What is localhost.pharos from Netstat? Over past week, netstat reflects an established connection to localhost.pharos.

Googled Pharos and it's a software which enables printing services at Universities/Enterprises.

Any ideas why connection is constant at each login?

Proto Recv-Q Send-Q  Local Address          Foreign Address        (state)
tcp6       0      0  localhost.pharos       localhost.49437        ESTABLISHED
tcp6       0      0  localhost.49437        localhost.pharos       ESTABLISHED
tcp6       0      0  localhost.krb524       localhost.49436        ESTABLISHED
tcp6       0      0  localhost.49436        localhost.krb524       ESTABLISHED

pharos and krb524 are both just guesses about network services, based on the service <-> port number listings in /etc/services; in this case I'm fairly sure they're both wrong guesses, so just think of them as identifiers for port numbers 4443 and 4444 respectively. To  find out what's really going on, you need to find out what programs are connecting via those ports. You can do this with the lsof commands, like this:

sudo lsof -i:pharos -i:krb524

(you'll need to enter your admin password for sudo to get root access.) In the output, the important bits are the first two columns, which list the program ("command") names and process IDs of the processes that are using these ports. If the program name doesn't tell you what's going on, you can use ps and/or Activity Monitor to investigate those processes in more detail.

EDIT: If I'm reconstructing the lsof output correctly, it looks like this:

COMMAND   PID          USER  FD   TYPE             DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
collabd    237 _teamsserver  7u   IPv6 0x7da9dd76981ec947      0t0  TCP localhost:pharos->localhost:50603 (ESTABLISHED
ruby       323 _teamsserver  31u  IPv6 0x7da9dd76981eeb47      0t0  TCP localhost:50602->localhost:krb524 (CLOSE_WAIT)
xcsbuildd 6943 _teamsserver  8u   IPv6 0x7da9dd76981ecd87      0t0  TCP localhost:50603->localhost:pharos (ESTABLISHED)

Those all look like components of OS X Server -- I'm not very familiar with the details, but collabd is a background process relating to "collaborative services" parts of OS X server, and the _teamserver user ID is used for those services.  From comparing to my server, it looks like the ruby script handles notifications, and xcsbuildd is probably the Xcode build server. Apparently, they all talk to each other over ports 4443 and 4444.


Can an iPhone be force started before the 15 minute recharge period? There are times when the iPhone is at low battery level that it turns itself off.

Sometimes, it maybe when I am going to charge it but looking for where my cable is, it turned itself off.

So I wonder, if I missed it by 20 seconds, how come sometimes I had to wait 15 minutes or even 18 minutes of recharging before I can start up the iPhone again, say, just to look at my email to see what flight number it is.

So if I had plugged in 20 seconds earlier, I might be able to use it continuously, for as long as I want, vs now I have to wait 15 minutes.  It is no issue if I am at home, but it matters more if I am at the airport trying to look up some info or to find a hotel due to flight cancelation due to weather.

So is there a way to charge it for 3 or 5 minutes, and force start the iPhone instead?

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way. As far as I know it charges to around 4-5% of battery capacity so that it's sure to be able to perform the whole boot process, even if it's unplugged, so not to screw something up when losing power while starting up the OS.
15-18 minutes seems long to me, though. It's usually 5-7 minutes using the iPhone charger.
Are you charging off a PC USB port?


Seriously corroded Macintosh Color Classic I just got my hands on a 1993 color classic to try and repair. The machine turns on (I hear the fan) and emits three monotone beeps. Not the chimes of death, but something I can’t figure out. I busted out the logic board, and wow. There was some serious corrosion. I tried to clean it up with some isopropyl alcohol and cotton balls, but some resistors totally fell off and I can see connectors that are completely worn through. I’ve attached some photos. What should I do? I only see one really leaky cap. Should I try dishwashing it? I’ve heard of this method but I don’t know how to go about I to without a. ruining my dishwasher or b. ruining the board. Any suggestions would be very welcome!

I suspect @Allan is right, and the board is too far gone to salvage. But if you want to gamble on further damage vs. possible resurrection, there at least one thing you can try.
It looks to me like that was area around the the battery that has most of the damage; the battery probably leaked (acid or alkaline, depending on the type) and corroded everything around it. The corrosion is basically irreversible, but you can at least try to remove the acid/alkali. Alcohol won't do a good job of this, it takes a polar solvent like water. The problem is that water can also accelerate the corrosion, so you have to do it carefully. Note: read all of these instructions before starting, and get all the tools ready in advance.
Tools: a sink, a old soft-bristle toothbrush, compressed air (something like this, not the high-pressure stuff you'd find in a machine shop), paper towels, a hair dryer or heat gun, and some uncooked rice for final drying.

Use running water. Turn a tap on low (you don't want it to splash). Hold the board with the damaged corner tilted down, so the water runs toward it and off the board, not toward the undamaged sections. Let the water run on where the battery was, so it runs across the damaged section. Move the board around a bit, so the whole damaged area gets washed.

Use a soft toothbrush to gently scrub the components and traces as the water runs across them. Try to get especially between the tiny wires on the components. Don't push too hard; the wires will be weak, and you don't want to tear anything loose! Rinse the toothbrush out periodically so you aren't grinding crud into the things you're trying to clean. When you're done with this process, throw the toothbrush out; you don't ever want it near your mouth again!

When you're done brushing, rinse that corner of the board for a little bit longer.

Now take the board out from under the water, and use the compressed air. Blow mostly across the board (not straight down), and toward the damaged corner. You need to blow out under the components (and maybe the corroded-looking end of the SIMM socket), and you don't want to blow any of the crud into the clean section of the board. If possible, blow air out through the connectors at the back of the board as well.

Now rinse the board again. Repeat the rinse & blow cycle a couple of times to clean out better under components and inside the connectors.
When you're done washing, you want to dry the board as quickly and completely as possible. The water is both washing crud off, and accelerating corrosion while the board is wet. Once you're done rinsing, the water is hurting more than it helps!

Gently pat-dry it with a paper towel, then use the compressed air to blow-dry it a final time (same tactics as before, to blow water out from under things). Get the entire board this time, in case any water splashed onto the undamaged section. Similarly, get the bottom side of the board in case any water got there.

Now use a hair dryer or heat gun to continue drying the board. You probably want the low setting; you want to dry it, not cook it.

When you get bored with the hair dryer, switch to rice. You want to basically submerge the board in dry rice (see figure 2 here) and leave it there at least overnight. If there's any remaining battery gunk there, it'll hang onto the water longer than you expect, so be patient. When you're done with this, throw out the rice; like the toothbrush, it should be considered contaminated.

Finally, when you're confident it's fully dry, reinstall it any try powering it back up. Without a battery, it may not work right on the first try; IIRC those old Macs get a dead-looking black screen on first boot with a dead battery, but will come up if you turn them off & right back on (assuming everything else is ok).

Do not apply power before you're confident it's all dry. Power will greatly accelerate the damage that water does, so it's better to be patient.


If I develop an app for iPhone or iPad, how much does Apple charge me? What fees does Apple charge iPhone/iPad developers? Is there an entrance fee so that the app is listed in the App Store, and some charges on each sold app?

If you want to develop HTML5 web apps that run in Safari on your Mac/iPhone/iPad, it's free.  These apps can be designed as web clippings for your device as well.

If you want to develop Simulated iOS apps that run on the iPhone/iPad Simulator on a Mac, it's free (after the cost of your Intel Mac with Snow Leopard or Lion), or maybe $5 to download the tools from the Mac App store.

If you want to develop, install and run a native iOS app on any stock OS iPhone or iPad, you need to pay $99/annum to enroll in Apple's iOS Developer program.

If you want to submit a native app or an app encapsulated HTML5 web app to Apple's iTunes App store, you need to be enrolled in the same $99 per year iOS Developer program.

If your app is a paid app that they approve for distribution from their App store, Apple pays you around 70% of what it charges the customers (less if there's a VAT tax).

Added: Starting with Xcode 7, and with a valid AppleID, you can use a personal profile to install apps developed using Xcode on your directly connected personal iOS devices, without paying $99 for an Apple Developer enrollment.  But apps installed this way are reported to have a short expiration date, around 1 week or so.


TextEdit not closing without asking me for a file name Previously, macOS using TextEdit and other apps allow blank documents to be edited and closing them without having to save the files, even for new files that were not giving a name yet.

I have to reinstall Catalina recently, and now, every time I close TextEdit it asks me to save or delete the file.

It appears TextEdit is not working normally anymore and there is no preference to adjust that.

This does not do the trick

defaults write com.apple.TextEdit ApplePersistence -bool yes

Any way to solve that?

Found the culprit. This box was turned on.


Modifing a preference via applescript changes file group I recently request help about modifying firewall settings via command-line (see my previous question).
Everything is working, but I have noticed that whenever I use this command in an applescript, the file group changes from wheel to staff.

Before:

-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel

After running the script:

-rw-r--r--  1 root  staff

Repairing Disk Permissions fixed the issue but change it to admin instead of wheel.

After fixing permissions:

-rw-r--r--  1 root  admin

However, I want to know:

Why is this happening, and
if it can raise security issues?

In short, it doesn't matter.

ls -l print out consists of status (10 character), number of links, owner, group, etc.

Of the first 10 characters describe file type(1), owner permission(3), group permission, and permission for others. In the case of

 -rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel

File type: - means regular file.

Owner Permission: rw- means user root can read and write.

Group Permission: r-- means user(s) in group wheel can read only.

Others: r-- means user(s) not in group wheel can also read only.

So you don't have to read the rest to know there is not security risk for what the group is.

So what are the users in wheel, admin and staff?

$dscacheutil -q group -a name wheel; dscacheutil -q group -a name staff; dscacheutil -q group -a name admin

You get:

name: wheel
password: *
gid: 0
users: root

name: staff
password: *
gid: 20
users: root

name: admin
password: *
gid: 80
users: root YourUserNameHere

wheel is a legacy thing from UNIX. OS X never bothered to change it. When you sudo the file, sudo automatically use group staff. If you don't want the group name to change on the file, do:

sudo -g wheel defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.alf globalstate -int 2


iMac 27-inch, Late 2014, RAM upgrade size combinations There are 4 slots. 2 slots taken by 2x4GB that came with Mac at purchase. Max memory is specified as 32GB. Can I buy 1x8GB and 1x16GB to fill the remaining 2 slots. Or do I need to use 8GB for both remaining slots. Thank you!

