BOOTCAMP no longer listed as Device in Finder, but can boot into it on startup How can I get BOOTCAMP to be listed under Devices in Finder so that I can go into it and view the files there?

I can boot into BOOTCAMP as normal on startup but in OS X, Finder does not list BOOTCAMP.

It used to in OS X versions previous to OS X El Capitan, but I'm not sure exactly when it stopped showing and whether or not it's the OS X El Capitan upgrade or something else that caused the issue.

Here is the screenshot showing that BOOTCAMP is not listed in Finder:

Disk Utility shows the Macintosh HD and BOOTCAMP partitions, but only lists Macintosh HD on the left beneath the overall drive (Samsung 840 Pro SSD). Here is a screenshot showing this:

sudo frisk /dev/disk0 command issued in the Terminal gives the following:

Roberts-MacBook-Pro:Volumes robdavishome$ sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 62260/255/63 [1000215216 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
 2: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 -  640270848] HFS+
 3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 640684032 -    1269536] Darwin Boot
*4: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 641953792 -  358260736] HPFS/QNX/AUX

Here is the output from sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0:

Roberts-MacBook-Pro:Volumes robdavishome$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0
Password:
gpt show: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         MBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640   640270848      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   640680488        3544
   640684032     1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   641953568         224
   641953792   358260736      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  1000214528         655
  1000215183          32         Sec GPT table
  1000215215           1         Sec GPT header

I don't have gdisk installed.

My Setup

MacBookPro mid 2010 17"
Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11.5
Samsung SSD 840 Pro
Windows 10 Pro 64bit (in-place Microsoft standard upgrade from Windows 7 Pro 64bit)
I adjusted the size of the partitions using Camptune X when I had Yosemite
My adjustment was to create some unpartitioned space at the end of the SSD for over provisioning (to apparently enhance the life and performance of the SSD). I reduced the size of the Mac OS partition and shifted the Windows partition to take up the space created by the shrinking of the Mac OS partition, so that some unpartitioned space was left at the end.

Research so far

I considered following the answer to the problem here: bootcamp partition not showing up in El Capitan but the answer appeared to be very specific to the question and I was not confident that I could safely adapt this to my scenario.
Also looked at: Boot Camp disappeared after El Capitan update also Bootcamp not showing in Devices & Can't transfer files between and Resized bootcamp. MBR updated. GPT is not. Understanding and fixing but did not follow it for same reason about specifics.

Please can I have advice on how to get BOOTCAMP to be shown in Finder.

Solved - the answer is that Windows was in a hibernate state. I was able to take Windows out of this state and now BOOTCAMP appears. I will accept my own answer when I am allowed to. More details of solution below.

I downloaded a trial of Paragon Disk Manager which showed the BOOTCAMP partition and provided an option to mount it. On attempting to mount, a dialogue popped up saying that the Windows operating system was in hibernate state and that it could not be mounted by accessing the partition by read-only operations; some write options would be required. I think an option was provided to proceed, but instead I decided to boot into Windows from start up as usual and attempt to fully and properly shut it down (as this is the least risky approach; better to get Windows to sort itself out regarding fully shut down and out of hibernate mode rather than from externally (i.e via an app in MacOS). There were some routine Windows updates ran but I don't think this is relevant. So after having shut Windows down. I started up into MacOS and can now see BOOTCAMP in finder. I don't work for Paragon or have any financial or otherwise interest in them, but the tool served a good purpose in that I could attempt to mount the partition which lead me to the solution.

I've seen something like this with dual-boot Windows / Ubuntu (Linux) systems whereby Ubuntu warns of same message about Windows being in a hibernate state when attempting to mount the Windows partition. So from that I conclude that the issue is not rare (and fortunately remediable). Ubuntu warns that attempting to mount is risky as it means it would have to modify the partition in order to mount it. Again it's therefore better to boot into Windows and fully shut it down. Not really sure why Windows would ever be hibernate mode when shut down though, but a "power cycle" seemed to get it out of this mode and into a fully shut down state.

So that's solved. However as a separate perhaps unrelated point I am concerned about the gpt show: /dev/disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0 message seen when running sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0 as stated above. Any tips would be welcome, but my machine functions perfectly fine so this does not appear to affect it but I'd like to resolve this message anyway - research so far doesn't give a definitive answer it seems, I may write another question.


How to edit videos with coustom musics on iPad? I bought iPad Pro to replace my MacBook in some light works.
For personal interest I produce small (2-3min) videos, but on iPad there is no way I can add coustom musics I find on internet (even though musics are non copyrighted).
Also it don’t let me use musics from my Apple Music account.

Is there any soulution to this issue?
How other people use iPads for video production. I want to do it fully on iPad and don’t want download and sync music from MacBook to use on iPad.

You can add music from iCloud Drive. The easiest way to save music in iCloud Drive is to use Workflow app, where you can use a workflow which downloads file from the URL.


My 2,5 year old Macbook Pro wakes from sleep every other hour after installing Mavericks Okay so, I own a 2,5 year old (Early 2011) Macbook Pro which works just fine. After the release of Mavericks I decided to reinstall it from scratch since I had been upgrading it step-by-step since Snow Leopard and it would feel good to reinstall it from scratch.

Well, I did that a while back ago, and only yesterday did I remember that I had forgotten to install an IRC client. So, I installed Limechat which is what I normally use. Well, today at work, I realized that my computer at home was logging in to IRC every other hour just to get a ping timeout 3 minutes later. Hm, that's weird.

So, when I come home I find this every other hour in /var/log/system.log (example has been cut for brevity):

Nov  5 14:30:50 pioneer kernel[0]: AirPort_Brcm43xx::powerChange: System Wake - Full Wake/ Dark Wake / Maintenance wake
Nov  5 14:30:50 pioneer kernel[0]: Previous Sleep Cause: 5
Nov  5 14:30:50 pioneer WindowServer[126]: _CGXHWCaptureWindowList: No capable active display found.
Nov  5 14:30:50 pioneer kernel[0]: wlEvent: en1 en1 Link DOWN virtIf = 0
Nov  5 14:30:50 pioneer kernel[0]: AirPort: Link Down on en1. Reason 8 (Disassociated because station leaving).
Nov  5 14:30:50 pioneer UserEventAgent[11]: Captive: CNPluginHandler en1: Inactive
...

At first I thought it was this new (?) feature called Power Nap, but it turns out that my Mac doesn't support that. So I figure it must either be something on my LAN that is waking it up through the wake-on-LAN mechanism, or something that runs locally on my Mac.

What do you guys think it could be?

Possibly you have a "Wake for network access" on in Power Saver preferences. This is a feature that works if you use "Find My Mac" feature with iCloud. Check that.


How to specify DNS on iOS when connected via VPN? I have set up a VPN connection using my FritzBox 6330. This works great on my Macbook Air if I specify a DNS server (192.168.178.1 - which is the address of my FritzBox) in the network settings of the VPN.

On iOS however there is no such entry field, hence no names can  be resolved. The VPN itself works. I can connect to various IP addresses.

The DNS settings over a VPN connection should be forced by the VPN server. This makes sure DNS queries get routed securely over the VPN, and allows you to see private services on the intranet that may not be exposed as public DNS records.

It's possible the VPN server may not be telling iOS what DNS server to use, something that could be solved by a configuration change in the VPN server?


Cannot create Apple ID either from iOS of website - An unknown error has occurred I'm trying to create an Apple ID from a used iPhone 5 that I have purchased but it's failing.

After failing on the iPhone I tried to create one from the website but I'm always getting an "An unknown error has occurred"

No clue on how to solve it.

Try using a different network to access the website. Sometimes changing networks can cause that issue. If you arent at liberty to change networks then restarting your device can help.


Cannot use existng Time Machine Backup on OS X Server after changing password I'm backing up to a drive attached to an OS X Server via the Time Machine backup service. Recently I changed my password on OS X Server I had been authenticating with for the backup.

So, I had to remove the old drive and connect to the server backup location again, authenticating with my new password. However, it doesn't appear the my laptop is recognizing there is an existing backup because it shows "Latest backup: None". in Time Machine preferences after selecting the backup disk.

I don't want to start my backups over. Is there anyway I can continue backing up to my existing server backup?

For me, I had to delete the old password from the login / system key chain before it would let me connect again to my server.

Also, Time Machine won't show you the old backups until after it makes the first new backup, so you might need to clear the old password and then set up the destination again and then wait for the backup to finish.

At that point, the interface should show the old range. If it doesn't inherit the old backups, you have options, but there are some steps needed to get there first possibly.


Preventing iOS devices from sleeping Is there any straight forward way of preventing an iOS device from sleeping?

The only way I found so far is to open the "Music" app and start playing (and muting the volume if I don't really want to listen to anything), but this feels like a hack, and I'm not sure if it works when the device is running on batteries.

Yes you can, go to:

Settings > General > Auto-Lock > Never


Wireless earphones connection I accidentally deleted my bluetooth speakers from my macbooks devices list. Now it will not show up again. How can I get it to show up again so I can reconnect it?

Hold the bluetooth pairing button on your bluetooth speakers for about 3-5 seconds (typically until some audible cue is played). Then you should be able to pair it with your MacBook again in bluetooth preferences.


Developer not identified error when logging in Oracle Instantclient on Catalina I have the Oracle Instantclient installed (PHP needs it for the oci extension to work), the install directory is /opt/instantclient_19_3 and every time I log in after a reboot I get the following error messages which read translate to

  libclntsh.dylib.18.1 cannot be opened because the developer can't be verified.
  libclntshcore.dylib.19.1 cannot be opened because the developer can't be verified

I had the same errors popup when using Terminal and Hyper but since I've allowed those apps full disk access everything works fine. Still, after logging in I get both error messages, so I assume something needs permissions but I can't figure it out. Any hints?

This should do it!

System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Developer Tools

White-listing one-by-one

While launching your non-verified app keep your System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> General open.
You can whitelist executables and libraries along the way. They will pop up in the general tab.

A signing tool

https://github.com/mitchellh/gon


Apple Pay with iPhone 6 Does Apple Pay require password unlock protection on the iPhone?  I know I am a party of one for feeling this way, but having to use the password unlock routine is just too cumbersome for the immediate use of my phone.  Please don't slam me over the virtues of it's use, or the idiocy of not using it. I just want to know if it can be eliminated to use Apple Pay.

