS.

  Apple's update describes the CoreGraphics vulnerability as "A buffer overflow…in FreeType's handling of TrueType fonts. Viewing a maliciously crafted PDF file may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution."

  [...]

  This update comes on the heels of an alert from German IT group BSI, which warned of an unpatched vulnerability that would "allow attackers to gain access to the entire system with administrative privileges."

Apple does "verify" any software for their App Stores, but developers have been known to sneak in features without Apple's testers seeing them, so don't expect this to entirely protect you.


Copying to targets where the files already exist: skip or stop I noticed that sometimes, when I tell Finder to copy files to a location where some of those files already exist, Finder gives me the option to "skip" those files and then proceeds to copy the rest.

But at other times, more often I guess, Finder gives me the option to "stop" (or to "replace") and there is no "skip" option.

I cannot figure out what triggers either behaviour.

Today both happened within the same hour when I was copying files from an internal disk to an external disk. The first time I could simply drag and drop all the files and tell Finder to skip the files that already existed on the external disk. The second time Finder didn't give me that option.

Any ideas what makes Finder decide to offer or not offer the useful skip option when copying files?

I don't know what makes Finder choose one dialog over the other, but you can make the Skip button appear by holding down Option.


Is It Possible To Still Upgrade To OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion? For those Mac owners still on OS X Snow Leopard, does the possibility exist to upgrade to OSX 10.8 Mountain Lion rather than to 10.9 Mavericks?

Yes, Apple sells older OS as redeemable downloads from the web store.

Apple sells OS X Mountain Lion redemption codes, alongside OS X Lion, for £14 each on the UK store.

The US store link is below and it appears the part number is the same no matter which store you select:

http://store.apple.com/us/product/D6377Z/A/os-x-mountain-lion
http://store.apple.com/us/product/D6106Z/A/os-x-lion


Problems With Terminal (/usr/bin) I'm experimenting around with my computer and I realized that all the commands in the terminal that aren't bash builtins were stored in the /usr/bin. So I wanted to see (to confirm my realization) that they would not work in Terminal if they weren't there. So I copied bin to my desktop and deleted bin in usr. Sure enough, I was right. All the builtins still worked but things like 'say' didn't. Feeling content with myself for figuring out something about my computer, I promptly placed bin back in usr and check to see if 'say' was working to confirm no harm was done. It worked. Then some time later I need to use sudo for something and I get an error. I restarted my computer, hoping that would help. Now I can't even use Terminal anymore. When I boot it up it says:

Last login: Fri Jul 25 01:12:20 on console
login(529,0x7fff744b4310) malloc: *** error for object 0x7fcfa3600e20: pointer being freed was not allocated
*** set a breakpoint in malloc_error_break to debug

[Process completed]

Uh-oh, so how do I fix this? The only thing my non-educated brain can think of is a reinstall of OS X.

I figured it out by searching it myself (sorry for not thinking of that first). You just go to the disk utility and click 'Repair Disk Permissions'.


Is there free utility to amplify the system volume? Possible Duplicate:
  Do you know a simple sound booster app for Mac?
  Skype way too quiet. How to get louder Skype audio output on my MacBook Pro?

I came across this question about tools that amplify sound in OS X, but they're not free.

Are you aware of a free tool that boosts the volume?

If you're happy to get your hands dirty and you're a registered Apple Developer, you could use Soundflower to pipe your system audio into AU Lab (search for AU Lab on the ADC Downloads page) and push everything through Apple's own awful AUDynamicsProcessor Audio Unit.


Ping on Mavericks on late 2013 MacBook Pro slow and variable compared to Windows I had a couple of issues connecting to an SMB share last night so started using ping to test connectivity.

At that point I noticed the ping was very slow and variable - my Windows laptop shows <1ms for all pings to the router.

An example:

64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=335 ttl=64 time=208.350 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=336 ttl=64 time=129.768 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=337 ttl=64 time=51.067 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=338 ttl=64 time=278.491 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=339 ttl=64 time=1.315 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=340 ttl=64 time=120.040 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=341 ttl=64 time=40.420 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=342 ttl=64 time=267.817 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=343 ttl=64 time=188.607 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=344 ttl=64 time=109.445 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=345 ttl=64 time=1.313 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=346 ttl=64 time=1.905 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=347 ttl=64 time=3.662 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=348 ttl=64 time=100.708 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=349 ttl=64 time=21.266 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=350 ttl=64 time=1.674 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=351 ttl=64 time=1.397 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=352 ttl=64 time=89.599 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=353 ttl=64 time=10.996 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=354 ttl=64 time=341.583 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=355 ttl=64 time=159.329 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=356 ttl=64 time=81.145 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=357 ttl=64 time=1.945 ms

I have not seen any other symptoms - network speeds and things like ping test are fine. I see similar behaviour when pinging external sites though - much slower and variable.

I have tried plugging into power (possibly power saving could cause this) and also restarting.

I searched before posting and found no other questions, but now one of the related questions is useful - changing the interval to 200ms makes the pings fast and consistent.

But why would changing the ping interval to be 200ms instead of 1s change the latency?

The ping on Mavericks is badly broken. The reason for this is Mavericks puts network card into a power save mode within milliseconds when there's no traffic that it considers vital, and apparently it doesn't consider pings to be valuable traffic, therefore the network card (or, rather, wifi card) goes to "sleep" immediately, and it takes time for it to do so, therefore causing completely random ping results.

I have submitted a bug report to Apple in the early beta stages of the Mavericks, but they refused to address the issue, claiming "will not fix".

So the results you're seeing are not representative of the actual network connection.


How to tell why macOS thinks that a certificate is revoked? I cannot access Wikipedia on both my Macs. macOS says that the intermediate certificate used to sign Wikipedia’s certificate (GlobalSign Organization Validation CA - SHA256 - G2) has been revoked.

I don’t believe that the certificate in question has been revoked, so I checked manually GlobalSign’s CRL and OCSP service and both tell me that the certificate is OK.

Are there other sources of CRLs that macOS can potentially use? Is there a way to ask Security Framework to tell me what exactly is wrong with the certificate in its opinion?

I tried crlrefresh rp and also manually deleting the OCSP cache with sudo rm /var/db/crls/*cache.db as documented by GlobalSign.

However, the cache seems to be in a different location on macOS 10.12 Sierra. The following command worked for me and resolved the problem:

$ sqlite3 ~/Library/Keychains/*/ocspcache.sqlite3 'DELETE FROM responses WHERE responderURI LIKE "%http://%.globalsign.com/%";'

I also tried deleting the whole database, but it does not seem to come back automatically.

If unsure, better just restore ~/Library/Keychains/*/ocspcache.sqlite3* (including -shm and -wal) from a backup before the OCSP servers started to give wrong replies, for example from yesterday.


Cannot empty iCloud trash folder I've had this infuriating problem for quite some time now, where I can't empty my Trash. More specifically, every time I empty it, there's a folder called temp(1) that keeps reappearing in there after a while. I managed to determine this folder comes from iCloud (specifically the .trash folder under the iCloud library folder). I have no idea how all that information got in there (I had no idea iCloud has its own trash folder), but it's been there for a while apparently.

I've tried everything I could think of to remedy this:

delete the .trash folder from the console
rename it
move it to other iCloud tracked folder (like Desktop)
delete it using the iCloud web interface
delete it from my iPhone

No matter what I do, it keeps reappearing. It's driving me insane. My guess is that there's some server side error and the iCloud storage server can't remove this folder, so that's why it keeps getting resurrected. Any idea what I can do in this case?

I found out why this was happening. I have a Windows box which I completely forgot I installed iCloud on. For some reason, that temp folder would not get deleted on the Windows machine, and it was re-uploaded to iCloud every night. That's why it was re-appearing on the other devices.

After deleting the folder from the Windows machine, the issue stopped happening. Case closed.


Why does my iMac reboot every day at the same time? Every evening around 10:30, my iMac just stops and restarts. It's not a power outage because another iMac next to it (same plug) is not affected.

I'm thinking maybe a service that's set to run at that time, but I don't see it just shutting down the computer with no warning ..

This is a shot in the dark but worth checking, since it is so specific time wise, have you maybe by accident set up an automatic restart under the Energy Saver?

Open Preferences
Open Engery Saver
Click on Schedule


Mac mini 2012 graphic upgrade for UE4 Unity3D Blender I have a Mac Mini (late 2012) i7, 16gb ram graphic card intel HD4000.

I recently bought a thunderbolt expansion PCIE which supports a PCIE 2.0 16x graphic card  with space for Full length card.

I have doubts about what graphic card gonna give me the best results for using the Unreal Engine 4 UE4 or Unity3D, and Blender.

My budget covers a Nvidia Quadro K4000 3gb or ATI Firepro W7000 4gb. Any recommendation? What professional graphic card would be better for design games in 3D?

