Macpro two drives Triple UEFI Boot move from Grub2 to "headless" bootmanager rEFInd issues Thanks @David Anderson for the huge afford to instruct people like me for make tools more efficient. I have been very happy with my triple boot mac via Grub2 a long period of time since Adobe have issues with my GT120 i lost my Bootscreen. Now i struggle with the new workaround with (silent)refind.
I don't get the hint with the scripts installed within the Dock (macOS/Ubuntu/Win10)
Can i boot my UEFI install of Win10 and Ubuntu on a second SSD drive with it?!
My setup: cMP5,1 macOS High Sierra / Bootrom 140 / Boot:SM951 in a IO-Crest PCIe / Win10 & Ubuntu on a second SSD / Vega 56 graphics

Thanks in advance

The original assumption was rEFInd would be installed in a small FAT formatted partition. This had the advantage that macOS, Windows and Linux could read and write to the volume. Recently, I added the option for rEFInd to reside in an EFI partition. This required modifying the Startup application to include an option for mounting and unmounting volumes.

One can define menuentry options in the refind.conf file. The default menuentry to boot can be selected by using the default_selection option. The refind.conf file can also contain a include option to read options from another file. For example, the option given below would read options from the default_os.conf file in the rEFInd tools folder.

include \EFI\tools\default_os.conf

The Startup application assumes the default_os.conf file contains default_selection options where zero to one option is not comment out. For example, the file could contain the following lines.

#default_selection "macOS High Sierra"
default_selection "Windows 10"
#default_selection "Ubuntu 18"
#default_selection "High Sierra on USB3"
#xdefault_selection "Fedora 18"

Here "Windows 10" would be the operating system that rEFInd would boot by default. The Startup application can change which default_selection options are commented out.

If you were to select High Sierra on USB3 as shown below, the the default_os.conf file  would change to what is shown below.

#default_selection "macOS High Sierra"
#default_selection "Windows 10"
#default_selection "Ubuntu 18"
default_selection "High Sierra on USB3"
#xdefault_selection "Fedora 18"

If you were to select Use Previous as shown below, then the default_os.conf file  would change to what is shown below. Basically, rEFInd would now boot to which ever operating system was chosen last from rEFInd's menu. In your case, you probably would configure the Startup application to omit this choice.

#default_selection "macOS High Sierra"
#default_selection "Windows 10"
#default_selection "Ubuntu 18"
#default_selection "High Sierra on USB3"
#xdefault_selection "Fedora 18"

Startup Application User Configurable Options

Being that you have the source, you can actually make any changes you like. However, the top of the script contains a few common items one would wish to configure.

Path an name of the file containing the default_selection options.

set inputFile to "/Volumes/REFIND/EFI/tools/default_os.conf"

An optional device to mount. If you do not need to mount any volumes, then leave the string empty. For example, to mount the default EFI partition, you would make the following change.

set deviceToMount to "/dev/disk0s1"

If you need to enter a password before mounting a volume, then make the following change.

set mountAsSuperuser to true

To omit Use Previous from the list of choices, you would need to make the change shown below.

set allowPrevious to false

Downloading the Startup Application

The Startup Application can be obtained by downloading the Startup.app.zip file. Basically, click on the green Download button on this webpage. This application was creating using macOS 10.13.16 (High Sierra) and the Script Editor application Version 2.10 (194) for AppleScript 2.7. You will need to enter the following command to remove the quarantine. Here I assume you download to your Downloads folder.

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/Startup.app

If you are using an older version of macOS, then you may need to build the application. The steps are outlined in the next section.

Steps to Build the Startup Application

Download Startup.applescript and rEFInd.icns from this SourceForge website.
Open Startup.applescript in Script Editor application.
From the Script Editor menu bar select File->New.
Copy the entire contents of Startup.applescript to the new window.
From the Script Editor menu bar, select File->Save. Choose the Application file format, then set save as to Startup.app.
From the Finder application, right click on Startup.app and select Get Info.
Drag the icon representing rEFInd.icns onto the icon in the upper left corner of the Startup.app Info window, as shown below.

The result should be the Startup.app icon be changed to the image shown below.

Finally Note

There also is a GUI PowerShell version for Windows and a GUI Python 3 version for Ubuntu (and perhaps other versions of Linux). A CLI version written in Bash 3 exists for operating systems with no graphical interface.


What process is using UDP port? I am trying to install a server that needs to use the port 3052 and it's not working. I have a feeling another process has that port. I see:

% netstat -anv | grep 3052
udp4       0      0  *.3052          *.*          196724   9216    335      0

So what does this mean? Does some process have UDP port 3052 taken, and how do I find out what it is?

You can use the lsof command to get more insight into what process is using a specific port. In your case, you'd issue the command lsof -i4UDP:3052. Read the man page for more information about how to use the tool, as it is slightly different between current and older macOS versions.

One of the columns displayed by lsof, the PID column, will show the ID of the process that is using that port. You could find out more about the process using ps.


Remove Sender name ( not email address) from outgoing Mac Mail Instead of "from" showing (Name,Name)blablabla@hjgy.xxx  -  just show   blablabla@hjgy.xxx.

Only want my email address to show on certain outgoing emails from certain servives, ex. show Name and email address from Verizon service but (no name) email address only when sent from Gmail service.

Thanks

Mail (menu) > Preferences... > Accounts > select the target account and under Account Information in the Full Name: field put the email address not the full name.


How does AppleCare Protection work overseas? (MacBook Pro 13 inch) If I buy an apple laptop overseas can I get the apple protection back in UK?

If I buy the laptop and Apple protection abroad, if something has gone wrong will it be protected when I am back in UK.

Apple Inc.
The AppleCare Protection Plan provides global repair coverage.

So yes, you are fully covered.


Catalina not allowing me to read-write from remote host? How to fix? I'm trying to download some files from my remote host using scp and proxyjump, however, I keep getting the dread read-only file system anywhere I try to download my file to... initially I couldn't even touch any files to my directory however I managed to run killall Finder and that fixed the latter, however, I still cannot download the necessary files to my directory of choice... does anyone know how to fix this?

scp -r -oProxyJump=I R:remote_file localfile

The above is what I'm using for downloading a file. Where I is an intermediate host, R is the remote host and remote_file is the directory and localfile is my directory, all I get is:

localfile: Read-only file system

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

I had to move out of my root directory and scp somewhere else (Applications folder in my case).


How to use the cmd+w shortcut without closing a Fluid app? I am using Coder.com, an online IDE, as a Fluid app.

I want cmd+w and cmd-t to close and open new tabs inside the IDE, not the Fluid app. Is there any way I can overwrite these shortcuts?

Yup.

Quit your Fluid.app, and then follow these steps:

Go to System Preferences » Keyboard » Shortcuts » App Shortcuts.
Click the "+"
In the pop-up window, change "Application" from "All Applications" to "Your Fluid App.app"
Set the Menu Title to "Close Tab"
Set the Keyboard Shortcut to something else like ⌘⌥W
Click "Add"

Then repeat steps 2-6 for "New Tab", like so:

Click the "+"
In the pop-up window, change "Application" from "All Applications" to "Your Fluid App.app"
Set the Menu Title to "New Tab"
Set the Keyboard Shortcut to something else, like ⌘⌥T
Click "Add"

Go to Coder.com and use their keyboard settings to set Close Tab and New Tab to ⌘W and ⌘T


Time & Location - High data usage iPhone 5s running iOS 8.0.2

I am on a 2GB/month plan so I tend to keep a close eye on cellular data usage. Recently noticed that Settings > Cellular > System Services > Time & Location was almost 300MB in about 20 days. In the past, I have never seen this more than 3-5MB. Checked a friend who has the same hardware & software and his usage has remained under 10MB/month.

What accounts for this high usage? I have background refresh turned off, Location Services enabled only for GPS apps (e.g. Waze cellular usage is around 30MB) and Find My Phone.

What exactly does "Time and Location" mean, which system components use this service and why has the usage shot up 100 times from 3MB to almost 300MB?

Thanks

I know this question is old, but I just found the the same happening for me.

First off, you can see when your location services are currently in use when a little North-East arrow appears on your status bar next to your battery.

One way to find out which apps are using location services, is to start closing apps one by one and checking when that arrow disappears.

A better way is to look at the Location Services settings Settings > Privacy > Location Services. Here you can see all the apps that have requested access to Location Services and also what permission they have been granted ("Never", "While Using" or "Always"). Best pay special attention to the apps that show "Always". This means they can use Location Services even when the app is not active. This screen will also show a purple North East arrow next to apps that are actively using Location Services right now.

If you don't want the offending apps to have access to Location Services you can change their access to "Never" or "While Using" to limit the damage. Note though that depending on the apps purpose it might stop performing as desired.


How do cope with a space when setting the $PATH I want to add the sublime lib to my path but it has a space in it.

I have tried the obvious like you would navigate in the terminal (
e.g. /Applications/Sublime\ Text\ 2.app/Contents)

export PATH="/Applications/Sublime\ Text\ 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl:$PATH"

But I still get the error

/Applications/Sublime: No such file or directory

I could rename it but I am curious how to resolve it. I am using bash.

Use backslash or quotes, not both. You put the sequence backslash-space in the PATH value.

export PATH="/Applications/Sublime Text 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl:$PATH"

or

export PATH=/Applications/Sublime\ Text\ 2.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl:$PATH

Be sure not to wrap the line: it has to be spaces, not newlines.

Note that if you see an error like /Applications/Sublime: No such file or directory from the export PATH=… line, then you have a syntax error in that line, such as a space after the equal sign: the assignment doesn't try to look up the directory. If the error is at some later time, then it isn't due to the PATH value, or if so only very indirectly: it's perfectly ok for entries in $PATH not to exist, and a non-existent directory will not lead to an error message.


What are stub applications? I am trying to understand how and where Java is installed on my Mac (Mavericks this time) and I found this question and answers:

Need help understanding Oracle's Java on Mac — Stack Overflow

Here is mentioned

  /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Commands. The binaries within that directory are stub applications

What are stub applications? They are not symbolic link?

Stub applications are smaller apps that do work for larger, more complex apps.

For example, an app can request information from a stub app concurrently with a main process that the original app is running. Then, the stub app can return information back to the main process that initiated the stub binary.


Unresponsive save dialogs in Preview With the introduction of Mountain Lion, Preview acts up whenever I need to save a file.  It does this regardless of whether I use File > Save or Command+S.  The logs tell the same story:

10/20/12 10:54:48.700 PM Preview[56917]: RVS:__54-[NSRemoteSavePanel _runOrderingOperationWithContext:]_block_invoke_0319 : Timeout occured while waiting for the window

Right after Preview stops responding, this log shows up and I can use Preview normally again.  This also occurs when I try to Move to...  from the window menu.

I have all of Mountain Lion's latest updates. Is this a bug just like this and is Apple aware of it?  Is anyone else experiencing these issues and are there known workarounds (besides quitting and re-opening Preview [although it does save your work and annotations right before, because of Auto Save...?] or using Skitch).

It seems that a recent restore and fixing permissions and the disk in Disk Utility have cleared up the issue. If it does happen again, however, I will return to this post with a bounty. Also, a recent OS X update seems to have eliminated the issue.


How to turn off screensaver automatically when "do not disturb“ is on? When I perform a task in "do not disturb" mode, I don't want also to be disturbed by a screensaver.

Can I automatically turn off the screensaver together with "do not disturb"? I.e. to configure it or to automate it by catching an event and triggering an action.

I know about Caffeine and similar apps, but it bothers me to configure both if only one button should be enough. Also some apps (and TV mirroring) start "do not disturb"“ automatically and I want the benefit of not being disturbed by a screensaver as well.

If you're using the mouse &/or keyboard, it won't, of course, go to screensaver.

If you're not, try System Prefs > Desktop & Screen Saver > Hot Corners.

I have mine set like this... just shove the cursor to the top left of the main screen & no more nodding off...


How do I set a static IP for my iPad? I have an iPad v1 and need to plug in its IP to a program on my computer to test files.

The problem is every time I connect, the IP is reset and I have to enter a new IP.

Is there a way to have it permanently on one IP?

Settings --> WiFi --> select the network --> select Static and set the necessary values


mysql.sock gets deleted on restart I have set up PHP and MySQL, however MySQL wants the mysql.sock file in /var/mysql, which is fair enough. I change the directory to /var/mysql however every time I restart my computer mysql.sock gets deleted and I can't work.

Has anyone got any ideas on how I can fix this problem?

It is not ridiculous at all. I'd assume that, seeing you're coming from a Windows environment, you simply don't understand Unix sockets.

An Unix socket file is created when mysqld is started up, and mysql.sock is that file. It is a faster alternative to TCP/IP for use on a local system.

So yeah, it is actually totally normal that the file is deleted when you restart your computer: once the server is off, there's no reason for the communication line (socket) to still be open.

Your problem is not about the file missing, but about the server not starting up automatically on restart. You probably didn't have this problem “on Windows at work” not because of Windows, but because of work, where your workstation was set up to start MySQL server on boot.

Simply check the “Automatically Start MySQL Server on Startup” checkbox in the MySQL prefpane (in System Preferences) if you used the standard installer, or see the “MySQL does not start on startup” question in case of a problem on Lion or another installation method.


Will my user directory be enough for offsite backup? I'm about to dive into the world of offsite backup. The service I use recommend that I backup just my user folder. Would this be enough to restore my system to it's original if there's something wrong with the computer? I want a backup of all the app settings, including system settings etc not just my documents.

To be safe, and assuming bandwidth/storage space is not a big issue, I would recommend backing up everything. A good argument could be made that you don't always need all of it, but unless doing so would cause great inconvenience to you, it will probably be worth it to have the additional security of knowing everything is recoverable. There ARE files outside of just your user directory that even a casual user could find important. Many settings/preferences, application support files, etc. are stored on a higher level than your user directory.

That being said, folders outside of your user directory probably do not need to be backed up as frequently as the ones inside it, so you could probably get away just fine with backing up the system folders, say, once a week, while your user directory should be backed up daily.


Waking Mac over WiFi by Linux Does anyone know if a mac can be woken up from the sleep state by a Linux machine over WiFi? The router is non-Apple.

Under System Preferences -> Energy Saver, select the checkbox "Wake for network access". Note that for Mac laptops this can only be enabled while the laptop is connected to a power source.

Accessing the Mac over the network from your Linux machine, such as through SSH, will wake the machine.


Older version of gfortran doesn't get installed despite removal newer version I installed gfortran v6.3.0 using installer, and needed to go back to 4.9.2.
I removed gfortran using sudo rm -r /usr/local/gfortran /usr/local/bin/gfortran, but when I try to install v4.9.2 using a disk image, it says a newer version already exists.

How do I resolve this issue?

You can use apps such as App Cleaner to fully uninstall apps.

In your case there are likely files left on your computer for v6.3.0 and using App Cleaner will remove these additional files.

You can do this manually by finding and deleting the .plist and .bom files associated with gfortran. Type 'locate gfortran' in a terminal window will find the path names to these files.


Recover QuickTime 7 Pro registration from backup? I recently had a disk corruption simultaneous with my Time Machine backup failing to execute for a period of 3 weeks.

So I wiped the drive and reinstalled the OS and have been dragging and dropping from the old back up to get close to the previous state. In some cases I've had to reenter software keys.

At the moment I am having no luck with re-enabling QuickTime Pro.  I have read Apple's note on the topic:

  Retrieve a lost QuickTime 7 Pro registration key

None of the methods they suggest work for me.

Does anyone know if it is possible to copy a preference from the back up to the new disk that will re-enable QuickTime Pro?  What would be the name + location of that file?

The file that contains the serial number, if you still have it, would be here:

Macintosh HD/Library/Preferences/com.apple.QuickTime.plist

*NOTE: This is the main Library folder, not your User folder Library.


is there Dictionary app on iphone that can translate word printed on real paper? Is there any Dictionary app act like this:
1.capturing the image of the word on the book by its camera
2.converting the image of the word to text,and show its meaning in other languages

Yes, application is called Word Lens, and the technology behind it is darn impressive :)
Have a look at the video presentation.
But it only works for translations from english to spanish (and vice-versa). Supposedly more languages to come but no progress since it launched.


Sublime Text like fuzzy filesystem search for Mac OS X Currently I am using Alfred's filesystem navigation capabilities. It's pretty awesome, but sometimes I want fuzzy-search to match not only the filename but the full path.

E.g. I want to find a pdf file with some very common filename (say proposal.pdf). And I have a directory structure like this:

 - dropbox
   - partners
     - supercorp
       - proposal.pdf
     - megacorp
       - proposal.pdf

It would be nice if I can type dro/meg/propos to get to the megacorp's proposal file. The answer may be the Alfred plugin or some configuration, but I'll accept any solution that allows me to quickly navigate to this file and perform some action (e.g. reveal in Finder or something). "Search-as-you-type" functionality is very important.

UPD Just found a similar question. Seems that full path matching feature is missing because mdfind is only searching the file name and all the tools are using it internally.

Alfred ships with an example workflow called Dynamic File Search that does something similar to fuzzy searching:
https://www.alfredapp.com/blog/tips-and-tricks/how-to-get-the-results-you-want-in-alfred-every-time/
https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/11981-searching-in-files-in-a-specific-location/?do=findComment&comment=62957
Alfred searching through directories and filenames at the same time

To add it, click the [+] at the bottom of the Workflows preferences, and choose Examples > Dynamic File Search.

Type "ff" in Alfred to first select a search scope
Then type the name of the file you're searching for within that folder

More documentation on Alfred's file filter feature can be found here https://www.alfredapp.com/help/workflows/inputs/file-filter/


When swiping between spaces, sometimes the background moves and sometimes it doesnt Since upgrading to Sierra I've noticed that sometimes when I swipe between spaces the background image moves left or right as I swipe along with whatever icons I have on my desktop and whatever (lets say) open finder windows I have. Other times the background remains static but everything else moves left or right as I swipe.

I have the same (default) bg image for all spaces.

I have also noticed that the behavior seems to remembered by the space I am moving to/from. For instance, right now I have 2 full screen spaces and then 4 "desktop" spaces and then 2 more full screen spaces. And if I swipe into or out of the desktop 4 space then the bg remains static, but swiping to any other space, the background moves.

I realize this is not a big deal, but it's annoying... thoughts?

I have this exact same problem. It usually resolves itself after a reboot or removing the affected space but is slight annoying as it does consistently happen after a few hours of uptime.


Make iOS devices by default connect to external audio sources (Airplay/Bluetooth)? Is there a way to get an iOS device to connect to an Airplay server and/or Bluetooth audio device by default?

I would like my iPad to use my Mac computer's speakers by default, instead of the iPad internal speakers.

I can think of two options:

Run an AirServer or Airfoil server on the Mac, and somehow get the iPad to connect to that Airplay server by default when it's online.
Trick the iPad into believing that the Mac is a Bluetooth speaker, and get it to connect there by default.

Both options above would probably require some sort of third-party software like AirServer or Airfoil – or something for Bluetooth – but the big question is if it's possible to get an iOS device to connect by default to an external sound source.

Btw, the way I solve this problem today is simply connecting the iPad to my speakers via an Aux 3.5 mm cable, and simply bypass the computer altogether. I am however thinking of getting a portable Bluetooth speaker or a portable Airplay speaker, and I'm trying to learn how easy it is to use these technologies to use a default audio output. A big advantage of Bluetooth over Airplay would be if it's easier to set a standard output device via Bluetooth, rather than having to use the pesky iOS control center every time one of the devices are put to sleep or shut down.

Right now you can only set the default audio routing for calls (phone calls, Skype, FaceTime) by changing the setting for it in Settings -> General -> Accessibility -> Call Audio Routing.

There is no method to change the default audio routing for media at this point in time.


What is proper way to get rid of quarantined files after ClamXav scan? I used ClamXav to scan my iMac for viruses. Now that I have them quarantined (19 files) do I just put them in the trash? Or is there a different method to making sure these are gone and won't be a problem anymore?

I have attached a pic. Are these just all email/spam/phish?

Assuming the infected files have been moved to a defined quarantine folder, i.e., e.g., ClamXav > Preferences > Quarantine Preferences > Set quarantine folder, then in Finder, select the files in the quarantine folder and right-click > Move to Trash, then empty the Trash.

Note: The *.emlx files are the entire email files, as ClamXav cannot just remove the spam/virus/malware/etc. portion of the email.  The *.partial.emlx file are partially downloaded email files that contain spam/virus/malware/etc.


Restore videos backed up to iCloud? I have some videos on my iPad, which have gone corrupt somehow. They do not play and say Unknown in the details.

I had taken a iCloud backup of these. How do I force them to be downloaded back to my iPad to replace the corrupt videos?

iCloud does not actually backup the videos, only the metadata. The Videos themselves still need to be synced via iTunes or the App Store/iTunes download on the device.

Like the old backups made in iTunes, the backup contains the metadata, settings and various other bits or pieces that is not part of a normal sync or purchase.

When you restore a backup it will afterwards start syncing the actual media and apps from iTunes, if it is done via iTunes, or start downloading the media and apps from the App Store if you haven't used iTunes for syncing. This does not include videos or music that was not purchased from the iTunes store.

The only videos that are backed up are those in the Camera roll as per this Apple support document. Also note the disclaimer at the bottom:

  Backup of purchased music is not available in all countries. Backup of purchased TV shows is U.S. only. Previous purchases may not be restored if they are no longer in the iTunes Store, App Store, or iBookstore.


How do I clear the default email client? I do not want ANY email client as a default. Whenever I accidentally click on a link, Outlook comes up. I do not want ANYTHING to pop up.

Uninstalling is not an option. I want Outlook on the computer; I just do not want a default or anything to open if I accidentally click on a mail-link.

How can I clear the default?

I'm on OSX 10.9.2

The location you set your default email reader is in Mail.app:

Mail > Preferences > General

That will let you pick a different program than Outlook, but doesn't have a none option.

There is a third party system preference that I have, but I can't tell if it is discontinued or the developer's site is just down. It lets you set a default application for all sorts of "various URL schemes, file extensions, file types, Uniform Type Identifiers (UTIs), and MIME types."
RCDefaultApp

One of the options under email is <disabled> which should be what you want.


Can I share the Wi-Fi connection of my Mac to the internet with my iPad? My Mac is connected to the internet via Wi-Fi.

Can I use this connection for my iPad? I guess creating a local network is not possible, since I already use the wifi of the mac. So, is it possible by connecting the iPad with the USB cable?

To share your Mac internet connection with your iPad do the following (Source with some screenshots)

On your Mac, go to Apple > System Preferences > Bluetooth > Turn Bluetooth On.
Turn Bluetooth On on your iPad.
Your iPad should show up as a new device in the Bluetooth preferences of your Mac. Click Pair. A six digit number will appear on your Mac. This same number should show up on your iPad. Confirm the connection by tapping “Pair” on your iPad.
On your Mac, go to Apple > System Preferences > Sharing

Click on “Internet Sharing” from the menu on the left. Do not check the box yet!
Select: Share your connection from “Wi-Fi”
Check: To computers using “Bluetooth PAN”
Check the “Internet Sharing” box from the menu on the left
When asked if you’re sure you want to share your connection, select “Start”
share mac internet with iPad

At this point, you should be able to get online on your iPad. Obviously, for this to work, your Mac will have to be awake and connected to the internet.


Weird US keyboard input on Macbook Pro with French keyboard layout? I've been given a replacement Macbook Pro while waiting for my new one to arrive, and the machine has a French Keyboard layout (I work for a French institution, and the technical service did not have any replacement machine with a US keyboard).

I would like to switch to the US layout I am very used to, especially to get easy access to curly brackets and tilde signs I sue to program. I changed the keyboard settings and almost all keys do what they should, apart for the top left "tilde" key (the key below the ESC key), that is mapped to an unexpected sign in all US layouts I tried (US, US international, US-PC).

I attach a screenshot of the weird US keyboard layout I'm proposed. The machine is running OS X 10.10.5. How can I set a standard US layout?

Thanks, M.

Update: after a few tests I came to the conclusion the system is proposing me the US International layout even if I explicitly select US. Is there any way to remap a the keyboard to act like a real US layout?


Flashing blue dot on Google Map I have an iphone 5S.  Sometimes when I use the Google map and enter a destination, my current location is a flashing blue dot which is very convenient.  Lately, the blue dot has been replaced with an arrow which is not as convenient.  How do I get my map to permanently show the flashing blue dot?

The arrow is your current location, except that it also represents your current location and orientation in navigation mode.

Google Maps automatically switches between the blue dot that represents your current location to an arrow in a circle when you are using the app for navigation, as you can see in the following screenshots (surroundings obscured for general privacy):

Regular (non-navigation) mode, with blue dot representing current location

Navigation mode, with arrow representing current location

As you can see, these are the defaults and I doubt they can be changed. You might just want to ensure that you aren't currently navigating anywhere (exit by tapping the 'X' at the bottom left corner) and your current location indicator should return to its usual blue dot self.


iMac mid 2011 reboots when connecting an external display I'm new to apple, and finally got my second hand iMac booted.
I try to connect an external display to the iMac with an mini display port adapter.
I have 2 adapters, 1 does nothing, the other makes my external display working (FHD and 4K), but then, the iMac reboots.
I think this has something to do with the switching of the graphics adapter.
I searched for a workaround to disable the AMD graphics adapter, but can't find this.
Does anyone has another solution, or tips for a work around?

It is safest to treat DisplayPort as not hot-pluggable.
Only connect or disconnect when the computer is off. Power on the display before the computer [it may go straight back to sleep, this is not a problem, it will re-awaken during boot.]
It theoretically should be capable, but relies on the computer, display & cable to all be compliant [& not buggy].
Google "display port hot plug" to see some of the issues it has.


Mac Pro: Splitting network traffic based on destination I have a Mac Pro tower with two ethernet ports. One of them is connected to the company intranet and the other to my home network. I'd like my Mac to use the former ethernet connection only for those services within the intranet; for everything else I'd like to use the latter connection (e.g. the web).

Given that the intranet addresses will fall into a specific range, how can this be done?

Update

Thanks to some huge help from bmike I've been making some progress but am still not quite there yet. Here is my original routing table (with some details omitted) showing the two default paths leading out of either Ethernet port:

default    A.B.C.D    UGSc           17        0     en0
default    E.F.G.H    UGScI          12        0     en1

The first entry is to the company network via Ethernet 1 (en0); the second to my home network via Ethernet 2 (en1).

The goal is to force all traffic not destined for a location within the company to route through Ethernet 2. My understanding thus far has led me to modify the routing tables as such:

sudo /sbin/route -n delete default A.B.C.D
sudo /sbin/route -n add -net A A.B.C.D

Giving me the following modified table:

default    E.F.G.H     UGScI          1        0     en1
A          A.B.C.D     UGSc          28        0     en0

The end result is not quite what I'd expect, however. I am still able to access all sites on the company intranet however all traffic to e.g., stackoverflow.com or anywhere else other than the intranet fails. A sampling from ping confirms this:

FooBar:~ username$ ping latimes.com
PING latimes.com (144.142.224.43): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: No route to host

Is the default entry above not sufficient for that purpose, or am I missing something?

Update 2

Apparently adding the following got things working as I'd expect:

sudo /sbin/route -n add default E.F.G.H

Resulting in the following table:

default            E.F.G.H     UGSc            0        0     en1
default            E.F.G.H     UGScI          25        0     en1
A                  A.B.C.D     UGSc            2        0     en0

But I don't understand why the original default entry didn't suffice? The documentation for the I flag reads:

I       RTF_IFSCOPE      Route is associated with an interface scope

So how does that default entry's I status prevent its use for my stated goal? (I've asked a related question to the same effect here.)

The solution was to perform the following:

sudo /sbin/route -n delete default A.B.C.D
sudo /sbin/route -n add -net A A.B.C.D
sudo /sbin/route -n add default E.F.G.H

(details as to the above can be found in the question.)


kernel_task using way too much cpu After installing big sur, i noticed my 2017 macbook pro would lag every few hours, during the lag i basically cannot do anything because it was so laggy, but one time managed to open activity monitor when it was lagging and i saw kernel_task was using 400% or higher cpu, ive already tried to restart my computer but it just comes back after few minutes, ive also tried reseting my smc and unplugging my cords but it still didnt work, how can I fix this? (sorry if my english is bad, english is not my native language)
also, my mac's model id is 14,2

Your mac may be overheating, try switching the charging ports.


Blur text in iMovie 10.0.7 I want to blur sensitive information in my video. How do I do that in iMovie 10.0.7?

"Adjust", "Video Overlay settings" options are missing.

I found an apple discussion that seemingly answers your question:

Question

  I went to the help menu and it instructs me to click an icon that doesn't appear.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer

  Yes I had this problem as well, I found out that you have to Drag the clip from EVENTS into your PROJECT.

  But when you do so, make sure that you drag it just over the top, not actually into the clip. The icon should then appear.

I am sure that Video Overlay settings have the same reason to not show up as the Adjust option

Hope this helps


Touch LCD with Mac Mini I bought my first Mac Mini today. I'm using touch screen LCD PL2735M (http://www.iiyama.com/gb_en/products/prolite-t2735msc-2/). When I click on screen, mouse is moved to that place, but no click is issued. Is there any touch settings? (sensitivity, calibration). Thank you.

This might help...  when using a trackpad on a MacBook, tapping does not, by default, click the mouse...   there is a setting (System Preferences -> Trackpad -> Tap to click) that must be enabled.

You might try checking for that...  or something similar, to enable "tap to click" for the monitor (if possible).   I can't say 100% this will work, as I've never seen a touch screen used with a Mac... however hopefully this helps.


Playing DVDs from other regions I moved to different continents a few times (Europe -> North America -> Asia -> Europe) and ended up with a stack of DVDs I can't play now.

I looked around for a firmware update for my iMac, but it doesn't look like it exists:

http://www.rpc1.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=49450

Since I got the DVDs legitimately, I feel like I have the right to play them. So my question is, I mainly have a whole bunch of DVDs from North America. Is my only safe option to buy a secondary external DVD player for this region, or is it possible to find a region-free DVD player altogether (I'm in Germany right now). I had trouble finding it.

What I believe you can do is to use VLC instead of the built-in DVD Player app to play your DVDs.

I've had a similar problem, because DVD Player always wanted me to pick one region. I then discovered that if I play the DVD in VLC it doesn't ask me about any region settings and just plays the movie.


Can automator's Filter Finder Items process music based on length? I want to make an automator workflow to find certain audio files in a folder, but I want it to look at the duration of those files.  I'm looking for quite short audio samples of under 2 seconds.  It doesn't appear to have the ability to filter by duration.  Is there any other way to accomplish this in Automator?

Alternatively I can easily make a Smart Folder that contains what I'm looking for, but then Automator cannot find the contents of said Smart Folder in order to further manipulate them.  Is there any way to get the contents of a smart folder in Automator?

Lets assume you have some action that's passing off files to a Filter Finder Items action, set as Find files where: All of the following are true and Kind is music.

This ensures what's passed to the next action, a Run Shell Script action, set as Shell: /bin/bash and Pass input as arguments are music files.

Replace the default code in the Run Shell Script action, having the above settings, with the following code:

for f in "$@"; do
    d="$(afinfo -r "$f" | awk '/estimated duration:/{print int($3)}')"
    if [[ $d -lt 2 ]]; then
        echo "$f"
    fi
done

The results of the above code with be the fully qualified pathname of music files with less than a 2 second duration and is passed to the next action as a list.

To address your second comment to my original answer, use the following code in place of the code above:

for f in "$@"; do
    d="$(afinfo -r "$f" | awk '/estimated duration:/{print $3}')"
    if (( $(echo "1.5 > $d" | bc -l) )); then
        echo "$f"
    fi
done


Using the iPad dock connector to connect cameras - airplane mode - no WiFi At my work we need to connect to a few IP cameras but it can not be wireless as the iPad must be in airplane mode, we must use the 30 pin dock connector and a wired cable.

We are installing cameras in the cabin on an aircraft and need to view it on the iPads on the flight deck. But certification rules will not allow us to use WiFi for this.

We are open to becoming enterprise developers because the software will be on a couple of thousand iPads.

Is this possible?

Using the iPad camera connector with the USB port seems to work with certain items (headsets, etc.) that aren't cameras, leading me to believe that there is a full USB hardware implementation in there but there simply aren't any drivers. If this is true, you could get a USB Ethernet dongle, write iPad drivers for it in your camera-viewing app, and use Ethernet to connect to your cameras. I doubt that would get on the App Store, but that's not a problem, given that you will be using the Enterprise distribution method. This might also preclude charging the iPad while it is connected, so you may have to design and manufacture your own power-and-ethernet dongle.


Disable and hide all keyboard shortcuts for one application I would like to disable and hide from the menu bar all shortcuts for one application.  Is there a way maybe to output all shortcuts for a specific application so I can mainly and them under System Preferences->Keyboard->Shortcuts->App Shortcuts.

I have been creating duplicate shortcuts and when there is a duplicate it just displays nothing(no shorcut).

There is a cool application called CheatSheet which can display all the shortcuts in any application on screen.


Simple Console Editor for OS X Terminal I am looking for a simple console text editor for OS X to run in a terminal. I have used “Joe” for many years, and it’s very good, but I am looking for one that is simpler.

In particular I would prefer one that uses copy & paste like modern text editors, and allows you to select text with the shift-arrow keys.

Windows has the built-in editor called “Edit”. Something like that would be nice.

There are a bunch of editors running in Terminal already installed by default. Some of them come with quite a learning curve though...

nano rather easy to use, onscreen help, limited functionality
emacs takes some time to get used to, start with the tutorial (type Ctrl-h t)
vi/vim takes some time to get used to as well, especially because it's a modal editor, start with the help document (type :help)

And of course there is also Textedit.app. Doesn't run in Terminal but is quite a versatile editor to get started.


How to Add Items to Power Nap Is there a way to add applications/processes to the Power Nap function on a Mac? In other words, instead of just the default Time Machine, Mail, etc. you can make it run other applications too. I am running a Mac Mini with OS X Yosemite.

Thanks

So far as I can tell, the answer is no. I can't find any mention of public APIs for developers to leverage Power Nap.

What did you have in mind? You could also put in an enhancement request at Apple.


com.apple.WebKit.Networking continually asking to sign using "privateKey" Title sums it up, pretty frequently, once an hour or so at work I get a pop up asking me to "always allow" "deny", or "allow" WebKit to sign using my private keychain. At this point I've answered it pretty much all ways and it keeps coming up.

Some information that may be relevant:

I'm not logged in as an administrator, but a normal privileged user
Happens most frequently when I log in
I have to use an invalid certificate to access a certain website for work. The pop up doesn't seem correlated with that website though
I'm on the beta release track of MacOS

Any ideas on how to make it stop? Comments about what more information I could provide would be welcome as well.

I had the same issue with my company SSO certificate, it's a known issue in MacOS Sierra 10.12

Temporary workaround available:

Open Keychain Access.
Select your login keychain and then the private key "YOUR ID/Company SSO Server" (Do not search for the item but find and select ... searching will not work properly to access the ACL option)

Open Keychain Access.
Select your login keychain and then the private key "" (Do not search for the item but find and select ... searching will not work properly to access the ACL option)
Double-click the key to show the key's info window select the tab "Access Control"
Click the + button at the bottom of the window and add /Applications/Safari.app
Click the + button at the bottom of the window and add /System/Library/Frameworks/WebKit.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/com.apple.WebKit.Networking.xpc
Click Save Changes and authenticate to allow those changes
Quit Keychain Access.


Mac mail shows thousands of incoming emails in Activity Does anyone know how to bug test Mac Mail?

Each time I open it, it starts to hog resources and shows thousands and thousands of "incoming mail messages".

I certainly do not have any email arriving...

I use IMAP accounts mostly with Google accounts and on Mavericks 10.0.3

If you've just set up Mail, it will attempt to download all the mail that it can find from your mail server. This can't be configured in Mail, only in the mail server/provider's settings.

For gmail - set IMAP sync off for just about all your mailboxes to let one sync start. Once you have a clean sync - then re-enable IMAP sync for the others.

Keep in mind, your Mac will download every mail that google has locally if you don’t prune the list or disable sync for things like archive folders, etc...


How can I jailbreak my iPad 2? I want to jailbreak my iPad 2.

How can this be done?

What is your iPad firmware?
If you're running 4.3.3 you can use http://jailbreakme.com.


Apple "Strength" Commercial featuring Fitness Apps Does anyone know fitness app featured where the guy is doing step-ups on a park bench followed by push-ups?

According to Apple's webpage for the video, Strength, it is Seven Minute Workout


Xserve shuts itself off and boots at will Okay, there's a lot of smart Mac guys here, so lets see if any of you can figure out this stumper.

Our Xserve G4 (RackMac1,1) went incommunicado a few years ago was left in this state until I pulled it out yesterday. I started my mission with a triple PRAM zap, and like clockwork it decided to boot perfectly into Mac OS X Tiger Server.

I decided to upgrade it to Leopard, this machine only has a CD drive, so I hooked it up to my MBP via FireWire and attempted to burn the install DVD to one of the hard drives (since all it's data is irrelevant / four years old anyhow). It starts copying just as always on the various computers I've done this to, it says "20 minutes remaining", so I leave the server room to go do other things. I come back 20 minutes later to a MBP saying "18 minutes remaining", and a shut down Xserve.

Rinse and repeat this process. Perhaps something weird happened.

I decide perhaps it doesn't like being in FireWire target disk mode and boot it back up to Tiger to download the disk image and burn it to the hard drive. After about 10 minutes of uptime, it just shuts down. Not even a soft shutdown. Total loss of power. I had some other stuff to do in the server room and after about 15 minutes I look back and there it is, fully booted, sitting at the login screen.

I ask you, what sentient force has made a victim of my Xserve?! :(

The original G4 Xserve was prone to structural 'sagging' after spending a while in a rack. I'm not aware of any specific fix for this problem, which causes random kernel panics / shut-downs / other weirdness; later model XServes were not affected (not sure when exactly, but I've never seen this on any intel xserves, while I did see it on a significant number of g4 serves).

http://tidbits.com/article/11735

Sorry for the bummer news :/ If you can get your hands on a late-model intel xserve, they still hold up pretty well. I use several of them on a regular basis.


Which MacBook supports Thunderbolt 3 and has regular USB 3 ports? I'm looking to upgrade my MacBook Air to something with the new Thunderbolt 3 ports, but also has USB 3 ports. There seem to be so many models out there, but I didn't find one.

Which MacBooks have Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3 ports without the need of an extra adapter?

Which MacBook supports Thunderbolt 3 and has regular USB 3 ports??

None.

Currently, the only "MacBook" that supports Thunderbolt 3 are the MacBook Pros that were released in 2016 and on.  Those only have USB-C type Thunderbolt ports.  If you are looking for something that will give you USB-A ports along with USB 3.0 compatibility, you will need a (dreaded) dongle.

The 2016 MacBook Pro 15" (with and without Touchbar) has the following ports:

  Charging and Expansion Four Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports with support for:

  Charging
  DisplayPort
  Thunderbolt (up to 40 Gbps)
  USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gbps)

The 13" model has only 2 Thunderbolt ports:

  Charging and Expansion Two Thunderbolt 3  (USB-C) ports with support for:

  Charging
  DisplayPort
  Thunderbolt (up to 40 Gbps)
  USB 3.1 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gbps)

The MacBook Air (2015) only supports Thunderbolt 2 while the latest MacBook only support USB-C with DisplayPort (no Thunderbolt).


How to see the current playback speed in VLC? On Windows, VLC's playback speed can be discovered on status bar, but the Mac version doesn't have a status bar. Where should I go to see the current playback speed?

On the Mac version of VLC, to see the playback speed, you have to click the Playback menu. It won't be shown on the default window.


Slight blue shade on my MacBook Pro I am seeing a light blue shade on anything I open in my MacBook, it just started suddenly and I don’t have any idea why its happening. The image above shouldn’t have a blue cast.
Is there a sequence of things to check when the color looks off unexpectedly?

This is either a colour profile or possibly a hardware issue.
It may also be a True Tone or Night Shift issue [though I've never had a Mac that can use those so I've no experience with them].
Your screenshot does not show any colour cast at all and 'white is white', as in this image showing the Digital colour meter over your screenshot (whether or not you see it that way, that's what the numbers say.)

First check the Apple KB links above to make sure it's not True Tone/Night Shift.
If neither of those is the cause, then either someone/something has changed your screen profile… or you have a hardware issue.
System Prefs > Display > Colour
Check what profile is shown as in use.
Check other profiles to see if they all show a similar colour-cast - some will look OK & some will look awful, but you need to determine if it's always 'too blue'.
If most profiles show the colour is 'balanced' if not 'good' then you could try re-calibrating your display by eye.
To the right of that control panel is Calibrate…
Hold  Opt ⌥  as you click it & it will open with the Advanced parameters as an option. Check 'Expert Mode' & work your way through the following screens, adjusting each as best you can all the way through.
If all your efforts come out blue no matter what you do, then suspect a hardware fault & take it to Apple.


Wrong volume name for sshfs volume in Finder even with volname option I am using sshfs @2.5 and osxfuse @2.6.4 installed via MacPorts 2.2.1 on my MacBook Pro Retina Late 2013 which is running OS X Mavericks 10.9.2.  When issuing the following command:

sshfs -ovolname=Z user@host:/somewhere/on/the/Y /Z

The mounting is done correctly.  Using the terminal, everything works as expected.  However, finder displays the volume name as Y, as if the presence of the volname= option didn't matter.  Has anyone else encountered this?

The options go at the end of the command, so in your case:

sshfs user@host:/somewhere/on/the/Y /Z -o volname=Z

I just had a similar problem and this fixes it for me!


Redundancy/RAID on Airport Shared Disk? I'd like to use a shared drive on my Airport as a central location for all of my media. But, I'd like to not place all my important data on a single drive if I can avoid it. Is there any way to build in some kind of redundancy or RAID as a kind of wannabe SAN into something Airport will allow me to share as a single disk, on the cheap/free?

According to this Apple support article:

  The AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule work with most disks
  that are not software RAID volumes (no more than one volume per
  physical disk). If the disk is a self-contained RAID that presents
  itself to a computer as a single volume requiring no software support,
  then it may be supported.

So it would appear that you need something that could be connected to the Airport Extreme that does its own RAID. Perhaps something like the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo, if you want to get a ready-made solution. You can also buy NAS enclosures with two or more bays, a couple of bare drives, and roll your own. Note that you would typically connect your NAS to the Airport via Ethernet (though some NAS enclosures allow you to connect via USB, which was your original plan), but since the limiting speed is the Airport wireless speed, I don't think that would be a problem.


Replaced the cable. Now the screen doesn't work. What could it be? The cable that comes out of the back of my Apple Thunderbolt Display was fraying. I decided that rather than risk a short at some point, I'd preemptively replace the cable. Upon iFixit teardown photos, I decided to replace the cable that comes out of the back of the screen myself instead of paying nearly $200 to get an Apple Service Provider to do it here in Bangkok. Bought the cable on AliExpress for $12. Replaced it. And ... no dice. Screen did not come on.

My setup

[MacBook Air] ---- [Thunderbolt Display] --- [Thunderbolt drive] --- [Cinema Display]

with a USB drive and Ethernet plugged into the back of the Thunderbolt Display

Already tried

Initial thoughts were that the cable was faulty. But then I noticed
Ethernet came on, the USB drive was mounted, Thunderbolt drive was
mounted and after a reboot the Cinema Display also come on.
Obviously, the cable was working just fine.
Second thought was that I had neglected to reconnect some cables that connect the LCD panel to the main logic board. I checked. Seemed just fine.
Third was that
perhaps the cable serial number was somehow tied to the main logic
board. So I put the old cable back. Still no screen.
Tried to
connect the screen using an external Thunderbolt cable, everything
worked equally well but still no image on the screen.
Tried 30+
seconds and 3+ hours unplugged as a 'reset' of the screen. No change.
Rebooted my laptop. No change.
Plugged the Thunderbolt Display into
the drive and then into the MacBook, so change the sequence of
devices. No change.
System Information reports under "Thunderbolt"
the whole chain of devices, but under "Graphics/Displays" shows only
the internal screen and Cinema Display.
Using the newly-purchased
cable as an external Thunderbolt cable works just fine too.

Question

Does anybody have any suggestions on what to try next?

Does the logic board go into some kind of lockdown mode when replacing the cable?
Are there more than 3 connecting flat cables + ground connection between the panel and the main logic board?
Although there is no reason to assume it has been, how do I test the LCD panel to still function given all these flat cable connectors?

Note: There are no Apple Stores here.  Apple Authorised Service providers are no help. They suggested replacing the cable and the panel at a cost that is nearly the same as buying a new screen.

If all of your devices in the Thunderbolt "chain" are still functional including your Cinema display at the end of it all, chances are there is a problem with the connectors that go from the logic board in the Thunderbolt display to the display panel itself.

It's a quite common occurrence that when you disassemble this, that the connector comes loose.  Look to make sure that the LVDS and power connectors are securely attached at both the logic board side and on the display panel itself.


Apple TV (headless) + Home Sharing + Remote stops playback after one song I have the following setup:

iMac (2013) with iTunes (11) and Home Sharing enabled
Apple TV (3rd gen) with Home Sharing enabled, no HDMI connected only optical digital out to my DAC
iPhone 4 with Apple Remote app
All devices are on the same wireless network (Jensen Air:Link something, might be replaced soon)

The problem: I connect to the Apple TV with the Remote app on the iPhone. After a short period, I can access my music library (located on the iMac) and play songs from it. It will play fine for a song (or two), and then it just stops.

(Remote app will typically display the song after the one that was just played, as if it was playing (the pause symbol is displayed) but there will be no "progress" indicator. Pressing pause does not have an effect. Skipping back/forth will change the song title/icon in Remote app, but nothing is played. After clicking around in Remote app, trying to restart the playback, sometimes playback starts again, sometimes the app terminates (I haven't found any patterns for what works here yet, it seems somewhat random). After restarting the Remote app and/or playing around in it for a while, I can make the playback restart, but it stops again and the process repeats.)

I've read about various ports that need to be opened in the firewall etc., but I don't think any of these apply, as everything works fine for a while. AirPlay to the same Apple TV also works (for a while). There's no firewall enabled between any of the devices on the local wifi network.

I'm starting to think this could be a problem with the Apple TV running without a TV/screen connected on the HDMI port, and that some kind of "screen blanker" or power save mode is triggered.

Now, the questions: Does anyone know how to make the Apple TV run problem-free in headless mode (no TV/screen)? Is this even supported? Or would I be better off buying an AirPort Express and connect that to the DAC?

I suspect your problem is the network, not the devices. The queue used when controlling the AppleTV from an iOS device is different from the queue on the native Music app (to see this yourself, note the empty queue in the AppleTV music app when you start music from your iPhone).

So, you have two dependent links (at some frequency, not necessarily constant):

iPhone to AppleTV, to update the queue, provide new information, etc.
AppleTV to iMac, to retrieve requested files

Can you monitor the network links on these devices using your WAPs diagnostics features? Or, perhaps more usefully, using Wireshark or the like to promiscuously capture the conversations? I'm willing to bet there's some severance going on.

Regarding running the AppleTV headless, I'm certain that's not the anticipated use of the device, but I'm not aware of any specific problems this could cause, unless it expects video signal via HDMI to keep alive, which you could test easily enough.

Hopefully, this is somewhat helpful in considering your problem. Good luck!


Any REAL good Mac/iPhone combo IM applications out there? I am looking for a combo of two IM applications, one for the Mac and the other for the iPhone. The main features I am looking for are as follows:

supports MSN (Microsoft messenger)
has Push Notifications on the iPhone
has a unified session (will explain below)
doesn't have stupid bugs (Trillian will not let you copy with ⌘C)
does not ask me to email someone that is invisible/offline (instead of messaging)

Unified session - I want the two apps (iOS and OSX) to share the same session, so when I leave the one and fire up the other, it should have my chats already there, exactly as I left them on the other device.

I have tried Meebo and Trillian thus far.

Meebo not being a Mac application did not feel right (not even when I applified it using Fluid) but its unified session (in the cloud) was pretty good. The iOS app was good.

Trillian is a great application on both iOS and OSX but has some stupidities built in (like the copy to clipboard bug I mentioned earlier).

What I'm actually looking for is something better than Trillian.

PS: since I'm a developer, open-source is a plus

I'm not sure about the unified session requirement - I've never seen that in any IM client.

However, I find Adium (http://adium.im/) is the best Mac IM application (and it's open source!).

As for the iPhone, have you considered IM+ (http://www.shapeservices.com)?  It works quite well for me.


How do I disable context menu key from Windows Keyboard? I bought a Logitech USB keyboard (model K120) to use with my MBP while it's on a stand.

I got some help swapping the mapping of the command and option keys to the Alt and Windows keys so the layout is more like a standard Mac keyboard.

The next problem is this key:

(The one under the shift key with the rectangle with 3 lines on it.)

Apparently this is a Windows Context menu key.

I'm an iOS/Mac OS developer, and I keep pressing that key by mistake. It puts some non-displayed character into my source files. It generates an error "invalid character in source file" that prevents my code from compiling. Since it's non-printing it is quite hard to find, and is a real pain.

I'd like to map it to NOTHING so it stops inserting invisible compile-breaking characters into my source files. Alternately, mapping it to the control key would be good, since the control key is in the same spot on the other side of the keyboard. (I'd then have 2 control keys on that side of the keyboard, but whatever.)

Provided you are not running macOS Sierra (which from a previous question, I know you are). Support for Sierra is promised to come.

Install Karabiner.

Run it and on Change Key tab search for "Application Key" (or navigate to "For PC Users" -> "Change PC Application Key (Menu Key)".

Select the mapping "Application Key to Control_L".

To disable completely you'd have to edit ~Library/Application Support/Karabiner/private.xml (examples). The key code (reference) is PC_APPLICATION, so the following line will add a menu entry:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
    <name>Disable Windows context key</name>
    <identifier>private.disable_windows_context_key</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::PC_APPLICATION | ModifierFlag::NONE</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

(press "Reload XML" in Karabiner window to apply after editing the file)


How to identify plist values for iterm preferences iTerm2 preferences are stored at ~/Library/Preferences/com.googlecode.iterm2.plist. (see also this post for details).
I can print its contents using
defaults read com.googlecode.iterm2.plist

Is there a way to I identify the plist value for a specific setting without setting the option in the GUI, saving it and checking the plist again?
I fail to find documentation on this.
I am specifically looking the following:

Save changes to folder when iTerm2 quits
emulate the button press of Save Current Settings to Folder

This is like asking if you can find all the words in a dictionary. Each author chooses the words they place when they publish, same as app developers code what they write into the code when they ship.
Before attempting to answer directly, in the past the user defaults were simple and wrote to one file. Over time, that design failed in several ways and a newer system exists across all Apple OS.

new https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/userdefaults
old(er) https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/UserDefaults/AboutPreferenceDomains/AboutPreferenceDomains.html

In your case, the book is written and published and you would need a disassembler like Hopper to translate the machine instructions into code if that helps you list how it handles parsing and writing to the preference file.

https://www.hopperapp.com/

I’m not aware of a tool that disassembles only the preference handling, but that’s a super idea for side project if anyone is looking. Also, don’t overlook that the current preference system on macOS doesn’t necessarily persist any settings to a physical file. A developer can program that, but with iCloud and managed preferences, most apps skip that appendage as dead weight.  Again, unless dev document is generated when they ship the app, someone has to disassemble things to know implementation for each version of each app.


How do I transfer app data from my old iPad to my new iPad? How does one transfer app data (e.g., Notetaker HD books, game progress, etc.) from an old iOS device to a new one?

While I'm sure this issue is relevant to iPhones, it seems that with the advent of the iPad, this issue gains particular significance.  How do I keep my Battlehearts game when I get my new shiny?

What I'm Not Asking:  Obviously, exchange data will migrate seamlessly to the new device upon provision of login credentials, and same goes (maybe without the "seamlessly") to data (music, video, etc.) associated with my iTunes account.

I am assuming this process will work out to be the same as the current situation with  iPhones:

Backup your iPad using iTunes.
Plug new iPad into same computer.
Restore new iPad from old iPad backup.

When this is done with an iPhone, the new iPhone will be configured exactly as the old one - save games, email apps, photos, everything is transfered.

What happens is actually that the backup contains all app data + configuration. The rest is basically a list of stuff that should be synced from your computer to the device (e.g. music, photos, apps).


iPhoto - Removing image files that weren't taken by a camera I recently attempted to import my archive of 20000 photos into iPhoto - unfortunately I found out that some of the imported images were not photos but things I downloaded from the internet.

I would like to know how I can filter these images according to their Exif tags. I want to specify the cameras whose photos I want to keep - and the rest I want to delete. Is this possible using iPhoto / is there a script that will do this?

Any help is much appreciated.

You can create a smart album to divide your pictures into the ones you wish to keep & the ones to delete. There are several metadata fields you can use to create an album that divides your images - you should likely start with the Camera Model field.

So, to do this,

Select New Smart Album in iPhoto
Under Match the following condition, select Camera Model is (whatever camera you wish to retain).
If you have several cameras create more than one condition, and change the "Match all of the following conditions" to "Match any of the following conditions."

Depending on your setup, you can reverse this search - instead creating a Smart Album that contains just the images that weren't taken with any of your cameras, and then deleting the downloaded ones...


Embarrassing bug in Safari I have had a rather embarrassing bug for a while now. It has to do with safari on my iPad and adult websites.
After every visit to one of those websites, I always clear my browser history. However, one page just sticks in my suggested websites. I only have to type in an "X" or a "W", and it pops up in the suggested websites, like shown here, even though I have cleared my history.

If anyone knows a solution to this somewhat embarrassing problem, I would be very grateful.

Note that if you use iCloud on a Mac and your iPad (or other iOS devices) (the same account), open tabs will appear on the iPad and vice versa in the iCloud Tabs section (next to bookmarks on iPad). This could be where such a suggestion is coming from. I would suggest clearing history and cookies/data on all devices using iCloud (yes you will lose logged in state for many sites and will need to re-sign in).

On your iOS devices, make sure you are clearing your history and data using the Settings app, and not by manually deleting entries in Safari's bookmark menu. You can also disable Safari with iCloud using the Settings app under the iCloud section.

After you have reset everything, when you want to visit sites and not keep history, you can use Safari's privacy mode. To do this in Safari (iOS 7), when you tap the address bar, tap Private above the keyboard on the left side to toggle privacy mode. If you are using a physical keyboard, this option will still show at the bottom of the screen.

I use Chrome as my main browser on iOS. There you tap the button on the top right (next to the address bar most of the time) and then tap New Incognito* Tab to enter incognito mode.


Visual Voicemail Save Greeting: The operation could not be completed. (com.apple.mobilephone error 1035.) I have MetroPCS. I set up my greeting earlier this week. I had bad reception so called their support and they 'reset the network'. Now I can't save my voicemail greeting. I get this error. I took the phone to a MetroPCS store, but they couldn't fix it. They only called tech support too. How do I fix it?

Also, my visual voicemail is not showing new voicemails. I manually called my voicemail by holding down 1, sent a voicemail message to myself, and hung up. It doesn't appear in visual voicemail.

I also called my phone from another line and left a voicemail, but it doesn't show up or notify me of a voicemail.

iPhone 5, iOS 10.3.3.

Voicemail needs to be activated by carrier. I too had same problem, phoned my carrier and they activated it so I was able to record my greeting. Problem solved


Since Yosemite upgrade, I always need to "force eject" drives? Whenever I have a hard drive plugged in the computer (mid-2011 iMac) that I want to eject, I get the message "unable to eject the volume, an application is using it, would you like to force eject?"

I believe this is new, it didn't do it before when I wasn't under Yosemite.

What is the "application" using the volume? (in most cases)? I am sorry if this is too little information for now to troubleshoot it, I am willing to share more info on my current settings - just tell me how.

You can find out what's using the volume with the command:

sudo lsof +D '/Volumes/volumename'

Note that sudo will prompt for your admin password, and it won't echo as you type. The first column will list the name(s) of the processes using files on the volume. In my personal experience, the culprit is usually "mds" and/or "mds_store". These processes are both involved in indexing the files so that Spotlight can search them quickly.

Sometimes they seem to let loose of disk and allow a normal eject, but sometimes not. Unfortunately, I don't know of a real solution; sometimes you just have to use Force Eject.


How to export Contacts version 9.0 data or .abbu file to .csv or other usable spreadsheet format In the newest Apple Contacts version 9.0, how do you export all contacts or an .abbu file to a .csv file or other usable spreadsheet format? Dragging and dropping to Numbers does not work. Exporting to Vcard does not work...only exports a small handful of vcards out of over 4,000 and data is not usable in Numbers, Excel, or Outlook/Windows Live Mail. Please help!

Really simple:

In Contacts select all contacts you want to export or press CMD-A.
Press CMD-C (copy to clipboard).
Open a new, empty Numbers document.
Delete any existing table in that document.
Press CMD-V to paste your clipboard.

This gives you a nice spreadsheet with all your selected contacts and proper rows and columns.


Prevent Finder from restoring previous tabs? For some reason Finder always restores all my previously open tabs even after I've restarted the system. This is unnecessary for me and in just several days my Finder is really clustered up and I had to close the tabs one by one. There must be a setting to disable such behavior?

You have the option at Shutdown or Restart for whether or not to reopen windows...
though it does include whether to reopen Apps, too

If you want only the Finder to not save its state, try this in Terminal

defaults write com.apple.finder ApplePersistenceIgnoreState YES

You can revert the setting using NO instead of YES


Merge two APFS containers I want to know if I can merge two APFS containers.

I want to merge Untitled to mac, mac-Data container.
If I click - button at the bottom, Untitled container is merged to Workspace. But this is not what I want to do.

Anyone can help ?

This image is diskutil list result.

I am using Mac Mojave now.

No - there is no merging. The point of APFS is to put all your volumes in one container and not make multiple containers, but you're where you are today.

Looking at the image you should have more than enough space to move what you can off of the middle container (into the first ideally or into the last if needed. Then you can remove the middle empty container, grow the first container, then complete cleanup

Of course, just copying the data from the second two containers to another drive and then removing both, growing the first is the simplest way to return to one container with all your space.

David's comment to show the diskutil list will unlock someone giving you the exact commands needed to accomplish the rough sketch idea I've put in words here.


Terminal flashes on empty backspace with Yosemite Since using Yosemite, I've had the annoying problem of my current Terminal window flashing when backspacing on an empty line. I know on previous versions of OS X this flashing was not default, and could be toggled in accessibility settings, but I cannot find the same setting and I'm dying to get this turned off. Any known ways to get rid of it?

That is called the visual bell, and by default it’s enabled when your sound is muted. To change that setting, go into Terminal > Preferences > Profiles > <your profile> > Advanced.

You can also run

echo $'\nset bell-style off' >> ~/.inputrc

to disable Readline's use of the bell (deleting on an empty line, tab-complete, etc.). You will need to restart your session for this change to take effect.


MacBook Pro 15" 2015 iGPU slows down from normal 750mhz to 200mhz I've faced with issue when sometimes after leaving sleep mode the iGPU is going into 200mhz instead normal 750mhz. The UI works slow, especially while you're switching desktops, scrolling in WebStorm and so on.

Here is some thermal data:

$ sudo thermal levels
cpu: 0
gpu: 0
io: 0

And some powermetrics:

$ sudo powermetrics -s gpu_power
Machine model: MacBookPro11,4
SMC version: 2.29f24
EFI version: 187.0.0
OS version: 18D109
Boot arguments:
Boot time: Mon Feb 11 13:59:37 2019

*** Sampled system activity (Tue Feb 12 17:39:04 2019 +0200) (5000.23ms elapsed) ***

**** GPU usage ****

GPU 0 name IntelIG
GPU 0 C-state residency: 98.22% (0.43%, 97.79%)
GPU 0 P-state residency: 1200MHz: 0.00%, 1150MHz: 0.00%, 1100MHz: 0.00%, 1050MHz: 0.00%, 1000MHz: 0.00%, 950MHz: 0.00%, 900MHz: 0.00%, 850MHz: 0.00%, 800MHz: 0.00%, 750MHz: 0.00%, 700MHz: 0.00%, 650MHz: 0.00%, 600MHz: 0.00%, 550MHz: 0.00%, 500MHz: 0.00%, 450MHz: 0.00%, 400MHz: 0.00%, 350MHz: 0.00%, 300MHz: 0.00%, 250MHz: 0.00%, 200MHz: 1.78%
GPU 0 average active frequency as fraction of nominal (200.00Mhz): 100.00% (200.00Mhz)
GPU 0 GPU Busy 1.78%
GPU 0 FB Test Case 0
GPU 0 [PSR] GPU + TCON are Off    : 0.00%
GPU 0 [PSR] Only GPU is On        : 100.00%
GPU 0 [PSR] Only TCON is On       : 0.00%
GPU 0 [PSR] GPU + TCON are On     : 0.00%
GPU 0 [PSR] Enter Count           : 0 (0.00/second)
GPU 0 [PSR] Abort Count           : 0 (0.00/second)
GPU 0 DPB on 0.00%
GPU 0 GT2 on 0.00%
GPU 0 GT3 on 100.00%

And here we go: 200MHz: 1.78%

And let me show iStat Menus output:

And only reboot is helpful. After reboot iGPU returns to 750mhz and UI works great.
Is it the Apple's bug? Someone faced with the same issue?
It's only about MacBook Pro 15" 2015 !! I have this issue on both (home laptop and on my work).
Looks like I've faced it only on Mojave..

The new 10.14.6 macOS update says it "resolves a graphics issue that may occur when waking from sleep". I'm hoping that might be referring to this issue (I filed an issue a few weeks ago at https://feedbackassistant.apple.com/, so that may have prompted them to look into it, though they haven't responded to it).

I'll update this answer if I see the problem again after the update.

UPDATE: I'm still seing the problem in 10.14.6 (as well as OP who commented below), so this is unfortunately not the solution.


why modified pictures lose the little white frame as thumbnails in finder? Let's say we have a picture. We open it with photoshop and save it a copy. If we open the folder with finder, the original picture has a white frame, but the modified doesn't. Why is this happening? is there any way to prevent this behavior?

Note: I don't know if this happen with all the formats, or with modified images by different softwares. Any idea?

I think I figured it out. It's because Photoshop creates it's own preview, which appears instead of the automatically generated Finder preview. To turn this off, go to Photoshop Preferences, find the file saving preferences, and set it so it never saves previews. From what I can tell, that saves it with the border, like you needed. Also, to add a border back to an image without going back and resaving it, you can click it's icon in Finder, and then click File > Get Info. Then click the icon in the upper left corner and push Delete on the keyboard. That gets rid of the custom preview from Photoshop.

Hope this helps!


Delete a location from time machine I have a folder in ~/Downloads/Media with lot of media files backed up in time machine. Since I moved the files back and forth it has taken so much space in my external drive. Can anyone tell me a way to remove the location from Time Machine completely? I want to remove the location permanently.

Open System Prefs > Time Machine, then click Options…
You can add exclusions to the list, by clicking the + & navigating to the location, or simply by dragging any folder/drive etc into the box.

It would appear that anything already backed up will stay in the older backups until eventually it just 'falls off' over time, as Time Machine cycles through your drive space.


Mac won't load some web contents My MacBook Pro 2012 running ML has started not to load certain web pages. I tried with every browser but I have the same issue. I thought it was a firewall trouble, but it's disabled. Tried to ping websites, dns resolving works. Can't load even from IP addresses. Also apps that needs some internet contents can't work.
I can just surf with tor p2p network.

I used to get this mainly on banking sites. It might be a certificate issue, or more accurately, the older browsers that run on ML not being compatible with the certs or negotiate secure connections properly with the sites (perhaps the server actively denies access due to browser version).

As ping and DNS works, the problem must lie at a higher level.

Unless you've a reason to run ML still (I've only just updated to ElCap due to various bits of software) then I'd update.


Deleting the original files iTunes I let iTunes copy the files i add to it into the iTunes Media folder. I have recently learned that I can delete songs from my mac once they are in iTunes. Having not known this, the amount of storage being taken up by audio on my laptop is huge. I was wondering, if there is a way through iTunes, or perhaps a AppleScript, that will locate all the original files of my iTunes and delete them as they are not needed as they are stored in the iTunes media folder. This would mean i have over 100GB of space saved on my laptop (Yes I have a lot of music).

Anyone able to help would be wicked,

Dan

iTunes does not keep track of where imported files were originally found. In other words, it knows where the copied files are (within the iTunes folders) but it has no record of where the original files are scattered around your hard drive.

That said, you could use Spotlight to find the files. Note that for this method you will need to know where your iTunes folder is. (Unless you have moved it, it is located at /Users/your-username/Music/iTunes.)

Open Finder.
Click on your computer's name in the sidebar under Devices.
In the search box at the upper-left, type kind:music. (A drop-down menu will appear asking if you meant "name: music". Click outside of the menu to make it disappear.)
To the far left, right under the search box, you will see two buttons, "Save" and a plus sign. Click the plus sign.
On the new row that appears, it should say "Kind is Any". Across from this there is a minus button and a plus button. Press and hold Option and click the "..." button (which replaced the plus sign button because you are pressing Option).
Now click the minus button on the "Kind is Any" row.
You should now see a row that says "Any of the following are true". Change "Any" to "None".
On the line below that, click the first drop-down menu and choose "Other..." at the bottom.
In the window that pops up, type "folder". You should see two results, one of which is "Document Container". Click on that line and click OK.
Next to where it now says Document Container, change "matches" to "contains".
In the box, type iTunes.

This will search for all files on your machine that are music, and that do not live in the iTunes folder. All of the resulting files should safely be able to be removed.


How do I delete or show the size of a non-TimeMachine APFS snapshot tmutil not only stores Time Machine snapshots, but also snapshots for other applications. E.g.:

~% tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.econtechnologies.chronosync.236A7A4F-5F96-4F99-8559-57D3965BF6BA.1575374525

This is a snapshot from a backup/sync application called ChronoSync.

My question: How can I determine the size it takes on my hard disk, and how can I delete it?

I'm using High Sierra, and there is no hidden /.MobileBackups folder, nor is anything (other than my hard disk) mounted at /Volumes.

Edit: I can mount the snapshot using the following commands:

~ » sudo mdkir /tmp/snapshotbackup
~ » sudo mount_apfs -s com.econtechnologies.chronosync.236A7A4F-5F96-4F99-8559-57D3965BF6BA.1575374525 / /tmp/snapshotbackup

From there, I can determine the size:

~ » sudo du -sh /tmp/snapshotbackup/
204G

Clearly, this is a stray snapshot that is causing my disk to fill. However, that 204G is so large (on a 250 G disk), that is surely contain files also present on my hard disk (I kind of assume APFS uses hard symlinks here). However, I'm hesitant to delete and files from /tmp/snapshotbackup/ fearing I may thus delete (hardlinked) files from my regular disk (not likely, but I prefer to be cautious).

So I still have the question how can I determine the size this snapshot takes on my hard disk, and how can I delete it?

I received a reply from the author of ChronoSync, and he helpfully explained the following option to manage snapshots.

To list snapshots:

diskutil apfs listSnapshots /

To delete snapshots:

diskutil apfs deleteSnapshot / -name <name_of_snapshot>

This seems the better option, which unfortunately doesn't seem listed elsewhere (all other guides I found only mention tmutil).
I couldn't test, since I already deleted it with CCC.


AirPods: Extremely poor mic quality on Mac Ever since I purchased the AirPods (1st Generation), they demonstrate extremely poor quality while activating the AirPod mic, whilst they are connected to a Mac. When activating the mic to record audio, it seems that both the recording quality AND audio playback quality severely drops to a substandard level (Mono 8.0 kHz).

For example, if I invoke Siri on the Mac, whatever is being said and recorded by me, AND the Siri/Mac/AirPod audio  response will be in poor quality. After the recording is done, audio playback quality usually goes back to normal1. Any mic audio recorded to a file will however be in the poor quality; which is why I interpret the issue to affect both recording and playback qualities.

The issue appears to be identical to the one discussed in this Apple Support Forum thread. The thread offers possible explanations but no definitive solution or suggested course of action.

I have this issue with several Macs of various recent models. I don't have this problem when using the AirPods with an iPhone.  I have tried resetting the Mac Bluetooth interface, tried resetting the AirPods, and so forth.

FYI: Using the macOS native application Audio MIDI Setup, I attempted to observe what's happening when AirPod recording is activated. Output quality drops from the standard 2 ch 24-bit Integer 44.1 kHz → 1 ch 16-bit Integer 8.0 kHz.

1It has happened that the Mac got permanently stuck in low quality until system reboot, or even whenever the AirPods were connected afterwards. I had to attempt AirPod unpair/re-pair, and even a charging case reset to fix the latter situation.

OP here – I'd just like to add to the answer below, that I've been in contact with Apple Support.
Explanation
Apple claims that the poor Mono 8kHz quality which affects recording and indeed simultaneously playback on Mac when the AirPod microphones are activated, is because the SCO codec then gets employed over the entire Mac audio system. This is supposedly "expected behaviour" when trying to use the AirPods and other Bluetooth headsets together with a computer, according to Apple.
The AAC codec is normally used when just listening to playback on the AirPods. It's just very unfortunate that SCO – low-quality as it may be – upon AirPod microphone activation is not only limited to doing recording, but also displaces AAC and audio playback.
Apple Support claims that Apple is looking at this issue, and that improvements might be coming in future firmware updates, but I did not interpret that as a promise to be honest. But for the time being, I'd say that the benefits of making calls and so forth with AirPods on Macs are quite limited.
Current best practice
Current best practice is to use the Internal Microphone for Recording, and the AirPods for playback when conducting calls. Input and Output devices can be selected in System Settings > Sound or by ⌥-clicking the Volume icon in the macOS Menu Bar, and selecting devices there.
See the screenshots below:


Where on disk are imported Photos? As shown in the screenshot the "Show Referenced File in Folder" is grayed out. What are the (remaining/alternate) options to locate them on disk?

Generally speaking photos are moved into the Photos Library.photoslibrary file located in your Pictures folder in your Home folder. This is a package file that contains the picture, thumbnails, metadata and changes you have made to picture imported into the Photos.app.

Right or control click on the photos library file and select "Show package contents" to have a look.

Though I don't use this feature I believe it may be possible to import a picture into Photos.app and leave it where it was. That is likely where that menu function comes into play, I believe.


Strange “Devices” section in iOS Wi-Fi Settings Has anyone ever seen this ‘Devices’ section in the Wi-Fi Settings page?

It very strange, it's my first time I've seen this. Even more, when I tried to connect to this SSID, iOS pops up a dialog which says "x is not connected to the Internet; Are you sure you want to use this network?"

What is this? How was this achieved?

This can happen when (for example) a MacBook computer was used to create it's own Wi-Fi network.

The pop-up you see indicates that after you connect to this SSID you won't have internet access.

Such networks are called Ad-Hoc networks (more info: Wiki) .


Finder reverts to SMB for shares set up as AFP My Mac Mini running the El Capitan (10.11.1) connects to my Synology DS 1515+ via AFP as follows; afp://c9_nas.local. Finder recognizes the NAS as a fellow Mac when performing a get info. (the multiple instances of the same Mac is annoying as well):

When I click on the NAS in finder it takes a very long time to connect, 7 to 10 seconds.  When it does I open one of the folders and get info on an item.  It shows as SMB:

The get info for the NAS itself remains AFP.

My Synology is up to date.  I have tried switching between SMB 1 and 2 on the Synology box which makes no difference.  Unfortunately I have some Windows machines that need SMB so disabling it is not an option.

If I initiate a new connection to the NAS using finder->go->connect to server, using AFP, that connection is nearly instant.  It's the subsequent attempts to access the shared server that take so long to connect and yield SMB results.

One other bit of weirdness that it probably related somehow: if I use the device's IP instead of the .local name, subsequent attempts to access the share result in it disconnecting and not working at all.

All of these behaviors survive reboots.

I'm pretty sure that this wasn't an issue in Yosemite, but I cannot be certain of that.  It definitely did connect much faster though.

Apple is switching to SMB, as multiple sources reported. And you can see this from the Apple Support article:

  When you connect from a Mac using OS X Mavericks or OS X Yosemite to another computer using file sharing, your Mac automatically tries to use the Service Message Block (SMB) protocol to communicate. If SMB is not available, it tries to connect using Apple File Protocol (AFP).  (How to connect with File Sharing on your Mac - Apple Support)

In fact, I have to disable SMB protocol on my NAS to use AFP. I think I will continue to do this till SMB supports case sensitive device names.


Why does my Displayport monitor not turn on when selecting a boot drive? I'm on OSX 14.5, with a MacPro 2013. I have an ASUS Displayport monitor, and ordinarily it works fine, both in OSX and from Windows 10 on a Bootcamp partition.

But if I boot the Mac holding Option to open the boot drive selection screen, the monitor does not turn on.

How can I get this to work?

EDIT:
Extra data... if Win 10 sleeps, the monitor will not wake up.

I was not able to solve the problem with that connection. However, it works fine with an HDMI to HDMI cable.

Leaving the question unanswered, as I'd still like to know why the Thunderbolt to Displayport connection didn't work properly.


X.Org vs. XQuartz - MacPorts After installing MacPorts and some software through that way, I noticed that MacPorts installed X.Org.
I've already installed XQuartz years ago and I'm really fine with it.

My 1. question is:
Do I need the installed X.Org from MacPorts to run software like KeepNote or Gedit, which was installed automatically by MacPorts, or am I free to uninstall X.Org and leave XQuartz instead?

My 2. question is: What about the other way round? Keeping the automatically installed X.Org and remove XQuartz?

edit: changed the question and added a second one.

In general you are confusing several things.

XQuartz is a set of libraries to allow X11 applications to be compiled and run on OSX. It is based on the X11 sources from X.org the changes were originally done by Apple.

Quartz is the set of technologies that are in the OSX Core Graphics that deal with 2d from wikipedia

  Quartz is often synonymous with Core Graphics

Thus Quartz is so called as it provides the X11 libraries that work by calling Quartz provided APIs

In the macports variants.conf what you are saying is don't use X11 (i.e. XQuartz) but use Apple's graphics directly and not via X11 so not calling any X.org code


iTunes Match not downloading high bitrate version of songs I have a playlist in iTunes that shows all my songs that are matched with iTunes Match but are lower than 256 kbps. What I do every once in a while, is delete all the songs in the playlist (I delete them from iTunes, but NOT from iTunes Match/iCloud, then download them again. This is supposed to download the 256 kbps copies that iTunes has of each song.

Lately though, I've noticed that when I delete and download these songs again, the version that is downloaded is exactly the same as the one I just deleted. Is this a new thing? Or is this just a bug?

In addition to iTunes Match not working properly, I also noticed that I was unable to add new songs to my iTunes library. After searching online, I came across this thread, in which some of the posts recommend logging out and back in to your iTunes Store account. So, I did that, and both the iTunes Match problem and the add songs problem were fixed.

Although for some reason, unchecked songs still aren't downloading higher bitrate versions, so I haven't completely figured things out yet.


How add home LaCie NAS to Finder sidebar on work iMac? I have a LaCie NAS at home which I use as a central place to park all home admin docs, Time Machine back ups etc.

I want to be able to access it easily from my work iMac (different LAN) so it appears there in the Finder side bar as Dropbox does…
I can access the file server via a web browser but this is slow and clunky.

Someone mentioned something about port forwarding and Bonjour so it appears as a server in the Finder sidebar?

You can use this: http://www.chaoticsoftware.com/ProductPages/NetworkBeacon.html to create a sidebar icon on your Mac that links up to some address and port elsewhere.  Keep in mind it will show up regardless of whether it connects successfully or not, so don't take the appearance of your device in the sidebar to mean it's actually available.

A quick sample configuration: I have a VPN I can use to tunnel back into my home network.  Once I'm connected I can start Network Beacon with the following settings, to get my server to show up in my sidebar and for me to get access to the files:

Where the service name is just how it shows up in the sidebar, the service type is "AFP over TCP" - there's a bunch of other services you can choose from, the port number is relatively obvious, and important if you're using port forwarding instead of something like VPN, and then the host proxy information is the hostname and IP address of the device you're connecting to.


Texting without the chain of previous conversations How can I send a text to someone without all of our previous texts attached and without deleting the previous conversation?

Neither text nor iMessages send the conversation history; that is saved locally on your own device, & also on theirs. Each user is in charge of whether or not to keep that history.

To send a text/iMessage, all you need is their phone number, nothing else. They don't even have to be in your address book.


Mac mini starting itself when power is applied Having a weird issue with a Mac mini.

At the end of the day, I perform a full shutdown.  The main power is then turned off.

When the main power is turned back on again, the Mac mini is automatically turning itself on and starting up. I don't want it to do this.

Under the Energy Saver settings in System Preferences, start automatically after a power failure is unchecked. There is also nothing in the Schedule that would cause the machine to turn on.

Any ideas why my Mac won't stay off when the main power is reapplied?

EDIT - pmset -g output

Active Profiles:
AC Power        -1*
Currently in use:
hibernatemode        0
womp                 0
networkoversleep     0
sleep                20
Sleep On Power Button 1
ttyskeepawake        1
hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
autorestart          0
disksleep            10
displaysleep         20

EDIT 2

If I understand correctly, I will be resetting the SMC every day because the main power is removed from the machine. As per; https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201295

Could the fact that the SMC is being reset make the machine power on the next time main power is applied?

Have you tried removing any usb such as external hard drives? That's probably the issue


Stuck with unwanted advertisements in-game Whilst playing Angry Birds with my grandson, an ad for another game kept appearing. Despite trying to close this ad several times, I now find myself stuck with this game app on screen inviting me to download.

All other 'buttons', features, refresh, etc are inactive. How do I escape from this app and return to the wanted game?

You can force the app to close and then reopen it:

 1. Double-click the Home button.
 2. Swipe left or right until you have located the app you wish to close.
 3. Swipe the app's preview up to close it.

Now reopen the app from the Home screen and you should be set.

Pro Tip: Sometimes tapping excessively with an app can cause it to slow down, freeze or lock up like you describe.


Jerky internet on MacBook Pro My wifi works fine on all other computers/phones/tablets; however, it's very jerky on my MacBook Pro.

It used to work fine, but began being jerky a couple months ago. Nothing has changed, but it's like the internet just locks up every few seconds, then jumps right in and starts working again.

Any ideas on what's causing this?

Here's a few things you can try...

Firstly, (as a test) try moving closer to your wireless router until you are along side it. If the dropouts reduce, there may be something interfering with the wifi signal (especially if it is on the 2.4Ghz band - which it probably is). Have a think about what you might have transmitting on this frequency... Cordless phone, baby monitor etc. If you have either, try switching them off.

Load safari and visit www.speedtest.net
As you run the speed test, watch the graph.
This will at least give you a visual interpretation of the problem - but not actually fix it. You should be able to 'see' the data transfer stopping & starting - thereby verifying your problem.

Try also searching for FREE network analysis tools on the App Store. Have a look for NetSpot, Network Strength & more.

The one I use is called Wifi Analyser (in the Mac App Store, and the Android Store, but by different people I believe) - The Android version displays the signal strength of your wifi (and close neighbors) as you walk around your house (or where-ever) in a graphical format. Maybe the problem is a very weak signal ?

Lastly, maybe the problem is not the wifi at all... Perhaps there is some other software running in the background chewing up all of your processing power?

Regards, Greg.