Multiple default routes on MacOS I noticed that both WiFi and ethernet are enabled simultaneously on my MacOS machine, so I was curious about how routing would work. I see the following:

myprompt$ netstat -rn

Routing tables

Internet:
Destination        Gateway            Flags        Refs      Use   Netif Expire
default            192.168.1.254      UGSc          173        0     en8
default            192.168.1.254      UGScI           2        0     en0
default            link#21            UCSI            0        0   utun2
...

Using ifconfig, I can see that en8 is the 100baseTX ethernet port, and I guess en0 is WiFi. I guess utun2 is my VPN connection.

For any IP address destination that is not in the routing table, which default route would be selected? Is it a random selection? Or is there some other table or something else that I could inspect to figure that out?

This machine is on macOS Mojave version 10.14.5

macOS chooses which of those default routes to use based on the service order. You can set the order by opening System Preferences, select Network and then click the gear icon below the interface list to select Set Service Order. Drag and drop the interfaces to prioritize.

As you're working with the Terminal, this information is also available there by running:

networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder

This will show you the prioritized list. You can change the order by running:

networksetup -ordernetworkservices <service1> <service2> <...>

Note that this determines the route chosen only for connections initiated from your computer. If a connection is initiated by another device, the interface that it is initiated from will be used for that connection.

I.e. for example you have both an Ethernet and WiFi connection to another computer. You could set your service order so that you prefer connections to be made over WiFi. But if the other computer initiates the connection over Ethernet, then packets you send later on that connection will be sent over Ethernet.


Can no longer log into CUPS web admin on macOS Mojave Beta? I have a printer and I'm trying to set the default paper size. Normally, I can do this via the cups webadmin localhost:631

If you make any changes to a printer, it asks for your login credentials via an http basic auth request. On previous versions of Mac OS/OS X, you would use your 'short name' login and password for that computer. My Macbook Air is running the latest Mojave release 10.14 beta and now that no longer works. It asks for the password, but rejects it. I am sure the short name/password i am using is correct, as that's the one you need for all the auth system changes.

Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone know how to log in to the CUPS webadmin to make changes to a printer's default settings?

I had to enable the cups webinterface first:
Open a terminal and type:

sudo cupsctl WebInterface=yes

Confirm with <enter> and enter your password.

Then authentication as described worked fine (on the final Mojave, though, not the beta)


Keeping Firefox's places.sqlite file from consuming too much space in Time Machine bakckups My Time Machine backups often consist of Firefox's places.sqlite file (which, as I understand it, contains both history and bookmarks) and little else. When I clear my browsing history the file shrinks by about 80%. I think I have the following options:

Live with it
Exclude places.sqlite from being backed up and risk losing my bookmarks
Tell Firefox not to track history

Is there another option under which I track history without burning space to back it up?

BTW, running sqlite vacuum helps some, shrinking places.sqlite by about a factor of two. The command is sqlite3 places.sqlite "vacuum;".

Yes.

Set Firefox to auto-export your bookmarks on close to bookmarks.html in your profile and then exclude places.sqlite from being backed up.

See this support article: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML


Transporting from home to work (~10 min by car), should I just make my MacBook Pro sleep, or shut it completely down first? I just got a new MacBook Pro, and is looking at how the power modes work, and according to this article: About Energy Saver sleep and idle modes in Mac OS X, making it sleep by closing the lid (say) will put it into a low-power mode.

However, the article also says that it uses power to keep RAM contents. What I'm wondering is if the sleep mode is just a mode meant for "sleep on my desk", or meant for transport.

So, tomorrow I will bring my computer to work, by car, I have a computer bag I'll use so it'll be protected, but I'm worried that if I just put it to sleep, it'll get hotter than just regular off, and I know that you're not supposed to stash a running computer into a confined space, like a computer bag, because the heat might induce wear'n'tear problems on various parts.

So, should I:

Just make it sleep by closing the lid?
or, should I turn it completely off before transport?

Also, if option 1 is OK for a 5-10 minute ride, but not OK for, say, a train-ride to our offices in the capital (2-3 hours by bus and train), I would like to know that as well.

I've had a Windows machine for quite some time and I always put the unit into hibernation before transporting it, in order to make it go completely off, but also start somewhat faster than a complete reboot. Is sleep similar to hibernation, or is there some other mode like hibernation I should use?

It's perfectly OK to transport it while it's sleeping - I do this all the time.
The disk is stopped and the only power draw is what is required to keep the memory contents (and the fading in/out of the power light).  Any heat it generates during sleep is pretty much undetectable (in human terms).  As long as nothing is connected to it, it shouldn't wake up in the bag.


Transfer iTunes library and music to external hard drive I have an iMac running OS X Yosemite 10.10.5, with iTunes 12.3. I want to transfer my music to an external hard drive, but here is the difference:

I don't want to transfer it to another computer. I want all my music on my iMac referenced on my iMac, but located in my external hard drive. That means, if I eject my drive, I can't hear the music because it's not on my iMac. I would still want the possibility to see my list of songs in the iTunes program.

This is is how I have iTunes set up. Just go to iTunes->Preferences->Advanced and change the iTunes Media Folder location to the external disk. The iTunes library file will remain in ~/Music/iTunes and so you ca browse the titles and other metadata,

The one thing that I have found you need to be careful of is if the external disk is not mounted then don't add Podcasts or do much with ITunes as the program will reset the directory path if it can't find the external direve. However the paths to the music files will not be altered so it is only a long term issue,


Game Center friend invites not working in iOS 10 When sending a Game Center Friend Invite from the Matchmaking screen of an App the invited player cannot join the Game.

When clicking on the Game Center Invite in iMessage it will open the Settings App instead of launching the Game.

Is this a problem on my end or is it a problem at Apples end.
Does anyone else experience this problem?
If not.
How can you fix this.

Many Game Center's features were removed from the Game Center service itself so they still wouldn't work, including adding friends, even if you have Ios 10 . Now, you can see just the rankings and the goals of the game; you can also invite and challenge your friends only through iMessage, and only if the game supports it.


Using international phone numbers on iPhone edit: 1 accepted answer but still no (good) solution! :(

In my previous phone carrier I could just dial +55 11 99883655 and it would just work.
Now I moved to a new carrier and it doesn't work anymore! When I dial the same international number it keeps saying the number isn't formatted correctly.

How can I get my iPhone to understand international numbering back again?

I've got over 100 contacts with numbers stored in this format already, and I want to keep them that way.

At this point I would be happy with any simple app that would just enable me to use my stored info the way it is to strip the +5511 part and place a call. Or some tweaking to allow proper and simple editing of the phone number on Phone.app would be very welcomed!

You are in Brazil (so am I), so you can't just dial the "+" in front of the country code. You need to dial "00" and the CSP (the long distance operator code).

What happens is that some operators (Oi and Claro, for sure) have a JavaCard application in the SIM card that intercepts every call you place and before send the dialed number to the network verifies if you are in a situation that you should need to add a CSP or not, and adds the operators own CSP in that case, if there isn't one in the dialed number.

So, for example, if I'm in Rio (area code 21) and dial a call to (24) 9999-8888, which is a long distance call, the application will add "0"+  to my number. The same if I'm in Petrópolis (area code 24), since my MSISDN is from Rio.

On the other side, if I register my phone numbers using the international notation, the application is smart enough to remove the "+" and the country code and add the "0" and the CSP, unless it realizes that you're roaming abroad.

Besides Oi and Claro, I would guess that Vivo also uses an application like that, since it buys SIM cards from the same manufacturers.

TIM has a different application in their SIM cards that modifies the phone numbers in your SIM card to add the CSP 41. It is a lame solution and I regret every time I have to use a TIM mobile.

If it is enough for you to have an application like TIM's, there are at least two in the brazilian App Store that will edit the iPhone's Address Book:

[Minha Operadora](http://itunes.apple.com/br/app/minha-operadora/id401640256?mt=8)
[DDD Fácil](http://itunes.apple.com/br/app/ddd-facil/id381994693?mt=8)

I haven't tested either, so I can't offer advice on how well they work.

Otherwise, you will probably have to go back to an operator that offer that application in the SIM card (there is no way for a user to add apps to their SIM card by themselves).


Use Windows-Only Hardware on Mac I recently bought hardware that apparently does not support Mac.
When connecting it to my Windows VirtualMachine the installer pops up and the device is ready to be used. However, that does not happen on my Mac (Mac Mini Late 2012, macOS 10.11.2).
I checked for available drivers for the hardware that I could install on my Mac to make it run but they do not offer any.

Is there any application or 3rd party software that allows me to run Windows-only hardware on my Mac?

Thanks in advance!

I believe the Mac program with the best chance of working with that accessory would be GamePad Companion.

I can't say for sure if it would work with that device, because it is not on the compatibility list, but GamePad Companion probably works with a wider variety of controllers than any other Mac program, and it has the ability to map gamepads to various keyboard and mouse actions so they will work with any game.

(This is my personal opinion, and I am not affiliated with this developer.)


How do I stop the search helper from popping up in my browser? I'm trying to select text in chrome, and half the time I get this weird popup while selecting the first word, It's really annoying and I'd like to disable it, at least in chrome.

I've never experienced this behavior before today, I'm on a newly issued rMBP at work, I haven't seen this on my personal laptop, or other OSX devices, or windows or linux for that matter.  I'm just not even sure where to start in terms of disabling this.

Finally found it, it appears to be part of the Trackpad Settings regarding Look up and data detectors ... I changed the setting from Force click with one finger to tap with three fingers.


How do I truly flush Safari's cache? There have been countless times where I run into a problem after I edit HTML on a Mac. The issue derives from me uploading the updated file to my server through FTP, and I'll navigate to the website in Safari. The one thing that didn't  act properly was that Safari had already cached the webpage (the old version), so it would display the old version. I thought to myself and decided to clear the cache in Safari hoping it would solve my issue. Clearing the cache merely let the website appear to reload. It still came up with the old version of the file. To prove that the file on the server was actually updated, I got on another Mac on the same network, and it displayed the new version of the file. No matter how many times I refreshed or cleared the cache or reopened Safari, it would always deliver the old file. The only other solution I could come up with was to reboot. After a reboot, Safari reloaded the entire website and displayed the new version of the file.

I'm really just wondering how to flush Safari's cache and have it behave properly. Is this something the operating system does (I've had similar problems with files on my harddrive, too)? I don't want to have to reboot all the time just to see a new version of a file, so is there any way I can ensure I'm viewing the newest one? Is there a temporary storage folder that I can manually clear out? This happens to me quite often (not terribly frequent, but enough for me to notice), and my only current solution is to reboot.

I have strange feeling (it's not really a thought, but an ever so slight possiblilty that doesn't make much sense) that it's originating from a lower level.

In Safari, hold down down the ⇧ (Shift) key while clicking the refresh button. This will perform a “hard” refresh, which bypasses the local cache.

(To quickly clear the cache in Safari, hit ⌥+⌘+E, go to Privacy, and click “Remove All Website Data”.)


Draggable icon in the title bar? Previously, one could see an icon of the document in the title bar of any open window. For instance, In Pages there would be a small Pages icon to the left of the title of the document. I used these to save the document to new locations when I didn't know the original, for instance, when I opend it from Mail.
This does not appear to exist in Big Sur. I am missing it. Is there a way to get it back?

The draggable icon in the title bar is not gone in Big Sur, just hidden.
To display it, simply place the mouse over the document name for a second, and it will appear. Hold shift to remove the delay before the icon appears.

When the icon is visible, you can drag it to another folder as you desire.
Note that it is not necessary that the icon be visible if you just want to display the full path to the file. Either right-click the document title, or click the title while pressing the command key and it will appear instantly:


FaceTime calls keep disconnecting the moment I answer I've recently upgraded my MacBook Pro to macOS High Sierra Version 10.13. So did my friend. We called each other on FaceTime. It took several attempts to establish a FaceTime connection. The first few times the call disconnected immediately when I hit the answer button. It didn't use to be this way before the upgrade. Is there anything I can do to fix this issue?

Here's a link that might shed some light on that issue. http://support.apple.com/kb/TS5419
D.


Game Center corruption. How to fix? Lately I'm finding that I am not able to use any software that utilizes Game Center. In iOS 6 on login (or opening any game) it says, "Could not connect to Game Center server." In OS X Mountain Lion on login, it says, "The data couldn’t be read because it has been corrupted."

I've tried some steps to fix that were suggested in Apple's Support Discussions without success. These include rebuilding permissions, resetting PRAM, restoring the /etc/hosts file to its default state, and in OS X, logging in using Chess instead of Game Center.

That this is happening on both of my devices (MacBook Pro and iPhone 4S) makes me think the 'corruption' is occurring on Apple end, in the cloud. I'm wondering if anyone has experienced this issue and conquered it, or if Apple Support can do anything to restore this functionality on their end at a customer's request.

I'm thinking that the server just must be down. I'm having the same issues logging into my game center on my iphone 4s. Perhaps it will fix itself within the hour as things like this apparently have happened before.


Mountain Lion displaying graphical artefacts on screen I have a default automatic login account, User A. The Dock renders all it is responsible for (Dock, Launchpad, Mission Control) correctly for User A, but when I Fast User Switch to User B or C or the Guest Account, the Dock process doesn’t render anything properly, as shown in the screenshot.

This doesn’t happen when I disable automatic login and login to either User B, C or Guest on boot.

I did not have this problem on Lion.

If it matters, I have an Sapphire ATI Radeon 5450 HD.

Why is this happening and how do I fix it?

Check for updates through the Mac App Store first just in case Apple may have fixed this (obviously not everyone is experiencing this issue, but they may have anyway).  In the comments of this article about Mountain Lion bugs, many users are expressing the same issue that you are having, and having to logout and back in again to fix this.

Another thing you might try (if you haven't already) is to back up and re-install Mountain Lion.

update Everyone on this thread has the same exact issue. Yes, it is a bug, and yes, the only workaround is to killall Dock. I suggest using an AppleScript with Login Items, launchd, or Lingon (old, free, unsupported version here, and $3 newer, supported version here) to run killall Dock as soon as you log in so that the Dock just restarts itself immediately.  Meanwhile, submit this bug to Apple.


How to use a PDF in a presentation I have to make a little keynote tomorrow, and I have all the slides saved as PDFs. I will be using a projector as a second screen to my laptop.
What's the best way to transform this long PDF document into something more slidy?
If I open in with built-in Preview, I get some annoying issues such as the page number that pops out on the bottom of the slide whenever I flip a page and the non-full-screen-adapting when the ratio of the PDF isn't the same as the ratio of the screen.

So, any solutions?

Note I don't own a Keynote copy, so options like PDF to Keynote are not valid ones.

I have switched to Skim from Preview for presenting PDFs on a data projector. It has more & better presentation options and it’s free. Starting with Lion, Preview.app drove me crazy. Regarding screen ratio: If I see correctly, both Applications will not change the aspect ratio of the PDF when in presentation mode (e.g. for square PDFs)


How do I open a file in textwrangler? I'm learning how to code in Python using TextWrangler as my text editor (using OS X), and I've been unable to open any files. Here's how I want to open the files:

file = open("genomic_dna.txt")

Whenever I try to run this, I get an error message saying it can't locate the file. Or any other file I've tried. I've also tried specifying the file path with the same result. Here's the error message I get every time:

  ~/Desktop/exercises/chapter_2/calculating_at_content.py:1: IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'genomic_dna.txt'

What am I doing wrong?

I think @timothymh is right, this is a Python question not a Textwrangler one, but regardless, to open a file with Textwrangler:

via the Finder

Just double click it. If that file type is associated with a different application then open the context menu for the file, and select "Get Info" and change the "Open with:" to Textwrangler. Click the "Change All…" if you want all files of that type to open in Textwrangler.

via the Terminal

With Textwrangler open and active, select the Textwrangler menu and "Install Command Line Tools". This will give you the edit command, so to open a text file in Documents called "My Text File.txt" you'd issue the command via the terminal of:

edit ~/Documents/My\ Text\ File.txt

and it will open in Textwrangler.

Now that's out the way…

The Python problem

You're trying to open a file without giving the full path to the file. Since you don't give a full path (either absolute or relative) the command assumes it's a relative file path, which means it will look for "genomic_dna.txt" in the current working directory.

You've also not specified a file mode, which means open will assume you want to read the file. All of which means you get an error, because that file does not exist in the current working directory.

To fix this, either:

Give an absolute path, e.g. file = open("/Users/jonathan/Documents/genomic_dna.txt") (or wherever genomic_dna.txt is to be found, obviously).
Give a relative path, e.g. if the current working directory is ~/PythonProjects/ then file = open("../Documents/genomic_dna.txt").
If the file doesn't exist because you haven't created it yet and want to write to it, then pass the file mode, e.g. file = open("genomic_dna.txt", "w").

You might want to try using the Python interpreter to test your code out first and then transfer it to a file (by using Textwrangler to save it). To open the interpreter just type python at a terminal and press enter.


Is it feasible to install Sierra atop a Mountain Lion that won’t boot? My friend has a 17“ Macbook Pro, I think a 2010 model.

It has had massive problems for a while: trivial finder operations that typically take fractions of a second (like opening a new window or changing a directory) would take minutes to complete; apps would randomly hang for a half hour.

There was clearly something amiss and I was going to save her data, wipe the drive and install a new OS. However, in the meantime my friend installed an OS X update (not Sierra, but a regular package with minor updates).

Installing the update froze the computer for three days. The progress bar would move a little bit during the first day, then nothing. Once it was clear nothing was going to happen, we turned it off. Now, unsurprisingly, it won’t boot: you can see the apple and the OS’s progress bar; once that is loaded, the machine will reset.

I’d like to download Sierra and install it right away, but there’s important data on the drive, including an iTunes library that hasn’t been backed up in a long while. So it’s pretty important to try and build on the system’s old state.

Is there a chance the Sierra installer can fix the old system and do the upgrade, or do I need to find/download a DVD with the original system, and do a repair install first?

While your friend's MacBook Pro is compatible with macOS Sierra (MBP Mid-2010 or newer) I suggest to fix the issue first.

It sounds as if the HDD is corrupted. Try replacing the HDD or to boot from an external HDD (USB or FireWire).

Make sure everything runs smoothly before upgrading to a major version of OS X / macOS.


Spotlight Euro Exchange rate seems stuck to 2 weeks ago I use Spotlight to currency conversions several times a day.

E.g. I type into Spotlight

100 EUR to GBP
or
500 USD to CZK

However I have just noticed that the exchange rate is stuck to that of 2-3 weeks ago

For example, spotlight returns:

1 GBP = 1.34 EUR ---> should be ---> 1 GBP = 1.39 EUR

1 USD = 0.66 GBP ---> this is correct

1 EUR = 136.45 YEN ---> should be ---> 1 EUR = 132.19 YEN

The strange thing is that Spotlight's data source is Yahoo, but checking directly the exchange rate with Yahoo the correct rate is returned. So it seems like there's an issue with Spotlight.

Can anyone try it from their end? And if it's only an issue that affects me, any ideas of what to do to get it fixed?

Rebooting the machine sorted out the issue, but not sure if it's only at bootup that OS X refreshes the exchange rates. So the problem might happen again if I don't reboot the machine for a long time


How do I get Siri to call Amy instead of Aimee? I don't even have a phone number for Aimee.  Amy is even marked as a favorite. Whenever I say "Call Amy" then Siri says "I don't have a phone number for Aimee."

It was working with iOS 9.

iOS 10.1.1, iPhone 5,1.

If both people are in your Contacts, you can give one, or both, a nickname.  When using Siri, you can refer to the person by nickname and Siri will know who you're talking about.

To add a nickname to a person:

Open the Contacts app
Tap the contact you want to view, then tap Edit
Scroll down and tap add field -> Nickname
Add a nickname and tap Done

To remove a nickname, just reverse the steps.  You can change the nickname at any time.

Source


Incredibly slow user interface and incredibly high disk writes My late-2013 Macbook Pro 13" has been increasingly laggy and slow for the last several months. Replacing the SSD helped a little, but now it is beach-balling even opening a single new tab. Overall CPU usage is low (mostly WindowServer) but I was alarmed to see the amount of disk writes that kernel_task is doing (about 20GB per day).

Checking with smartctl then showed that over the 4 months since I replaced the SSD, it has done over 70TB of writes! I have no idea what it could be writing. My usual apps are Google Chrome, Terminal, Preview (for pdfs) and TeXshop and background apps (Dropbox, Google Drive, etc). How can I figure out what is lagging everything/causing kernel_task to do so many writes?

It's probably Dropbox or Google Drive. I've seen similar problems. Typically it's caused by Dropbox or Google Drive repeatedly downloading the same files over-and-over. They are both somewhat buggy programs.

Do you have any symbolic links in either your Dropbox or Google Drive? Neither deal well with symlinks; Dropbox specifically does not support them. (See https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Symbolic-link-on-Mac/td-p/27496 and https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/sync-uploads/symlinks).

You can find symbolic links from the Terminal with this command:

find $HOME -type -l -print

or to see where it points:

find $HOME -type -l -ls

You can also run a program that monitors all writes to your hard drive by file, to diagnose the problem youself. Turn off System Integrity Protection and run opensnoop or iofileb.d.


2 ram sticks not working toghether I have a weird problem on my mid 2013 27" imac. A few days ago, I started getting kernel panics and crashes every few minutes. After discarding software issues, I started testing the ram sticks. I have 2 sticks, 4GB each. I ran memtest and Apple diagnostics. Memtest gave a clean bill of health. I ran apple diagnostics individually for each stick, in every slot, and always came out OK. However, with the 2 sticks inserted (I tried all slot combinations several times), I occasionally got a memory warning.

I then took out one of the sticks, and ran my imac on 4GB. Worked perfectly for a week, no kernel panics.

I then re-inserted the ram stick, and Kernel panics again.

I am now using only the other ram stick, several days now, and again, perfect performance, no panics.

So it seems to me that the 2 sticks work fine, individually, but can't seem to work toghether. They are both identical, Elpida 4GB sticks that shipped with the imac.

Does anyone know if this is a RAM issue or a problem on my iMac? What should I do? I need my 8GB.

Thanks in advance,

Albert C.

I would start with blaming the RAM. If it is possible to return both of them and get a replacement, I would do that.

The only way to tell if it is the RAM or the slot is to try different RAM. The problem with that is if you show up at an Apple store with 3rd party RAM installed saying that you have a bad slot, they will take out the 3rd party RAM and say "problem solved."

One option is to return the RAM for a refund and buy new RAM from another vendor, but if it fails you'll likely get a similar reaction from an Apple Genius.

It's a bit of a Catch-22 unless you can get an Apple genius to test your Mac with some Apple branded memory. Not sure if that is possible or not.


Which file system for an SD card permanently mounted on my Mac? To extend my limited Macbook Pro storage I keep a 128 GB micro SD always mounted in the SD card reader (thanks to Nifty Minidrive). I use it for static files:  music, photo and video files I need to refer to, but that don't change often.

The SD card is formatted in exFAT and from time to time it gets disconnected when I bump my Mac during my commute, and to fix the file system corruption I need to mount it on a Windows PC (since Disk Utility doesn't seem to be able to fix it).

Since I'll use this SD card only on my Mac, should I format it as HFS+ instead?
I've read that a journaled file system can cope better with this kind of problems, and Disk Utility could repair it if needed.

Is there any risk (i.e. excessive wear on the SD card) in formatting my micro SD in HFS+?

Will be HFS+ more reliable than exFAT?

I tried for myself, formatted the SD card in GUID + HFS+, and after several months it seems more reliable than exFAT for this use case.

When the  card is accidentally disconnected the OS shows a notification, but as I unplug and replug the card, the system checks it for defects, and run fsck in the background if needed (it happens rarely, and it takes less than a minute).

So this setup it's a good solution from my point of view.

It's worth remembering that you should use it only for static files, i.e. data that you read often, but write seldom.


fixed date in numbers template Is it possible to use the =today() function (or something else) to insert the current date but then not update each time the file is opened?

I want to create a numbers template for my invoices. I'd like it to auto fill invoice date and date due then, when I save the document, store the values, not the function.

I am creating templates on my mac then using the inumbers app on my iPad.

i'm guessing this is what you are looking for  =NOW()


Installation of Yosemite taking over 20h Yesterday I started installing Yosemite on my MacBookPro 2011.
It all went well until it started rebooting. It is stuck on the Apple grey screen for over 20h now. The progress bar is at the very same point (half way) since 20 hours ago. What to do?

I'm not recommending this to anyone, just thought I'd report on what worked for me:

Let Yosemite upgrade sit at the white progress bar screen at 50% for 4 hours.
Once I was nearly positive it wasn't doing anything like writing to the hard drive...
Held power button for 10 seconds to turn computer off
Waited about 10 seconds again
Turned power on and held Command R  (It took about 3 minutes to boot)
Clicked on WI-Fi symbol on upper right and turned off Wi-Fi
Selected restart from the System menu option
Computer rebooted and finished the upgrade

I have since rebooted (twice to be sure) and run a few things and all seems fine at this point.


how to open password protected 7zip archive on OSX As the title says, I'm looking for a way to open password protected 7zip archive. I have the password but cant seem to find an application to open it. So far I have tried the following applications:

Zipeg
Stuffit Expander
7zx
ExpressZip
The Unarchiver

I would prefer any free applications or solutions if possible

Running OS 10.6.8

You can use the command line. One way would be to:

Install Homebrew
Install 7zip: brew install p7zip
Extract the archive in question: 7za x archive.7z

You will be asked to enter the password.
7-Zip (a) [64] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=utf8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,8 CPUs x64)

Scanning the drive for archives:
1 file, 520 bytes (1 KiB)

Extracting archive: archive.7z

Enter password (will not be echoed):
--
Path = archive.7z
Type = 7z
Physical Size = 520
Headers Size = 200
Method = LZMA2:12 7zAES
Solid = -
Blocks = 1

Everything is Ok

Size:       417
Compressed: 520


Can I get around Bento's Database Password? Bento is being discontinued so I want to get my data out and export it to Filemaker using one of the tools that converts the data properly, including images, popup menus, etc.
Unfortunately, at some point, I established a Database Password in the Preferences>Security settings but now, despite all my PW redundancies the PW I have on file does not work.
Bento says you're screwed if you lose your PW but I'm hoping against hope that someone knows a way to crack this. I've (foolishly) invested a lot of time into these Bento records and the thought of starting from scratch is depressing me. THANKS!

No, there's currently no way to obtain the password if you've forgotten it.
What'd be the purpose of an encrypting password if you could bypass it? ;)

After creating a password, click on the "Set Password" button to confirm.  Please note that passwords are case sensitive, and that lost or forgotten passwords cannot be recovered.

Source: http://help.filemaker.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/7340/~/passwords-and-encrypted-fields

The only way to eradicate a database password is to navigate to the security preferences, and uncheck the "Use Database Password" option. Of course, you must know the password in order to remove the password. There is no way to recover a password or remove it if it is forgotten. This is why Bento presents a user with this warning once a password has been set:

Source: http://forums.filemaker.com/posts/62e53480b4


Mac Pro & Apple TV 2 for computer audio Equipment & OS:

Apple TV 2
Mac Pro (circa 2013 - the cylinder)
MacOS Sierra Version 10.12.6
DAC (digital to analog converter, this only has USB and TOSLINK connections)
HDMI cable connects Mac Pro & Apple TV
TOSLINK (digital optical) cable connects Apple TV to DAC

What I want to do...

I want to use the Apple TV to stream iTunes music from my MacPro to the DAC which then connects directly to powered speakers.

Previously I have connected an earlier Mac Pro (circa 2009) directly to the DAC via TOSLINK.  This worked GREAT!  The earlier Mac Pro had a TOSLINK output.  The new Mac Pro (2013) doesn't.

Prior to that I has streamed iTunes wirelessly to the Apple TV which in turn connected by TOSLINK to the DAC.  This worked GREAT too!  When I set up this solution I had a TV monitor available that connected by HDMI to the Apple TV.

Unfortunately, I have no other monitor or TV display available to connect to the Apple TV.

Problems

<< System Preferences >> << Sound >>

If I go to << System Preferences >> << Sound >> and look to "Select a device for sound output" I don't see the Apple TV connection via the HDMI.  Note, the Apple TV via the HDMI doesn't show up as an input either.

I do see the Apple TV available for AirPlay, but when I select it a pop-up window appears asking me to: "Enter the AirPlay code for "Apple TV"

I assume the "AirPlay code" is not a "password" for the Apple TV (my Apple ID password doesn't work).  I think the pop-up window wants one of those 4 to 6 digit "codes" that pops up on the device to which one wants to connect.

As I don't have a monitor connected to the Apple TV I don't have anything that can display the "AirPlay code".

Seems like the HDMI connection to the Apple TV should get me something, but I can't think of a way to make the Apple TV display appear on the monitors connected to the Mac Pro;-(

Suggestions appreciated.

iTunes

I have similar problems in iTunes.  If I open iTunes and try to select an output device, I can select the Apple TV but the same pop-up window requesting the "AirPlay code" that I don't have a way to see appears.

Note: I have a 27" Apple Cinema Display, but it has not way to connect directly to the Apple TV.

Again, any suggestions much appreciated.

Footnote -- If I had a shorter distance between the Mac Pro & the DAC I could use USB, but USB doesn't do well at distances beyond 20 feet.

Contrary to what you write, the 2013 Mac Pro actually has TOSLINK output. The jack connector for the analog output doubles as an optical connection for digitally transferring the sound signal to your DAC.

This means that you can just use the TOSLINK solution that worked well for you before. You'll need a mini-TOSLINK to TOSLINK cable.


Can't start Mac in recovery mode - only get folder with question mark instead I can't start my MacBook Pro 2017 using controlR, controloptionR, or shiftcontroloptionR.

For all combinations I only get the folder with a question mark shown.

What can it mean and how can I fix it?

This is pretty easy - the folder with a question mark means no bootable volume is connected to the computer despite what disk used to be the startup disk was in the past.

You'll want to connect to a WiFi or wired network and try booting to internet recovery or bring a known good bootable OS to this machine so you can boot to disk utility and see if the internal drive needs first aid or a wipe and erase.

  To manually start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet, hold down Option-Command-R or Shift-Option-Command-R at startup.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201314

Barring that, you'll need to seek hardware service if you don't have internet boot or a way to bring a bootable OS to this Mac.

The only one thing to try is resetting the NVRAM one time. Hold Command - Option - P - R at boot and make sure you hear the startup chime twice before letting go.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

All the other commands won't help get you past the folder with a question mark.


Could not connect to "Apple TV" I have recently updated both my Mac & Apple TV software now my Airplay mirroring is no longer working (though does through iTunes) I just receive a message saying Could not connect to "Apple TV" when clicking on the Airplay icon. It's not a WiFi issue as I can still access my computer via apple TV.

I had the same problem and found it was because I had checked "Block all incoming connections" in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Firewall > Firewall Options.


How to make terminal maximize at open? By right clicking its icon, I can make terminal.app "Open at Login". But I want to maximize the terminal window when it's opened. So it will be very cool when I login: Imagine an OS X without GUI! (at least it seems so.)

Any advice?

If you go to Preference inside Terminal, then inside Profiles and then Window you can set the default windows size.

Knowing that you are setting the size for the default window, every time you open it all the default settings will be applied.


MBP Late 2016 Thunderbolt 3 issue: connected cables not recognized after sleep/wake up I have a new MacBook pro, late 2016 with Touch Bar, and recently bought some adapters (Aukey) to use my usb mouse, ethernet cable etc.

One thing that really bugs me is that the ethernet connection is lost whenever the computer wakes up. I have to unplug and re-plug it in again, i.e. the ethernet device is "unmounted" and does not get automatically detected again.

I didn't verify this behavior with my other equipment yet, but I guess this could be a general thing?

Anyway – is this a common error? Is there a cure?

I've had a similar issue with the Monoprice Select Series USB-C to 3x USB-A 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet & USB-C Adapter. If I use the MacBook Pro 2016 w/ touchbar in clamshell mode with this adapter, the MBP will not wake from sleep at all. It's almost as if the adapter has gone to sleep, even though the lights on the ethernet port light up and blink and the AC adapter is plugged into the usb-c port on the adapter.

I have another ethernet adapter made by Anker that has 3 USB-A 3.0 ports on it that works just fine though. Might be a difference in chip set?


Can Wineskin work with Catalina? I reviewed my previous question, and I think the differences with Catalina merit a separate question.

A double-click or a menu→open on vanilla wineskin or a wineskin-wrapped Windows app has no visible effect (except for showing the icon in the recent items part of the dock).

I verified that the settings in the accepted answer there are still set.

There is an unofficial update of wineskin. It works on Catalina. You can find it here - https://github.com/Gcenx/WineskinServer


Reattaching remote servers: no such file or directory in terminal I'm using the Connect to Server tool to mount a remote drive.  I'm able to access this via Terminal at /Volumes/REMOTE.  If I unmount and remount the same connection however, my existing terminal windows can't reconnect --- I have to open new terminal windows.  Is there any way around this behavior?

e.g.

$ cd /Volumes/REMOTE
$ ls
Desktop    envs    intel
<un-mount>
<re-mount>
$ pwd
/Volumes/REMOTE
$ ls
ls: .: No such file or directory

If I have an emacs session open with a remote file, and the connection is lost and reconnected (un-mounted, and re-mounted), the session still works fine.

As of El Capitan, OSX 10.11.0, this is no longer an issue.  Terminal is now able to recover once the remote server has been remounted.


Cannot setup two-factor authentication I'm trying to set up 2FA on my iCloud account but I get this message:

Any ideas on a solution? There's also no option in the security settings on my iPhone to enable it. I'm running the latest versions of iOS and macOS.

Thought I'd share because I went down the rabbit hole on this and it turned out pretty simple.

I was not able to turn on two factor authenication because I had a couple of old apple devices (an old iphone 4 i was using for music and a phone that hadn't been charged in 5 years) that DID NOT HAVE A PASSCODE ENABLED.

Apple wasn't able to turn on two factor unless every device on my appleid account had a password set.

I just deleted from my account and it worked.  This took a week of back and forth with (a very nice) apple rep.

Good luck!


How can I check the version of a package online before installing? For example, when I run

brew search octave

I see:

homebrew/science/octave                Caskroom/cask/octave

I don't know which of these to install so I want to check the version of these programs. Is there any way to get it without installing?

You can get information on each of the hits:
brew info octave
brew info --cask evernote

In both cases, these may require you to "tap" the containing levels, but it gives you the command to run for each as needed.
From the first package information, you should get an info URL of https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-science/blob/master/octave.rb and then could inspect the source of that octave installation. Repeat for the cask and then you can decide or not to install one or the other.


terminal sudo or su asks for password in Mountain Lion OS X I don't know the root password on my system and I'm trying to start Apache.

$ sudo apachectl start

WARNING: Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss
or the deletion of important system files. Please double-check your
typing when using sudo. Type "man sudo" for more information.

To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.

Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
Sorry, try again.
Password:
Sorry, try again.
sudo: 3 incorrect password attempts

------- or -----------

$ sudo su apachectl start

(same results)

My user account is an admin account. This is a refurbished MacBook Pro - new to me.

This is standard behaviour for a Mac, even if the user is in the Administrators group. The password is that of your user account, not the root account (which is typically disabled by default). OS X asks for your password in a number of situations, not just when using sudo.

If you've forgotten your user account password, you can reset it following Apple's instructions.


Trying to use an iMac as a second screen, but it keeps dimming I'm hooking up my new MacBook Pro (13-inch 2016) to my old iMac (27-inch late 2012) using a lightning-to-USBC converter, in order to use the latter as a screen when working from home.

Pressing CMD-F2 on the iMac keyboard successfully connects the monitor. Hurrah!

But - boo! - 9 times out of 10, the brightness on the second screen drops to a minimal level, and can't be changed.

Sometimes (about 1 in 10) it retains the level that it's set to to start with. But most of the time it doesn't. And perhaps more annoyingly, as far as I can tell there is no way to change the brightness on the iMac screen once the MacBook Pro is using it as a screen.

Any way to either a) ensure it doesn't drop brightness when connecting or b) allow me to change the brightness on the iMac screen once it's being driven by the MacBook Pro would be much appreciated.

Pulling my own answer out of the comments: The workaround is to log out of the iMac, leaving it showing the login screen.

CMD-F2 will then connect the laptop to the iMac screen without dimming.


"brew install python3" fails to compile pyexpat brew install python3 fails with a pyexpat error, which means the installed Python can't parse XML (breaking pip etc). Here's the relevant excerpt from ~/Library/Logs/Homebrew/python/02.make:

*** WARNING: renaming "pyexpat" since importing it failed: dlopen(build/lib.macosx-10.13-x86_64-3.7/pyexpat.cpython-37m-darwin.so, 2): Symbol not found: _XML_ErrorString
  Referenced from: build/lib.macosx-10.13-x86_64-3.7/pyexpat.cpython-37m-darwin.so
  Expected in: flat namespace
 in build/lib.macosx-10.13-x86_64-3.7/pyexpat.cpython-37m-darwin.so

nm -gU /usr/lib/libexpat.1.dylib shows that this symbol is defined there, but according to otool -L the pyexpat .so file doesn't mention it; its only dependency is:

/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1252.50.4)

Again from 02.make, this is how the pyexpat .so was built (I've added line breaks to make it more readable):

clang \
-bundle \
-undefined dynamic_lookup \
-isysroot \
/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.13.sdk \
build/temp.macosx-10.13-x86_64-3.7/private/tmp/python-20180929-40812-11ki5rr/Python-3.7.0/Modules/pyexpat.o \
build/temp.macosx-10.13-x86_64-3.7/private/tmp/python-20180929-40812-11ki5rr/Python-3.7.0/Modules/expat/xmlparse.o \
build/temp.macosx-10.13-x86_64-3.7/private/tmp/python-20180929-40812-11ki5rr/Python-3.7.0/Modules/expat/xmlrole.o \
build/temp.macosx-10.13-x86_64-3.7/private/tmp/python-20180929-40812-11ki5rr/Python-3.7.0/Modules/expat/xmltok.o \
-L/usr/local/lib \
-o build/lib.macosx-10.13-x86_64-3.7/pyexpat.cpython-37m-darwin.so

I'm running XCode 9.4.1 on mac OS 10.13.6 (17G65). Other reports indicate that the problem might be that my Xcode version is newer than my macOS version, but due to work policy I can't upgrade to Mojave just yet.

Any ideas how I can get a working Python 3 install?

I eventually fixed this by

uninstalling XCode altogether (and relying on the xcode-select command line tools)
cherry-picking this commit into my homebrew-core Taps directory
reinstalling python3


AppleUSBCDC weirdness after strange incident I use my MBP propped on one of those laptop stands, ergo my external USB mouse and USB keyboard (both generic cheap-ass Logitechs) are always connected through a powered Belkin USB hub.

Yesterday I noticed the following — after trying to eject my iPod, my USB mouse started “slowing down”, the pointer wasn’t moving smoothly. Then both the mouse and the keyboard stopped working, the “laser” in the mouse went off. I noticed that the hub became extremely (!) hot and unplugged it. This is how it happened log-wise:

05.01.12 00:55:11,000 kernel: USBF: 29136.223   [0xffffff800b871e00] The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in.  It will keep retrying.  (Port 7 of Hub at 0xfd120000)
05.01.12 00:55:29,000 kernel: USBF: 29154.870   AppleUSBHubPort[0xffffff800b86e000]::FatalError - Port 6 of Hub at 0xfd120000 reported error 0xe000404f while doing get status (second in port status change)
05.01.12 00:55:44,000 kernel: Logitech USB Keyboard::terminate(kIOServiceSynchronous) timeout
05.01.12 00:55:44,000 kernel: USBF: 29169.943   AppleUSBHubPort[0xffffff800b871e00]::FatalError - Port 7 of Hub at 0xfd120000 reported error 0xe00002c0 while doing clearing port feature (1)
05.01.12 00:55:46,000 kernel: 0        0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed
05.01.12 00:55:46,000 kernel: USBMSC Identifier (non-unique): 000A2700150DF0AA 0x5ac 0x1209 0x2
05.01.12 00:55:46,000 kernel: 0        0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed
05.01.12 00:55:46,000 kernel: USBMSC Identifier (non-unique): 574341535531333731343832 0x1058 0x1001 0x106
05.01.12 00:55:46,000 kernel: 0        0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed
05.01.12 00:55:54,000 kernel: IOUSBMassStorageClass[0xffffff800cc3e600]: The device is still unresponsive after 6 consecutive USB Device Resets; it will be terminated.
05.01.12 00:55:54,000 kernel: USBF: 29179.967   [0xffffff800cc3ee00] The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in.  It will keep retrying.  (Port 7 of Hub at 0xfd120000)
05.01.12 00:56:03,000 kernel: USBF: 29188.734   [0xffffff800cc3ee00] The IOUSBFamily was not able to enumerate a device.
05.01.12 00:56:04,000 kernel: USBF: 29189.636   [0xffffff800cc3aa00] The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in.  It will keep retrying.  (Port 5 of Hub at 0xfd120000)
05.01.12 00:56:19,000 kernel: USB Optical Mouse::terminate(kIOServiceSynchronous) timeout
05.01.12 00:56:19,000 kernel: USBF: 29205.  7   AppleUSBHubPort[0xffffff800cc3aa00]::FatalError - Port 5 of Hub at 0xfd120000 reported error 0xe00002ed while doing get status (first in port status change)
05.01.12 00:56:19,000 kernel: USBF: 29205.  7   [0xffffff800cc3aa00] The IOUSBFamily was not able to enumerate a device.
05.01.12 00:56:36,000 kernel: 0        0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed
05.01.12 00:56:36,000 kernel: 0        0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed
05.01.12 01:00:41,000 kernel: 0        0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed
05.01.12 01:00:41,000 kernel: 0        0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed

When I plug the mouse and the keyboard directly into the two built-in USB ports, everything works fine. I’m using the Belkin hub again, and so far it’s not heating up, everything works. However, every time I connect USB peripherals (=my mouse and keyboard), no matter if it’s the Belkin hub or one the built-in ports, I get something like that:

05.01.12 13:18:55,000 kernel: 0        0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed
05.01.12 13:18:55,000 kernel: USBMSC Identifier (non-unique): 574341535531333731343832 0x1058 0x1001 0x106
05.01.12 13:18:55,000 kernel: 0        0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed
05.01.12 13:18:55,000 kernel: 0        0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed

Mind you, everything works, and so far I haven’t encountered the “jerky mouse” problem or USB timeouts again. What’s going on? Is this normal? Have I somehow fried my Mac’s USB? :(

Thanks in advance for any kind of help!

I don't think you have anything to be worried about.

The AppleUSBCDC mentioned in the error message is related to "communication devices". This is usually a USB<>Ethernet adapter. Do you have such a device plugged in?

Try unplugging it and rebooting your system - I guess that will make the error messages disappear.


Empty trash with open files, MacOs Sierra I'm watching a movie in VLC and, while the movie is playing, I can move it to the trash and empty it.

At no point MacOs tries to warning me about anything. The movie continues to play, even after I emptied the trash. But if I pause it, the sound goes missing.

Same goes for any other file...

Does this happens to anyone else? Is this the expected behavior?

VLC maintains its own cache of media that it is playing. This means if the original media is temporarily unavailable, such as on a network drive over a poor network connection, the file can continue playing for a while until the network connection is re-established. This also means VLC isn't accessing the actual file, meaning VLC can play partially downloaded media, but also means you can delete the file without Finder complaining that the file is in use.


Numbers: How to change cell text conditionally? I am trying to change the text of a cell in Numbers 3 according to a condition.
E.g. if A1-A2 is a negative value, the text shall be 'Negative'. If the value is positive the text shall be 'Positive'. Is there something like a function to accomplish this?

You can do this with the IF function. The syntax is…

┌── IF function returns one of two values when upon an expression's evaluation.
│
│                     ┌── string or calculation for cell to show upon TRUE/FALSE
│                     │   strings should be inside double quotes "like this"
│                ┌────┴─────────┐
IF(if-expression,if-true,if-false)
   └─────┬─────┘
         └── the expression to evaluate
             for example: to test if A1-A2 is negative, you can use (A1-A2)<0
             the result must be a boolean

This results in the following calculation:

IF(Data::A1<0,"Negative","Positive")

Result:

An example for comparing a calculation in the if-expression:

            ┌── from table "Data" do A1-B1
            │
            │          ┌── is the result less than zero (i.e. negative)?
    ┌───────┴───────┐  │
IF((Data::A1−Data::B1)<0,"Negative","Positive")
                         └───┬────┘ └───┬────┘
                             │          └── if false, return "Positive"
                             │
                             └── if true, return "Negative"

Result:

However, this will return Positive even if the number is 0, so instead…

            ┌── from table "Data" do A1-B1
            │
            │          ┌── is the result less than zero (i.e. negative)?
    ┌───────┴───────┐  │
IF((Data::A1−Data::B1)<0,"Negative",IF((Data::A1−Data::B1)=0,"Zero","Positive"))
                         └───┬────┘                        │ └─┬──┘ └────┬───┘
if true, return "Negative" ──┘           is equal to 0? ───┘   │  return "Positive"
                                                               └── return "Zero"


Did the calculator widget break in Lion? I seem unable to send a "clear" button press from the number pad on my standard apple extended keyboard (aluminum) to the calculator widget in Dashboard on Lion. The regular calculator app works as expected. Strangely, nothing on the internet seems to indicate a known bug.

I wrote a fix for this bug. Check my article for details.


Why can I sometimes not enter my password on my iPad? I have an iPad 3 (16GB, no 3G), running iOS 6. Three times recently it's got into a state where when I've turned it on (from sleep, not from completely off), and I haven't been able to enter my password. I can 'slide to unlock', but when the keyboard comes up, the cursor flickers, but all the 'keypresses' don't do anything (although, for example, the 123 key on the keyboard still works). I've also noticed that the orientation sensor doesn't work when I rotate it in this state (the lock switch is off).

Has anyone else seen this issue? Is it a known problem? How can I fix it? So far I've fixed it by turned the iPad completely off and on, but obviously that's far from ideal.

Just like a computer, an iPad is a software-driven device, and unresponsiveness like this is commonly the result of imperfect memory management.

From my experience, the leading cause of iOS software instability is running low on application memory. This can happen after long periods of use without ever power cycling the device — days or even weeks. (How often are you needing to power cycle your device?) Even if the device works great, if it has been a while, turning it off and on is a healthy action, as it can re-allocate its full memory once again, just like restarting a computer.

If you aren’t noticing delayed or unresponsive behavior elsewhere, then perhaps a backup and restore would be a good thing to try, to rule out corrupt or damaged system software.


Cmd-N in Lion Finder shows "All My Files" not home? In Lion Cmd-N in Finder opens a new Window with "All My Files" showing as the default. Is it possible to set that back to the normal "home" directory of my user?

You can set the default under Finder -> Preferences.

Look for New Finder Window Shows


How can I hide a local disk in Finder at root level? I want to hide some local disks from left pane (Devices section) in Finder.

I want to remove them from the list of all disks at root level.
What is the command in terminal?

PS: I can't unmount them because they must be accessible for the system.

Here you go

/usr/bin/SetFile -a V /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD

You will need to get the command line tools installed from Xcode if your system lacks the setfile program.


How to stop OS X from trying to run TeamViewer every 10 seconds I recently happened to look at my system.log file and noticed the following messages over and over:

Mar  4 12:09:32 ix com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]
(com.teamviewer.teamviewer[11506]): Service could not initialize:
Unable to set current working directory. error = 2: No such file or
directory, path = /Applications/TeamViewer.app/Contents/MacOS: 15D21:
xpcproxy + 12028 [1353][<>]: 0x2
Mar 4 12:09:32 ix com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]
(com.teamviewer.desktop[11507]): Service could not initialize: Unable
to set current working directory. error = 2: No such file or
directory, path = /Applications/TeamViewer.app/Contents/Resources:
15D21: xpcproxy + 12028 [1353][<>]:
0x2
Mar  4 12:09:32 ix com.apple.xpc.launchd[1]
(com.teamviewer.teamviewer): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing
respawn out by 10 seconds.
Mar  4 12:09:32 ix com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.teamviewer.desktop):
Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

TeamViewer is not installed on my Mac, and has not been for a long time.  So the above is obviously looking to run something in a path that no longer exists.  However, seeing launchctl involved, I ran launchctl list | grep team and lo and behold I found a couple of entries related to TeamViewer.  So then I tried the following commands:
sudo launchctl stop com.teamviewer.service
sudo launchctl stop com.teamviewer.teamviewer
sudo launchctl stop com.teamviewer.Helper
sudo launchctl stop com.teamviewer.service
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/com.teamviewer.teamviewer.plist
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/com.teamviewer.teamviewer_desktop.plist
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.teamviewer.*
sudo launchctl remove /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.teamviewer.*
sudo launchctl remove /Library/LaunchAgents/com.teamviewer.*
sudo rm /Library/LaunchAgents/com.teamviewer.*
sudo rm /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.teamviewer.*

There are no more files I can find that are related to TeamViewer.  Now sudo launchctl list | grep team and launchctl list | grep team both show no output, which suggests everything should be stopped and removed. But I still see the above messages every 10 seconds in system.log, even after running all those commands!
How do I make it stop?!

This kind of behavior is usually the result of a leftover .plist file, startup daemon or something similar. Without an uninstaller you have to root through

/Library/Application Support
/Library/LaunchAgents
/Library/LaunchDaemons
/Library/Preferences
/Library/StartupItems
~/Library/Application Support
~/Library/LaunchAgents
~/Library/Preferences

for any & all related files and delete them too.
If the behavior persists after all that then use the find command in Terminal to see if you can find any instances of the offending app (or sudo find if necessary) just in case there's something leftover in the normally invisible "unix-y" folders at the root level of your drive.


How to share an iTunes library between Mac & Windows? i have two SSDs and one HDD in my computer. One SSD runs OS X and one SSD runs Windows. On the HDD i have my iTunes Library and Music Files. I want to use the same library on both OSs.

I used this guide to get write permissions on the NTFS HDD over Mac OS: NTFS support on El Capitan

I now have the problem that Mac OS searches music in the path:

file://localhost/D:/Music/

While it is (within Mac OS) in the path:

file:///Volumes/DATA/Music/

Which options do i have to solve this problem?

I already read about OS X Fuse but im confused if this is the tool that can help me.

Getting both Mac & Windows able to read & write to the same location is just the beginning… [& frankly, the simplest method is probably to just format the shared drive as exFAT, which both Mac & Windows can read & write to natively.]

"Sharing the library" is something of a misnomer when it comes to manually keeping one iTunes Media folder synchronised between two different machines & two different iTunes instances.

You can do it, but each copy of iTunes will want to be "in charge" & they will not auto-synchronise at all. You would have to do that manually, every so often. It is not a quick task, but it can be done.

The first thing to do is establish which will be your Master & which your Slave.
It is going to be very counter-productive if you keep adding tunes & playlists to both iTunes, as you will then never be able to synchronise them. One has to be "in charge" the other merely a copy.

I'm going to assume we're using the Mac as Master, Windows as Slave.

Note: You are not going to be moving the default iTunes folder on either OS, only the Media folder location. You cannot make iTunes synchronise the main folder across what is essentially two machines.

Next, you need to establish what the full path to each is, from each OS.
As you've already discovered, the paths are absolute, not relative - so the next thing to do is take your Master iTunes Library.xml file & modify all the paths so that it will work on your Slave iTunes.

Assuming your stated paths are correct for each instance, then you need to take your Master xml file, duplicate it & search/replace the paths to match your Slave paths. Something like TextWrangler [freeware] is going to be good for this.

Open your Mac iTunes folder & copy the iTunes Library.xml file to the desktop. This is going to be our working copy of the Mac Master which we will modify & move to Windows. Leave the original where it is.

Open this duplicate Master iTunes Library.xml & scroll down until you find the first path instance, check it's correct - so, for instance your Mac path would be file:///Volumes/DATA/Music/ so in Search menu > Find…  put file:///Volumes/DATA/Music/ in find & file://localhost/D:/Music/ in replace.
Replace all.

In your Slave iTunes folder, move the existing iTunes Library.xml & iTunes Library.itl files to the desktop, for safety.

Copy across your newly-modified .xml file to your Windows iTunes folder.
Don't launch iTunes yet.

Important Note
iTunes behaviour appears to have changed at approximately version 12.3
You can no longer break the .itl file & use that as your base to rebuild. iTunes now just claims it is damaged & will not use it.

post 12.3 method

Copy your newly-edited iTunes Library.xml to your Windows music/iTunes folder & your existing, unmodified iTunes Library.itl file directly from your Mac iTunes folder to your Windows folder, replacing the existing one, if it's still there.

Launch iTunes.
Open the prefs  Ctrl ⌃   ,  go to the Advanced tab & first switch off 'keep organised' & 'copy to iTunes media folder'.
Then change the path to the correct one for your remote media folder location.
Click OK - if you are asked anything about 'should I organise/fix/etc' say no.

iTunes will do a quick 'Updating Library' & then you appear to be ready to go [I'm doing this live as I'm typing this answer…]

This method no longer appears to preserve the album artwork & instead iTunes will need to go fetch it all again, rather annoyingly.
As of iTunes 12.6 Album Artwork & play counts are once more preserved.

It runs like molasses whilst this is happening… but seems to be good once finished.

pre 12.3 method

This is the important bit that none of the 'moving my iTunes Library' guides tell you. They mostly tell you to Import this new XML from the Import menu - I've done it, it can take 12 hours & you lose some data.

Instead, we will make a new broken ITL file.
As I don't know how to do this on Windows, lets make one on the Mac & copy it over.

Open Terminal & enter this touch ~/Desktop/iTunes\ Library.itl That will create an empty ITL file on the desktop, broken enough for this.
Move this file to your Windows iTunes folder.

Launch iTunes. It will now notice something is 'wrong' & start rebuilding the ITL file, using your newly-modified XML file. The message is 'Importing ‘iTunes Music Library.xml’ This will take some time, but more like 15 minutes than 8 hours.

You may find some album artwork missing - it never seems to be a truly perfect solution, but your play counts, playlists etc should all survive intact.

You need to repeat this entire process every so often, to maintain sync between the two instances. You will always lose the play counts, etc from the Windows instance this way, but that's as close as you are going to get to fully synchronising iTunes.


How do I install OS X Yosemite on an unsupported MacBook? I have downloaded and made a bootable USB of Yosemite but once I boot holding the option key and attempt to install I get an error stating that Yosemite is already installed on my computer. I'm running Snow Leopard and I made my bootable USB using Diskmaker X.

You should use following to make a bootable Yosemite USB.

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ Yosemite.app —nointeraction

Just replace the Untitled with name of the USB drive


Disabling iCloud Drive sync on specific Wifi networks Is there a way to do this ? I have disabled iCloud Drive for certain directories by adding .nosync to it's name but this situation is different. Maybe using monitoring the wifi network SSID and launching a custom command.

Try TripMode. It's a third party app, but it's build to do exactly what you want. There's a free trial as well.

  TripMode activates itself on networks where you’ve turned it on before. Set it, then forget it.


What's the difference between rm and empty trash? If I put a file in the trash and "empty trash", is that the same as doing rm file?

I understand that there are questions here asking about (e.g. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]), but no answer directly pertains to the difference in process (if there is one).

Yes, rm removes the file as does moving it to trash and then emptying the trash. One nice thing about moving files to Trash is that it gives you a little longer to decide if you really want to delete them. rm will remove immediately.


Is it possible to get the full suite of unix options for the command line tools on OS X? I follow Unix Tool Tip on Twitter and it is interesting that many of the tips that are posted are not available on OS X.

For example:

  cp - u will only copy files that don't exist, or are newer than their existing counterparts, in the destination directory.

Trying this on my machine results in:

cp: illegal option -- u
usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvX] source_file target_file
   cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-fi | -n] [-apvX] source_file ... target_directory

Why are these options not available and is it possible to get access to them on OS X?

Get homebrew and have it install the core utilities. You can then see if the GNU version of cp supports the flags you desire. Here is a good answer on a partner site and I'll excerpt the exact steps you'll need to have cp be replaced by the GNU version if you wish:

Here's homebrew - http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/
Here's the long story - https://superuser.com/questions/476575/replace-os-xs-shell-commands-with-the-linux-versions/476594#476594

An example of such an environment is [Homebrew] (http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/) which for example has GNU sed among other things. Once you've installed Homebrew, you can type

brew install coreutils

and install the GNU Coreutils. These will provide you with sed, date, printf, wc and many other tools that ship with GNU/Linux, but not OS X. However, so as not to "override" default OS X binaries, they will be prefixed with g by default. So, after installing the Coreutils, if you want to use GNU sed, type

gsed

If this is too much of a hassle to type every time, you can add a "gnubin" directory to your PATH and just call GNU sed with sed. You will need to add the following to your ~/.bash_profile:

PATH="$(brew --prefix coreutils)/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"


Can I use a non "me.com" address to send email with iCloud? I will  be buying an iPad and will want to use iCloud.  However, I want to use a non "@me.com" address to send email from/reply to.  Is this possible when you sign up for iCloud?  Thanks

Using iCloud doesn't necessarily means you'll have to use Mail on iCloud. You can still use your current mail provider to send/receive email on your iPad. Providing you can connect to your current provider using IMAP, Exchange or POP.

You can also create your iCloud account without having a @me.com address. I use my @gmail.com address as my Apple ID to connect to iCloud to sync Contacts, Calendars, etc.


Booting from SSD in optibay (MacBook Pro mid-2010) I'm considering putting in an SSD for extra space and faster boot times and such in my MacBook Pro Mid-2010.

Due to losing the sudden motion sensor if I move the existing mechanical HD to the optibay, I'm considering just putting the new SSD there and booting from it.

Is that possible to do? How does bootcamp handle it? And is the hibernation issue still here in Mountain Lion?

I went through a lot of the same questions you were asking and had to search high and low to find my answers.

First of all, this is my setup:

MacBook Pro Mid 2009

Optibay: SSD
HD Bay: Original Mechanical HD
8GB RAM

OS X Boot Disk: SSD
Windows Boot Disk: Original Mechanical HD

SSD: Mac OS X
Original Mechanical HD: Windows 7 Partition / Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

Ok, so here is the reasons for the described setup.  I, like you, put the SSD in the Optibay because of the motion sensor issue.  The Optibay doesn't have a motion sensor and the Original Mechanical HD isn't motion sensor equipped. So I put the SSD in the Optibay and boot into OS X.

The next issue I faced was the fact that Mac's can freeze when trying to do hibernate with an SSD in the Optibay. So I disabled Hibernate.  This had a few nice perks, such as faster sleep and resume and the gaining back of 8 GB of SSD space that was wasted by the Hibernate RAM Image that Hibernate will make before your machine runs out of battery.  Now obviously, this means that if I was working on something important and my battery dies, then I will have lost it forever.  So this is a risk you will have to be willing to take but it is up to you. Personally I only do really important work while the charger is plugged in because of the fact that I am doing that work for 8 hours straight.

Update

Now some searching on the issue recently showed me that as of 10.8.1, this issue of freezing when waking from sleep had been fixed. I have not tested this personally on my machine because of the fact that I am used to having hibernation disabled.  I don't like or need hibernation personally and I like the extra space I get from disabling it.  Now the article says that it has been fixed but it does not state anything about Optibays, it only states its fixed for the SSDs in the Original HD Bay.  I would recommend testing it out though, leaving Hibernation turned on, sleeping your machine while NOT doing any important work, and seeing if it wakes, doing it multiple times, just to be sure.  If it does freeze or cause issues, then I would recommend disabling Hibernation.

End Update

You can disable Hibernation with the following command:

# Check Current Hibernation Status

$ sudo pmset -g | grep hibernatemode
hibernatemode   3
# 3 is the default mode, we want to change this to 0 to disable disk writes.

# Disable Hibernation
$ sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0

# Now we can remove the old sleep image
$ sudo rm /var/vm/sleepimage

Now as for Windows, since I had Windows Installed on a 50 GB partition of the Original Mechanical HD, I just left it there. Installing Windows is a pain the butt and I didn't want to do it again. Also, I am rarely ever on Windows, I only use it to play some games and to do some Windows Development on every once in a while. Also, by keeping it there, you keep windows from having any possible issues with booting from the Optibay (though when I had the Original Mechanical HD in the Optibay as a test, it booted just fine).

Since I use the SSD for pure Apple Stuff, I took the original Mac OS X partition that was on my Original Mechanical HD and just reformatted it to extra space for my Mac.  I download and store all my heavy giant waste of space extra files on that partition so I don't take up space on my precious and fast SSD in the Optibay. You could also partition it in a format that both Mac OS X and Windows 7 can access, such as ExFAT, so that they both play nice with the space and you have extra storage that both can share. Very convenient.

Now after you get all your pieces in place, be sure to go to System Preferences > Start Up Disk and set your SSD as the startup disk.  If you don't, it might delay your boot time because it thinks it has to look for the disk in the Original HD Bay.

Another tip that you will see all over the place is to enabling TRIM on your SSD. You only need to do that though if your SSD DOES NOT already do it for you. My SSD did not require me to enable TRIM, so I didn't.  Enabling it when you don't have to can sometimes slow down performance slightly but it will not hurt anything. Just check your manufacturers website or do a google search on your drive to see if its necessary.

Another thing you see all over the place is people recommending software for doing a copy over to your new SSD. Copying over your SSD is usually no problem, but issues can occur sometimes, especially if you copy over your windows partition as well.  I, like many others, will recommend just doing a clean install and copying your data over and reinstalling your programs.  Now obviously this could be a huge pain in the butt but it is completely worth it.  It will usually allow you to take stock of whats on your drive, and help you trim the fat from your file system and reorganize yourself. I have done both, complete copy and clean install and copy and can say that my machine seemed slightly snappier with the clean install. My boot time dropped by a second or 2 as well.

Doing all of this and taking the precautions with Hibernation, my computer has never been faster.  It boots in 6 seconds!

I highly recommend an Optibay if you can, it can make all the difference. I hope that this long answer helps you out and answers your questions about storing your SSD in your Optibay.  Personally it was the best choice for my computer and my needs.


Locational service notification I would like to know if there is any app that would notify me when locational service is being used up . Or it been open .

My ex wife has my find my iphone . I get a little arrow when she is using it . But it doesn’t pop up notify me when it’s been used .

No - apps don't get to track other apps and their use of the location API. This is by design of sandboxing, entitlements and public SDK/API and the review process to catch apps using private API.

You need to use Apple's iOS features to verify which apps use location and trust that is correct.

The overview of privacy and location services is:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203033 - About privacy and Location Services in iOS 8 and later
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056 - About Location Services and Privacy

Each fall, these articles above usually get updates due to the new OS. In the spring, a formally written and reviewed (Apple brings in consultants to audit their code) and then publicly documents formal design decisions) in a white paper. The one for iOS 10 from March 2017 is available.


How to download additional text-to-speech voices for later installation? I would like to download additional text-to-speech voices for OS X to later install on multiple systems or systems without an internet connection.

Is this possible, or do I have to be online to download them through the System Preferences ?

The downloaded voices are stored in /System/Library/Speech/Voices.

You can copy these between Macs. Download the desired voice on one Mac through System Preferences and copy it to the other Macs that you want.


Upgraded 10.9.1 to 10.9.2 now SD cards not recognized On early 2011 MacBook Pro 15inch -- I use the SD card slot a lot. Suddenly after the upgrade to 10.9.2 (for security reasons), now inserting an SD card gets no reaction, instead of showing an icon on the desktop for the new mounted volume.

try another brand of sd card, I had this problem with sandisk cards but al others would work perfectly.
You can also try wiggling it around a bit after a while it would read my cards if I did that.
Just don't break the card ;)


Where does macOS really install the SF Pro Text fonts? I know that it's limited for creative use Apple's proprietary fonts, and required downloading a DMG from Apple's Design Resources and installing so you can use it on your design tools, despite it already being basically installed and being used throughout the macOS system already.
But I wanna ask, where does this fonts really reside when installed? And where you can find it? Including the Emoji font?
It's not on the /Library/Fonts folder then where is it really?

Yes, its located at System/Library/Fonts.  There are several versions for different uses. SF-Pro for macs, and iPads, SF Compact for iWatch. And a third one for the terminal called SF-mono
Apple has a very restrictive license for these fonts. It may be a good idea to read it.


Importing only RAW with Photos - ignoring JPEG My camera creates both RAW and JPEG photos. Normally I delete the JPEG photos before importing. Today I forgot to do that. Now the photos on the card are deleted, and it seems that I only have JPEG images in my Photos library.

To test this I created two smart albums, one with only RAW, one with no RAW - effectively JPEG only. The last photos are only found in RAW, not in the JPEG album. Why is that? I can't find a setting to prefer RAW either.

Why would Photos ignore the RAW files, while it's obvious that these are preferred?

If you see a J in a square on the top right of the image, you're using the JPEG image. You can change this to RAW using the following steps:

Open the image
Click the yellow edit button
Menu: Image > Use RAW as original
Click done

You will now see an R in a square instead of the J. You have to do this for each image, can't do it for all at once.


Hard drive will not format - bad drive or enclosure? Today, I received from Amazon a Thermaltake BlacX 5G hard drive docking station and a 2 TB Western Digital Green drive. I inserted the drive and was able to format it into a one partition drive.

I then started a clone backup in SuperDuper which stopped when the drive seemed to eject itself. I reinserted the drive and was told it was not formatted. I began to reformat it and received the "File System Formatter Failed" error message. I rebooted, tried the docking station on a different USB port, etc. None of it worked.

I then tried to format the drive via terminal and received the following:

AndyMBP:dev andy$ diskutil eraseDisk HFS+ clone disk3
Started erase on disk3
Unmounting disk
Error: -69760: Unable to write to the last block of the device
AndyMBP:dev andy$

What I am trying to figure out is whether I have a bum drive or a bum docking station. Is there a way to determine this short of buying another drive? Everything is under warranty, but I want to make sure I return the correct item.

Try using some other means of connecting to the drive other than the Thermalake docking station. I had the same problem with one awhile back. I ended up using a plain ol' SATA to USB cable and that fixed my problem.


Any one know how to remove this shared chrome instance? This keeps popping up and showing current tabs from a colleague's computer. Any way to disable this? It may be because we're using a global apple ID but unsure.
Thanks in advance.

This is part of the handoff functionality. Which is indeed linked to an AppleID. You can easily disable handoff in System Preferences.

System Preferences --> General

And then uncheck “Allow Handoff Between This Mac and Your iCloud Devices”.

More info on handoff at the Apple's website Pick up where you left off with Handoff on Mac.


Bash Alt+Arrow keyboard combination not working in Terminal under Mojave I just migrated to Mojave from El Capitan. I am a extensive user of Terminal application.

But I got a bad surprise in this application: the alt+←  and alt+→ that move cursor from one word to another do not work anymore.

Expected behaviour (what should happen)

Previously, using alt+← in this state (cursor is symbolised with |) :

one two three four|

Led to :

one two three |four

This works fine in Safari or other applications.

Example (what actually happens)

Using alt+← in this state :

one two three four|

Led to (in Terminal):

one two three fou|r

Terminal configuration

My terminal configuration did not change since Mojave installation (option key is not used as Meta key)

Question

Does anyone have a clue about what to change in my configuration and restore expected behaviour ?

Can you check:

Go to Terminal > Preferences... > Profiles > Keyboard

From this pannel, check those two lines:

Key = Alt+← Action = \033b

Key = Alt+→ Action = \033f

They might have gone away so you may create them again, or edit and double check the key, the modifier, and the action associated:

As a workaround, (actually it could even be better, so that you don't need to reach for the arrow keys), you could use Esc+f (jump forward) and Esc+b (jump backward).

And because the Esc key is far to reach, for more convenience, map the Caps key to Esc key with Karabiner Elements.

So that you can jump back and forth with Caps+f and Caps+b.


How to enable FileVault after upgrading SSD on a MacBook Pro with no Recovery Partition I have been using a 1 TB SSD with my 17" MacBook Pro Early 2011.  With the recent availability of 2 TB SSD's, I wanted to upgrade to the larger size.  I have upgraded my HD several times since I purchased this MacBook four years ago, including two years ago when I installed the 1 TB SSD (as well as having upgraded a previous Early 2009 model).

Each time, I used SuperDuper! to transfer the partition to the new HD (connected via USB), and then put the new HD into the MacBook Pro.  I then turned on FileVault, and the new HD partition was encrypted.

However, this time was different -- when I tried to turn on FileVault, I got the message that I can't enable FileVault because the recovery partition is missing.  Using diskutil list, but not Disk Utility, I can see a recovery partition on the old HD.  Of course, I believe my MacBook came with the operating system (which I think was Lion) on DVD's, before the operating system was being shipped on the recovery partition.  I had previously upgraded the old 1 TB SSD to Yosemite.

There are a few mentions of this problem online, including Can't Enable Filevault because Recovery Partition Missing from 2011, suggesting reinstalling Lion.  http://www.techrepublic.com/article/pro-tip-restore-the-recovery-partition-in-os-x-10-10-yosemite/ suggested reinstalling the operating system, but also suggested that that might result in system instability in the future, and therefore suggested using Carbon Copy Cloner 4.  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-re-create-missing-recovery-partition-os-x-mattia provides instructions about creating a new recovery partition, but doesn't specifically mention the problem with FileVault, or whether following that process would allow FileVault to start.

I seem to have solved the problem, and FileVault is processing my new SSD as I write this.  Because I did not find a complete solution online, I wanted to put my notes here.

I followed the instructions at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-re-create-missing-recovery-partition-os-x-mattia, basically downloading the Yosemite installer from the App Store, making a separate copy from the Applications folder in case I needed it, and then running the installation.  That post suggested that the installation would take about 30 minutes, but my installation took significantly longer.  The first pass took only about 16 seconds, and then the system rebooted, and the Yosemite installation itself began.  The initial message was that it would take 44 minutes, and the first 43 minutes ran normally, but when the progress bar was at about a minute remaining, it stopped moving, and it literally took several hours for that last minute to complete, but ultimately it did, and the system rebooted.

Once that had completed, running diskutil list in a terminal window does show Apple_Boot Recovery HD.  I was able to configure FileVault, and I have my 2 TB SSD.  The operating system version is 10.10.5, which appears to be the current version, having been released on about August 13.

Finally, I would mention that I did slightly reduce the size of the 2 TB partition to 1.98 TB before running the Yosemite install, so that there would be space for the recovery partition.  However, I don't know that that was necessary, and I probably wouldn't do it next time, especially since I don't seem to be able to change the size again now that I am using FileVault.  Next time, I would make sure that the Recovery Partition was present (using diskutil list from a Terminal window), and then maximize the main partition size.

Also, when I initially created the Mac partition on the new SSD using Disk Utility, I did not create it as an encrypted, but rather used "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)"  I think that was correct, but would be interested if anyone knows a better way.


How to get rid of my spamming notification? The DivX player has installed a junk notification on my Mac saying:

  A new version of DivX is available.

as shown below:

This stupid notification bumps up every hour or so, and there is no way to turn it off (there's no disable option when I click on it's icon). I don't want and don't need their software. I can't see the player in my Notification panel.

Question: How to prevent DivX from spamming me with notifications?

Removing DivX and DivXUpdate

If you'd like to remove the DivX app along with its DivXUpdate, you need to uninstall the software.

Uninstaller

Uninstaller you can find in /Applications/DivX folder and run Uninstall DivX for Mac.app.

Manual Removal

If above folder and uninstaller doesn't exist, just remove:

/Library/Application Support/DivX/DivXUpdate.app

To remove the associated launchd services, check first which one are registered by this Terminal command:

launchctl list | grep divx

Then disable or remove them. The following two commands will remove the jobs:

launchctl remove com.divx.update.agent
launchctl remove com.divx.dms.agent

After you may consider removing these service files from /Library/LaunchAgents (called divx).

sudo rm /Library/LaunchAgents/com.divx.update.agent.plist # For Update
sudo rm /Library/LaunchAgents/com.divx.dms.agent.plist # For DivXMediaServer

Killing notification popup

Then kill the annoying update app, type this command in Terminal:

killall DivXUpdate


Change file creation date to content created date using terminal I have a lot of pictures with the wrong creation date and wrong modification date.  There is however a third date, "content created" that is correct.  user3439894 had this command line as an answer to Change file creation date to modification date using terminal
for f in *.[iI][mM][gG]; do m="$(GetFileInfo -m "$f")"; SetFile -m "$m" -d "$m" "$f"; done

Where GetFileInfo reads the modified date and rewrites the created date.  Very useful and works great (after installing the command line tools) for a lot of my pictures that have the correct modification date, thanks.  What I am looking for now, is a syntax for "content created" date that I could use?
Any help on this would be great.
Update: The easiest is probably to install EXIFTOOL.  This simple command line in terminal did the job. To set “Date Created” to time from EXIF’s “DateTimeOriginal”: exiftool "-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal" *
to move time by X hours ahead you can do: exiftool "-DateTimeOriginal-=1" *

Using tools that are part of macOS, We start by getting the ContentCreationDate from the file and place it into a container ccd -
ccd=$(mdls -raw -n kMDItemContentCreationDate FILE)

Next, We format the ContentCreationDate string into a string usable by SetFile and place that into a container nct -
nct=$(date -f '%F %T %z' -j "$ccd" '+%D %T %z')

Finally, We use SetFile and set the FSCreationDate to the modified date/time string from ContentCreationDate -
SetFile -d "$nct" FILE

I'm assuming that you know how to place all of this into a loop for processing multiple files.
Note: Look into exiftool


Activate used Verizon iPhone 6 without sim? I recently purchased a used iPhone 6, originally on the Verizon network. I'm an app developer, and as such, only need to be able to use this phone over wifi. However, when I boot up the phone I reach a "SIM Required" screen.

Is there a way to bypass this restriction or do I need to buy a cheap prepaid plan to overcome it?

If the phone is carrier locked, your best bet is to establish service with Verizon and get it unlocked. It's probably unlocked though so you might have luck putting any carrier's valid SIM into the phone. The SIM doesn't necessarily even need to be active - just that it once was valid and used.

Basically a Verizon sim will get you past the screen, possibly others as well initially.


How to view iPhone Safari developer tools on Mac over WiFi? I need to access the JavaScript console/debugger menu from my iPhone on my Mac but I need to test it while the iPhone is not charging.

Is there a way to do this?

Connect your iPhone to your Mac via USB
Go to Safari on your Mac
Mac: Safari > Preferences > Advanced > Show Developer menu in menu bar
iPhone: Settings > Safari > Advanced > Web Inspector
Mac: Safari > Develop > [iPhone Name] > Connect via Network
Unplug the iPhone form USB. You should still see it in the menu
Go to the website on iPhone Safari
On your Mac select the website. A window should open with console, inspect element and a bunch of other developer tools.


Pdfs on my iPad to my pc I have downloaded some pdf files I need them for school but would like to read them on my PC at home. how do I get them to my PC.


Select the save format in the Save As dialog by using AppleScript How do I select the output format in the Save As dialog of Mail.app? I know how to change the file name by using keystroke but I could not figure out how to change the file format in AppleScript.

Assuming Mail has focus and the Save As sheet is showing, then the following example AppleScript code would click the Format: pop up menu and select e.g.: Plain Text

tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "Mail"
        tell sheet 1 of window 1
            tell pop up button 2
                click
                click menu item "Plain Text" of menu 1
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end tell

You can also use the menu item number, e.g. click menu item 3 of menu 1

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not contain any error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors. Additionally, the use of the delay command may be necessary between events where appropriate, e.g. delay 0.5, with the value of the delay set appropriately.


External drive is damaged and freezes my Mac. Any way to recover? I'll explain everything in a clearer way.
I have a WD My Passport Studio external hd, since a while it's impossible to read it and here's the symptoms:

When I mount it and try to open the main folder, it is empty, but I
can see the content with ls from terminal.
Every action takes a lot of time (like trying to fix it in Disk Utility) and always fails.
I can't unmount it, it just doesn't and I have to reboot.

I think the partition is somehow damaged but I can't solve the problem. any clues?

First Steps: Repair the Disk, Tell Us What Happens

What exactly is happening isn't something I know. However, with a damaged disk, the first step should be to attempt to diagnose/repair it. Since that didn't work, tell us what went wrong. It'll give us a lot of insight into what may have happened and how we can fix it.

Since You Can't Repair The Disk

It's possible (although unusual) that using the command line fsck will help. Follow this guide and let us know what happens.

Command Line?

This doesn't seem like it should work, but if the disk is accessible from the command line, you could just use command-line copy paste. This doesn't seem like it should work, but you never know.

Data Recovery

No one likes it, but you may have to just reformat your partition after taking it to a data recovery service.


Using tmux and pbpaste, pbcopy, and launchctl I have discovered that tmux breaks pbpaste, pbcopy and launchctl.

Is there a good way to make it play nice with these tools?

Okay, I found a solution...

Chris Johnsen has a good writeup of what causes this problem on github.

His tools work, but a better solution, if you have homebrew installed to:

brew install reattach-to-user-namespace

Then in your ~/.tmux.conf add these lines:

set-option -g default-command "reattach-to-user-namespace -l zsh" # or bash
bind C-c run "tmux show-buffer | reattach-to-user-namespace pbcopy"
bind C-v run "reattach-to-user-namespace pbpaste | tmux load-buffer - && tmux paste-buffer"

The first line ensures your shell can talk to pbpaste, pbcopy and launchctl now with no worries.

The second line lets you copy the tmux paste buffer into the Mac's paste buffer by typing control-b control-c (replace control-b with your tmux prefix key).

The third line will directly paste the Mac's paste buffer by typing control-v.  As a side-effect it copies the Mac's paste buffer into tmux's paste buffer.

I'd prefer if I could nuke tmux's paste buffer entirely and have it paste directly into the Mac`s paste buffer, but... oh well.


Python Launcher shows nothing on the terminal I installed python 3 in Mac OS. When I first time ran a python program using Python Launcher, it asked for something like printing access to terminal. I declined it. Now when I run any python program, it opens the terminal, executes the program, but doesn't show any output. I tried searching in the settings to give Python Launcher the access but didn't found anything.

How do I give Terminal access to Python Launcher?

When you run python launcher you should get a set of menu items. Go to the Python Launcher menu item and under that select Preferences. The panel that appears should look like the image below.

As you can see there is a checkbox to run in a terminal window.


Is there a preference file where MobileMe username and password are saved? I am looking for a preference file that contains the MobileMe username/password couple that I would need to pass to a script that starts the MobileMe synchronization. What I am trying to achieve is to start the synchronization when some conditions are verified, and disable the automatic synchronization that is started from the Mac OS X.

Is there a preference file that contains the MobileMe credentials for the currently logged in user?

On Mac computers, no password information is stored in plain-text preference files -- it's all kept securely in the Keychain, which you can view using the Keychain Access utility.


Fan speed increased after upgrading to SSD I just replaced my Macbook Pro's Mid 2012 HDD with a Samsung 850 EVO SSD. The performance is great and I am very happy, but I noticed that the fan seems to run faster. It is not a drastic change, but it is noticeable. I have downloaded iStat Menus, the Exhaust of the fan is 2000 rpm and the Temperature is a bit over 50°. Is that normal and is there any chance I did something wrong while replacing the HDD?
I am running Yosemite and I did a SMC reset.

Have a look at Controlling the fan speed in Mac models after an SSD upgrade. Extracted from that article:

  Download the app “smcFanControl“
  Install smcFanControl into your Applications folder
  Open Automator
  Create “New Application”
  Go to Utilities > “Run Shell Script” and delete the word “Cat”
  Copy the following code into the Shell Script:
  /applications/smcfancontrol.app/Contents/resources/smc -k F1Mx -w 1770
  Test the Shell Script by clicking on “Run” and your fan should stop running at full speed
  Save the application to your SSD as “maxfanadjustment”
  Open System Preferences, go to Users & Groups, the tab for Login Items
  Click the “+” to add a new application and navigate to the Automator file you just created and add it.


MacBook Pro not filling the entire screen of external display I recently bought an LG 22MP68VQ, but when I connect it
MacBook Pro (13 inch, 2016) + Big Sur OS + USB Connector + VGA Cable.
But it's working fine when I am connecting an HP + Windows + VGA cable.
Any solution

Yes, because the graphics card adjusts the resolution on both devices. If you want everything to be filled on your external monitor, you have to specify it in the Macbook settings under Monitors. (If you used sync screens).
Regardless of that, VGA cables would no longer be used in this age. There are many advantages to using an HDMI / Display Port. Try it out.


Is there a way to set an alarm for sunrise, whenever that may be? The title pretty much says it all.  I've been wanting a "Sunrise alarm" for some time, but have never been able to find a way to do it - at least not a free one.  In addition to much experimentation with the built-in alarms, I've tried I think every free app in the store that claims to do this, and literally not a single one has worked (they all fail in various horrendously bad ways).
Is there a free way to set a simple sunrise alarm?  Failing that, is there any low-cost (like under $5) app that will actually do this well, and works on iOS 12?

You can create a shortcut within the Shortcuts app for this.

The coordinates in the first command need to be replaced with those of the location you need the alarm for.
PS: The alert will show the UTC time, but the alarm itself will be created in the local timezone of the iPhone/iPad