I actually wouldn't worry about it too much for Unity3D and Blender - both are very efficient.  UE4 seems to be a bit less efficient.

In the past I've really liked NVidia, but on my late 2011 MacBook Pro (with 8G of normal ram) I'm using a AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1024 MB (only 1G graphics!) and am very happy.  Well, happy with Unity3D and Blender that is.  It runs a bit hot sometimes if I have lots of particle effects and such - but I use a fan control software that helps a bunch.  So, I'm thinking either card you've chosen should work for those two apps.

For UE, I'd go to the forums over there.  Last time I used Unreal, I had to run the Windows version and was using Parallels. I was woefully under-powered for that but, I was still able to grade a bunch of students senior capstones (big projects).  So, even my set-up worked.  Just slooooooow. :-)


Unable to symlink /Users in OS X El Capitan I#m running OS X El Capitan and want to symlink /Users to /home

sudo ln -sf /Users /home

fails with

  ln: home/Users: Operation not supported

Why does this fail?

Could this be related to other OS X restrictions? Such as when trying to write to /usr/share ...

  Operation not permitted

System Integrity Protection doesn't prevent you creating sym links in / because the root of the file system is not protected!

But the root of the OS X file system already contains an invisible volume/mount point home created by /etc/auto_master (and /etc/auto_home). Your intension to create an equally named sym link there conflicts with this and is therefore forbidden.

Network users who login to the local machine will have their home directories mounted in /home according to the details in /etc/auto_home.


Is there a way to "unsubscribe" from group texts in iOS? When you send a group text message in iOS, it appears as if you automatically opt in to receive any and all replies to that message. Is there a way to avoid being included in group replies? Is there a way to remove oneself from a group chat?

As Messages and SMS integration + iMessage is designed today, this can not be done.

What you could do is:

block the people and leave SMS / iMessage enabled
place that conversation on Do Not Disturb so you don't get notifications from that group
enable no notifications for either SMS or iMessage
turn off iCloud Messages entirely
disable SMS entirely

Just as you can't block a number or email from sending you an iMessage - there is no technical way to get others to not send you a group message (other than by exerting social pressure to exclude you from further communications).

I haven’t been able to find anything playing on my phone, and several forum posts suggest that it can’t be done:

On Mac Rumors, sla252 writes (November, 2011):

  Just got off the phone with Apple tech support. They admitted there is no way to remove yourself from an iMessage group chat. The tech guy says the best thing we can do is go to http://www.apple.com/feedback

There’s also a Reddit thread in which huntard713 suggests (October, 2011):

  Settings-Messages. Turn group messaging off.

It's now November 2011 and I can’t find this setting on my iPhone, and this was in response to a slightly different problem (about who sees the other participants in a group iMessage, so I don’t know how effective this.

I’m sorry this doesn’t really answer your question; for now at least, it looks like you can’t leave a group iMessage.


How to check the integrity of a downloaded MacOS X installer? A Sierra installer I downloaded last week was corrupted. It wasn't obvious at first since I was able to create a USB installer and the USB stick booted fine. But after an hour of proceeding I had issues in MacOS installation process, I got a message that says my installer was corrupted.
I downloaded it again and after one more hour it is working fine.

When downloading Linux ISOs, most (perhaps all) distributions provides an MD5/SHA1 code so I can check my downloaded copy with those.

So is there way to check for the integrity of Mac AppStore downloads? I'm not so concerned with small downloads but very with 1+GB ones which could waste hours of time.

From Apple KB: Mac OS X: How to verify a SHA-1 digest
[emphasis mine]

  Learn how to verify a SHA-1 digest (also known as a checksum).

  Important: Verifying the SHA-1 of a software update is optional; it is
  provided on Apple software updates for those individuals who want to
  verify the authenticity of an update.

  Note: For updates delivered by Automatic Software Update, SHA-1 digest verification is performed automatically for you.

  To verify a manually-downloaded software update from Apple Downloads,
  which contains a SHA-1 digest, perform the following steps:

  Open Terminal (located in /Applications/Utilities).
  Type the following at the Terminal prompt:   openssl sha1 [full path to file]

Which would appear to conclude that Apple doesn't maintain a public list of checksums for App Store versions.
However, there is an independent list maintained at https://github.com/drduh/macOS-Security-and-Privacy-Guide/blob/master/InstallESD_Hashes.csv for just the InstallESD components themselves.


Calendar in list but not in sidebar I loaded the My Meetups Calendar from meetup.com into my gmail account which I synchronize with Calendar.app. The My Meet up a calendar is in the calendars list in the menu, but not in the sidebar, and that means I have to specifically open a separate window to see the events on my meetups.

Illustration:

How can I fix thhis?

I solved this by going to Preferences (⌘+,) -> Accounts -> Google Account -> Delegation (tab) -> Click on My Meetups.

I can now see the meetups in the calendar :)

Warning: This is a viable solution only, of course, if you don't use the delegation feature -> If you do, you will give (unneccesary?) access to your Meet ups to your delegates, which may not be what you want.


Advice on upgrading OS X 10.10.5 (Yosemite) [I reformulated the question after the 1st comment]
I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, early 2015) with OS X 10.10.5 (Yosemite). I would like to upgrade the OS. The only reason is that some new programs and devices (eg Wacom tablet) are not compatible with Yosemite. Otherwise it works perfectly for all my needs (a research mathematician). This is the 1st time I am doing this since I acquired this laptop and would like to do it myself (we don't have good Apple support here).
Question: Can you give some advice/tips how to best perform this task?
Here are some comments revealing my ignorance, to help you Mac experts guide me:

I heard it is not a good idea to upgrade to the last OS (possible unresolved bugs, incompatible with some of my older programs). But I am not sure.

I am afraid that after upgrade some apps won't work or will be missing. Say Keynote. Or non-Apple programs, like Mathematica 9, or MikTex.

I am not sure the cloud services I am using, like Dropbox, will not work after the update. I have several of these, about 80GB on my MacBook Pro.

I am not sure where is a good place to download the update, especially if not the last one. Seems like Apple will only let you download the recent one, but I am not sure.

A great answer can be just a link to some good article or a similar question on this forum.
MUCHAS GRACIAS!!

Welcome to the world of upgrading! These days, both Operating Systems and applications are regularly updated to keep pace with progress.
'Not upgrading' has the advantage that you reached a static point where everything works (or at least has fixed, known bugs). The problem comes, as you've found out, when you want something new, and it requires a newer OS than yours.
Upgrading 'one big jump' from very old software is more difficult than just 'the next version', because the change is so much larger. You will almost certainly have to update all your apps to match the OS, so you should check that there is a version compatible with the latest macOS (Catalina) for each one.
The good news is that any company still in business is likely to have current versions. Apple, as you would expect, has current versions of KeyNote, Pages and Numbers. Dropbox and other cloud services all have current versions.
The bad news is that some companies may require payment for newer versions.
There will always be unresolved bugs in any OS. But now is a good time in the 'annual cycle' to update, as Catalina is on its sixth and final release, so it's as good as it's going to get.
You should always download from Apple and nowhere else. Apple does make it difficult to obtain 'non-current' versions of the OS. This article provides links to some earlier versions on the Mac App Store.
https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac-software/download-old-os-x-3629363/#toc-3629363-2
If you have any software that runs as 32-bit binaries, with no updates available to 64-bit versions, then you may prefer to run Mojave (10.14) instead of Catalina. Catalina can only run 64-bit executable code, and won't run older 32-bit code.
If you do have old apps that don't have upgrades available, then you have two options: either use a separate volume with the earlier OS and boot to that when you want to use those apps; or use Virtual Machine software, such as Parallels, VMWare or VirtualBox, to create an 'OS within an OS', where you can use the older software.
Generally, it's best to keep up (to some extent) with new versions regularly. You don't always have to be on the very latest: you can be '1 year behind', for instance. But keeping up ensures that you receive important security fixes, as well as bug fixes; and that you don't fall behind into the situation you are now in.
It can be a bit of a pain when every time you launch an app to do some work, there's an alert that a new version is available: do you want to install it now? But it's good to set a small amount of time to deal with 'software admin'. Some apps (and those from the Mac App Store) can be set to install silently in the background.
Relying on software that is not being maintained is not a great place to be. Old, unsupported software will require old hardware, which eventually break down and become hard to repair or replace.


OS X menubar/dashboard/dock utility for monitoring a server? Is there any desktop utility for OS X that would periodically monitor a (non-osx) server and display a status icon?  Something as simple as attempting to visit a URL every 5 minutes and turning red if it does not respond would be enough, although anything more detailed is interesting too.

GeekTool (free)

GeekTool will let you set up a simple icon or show more detailed information, embedded in or floating over your desktop, based on whatever programming you want.