The general rule is you can mismatch sizes in pairs but not in individual slots.
Computers use interleaved memory, which requires each pair of slots to be populated with the exact same RAM. Having mis-matched slots will 'break' the interleaving & slow down the RAM access. As far as I'm aware this isn't 'dangerous' at all, merely slower.

Some machines can also use triple-channel memory, where three matching memory sticks can be interleaved. I don't know whether your iMac can do that, it may only be the Mac Pros that can - though in this case would make your issue harder to solve [I'm just including it for completeness]

So, your ideal way to achieve 32GB would be 4 x 8GB, which is probably cheaper than 2 x 16 anyway. If you keep the existing 4's I would add a pair of 8's.

Crucial's RAM configurator, on a quick search [check for your exact model] shows no 16GB sticks at all.


To use the "java" command-line tool you need to install a JDK This seems to be a on-going thing with Apple but previous threads indicate that each time it seems to be a different issue. I just updated Catalina (10.15.7). The update included safari, system security update and a command-line tools update. After the update was complete, I get the following error when running brew update.
To use the "java" command-line tool you need to install a JDK. Click "More info..." to visit the Java Developer Kit download website.
When i click "more" it takes me to a adobe flash player end of life page. I noticed in similar threads it takes the user to a different page. For example in this post it takes a user to a safari page. I don't have the facebook file in Library/LaunchAgents like what has been reported in similar threads from 2019.
Is "java" a dependency of command-line tools now? Can I resolve this message any other way besides trying to download JDK on a system that was running fine without it?
Why am i getting taken to an adobe flash page when i click more? I don't have flash either (unless it was installed by factory)

UPDATE: PR was merged, fix will be available when version 3.0.1 is released.
This is a known issue that is being actively worked on.
I'm ignoring the alert for now, with the understanding that it will no longer show up once that PR is merged.


Bootcamp Windows 10: Bluetooth works, but mouse not found I'm having some weird issues with getting my bluetooth mouse to work on a Bootcamp Windows 10 installation.

I've verified that bluetooth per se is working by connecting other bluetooth devices (my phone) to the computer. However, my bluetooth mouse (ironically a Windows Bluetooth Design Mouse) won't show up in the bluetooth device scans. It is the same mouse I normally use in OS X on the same computer.

Any idea why I can't connect that particular device in the Bootcamp Windows 10 version? What could I try to make bluetooth recognize the mouse or troubleshoot why it isn't?

So far I've once used the Bootcamp Driver download an made a fresh setup install of Bootcamp.

Edit: In addition to this, I've tested and also another Logitech bluetooth mouse can't be found either via the bluetooth assistant.

Turns out this was not an issue with the Bootcamp installation or its drivers. I did not know you had to hold the power botton of the mouse to make it pair. So in order to get it to work, go to Bluetooth, turn Bluetooth on, turn mouse on, hold power button pressed, the mouse will then show up under Bluetooth devices, then pair it.


Movies that I cannot find are taking up 200 GB on Mac Movies that I cannot find are taking up 200 GB on my Mac. I tried looking for these movies but I cannot find them. I believe that this is being cause by a video editing software I use called "VideoBlend". I think that it creates backups of the videos onto my mac, but I cannot find any them. Not sure what I should do.

Note: I've searched countless of questions on this site and I was unable to find a solution.

Update: I also used to manually insert movies into my devices on Itunes. Could there be backup files of these movies?

Update 2: I completely missed out on the fact that my mac has storage space of only 128GB'S. So could this just be an error. If so, is there a way for me to fix it?

The How can I figure out what's slowly eating my HD space? provides a general approach to answering your question.

Graph and Find

You can use a tool like GrandPerspective to help highlight large files on your Mac:

Disk Inventory X is an alternative disk space visualizer:

Ask VideoBlend's Developers

Consider contacting the makers of VideoBlend, via videoblendteam@gmail.com, and asking them directly. This may help prompt the developers to improve their caching approach in the future.


Message reply on Mac goes to wrong person 3 people at my office send me messages from their iOS device. If I read and reply from my iOS device, all works well. If I read and reply from my Mac, the replies get mixed and and the wrong person receives it. I have each set up in my Contacts with unique mobile numbers, but identical work numbers.

Any ideas? I have resorted to deleting the coworker who receives the messages from my iPhone and laptop contacts, but that doesn't feel like a long-term solution. Firing him does, I'll look into that for sure...

At the top of the conversation of the Messages app the contact should be listed under the To: header. You can use the arrow by the name to select more details and change which number you are replying to.

As an alternative you could delete their work numbers, or put it in the notes section of the contact to prevent Messages from mixing them up.

It's best to delete the conversation and start a new one after making changes like these to make sure that messages is using the proper contact info.


For making an assistive device, does iOS 13 enable control of a cursor using code? Curious if it's possible to control a cursor on an iPad, for example to allow someone who can't touch the screen to be able to generate movement commands some other way, and have those commands sent to the iPad to move and click the cursor.

I heard iOS 13 has AssistiveTouch and allows things like a Bluetooth mouse, which gets toward what I'm asking about.

As an example, it would be great to use Python to send messages to the iPad to move the cursor, or use Python to emulate a Bluetooth mouse essentially. Anyone know if this is possible?

You can use a Bluetooth mouse with iOS 13 by opening Settings > Accessibility > Switch Control > Switches, and then from there add the Bluetooth device. This allows you to control a cursor on screen.

You can also do on-screen navigation using other third party hardware in form of "ordinary" Switch Control equipment. In addition it is possible to use the camera to control navigation - moving your head to the left or to the right choosing diretion.

You can use Python on seperate hardware to emulate a Bluetooth mouse - this would make it possible to control the cursor from Python.

All the above have to do with system wide cursor control. There's also the option of developing your own app. If you do this, you can control the cursor within the app any way you like - this could for example be over the network controlled by Python. This is essentially the way that for example Citrix managed to have a controllable cursor on pre-iOS 13.


Privent Auto mount a partition on 10.7.4 I made a journaled, Encrypted Partition on 10.7.4

Now every time in startup it asks for the partition password.
I would like to unlock and use this partition when ever I want not every time. So I want Mac leave it and do not ask me the password automatically at the startup every time
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7.4)

Add the following line to the /etc/fstab file:

  LABEL= none hfs ro,noauto

Being <label>the name of the encrypted volume.

If you are just wondering, ro means read only (you should use rwinstead, if you want to read and write after mount).

Note that the file could not exist, therefore you'll have create it. To do so just open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal and type:

sudo vi /etc/fstab
This will prompt the password. Type it. It won't be shown, don't worry.
Add the already mentioned line.
Hit Escape, type :wq, and hit Enter


type of emails from Contacts.app in AppleScript (on El Capitan) I want to work with a list of all email addresses that appear in my address book. I thought I could simply set such a list with AppleScript, and use the elements, maybe after casting the references to strings, as this answer suggests. However, the code below runs into a casting error, with or without explicit casting (e.g. as string):

  error "Can’t make «class az21» 1 of «class azf4» id
  \"C74972A5-88D4-4B0F-8DEA-304914926EE6:ABPerson\" of application
  \"Contacts\" into the expected type." number -1700 from «class az21» 1
  of «class azf4» id "C74972A5-88D4-4B0F-8DEA-304914926EE6:ABPerson"

tell application "Contacts"
    set allEmails to every email of every person
end tell
repeat with anEmail in allEmails
    display dialog anEmail
end repeat

This problem, of course, also inhibits any more meaningful uses of the email addresses.

What is this about, and what is a workable way to collect and access all email addresses in my address book?

I am running Public Beta 5 of El Capitan, though I did not test whether the behavior is any different on older (= actual) releases.

allEmails is a list that contains several lists, each sublist contains emails of a contact.

email is an object, you need to get the value of this object.

So, you need a loop for each list, and another loop for each value.

tell application "Contacts"
    set myList to value of emails of people
end tell
repeat with aList in myList
    repeat with anEmail in aList
        display dialog anEmail
    end repeat
end repeat


MacBook backlight turns off when brightness is set at 100% I was using my MacBook today when suddenly the backlight turned off, right while I was in the middle of using it. I know it was the backlight because:

I have an external display, which remained on, and I could still see my desktop (so the computer hadn't turned off)
The windows that were on the internal display didn't move over to the external display, meaning that the internal display itself was still on, but just not illuminated

After some experimentation, I discovered that I could get the backlight to turn back on by holding down F1 (to lower the brightness) until the brightness setting reached 0, then holding F2 (to raise the brightness) until it was back at 100%. It was as if the system didn't "know" that the backlight was off until I manually lowered the brightness to 0, and then it would know to turn it back on when I raised the brightness.

However, after doing this, the backlight would only last for a few seconds at 100% and then it would turn off again.

Finally, I tried raising the brightness slowly from 0, and was able to work my way back up to 100% without it turning off. It's been working since.

Is this a hardware failure or a software glitch? I'm running OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4) and the issue persisted through a reboot.

The issue is caused by a burnt out soldering attaching a cable to an iron bar component situated in the lowest part of the screen. It is part of the module named 612-0035-a. It is the LCD inverter. It is not user solderable with standard equipment.

There's no need to buy an entire screen to fix this, just a new LCD inverter. To prevent same damage from happening again, it is recommended to brace from power surges.


Month old iPad mini 4 has a yellow box outline on the screen! What should I do? I'm pretty sure this was not there before but now I just noticed it while reading on my iPad. I think it's only on the inside part of the screen as I cannot get the picture to show the yellow when I screenshot it...what should I do? Help! It's just over a month old!

Make an appointment with a Genius in an Apple Store and they will swap it for a new one.