You need to set a passcode to use Apple Pay. This is because every transaction with Apple Pay is authenticated by you by using your Touch ID or passcode.

You can't use touch ID without a passcode, so there is no way around this.


Moving Windows with Keyboard I often work with fullscreen apps and I'm moving between apps with three-finger right/left on touchpad or mostly doing that with the keyboard (⌃ + →/ ⌃ + ←).

And sometimes using ⌃ + ↑ to see which windows I have. I'm talking about this screen:

The problem is when I want to move or arrange windows, I need to use my mouse (or touchpad) and drag/drop the windows, which is non-efficient. I want to arrange them with keyboard (for example I have 2 VSCode full-screen windows and I want to move it to left).

Is there any way to move windows with keyboard. Any solution (native or open-source) is accepted.

PS 1: I'm using macOS High Sierra.

PS 2: Don't kill me if it's already answered. Just give me the link and question will deleted.(^_^)

Better Touch tool is definitely the way to go. When you create a new shortcut, in the actions there is a whole category called "Navigating Spaces / Desktops". Within it you can then pick an action such as 'move left a space', 'switch to desktop 3', etc. Check it out and let us know!


Can I use an Advanced Format drive in a Late 2010 13" MacBook Pro? I have the 13" Late 2010 MacBook Pro, and the 250 GB Hard Drive is way to small, so I'm looking to get a bigger one.

I wanted to upgrade to a 750 GB WD Scorpio Blue (WD7500BPVT), but I've read reviews that say the Mac will constantly park the head and that I need an HDAPM fix or downgrade to a lower EFI.

Is that because it's an Advanced Format (4k sectors) drive, or what causes this?

Is there a good way to know if a hard drive is fully compatible or not? Is there any 640 or 750 GB Drive that works in the MBP without having to install fixes or anything like that?

I read that the larger capacity (750Gb-1Tb) WD Scorpio Blue hard drives are physically a few mm's to thick to fit in MacBooks and MBP's. I cannot answer your question about the software compatibility but in regards to alternatives try this one, from OWC:

750 GB 7200rpm Seagate

Hope some part of this helps.


Enable URL rewriting (mod_rewrite) using .htaccess files in ~/Sites on Lion I cannot get mod_rewrite to work on Lion. I am developing a number of websites locally, in ~/Sites, using .htaccess files. I am on 10.7.3 and I have not touched any configuration files except for enabling PHP in httpd.conf (which works).

I know there are at least 2 questions about this here, but the solutions detailed there don't work. Nor do the other solutions that I have found on the web. I must be doing something stupid or overlooking something, or else I am probably going crazy, but it's not working.

I've tried all the usual stuff:

In /private/etc/apache2/users/<myusername>.conf, change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All and restart the web server
Additionally, in /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf, change any/all occurrence(s) of AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All -- I've tried it in all the various places where these directives are found
Try basically all possible combinations of values for the Options line above/below the AllowOverride line, including the values: Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks All

Always restarting the web server after such a change, of course. None of this works. All my clean urls simply do not work; I get a 404 - not found. Apache's error log just gives me "File does not exist:" errors. So it seems that the mod_rewrite module is not even working at all.

I made sure that mod_rewrite is loaded in the httpd.conf, which it is; it is so by default on a Lion install.

The crazy thing is that everything had been working perfectly -- until I migrated to a new machine running Lion. That is, I am ruling out an error in my .htaccess files because I know it worked before. Also, if it was an error in the .htaccess, I would get some kind of error message from the mod_rewrite module in Apache's error_log, at least telling me that the module itself is being called. But this is not happening.

Am I overlooking something? Do I have to change config settings someplace else? Do I have to change PHP's config? Why are the instructions (like How to activate mod_rewrite on MacOSX Lion and getting mod_rewrite to work on Mac OS X) working for other people but not for me? :)

I've wasted hours on this already. Any help would be VERY appreciated.

You should make sure that in your /etc/apache2/users/username.conf you have the following:

<Directory "/Users/username/Sites/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymlinks
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

The FollowSymlinks and AllowOverride are essential here. While you are hinting at both in your question, maybe you did not configure these correctly in tandem.

Make sure in httpd.conf /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf is included as well. It is by default.

After any modifications, restart the web server for the changes to take effect.

If you are still having problems, maybe there is a problem with your actual rewrite rules. Were you using them in a .htaccess context before as well? Note that in a .htaccess, the rewrite rule regex is matched against a request URI without the leading slash and always relative to the directory where the .htaccess resides, whereas in a global httpd.conf the URI must match with a leading slash and is relative to the web root. Because assumedly you have your .htaccess in a subdirectory of ~/Sites, your rewrite rules might behave different from when the .htaccess resides in the web root of a (virtual) host.

To debug mod_rewrite you can enable rewrite logging. You should enable that in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf:

RewriteLogLevel 3
RewriteLog /path/to/rewrite.log


Outlook 2011 Search Email How can search email in outlook?
my outlook seems didn't have search bar like in this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jbRYk_Cc0U

Here is screenshot of my Outlook:

As you can see, my outlook didn't have search bar on top right like in the video.

I use outlook 2011 version 14.0.0

You can show your search bar by right clicking your top bar (just at the text "Inbox") and select to show symbols, then also the search bar will appear.

(don't mind I'm using a swedish version of Outlook)


Leopard won't remember default programs Everytime I restart/boot my mac and open up a mail application (thunderbird) or a web browser (firefox or chrome) I am always asked if I want to make it the default. This happens even if I click yes.

So, for some reason osx isn't remembering what I set as the default mail or web browser. I have already repaired disk permissions which didn't fix the problem.

Any ideas?

The problem was I was using the root user. Creating a new user sorted everything out!


Good IMAP provider for the Mail app? I'd like to give the Mail app a real try, and see what it'd be like moving off of gmail. I have a small company (2 people) and I use its domain name to receive and send all my email. Currently, I use google apps to handle all the company's email (and calendars too, etc.)

iCloud seems like it might be an option, except that the web client won't support a domain name.

My short answer is any mail provider that supports IMAP except for Google or Apple is your solution.

Apple's mail app works best with standard IMAP services, so iCloud is out since you can't bring any email except @icloud.com / @me.com / @mac.com to that service.

Gmail is out due to the non-standard breakage that many are experiencing due to Apple/Google's combined inability to play well together.

So, you are left with pretty much any other implementation of IMAP mail that exists as a good technical option for you. I've had good luck with http://gandi.net IMAP email for years and have heard nothing but raves from people that use http://fastmail.fm but you could pretty much pick any company that meets your desire for price, support and features and find that IMAP is really IMAP on Apple's Mail.app for iOS and Mac and the only pain point is between gmail's IMAP/Exchange history assuming that you don't ever want to go back to larger pain that was POP3 access for mail.


How to check when Macbook was turned on first time? I need to know when some Macbook did run first time. Is it possible?

You can try following this command on Terminal:

ls -lt /private/var/db/ | tail -3

There will be shown a list of files, and you can refer to the oldest one in order to determine the date you are looking for.


Snow Leopard Tiles Overflow Finder window I have somewhat recently noticed that when I have have the Finder mode set to Tiles, that the tiles are too wide for the window. For example, it shows 7 across (in a row), whereas that makes it to where I have to scroll sideways in order to see all the documents. It, in effect makes it very difficult to use the Finder tile display. Is there a way I can fix this?

I can increase the Finder window, and it works then, but most often I don't want a massive window. I can also shrink the size of the tiles, but that starts to defeat the purpose of using the tiles.

Any suggestions are much appreciated. This isn't something I can't live with, but it would be really nice to get fixed.

You could use the Keep Arranged By setting:


Is it possible to assign custom Keyboard Shortcuts to Styles in Pages 5.0? In the previous Pages release there used to be the possibility to assign keyboard shortcuts to styles, although limited to the F1..F8 keys.

Apparently this feature is missing from the freshly installed Pages 5.0. Even worse, shortcuts do not apply to documents created with a template that defined the shortcuts link.

Is there any other way to assign keyboard shortcut to styles?

Cheers

====

Update: in current version (5.2) of Pages the feature has been re-introduced. I guess this closes the question.

I'm afraid there is no way to do it. Apple apparently removed the feature and it is also not possible to do it via the OS X shortcuts because there is no Menu entry for choosing styles in Pages.

Here's a discussion in the Apple Support Communities where people are pretty upset about this truly annoying feature regression: https://discussions.apple.com/message/23628178#23628178


how to remove ffmpeg ? and install again I want to remove ffmpeg. Typed to terminal

    ..........$ rm ffmpeg
    rm: ffmpeg: is a directory
    ..........$ ffmpeg
    ffmpeg version 2.1.git Copyright (c) 2000-2014 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Jan 28 2014 01:43:39 with Apple LLVM version 5.0 (clang-500.2.79)     (based on LLVM 3.3svn)
  configuration:
  libavutil      52. 63.100 / 52. 63.100
  libavcodec     55. 49.100 / 55. 49.100
  libavformat    55. 26.100 / 55. 26.100
  libavdevice    55.  5.102 / 55.  5.102
  libavfilter     4.  1.101 /  4.  1.101
  libswscale      2.  5.101 /  2.  5.101
  libswresample   0. 17.104 /  0. 17.104
  Hyper fast Audio and Video encoder
  usage: ffmpeg [options] [[infile options] -i infile]... {[outfile options]     outfile}...

Use -h to get full help or, even better, run 'man ffmpeg'

How do I remove and install it again?

I finally got this

.........$ which ffmpeg
/usr/local/bin/ffmpeg

Removal

If you installed with HomeBrew, the following Terminal.app command will perform the uninstall:

brew uninstall ffmpeg

If you are not sure how you installed ffmpeg, try running the command alone. The output will include a line containing the binary's location on your Mac:

ffmpeg

Look for output similar to:

ffmpeg version 1.2.4 Copyright (c) 2000-2013 the FFmpeg developers
  built on Nov 21 2013 11:36:01 with Apple LLVM version 5.0 (clang-500.2.79) (based on LLVM 3.3svn)
  configuration: --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/1.2.4 …

The key information in this extract is /usr/local/Cellar/ffmpeg/; this provides the location and that ffmpeg was installed as a HomeBrew Cellar.