If you can write a script to check the server and return either a binary status or more detailed information, GeekTool is the way to display it.


Is there a mail app handling maildir format on one's mac in a reliable manner? I need to handle, i.e. read, write, store and search, mail in maildir or maildir++ format.

Mail must be stored on my mac, that is, reading and storing maildir on a server, via IMAP would not be good for my use case.

I am aware Thunderbird can handle "almost-ready" maildir format, but it still has a few bugs.

Also, Thunderbird is still non completely maildir-compatible.

I am aware of this question, but it does not apply to my case, as I need to be able to store messages in maildir or maildir++ proper format on my mac.

Is there a mail app handling maildir in a reliable manner, without resorting to the terminal?

I can only suggest that you run a local mailserver on your Mac using Parallels and on there you create a virtual machine being Ubuntu Linux. Strip down the install so you have Dovecot, Postfix and Getmail, and of course the GUI bits. you can then instruct Thunderbord to read mail from  Maildir store. I had this done and it works perfectly. One caveat though is that the VM MUST be able to connect to the client. otherwise you end up with a mailstore that is not accessible by Thunderbird, nor can it retrieve Internet email. YMMV depending on Linux knowledge.


Mail.app signature preferences too big for screen Because I have so many .signature 'quotes' attached to Mail.app, when I switch to that tab in the Mail.app preferences, the window is too large for my screen.

Click for full size.
I cannot resize it with the top corners, and I can't reach the bottom corners to resize it.  Moom.app is installed on the Mac, but even that will not let me change the size.  I have tried to rotate the display by 90°, in the hope of being able to grab it that way.  I have also tried to modify the resolution of the display, but to no avail.
Any help appreciated.

Well, I deleted a lot of .signatures, but no luck.  I killed Moom, and that seems to have done the trick.  Curiously, I can't now replace my .signatures from Time Machine.  Ah, well.  Not to worry.  I never used most of them anyway.


How do I remove an app folder is OSX when all else fails? I have a folder/package in the Applications called CrashPlan.app. The uninstall failed and I am left with a folder that has a Contents folder, but aside from that, is completely empty.

The folder info:

drwxrwxr-x@ 3 root 102 13 Jul 20:36 CrashPlan.app

I have tried the following:

sudo rm -rf CrashPlah.app chown chflags nouchg

I tried the same things in Safe Mode and Recovery Mode. I tried disabling System Integrity Protection. Whenever I try to remove the folder I get: rm: CrashPlan.app/Contents: Operation not permitted rm: CrashPlan.app: Operation not permitted

Does anyone have any advise? I feel like I've tried everything.

I jumped a gun posting here and got the answer elsewhere.  Here is the solution:
Because uninstall has already failed, the problem may be that the "system immutable flag" is set for /Applications/CrashPlan.app or its contents. In Terminal, try

ls -ldO /Applications/CrashPlan.app

and

ls -ldO /Applications/CrashPlan.app/Contents

The ls command may show something like this:

drwxrwxr-x@  3 root  102  schg   13 Jul 14 20:36 CrashPlan.app

If you see the schg flag, run these commands:

sudo chflags -R noschg /Applications/CrashPlan.app
sudo rm -fR /Applications/CrashPlan.app


How do I open images in Preview at full size? Is there a way I can get Preview to open images in Actual Size by default and not have it fit to screen? I vaguely remember this as an option in previous versions of Preview, but am unable to find anything in the current version. System is 10.7.3 with Preview Version 5.5.1 (719.11).


Excel API data query - populates into a single column I am trying to populate some data from an API call.
(Below is the process to get the same example)

Everything works fine until I hit the last button: all the data goes into the first column and does not seem to understand the separator.

Mind that my Language & Settings are for "United Kingdom" which should recognise comma as separator.

Process flow:

create text file with "https://api.coinmarketcap.com/v1/ticker/"
change the .txt file into .iqy
Open Excel, go to Data tab
Get External Data then Run Saved Query
Open the .iqy file
Select new sheet and you're good to go.

Thanks for the help,
Chris

It appears you are attempting to import data in JSON format which is not supported by Excel.

Doing a cursory search, I was able to find an Excel plug-in that converts JSON to XLS (Free).

I have not used this myself, so YMMV.


Changing the owner of a directory when username has a . (dot) in it If I enter whoami in Terminal.app my id is shown as Abhi.Sri

Now if I do  chown -R Abhi.Sri /usr/local it says the user Abhi.Sri is invalid.

I think your short username is malformed. I recommend to rename it to lower case characters (and no special characters except the underscore).

Additionally you would have to use a sudoers account (e.g. an admin account) and prepend sudo to change ownership of /usr/local since /usr/local is owned by root:wheel. Changing the ownership of /usr/local and subsequent items is non-standard and not recommended.


How to optimize imported photos from digital camera? I'm importing photos from my camera using Photos application, but how can I optimize these photos.

My camera does 5.5MB big JPEG images but I want somehow lower the resolution and also the quality does not need to be 100%.

Can I somehow set the imported photo quality in Photos application or can I somewhere found the imported photos and lower the quality using some other application?

Usually cameras provide settings that will allow you to shoot photos of smaller resolution, so if I wouldn't want images of that resolution, I would first look to change the shooting settings.

However when I want to batch resize images in mac, here is some of my techniques:

With an Automator Workflow
 I have created an automator workflow of the following 2 steps:

Ask for Finder Items: with Allow Multiple Selection.
Scale Images: where I specify the desired dimension.

Then I click to run it, it asks me for the Finder Items, I select the images I want to resize and voila.

Note that the above 2 automator steps are destructive, meaning that your images cannot be reverted back to their original size. It's generally recommended to add an extra step in your workflow to copy the files before resizing them.

Using Photos Export
Another option using Photos, is to use the export feature and create your desired export settings to rescale your images. Then you can import them back.

Image Optimization
Finally there is another tool I use it when I want to optimize jpeg files for the web: It is the imageOptim. It won't resize the images, rather than it will try to compress them even more, in order to save in weight.


Repeat on iOS music app I have an iPhone 5. I have the latest software update of iOS 10.0.2. How can I repeat a Playlist and song?
Many thanks.

While a song is playing, pull up to reveal both the list of next titles and two buttons to enable/disable shuffle and to set the playlist or title to repeat.


Customize Lock Screen When I lock my screen, sometimes it shows my iTunes library, other times it shows a screensaver, and other times it shows photos.

I don't want it to do any of these things, I'd like it to just show a black background or maybe a picture.

Is there a way to customize it?

This is a system preference, and you change it in the Desktop & Screensaver pane of... System Preferences.


Exclamation Mark in iMessages Sometimes, after i send a message to a specific person, there is an exclamation mark inside a little black bubble down on the lower right corner by the status info.

What does that mean?

Does it look something like this? http://www.iqtan.com/_/rsrc/1349108748767/ios-6/9-iphone-messages/iphone-sending-and-receiving-messages/exclamation%20mark.png

This just means that the message wasn't sent, most likely because you are in an area with bad reception or Apple's iMessaging services are temporarily overwhelmed.

If not, please post a picture so we can better identify this.


How to trim .mov without losing quality? When a video file (.mov recorded on iPhone) of resolution 1080x1920 is trimmed in QuickTime and saved as 1080p, the saved video resolution is 607x1024.

Is there a way to trim video and keep the original video resolution?

p.s. QuickTime Version 10.1 (501.22) on Lion

Just trim your video on the iPhone, in your "camera roll". This is the only way I know won't  re-encoding the video.


How can I remove the new imessage apps and drawing options I've just updated my phone to iOS10 and my message app is feeling a little overcrowded. Is it possible to remove these icons from the message app?? It's  a little annoying have a shortcut to the app store forced upon me every time I want to send a message, I guess with the intention to sell animations and gifs to be able to include in messages.

You can't remove them, they're part of Messages.  Once you tap into the tiny text area, the text box expands to hide the buttons.


Howto run a Terminal command using shortcut or a button I always have the problem in my dock, where the download bar just stops and stays froze. I know you can do a killall -KILL Dock and it will fix the issue.

Is there a way to click a button or do a keyboard-shortcut that runs this Terminal command?

There are multiple ways to do this, here are 2.
First method: Create a quick script that runs after a double-click.
Create a text file, named myScript.command. The '.command' postfix will let Finder know to run it on opening.
Add the following as plain text:
#!/bin/bash
killall -KILL Dock

Now the script exists but needs to be executable. To do this you need to do a chmod.
chmod 755 myScript.command

Running myScript.command will open a Terminal window and run the command. The first line, hashbang, will let your computer know to use bash for the following script. You can set the preferences in Terminal.app to close the terminal window after a clean exit.
Second method: Create a 'Service' and bind a keystroke to that service.
Create and install the service:

Open Automator
New Document -> Service
Add the 'Run Shell Script' module and insert your code killall -KILL Dock
Set the 'Service receives no input', save and quit.
Install your newly created service by opening it in Finder and choose 'Install'.