How to remotely push "defaults write" settings to OS X server clients I have some Mac OSX machines that i'm managing with an OS X server, clients are authenticated using Active Directory (golden triangle) and i'd like to disable version control for Pages/Numbers/Keynote as it doesn't work well with user profiles stored on an SMB share,

The commands that achieve this are as follows:

defaults write com.apple.iWork.Pages ApplePersistence -bool no
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Numbers ApplePersistence -bool no
defaults write com.apple.iWork.Keynote ApplePersistence -bool no

This setting appears to be per-user

I tried to save these into a logon script file with .sh extension, I chmod+x the file to allow me to import it into OS X server but it doesn't work :(

There's a section in OSX server under preferences which has a load of .plist files in there but I couldnt find any good documentation on how to use it ... and I can't locate the plist file for Pages itself..

Sorry for the poor description, i'm new to OS X administration in this environment

Thanks in advance

(This query is actually solved now but just FYI it was OX Mavericks 10.9.5 client and a Mac Mini running 10.9.5 with Server 3.1.2)

The plists for the iWork suite are stored here:

/Users/accountname/Library/Containers/com.apple.iWork.AppName/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iWork.AppName.plist

with AppName: Pages, Numbers or Keynote.
Note: If you browse the folder "Containers" with the Finder the "directories" com.apple.iWork.pages and com.apple.iWork.numbers look like files but are indeed folders with file extensions like valid Pages or Numbers files (which are packages itself). Just right-click open -> Show Package Contents to dive deeper.

One way is to edit the files manually with nano or PlistEdit Pro:

Just add the following to the respective plist files:

<key>ApplePersistence</key>
<false/>

Another way (depending on your setup) is to ssh to the machine/account and execute:

defaults write com.apple.iWork.AppName ApplePersistence -bool no


Automate Continuity reactivation post-update? I've got an early 2011 MBP with an upgraded AirPort card. I know that one has to jump through kext- and Terminal-based hoops to enable Continuity, but I also know that Continuity Activation Tool does the entire process at the press of a button. The one problem is that whenever I install a software update or reinstall Yosemite, it undoes the Continuity-enabling process.

My question: Is there a way to make the Continuity-enabling process automatically run after every update/reinstall?

Continuity Activation Tool author here.

Writing an additional script and tweaking CAT's script would be necessary as the tools' activation feature isn't currently designed to run automatically and silently. Stuart H's suggestion points you in the right direction IMO.

Functionality I'd include in a boot time script:

Detect if one of the IOBluetoothFamily.kext or IO80211Family.kext drivers, located in /System/Library/Extensions/, pass code
signature validation (with Apple's codesign command line utility). If one or both of them do, they
likely have been updated/replaced by an OS X update and need to be re-patched: the script can proceed.
Rename any KextsBackupBeforePatch and KextsBackupAfterPatch folders in the user    dir to avoid any "overwrite files" prompt during the activation.
Run contitool.sh -a with admin privileges to activate Continuity from the command line. Catch and log CAT's output in a file: in case of failure you may want to know what happened.

Additionally, I'd modify the rebootPrompt() function of contitool.sh to restart the system automatically. You could also add a popup asking or warning the user about the reboot on top of that, e.g. through Apple Script (osascript command line utility).

Last but not least: Apple may release an OS X update anytime that breaks the methods used by this tool to activate Continuity. So far this hasn't been the case - but risks of issues with your system are increased if you automate the activation right after an OS X update.


Cannot enable FileVault on macOS High Sierra I've just got a new MacBook Pro, currently running macOS 10.13.6 High Sierra. As I'm the only one using it, it only has one user account, which does have admin privileges. However, I'm encountering some problems attempting to enable FileVault 2 disk encryption.

If I try the standard method of going into settings -> security & privacy, then clicking "enable FileVault", nothing happens. No error message, it just doesn't respond.

Going into terminal, I've tried running sudo fdesetup enable, which returns the following message. Error: A problem occurred while trying to enable FileVault. (-69594).

Based on a previous answer I saw on here, I then tried booting into recovery mode, and running sudo rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone.
This tells me that the sudo command is not recognised. Alternatively, running without sudo returns /var/db/.AppleSetupDone: No such file or directory.

Basically, I've no idea what else to try, short of wiping the computer and starting from scratch. Any ideas (preferably FileVault, but I'll accept other full disk encryption methods), or is that my only option?

Being on MacOS Mojave 10.14.6 the following worked for me. Process was partly derived from below mentioned reddit and https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2019/02/08/unable-to-enable-filevault-on-macos-mojave/.

Tested for all user accounts on the computer in terminal the command sudo sysadminctl -secureTokenStatus USER_NAME_HERE. It returned for all accounts "Secure token is DISABLED for user". If this is different, see below.
If for all users step 1 returned "Secure token is DISABLED for user", boot into Recovery mode (reboot and hold command-R)
In Recovery mode start Terminal window (menu Utilities -> Terminal)
Execute command resetFileVaultpassword to change the passwords for all users.
Then restart back into normal mode. For me changing all passwords resulted in TouchID becoming disabled, but I could re-enable without issues.
Now back in normal mode, terminal confirmed for command from step 1 that "Secure token is ENABLED". Go to System preferences and enable FileVault.

My understanding is that if for at least one user the return in step 1. says "Secure token is ENABLED for user", this user could be used to re-enable the desired admin user by

a) promoting the TOKEN_user to admin,

b) login with the TOKEN_user,

c) change the password of all non-TOKEN_users (according to https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/74scld/unable_to_turn_on_filevault_on_high_sierra_apfs/do1beb1/ this will make them users with a TOKEN as well), and finally

d) change promoted TOKEN_user back to normal user.


Voice Quality on iPhone 5 My setup is iPhone 4 and Bluetooth in my 2012 SUV.

I have a 80 minute highway commute.  I have real trouble hearing the other party at highway speeds around 65 Mph or higher.

If I drop my speed down by 15 Mph, I get much clearer voice quality.  The phone shows me either max bars for connectivity or 4 bars in either case.

This leads me to believe that it is not the Bluetooth, or the quality of the phone itself, but the quality/strength of the signal captured.

This is the only reason I am considering switching phones. The iPhone 5 for AT&T has the 4G LTE network.

Is voice quality better because the 4GLTE is a faster network?  Does the quality of voice issue at high speeds go away for the LTE phones?

LTE is a data network and voice calls still use 2G/3G. I expect that your problem is related to your call being handed off from one cell tower to another.
The iPhone 5 or an LTE phone in general is not going to solve that problem for you.


Apple TV - Can't Sign In, or use YouTube (but other stuff works) Apple TV was working fine up until yesterday.

I had rented & watched Men in Black 3 and it was all good - that was my first day experience wi Apple TV - great!

Now it's all gone downhill...

Nothing changed on my network - connecting wired directly to my router/modem to the net.

Apple ID is fine as i've tested it on other iDevices.

I have the iTunes Store set to Australia with correct Time Zone.

I've got Home Sharing turned on with my Apple ID on the Apple TV and it's working.

The problems ...

When I try to Sign In, I either get (it's random) ... 'Unable to Sign In - Apple TV can't connect to the server at this time. please try later.', OR  'Unable to Sign In - The Apple ID you entered couldn't be found or your password was incorrect. Please try again.'

When I try to watch YouTube I get ... 'No content was found - There is a problem communicating with YouTube. Try again later.'

Funny thing is everything else works - Movies & TV Shows previews, iTunes Festival, Trailers, Vimeo etc.

* ? Any ideas guys?

FYI - I'm with iiNet (Australia).

Updated ...

Have cross posted here (there is a workaround included in the discussion now) - https://discussions.apple.com/message/19836260#19836260

This may sound weird, but, unplug the Ethernet and connect to your wireless network. You should have access to all internet services. Some thing happened with my ATV out of the box, but using wifi solved the issues. Apparently a bug with that version of iOS. Apparently they fixed it on the latest update but I never went back to Ethernet to test and it's been fine on wifi.

It's something to do with the relay back to Apple servers apparently, but seemed like a weird bug.


Apple TV4 VLC sees SMB but folder empty I screwed something up. i just got vlc for apple tv 4 and enabled file sharing from my mac mini 2014 running high sierra 10.13.4. it ran great but it allowed anonymous login, so i thought i'd restrict it because I live in high rise and use wifi. Anyway, I deleted some users ('staff', "Everyone") and added a new admin. Now nothing works. vlc recognizes my computer in smb but when i try to access it the folder reads empty. Can't see anything on iphone app, either. is there someway to reset the thing? i tried diskutil resetUserPermissions / id -u in terminal, nothing doing.

Any advice would be appreciated. thank you

I had a similar issue - VLC would only show empty folders once connected - this was happening from the first time I opened VLC on my Apple TV.
My shares are also on a Mac Mini (2012 model) running 10.13.4
I got it to work by turning off file sharing, then disabling AFP sharing and only using SMB.
Once I turned file sharing back on, VLC could see all my shared folders.
To change sharing options, go into System Preferences, Sharing.

Oh, and I use a password-protected account called 'media' for accessing the shares from networked devices. I don't use anonymous logins.
Hope this helps, or you got the issue sorted already.

I'm also trying out the app 'infuse' and it looks nice, but with some videos it wants me to buy a subscription to use the app to continue, so not sure yet if it's something I'll stick with.


Starting Preview without opening previous PostScript documents I'm running the latest version of OS X and Preview is hanging whenever I try to start it.

It attempts to open the documents which I previously had open, which is ~10 PDFs and ~3 PostScript files, and it seems to be permanently get stuck whilst "converting" those PostScript files (even though opening them was no issue before).

Hence my question is, how do I start Preview without opening those documents? (I'm guessing there's some kind of cache I should delete.)

Do you want to disable the App re-open the documents when you launch the App?
So, you can go to "System Preferences" > "General" and enable the "close windows when quitting and app" option.


iMessage sync with the computer? I know that if you have an iPhone and an iMac computer/laptop, you can text off your iPhone, then once coming within a certain radius of your computer, iCloud uses Wi-Fi and sends the conversations to your iPhone. However, i was wondering what happens if the laptop is dead?  I assume it can't transfer the messages, correct? Also, I was wondering what happens if BEFORE you charge the laptop and turn it on, you delete the messages off your phone? Will they still somehow be transfered to your laptop?