If you do not see this output or it does not mention Cellar, please expand your question with the output you do see.

Alternative Installations

It is critical to know how you installed ffmpeg in order to know how to remove it. If may just be removing a folder, or it may be hunting around in /usr/local/ and /usr/bin folders for installed binaries.

Easy removal and upgrading is a strong argument for using a package manager for command line tools. Well supported package managers on the Mac include brew and MacPorts.

Re-installation

To install ffmpeg again, after removing the prior version, use brew to handle the entire process with:

brew install ffmpeg


Reinstall OS X (Yosemite) without Internet Connection I have got very slow internet connection. Last time, it took me 8 hours to download the Yosemite installation files.
Is there anyway to clone a clean copy of OS X to another drive?

I have tried rsync in the Terminal after Bootup + Option. The rsync command is not available

You can use a third-party utility like Carbon Copy Cloner or you can even use Disk Utility in OS X to create and restore OS X Images.  There is also hdiutil and asr if you want to work from the command line.  In a Terminal type man hdiutil and man asr to bring up their man pages.


Can having a MBP constantly charging damage the battery? I constantly have my MBP connected to its charger. I was curious though, can this affect the battery? If the battery is always at 100% and power is constantly being fed into it, does this damage the battery? Because right now my trackpad is bulging same with the lower body of the MBP and it's because of the battery expanding. So I was curious if the constant charge may have deformed the battery.

Thank you

Constant charging should not damage the battery in an extreme manner. Yes, you would get more life from it if you would let it always cycle between 40 and 80%, but the Mac is already cycling power in the high 90s even though it is not showing it to you. I have not been cautious at all with by 2009 Macbook Pro and I can still get around 2 hours of autonomy from it.

However, a bulging battery is a very different scenario. You should get that replaced as soon as possible. Several people (on forums) have reported that they got their batteries replaced for free, even in out of warranty computers. I would strongly suggest bringing your computer to an Apple store if you can.


MacOS 10.12 (Sierra) - Missing "SystemCACertificates.keychain" file I upgraded to Sierra today and it appears that the "SystemCACertificates.keychain" file no longer appears in Macintosh HD -> System -> Library - Keychains.

Anyone know a workaround for this?  I use a smart-card to login to many sites and I no longer have access to 50% of those sites now.  I think this might be the root cause.

This is currently being discussed here: Centrify LInk and it seems like many of us are in the same boat.  I found a link to the certificates:  SystemCACertificates from git site, and I am able to import it into my keychain.  However, the icon for the original SystemCACertificates is still in my keychain.  Also, I've notice that the most recent certificate in that SystemCACerts is CA30; my CAC card requires a CA32 certificate for validation.  Both of these issues may be to blame for why it doesn't work.  I'm planning on going back to 10.11.


How to find recently connected external disks? Bit of an emergency so any help really appreciated.

I am trying to work out whether or not the there is a way for me to see the details (specifically names) of external drives that have been connected to my machine in the last 6 weeks. Basically a hard drive with confidential information has gone missing and I would like to see if it was ever connected to my machine, does anyone know how or where I can find this information?

The following commands will show you all the external disks which were mounted upon your Mac during the last 7 days (unless you modified the conservation limit of system logs):

grep mounted /var/log/system.log
zgrep mounted /var/log/system.log.*

If you would like to increase your auditing possibility on this sort of event, here is the way (for the ones at ease with the Unix talk):

open the newsyslog configuration file:

/usr/bin/sudo vi /etc/newsyslog.conf

change the following line:

/var/log/system.log                     640  7     *    @T00  J

with:

/var/log/system.log                     640  30    *    @T00  J

(which means keep 30 versions of my old /var/log/syslog files)
save this modified /etc/newsyslog.conf.


Can't delete file even when using sudo Trying to delete the following file: ~/Library/Cookies/HSTS.plist, but MacOS won't let me do it even when using sudo.

I just switched to Mac (was using Ubuntu before) and I'm probably missing something obvious. I'm using MacOS Mojave 10.14.1.
What could be wrong?

sudo rm -f ~/Library/Cookies/HSTS.plist
rm: /Users/dima/Library/Cookies/HSTS.plist: Operation not permitted

I can't run ls on the folder files:

ls -la ~/Library/Cookies/
ls: : Operation not permitted

Output of ls -lde@ ~/Library/Cookies:

drwx------@ 11 dima  staff  352 Dec 11 23:03 /Users/dima/Library/Cookies
    com.apple.quarantine     -1

I found out I can delete the file using Finder, but not using command line. Why is that?

I've had this problem before, too.  I believe this is because of System Integrity Protection.  macOS protects some parts of the filesystem starting with El Capitan.

I think there are two ways to work around this.

Disable System Integrity Protection
Grant Full Disk Access to Terminal

For the first, restart your Mac, but hold down Command-R until you boot into Recovery Mode.  Then on the menu, select Utilities then type csrutil disable and press Enter.  Reboot your Mac and try your rm command again.  When you're done, I suggest you go back into Recovery Mode and re-enable it (csrutil enable).

For the second, open Security & Privacy in System Preferences.  Click the Privacy tab, select Full Disk Access and add Terminal to the list of applications.  You'll likely have to unlock that screen first by clicking the padlock at the lower left corner.

When I had this problem, I didn't know about the Full Disk Access trick and used the first option.  I know it works.  I just learned about the second option earlier today and I'm betting it does the trick, too.

Good luck!


What is the LED in Audio port for? I recently attempted to install Ubuntu on may Late 2013 13" Mac Book Pro with Retina Display.

Under Linux I noticed a Red LED light inside the audio port. It looks like Ubuntu doesn't know how to handle it and activated it.

I have absolutely no idea what is that for, but I would really like to know.

Also is there any way to control it? : )

It is part of the the digital audio out built into that port. You can plug in a toslink cable instead of a 1/8th inch analog cable to get digital audio from your Mac Book. (via)

might not work in Ubuntu


Ducking in iMovie 10 iMovie 10 makes ducking a lot less easy... I'm trying to make interview clips automatically reduce the music, but it's making life difficult for me. Can someone please tell me how to do audio ducking in iMovie 10? Thank you!

The audio ducking controls in iMovie 10 are in the adjustments bar under the sound tab. In the sound tab, there's a slider labeled "Lower volume of other clips" and this slider ranges from around 20% ducking to 100%.

More about this in this tutorial video I made: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EChiImCZbno


What is the technical difference between transferring from an old phone and an iCloud restore when setting up a new iPhone? Is there a difference in terms of how the iPhone's settings and state are compared between setting up a new iPhone using a transfer from a previous iPhone and setting up a new iPhone using an iCloud restore-from-backup?

In the past, I don’t think it mattered but in iOS 14 and watchOS 7 I am finding the iCloud backup to be the best option due to a bug or migration failure that I and several others here experienced.

Workout sync from Watch to iPhone is unreliable since iOS 14 update
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211865

Apple says it’s fine to do an encrypted backup to a computer, and that will work, but the unpairing of the watch and validating the backup to iCloud was what helped me restore all my data. If you are about to transfer device to device, I recommend unpairing your watch and checking the date of the iCloud backup if you can.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204184

It’s not entirely clear if Apple does some cleaning once the data is in iCloud or if the mechanics of the restore step and the repairing step re-runs a data migration step that fills in the gaps. Presumably, that would also run if you transferred device to device but for some reason Apple only mentions computer and iCloud setup in the support articles and when I talked with support and engineering about my issue before these articles were published.
So far, iCloud has bailed me out three times ( shelf and two friends) and we did make a computer backup, but didn’t try them first. I set up two fast Macs with content caching that saves/serves iCloud data so iCloud restored fly for me and happen faster than a new backup to the same computers over USB. I could see the opposite direction  wing much faster for other setups, so my solution might not be optimal for all, but it works well for me.
I would not rely on direct migration to fix this and would do what Apple says, on the original device if possible and work with Apple support if you fail to fix it after one go.


How can I reset a Mac's password from Single User Mode? My sister bought a used MacBook about 6 months ago and she has lost her password.

Here is the procedure I tried to use to reset the password:

Boot into single user mode (press Command-S at power on)
Type fsck -fy
Type mount -uw /
Type launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist
Type dscl . -passwd /Users/username password, replacing username with the targeted user and password with the desired password.
Reboot

But when I try the step 4, it says launch_msg(): Socket is not connected.

I would like to know what command to enter in the single user mode to know what version the Macbook is running and the right command to reset the password. Thank you.

Try loading com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist instead.

Hold command-S on startup.
Run mount -uw /. (fsck -fy is not necessary.)
In 10.7 and later, run:

 launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.opendirectoryd.plist

or in 10.6 and earlier:

launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist

Run passwd username and reset the password.
Run reboot.

A second way to reset the login password of an account is to use Reset Password.app from the recovery partition:

Hold command-R on startup.
Open Terminal from the Utilities menu.
Run resetpassword, which opens the Reset Password application.
Select the volume and account and reset the password.

A third way is to create a new admin account:

Hold command-S on startup.
Run mount -uw /.
Run rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone.
Run reboot.
Go through the steps of creating a new account.
Reset the password of the old account from the Users & Groups preference pane.

None of these options resets the password of the login keychain.

If FileVault 2 is enabled, you have to enter a password to start up in single user mode, and you can't use Reset Password.app to reset the password of an account.


Open PDF using Google Chrome I like the fact that I can use Google's built in PDF viewer instead of a separate application (Adobe Acrobat). Normally I would open a Finder Window with the PDF and drag it to a tab on Google Chrome but this process becomes two steps if the PDF is to be downloaded first.

I tried changing the default application for PDF using "Get Info" > "Open with", but it does not seem to work properly. I still have to drag a file to a Chrome Tab. I would like to ideally double click to open as well as drag to the Chrome icon in the dock.

Make sure you click the "Change All" checkbox in the Get Info window.

(Credit for this answer goes to Lyken. There was just no sense in letting this question masquerade as unanswered any longer.)