Attach a keystroke to this service:

Open 'System preferences' -> 'Keyboard' -> 'Keyboard shortcuts' -> 'Services'
Find the 'Kill Dock' service and attach a keystroke to it.


High Sierra doesn't boot after ubuntu partition deletion (which was dual booted) About 4 months ago I dual booted High Sierra with ubuntu. I dedicated 20 GB of my hard with default Disk Utility. Recently I tried to merge the partition back, but during this process it failed and after that when I boot the system, it fails to start.

What I have:

I have a Macbook Pro 2015
High Sierra
Filesystem is APFS
Encrypted with FileVault

What I don't Have:

Access to any Mac system

What I did

I tried to use rEFInd maybe it could see the bootable partition (FAILED)
I tried to boot from Recovery mode (FAILED)
I tried Network boot (FAILED)
I tried make a bootable usb with dmg which I downloaded. I translated first to iso (FAILED)

What I want (with priority :-) )

If possible to boot current system
Some instruction how to make bootable USB (to verify whether I did anything wrong) and Reinstall

Thanks

I know it's while I opened this thread but I finally understand what is the problem and how to fix it.

The problem is that after merging the partitions the Disk Utility somehow destroyed the partition type (APFS partition), and changed it to 'FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFF'. There was similar questions related to my issue here and here.

I imaged the whole disk and installed the OS from scratch and with the instructions mentioned in the links I managed to mount the image and access my data. But it was possible to fix the problem without reinstalling and imaging.

Anyway here is the commands I used after installing new OS to solve the issue on the disk image.

First mount the raw image (I imaged the disk with dd).

sudo hdiutil attach -imagekey diskimage-class=CRawDiskImage -nomount hard.dmg

here is my output, as you can see the third partition type is invalid.

/dev/disk3              GUID_partition_scheme
/dev/disk3s1            EFI
/dev/disk3s2            FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFF

Get information about disk layout and start and size of each partitions.

sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk3

here is the output

      start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  927867256      2  GPT part - FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF
  928276896   48828131
  977105027         32         Sec GPT table
  977105059          1         Sec GPT header

So I just need to remove the third partition and add it again with the right GUID, I also used the start and size from previous command. the GUID for APFS partition is 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC.

gpt  remove  -i  2  /dev/disk3
gpt  add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 927867256 -t 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC disk3


iPhone Notes synced on different accounts do not push to the Mac Mac does not receive all notes from Phone. Apparently I changed the default to Gmail and now those notes do not appear on the Mac. I have tried changing Mac settings and accounts.

Is there a way to change the setting on the individual note so it syncs with a new account on the phone, such as from Gmail to iCloud, or do I have to manually retype the notes after setting the note default to iCloud from Gmail?

You can share the Notes created under your Gmail account by adding the Gmail account that you're using on your iPhone to your Mac. To do this, go to Settings → Mail, Contacts & Calendars. Select the Gmail button and add your account information and be sure to check the box next to Notes. If you already have your Gmail account set up on your Mac, follow the same instructions but when you access the Mail, Contacts & Calendars area click on the Gmail acct on the left and a list of options will show on the left. From there you can see if the Notes option is selected. If not, check the box and they should sync. One caveat: some CalDAV notes show up in Mail app instead of the OSX Notes app. I'm not sure about Gmail.

If none of the above work, I recommend checking Help online in Gmail (or similar; that's how I solved a shared calendar sync problem.


To install Brew's ImageMagick and fix its Symlink Assume you installed Imagemagick by

brew install imagemagick

but it does not get into your PATH.
For example, I run unsuccessfully

compare

since imagemagick is not in PATH: -bash: compare: command not found.

The command ls -l /usr/local/bin/compare gives

ls: /usr/local/bin/compare: No such file or directory

My .bash_profile

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
    source ~/.bashrc
fi

# http://apple.stackexchange.com/a/53058/15504
export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH

Echoing $PATH gives

/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/usr/texbin

which seems to be ok because /usr/local/bin/ there.

ImageMagick in my system - answers to 4ae1e1's answer

The command brew --prefix gives /usr/local so ok.

The command brew info imagemagick gives

imagemagick: stable 6.9.0-3 (bottled), HEAD
http://www.imagemagick.org
/usr/local/Cellar/imagemagick/6.9.0-3 (1440 files, 22M)
  Poured from bottle
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/Library/Formula/imagemagick.rb
==> Dependencies
Build: xz ✔, pkg-config ✔
Required: libtool ✔, xz ✔
Recommended: jpeg ✔, libpng ✔, freetype ✔
Optional: fontconfig ✔, libtiff ✔, little-cms ✘, little-cms2 ✘, libwmf ✘, librsvg ✘, liblqr ✘, openexr ✘, ghostscript ✘, webp ✘, fftw ✘
==> Options
--enable-hdri
        Compile with HDRI support
--with-fftw
        Compile with FFTW support
--with-fontconfig
        Build with fontconfig support
--with-ghostscript
        Build with ghostscript support
--with-jp2
        Compile with Jpeg2000 support
--with-liblqr
        Build with liblqr support
--with-librsvg
        Build with librsvg support
--with-libtiff
        Build with libtiff support
--with-libwmf
        Build with libwmf support
--with-little-cms
        Build with little-cms support
--with-little-cms2
        Build with little-cms2 support
--with-openexr
        Build with openexr support
--with-perl
        enable build/install of PerlMagick
--with-quantum-depth-16
        Compile with a quantum depth of 16 bit
--with-quantum-depth-32
        Compile with a quantum depth of 32 bit
--with-quantum-depth-8
        Compile with a quantum depth of 8 bit
--with-webp
        Build with webp support
--with-x11
        Build with x11 support
--without-freetype
        Build without freetype support
--without-jpeg
        Build without jpeg support
--without-libpng
        Build without libpng support
--without-magick-plus-plus
        disable build/install of Magick++
--HEAD
        Install HEAD version

which seems to be ok.

I run the command  brew link imagemagick and get

Linking /usr/local/Cellar/imagemagick/6.9.0-3...
Error: Could not symlink bin/convert
Target /usr/local/bin/convert
already exists. You may want to remove it:
  rm '/usr/local/bin/convert'

To force the link and overwrite all conflicting files:
  brew link --overwrite imagemagick

To list all files that would be deleted:
  brew link --overwrite --dry-run imagemagick

This seems to be strange. How can you solve this problem?

I run the command brew reinstall imagemagick and get

==> Reinstalling imagemagick
==> Downloading https://downloads.sf.net/project/machomebrew/Bottles/imagemagick
Already downloaded: /Library/Caches/Homebrew/imagemagick-6.9.0-3.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
==> Pouring imagemagick-6.9.0-3.yosemite.bottle.tar.gz
Error: The `brew link` step did not complete successfully
The formula built, but is not symlinked into /usr/local
Could not symlink bin/convert
Target /usr/local/bin/convert
already exists. You may want to remove it:
  rm '/usr/local/bin/convert'

To force the link and overwrite all conflicting files:
  brew link --overwrite imagemagick

To list all files that would be deleted:
  brew link --overwrite --dry-run imagemagick

Possible conflicting files are:
/usr/local/bin/convert
/usr/local/share/man/man1/convert.1
==> Summary
  /usr/local/Cellar/imagemagick/6.9.0-3: 1440 files, 22M

so something wrong in symlinking.

How can you solve the error about symlink?

A list of things to try, in order (I'm writing an answer instead of a comment for better formatting). Run hash -r after each step (assuming you're in bash; do rehash instead for zsh; or you can always open a new shell).

Run brew --prefix and see if the output is /usr/local. If not, your brew is not installed to /usr/local! Add $(brew --prefix)/bin to you $PATH.
Run brew info imagemagick and make sure it's actually installed; maybe you had an error during installation and it was simply not installed successfully.
Run brew link imagemagick to symlink to /usr/local/bin; maybe the executables weren't symlinked correctly (for some reason);
Run brew reinstall imagemagick to reinstall.
If it still doesn't work, show us the output of brew list imagemagick and we'll see what's wrong.