What happens in your proposed case is that if you delete messages from the iPhone, and then power on your Mac, the Mac will not receive those deleted messages.

EDIT: Well, folks, I stand corrected. I certainly believed the above to be the case, but my tests proved otherwise. I sent several messages from multiple devices to other devices that were powered down. Each message was deleted before the recipients were powered back on. Although there was a significant lag in reception (one took nearly ten minutes), all messages that were sent were received, even those that were deleted.

Several of the messages were out of sync, which doesn't surprise me given the flakiness of the iMessage system during its infancy. However, to the original question, the answer is that messages, deleted or otherwise, eventually find their destination, even to devices that were powered down when those messages were transmitted.

(Hat tip to tubedogg for the correction.)


What does the command afplay --leaks do? What does the command afplay --leaks do?
The man page states that it performs leak analyzes.
What are leak analyzes, please? When I ran this command with an audio file, no event occurred.

--leaks analyzes memory leaks. Running strings /usr/bin/afplay strongly indicates that
leaks -nocontext %d | tee /tmp/leaks_P%d.log
x=`cat /tmp/leaks_P%d.log |grep -i Leak: | wc -l`
exit $x

is actually run for this. man leaks will give a lot of additional details about what that command does.


How do I reset my passcode on my iPhone? I can't remember my passcode for my iPhone 5s—can I reset the passcode?

No you can't.

Recovery mode is the only solution.

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1808


How can I prevent iOS 7 from downloading to iOS 6 devices? I would like to prevent devices from downloading iOS 7 while using networks we control. We have MDM capability and firewalls, but I'm not sure what the the minimal ports and destinations that should be entered into a firewall to prevent downloading iOS 7 over the air via WiFi network.

What can be done to prevent iOS 7 downloads to save bandwidth and save storage space on our devices?

Bonus points for describing any issues / other things that this block might affect such as App Store updates or downloads. Extra bonus points if this could be accomplished by a profile or other means than network control. I'm more focused on not having devices download the update than how that happens.

Apple uses the following hostnames for distributing OTA updates:

mesu.apple.com
appldnld.apple.com

Blocking access to these hostnames should prevent iOS from downloading the updates, resulting in one of the following errors, based on whether the device has knowledge of the update or not before the access is blocked:

Software Update Failed: An error occurred downloading iOS 7.
Software Update Unavailable: Software Update is not available at this time. Try again later.
Unable to Check for Update: An error occurred while checking for a software update.

iOS devices use the following XML file to find the relevant update and download file:

http://mesu.apple.com/assets/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate/com_apple_MobileAsset_SoftwareUpdate.xml

Blocking access just to this file should be sufficient providing that the devices have no knowledge of the update prior to your blocking.


Do I need an internet connection to update iOS on my PC? I've downloaded the IOS5 IPSW from Apple's site and want to update it from within iTunes. So,

Does the update require an Internet connection?
Does the iPhone switch off/reboot just as the update is initiated?

I ask because I'm at my new place where I'm yet to setup an Internet connection & my iPhone tethered to my laptop is my only Internet connection. I don't want my phone to be bricked because it cannot verify the update or what-not because there's no Internet connection.

Yes it does. It has to verify the firmware with Apple's servers (gs.apple.com). If it cannot, it will error out (usually presenting a 3XXX error, which is quite often 3004) and fail to update.


Presence of a Linux partition causes FileVault2 setup to fail I'm currently dual booting Mountain Lion and Ubuntu 12.04 on a rMBP. Everything works fine, but enabling FileVault fails with the error message: "Some information was unavailable during an internal lookup." I receive the same error message if I run "Verify Disk" in Disk Utility.

By experimenting over the course of half a dozen reinstallations, I made the following observations:

Install Ubuntu 12.04 (x64, alternative Mac version) and GRUB -> ERROR
Add a ext4 or btrfs partition using Gparted on a LiveCD without installing GRUB -> ERROR
Removing the Linux partitions (but leaving the hybrid MBR) -> NO ERROR

As a result, my best guess is that OS X throws an error as soon as it detects a filesystem that it doesn't recognize. Has anyone else encountered this problem? How do get OS X to ignore my Linux partitions?

Update 1

Adding 128 MiB of padding between partitions solves the "Verify Disk" error. Unfortunately, I still get the same error message when I attempt to enable FileVault 2. Interestingly, "Verify Disk" started returning errors as soon as I attempted to "Repair Disk." Disk Utility seems quite adept at corrupting its own partition tables...

Update 2

I get more information if I run fsck_cs from the terminal. It looks like this may be related to FireVault2 using CoreStorage. Here's the output:

$ sudo fsck_cs /dev/disk0
** Checking volume.
   Content Hint for disk0 is not Apple_CoreStorage
** disk0: Scan for Volume Headers
   Invalid Volume Header @ 0: invalid field value
   Invalid Volume Header @ 251000192512: invalid field value
** disk0 is not a CoreStorage volume

I believe I found the issue: Apple expects 128 MiB of free space between every partition. Disk Utility hides this free space, similar to how it hides the ESP. If this padding isn't present, it generates the error I described above.

Easy fix: Tell Gparted to use +128 MiB as the beginning offset for each partition.

Edit: Nevermind, this only solves the "Verify Disk" problem...I still can't enable FileVault. See above for an update.


27" iMac Hangs On Reboot I've got a 27" iMac 2.93Ghuz Intel Core i7 running 10.7.2.

Anytime I reboot (like for some software updates), it gets stuck at the gray startup screen (no Apple logo). If I press and hold the power, turn it off, then turn it on, it boots as normal.

Any idea why a cold startup works but a warm reboot always hangs? Any idea how to diagnose it?

Try a verbose boot and see if the text output during the boot sequence provides any clues.


Anything comparable to Windows' "Network Location" in MacOS? This is my first Mac. On Windows I can set each network connection as either Home, Work or Public using "Network Location". Each mode has different sharing and security options. Is there a way to do this for the Mac? For example, at home I want to turn on File Sharing, but in Public I want it turned off. Furthermore, in Public I'd like to automatically "Enable stealth mode" in my security settings.

Basically, I want to automatically adjust network and security settings based on which network I'm connected to.

You cannot adjust both the security and network settings at once unless you use applescript.

You can however set the network settings to Home, Work or Public as follows.

Navigate to:

>Applications/System Preferences.app/Network

Select the dropdown at the top which says Location:

Navigate to the bottom and select "Edit Locations ..."

Then click the plus sign and add the location you want.

You will then need configure all the required parameters, such as DHCP v Static etc.

Once this is done you can set up an applescript which will modify your firewall settings depending on which location you are at.


How to mirror ipad on mac catalina I have a MacBook Pro with macOS Catalina version 10.15.3 and an iPad mini with iOS 13.3.1.
I'd like to mirror the iPad to MacBook Pro.
I can extend the iPad using Sidecar but not the other way around.

How can I do it?

There are also a bunch of 3rd party tools with more advance options that can be used to mirror iPad's screen on a Mac.

AirServer
Reflector 3
ApowerMirror


How to know if an iOS app does not access the internet via Wi-Fi or Cellular? Is there a clear indicator that an app does not access the internet via Wi-Fi or cellular?

For instance in the Settings App there is an entry for every app installed on iOS 13. There you find an app specific toggle for „cellular data“. But some apps (eg KeePassium) do not have this toggle.

Would an app connect to the internet if its “cellular data” setting is missing?   Because every other app that can use Wi-Fi and cellular has that toggle. I am not worried about bluetooth tethering as I can turn off Bluetooth on individual app basis and cable tethering is not an issue.

iOS 12.
There's Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and USB-Tethering that you cannot directly toggle if you're using any of those interfaces for any purpose. Only way to stop them is to turn off the connection path itself. For Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, they should be turned off globally in Settings. For USB, detaching the cable is the way to go.


Screen refresh rates on mobile devices Are there any hand held devices, PDA , phones or pads that have a screen refresh rate of 120Hz.

Since you are dealing with devices that have LCD screens (and not CRTs), it ultimately doesn't matter what the refresh rate is -- what matters most is how quickly a pixel can change from one color to another, and this isn't constant across the color range the device can display.

It is important how certain videos are processed since 24p can't fit into 60 equally (hence the supposed value of 120hz), but you'll find conflicting views as to if it is all that noticeable, useful, and/or even desirable. Let's just say this: I've never had a problem watching a video on my iPhone or iPad and noticing bad motion blur or odd artifacts.


How do I download the free Swift Programming Language book (Swift 5 Edition) from the Apple Books Store? I'm wondering how to download The Swift Programming Language Book (Swift 5 Edition) from the Apple Books Store?

Easy using iPad or iPhone, but I'd really like to use the download on an alternate machine (Program on Mac, reference on nearby big screen using Windows or Linux...). The link shows 4.3 MB of data, it must be a file somewhere, somehow.

Anyone know how do I download this book? (and/or other free book resources as well?)

For reference, here's another valuable resource from Apple:

Intro to App Development with Swift

Assuming you are using iCloud Library for Apple Books, the location for the raw .epub files (can be accessed from the terminal.app) is:

/Users/<YourUserName>/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~com~apple~iBooks/Documents

As for opening books downloaded from Apple Book Store in Windows/Linux, the books are DRM protected (even the free ones).

Source:

http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/296462/ddg#297650


When using Numbers app, is there a setting to create a new column when user presses tab? When you are navigating in Numbers, pressing the tab key will take you to the next cell to the right and allows you to start typing. Very quick and helpful for data entry. When the user reaches the last column, pressing tab has no effect. In MS Excel, pressing tab in the final column will create a new column and allow the user to continue.

Is it possible to do the same in numbers or is there always a break in workflow to stop and create new columns manually? Same question applies for enter but for rows. In excel, pressing enter in the final row will add a new row and let the user continue.

To add a row above the selected cells use the Option+Up Arrow command.

To add a row below the selected cells use the Option+Down Arrow command.

To add a column to the right of the selected cells use the Option+Right Arrow command.

To add a column to the left of the selected cells use the Option+Left Arrow command.