Iphone 5 : Recording video in slow motion I know It's one feature of iphone 5s, but can iPhone 5 do it? or can you record 60fps or 120fps with iphone 5?

Slow motion video is not available on models below iPhone 5s with stock software. There are camera apps that simulate it, but the hardware in iPhone 5 is apparently not physically capable of going above 60 FPS.

It is possible on jailbroken devices to unlock this 60 FPS mode, or at least it was as of iOS 7 (a few years ago).


Connect 2008 black MacBook to 2013 MBA via Thunderbolt / Firewire? I am buying a new MacBook Air soon and am getting ready to transfer all of my data via migration assistant. I know this can run via wifi but that is way too slow. My MacBook has a FireWire port, which was how I transferred my data from my older computer that I no longer use to my currently old MacBook that I will be replacing next week. Does anyone sell a male-male Thunderbolt to Firewire cable, and are the reliable? The Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter that Apple sells is female-male so it won't connect into both ports. It seems to be made more for connecting third-party firewire devices (e.g. cameras, media devices) to newer computers that no longer have firewire ports, only thunderbolt ones. Or in the end should I just give up and connect via USB which will be much slower?

Either way the point is to connect the computers -- whether I use Migration Assistant or not. If I end up just transferring data manually it's the same issue -- I want the fastest connection between the two computers so the process will finish quickly.

What you need is a FireWire 800, according to this post from an Apple discussion board. Monoprice is a great, online retailer that has cables for a really low price. Take a look at the results that I have linked you. Remember, you need the 9 pin to 9 pin cable if you want to connect two Macbook Pro's together.


Mac CRM software with iCloud Contacts integration I'm looking for basic customer relationship management (CRM) software that syncs with iCloud Contacts. I'm not looking for software that imports contacts into its own proprietary database. I'm seeking software that, like BusyContacts and Contacts.app, works with iCloud Contacts. It reads and writes to the .vcf or Vcard files themselves, so its changes are viewable in contact management software.

I don't know much about the software, but it seems like Contacts Journal may do what you're looking for, with two caveats:

new contacts entered in Contacts.app are not automatically imported into Contacts Journal, but it will automatically prompt you to do so, and thereafter keep the contacts sync'd
contacts added directly in Contacts Journal will not automatically appear in Contacts.app, and I don't see an indication of how to accomplish this.

There is a lite version that you can try for free, and also a FAQ.

I have no affiliation with the product.


How to change iCloud storage size for Emails? I am using the 25 GB plan for iCloud. This morning I got the message in Mail.app that my iCloud storage is full. However, the iCloud system preferences tell me, I have still 11 GB left. In MobileMe I could set the split on how much would be used for my Email account. How can I increase the Email storage with iCloud?

iCloud mail space should be dynamically increased as you go. There is nothing users can do to manually expand that size. If it is stuck for you, I recommend contacting Apple at their support web page for iCloud, as you are a paying customer, you sure are entitled to great service.


Apple ID auto log in I'm on my iphone 5s if my sister get iphone and we have same apple id.
Example i download instagram it auto log me in. Will it do on her device also?
Please help

Same AppleID, eh?  Would you get each others' Facetime calls?  Would you be responsible for paying for her "in-game" purchases?  I guess you can set up "Parental Controls" (with you as the parent) to limit what she can do.  But is that really what you want?  Why not let her get her own AppleID?  There is a "family plan" for sharing downloads.


installation stuck in a loop due to damaged HD Right off the bat I'll admit it was stupid to jump into trying to install a new version of OS X to the only partition without having taken adequate  precautions (no backups or recovery disks), but unfortunately it's done.  (the failed installation attempt, not the installation itself!)

I'm on a mid-2011 MBP that was running Lion. I download the installer for the latest OS X beta version to my HD and started installation process from there. The system rebooted and the  installation started, but after 1 minute into the estimated 43 minutes  for the installation to complete, I get an "Install Failed" message: "OS  X could not be installed on your computer. The OS X upgrade couldn't be  started because the disk Lion DP GM is damaged and can't be repaired.  After your computer restarts, back up your data, erase your disk, and  try installing again. Click Restart to restart your computer and try  installing again."

Restarting just repeats the process and the same problem recurs. I went  into "Disk Utility" from the Installer's menu, and trying to verify the  offending volume returns "This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair  Disk". Unfortunately the "Repair Disk" option stays greys out.

Is there any way I can "revoke" the installation process (via the  Terminal perhaps?) and get back to my previous set up with Lion (without  losing data, obviously), so I can start over the right way this time?

Any advice is appreciated.

Update:

I'm not able to back up my main volume ("Lion DP GM") with Disk Utility. It barely starts before I get the following error:

  Unable to create "Lion DP GM.dmg" (Input/output error)

I tried booting in recovery mode and reinstalling Lion, but it didn't work. Under the disk "Lion DP GM" where I would install it, it says

  This disk is locked

When the OS installer is running, I can see - via Terminal - the contents of my main volume under /Volumes/Image Volume, whereas in Recovery Mode it's under /Volumes/Lion DP GM

Unless someone has some bright ideas how to restore things back to how they were, I would at least like to attempt backing up the entire "Lion DP GM" disk to an external disk via Terminal (since Disk Utility failed). What command would be the best way to attempt this?

Update #2:

In the end I copied just the bare essentials to an external drive via Terminal, which didn't cause any problems. Then I erased the whole partition, and did a USB installation, which completed successfully. Disk Utility on the new version of Mac OS X is no longer complaining of HD errors (although I'm not sure whether that means I'm in the clear or not).

If you haven't already made backups, you can start up from the recovery partition and save a disk image of the main OS X volume (or other volumes you use) to a different drive in Disk Utility.

The first thing I'd try would be to do an upgrade install of 10.7 by choosing Reinstall OS X without erasing anything first. If that wouldn't work, I'd do a clean reinstall and restore files manually.

See these Apple KB articles:

Mac OS X v10.5, v10.6: How to back up and restore your files
OS X Mountain Lion: Reinstall OS X
OS X Mountain Lion: Erase and reinstall OS X


Read PDF (book) partly on mac partly on iphone and ipad, tracking most recently read page What I want to do is pretty simple: I have a PDF I'm reading on my mac and later on I want to pick up reading where I left off on an iPad or iPhone, then continue again on the mac.

Nearest I can get so far is to have the file in dropbox folder that all devices can see, but that means I need to either remember, or make note of, the page where I stopped reading.

Apparently bookmarks get stored in the PDF itself, so that might be part of the solution, except that the bookmarks I'm storing in 'Preview' on OS X don't show up in any IOS app that I've found so far, and vice versa for the IOS apps I've found ('Documents 5' and 'PDF Reader' (not acrobat))

I must have spent an hour googling for an answer with nothing straightforward as a solution yet (surely there's an app for this ?).

Any ideas ?  Anything obvious I'm missing ?

I believe iBooks will load up and view PDFs and if you are signed into iCloud on all devices the last read page should sync between devices.

I stand corrected this does not seem to work, grrrr... I thought I remembered it working, sorry. I have no other suggestions other than to try other PDF readers on the app store. You might also want to ask the hive mind at macintouch.com. It often has solutions for seemingly insurmountable problems.


Why does Finder's scp folder disappear when ssh is invoked? sshfs 2.5 and fuse 3.8.3  were installed on OS X 10.11.6 ElCapitan

Why does:

sshfs users@fqdn.com:/mnt/CRUZERFIT16/Directory /Users/user/Documents/scpbox

force the folder scpbox to disappear?  I would like to view the contents of the directory in the file manager 'Finder'.  The command:

ls -l /Users/user/Documents/scpbox

lists the contents of the remote Unix box.

What can be done to enable viewing in the file manager?  The remote Unix box has been tested with Ubuntu sshfs and is accessible through Ubuntu's native file manager (Nautilus).

You need to use the -ovolname option. Using your example:

sshfs users@fqdn.com:/mnt/CRUZERFIT16/Directory /Users/user/Documents/scpbox -ovolname=scpbox


Can't save files in some applications I some application, such as Xcode, Pages and Pixelmator 2, when I save, I get an error about not having the permissions to save the file:

"The document “[document name]” could not be saved. You don’t have permission. To view or change permissions, select the item in the Finder and choose File > Get Info."

There's nothing wrong with the permissions. I can edit and save the same files from other applications, such as Textmate, Text Edit and Preview, without problems. I can also create a new project in Xcode, and it generates all the files without problem, but I still get the error message when trying to save any changes in these.

I'm running Lion, clean installed.

Edit: here's an example ls -l on some files I can't edit:

-rw-r--r--  1 ulrikdamm  staff  4221 Nov  1 08:36 french.strings
-rw-r--r--  1 ulrikdamm  staff  3755 Nov  1 10:53 german.strings
-rwxrwxrwx  1 ulrikdamm  staff  4147 Oct 31 23:49 hungarian.strings

even with full permissions, I can't save them. And it's not only some files that cannot be saved, it's all files, no matter what their permission level is.

Edit 2: folder permissions:

drwx------+ 32 ulrikdamm  staff  1088 Nov  4 14:00 Desktop

(yes, it's on my desktop)

id output:

uid=501(ulrikdamm) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),402(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1),401(com.apple.access_screensharing),12(everyone),33(_appstore),61(localaccounts),79(_appserverusr),80(admin),81(_appserveradm),98(_lpadmin),100(_lpoperator),204(_developer)

Edit 3: I tried making a new user, and saving files there works without problems. Can it has something to do with some user settings being messed up?

Since you haven't used ls -le as recommended, we don't know what the access control list looks like, but there might be something going on there that is preventing you from being able to write the files. The fact that a newly created user CAN edit the files makes me even more suspicious.

This command will remove ALL access control list entries from the folder and all its subfolders and files:

sudo chmod -RN path/to/folder/containing/files

Once you've cleared the access control list, try resetting the ownership like so:

sudo chown -R ulrikdamn:staff path/to/folder/containing/files

Now grant permissions like so:

sudo chmod -R u+rwX,g+rX,o+rX path/to/folder/containing/files

This gives you full read/write permissions. The "staff" group and all other users get full read permissions. Using an uppercase X, sets the execute bit for all directories within the tree, but leaves the execute bit for regular files as is.