*macOS 10.13 High Sierra Beta* Cannot Resize APFS Volumes on External Hard Drive I have impatiently updated my Mac to the High Sierra Public Beta and I noticed something strange when I was trying to mess with my external hard drive. I have a 4TB WD MyPassport for Mac and I was planning on partitioning it so I could have half of it to use as a Time Machine and the other half for storage. So, I naturally thought I would reformat the drive as APFS and then partition it so everything is in the same format as my internal hard drive. However, once it was in the APFS format and in the partition drop-down, everything was grayed out from the plus/minus buttons to the resize text box. Down below where they normally display the errors it only said that "This volume cannot be resized." I did also run into the issue where I thought that I would just reformat it back to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) (AKA: JHFS+). In the drop-down for the Erase menu, I was only given the four APFS options as the format. So, being the hard-head I am, I went into terminal and used the "diskutil eraseDisk" option to reformat it to JHFS+, which worked. From there I was able to partition it off and reformat one volume to APFS for Time Machine and use the other for extra storage. What I learned after setting up Time Machine, is that it actually needs to be in the JHFS+ format to work. TL;DR So, I guess my question ends up being: does anyone know why I can't partition a drive that is in APFS format? And why does Time Machine use JHFS+ format if the new native format is APFS? As far as the first question, is it just me or maybe because High Sierra is in Beta and it's just something that hasn't been fixed? And for the second, also maybe because it's in Beta and it's just something that hasn't been updated?

Thank you for everyone's time reading this, I know it was kind of a long one.

I'm no APFS expert but my understanding is that once the whole HD is formatted as APFS it becomes a "container" that can hold multiple volumes.  You can add volumes (partitions) to the container but they all share the entire space of the container and resize themselves dynamically.  Therefore there is no option to resize a partition or volume in disk utility. The file system takes care of it automatically.


Wifi connection but no internet I have joined my home WiFi network and I don't get Internet through it anymore. Phones and other computers have no issues, others who were here haven't  changed anything or noticed any difference.

I was away from home for a week using various public and hotel WiFi networks, if that means anything. I used a public WiFi network 30 minutes before and had no issues.

I've looked through previous questions like this which had a lot of responses, and I still haven't solved it:

Full Wi-fi/ethernet signal but no internet

How do I troubleshoot my Wi-Fi connection when an exclamation mark appears?

I can log in to the router admin settings. Everything seems fine.
I have tried changing the IPv4 address manually, making sure nothing is using the same IP etc.

I have tried using 8.8.8.8 as the DNS server address.
In Terminal ifconfig en1 gives:

Flags=963<UP BROADCAST SMART RUNNING PROMISC SIMPLEX> mtu 1500
Options =60 <tso4, tso6>
Ether 4a:00:03:a0:13:90
Media: auto select <full-duplex>
Status: inactive

(Apologies if the syntax is off, I'm copying this on to my phone)

It is a MacBook Pro retina 13inch 2.9ghz i5, OSX 10.11.4

Any ideas are much appreciated!

Your wireless device appears to be in promiscuous mode.  Maybe you are doing a packet dump or sniffing packets?  If so, no worries.  If not, I would investigate this further, as it sometimes yet not always indicates a compromised system being used as a stepping stone in further network penetration.

First, a quick and dirty network device refresh can be effectuated by creating a new location in the System Preferences, under the network portion.  Look at the top, and under location, click edit locations.  Then click the plus button, and give the new location a name.
Then please select your home network, and re-enter the password.

Your problem might have been resolved.  If not, then please go back to the terminal and provide the output of these:

     ifconfig -a -v

     pfctl -v -si

     pfctl -v -sr

     ipconfig getpacket en1

     netstat -nvia -I en1

     netstat -nr

Hope that this helps.

F.


mountain lion server - web services wiki only work on host computer We have macmini with os x mountain lion server app installed. The web services and wiki only work on the host machine, not on any of the other computers on the network, using network users.
 When we set up the server app, the modem/router failed and we were unable to set the ip address of our server until we sorted our router out, which took a while. In the meantime in our excitement we tried to set up web services / wiki etc.. So I think that may have caused the issue.
Any ideas what we can do to fix this?
what direction to go?

I'm sorry to post this as an answer instead of a comment; I don't have enough Reputation here to comment.

Can you ping the server from another host?
If you can ping, try firing up a terminal with tail -f /Library/Logs/wikid/error.log and see what happens when someone tries to access the wiki service - that'll give you something to work with

Alternative to tail, use Console.app from your /Applications/Utilities folder


Sign in with apple feature on ios 13 Apple provides developers to add a SignInWith apple button in the ios apps.Does Apple also provides the SignUpWith apple button too?

Apple's Developer Documentation addresses this question.  In their Human Interface Guidelines for Sign In with Apple they it states:

  To help people set up an account and sign in, it's best to use the familiar buttons that Apple provides for Sign In with Apple. When you use the system-provided API to create a Sign In with Apple button, you get:

  A button that's guaranteed to use an Apple-approved title, font, color, and style
  Assurance that the button's contents maintain ideal proportions as you change its style
  Automatic translation of the button's title into the language that's set for the device
  Support for configuring the button's corner radius to match the style of your UI

There's several examples of buttons designs to fit the look of your app.  You have to use Xcode 11, of course, to get access to this API.

Here's a short tutorial that indicates how to add this feature to your own app.


Packet sending script, iOS 9.1 I have an app which sends specific packets to a server every time I press a particular button on the app, the problem is that I need to press it every 30 seconds during a few hours and it's annoying. Is there any way to script it so that the packets are automatically sent every 30 seconds to the server?

I thought about a macro tool but it's not possible since I can't jailbreak.
Any ideas on how to approach to a solution?

Solved! This might be really helpful for those with the same issue, follow these steps:

Download and install Burp Suite Free Edition in your PC/Mac
Go to Proxy->Options and edit the *.8080 interface to "All interfaces" in "Bind to address"
Go to your iPhone/Tablet/Whatever and connect it to the same Wi-Fi network your PC is connected to, set up a manual proxy to your PC's IP on port 8080.
In Burp Suite go to Proxy->HTTP History and press the button in your cellphone that sends the request you want to automate.
Compile a script in C# that sends a HTTP request with the same method, parameters and headers.
Make it loop :)

Now your PC will send the packets to the host and you can even simulate it was sent from iOS using the parameters you just coppied, it also wont drain your phone's battery at all.


How do I identify what PowerPC apps I use? I have a Mac with Snow Leopard 10.6.8 still installed on it and am seriously considering installing Mountain Lion. I’ve read that from Lion onwards PowerPC apps can no longer run.

My questions are: Is this true? How can I identify what PowerPC apps I currently use?

I don’t want to go to the trouble of cloning my drive and then doing the upgrade only to find some software I rely on will not run in Mountain Lion.

Yes, this is true.

It's also very easy to identify what PowerPC apps you're still using. To do this, follow these steps. On the Mac which still has Snow Leopard installed:

Click on the Apple Menu
Select About This Mac
In the About This Mac window that pops up, click on the More Info... button near the centre bottom.
This opens up the System Profiler window. In the Sidebar on the left you will see a number of headings and subheadings.
Under the Software heading (it's the 3rd one down) you'll see a subheading labelled Applications. Click on this.
In the main part of the window on the right-hand side you will see a list of apps appear. Be patient as this may take a little while to populate.
Once the list appears, you'll see column headings at the top.
Click on the Kind column heading (it's the 4th one) and this will sort the list by the kind of app.

Now all you need to do is peruse the list to identify any apps labelled PowerPC and/or Classic. These are the apps that will no longer run in Mac OS X Lion or above.


Problem with Google Drive I have Google Drive installed on my iMac running High Sierra. I have a folder on my machine named Google Drive. I haven't used it in a while. I seem to recall that I once had a menu item for Google Drive. Well, I no longer have a menu item for Google Drive and if I open the Google Drive folder there is only a few MB's used.

If I go to Safari and go to Google Drive it says I'm using over 10 GB of my allotted 15 GB and it lists the files which I remember copying to the drive about 2 years ago. Have things changed for Google Drive? Why does the Google Drive folder not reflect what is actually on my Google Drive? At some time in the past, I copied close to 10 GB of data to Google Drive. I have no idea how to do that now.

Google Drive is a Online storage, not storing on your Mac.
Just like iCloud, one-drive and others.
What you have installed on you Mac is just the Google Drive app to manage online drive, not to store information on your Mac.
Go to your Google drive online (Log in) to see it directly. It will also show you how much storage you use and how much you have left.
Know that Google Drive also serves as storage for your Gmail.
If need be download and install the Google Drive app again.
I have 2 Google drives (one comes with each Gmail). I do not use the Google Drive app on my Mac (find it not nesessary). I go online log in to Google and can see and manage my drives there.


What does a red check mark on the OS X login screen indicate? I booted up my MacBook Pro after the lid was closed on it for several days. Today when I powered it on there is a red check mark next to my name at the login screen. Anyone know what this stands for?

This happened to me. I believe this only happens when your computer is asleep and the battery dies completely and you plug it in before you snap it out of the sleep. It is supposed to let you know that that account is the one that you are still logged in on. I still can't explain why you have to log in twice. Strange huh I'm not 100% sure though.


Blur Interfaces of TeXworks on MacBook Pro with Retina Display？ I am using TeXworks as the LaTeX editor on my new MacBook Pro with Retina Display.