On an iPad you can use the next buttons found on the screen


How can I set up my iphone to play sounds only when plugged in or an alarm is going off? I just got an iPhone 5 with iOS 6 and am struggling with all the different sound/vibration settings.  It seems like there are so many different ways to control this (up/down buttons on the left of the phone, the on/off toggle on the left, Settings --> Sound, and individual in-app settings).

Ideally what I want is for the phone to be silent (vibrate only) all of the time, except when:

I do something explicit to turn the volume on (e.g. I am playing a game or listening to music or something)
It is plugged in
An alarm goes off

What I specifically do NOT want:

The ringer to ever ring while the phone is in my pocket (i.e. 100% of the time it is not plugged in)
The alarm to ever NOT make a audible sound, regardless of any other volume/sound settings (e.g. if the answer is "flip the toggle switch on before you go to sleep and flip it off when you wake up," that's not good enough because I know I'll forget to do that and miss my alarm)

Is what I want possible?  What settings should I use?  Does this depend on the choice of alarm clock app?

Sound on iPhone is reasonably complicated when you get down and start "taking it apart". This is because it is managed on a very much case-by-base basis.

For example, if you call up Siri, and adjust the volume, it will only be adjusting the volume for Siri, not something like the ringer volume.

So to divide things up and try to answer your question, I'll start with the basics.

If you turn on Vibration mode (orange position) using the switch on the side of the phone it will turn off almost all sounds. Unlock, keyboards and such sounds will no longer be on. Notifications and phone calls will vibrate but not be heard. You will have to turn the switch off (no orange) in order to hear normal sounds while in apps - (i.e. games). When alternating vibration mode versus normal mode, iPhone remembers your previous state, and will set the volume to what it was before vibration mode was active.

Exception: alarms set in the Clock.app are still heard. In fact, there is no way to turn off Clock.app's alarms from being heard unless you turn off the alarm(s) itself. As for other alarm clock style apps (for example, Sleep Cycle), it is up to the developer to make it behave like Clock.app. That is the case with Sleep Cycle, but it would be worth verifying with any other alarm style app.

If you turn down the volume in the Music.app (or double tap home button and swipe to the right twice), or while watching a video, or in Settings.app, that is the volume that is applied across the board, mostly. That volume reflects the volume for videos, music, and apps that in general make noise - as in, games. Note that iPhone remembers your settings when you have headphones plugged in vs. not.

When iPhone is unlocked and you are on the home screen and you adjust the volume, you are adjusting ringer volume. In other words if the vibration switch is off (no orange) then that would be the volume it would ring at.

Do-not-disturb suppresses basically all notifications (there are some configuration options there). Again, alarms (from Clock.app, and other properly set up apps like SleepCycle) will stay play.

The only thing you can't do is have it toggle sound settings when it is plugged into the wall vs. when it is not. I think you will find it becomes habit, however, to throw the vibration switch.


How to turn a keyboard key to power on/off button Is it possible to use a script to turn a mac keyboard key to a mac power on or off button?

Bad news is that there is no way of doing this. The power button is a completely different circuit and separate cable from the top case to the MLB. (That is with the model information you have provided). You can use CTRL + Eject to bring up the sleep, shutdown, restart dialog box but there is nothing else for starting the computer up unless you set up a energy saver setting which boots the computer up at a set time.

If the button is damaged in such a way, please recommend your friend either contact AppleCare or an AASP and get his top case replaced. It may seem like a pain but really is the best option.


LyX start every time as a new application I use LyX and I installed last version 2.3.5.2 on macOS Catalina 10.15.7.
Whenever I launch the application the system shows a progress bar saying 'Verifico "Lyx.app"...' (this is Italian, in English it should read something like 'Verifying "Lyx.app"...' or 'Checking "Lyx.app"...').
After that a window pops-up saying '"Lyx.app" è un'applicazione scaricata da internet. Confermi di volerla aprire?' (that translated is '"Lyx.app" is an application downloaded from internet. Do you confirm you want to open it?'), and I answer "yes".
This behavior is OK for the first run, but it repeats every time I launch the application, and seems more a problem of macOS than a problem of Lyx. Can someone help?

I finally realized that the folder /Applications/LyX.app/ didn't have write permissions not even for the proprietary user, differently from all other *.app folders in /Applications, so the execution of the command
chmod +w /Applications/LyX.app

solved the problem.


Copy iCloud Photos library to a clean install I'm doing a clean install on a new HD for various reasons, and I'd like to move my 700GB Photos library over. I also want the library to continue to sync with iCloud.

Since the existing library is synced, one way would be to create a new empty Photos library in the new system, turn on "iCloud Photos" and let it download the whole set from iCloud. Unfortunately that would take weeks and exhaust my data cap many times over, so I'd like to avoid this if possible.

I don't think I can use Migration Assistant because it will also move over all the stuff I'm doing a clean install to avoid.

I tried copying the system Photos Library, "Photos Library.photoslibrary" to the new HD. The copy went fine, I booted from the new drive and opened it, set it as the system library, and turned on iCloud Photos. It said "Updating" for a minute, then switched to "Uploading 100,000 photos". I paused it immediately and turned off iCloud Photos. I'm assuming this means it would treat all the photos in the copied library as new, and duplicate everything.

So my question is, is there a way to copy my full Photos library and maintain iCloud sync without downloading all 700GB from iCloud?

I ended up following ankii's suggestion and just chancing it by turning iCloud Photos back on and letting it upload 100,000+ photos.

On the plus side, it did sync successfully without duplicating any photos.

On the minus side, I started it on 09/08 and it just now finished on 09/17. So that's 9 solid days of "uploading". It was on a mostly idle iMac with broadband and it didn't seem to be taxing either the CPU or the network, so I'm not sure why it went so very very slowly.

My total data usage for the time is less than half the size of the library, so it does appear to have saved some data. No way to tell how long it would have taken to download the library from scratch.

I still feel like there should be a better way, but I can report that copying the library to the new system and turning on iCloud Photos does work.


Install Sierra as guest OS in VM with Parallels 12 Trying to install the official version of macOS Sierra, released today 2016-09-20.

When I use the Parallels Wizard to create a new VM, I selected the Install macOS Sierra.app application as listed. Next step is saving the OS X image file.dmg file with its default name in a folder I choose. Then I get the error:

  Failed to create a bootable disk image file for this version of OS X.

Running Parallels 12.0.2 on a MacBook Pro with El Capitan.

Ironically, I successfully did this same operation with the second, and last, GM seed from Apple using Parallels 12.0.1. Now, a few days later, I cannot install the official Sierra release with Parallels 12.0.2 (.2 update of Parallels is last day or two). So I suppose either (a) Apple changed something with the installer last-minute, or (b) the Parallels company changed something with this week’s new Parallels 12.0.2 update.

I'm use VMware Fusion and just downloaded "Install macOS Sierra.app" from the App Store and then made an ISO Image to install from. The ISO Image should also work in Parallels Desktop.

To create an ISO Image from the "Install macOS Sierra.app" application bundle, I used the following bash script. Note: This requires 12 GB of free space to create but only uses 6 GB when finished.

In Terminal:

touch makeSierraISO
open makeSierraISO

Copy and paste the code below into the document, modifying the path to the InstallESD.dmg if necessary, then save and close.

Back in Terminal:

chmod u+x makeSierraISO

To run the script in Terminal: ./makeSierraISO

#!/bin/bash

hdiutil attach "/Applications/Install macOS Sierra.app/Contents/SharedSupport/InstallESD.dmg" -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/esd
hdiutil create -o macOS_Sierra_10.12.0.cdr -size 6144m -layout SPUD -fs HFS+J
hdiutil attach macOS_Sierra_10.12.0.cdr.dmg -noverify -nobrowse -mountpoint /Volumes/iso
asr restore -source /Volumes/esd/BaseSystem.dmg -target /Volumes/iso -noprompt -noverify -erase
rm /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation/Packages
cp -rp /Volumes/esd/Packages /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/System/Installation
cp -rp /Volumes/esd/BaseSystem.chunklist /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/
cp -rp /Volumes/esd/BaseSystem.dmg /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/
hdiutil detach /Volumes/esd
hdiutil detach /Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System
hdiutil convert macOS_Sierra_10.12.0.cdr.dmg -format UDTO -o macOS_Sierra_10.12.0.iso
rm macOS_Sierra_10.12.0.cdr.dmg
mv macOS_Sierra_10.12.0.iso.cdr macOS_Sierra_10.12.0.iso

Assuming you ran the script from your Home Folder in Terminal, then look for the file macOS_Sierra_10.12.0.iso in your Home Folder. Use Parallels to create new VM. Point the new VM wizard to that .iso file. Parallels may complain, saying it is unable to recognize the OS being installed. Proceed and choose macOS from the offered menu.


Migrate from an early 2015 MacBook Pro running Catalina to a 2019 MacBook Air running Mojave I have one early 2015 MacBook Pro currently running Catalina 10.15. That’s my production machine;
I got a new 2019 MacBook Air which I want to make my main production machine; The Macbook Air is from summer 2019 and came brand new with Mojave installed;

Is there a way for me to migrate from Catalina to Mojave, using either the Migration Assistant or a TimeMachine backup? If I a restore from a TimeMachine backup, won’t it also restore the Catalina version of macOS on the new MacBook Air?

This has already been answered here

Anyway you should be fine as long as you only import data, e.g. desktop, documents, downloads, etc.  I would not try to carry over ~/Library folder, as this may contain items that are only relevant to the 'newer' version of macOS.  You should probably separately export Apple Mail and re-import as well.

That being said... why don't you just first update the 2019 to 10.15 then directly import your time machine and not worry about incompatibilities?


How to show a list of processes that are launched upon a login? There are some processes that are launched upon a login, how to get a list of these processes?
I want to prevent some processes from being launched automatically.

launchd and the Login Items pane of Accounts preferences are the two places that normally start a process when you log in.

If you don't see the item in System Preferences -> Accounts -> specific account ->  Login Items then you will have to look into launchd.

Basically the LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons folders in ~/Library

Lastly, if they are not there, then it's a system level launchd task that you might want to use launchctl to show or look in /Library instead of the user level library.