Lowercase x would set the execute bit for all folders AND files. The execute bit must be set for a directory in order to read its contents. If you'd like to give write permissions to the group or others, switch out for g+rwX or o+rwX as necessary in the last command.

Here I'm passing in a folder path. If you want to pass in a single file, just remove the -R from each command. The R makes the command recursive, applying it to an entire directory tree. Without it, the command will modify the permissions for a single file or folder passed in.


Why doesn't ⌥ (option)+click bring up the context menu? Does anyone know why ^ (control)+click was chosen to trigger a context menu, rather than ⌥ (option)+click? Is there any history surrounding this?

To me, an alternative method of clicking that brings up a menu of options seems most intuitive if triggered by ⌥ (option)+click, especially considering that key is also known as ⌥ (alt).

The option key has been in use on Macintosh computers long before there was a control key, since the option key was always used for alternative input of characters with diacritics, like "å".

Apple always tried to force developers into not hiding away functionality into contextual menus and thus did not include more than one mouse button for quite a long time. I think it was once applications gained complexity and needed to offer contextual menus for better usability, that Apple decided to include a control key for the first time.

In short: The naming of the control and  option keys are meant quite literal: one gives you access to optional input and one gives you access to controlling the interface.


Google Chrome Helper for "GPU Process" constantly shown as non responsive in OS X 10.9 I upgraded to OS X 10.9 yesterday, and since then, one Google Chrome Helper is constantly red in Activity Monitor. I checked the PID (375) in Google Chrome's own task manager, and it is GPU Process. I don't think it is used often, but I also fail to see why it is constantly non-responsive.

Does anyone else experience the same thing? Is this a problem of GPU handling of the new OS? Maybe there are some GPU-accelerated websites/videos (I mean video player) out there so I can test whether there is a problem? Thanks.

By the way, my machine is a MacBook Pro 13'' mid-2012 non-Retina.

I've been experiencing the same issue for about a month, except it predates Mavericks (10.9) when I was still using Mountain Lion (10.8.4 and 10.8.5 specifically).

I've found the only way I can remedy the issue is to force quit the unresponsive Google Chrome Helper and all other associated processes (all "Google Chrome ..." named items) except for Google Chrome itself (the one with the icon). That will crash most, if not all, browser plugins, but it will make Chrome useable for a decent amount of time if you keep down on your number of open tabs.

It's not fantastic by any means, but my other remedy is going back to using Firefox for the time being and keeping my fingers crossed Google is working on a fix for this issue.

MacBook Pro 6,2 (15-inch Mid-2010)
2.53GHz Intel i5
4GB RAM
128GB SanDisk Ultra Plus SSD/500GB Toshiba HDD
OS X 10.9 "Mavericks"


What causes the temporary loss of around 20GB of hard drive space while using XCode? I've got a hard disk of 120GB (20GB free space). I'm a developer in XCode and sometimes I get the "low disk space error"-message that I can't even save my coded files before cleaning some of the space.
I don't know why this happens because without performing anything I'm losing about 19GB of space. This lost space regains if I restart the mac. I asked around with my friends, and they don't get this kind of behavior, so it seems I'm the only one.

I've tried MACKeeper Utility to clear unused things but it's only a temporary solution!
Does any of you have an idea what to do?

The issue is probably that the space is being taken up by swap files and possibly a hibernate sleep image. To see this do an ls -l /var/vm These files are deleted on a reboot and start increasing as you use more memory and Xcode takes a lot of memory.

You need to reduce the space used by the rest of the system. apps and data. Basically 120GB is too small unless you only use it for development and not any music or other media files. You can save a bit of disc space by removing unused applications and clearing out other languages (see other questions here) but getting a bigger or external hard disk is probably a better use of your time.

To see where the space goes see the applications in this question or from the command line du.


Why does TimeMachine generate large backups and is there a way to optimize them? I have 2 Macs:

MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015), 128 GB  10.14.2 (18C54)
MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2009), 512 GB  El Capitan (I think)

Both of them make backups to the same Time Machine (set up on a local NAS).
My issue is that MacBook Air generates large backups almost every time it connects to Time Machine - by "large" I mean over 1 GB, often several GB.
This seems unusual to me because, to my knowledge, I don't generate large files or large number of changes on it - I use it for general office work: typically email, calendar, some work with MS Office (Word, PowerPoint, Excel), browsing.
The other Mac (MBP) is used for similar tasks, maybe a little less intensively and it backs up more frequently (typically every day vs. every couple of days) but it generates significantly smaller backups, at least by order of magnitude.
The other difference between those 2 Macs that may play a role is the macOS,  but both of them have highest version of the system available for given hardware.
How I can reduce the size of backups generated by my MacBook Air? If  this is more or less normal behavior, please let me know as well.

This utility can show you what has been included in the last backup: BackupLoupe

If some things are being backed up that don't ever need to be, then you can add them to the exclusions list in the Time Machine Preferences section when you click the [Options] button.


can you change iMessage settings by contacts on iPad Air? I would like to be able to get texts on my iPad running iOS 8.1.3 from some people (work contacts) and not others (Wife). Is this possible? or is it an accept all or none feature?

Actually yes it is possible, although it isn't as automatic/intuitive as would be nice.

On iOS 8, it is possible to mute any message thread. What I recommend that you do is go through and mute the conversations that you do not want coming into your iPad. You will no longer receive those notifications.

To do this, simply open the conversation, tap Details, and turn Do Not Disturb on.

Perhaps, in a future version of iOS, we will be able to control these things on a per-contact-group basis.


Built in keyboard that supports all Mongolian characters While OS X supports a vast library of characters in its set of keyboards, Mongolian is missing.  I would like to know if Mac OS (Yosemite) has a keyboard with a character set sufficient to type all Mongolian characters.  If possible, I would prefer a keyboard that most resembles traditional Mongolian keyboards.  Installing keyboard apps or extensions would be a last resort.

No, Apple has never provided a Mongolian keyboard layout with OS X (either cyrillic or traditional script).  You will have to use one of layouts which can be downloaded and installed from the internet.  Another example is

http://mountainedge.netfirms.com/store/page3.html


Airport Extreme suffering wildly inconsistent speeds between 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz I have an Airport Extreme (will find actual version number later, as it's not able to tell from Airport Utility any more) that runs a 2.4 and 5 ghz network.  The 5Ghz one is almost always fast, but the 2.4Ghz one can produce some woeful speeds.  The following screenshots showing me using my ISPs speedtest tool from the same iMac on each network:

I'm simply at a loss as to how to start troubleshooting this.  It usually works fine, but sometimes is so bad I cannot even connect to it.  The faster connection is pretty close to my maximum, so I'm happy with that - if I plug in direct via a cable it's usually similar to this.

It doesn't matter how far from the router I am, if it's decided to be slow, there is nothing I can see to either fix or troubleshoot it.  The latest 7.6.1 firmware is on the AE, and it does not show any errors or warnings.

You are suffering from network congestion. Channel 11 is a very common channel and most 2.4GHz routers ship with that channel default. There are simply too many routers using channel 11 around your house.

However, not many people in your neighbourhood are using 5GHz channels, so that is free from network congestion.

The solution to this problem will be to change your 2.4GHz channel from 11 to something else.


Oops -- deleted swap files (Mac OS, 10.6) -- will they come back? I'm worse than my grandmother when it comes to computers. So I got a Mac as my friends  who know me and know a bit about PCs said I'd fair better with a Mac. They were right and I love my Mac Book Air.

But I noticed over the last couple of days that everything was running a LOT slower and that my Microsoft Excel & Powerpoint each crashed twice (which otherwise NEVER happens -- have owned it for 2 years).

In trying to clean up some files, I foolishly deleted swapfiles, as I was worried I had downloaded some mega files (6 files, each over 1 Gb!) from the internet (although I am cautious when it comes to downloading anything!).

Of course only after the fact did I poke around on some forums and saw that these files seem pretty important to the running of the system.

How can I get them Back? Will they just come back once I start using my Mac again?  I also have a Time Machine backup, so should I look there? I"d rather avoide re-booting everything if possible.

FOLLOW-UP: Thanks for the answers below! I will INDEED be more cautious in the future! Real quick: re-boot is the same as re-start, correct? I hope it is, because I'm not sure if I have all the software to re-install everything. Please let me know; thanks again!

2nd FOLLOW UP: If I have to re-boot, do you think a safe boot would suffice? Would that mean I could avoid having to re-install software, e.g., Word & Powerpoint?

3rd FOLLOW-UP: If the swap files again get SO big, will re-starting the computer clear them?

Apologies that my questions are sort of pathetic -- I probably shouldn't be allowed to touch a computer ;-)

To re-create swap files, you should restart the Mac (a normal shutdown is all that's needed). Swap files get cleaned up each and every reboot whether you attempted to mess with them or not.

I used the word attempted since you can't really delete a swap file from under the system due to how unix (the underpinnings of Mac OS X) works. The best you can do is remove the entry in the filesystem that points to the swap file, but any file doesn't get deleted until all files that were using the file are done with it.

Since swap files contain the state of the machine while running, they are marked to not be backed up since they change from second to second and get recreated each boot. To back them up would simply waste space on the backup and time of the system.

You picked a good system file to delete - next time be sure to ask first before deleting other files since many system files are not as forgiving when you delete them from a system and then reboot things.


How to turn 3G off on iPhone 5 running iOS8? After the update to iOS8, the switch to disable the 3G has been replaced by a disable 4G switch.

4G is already off but how could I also disable also 3G (which is still active, as shown on the status bar)


Can the default View settings for Spotlight "Show all in Finder" be changed? When doing a Spotlight search (in OSX 10.14.6), I often click on "Show all in Finder" to see more results.  The resulting Finder winder is always grouped which is not my default Finder window setting and which I rarely want.  I have to go the View menu to unselect "Use Groups" every time.  My regular Finder windows do remember my View settings. Is there any way to change the default View settings for the Finder window produced by Spotlight "Show all in Finder"?

It doesn't seem possible
Notice that when you switch to Finder search, the View > Show View Options does not display the option to set window viewing defaults like a regular Finder window does (a):

If you find the search inadequate and not just a cosmetic irritation, it may be useful to further refine your Finder search with additional filters that can be accessed from the filter buttons (b) or directly in the search bar.