The interfaces are super blur. It seems that TeXworks does not support the retina resolution. See below.

The MacTeX.pkg was downloaded from MacTeX TUG today. Hence, I think it is the latest version.

How may I fix it?

You can use Retinizer:

  Retinizer is a small app I wrote that allows apps that aren’t retina ready and are displayed pixelated at 1x to display their UI widgets at 2x. That way, only their custom images will look bad and not the whole app.

Tested, and works great:

Before:

After:


OSX context menu and popups look strange For some time, I noticed that the appearance of the Mac OS context menu (right-click menu) and popups changed.

They look like in older OSX versions. In the upper picture, the corners should be rounded; in the lower picture, the blue should be different.

I don't really know why this changed or whether it's an editable setting.
I think that this behavior occurred after updating some Adobe programs (After Effects, Dimension CC, etc.).

My current OSX version is 10.13.6, on a MBP (late 2016, 15").

So after a long time, I found out that the actual behavior is a setting:

System Settings -> Accessibility -> Display -> Reduce Transparency -> On/Off

If you turn Reduce Transparency off, the usual, normal context menu will appear again. I have no idea who or what changed this setting.


MacBook Pro equipped with 16 GB RAM, never uses more than 8 GB I have an early 2015 MacBook Pro equipped with 16 GB RAM. The computer however appears to be never using more than 8 GB. This is a screenshot of htop with the computer under heavy load (Large postgres GIST index building):

Mac system params look good:

I'd appreciate if anyone has a clue as to what is going on. I am running macOS Mojave, but the problem has existed ever since I bought the computer.

There is no problem. Your computer is working as intended.

A computer does not “run faster” by using more memory. Memory is only used (allocated) when programs ask for memory. If they don’t ask for it, it’s not used. This is the preferred behavior as it makes your computer run faster and use less power without sacrificing anything really.

There’s no “8 GB limit” in Mojave, nor in your MacBook Pro hardware.

If you want to simulate  program that is asking for lots of memory, then open the Terminal and run this command:

perl -E 'my $x = "abcd1234" x 500000000; sleep(30);'

It should allocate lots of memory and hold it for 30 seconds, and then give it back.

You should be able to see it in Activity Monitor allocating ~8 GB of RAM. If you want to allocate more/less, then change the number "500000000" accordingly.


QC 35 paired with MacBook and iPhone simultaneously audio stops Recently I have been having these issues with my MacBook and iPhone wherein if I press the play/pause button on my MacBook to stop iTunes it "mutes" all audio and switches to my connected iPhone.

Only when I reset my QC35 does it reset and behave correctly (where in pressing the button stops iTunes but leaves audio connected to my MacBook).

Any ideas how I can solve this permanently or can someone guide me in the right direction?

Update

Little late but thought I'd add an update. I simply contacted Bose and they ended up replacing my headphones and even gave me the gen 2 headphones

If your Bose QC35 headphones are simultaneously connected to your MacBook and iPhone, then whichever device is sending an audio signal through to them will be heard in the headphones.

Now, pausing iTunes on your MacBook only pauses iTunes, it isn't going to pause any other audio - so if your headphones are connected at the time then any other audio will still be heard on your headphones, not on your internal MacBook speakers.

If what you want is for sound effects to not play through your headphones, then you can configure your Sound preferences (System Preferences > Sound) so that sound effects play through your internal speakers, even when your headphones are connected via Bluetooth.

Hope this helps, but if I've misunderstood your problem, perhaps you could clarify your question.

Reset and pair again

Another option you could try is to full reset your bluetooth device list and start again. To do this:

Slide the power switch to the Bluetooth symbol and hold it there
After about 10 seconds you should hear "Bluetooth device list cleared"
Now delete your headphones from the Bluetooth list on your MacBook and iPhone
Pair your headphones again, but only to your MacBook
Use your headphones with your MacBook for long enough to feel your issue is resolved
When satisfied, pair your headphone to your iPhone
Test to see if the behaviour is now what you expect between both devices

NOTE: I have always found that there are random issues like you're experiencing when multiple devices are simultaneously connected to Bluetooth headphones. For me, I no longer do this - but hopefully you have more success.

Bose Support

It may be worth you checking with Bose Support. I remember reading somewhere that these headphones can have their firmware updated - so perhaps Bose could shed some light on the issue you're having or whether or not there is an update available.


MacBook Pro Retina 2013 memory frequency limit I would like to replace the 2x8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 of soldered memory in my 15" 2013 MacBook Pro with some faster RAM. Is this MacBook Pro compatible?

This is not a duplicate question (Allan, patrix marked) because it about different device. Question about RAM frequency for specific device, not in general...

I am 99% sure that the 2013 MBP will not be compatible with faster RAM than 1600MHz, Apple spec sheets state this, with a memory type of DDR3L.

DDR3 is capable of being faster than 1600MHz; DDR4 has different latencies and clockspeeds to DDR3.

I think you're on a hiding to nothing trying to de-solder DDR3 RAM and solder in DDR4. You can try if you like, but I suspect you will just end up with an expensive (but shiny) tray.


What's the purpose of the eject button on the MacBook Air? I was interested to see that the power button on the new Airs has been moved to the keyboard, and was anticipating that it would just replace the eject key that has traditionally taken up that position.

However, this appears not to be the case (pic is from iFixit's teardown guide):

What's the purpose of the eject key with no optical drive?

There's also quite a few keyboard shortcuts that use the eject key.

Control ⌃+Eject ⏏ brings up a screen that has Restart/Sleep/Cancel/Shut Down options
Command ⌘+Control ⌃+Eject ⏏ instantly restarts
(etc.)


The `resetpassword` utility is failing to find users on the selected drive I booted into recovery mode and launched the terminal to run the resetpassword utility. After selecting the drive to reset passwords for, I'm seeing:-

There are no users on this volume to reset the password for.

I've run the Disk Utility to fix the drive. I've also reinstalled the OS, but I  can't reset the password.

Why does the resetpassword utility think there are no users? I looked at the passwd file and they all seem to be there.

I'm running macOS Sierra.

I've solved this by re-running the Apple Setup Assistant by booting into single-user mode,  mount -uw /, removing the .AppleSetupDone file from /var/db directory and rebooting which re-runs the Apple Setup Assistant to create users.


How to embed an Image in Mac OS Sierra Mail Application Me and a co-worker are trying to embed an image in our email signature in the default apple mail application with an url. For example we have this image https://www.kieran.pw/unnamed.jpg and want this in our signature. We do not want a file that is being sent with the email. We tried to edit the email HTML code in ~/Library/Mail/V4/MailData/Signatures but mail just either deletes it or completely ignores it even though we edited AccountsMap.plist and AllSignatures.plist with the correct data. Did apple remove that feature with version V4 because we read a tutorial about V2 and it apparently worked there.

There’s an entire new Storage Management window, located in the System Information app, that provides a suite of tools to help you free up disk space. Some aspects of the window are based on turning on or tweaking settings, like how Mail stores attachments and if iTunes should delete video files that have already been watched.


No Facebook notifications on Yosemite I run OS X 10.10.2 now, and when I started out with 10.10, I was delighted that Notif Center would send me Notifications when something happened, after I had added the Account in Internet Accounts (I used Lion previously). However, some months ago, it suddenly stopped working, with no clear cause. It was not installing the 10.10.1 update, for instance. Since then, I have been unsuccessful in diagnosing the problem and fixing it. Removing and re-adding the Account did nothing.

Two things I have noticed:

When adding the account, no contacts are imported (is this normal?
Never used it before)
I can use notification center to post status updates.

I looked at apple's support forums but most people seemingly have no fix and I find it hard to believe, Apple has done nothing about this (reports start as early as 2012).

Now, the actual question: Can somebody suggest a fix for this behaviour?

I made a clean install of El Capitan which fixed the problem.


An error occurred when configuring keychain syncing I'm using MobileMe to sync my keychain between an iMac and a MacBook Air. Since both machines run Lion this error message pops up every other system start (or when waking up from sleep):
"An error occurred when configuring keychain syncing."

I have already reset the keychain on MobileMe and on both machines but the error message keeps coming.
Is there anything else I can do?

No solution yet, looks like an OSX Lion issue...


PDFkit rendering issue I generated a PDF by running pdfTeX on the following source file:

\documentclass{article}

\newcommand\embolden[1]{%
    \special{pdf:literal 2 Tr 8 w}%
    #1%
    \special{pdf:literal 0 Tr 0 w}%
}

\begin{document}
light versus \embolden{heavy}
\end{document}

In Adobe Reader, it renders like this:

But in Preview it renders like this:

Is this considered a bug or a feature? Is there a workaround to force PDFkit applications to render in the same way as the default PDF viewer on other systems? Alternatively, are there any other macOS PDF viewers which do not rely on PDFkit?