Most people just have to manage the preference pane. Here is a snap of mine showing the Activity Monitor selected and ready to be deleted if I press the – button.


Is it possible to change the dock icon of an application only? Is there any way to just change the icon in the dock while still keeping it the same everywhere else? It's probably not going to be possible without tweaks, so are there any programs for that?

A workaround is to make an alias of the app, drag the alias to Dock and then change the icon for the alias ie. not for the actual app. Downside is that you get a small alias–arrow added to the lower–left corner to the icon.

Make an alias
Drag the alias to the Dock
Change the icon like you would for any Finder item.

In the following screenshot we have copied the icon of Chess app and pasted it to the newly–made alias of Automator. (NB, make sure you first copy the icon and then paste it; the screenshot accidentally is showing the opposite way.)


How to delete all emails from inbox in iPad 8.1.3? How do you delete all inbox mail messages in iPad iOS 8.1.3? It doesn't support prior move tricks many have posted as a method since it is unresponsive to the Trash target mailbox if you use the 'move all' trick.

Since you can't perform this trick... if you're that desperate, you can update to iOS 9 Public Beta and this feature will become present.

Alternatively, you can jailbreak your iPad and get a tweak named All Mail Actions from the BigBoss repository in Cydia.

If you're not willing to do any of these, you're going to have to delete each and every email individually. There's no other way.


MacBook DNS works behind some routers, doesn't behind others I've found WiFi routers where I cannot open domains, but ping IP addresses just fine. This means I can't browse websites. This happens only on my Macbook, and these connections work fine for Windows laptops. How do I fix this?

I have two internet AP at my office, one is problematic, one isn't. I also have a wifi at home that works, but another wifi at my friend's house doesn't work.

Details

These tests were performed on the same machine. I can switch to either WiFi and this always happens.

Routers that are fine:

$ ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=0 ttl=48 time=246.502 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=48 time=256.395 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=48 time=233.746 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=48 time=391.504 ms
^C
--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 233.746/282.037/391.504/63.709 ms

$ ping google.com
PING google.com (172.217.24.110): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 172.217.24.110: icmp_seq=0 ttl=56 time=301.756 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.24.110: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=146.550 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.24.110: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=159.926 ms
64 bytes from 172.217.24.110: icmp_seq=3 ttl=56 time=160.761 ms
^C
--- google.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 146.550/192.248/301.756/63.475 ms

$ nslookup google.com
Server:     8.8.8.8
Address:    8.8.8.8#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   google.com
Address: 74.125.200.113
Name:   google.com
Address: 74.125.200.138
Name:   google.com
Address: 74.125.200.101
Name:   google.com
Address: 74.125.200.102
Name:   google.com
Address: 74.125.200.100
Name:   google.com
Address: 74.125.200.139

$ dig google.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> google.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 52892
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com.            IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com.     299 IN  A   172.217.24.110

;; Query time: 254 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Thu Oct 20 14:28:26 2016
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 44

Routers that are problematic:

$ ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=0 ttl=43 time=275.333 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=43 time=167.851 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=43 time=160.801 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=43 time=193.566 ms
^C
--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 160.801/199.388/275.333/45.511 ms

$ ping google.com
ping: cannot resolve google.com: Unknown host

$ nslookup google.com
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

$ dig google.com

; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> google.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached

You have statically set network adapter settings (IP address, DNS server, etc.) and you are moving between different networks.  Keep in mind, though many networks are similar in configuration, no network is exactly alike.

There are many different reasons why you experienced what you did, and it would be impossible without actually looking at your individual configuration, but suffice to say the static setup you had working in one network wasn't exactly right for the other network and may have been good enough for the third network, and so on.

This is why it's good (among other reasons like IP address conflicts), when going between various networks, to obtain the network settings via DHCP.  This way, there can be no conflicts.


Can I Open Port 443 on my MacMini without using the Server App? I'm using an AT&T router where I have port 443 open. I did a port scan and it does not show 443 open. I have the firewall open with all the default options listed that Allow incoming connections.

I'm using Let's Encrypt on my development MacMini server for my SSL certificates. I'm having a problem with accessing my website. I contacted the Let's Encrypt forum and was told that my problem was that port 443 was blocked.

This is the only option that I found so far that claims to force open a port. This solution is three years old. I'm not familiar with netcat so I'm reluctant to use it without more understanding on how this works?

How to force open TCP 443 on my machine?

I've also read several solutions that use the Server app. I'm not using the Server app because I had problems with it a while ago. Is there another clean option to turn this port on that does not use it? I'll install it if I need to but I prefer another option if one is available.

UPDATE 03/13/2019: I just installed the latest version of macOS Server to try and open port 443. The vast majority of features that were available in older versions of the Server app have been removed so I need to find another option to get this done.

"443... connected. Unable to establish SSL connection" means that the problem isn't related to port 443 being blocked; your version of wget is probably stale (see this StackOverflow post.)

Try curl instead: curl https://mydomain.com

(Note: the "https://" part is important!)


How can I temporarily turn off the Apple watch display? The display on the Apple Watch tends to turn on and off too often.  This is distracting especially in darker environments.

This rapid turn on -then- turn off of the display that occurs when

"talking with one's hands"
general household chores (emptying the dishwasher)
moving around in a theatre (eating/drinking)

This is distracting to the listener or the speaker (wearer of the watch).

Yes, I can immediately dim the watch by covering it, but any accelerometer  motion will reactivate the display.

Preferred experience

Ideally I would like to cover the watch and have it go dark for either a custom time period, or until the screen is tapped.

Documentation or control over the actions that cause the display to light would be beneficial

I think Apple's new Theater mode is what you are looking for. It's now available as of WatchOS 3.2.


Lost MacBook's last detected location I received notification that Find iPhone's remote erase had been started on my lost MacBook on a specific time. I suppose someone brought it online, Apple detected it and initialized the remote wipe request I had set up. Somehow It's not showing the last location, which is weird to me. Any idea why last location is not shown?

I think I found the answer. Although Find iPhone app doesn't give any clue, this feature on www.icloud.com does explain it: "The location of this Mac won't be updated because it has been erased.". Looks like the behaviour is part of the product design, rationale behind the design is unclear though.


My computer logs out and sleeps after two or three songs play on itunes Recently I did some updating on my computer just to make the display better, change sleep length (extended, not shortened), and to add hot corners.

Well, now when we play up to two or three songs on iTunes, the computer logs the user out with no warning. I've gone to different timing settings, but I can't seem to find the problem.

Anyone know how to help?

Open System Preferences→Security & Privacy, unlock the padlock if it's locked, and then in the Privacy pane click on the Advanced... button. See if you've enabled "Log out after [x] minutes of inactivity".


Connect to OSX via AFP over WAN with a Time Capsule on network? I have a Time Capsule set up on my LAN to handle backups between my mom's computer and my computer.

Before we had the Time Capsule, I could connect remotely to a MacBook Pro that I set up as a server through the AFP protocol easily. Instead of having to worry about using the right IP, I used No-IP Dynamic Updater to assign me a DNS name that I can remember.

Since the Time Capsule was installed, however, I can no longer AFP into my mac. Instead, running the following command (hostname hidden):

afp://****

Will allow me to use AFP with the Time Capsule, and allows me to log in from there and view the storage disk on the capsule.

Is there someway to connect to my mac from outside my LAN, but specify what device I want to connect to inside my LAN? Something like:

afp://****:10.0.1.100

Where 10.0.1.100 is the LAN address of my MBP server?

You could forward port 548 to your MBP server to get back the old behavior of allowing afp://**** to connect to your MBP server instead of your Time Capsule.  This would definitely make your Time Capsule AFP server inaccessible from the Internet and might (but I would hope not) make it inaccessible from your LAN.  Try it and see.  Here is one of many web pages describing how to set up port forwarding.

You can pick any public port you want > 1024.  I'll pick 9898 for this example.  Following the instructions on the linked page, in step 4 set up port forwarding like this:

Description: AFP access to MBP
Public UDP Ports: 9898
Public TCP Ports 9898
Private IP Address: the LAN address of your server, e.g. 10.0.1.100
Private UDP Ports: 548
Private TCP Ports: 548

Then you can access your server from the internet using afp://hostname:9898


selenium IDE 101 - how to visit any page I've used the SeleniumIDE extensively on Linux (Ubuntu) a while ago, now I'm trying to get it working on a Mac (OSX v10.9) in the Firefox browser.
I have it installed but it doesn't seem to be interacting with the browser.  When I try and record scripts, nothing happens.  If I manually add a test case for open('http://www.google.com') I get

[info] Executing: |open('http://www.google.com') | | |
[error] Unknown command: 'open('http://www.google.com')'

See this screenshot for more background:

The answer was that you put the Base URL up top, e.g. http://www.google.com and then you put the rest of the url, e.g. /images in the 'Target' field.

If you only want to go to the base page of the site (e.g. "http://www.google.com") you just use that for the BaseURL and then use in the 'Command' line use 'open' with no parameters) but keep the Target field blank.


Where should a command line tool store cache files in OS X? /var/cache is missing, ~/Library/Caches seems to be for full-fledged applications rather than command line tools, tools I've seen in the wild do horrible things (like use the user's home directory). Where is the correct - or at least predictable and reliable - location?

It depends on the type of data being cached - is it per user or system wide?

If per user, there's nothing wrong with using a dot-prefixed directory in the user's home directory (that's what it's for, after all, and very much the UNIX way) or perhaps /tmp/<username> if the data is not to be persisted. If it's system wide and meant to be persisted, check the hier manual page - /var/db/<appname> may be an option?

One other Mac OS-specific option is to use /var/folders (as documented in hier(7)). As mentioned, you can retrieve the user-specific temporary directory by calling getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR.


Combining multiple small DMGs into one large "virtual" DMG I created 50 small (1GB) encrypted DMGs using DiskUtility, and want to
combine them into a single 50GB "virtual" drive but still have 50 1G
images on disk. How? Why:

I want to encrypt my files (even the filenames) before backing
them up without using half my disk space just for encrypted files.
I use an external backup service that'll backup 1G disk images
(files), but not 50G files. The smaller the individual disk images,
the better.
I'm running Mac OS X 10.4.11, so I can't use cryptomfs (plus, I'm
not sure if cryptomfs creates several small files or one large
file). I have MacFUSE installed, so I tried installing cryptomfs anyway,
but it failed (both 1.0 DMG and 1.1 pkg file).
Since upgrading is neither free nor easy, I'd prefer to avoid it.
I've considered other options (eg, a directory of hard links to
the files with encrypted names for the hard links and relying on my
backup service for content encryption), but they get fairly complex.

If you are on Leopard (OS X 10.5 or above) you can do this by having one encrypted disk image containing all the files.

The dmg to create in DiskUtility is a sparsebundle. This creates one bundle that mounts as a disk to OSX but actually is a directory and all the files in it are of a much smaller size. In Finder select the sparsesbundle and then Show Package Contents.

I just created a sparsebundle of capacity 1TB and copyied a 400GB vieo file onto it. The structure of the bindle had many files none of which were above 9MB

The band size can be controlled see hdiutil. But I have not done or worked out how do do this.


No New Mail Sound 10.6.7 This issue has been going on and off for years.  I still don't consistently get the new mail sound when new mail arrives.

Sometimes it happens, most of the time, never.

10.6.7

Since you mention this has been going on for years, this is likely related to a longstanding bug in Mail.app and fetching mail with IMAP. Try the instructions here and see if it helps:

  In Mail, open Preferences and go to
  Accounts » Advanced in all your mail
  accounts and turn off the Use IDLE
  command feature. Next, go to the
  General section of Preferences, and
  set Check for New Mail to Every minute
  -- you can set a longer interval if you want, so long as you don't set it
  to Manual.

  Now your mail alerts should play for
  every incoming message, but you will
  see your messages up to one minute
  later than you would with the IDLE
  mechanism.


looking for external speaker to amplify my Macbook pro 13" mid 2012 I'm looking for speakers, but every site I go to only refers to the internal speakers. Are there any speakers that can be attached with a USB?

Yes. Apple hardware and macOS support USB audio out of the box. Plug in amplified or non-amplified devices that fit your room and sound preference and enjoy. USB is digital out so may be better than analog audio out connectors or Bluetooth or AirPlay sounds.
Search for USB Computer Speakers online. If you are totally lost, start with a brand like Logitech and buy from them direct if you’re worried about return policies, counterfeit goods or incompatibility.

https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-S150-Speakers-Digital-Sound/dp/B000ZH98LU


How to force Mac (Yosemite) to use USB Bluetooth instead of internal? I'm on an older Mac Pro, and I bought the ASUS USB-BT400 so that I can use Yosemite's Handoff feature. The problem is, I don't know how to disable the internal Bluetooth and force my machine to use the USB Bluetooth instead. I searched around but didn't find anything that worked.

To force your system to use an external Bluetooth controller instead of the internal one, open Terminal and type:

sudo nvram bluetoothHostControllerSwitchBehavior=always

then reboot. To revert to the default OS X behavior, type:

sudo nvram -d bluetoothHostControllerSwitchBehavior

You may need to turn off (or un-pair) Bluetooth accessories that are currently using your internal Bluetooth controller, as they can prevent the dongle from being detected by the Continuity Activation Tool.


Link iPhones contact list to GMail app instead of native mail app? I am using the gmail app for my emails, but I want to merge my extensive list of contacts in my phone book to my gmail app. Is there a way to do this?

Ultimately, it would be great if when you tapped an email in the contact list it opened in the GMail app, rather then the iphones native mail app, but Im guessing thats not possible.

Nope, you can not change the default Mail Client. However, you can make Google the default directory for your contacts. With iOS7 just login with your Gmail account in Settings -> Mail, Calendar, Contacts. After this scroll down and search for the column "Contacts" there you should the default account to your gmail account. If you can’t find the last one, you probably have only one account with contact sync capabilities.


How can I map the F4 key's default functionality to trigger a key sequence rather than open Launchpad? (Mountain Lion) I will use the touchpad gesture to open Launchpad. I don't use Launchpad much.

I'd like to map the F4-key (which opens Launchpad) to send the Keystroke Command + Ctrl + Shift + 4 so I can use the OSX screenshot feature with it.

BetterTouchTool does not allow me to do it because it does not recognize when I press this key. I can get BTT to recognize F4 (i.e. hold fn then press F4) but this is not ideal: I need the top row to mostly function the way they already do while also not requiring pressing fn to take a screenshot.

This is more or less exactly what I wanted.

http://kevingessner.com/software/functionflip/

Works perfectly and no BTT is needed for setting the keyboard shortcut (Do it through Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts in System Prefs)


Finder.app won't open after I edited Info.plist I'm on macOS Mojave 10.14.3. I wanted to remove the Finder.app from the CMD+TAB, so I followed this tutorial and this solution to be able to edit the Info.plist file.

The steps I followed were:

Reboot into Recovery Mode
Run csrutil disable
Reboot into normal mode
Edit Info.plist as root
Run codesign -fs - /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/ as root
Reboot into Recovery Mode
Run csrutil enable
Reboot into normal mode

After those 8 steps, I expected to get my system working normally, but without Finder.app showing up in the CMD+TAB. Instead, I got a system where I can't open Finder.app at all. When I try to open it, it will say "The application 'Finder.app' can't be opened."

So I decided to revert it, I did all the steps like before, but now I removed the additional lines from Info.plist. It didn't work, Finder.app still won't open, even after I changed Info.plist to the original state.

What can I do?

I would boot to internet recovery or another OS and reinstall finder by reinstalling the OS. That leaves all your apps and files intact and fixes whatever problems finder had.

I have fast network, usually have both the internet recovery image and the OS cached on my Mac mini that runs caching server (or Mojave cache service), so the operation takes 5 minutes instead of 25 that is typical on fast networks.


'which' location different from executable location I'm trying to install ruby/rubygems on the latest version of 10.6. I used MacPorts to install ruby after noticing that my version was old. ruby was installed into /opt/local/bin.

I changed .bash_profile and added:

export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH

When I echo $PATH, I get:

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

So when I type which ruby I get:

/opt/local/bin/ruby

Which works correctly. However, when I type which gem I get:

/opt/local/bin/gem

When using gem -environment I get (gem is in the above directory):

-bash: /usr/bin/gem: No such file or directory

I'm completely open to uninstalling everything and starting over if necessary. I'm just not sure why it's still trying to grab it from /usr/bin!

The default gem is a function and they get called before $PATH and also before the command hash.

Try playing with hash (or clearing it with hash -r ) to see if your path isn't getting a say in which gem to call.

type gem will confirm whether yur gem is really a function...


List view in Finder is broken My Finder is broken (OS X 10.9.5). Icon view works fine, but List, Columns, and Cover Flow do not work at all.

When I switch to "List View" (cmd+2), the contents panel of the Finder window does not update. However, if I click around randomly the files will still open. So it is only a problem with the display.

I can revert to Icon View (cmd+1) and it will start working immediately. Related, my desktop icons have the same problem. I can't select icons on my desktop by dragging my mouse, but they are clickable. Relaunching Finder will fix this, but usually stops working very quickly.

I have tried deleting ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist, but it did not help.

What else can I try?

Update:

1) Everything works fine on a Guest account

2) "View as Columns" works as well IF I disable "Show icons" in "View Options". When I check the "Show icons" box it stops working, when I uncheck the box the Finder window starts working again immediately.

Update 2:

My problem seems to be fixed. I applied several System Updates (through Software Update) which seems to have caused some settings to be reset. At that point, my problem was 99% fixed; List View worked but was still a bit buggy (some of the "expand" arrows were missing). I followed the instructions from this page (posted below for convenience), and now it seems to be 100% back to normal for now.

Delete icon cache files:

  $ sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.dock.iconcache -exec rm {} \;

  $ sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.iconservices -exec rm -rf {} \;

  $ sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store

I had this problem following upgrades to Google Drive on 29 July 2016.

To fix it I had to

Change Google Drive settings to 'Show sync file status items and right click menu' (in Advanced tab)
Restart the Finder.

Of course the setting no longer worked, but you can see if you are synced from the Google Drive menu in the top bar.


How do I burn my iTunes purchased TV shows onto a playable DVD? I have several tv shows that I purchased on iTunes for my daughters to watch. Rather than have them sit at the desk and watch on my laptop or on the iPad, I  would like to burn the episodes onto a DVD that will be playable in my DVD Player.

You probably won't like this answer, but as far as I know, there is no legal way to burn those episodes onto a DVD in a way that is playable in your DVD player. The problem is that the iTunes episodes are encrypted with Apple's FairPlay DRM and DVD players do not know how to decrypt them. In order to make the videos playable in a DVD player, you would need to circumvent the DRM and this is illegal in many countries.

As an alternative, you could buy an AppleTV and hook it up to your television. At $99, it is a relatively inexpensive investment, and it would allow you to stream your iTunes shows to your TV while keeping your laptop and iPad free for your own use.


iPhone/Google contacts switched from Exchange to CardDAV but one way sync only Having read the answers to Is it better for iOS to sync Gmail contacts using Exchange ActiveSync or the CardDAV protocol?, I switched off Contacts on the Exchange account, and set up CardDAV following Google instructions. Google is set as the default account on the iPhone. I have nearly instantaneous updates from the iPhone to Google. But I've waited a couple of hours and have yet to see a new contact and an update to an existing contact that I made via web Gmail show up on the phone. Is there a setting I'm missing? Per Google help, I already checked that the Account is on, and that I am using SSL. I'm on iOS 6.0.

Well, seven hours later I have the updates on the phone. Is this the norm?

My understanding is that CardDAV does not push changes from server to clients, but rather requires that clients poll the server. Perhaps you have polling turned off?

Launch Settings.
Select Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
Select Fetch New Data.
Under the Fetch heading, is Manually selected? If so, then your phone is not automatically checking for updates.
Select Advanced.
Find your Google CardDAV account in this list. Is it set to Fetch or Manual? If the latter, then your phone is not automatically checking for updates.


How to force ejection of a DVD I have a DVD I was trying to rip, and handbrake froze up when scanning it.  I tried to eject the DVD by dragging and dropping it to the trash, which trashed the icon, but didn't eject the DVD.  I then forced Handbrake to quit, but without an icon on my desktop to select, how can I eject the DVD?

Reboot the computer while holding down the mouse button - if there's no physical issue preventing ejection, the disc will be ejected.

You can of course use terminal to try to force an eject, but this requires a little knowledge of text commands and is covered here:

Is there a Terminal command that will force open the DVD tray?


ss (netstat alternative) for OS X How do I install ss on OS X? I couldn't find the iproute package in homebrew.

  Red Hat recommends ss over netstat in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.
   ss is provided by the iproute package.

Red Hat Docs

ss is not ported to macos right now as far as I now. (It is also not inclided https://github.com/brona/iproute2mac -> see issue #20 for details: https://github.com/brona/iproute2mac/issues/20)
But I think you can still use netstat on macOS or what feature is missing there ?


Disconnecting charger while Macbook Pro Retina is still turned on Is it safe to disconnect (unplug the charger from) my Macbook Pro Retina 13" while the computer is turned on and running?

Absolutely it is safe.

It has been designed for that, it does not have a locked in plug, but a magnetically coupled plug for that reason.

I have done that on purpose or by accident (tripping over the cable) many times without problems.


Point iTunes to restored content after PC crash After my PC died I have started to restore my data from backup.  I have backed up the entire iTunes folder and successfully restored it.  I do not put my content in the standard location...I do not put it on the Windows drive for example.  Now that I have reinstalled iTunes, how do I tell it to use the content I restored?  Right now it just shows all my music as existing on the cloud.

I'm on Windows 7 64-bit and I have the latest version of iTunes.  I do not have iTunes match.

Thanks!

You can change the default location for the main mp3 file storage for iTunes, but not [easily] the location of the database files.

It is far simpler in the long term to leave the database in its default location -
C:\Users\[your name]\Music\iTunes
This is also a folder you should recover from your old machine & transfer to the new one, otherwise you will have all the music but none of the playlists, play counts etc etc. & will have to re-import all your existing tunes.

You can, however, easily change the main 'content' storage location.

Go to Edit menu > preferences > Advanced

The first section is 'iTunes Media Folder Location' with a file path beneath [presumably currently set to the default location mentioned above] & a Change… button to the right. This will allow you to redirect to your non-standard location.

If you still have the original database successfully recovered from your old machine, then to save a lot of additional effort, make sure you put your content folder in "the same place" as it used to be on the old machine, i.e., if it was in D:\iTunes remote folder then put it in the same place again, otherwise it will lose the connection to your existing tunes & again have to be rebuilt.


Disadvantages of encrypting SSD disk at time of disposing of computer vs. at first use? I know that one can encrypt a whole disk using File Vault when the disk is first used and loaded with user data.
Wondering whether encrypting at time of disk disposal would be equality effective?

No, it won't be as effective. Encrypting before writing anything (/anything important) is the best (most secure) option, but if you miss the opportunity to do that there are still methods better than retroactive encryption.
(Note: this is mostly inapplicable to the built-in SSD in newer Macs with the T2 chip or "Apple Silicon" CPUs, since they automatically encrypt the data volume, with an encryption key protected by the Secure Enclave. Turning on FileVault on these models doesn't encrypt the volume, since it already is encrypted -- it encrypts the encryption key. However, any data stored on other volumes or other SSDs is not protected by this, so the following discussion does apply.)
When you retroactively encrypt a drive, what you're basically doing is overwriting the old (unencrypted) data with an encrypted version. Overwriting the whole disk with zeros or random data is better for several reasons:

Encrypted data might be decryptable if the key/password leaks, is guessable, accidentally gets stored somewhere else, etc. Zeroes and random data cannot be decrypted because they don't contain any (relevant) information. Encrypting sounds like it's providing some extra level of protection, but this is illusory.
Depending on how the encrypt procedure works, it might not bother to encrypt "unused" portions of the disk -- but they might still contain leftover copies of old files (Ezekiel Elin mentioned this in a comment). I don't know exactly how macOS' current implementation works, but I know that overwriting the whole drive with zeroes/random data doesn't have this problem (well... with a caveat I'll get to).
macOS' volume encryption works at the volume level, and doesn't encrypt parts of the disk outside of your data volume. And there are a few types of info that may be stored outside of that.

There's also a problem that even overwriting with zeroes or random data doesn't solve: the SSD itself doesn't expose all of its storage space to the computer, so if you erase/overwrite "everything" from the computer... you haven't actually erased/overwritten everything. Reading the hidden residual data generally involves disassembling the SSD and bypassing its controller to read from the raw chips, so it's not something people are likely to do unless they think there's something of serious value on your SSD, so you probably don't have to worry about this. See my answer here and the links in it for the gory technical details. Long story short, overwriting the entire exposed space twice is generally -- but not necessarily -- enough to overwrite all the actual data.
So, in summary: if there's something of really high value on the drive, either don't ever write it unencrypted in the first place, or physically destroy the drive before disposing of it. For reasonable-level sensitive data (e.g. your banking info), overwrite twice with zeroes and/or random data before selling/donating/whatever.


iCloud **Documents and Data** discontinued on iOS 9/Yosemite? I haven't been able to find a definite answer to this question.

I've upgraded my iOS devices to v9.0 and in both of them iOS "Documents and Data" is nowhere to be found. I got the prompt to upgrade to iCloud Drive, which I didn't do (*). When I installed iOS 8, I also didn't update and things worked as they did before.

Now I seem to be stuck in a weird limbo as Documents don't sync via iCloud but I haven't been able to find any definite answer on whether this is by design (I find it quite surprising as it's a bit of nowhere land). Or a weird iOS 9 bug.

Also, on the Mac/OSX front, is there any confirmation on whether Yosemite/El Capitán onlysupport iCloud Drive too?

(*): I have a work Mac running Mavericks that I can't upgrade to Yosemite, and a Mac Mini on Snow Leopard that I have the feeling won't be able to run Yosemite with anything resembling reasonable performance.

Short answer is that your intuition is correct: in iOS 9 and Yosemite (or later), you have the choice between iCloud Drive or no iCloud at all.

The reason for this is that "Documents & Data" syncing was re-written using the new CloudKit in iOS 8 and OS X 10.10, and renamed "iCloud Drive".

iOS 8 did remain backwards compatible with old-iCloud if you chose not to upgrade to iCloud Drive. One weird exception to this was the iPhone 6 and 6+. These devices did not have this compatibility mode, so it was iCloud Drive or nothing.

OS X Yosemite (10.10) also does not have the same compatibility mode though, so unless iCloud Drive was enabled, there is no document syncing. The same goes for OS X El Capitan (10.11).

I expect that the iOS 8 compatibility was only included to fill the gap between the time iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite shipped, so I cannot imagine that iOS 9 would be compatible with the old-iCloud in any way.

Also note that "iCloud" is a collection of different technologies under the surface, so things like Contacts and Calendar may be able to sync without iCloud Drive enabled on all devices, but most other apps will need it enabled.


Airdrop not working on my macbook pro Airdrop is not working on my macbook pro (early 2015, 13-inch, 8G, Mojave 10.14.6). To be more specific:

My macbook can see and send files to my iphone and ipad, but not vice versa. My iphone and ipad cannot see my macbook in the Airdrop available devices.
If I log out of my Apple ID, the airdrop function is back to normal, i.e. the macbook and iphone can see each other in Airdrop, and send files. However, as soon as I log in my Apple ID, the macbook just disappears from the Airdrop list, and no other device can find it anymore.
Other LAN-related function seems not working either. For example, if I turn on ''File Sharing'' in System Preferences, my other macbook cannot see it in ``Network'' of Finder.

I have tried:

Rebooting the macbook with or without Apple ID signed in.
Turning on and off ``file sharing'' in System Preferences.
Resetting PRAM with option+cmd+P+R while booting.
Turning on and off the ``firewall'' function in Security & Privacy, System Preferences.
Turning on and off wifi and bluetooth, allowing my device to be found by everyone/contacts/no one, etc.

I want to note again, that if I log out of my Apple ID, the airdrop function is back to normal completely. My macbook can be found and marked as a device of nobody's, and every function is working. However, as soon as I log into my Apple ID and authorise the macbook, it just disappears from the Airdrop list, and cannot be found by my ipad, iphone and other macbook anymore.
What on earth is wrong?? Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Well, feel free to laugh at me. The above problem is caused by accidentally blocking my own Apple ID in imassages. Checked the block list of this app and removed my own Apple ID, and everything was back to normal.
For those having similar problems, I hope this question may help you out.
PS: My LAN-related functions are still not working. I am still trying to figure things out.


How does Apple Music prevent you from keeping offline music after cancelling your plan? Apple Music allows you to download an unlimited number of songs onto your phone or computer and then listen to them while not connected to the internet. What prevents someone from subscribing to Apple Music, downloading a large number of songs, and then stopping their subscription?

I assume that when you try to play a song, even one that is downloaded, the software (iTunes or the iOS Music app) checks your account status to ensure you are still an Apple Music subscriber. But what if you keep the device off of the internet? Apple would have no way of knowing if you are still a subscriber or not.

The only thing I can think of is that the songs have some sort of timestamp on them tracking when the service last verified your account; and that they will stop working after some period of time if it is not verified again. If this is how it is done, what is that time period? How long can you go without connecting to the internet while listening to a song downloaded from Apple Music?

They store the tracks in a different location than normal music and validate your subscription periodically when you play the files.

I believe the check in are quite rare as the system only promopts to renew tokens if you don’t otherwise connect regularly. I’ve seen it maybe three times a year lately. Even being offline a month, the token isn’t expiring in my experience.

This system seems designed to make it easy to re-up and give people latitude and runway in the mean time rather than to prevent any and all short term gaps. Clearly, if you’re online when you cancel, music would and should expire the music, but I’m not seeing that happen aggressively when you still pay for the service in practice or it lapses at the end of a subscription period.