Import user name and password automatically with AppleScript or Unix Shell I'm trying the Cloud Service tool: Egnyte Drive. But the process "SecurityAgent" will be activated and the administrator's name and password is required the first time when I try to launch Egnyte Drive. I wonder if there is a way to import the administrator's name and password automatically or any way to bypass to activate "SecurityAgent" and launch Egnyte Drive without user name and password. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Here is what I have tried:

1.

tell application "Egnyte Drive" to activate
    delay 1
        tell application "System Events" to tell process "SecurityAgent"
        set value of text field 2 of scroll area 1 of group 1 of window 1 to "password"
        click button 2 of group 2 of window 1
end tell

The above code is invoked from How to enter password for prompt windows using applescript

do shell script "open -n /Applications/Egnyte\ Drive" user name "USERNAME" password "THEPASSWORD" with administrator privileges

I have installed Egnyte Drive to test your script.

I have found out that you don't need to activate the application at all. Instead "SecurityAgent" is the only process that needs to be addressed:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "SecurityAgent"
    set value of text field 1 of window 1 to "user"
    if exists (text field 2 of window 1) then
        set value of text field 2 of window 1 to "password"
    end if
    click button "OK" of window 1
end tell

Let me know if this works for you as well. I tested it with macOS Sierra 10.12.2 beta.


Firewall blocks all internet sharing except port 80 MacBook Pro on 10.7.5 (Lion)
static ip 192.168.10.5 using wireless connection
ethernet jack connected to raspberry pi
raspberry pi has static ip 192.168.2.3

when internet sharing is enabled and firewall is enabled
-raspberry pi can surf the internet through browser
-terminal cannot ping macbook, cannot ping any ip on internet
-macbook can ping raspberry pi

when firewall is disabled
-terminal can ping macbook, can ping any address on internet

When internet sharing is turned on, is it ONLY sharing port 80?
How can I troubleshoot this?

I had to disable stealth mode on mac firewall to allow pi to ping mac.


Equivalent of Dragon NaturallySpeaking's HeardWord function in Dragon Dictate 4 In Dragon NaturallySpeaking's Advanced Scripting Command on Windows, HeardWord is a function that enables Dragon NaturallySpeaking to behave as if the specified word, word sequence, or voice command was received by the recognizer. HeardWord can be used to create a command that executes a series of other commands, or that has the same function as an existing command but a different name.

Here is an example to type a closing remark, in bold type, at the end of a document.

HeardWord "go", "to", "bottom"
HeardWord "set", "font", "bold"
Wait 1
SendDragonKeys "{Enter 2}" + "This document was dictated using Dragon NaturallySpeaking."

In Dragon Dictate 4, is there any way to write a voice command that calls other voice commands (e.g. a voice command that would call the built-in command "Cap")?

Since I bought the product more than six month ago I do not have access to the customer support anymore. Searching on Google didn't bring any interesting results.

It can depends in which application you dictate.

The online help is accessible by clicking on the Dragon icon in the menu bar.

Or click here: http://www.nuance.com/products/help/dragon/dragon-for-mac/enx/Content/GetStarted.htm

Else, there is the Commands manager in the same menu in the menu bar.

On Mac, you can use Applescript with Dragon Command manager.


How does Apple achieve the visual "wrap" to form its App store icons on itunes.apple.com? I recently skimmed the source-code of an app on the itunes.apple.com website and noticed when accessing the app image that the underlying image is plain squared! This means Apple somehow visually "wraps" the image with some technique to make it appear as if it has rounded corners! As I'm no expert on such details, yet would like to know how Apple achieves this.

The reason is that in my opinion this visual display of all apps (also in the iTunes App Store software) is a crucial, consistant aspect of Apple's app display. As I want to work on something related to Apples applications (and maybe also sign up for their affiliate program, which might answer this question, but I didn't do so yet), so I need to be informed about this issue.

Thank you for your help in advance.

The trick is to overlay a masking icon which contains a border and some shadow. With CSS this is positioned exactly above the underlying icon.

This is the image: http://r.mzstatic.com/htmlResources/F96C/images/mask175.png

If all you need is rounded corners, there is some CSS (3) only tricks for that, though it will look a bit different then.


How to replace icon view with list view on an iPhone's home page? I dislike selecting programs or other files from a grid of icons ("icon view"), even if their titles are shown beneath the icons. I prefer to select from a scrollable list of titles ("list view"), either with no icons present or if unavoidable then only with a very small icon at the start of each line.

Is there a way to make my iPhone XR (running iOS 13.3) use list view rather than icon view on its home page?

No, not without any type of jailbreak.

Apple doesn't allow any changes to the default grid view of their iOS/iPadOS devices.

If you have a jailbroken device, you can use tweak like HomeList.  This adds watchOS-type scrolling to the home page.


Can iOS apps be removed from iTunes Music Folder after upgrading to iTunes 12.7? Now that iTunes no longer syncs apps to iOS devices, can apps be removed from the folder that iTunes stored them in? (~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Mobile Applications in my case)

I have updated iTunes, and was surprised to see that the applications were not deleted.

The short answer is: YES you can delete the folder.

The longer answer is: It depends on which apps you have. If you have some apps that you no longer can download from the App Store, you still need them as a backup, so that you can drop them onto your device when/if needed. So you can delete the apps that you know you still can update/download from the App Store.

And when you decide if you still need the old app, you should also see at the app’s spec. - is it a 32-bit or a 64-bit app ?? only 64-bit will work with iOS 11


Listing all Openmeta Tags and associated Files Some month ago I started using openmeta tags to manage my files. Is there a tool which shows all openmeta tags on my mac and the files tagged with these tags?

Some suggestions:
Tags
By CASEapps.

Lists all created tags and files associated with them
Can tag
Easy search filtration
QuickLook

Leap
By Ironic.

Lists all created tags and files associated with them
Can tag
Easy search filtration
Ratings
Heavier/more feature rich interface

TagLists
By Ali Rantakari

Free
Tags & Tag searches for file lists must be made manually

ie. doesn't list created tags, which was what you were after

but hey, the price is right!


How to pass a file set as a variable from AppleScript to a Bash shell script I've got a two part problem.

I am trying to pass a variable from AppleScript to be used as a variable inside a bash shell script. I cannot figure out how to this work. I have read about concatenating the variable and the do shell script command with & inside AppleScript. But that doesn't really work with a longer script.

Here is the short AppleScript to select a file and (hopefully) pass it along to the shell as a variable.

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    choose file
    set myFile to result as text
end tell
do shell script "/path/to/script.sh"

And then the shell script itself:

#!/bin/bash
while read lines
do
    echo ${lines##*:}
    grep "string"
done <$myFile | awk '!x[$0]++' |\
trans -b :en # this is where the second problem occurs

This is a shortened version of the actual script but I think the intent is clear. I am unsure how to pass the myFile variable FROM Applescript to the shell.

The second problem is that the trans command (which is a rather handy command line translator) uses the gawk command which of course is installed along with the trans program itself. But when run from Applescript I get the error message:

  error "/usr/local/bin/trans: line 4990: gawk: command not found" number 127

I know that AppleScript needs the fullpath in order for this to work. But how do I provide the full path for a command embedded deep within nearly 5000 lines of code? Do I alter the code of the trans program itself to provide the full path to gawk?

Also I realize that I could do the whole thing from within the shell and that a lot of this is adding complexity where none is needed. But I think it is still worthwhile to know how to do this.

Thanks for reading.

The first problem with the first script is you aren't using the set myFile variable.

Here's a general guide to getting help:

Open Script editor - use the help menu to launch the AppleScript Language Guide and search for the command you have. In this case "do shell script"

That takes you to: https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/content/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/MacAutomationScriptingGuide/CallCommandLineUtilities.html

The example there shows how to set a variable for a host name and then call ping:

set theHostName to "www.apple.com"
do shell script "ping -c1 " & theHostName

So, in your case you'll need:

do shell script "/path/to/script.sh"  & myFile

At that point, you'll likely run into path issues so running small snippets of code in the editor, looking at the result and iterating should get you to solutions as inevitable errors in path, parsing, logic crop up. I left a typo in the second "do shell script" example above - pay attention to spaces and quotes :-)


Will my Bluetooth earbuds work with my Apple Watch even if I don't have my phone with me? I want to listen to music while I am running but don't want to bring my phone with me. Can I just pair the bluetooth earbuds that I use now with my phone and take my watch running?

You can listen to music on the Apple Watch without your iPhone. In this answer, you'll learn how to sync a playlist and pair your bluetooth headphones.

Make a music playlist

You can keep one music playlist on your Apple Watch at a time.
Audiobooks and podcasts aren't compatible.

On your iPhone, go to the Music app.
Tap My Music > Playlists > New.
Give your playlist a name, and then tap Add Songs.
Search or tap to find songs, artists, or albums to add.
When you find something that you'd like to add, tap "+".
After you add the item, tap Done. You can then search for more music to add.
When you're done adding music, tap Done to save your playlist. (A)

Sync your playlist

Set your Apple Watch on its charger and make sure the device is charging.
On your iPhone, go to Settings > Bluetooth. Make sure Bluetooth is turned on.
From the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, tap My Watch > Music > Synced Playlist.
Tap the playlist you want to sync to your Apple Watch. When a message next to your playlist says Sync Pending, your playlist will
begin syncing from your iPhone to your Apple Watch.
Wait until the sync is finished before using your Apple Watch. To see the sync progress, open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone and tap
Music. You might need to download any music stored in the cloud, such
as music from Apple Music or iTunes Match, to your iPhone before you
can sync it with the Watch. (B)

Pair Bluetooth headphones with your Apple Watch

To listen to music on your Apple Watch, you'll need to connect to
Bluetooth headphones:

Put your Bluetooth headphones in pairing mode using the instructions that came with them. You might need to enter a passkey or
PIN (Personal Identification Number).
On your Apple Watch, go to Settings > Bluetooth. Your Apple Watch will search for nearby Bluetooth devices.
Choose your Bluetooth headphones and enter a passkey or PIN if asked.