This bug appears to have been fixed in the latest macOS update (10.13.4, 17E199).


Software to produce plots for very large data sets? I'm looking to produce plots from some very large data sets. To start I've got a data set with 40 different series in it, each with 5000 samples that I'd like to produce a line chart out of, with each series represented by a line in the plot.

Numbers chokes after about 450 samples. Excel fares a little better and gets to 1000 samples. But neither of them can handle the full set of samples across all the series.

Is there better software I can use to generate the plot? Would OmniGraphSketcher handle this size of data set? What about R? Or gnuplot?

Something with an easier learning curve is preferred (i.e. I'm avoiding gnuplot like the plague until it's clear it's my only hope...) and it doesn't bother me if the generation of the plot can't be done in real time. I don't mind setting things up and then waiting for an image of the plot to be produced in the background. Bonus points if it can produce plot output that's as easy on the eyes as Numbers will produce for smaller data sets.

I assume that you mean 5000 observations. R will work, and RStudio will get you to use R with a bit more GUI than the native application. Commercial solutions like Stata -- which has a soft learning curve, in comparison especially to R -- will also work that kind of sample without any difficulty (by statistical standards, 5000 observations is a relatively small dataset).

The learning curve will matter if you want to reach beyond a mere plot; otherwise, a quick look at the documentation for line graphs should suffice (for R, check there and there, for instance). HTH!


Getting unknown command error when trying to run script via cron I recently had to re-install 10.9.5 (default install) and am now finding that bash scripts that run perfectly from the command line (~/Me...) no longer work using crontab. I use crontab to invoke "Diskutil unmount volumeX" but am getting mail from cron saying "diskutil" command not found. Is it a PATH issue and if so how would I fix it.
Thank you in advance for any help.

cron uses /usr/bin:/bin as the default PATH and diskutil is in /usr/sbin.

Specify the full path to diskutil or add a line like PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin to the start of your crontab.

Enter which diskutil to find its path, or enter echo $PATH to find the path where your commands are working.


Possible to install VM in another VM? Currently I own an MacBookPro. For some reasons, I need to run Windows. So I installed Windows XP using VirtualBox (a free virtual machine). My questions is: Can my Windows XP (which run from my MacBook Pro) install another VM machine, which is VMplayer, then I want to install ubuntu in the VMPlayer?

(Yes, you may ask, why dont I install the Ubuntu (client and server) on my macbook virtualbox? Well, as I said earlier, for some specific reasons.)

This is definetely possible.

You might get diffrent resutls from diffrent tools though.

Furthermore be prepared that if you computer isn't really fast you might experience heavy lagging issue on your virtul virtual machine.

But otherwise the virtual machine will most likely run since itself will not see the diffrence in running on an actual machine or on another virtual one.


Why are some desktops locked during a dual monitor set up? Sometimes during the dual monitor set up, I can't move a desktop to another monitor. Why??

For example, if I have a dual monitor, I can move desktop 1 to another monitor, but I can't move desktop 2. This happens vice versa.

I've been living with it for the past 1.5 years but finally got annoyed by it enough to ask it here.

The space that you want to move to another monitor cannot be active.
For instance if you are currently on "Desktop 1" you can move any space to any monitor except for "Desktop 1."  If you want to move "Desktop 1", you need to switch to a different space and then move it to the monitor you want.


Iphone 4 works with radio, I phone 5 doesnt I have a Pioneer T1809 car stereo with aux adapter for Ipod/phone. It will work with my friends Iphone 4 but will only charge my Iphone 5.. No music.. It doesnt recognize it as being hooked up. Will I need to get a new cable or a new adapter for the existing cable. I had to use an adapter to hook it up to the 5 obviously, do I have the wrong one or do I need an entirely new cable.

I have read that most adapters will charge the 5 but not play music unless it has the 3.5mm plug.  People then complain that doesn't work well unless you take the case off.  Read the reviews of these adapters.  It looks like you and I may have to get a bluetooth adapter for our t1809s.  Look up Coolstream Duo or go here.  We will have an opportunity to hide the bluetooth behind the console using this.


How can I use Automator Service to create a .zip file from two original files using the same name? Look at the image above. What I am trying to do is create a service in Automator that will allow me to select two of the files, such as

3LW And Loon - I Do (Wanna Get Close To You) (Duet).cdg
AND
3LW And Loon - I Do (Wanna Get Close To You) (Duet).mp3

And compress those two files into a .zip entitled

3LW And Loon - I Do (Wanna Get Close To You) (Duet).zip

And then be able to move down to

38 Special - Hold On Loosely.cdg
AND
38 Special - Hold On Loosely.mp3

and compress them into a .zip entitled

38 Special - Hold On Loosely.zip

Is this at all possible? I have no idea how to do this. Any help at all will be appreciated. Thank you.

Yes, this is doable, and in more then one way too.

The following describes a minimal no frills workflow:

In Automator, select: File > New > Service
Set: Service receives selected files or folders in Finder
Add the following Actions:
Run Shell Script

Settings: Shell: /bin/bash and Pass input: as arguments
Replace all of the default code with just: echo "$(basename "${1%.*}")"

This returns the filename portion of the first file, sans its extension, and is what Set Value of Variable gets set to.

Set Value of Variable

Click, Variable: New variable... and give it an appropriate name, e.g.: ZipFileName

Get Selected Finder Items

Set Options to: [√] Ignore this action's input

Note that this creates a wanted break between this action and the previous action.

Create Archive

Set Save as: to ZipFileName by drag and drop of the variable from the Variable section at the bottom of the workflow pane.
Set Where: to Same Folder as Input.

Update to add moving files to the Trash:

Add these additional Actions:
Get Selected Finder Items

Set Options to: [√] Ignore this action's input

Note that this creates a wanted break between this action and the previous action.

Move Finder Items to Trash
Save the Automator Service Workflow giving it an appropriate name, e.g.: Compress File Set

Now in Finder, select two of the matching filenames, sans having different extensions, then right-click and select Compress File Set, from the services section of the context menu.

Note: This minimal no frills Automator Service Workflow employs no error checking. It relies on one to properly select the two matching filenames, sans the differing extensions, to be compressed together in a zip archive of the first file's filename, sans its extension.

See the second workflow, below the picture, that employs conditional error checking and handling and has some features the no frills workflow doesn't have.

Second Automator Service Workflow

The following workflow has conditional error checking and handling. It can be used instead of the no frills workflow above:

It uses as single Run Shell Script action to handle the entire process.

In Automator, select: File > New > Service
Set: Service receives selected files or folders in Finder
Add a Run Shell Script Action

Settings: Shell: /bin/bash and Pass input: as arguments
Replace all of the default code with the code show further below.

Save the Automator Service Workflow giving it an appropriate name, e.g.: Compress File Set

Now in Finder, select two of the matching filenames, sans having different extensions, then right-click and select Compress File Set, from the services section of the context menu.

This Automator Service Workflow employs the following conditional error checking and handling:

Makes sure only two items are selected in Finder.
Makes sure both files have the same filename, sans extension.
Makes sure the filename extensions match the expected type, 'cdg' and 'mp3'.
Employs appropriate error handling if processing errors out.
Is coded to be able to give both verbal and visual messages as appropriate.

Is set to use Notification Center for visual messages, but can be easily changed to speak the messages too.

Frills:

Makes the same sounds when compressing and or moving the files to the Trash in Finder.

Can be set to play this event sound or not, default is to play it.

Can directly delete the files instead of placing them in the Trash.

The default is to move the files to the Trash, make this setting change only of you totally understand the finality of this action.

The script has two Functions and a Main section.

function CompressSelectedFiles ()

This handles the grunt work and has the settings for the compress event sound and moving files to the Trash.

function NotifyUserMessage()

This handles notifying the user with the various messages and the settings for the type of notifications, verbal and or visual.

Main

This handles the main logic flow validating conditions are met before processing. This section does not have user setting as that within the two functions have.

Read comments throughout the script so as to modify it features appropriately.