Listen to the playlist on your Apple Watch

After pairing your headphones, you can listen to your synced playlist
without an iPhone:

From the Home screen on your Apple Watch, tap the Music app.
Force Touch, then tap Source > Apple Watch.
Tap play to listen to your playlist.


Can the MacBook boot from a second HDD If I was to install a SSD in my MacBook Pro (Mid 12) where currently the Superdrive is attached and continue to use the preinstalled HDD for other files, can I run OSX from that new drive?

Or in other words: Is EFI configured to always use the first SATA to look for a bootable volume, or does it test all attached sources?

I used to run this exact configuration in a 2009 MacBook Pro. It works fine and never had any issues booting from a drive in the CD bay. I used the MCE Tech OptiBay drive bay kit for the second drive adaptor.


encoding of filenames in zip archives When I unpack a zip archive (with standard 'archive utility') that was created under windows, cyrillic characters in filenames become some gibberish.

Just the filenames are the problem, actual contents of files is ok.

How to fix this?

(Yosemite, if that's important. In general, I have a lot of files with cyrillic filenames — and they are displayed just fine (including on flash drives from windows users etc).)

Upd. Looks like the source of the problem (many modern zip unarchivers assume that filenames are in unicode, but that's not always the case) and a possible workaround (convmv) is described e.g. at http://blogs.gnome.org/happyaron/2010/09/03/workaround-of-file-name-problem-while-unzip-handling-cjk-encodings/

I wrote a Qt based utility specifically for handling and fixing double encoded filenames:
https://github.com/dennis97519/EncodingConverter


How can I easily indent a block in any textarea on OS X? Are there shortcut keys or another quick way to indent a text block at once in a normal text area on OS X?

So that I can easily turn:

[I want this to indent.
For formatting.
It's several lines.]

Into:

    [I want this to indent.
    For formatting.
    It's several lines.]

You want to edit text, and for that you need a text editor. There is (easy) native way in OS X to do these kind of text manipulations.

I personally use BBEdit/TextWrangler for these kind of codings. command]

You can also use Automator to create a Service and use sed/regex to do the 'hard' lifting: (and bind a keystroke to this Service)

sed 's/\(^.*\)/\ \ \ \ \1/g':

sed can be used to edit lines of text. In this line sed globally substitutes a match of 'the beginning of a line and everything that comes after it' with '4 spaces and that match'.


What are the steps to transfer an iPhone to someone else? I've seen several posts on the general process of handing off an old iPhone to someone else, but there are some details I'm not clear on. I have the following scenario to start with:

Person A: iPhone 4
Person B: iPhone 3G
Person C: (dumb phone; no data plan)

I'd like to end up with:

Person A: iPhone 4S
Person B: iPhone 4 (from A)
Person C: iPhone 3G (from B; new data plan)

Can someone walk me through the steps involved in making this happen? All folks involved have MobileMe accounts and Macs, and the 4S will probably be purchased initially for Person A. Those who start with iPhones have everything fully backed up and encrypted and password protected (so passwords will transfer).

Note: This is specifically a question about what I can do on my own, without going to the carrier's (AT&T) store.

There are two separate issues here:

1. Transferring data plans

This is best dealt with directly through your carrier as CajunLuke notes. For person A, a simple SIM swap should work though, for person B you'll need to cut the 3G's SIM down to micro-SIM size to fit in the iPhone 4. And you can probably swap the SIM from the dumbphone into the 3G and have the appropriate data plans added on the account. Still check with your carrier to avoid headaches.

2. Transferring backups amongst the iPhones

This is pretty straightforward. It sounds like the iPhone users have already got them backed up, so you're most of the way there. Do a final backup, and make sure they remember the passwords.

I'd start with the 4S, since it's a clean phone anyway. When you plug it in to iTunes and activate it, it should ask if you want to set it up as a new iPhone, or restore it from a backup. If it doesn't, just right-click the iPhone in the iTunes source list and choose Restore from Backup. Check to make sure everything seems right on the phone, then you're good to go.

To set up the iPhone 4, start by wiping it clean (this is why you want to do the 4S first, in case something goes wrong, you still have the data on the 4). Go to Settings > General > Reset and select Erase all Content and Settings. You'll have to enter the phone's passcode if you use one. Once the wipe is complete, plug it in to Person B's computer and set it up via iTunes as you did with the 4S, but using the backup from Person B's 3G.

To set up the 3G, repeat the wipe process above, but set it up as a new phone in iTunes for person C. If the dumbphone has Bluetooth sync capability, you can try transferring contacts to the PC that way using iSync and Address Book (note that Lion no longer includes iSync, you'll need a 10.6 machine or lower). Alternatively, if the phone stores the contacts on the SIM, or has the option to copy them there, you can import SIM contacts on the iPhone by going to Mail, Contacts, Calendars in Settings and selecting Import SIM Contacts.

Apple has a good KB article detailing any additional information you might want located here.


What does this mean: "Wi-Fi has the self-assigned IP address...& will not be able to connect to the Internet"? I have internet access but I noticed that in System Preferences/Network, although the W-Fi status is "On" this statement is below: "Wi-Fi has the self-assigned IP address XXX.XXX.X.XX and will not be able to connect to the Internet." There is a yellow dot preceding the "Wi-Fi / Self-Assigned IP" icon on the far left of the System Preferences/ Network window. The Network Diagnostics shows all the items under Network Status as green. My modem does not have a router. It is behind a Verizon (ISP) router that I do not physically own or have access to. I can only access the settings at: "my home.modem manufacturer's name.com". Is this still a problem that needs correcting? Thank you.

UPDATE: My ISP says: "Okay that's the issue as it is a 6100 modem it does not have a feature or wireless option you need to get one wireless router from ups store...I will send you a free modem which is an advanced one.."

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), MacBookPro11,3; Airport Time Capsule

So there are two things happening when a wifi device wants to use "internet". First it has to join the wifi network using an AP (access point) If there is a password like WPA that needs to be supplied. Next the device needs to get an IP address. That information comes from a router. It is not always necessarily true that the router and AP are the same piece of equipment. If the IP address acquisition (typically via DHCP) fails or times out the device will assign itself an IP from 169.254.X.X. However this IP can never talk to the Internet and the device knows that so that's why the message is provided. Sometimes this is simply resolved via a reboot of the router, but it could also be a hardware failure, especially if the AP and router are two separate devices.


Will Apple reject my iOS app if it has unused UIViewControllers? Will apple reject my iOS app if it has unused UIViewControllers?

I have many UIViewControllers in the Storyboard. However there are few of them I am leaving for next releases as they need more testing. Their functionality is implemented though.

Can I submit the app with these conditions?

The unused UIViewControllers are isolated from the used ones, So there are no segues between unused UIVC and a used one.

The app won't get rejected.

Apple don't browse the source of your app—they're testing the functionality from a user's point of view. Private API detection is left to iTunes Connect.

You should still try to remove unused code from your app to make the app as small as possible for users.


Mavericks Spotlight Can't Find Files i am looking at a file in finder (/Users/user/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.6-p420/gems/mysql2-0.3.17/lib/mysql2.rb   ---- I'm listing all this in case Spotlight can's go this deep).

i ask spotlight to find it --- typing in upper finder window "mysql2" or "mysql2." or "mysql2.rb".

No results.

I looked thru all the similar questions. I've gone to System Preferences and drug the whole disk onto the privacy tab. I've taken the disk off that tab and just selected one small directory there. Supposedly if you close it (preferences) it will index the disk and then find your file.

No go.

I'm really getting frustrated. Can somebody tell me if there is another configure option somewhere. Or if not, is there a "after-market" search app that is good. I have to be able to look up files.

OS X treats folders that start with a "." as hidden, and Spotlight doesn't search them.

You could use find in the Terminal.app to find files. In your situation:

find ~/ -iname mysql2.rb

I've never searched for after-market apps because I can find anything I want using the command line.

HTH,


Open "About This Mac" window How can I display About This Mac window?

I know that it is managed by the loginwindow process so I tried to open in applescript(I'm still a beginner).

tell application "System Events" to tell process "loginwindow"
    open window "About This Mac"
end tell

The code keeps on running. It neither stops nor displays window nor shows any error. Is it even right command?

So, how can I open About This Mac window?

The solution is not limited to applescript. Is there a way to open it from terminal?

I don't know about the applescript but I know how to do it terminal.

Use open command in the Terminal to open About This Mac window.

open -a "About This Mac"


Download all files in a directory (without index): file names in increasing numbers I would like to save my online textbook for offline usage, and through Google Chrome's "Network" panel I found out the path of the images. They can be accessed through the browser and downloaded using curl if given the correct configuration ("copy cURL"). The files look like the following: "https://c.m.com/r*/p*/R*/5*/5*/2*/O*/images/page.svgz", where  is the page number with four digits, e.g. page0258.svgz. I would like to batch download them using some shell syntaxes. I use fish, but I can also use other shells.

How would I achieve that four number pattern expansion on the command line?

curl can do this automatically for you (see the beginning of man curl for more details about this):

curl -O https://c.m.com/r*/p*/R*/5*/5*/2*/O*/images/page[0000-9999].svgz

PS: This assumes you will expand r*/p*/R*/5*/5*/2*/O*/ before running curl,


How do I do "Hey Siri" on Mac? On iOS, you can activate the Hey Siri feature in Settings and call out "Hey Siri" at any time to activate Siri without pressing a button. How can I do the same thing on macOS?

You can use Dictation for this.

Open Settings and enable dictation in keyboard settings. Make sure to check "Used Enhanced Dictation"(you may need to download something)
Go to Settings > Accessibility > Dictation(under interacting)
Check "Enable the dictation keyword phrase" Enter whatever you want in the text box underneath it. To use "Hey Siri", type "Hey" in the box.

Click on "Dictation Commands"
Check "Enable Advanced Commands"
Click on the plus that appears.
Now fill it in like this:

If you want (and I recommend you do), uncheck all the other boxes as you might accidentally activate one of those commands without meaning to.

Source


Turn off notification for certain messages Is it possible to turn of notifications for certain mail messages (ex. newsletters)?