Code for Run Shell Script Action:

#!/bin/bash

    ### Functions ###

function CompressSelectedFiles () {

        # Change to the target directory,
        # or notify user of failure and exit.

    if ! cd "$(dirname "$1")"; then
        NotifyUserMessage 'nochgdir'
        exit
    fi
        # Set the two filenames to variables.

    f1="$(basename "$1")"
    f2="$(basename "$2")"

        # Check to see if the target zip archive
        # already exists, and if not, create it.

    if [[ ! -e "${f1%.*}.zip" ]]; then
            # Syntax: zip [options] zipfile file ...
        if ! zip "${f1%.*}.zip" "${f1}" "${f2}"; then
            NotifyUserMessage 'ziperror'
            exit
        fi

    #       # The following lines of code mimic Finder's Compress command
    #       # as to numerically incrementing an archive's filename. It has
    #       # been commented out as the user requested to delete the files
    #       # after I wrote this. I've left it, in case it's found useful.
    #
    # else
    #       # The zip archive already exists!
    #       # Numerically increment the zip filename.
    #   n=2
    #   for f in ${f1%.*} *.zip; do
    #       if [[ "${f1%.*} $n.zip" == "$f" ]]; then
    #           n="$(( n + 1 ))"
    #       fi
    #   done
    #       # Syntax: zip [options] zipfile file ...
    #   if ! zip "${f1%.*} $n.zip" "${f1}" "${f2}"; then
    #       NotifyUserMessage 'ziperror'
    #       exit
    #   fi

            # Make the same event sound Finder does when compressing files.
            # Note: Despite its name, this *is* the sound made by Finder when compressing files.
            # If you do not want to hear it, set 'playthis=1' to 'playthis=0'.

        playthis=1

        [[ $playthis -eq 1 ]] && afplay "/System/Library/Components/CoreAudio.component/Contents/SharedSupport/SystemSounds/system/Volume Mount.aif"
        [[ $playthis -eq 1 ]] && sleep 1    # Pause to allow time between event sounds.
    fi

        # The following was added per user request.
        #
        # Move File Set to the Trash. So you can then use
        # Put Back from the Trash in Finder, if necessary.
        # Default is to use the Trash, setting 'trash=1'.
        #
        # If you don't want to put the files in the Trash,
        # just delete them directly, then set 'delete=1'
        # and set 'trash=0' when setting 'delete=1'.
        #
        # WARNING: Setting 'delete=1', this method
        #          is immediate and irreversible.

    trash=1
    delete=0

    [[ $trash -eq 1 ]] && osascript -e "set theFiles to {}" \
                                    -e "set the end of theFiles to POSIX file \"$1\"" \
                                    -e "set the end of theFiles to POSIX file \"$2\"" \
                                    -e "tell application \"Finder\" to move theFiles to trash"

    [[ $delete -eq 1 ]] && rm "$1" "$2"

        # Notify user processing is finished.

    NotifyUserMessage 'finished'
}

function NotifyUserMessage() {

        # Set servicename='' to the name of this service.

    servicename='Compress File Set'

    # As currently set, messages are sent to the Notification Center.
    # If you want a verbal message, change the value of 'verbal=0'
    # to 'verbal=1'. If your OS version is older and doesn't support
    # Notification Center from scripts, e.g. OS X 10.8, then change
    # 'visual=1' to 'visual=0'. Whichever your preference is, set 0
    # for false and 1 for true.

    verbal=0
    visual=1

    case $1 in
        selected )
                msg='This service requires two files to be selected.'
                [[ $verbal -eq 1 ]] && say "$msg"
                [[ $visual -eq 1 ]] && osascript -e "display notification \"$msg\" with title \"$servicename Error\""
                ;;
        filenames )
                msg='The filenames, sans extensions, are mismatched.'
                [[ $verbal -eq 1 ]] && say "$msg"
                [[ $visual -eq 1 ]] && osascript -e "display notification \"$msg\" with title \"$servicename Error\""
                ;;
        extensions )
                msg='One or both file extensions are not the expected type.'
                [[ $verbal -eq 1 ]] && say "$msg"
                [[ $visual -eq 1 ]] && osascript -e "display notification \"$msg\" with title \"$servicename Error\""
                ;;
        nochgdir )
                msg='An error occurred while trying to change directory.'
                [[ $verbal -eq 1 ]] && say "$msg"
                [[ $visual -eq 1 ]] && osascript -e "display notification \"$msg\" with title \"$servicename Error\""
                ;;
        ziperror )
                msg='An error occurred while compressing the files.'
                [[ $verbal -eq 1 ]] && say "$msg"
                [[ $visual -eq 1 ]] && osascript -e "display notification \"$msg\" with title \"$servicename Error\""
                ;;
        finished )
                msg='The selected files have been compressed.'
                [[ $verbal -eq 1 ]] && sleep 1  # Pause so as not to step on previous event sound.
                [[ $verbal -eq 1 ]] && say "$msg"
                [[ $visual -eq 1 ]] && osascript -e "display notification \"$msg\" with title \"$servicename\""
                ;;
    esac
}

    ### Main ###

        # Validate Conditions #

    # Make sure only two items are selected in Finder.

if [[ $# -eq 2 ]]; then

        # Make sure both files have the same filename, sans extension.

    if [[ ${1%.*} == "${2%.*}" ]]; then

            # Make sure the filename extensions match the expected type, 'cdg' and 'mp3'.

        if [[ ${1##*.} =~ [cC][dD][gG] ]] && [[ ${2##*.} =~ [mM][pP]3 ]]; then

                # All conditions met, create zip archive.

            CompressSelectedFiles "$1" "$2"

        elif [[ ${2##*.} =~ [cC][dD][gG] ]] && [[ ${1##*.} =~ [mM][pP]3 ]]; then

                # All conditions met, create zip archive.

            CompressSelectedFiles "$1" "$2"

        else
            NotifyUserMessage 'extensions'
        fi
    else
        NotifyUserMessage 'filenames'
    fi
else
    NotifyUserMessage 'selected'
fi


How to copy all messages of a conversation in one folder? For archiving purposes, I would like to copy/move all messages of a conversation in one folder, including sent messages and messages stored in different folders. I tried several things, like "Cmd+A" while one message of a conversation is selected, but nothing seems to work. Is there a way to do that?

The idea is the following: I use an IMAP account an whenever a project is finished, I move the corresponding folder on the server to an archive, e.g., from ./Mail to ./MailArchive. At the moment, all mails are included except the mails I sent. To get a complete archive, the sent mails should be in there as well.

The answer above about selecting all the messages in a conversation is good, but it forgets that you specified that the messages are not all in the same folder. What you need to do is create a smart folder first to get all the messages into a "virtual" folder, then select them. The smart folder could use a condition such as a specific word or string in the subjects of the emails, or you could simply grab all your emails (Sender contains @, for example), then use the Command-Shift-K shortcut to select the conversation, if they all come up as a single conversation.


Option to not select text when undoing a deletion? I'm new to Mac and it seems that on Mac OS Catalina, undoing some text deletion via the keyboard shortcut command + z also selects the text that was re-added. For example:

Type something
Delete the last word using option + delete
Undo the deletion using cmd + z
Observe that the last word is selected

This is a little annoying, as I need to explicitly unselect the text before typing again, otherwise I overwrite the text I was trying to add back.

Is there a way to make it so command + z does not select the text it adds back?

As @Tetsujin pointed out, it turns out this is a per-application behavior, not an OS behavior. The same happens in some programs on Windows, and some apps on Mac do not behave like this. Seems like nothing can be done about it.


Is there any way to sync iPhone with Google contacts with custom labels? The problem is that when you sync iPhone with google contacts through Microsoft Exchange all numbers with custom labels just don't sync to iPhone. So is there any solution to this problem?

Depends on how you sync  Google Contacts to iPhone. If you do it by setting up the gmail account on your iPhone using  the Exchange option, then fields in your Google contacts do not transfer to the phone. But the advantage of using the Exchange way is that syncing is instant--edit a contact on the phone and it changes in your Google account as well.
If you sync the contacts using the gmail option, the custom fields in Google contacts DO show up on your phone. The disadvantage is that syncing only happens when you sync the phone with iTunes on your computer.
That's my experience, anyway. I would like to know how to have both: sync custom field labels and sync instantly on the fly with every edit.


Why is the steps data in Health app all the same on everyday? I have noticed that the steps count on my iPhone’s Heath app somehow becomes the same on everyday.

I don’t really know when it will just “normalise” the count to become the same but it somehow does that after every few days later.

The count for the current day usually still looks alright, but the counts for the past day all look the same.

I think this probably happened after I upgraded my iOS to version 12.0.1. I have not upgraded past iOS 12.0.1

Does anyone have this issue and how can I fix it?

Update:
Chances are a large chunk of my data in the past since I’ve upgraded to iOS12 are already bad. I’ve updated my iOS to the most recent version. I’ll have to monitor and see how things go in the next week days.

First thing to do is establish if the underlying data is wrong or the chart is wrong.

Tap to the month (top of your picture) and the compare a few days with what Show all data reveals for the daily summaries.

Strange steps measurement in iphone

The month view is shown in the thread linked above.

Either way, I would back up your health data to iTunes with a passphrase to encrypt the backup and to iCloud so you have two good backups before you try to upgrade to the latest iOS.

If the data is bad, you’ll have to look at the sources of step data and possibly upgrade the iOS / wait for a bug fix from Apple.

If it’s just the graph, updating iOS and bug report to Apple is likely the fix.