You can create a filter, which makes them automatically read, and therefor no message. A downside is that you need to create a filter (or rule) for every newsletter (or whatever you want to block) you receive. This way you will not receive a notification, but it isn't removed from your inbox.


iMac Time Machine HDD and Internal HDD failed at same time My 2008 iMac, which has been extremely reliable for several years now, began to show the spinning 'beach ball' one day, and then would become unresponsive. After a couple of forced reboots, the internal HDD failed and would no longer start up. I had replaced it with a 1TB several years ago, so it was not the original. At the same time, however, the Seagate 2TB External Firewire HDD with Time Machine backups failed. When I booted from Snow Leopard, Disk Utility could not "Repair" either volume. A different drive connected via USB is OK. The biggest problem was that Time Machine never worked correctly, claiming some issue with the backup, so that I frequently had to wipe the TM volume and start again, so I had not run it in a while. How likely is  it that both drives would fail? I am concerned about a virus or malware, though none was detected. It's terrible that both the backup and main drive would fail at the same time. My iMac and drives are on a UPS, so a power surge seemed out of the question, but maybe not? Since the iMac tends to run hot, I even have a Zippi fan on it, 24 hours a day.

Viruses or malware do not (generally) cause hard drives to fail.
This was asked some time ago - so did you solve the problem in the end and if so, how?

For the record:
Save the Console log files if this happens again. Using these files it is possible to limit the source of the problem to software or hardware issues. It is rather unlikely that two disks fail simultaneously due to independant reasons. Are you working in a hot or humid environment? Do your devices have surge protectors between them and the power outlet?


I have an iPhone 6. How can I use two Bluetooth audio devices and the 3.5mm audio jack together? Me and my friends want to listen to music together. Two of us have Bluetooth Headphones (Beats Solo2 Wireless, Beats Studio Wireless) and one has a wired headset. Is there any way to use all three of these together?

As far as multiple pairs of Bluetooth headphones simultaneously, no, not without additional hardware. While you can obviously pair your iPhone with multiple Bluetooth devices, it can only output audio to one Bluetooth device at a time due to limitations in the A2DP audio profile that is used to transmit audio to the Bluetooth device.

You also cannot output audio to both wired headphones and a Bluetooth audio device at the same time. They are separate options on the audio output menu in Control Center ("iPhone" is the output setting for wired headphones). This was determined through my testing.


efficient duplication of Time Machine backups to remote location I have been using both Arq and Time Machine for backup for years, but a year or so ago I got unlimited Google Drive space and decided to try making a remote backup (with Arq) of my Time Machine drive.

This may seem ridiculous, but it helps ameliorate a major problem with Arq: you can't move your remote backup from one service to another.  For example if you signed up for Amazon's drive when it was $5 a year for unlimited space, and used it for your Arq backups, and then decided not to pay $120 a year for sufficient space for your backups when Amazon said "oh, just kidding!" and changed their prices, you're unable to move your backup history to another location. (Since history is the whole purpose of a backup system, this is the one reason I no longer recommend Arq to anyone.  I used to enthusiastically recommend it to friends and family.)  Backing up your Time Machine disk allows you to have a remote backup that you can move from one service to another without losing any history.  (The only obvious downside is that you must first restore the whole Time Machine backup if your Time Machine disk has died and you want to change cloud provider at the same time.)

There is a non-obvious downside, however: Arq really sucks for this use case, for reasons I don't understand.  It gets through about 3400 GB (out of around 3600 GB) around the first day, then runs for days and days making virtually no progress, and then might at some point start to make some progress.  I don't know if I have ever seen it complete the backup. Many times I need to shut down my laptop before it completes.

I'd like to have an efficient way to backup my Time Machine drive to a remote service.  It can't depend on (e.g.) running rsync or Resilio Sync on the remote service.

In case it's relevant for any reason, I have fiber, so the bandwidth is limited by the devices on both ends and any throttling the service does, rather than by the quantity of data pushed.)

One thing that Arq got right is the end-to-end encryption, so any replacement should include end-to-end encryption.  I'm not about to trust anyone with everything.

It is probably wiser to not backup the time machine backup, but instead make another backup of the computer directly.

The time machine format is a little finicky, as it uses a lot of tricks to save space while allowing to recover to many different dates, like reducing the amounts of dates one can go back to regularly. Even a minor corruption is likely to make it impossible to restore the backup of the backup to a functioning state. And that's exactly the situation you want the other backup for.

If instead you keep the backups separate, you have two completely different options to restore data if anything goes wrong, which should be useful in more situations.

Also, you can then use any encrypted backup solution you want.

Apart from that, here the official way to copy the time machine backup: https://support.apple.com/en-ie/HT202380

It suggests turning off time machine, then copying the backups.backupdb file to where you want it.

Note that this does not help with incremental changes, which is why I think it's not the best idea.

And here the closest to what you are looking for: https://www.berserkcomputers.co.uk/how-to-save-apple-time-machine-backups-to-cloud-services-like-onedrive/

In short, it suggests creating an encrypted image on your cloud drive with disk utility and then choose that as a backup destination.

Instead of copying the backup disk, just select two different disks, and time machine will use them alternatingly. This way, if one gets corrupted, the other should still work.

You can first copy the backup db to the image so that you keep the old backups, if you like. If your backup is already damaged, that will cause issues, though. If you have no likely need to restore an older version of your OS in the future, it's better to start a new backup, as the difference is mostly deleted files.


mDNSResponder missing I am on Yosemite since today and am trying to connect to network printers, but System Preferences doesn't show any. The printers use Bonjour and I read that the associated process is mDNSresponder. Checking Activity Monitor I see it is not running. Googling how to manually restart it reveals tips such as these.

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

However, the .plist file does not exist, neither does /usr/sbin/mDNSResponder.

The thing is that the printer problem existed even before I upgraded from 10.7.5 to 10.10, so I cannot judge whether this is a Yosemite issue or not, or wether the mDNSResponder stuff is even the source. I also don't know if I had the files before (although at some point I must have).

How do I enable Bonjour on Yosemite?

mDNSResponder was replaced by DiscoveryUtil in Yosemite. So Bonjour is still enabled. According to this Apple-kb article you might have to download updated printer drivers from Apple or the original manufacturer or re-add your printer with a different set up.
If you still have problems discovering your printer an Apple-discussion-thread might help:  unblock discoveryd in the firewall preferences and an immediate reboot...


How can I standardize icon size in Finder and across OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard? I running OS X 10.6.8 on a Mid-2009 MacBook Pro. I would like to standardize the size of icons seen in Finder (I use Icon View). Currently, every folder has its own icon size, which makes it less comfortable to use. I am tired of trying to "guesstimate" using the icon slider. Ideally, I would like to either revert all folders to default sizing, or be able to specify, for example, 48px.

I would also like to, if possible, revert the dock to default icon size (or at least be able to specify by pixel, and desktop icons also.

Is there an easy way to do this?

You can change the default size in the view options panel:

The sizes of icons are also stored in .DS_Store files that override the default setting. You can delete them by running sudo find / -name .DS_Store -delete, but it also resets other display options and removes Spotlight comments. The changes aren't always picked up until you quit and reopen Finder.


Fourier transform audio files? I need to batch-process some (several hours of) audio files and get their frequency/amplitude data.

I really have 10 folders each containing many wav files and I need the averages of each folder. I need to get the levels of different frequencies across each folder, and computing the levels individually for each file then averaging would work, and if you know of another method please suggest it.

Is there a command-line tool (or other resource) that will compute these Fourier transforms for me?


iOS development: GameCenter and In-App activated default So I've created an application in XCode and I've tried to put it in the store.
However, the options In-App purchases and GameCenter are activated and I cannot uncheck them.

Why are these on? And why can't I turn them off? I don't see why they should be active as my application has neither one of these.

Thanks in advance

You cannot deselect them. As apple mentions here they are automatically added to explicit app ids. The only way to do not have them is to create a wildcard app id (which is not a solution in most cases as it has many drawbacks).

Think of them as libraries added to your app. You do not have to use them and they change nothing to your project or to the way your app appears in the app store (unless you use them of course).


How can I make ctrl+cmd+V keyboard shortcut work again in Terminal Before my upgrade to Big Sur, pressing ctrlcmdV pasted the current selection with special characters escaped. It's still shown in the menu with this keyboard shortcut.
However, when I press this keyboard shortcut, I get some kind of history popup:

Where does this popup come from? I can't seem to find any references to it in the menu. Most importantly: how can I paste the clipboard content escaped into my terminal window?

Apparently Clipy uses the same keyboard shortcut for a command. The shortcut can be changed though.
D'oh!


Open System Preferences/Privacy/Full Disk Access with url I can open System Preferences/Privacy/Automation on Mojave with the URL

x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Automation

What is the equivalent to open Full Disk Access? Tried x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_FullDiskAccess and similar, but this didn't work.

x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_AllFiles

You can list all the available anchors for the pane by opening the pane and running the AppleScript

tell application "System Preferences" to get name of anchors of current pane

This returns the following list:

Advanced
FDE
Firewall
General
Privacy
Privacy_Accessibility
Privacy_AllFiles
Privacy_Assistive
Privacy_Calendars
Privacy_Camera
Privacy_Contacts
Privacy_Diagnostics
Privacy_LinkedIn
Privacy_LocationServices
Privacy_Microphone
Privacy_Reminders
Privacy_SystemServices


Does Time Machine take advantage of two backup disks to backup more fine-grained snapshots? I use Time Machine with two backup hard discs.

Does Time Machine create an identical copy of the data on both disks, or does it back up more fine-grained snapshots to different disks, so that I have more choices regarding the timestamp to restore to?

Let's say, with only one disk, Time Machine backs up hourly snapshots — 4:00, 5:00, 6:00, etc. Does it back up snapshots taken at 4:30, 5:30, 6:30 to the second disk?

Time Machine will continue to perform hourly backups, rotating through your backup drives. Each drive will contain a full, independent backup of your source drive.

This provides redundancy for your backup system, if that is what you seek. In case one of your backup drives fails, you still have another. This can prove particularly useful if you keep one of those backups offsite (backing over the Internet will require special setup, however, and can prove agonizingly slow).

The ability to use multiple backup drives was introduced starting with OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion).