Composing messages in Apple Mail: Displaying text on screen in larger size without changing font size When composing messages in Mail.app, as I now have an HD screen on my MBP, the default Helvetica 12pt appears quite small.

I would like to be able to enlarge the text size, but only locally, without changing the font in the message, as I don't want the recipients to have jumbo-size text on their screen.

Is there a way to perform this kind of "zoom" without using the "Universal access" zoom features which are a little bit too much.

You can go ahead and set it to what you want in Mail Preferences.  These settings have no effect on what is seen at the other end.  To do that you have to change the font for each outgoing individually in the New Message pane.


Missing nsmb.conf file I'm looking for the nsmb.conf file to try some different settings to troubleshoot network connectivity issues.  I'm on Mac OS Mojave.  I cannot find that file in /etc/nsmb.conf or ~/Library/Preferences/nsmb.conf.  Those are the only two locations described in the manual page (http://www.manpagez.com/man/5/nsmb.conf/).

There is an /etc/smb.conf file.  What is the difference between an nsmb.conf file and smb.conf file?

Just create the file via commandline/Terminal. It does not exist by default.

sudo touch /etc/nsmb.conf

The smb.conf file is most likely carried over from updating older versions of macOS. It’s not used anymore in Mojave.

The terminal command above is the global location for the config file, if you want to set config options for specific users, see the following URL. The link also contains additional info about SMB config.

https://www.flyweb.at/blog/network/1004/samba-fun-with-osx/


Why Disk Utility full? My Disk Utility is full. My Disk is about 1T but now I only have no more 100GB to use.
 I don't think I have used that much, the yellow one is belong to what? I want to erase some files to get more spaces but I have no idea what to do.
I think all of my folder is just 400GB. I think either Application or images, video are duplicate in somewhere. Please help!!

Open finder and use the go menu to open your home folder.

press command 2 to get the folder list view
press command j and turn on Calculate all sizes

Once you know how large these folders are, you can start determining where the "other space" is allocated. I like to sort by size, decreasing so that the biggest users of space bubble up to the top of the window.


What Kernel extensions should be deleted to disable bluetooth? A client needs to completely disable bluetooth. The most basic level (aside from physically disconnecting the antennas or removing the airport card) seems to be disabling the kernel extensions.

I looked in /Volumes/<your system's drive name>/Library/Extensions/ while in recover mode, courtesy of this question, but there were no bluetooth extensions there.

Supposedly deleting /System/Library/Extensions/IO80211family.kext will disable wifi, but I also ran into issues trying to delete this without being in recovery mode. (Recovery mode shows this file in /Volumes/<your system's drive name>/System/Library/Extension, and wifi was successfully disabled after deleting that file from within recover mode, showing No Hardware Installed after rebooting.)

What file should I delete to achieve the same result for bluetooth?

I'll leave this open to a more definitive answer, but after some guess-and-check I was able to disable the Bluetooth preferences pane with an error To see this preferences pane, you may need to connect a device to your computer. by removing the /System/Library/Extensions/IOBluetoothFamily.kext file.

Clarification as to which of the following found kernel extensions are specifically responsible for Bluetooth IO would be appreciated:

$ ls /System/Library/Extensions/*lue*
/System/Library/Extensions/AppleBluetoothDebug.kext:
Contents

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleBluetoothDebugService.kext:
Contents

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleBluetoothModule.kext:
Contents

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleBluetoothMultitouch.kext:
Contents

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleBluetoothRemote.kext:
Contents

/System/Library/Extensions/AppleMIDIBluetoothDriver.plugin:
Contents

/System/Library/Extensions/IOBluetoothFamily.kext:
Contents

/System/Library/Extensions/IOBluetoothHIDDriver.kext:
Contents


Tables with Arabic numbers (iWork) only show Western Numbers I tried to type a table with one column in Arabic numbers and the other one with corresponding Western numbers, just like this one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet#Numerals

But when I copy the table and paste it (or when I write a new one from scratch), all the Arabic digits turn to Western ones when I move to another cell.

The problem does not appear on Textedit (which handles right-to-left scripts and otf Arabic fonts much better, by the way).

I can see why this might be frustrating. Tables in iWork by default are set to automatically detect the type of text that is entered in each cell. If iWork sees a number (of any type) it converts it a Western character. Luckily it is possible to change this.

Open the inspector and go to the table settings section. Under the table settings section you are presented with two other sections ("Table" and "Format"). Select "Format" and you will see that you can set the "Cell Format" of a table. Select the table in your document and and click on the "Cell Format" drop-down menu. As you will see, the current option is set to "Automatic." Change this to "Text" and you will no longer have the problem of iWork changing your input to Western characters!

Note: You may be forced to manually create and enter the values in the table using the character viewer or copy and paste individual characters from Wikipedia in each cell AFTER initializing the table to have the "Text" cell format. Copying and pasting the entire table from Wikipedia seems to override any initial formatting (in the form of cell format) in iWork.


Apple Watch Motion face: is there any way to just pick one flower as the default flower? Is there any way to just pick one flower as the default flower?

As of watchOS 4 (and the newest watchOS 5 beta), you can't really do that, Apple didn't make it possible.


Is it possible to unlock iOS 6.1.3 already? For a iPhone 3GS with a IOS version 4.1(with cydia) is it possible to upgrate to 6.1.3(or something above 5) and unlock.

iTunes gives update for 6.1.3 . While evad3rs have unclocked till version 6.1.2 .

How can such an upgrade be possible. I know that first of all I have to upgrade through iTunes. But will I be available to unlock after that?

I have 3Gs with New Bootrom but manufactured before 2011. I had accidently updated iPhone from iTunes to 6.1.3. That upgraded my baseband to 05.16.08 and left me with a locked phone.

This is what I did.  You can do the same even if you have old Bootrom (that is in fact a boon since you’ll get untethered jailbreak of 6.1.3). But if your phone in manufactured in 2011 (exact date please Google it), then DONOT ATTEMPT THIS.

Thumb Rule: Make sure your internet connectivity is present throughout. Make sure of the versions of software mentioned. Make Sure you have shsh blobs of 6.1.3 present (in case you want to go to 6.1.3 in step6). Run all tools as “run as administrator” on windows.
Download iOS 4.1. Download Latest TinyUmbrella. Download latest iREB. Put your iPhone in Pwned DFU mode via iREB (Dark screen with no logo). Start TinyUmbrella TSS Server and use iTunes 11 to flash stock 4.1 onto iPhone (hold shift key while selecting restore from iTunes and select 4.1 iOS). Now your Phone is on iOS 4.1 and Baseband 05.16.08, since baseband cannot downgrade via iTunes.
Jailbreak using Redsn0w V0.9.14 b2– Select option Install Cydia and Install iPad Baseband. Now your Phone is on iOS 4.1 and Baseband 6.15.00. (May require couple of retries. If putting DFU mode from Cydia doesn’t work, try putting it in DFU mode through iREB)
Once Jailbroken, run Redsn0w0.9.15b1 – select ios4.1 from extras and deselect Install Cydia and select downgrade from iPad baseband. Now your Phone is on iOS 4.1 and Baseband 5.13.04. (May require couple of retries. If putting DFU mode from Cydia doesn’t work, try putting it in DFU mode through iREB)
Now you have a working iPhone 3gs on iOS 4.1 untethered and you can unlock it from Ultrasn0w. Proceed below only if you are willing to risk a tethered jailbreak for 6.1.3 
Download iOS 6.0.0 and 6.1.3 for 3gs. Download sn0wbreeze v2.9.14.
Start TinyUmbrella TSS server. Prepare Custom ipsw through Sn0wbreeze with option iFaith. When it asks for 6.1.3 appticket, pass on shsh blobs for 6.1.3 (This mode will preserve baseband too, so don’t worry). Sn0wbreeze will prepare the ROM (takes some time). At the end of it, it asks you to put your phone in DFU. Don’t use that. Close the Sn0wbreeze and use latest iREB to put phone in Pwned DFU mode.
Start iTunes. Use shift restore and select ipsw built by Sn0wbreeze. When restore is complete and it reboots, press home+power key to force shutdown and reboot using the iBooty tool created by Sn0wbreeze in Step 7 which is now placed on your desktop.
Now run Redsn0w0.9.15b1, select ipsw in extra as 6.0.0 (not 6.1.3!!). Click on jailbreak and install Cydia option. (May require couple of retries. If putting DFU mode from Cydia doesn’t work, try putting it in DFU mode through iREB). Whenever the phone is booted, don’t boot from Redsn0w’s ‘just boot’ option. Always use iBooty. If it starts booting in between, force shutdown from home+power and start with iBooty.
Now you should have a 3Gs on iOS 6.1.3, which is Jailbroken (tethered in case of New Bootrom) and fully unlockable through Ultras0W at baseband 5.13.04. You’ll have to use iBooty every time you iPhone restarts.


Is there a possibility to run a custom Notes server for iOS? I have notes where I strongly wish to avoid 3rd party cloud storage - even Apple’s

To that end, I am trying to set up my own one. iOS supports setting custom CalDAV server, so it is possible to handle Contacts, Reminders and Calendar with my server. Obviously, it is also possible to run own Mail server.

What is left is Notes. My research shows that Notes uses IMAP protocol internally.

I can see that if I set up an Exchange server account in Settings->Accounts, Notes will sync with that server.

My requirements are:

Use of the native notes app is preferred. Functionality including file attachments, document scanning, Apple Pencil handwriting and drawing are desired.
Sharing notes with third party is optional and not required
I would like to self host on Linux hardware using free/opensource software (MS Exchange is not free, plus it requires running Windows Server).

Is it possible?

So it looks like this is impossible.

Yes, Notes does support IMAP and this can be set up by adding an Email account to iOS (or macOS) and checking "Notes" there.

However those kind of Notes are handicapped: you can't draw there with Apple Pencil, can't use any markdown like tables/bullets. Basically it is just Text and (image) attachments, making this app nearly useless (most of the notes I am making are made with Apple Pencil).

What I like about internal Notes.app is that it is automatically launched upon an apple pencil tap on the locked screen - this is why I prefer it over 3rd party apps. But, when I tap on an IMAP-connected note, I am getting an Alert "Apple Pencil is supported only on iCloud notes". Damn.


Mac Mini 2012 - dual band bluetooth? does anyone know what the radio is in the mac mini late 2012? The only detail I can find is that it is 4.0, but I can't find out if it is dual-band capable.

I don't know if this answers your question but here:

Single-Chip Bluetooth® 4.0 HCI Solution with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Support

The Broadcom BCM20702 is a single-chip Bluetooth processor with a high performance integrated 2.4-GHz RF transceiver. It is fully compliant with Bluetooth 4.0 and all prior standard features. The BCM20702 offers unmatched integration, including on-board memory for a very small footprint and low cost of implementing a Bluetooth system.

Which i got from http://www.broadcom.com/products/Bluetooth/Bluetooth-RF-Silicon-and-Software-Solutions/BCM20702.
I got this from ifixit's Mac Mini Late 2012 teardown.


What happened to my imported music? I have no idea what I'm doing wrong ... or what iTunes is doing wrong ... but when I go into my Library, the only music that shows up is the stuff I actually purchased from iTunes.  Over the years my husband and I have gradually imported pretty much our entire CD collection ... but suddenly NONE of that is accessible.  Where did it go?  How do I access it?  It's like iTunes suddenly broke.  I can't update any of my playlists, because the music no longer exists.  I'm so frustrated I could just cry!

While iTunes is open, click the menu: iTunes > Preferences.
Click the Advanced (gear) icon.
Look at the "iTunes Media folder location." Is that where your files are located? You can click the Change button to point at the correct location (which is generally, as someone already commented, in your user folder > Music > iTunes > iTunes Media > Music).


Can a Terminal window be resized with a Terminal command? So that I could resize the window to a certain size from within Terminal.

Yes. Terminal supports escape sequences for manipulating windows, including the size and position, layering, and minimizing. Dimensions can be expressed in pixels or characters. See Xterm Control Sequences for details (search for “Window manipulation”; if you’re not familiar with the notation, “CSI” stands for “Control Sequence Introducer”, which is ESC [).

For example, this shell command will set the window to 100x50 characters:

printf '\e[8;50;100t'

Minimize the window for a few seconds, then restore it:

printf '\e[2t' && sleep 3 && printf '\e[1t'

Move the window to the top/left corner of the display:

printf '\e[3;0;0t'

Zoom the window:

printf '\e[9;1t'

Bring the window to the front (without changing keyboard focus):

printf '\e[5t'

Enabling the Control Sequences in Terminal Emulators

Some terminal emulators ignore these control sequences by default and require configuration to enable them.

To enable these in XTerm, set the following resource to true:

  allowWindowOps

To enable these in iTerm2, deselect the following preference:

  Preferences > Profiles > [profile] > Terminal > Disable session-initiated window resizing


Connect iPhone Lightning Headphones to Mac 2014 (standard headphone jack) I have a Mac 2014 with the standard headphone jack.  My headphones have the Lightning connector.   Ive spent 30 minutes trying to find a converter but no luck so figured I'd try here on Stack. Closest I came was this Anker Piece but thats for USB-C (newer mac)
Picture below

I'd say one does not exist.
The reasoning behind you being able to find an adaptor from USB-C to lightning is that both are digital connections. I'm not sure what, if any, data translation would need to be done, but if it was necessary USB-C can carry the power to do it. (Similarly for the lightning to audio cable supplied with the iPhones).
To do the same from a regular headphone socket would need the adaptor to carry two-way DACs (digital analogues converters) to & from the earphones & mic, & would also have to be battery-powered, as it can't take power from the headphone socket on the Mac.
It's not impossible to do that, but it would be costly. It seems so far, no-one is willing to see if the consumer would be prepared to pay the price.


iPhone 4s 6.1.3 Update to IOS 6 I have iPhone 4s with firmware IOS 6.1.3, i like upgrade to IOS 7. Actually signed firmware for iPhone 4s is IOS 9.1. Is Possible?

No - you would need Apple to start signing iOS 7 for that hardware. Since Apple is signing iOS 9 it's not signing 8 and lower anymore. Basically, upgrading to anything but the latest is essentially a downgrade and not supported unless you've already jailbroken or made arrangements to fake out the code signing needed for an iOS update.

Basically, you can stick with what you have or go all the way to 9 at this point.


How to re-download OS X Lion from 10.6.8 I purchased OS X 10.7 lion about two years ago, and installed it on my Mac running 10.6.8.

A couple of hours ago I re-formatted my computer and re-installed Mac OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard from the original DVD installer. Now I want to go to the App Store and re-download the OS X Lion installer, to upgrade my system to Lion.

The problem is that when I go to App Store and try to download the OS X 10.7 Lion installer, it reloads the same page and nothing happens.

I tried to delete the App store cache and re-install, but it did not work.

Any help?

Thanks

When a new OS X is released, it isn't no longer possible to download the previous version(s).

Apple has however now with the release of OS X Mavericks (10.9) again opened up for re-download of Lion and Mountain Lion (if previously purchased) - or to purchase the two OS's for a price of $19.99 each.

OS X Lion (10.7)

OS X Mountain Lion (10.8)


fsck_hfs keeps returning "The volume was modified" I have a iMac (Late 2013) which has a standard 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive. Long story short, I noticed a dramatic slowdown in Windows (in Bootcamp) and on the Mac. After installing DriveDx, it reported that I had around 8,600 Reported Uncorrectable Errors. To my knowledge, that essentially means bad blocks/sectors.

After looking at this post, I followed the fsck_hfs commands. I actually checked for bad blocks first using the /sbin/fsck_hfs -S /dev/disk0s2 and then ran the /sbin/fsck_hfs -drfy /dev/disk0s2 command.

After running the check Debug, Repair, Force command five times, all it would return is "The volume was modified" which to my research says that it is not complete, and that you should run it again.

A couple of questions. Does this command actually do anything to fix bad blocks? And if not, is there another command to actually fix the problem?

Thanks.

Your disk is failing.

To answer your questions - yes, it attempts to rescue the data and mark the bad blocks so they won't be used in the future and no, there is no command to fix bad blocks.  Bad blocks are physical problems on the storage media.

The -S option, per the man page (man fsck_hfs):

  Cause fsck_hfs to scan the entire device looking for I/O errors.  It
  will attempt to map the blocks with errors to names, similar to the
  -B option.

(emphasis mine)

When you run fsck_hfs, it attempts to repair the file system - there's no guarantee that it fixes it.

In a previous post, I referenced that the hard drive in the iMac generally has a 3 year warranty (2 years after 2012) so basically, you're about 4 to 5 years into a drive expected to last about 3.  Chances are, it's failing.

I suggest replacing the drive.


directory location of sync files? I am using my iPad with windows 7. So..everytime I connect my ipad to my pc, itunes downloads applications that I bought on iPad. So..to what directory does the Itune download purchased application from my iPad?

and..is there an option to prevent iTune from downloading apps from my iPad to sync?

For the first question, I think its actually stored under C:\Users\username\My Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\, if everything is standard. If anything, it will be wherever your music is also stored (just in another directory).

As for your second question, I don't think you can tell it not to sync the apps. The only ways to not keep them would be to delete off your iPad before sync, or delete from the file system after sync.


Yosemite to El Capitan MBP 13" Early 2015. Currently on Yosemite (10.10.5).

Mostly for Metal, I am interested in now upgrading to El Capitan (10.11.x). I have no interest in moving to macOS Sierra at this time. Apparently Apple is not really a fan of what I'm trying to do and has made it very difficult for me to just upgrade to El Capitan.

I do not have it listed in my "Purchased" tab of the app store. Further, the direct link to download El Capitan from Apple gives me a fun modal:

  This version of OS X 10.11 cannot be installed on this computer.

Presumably this is because it is for Snow Leopard upgrades.

Anyway, any help on how to install El Capitan is appreciated. Googling has not been helpful.

After more research and other similar questions on Stack Exchange, I have come to the solution I was originally looking for.

This website provides some instructions, but more importantly direct links to the .pkg files for El Capitan on the osxapps.itunes.apple.com domain. You can then use the checksums from this git repo to verify the installers if you still feel something is fishy.

I also spent about an hour on webchat with Apple support trying to get El Cap added to my purchase history for my Apple ID, so I could just download it from the App Store, to no avail. Their official recommendation was to find it on a third party site. Couldn't believe it. They also noted that going into an Apple Store / Genius Bar may yield results with getting it installed (or any Apple Authorized store), at which point backup media could be created if it ever needed to be reinstalled.


Take webcam picture and screenshot at the same time I'm trying to combine these two commands:
while :;do screencapture -x ~/Desktop/$(date +%y%m%d%H%M%S).png;sleep 300;done

and
imagesnap -t 300

I want to make a screenshot and a webcam photo at the same time every 5 minutes. It's my first time using the terminal, so I'm very new to this. It's probably very simple but I just can't figure it out.
Thank you for helping!

Something to try, add an ampersand to the end of your commands.
imagesnap -t 300&

The idea here is that the ampersand will cause the command to run in the background allowing the loop to continue to the next step.
As an example, if you were to run the following in Terminal you'll see that the second sleep reports out before the first one.
sleep 10&; sleep 5&;

I hope this helps


How to select text on Google Search, when using Chrome for iOS7? Once you type the text to be searched on the omnibox, it is replaced by a long URL, e.g. https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=how%20to%20select%20text%20on%20google%20search%2c%20when%20using%20chrome%20for%20ios7%3f

Then, if you want to select some of the previous text, tap and hold will not work.

Is there other alternative?

You can double tap to select a word, then just adjust the selection. More hints on this link


Uptime report multiple users I'm not sure I understand the command "uptime"

uptime
13:58  up 5 days,  9:49, 3 users

I have 3 users detected, but I have only one user account on the Mac and no sharing enabled.

What the users actually are?

Close Terminal.app, then open one Terminal.app window and read the manual pages for uptime, w and who, e.g man uptime, then execute each command e.g. uptime, w and whoin that order in that one Terminal.app window you opened.

It should become apparent however if not... There are always at least two users logged in, you using console and note its time, it's corresponds to the time you logged into your account from the GUI, and you using ttys000 (the Terminal.app windows that you opened). In these instances you is as shown in the output of who am i.

Each additional Terminal window you open will show as another user using , e.g. ttys001, ttys002, etc.


Circuit Simulator for iPad What is the best electronics circuit simulator app for iPad where I can draw a circuit and monitor its behaviour?

There are a few, if you are a Spice fanatic then I'd give this one a try first:

Spicy Schematics Free is a trial version of the full iPad app, Spicy Schematics

Circuit Lab HD and DCircuit Lab HD are two fully featured node analysis simulators, the first is an analog simulator in the Spice mould, the second purely for Digital gate and logic combinatory analysis.


How to move an opened file to trash? It's possible to move files to trash via Finder with ⌘⌫. But if i have an opened file (e.g. pdf or txt), is there any way to directly move it to trash without first closing it and finding it in Finder? Any shortcut?

The shortest way: Right-click the file icon in the title bar of the document window. It will display a drop-down menu of the file's location path. When you choose the folder icon that is directly under the file icon, a Finder window will open with the file already selected (highlighted), and you can directly press ⌘⌫ to trash it.


How to run .vtt and .srt files with videos using QuickTime Player Is there anyway I can run .vtt "WEBVTT" subtitles files and .srt files with QuickTime Player.
I am running QuickTime version 10.5.

Not that I know of.
In case you're unfamiliar, VLC is a free alternative that has excellent support for subtitles, etc.


If I transfer my Keychain folder to another MacBook Pro - open it with keychain access, would I be able to see it? Basically want to take my Keychain folder (from old Macbook) onto a new MacBook Pro, then open the login.keychain on the new MacBook, which ideally would show my iCould, system keychain, system roots too, correct?

Yes. After copying the keychain folder and you can open it with the Keychain app. Which prompts a pop up that is asking for your password.


App subscription confusion leads to billing I just downloaded an app yesterday and I accidentally agreed to the subscription which was about 100 dollars a year I cancelled it but now it says it expires next year so they billed me about $100. What do I do? Is there any way to fix this?

You didn’t say which App Store you purchased, but just go to the Apple Support app on iOS or web page - https://support.apple.com/ , select billing issues and refund.

Explain your situation and see what can be done. The sooner you ask for help, the more likely you will get a result you like.


is there any difference between part numbers? Is there any difference between iPad Air part numbers? Like ll/a versus zp/e – for different countries.

I want buy a new iPad Air and I stock between different part numbers.

The difference is localization. For iPad Air, it only means that you will get translated documentation. So it's OK to get it from another country like the Philippines.

Warranty is worldwide. The software language you will choose on first use, and you can change it later.

The only real difference is for products with keyboards (iMac, MacBook, etc), obviously then it will influence your keyboard layout (QWERTY, AZERTY etc.).


Error when importing photos from iCloud to Photos on macOS: "The operation couldn't be completed. (PHAssetExportRequestErrorDomain error 2.)" When I try to download copies of photos and videos in Shared Albums to my own library on my Mac:

Open Photos, then select a Shared Album from the left-hand menu.
Select the photos or videos. (in my case, I selected 4.900 pictures)
Control-click > Import.

It takes a while, the progress bar (in form of a disk next to the zoom slider) progresses normally, but when it completes, an error message is displayed and no image is imported in my library:

  The operation couldn't be completed. (PHAssetExportRequestErrorDomain error 2.)

Version information:

Photos Version 5.0 (151.19.150)
macOS Catalina 10.15.5

Diagnosis

By trying to import small groups of photos and videos, I found out that there is one video in the middle of my shared album that doesn't display a proper preview, and it can't be imported to my library. Probably this video is corrupted somehow in iCloud. All other photos and videos can be imported properly.

Work around

Importing all photos and videos before this corrupted video works, and importing all photos and videos after this corrupted video works as well.


IPhone: too much disk space is used for unknown reason Here is a full list of all applications installed on the device:

I have already used Battery Doctor (and other apps) and cleaned cache. So what is 7.2 gb used for? How can i clean it?

I don't know if it can help but the phone was already in use before.

Update: Settings -> General -> About screen:

Looks like that iOS is taking some space since it says the capacity is 12GB even though (I'm guessing) your device is 16GB.


iPhone XS Max - went into disabled mode I accidentally dropped my iPhone and part of the screen wasn't functioning. So I entered the incorrect passcode several times (Maybe around 10) and the phone got disabled.

Now, I have replaced the screen but my data is lost. I have some very sentimental pictures taken from this phone which is not backed. How can I recover these pictures ?

I used Dr.Fone and PhoneRescue, it recovered almost all the pictures except for the ones taken on the day I dropped the phone. I am not able to recover these images. Can someone please help me out?

I suggest using iMazing, as I've found that it has worked in multiple similar situations (water damage, dead screen, etc.

I'm afraid that iMazing is a paid app, but comes with a 30 day trial, but in my experience this trial can be reset  by uninstalling and reinstalling iMazing.


How can I delete a photo off my camera roll, but keep it in my album? I'm hitting the hide button, but it's still showing up in my camera roll. I want to delete some photos from my camera roll, but keep them in my album.

My workflow for this - not using iCloud - is:

import the photos into an app (I use Lightroom)
label photos I want to end up on my iPhone with "for-iphone"
export photos labelled "for-iphone" to a folder of your choice (I use "Pictures/for-iphone")
in iTunes turn on "Sync Photos" for your iPhone [note: find "Sync Photos" by plugging in your iPhone, opening iTunes, clicking on the little phone icon to the right of the "Music" dropdown, then clicking Photos in the list below]
at "Copy photos from:" pick "Choose folder..." and navigate to the "Pictures/for-iphone" folder or your equivalent
Hit Done

Your photos will be uploaded to your phone independent of the Camera Roll.

Each time you sync any newly-added photos in the for-iphone folder will be added to your phone.


Push notifications work everywhere but my home network I have an 2G (MC Model) 8GB iPod Touch on iOS 4.0 that has a strange issue.  Push notifications used to work just fine, but for the past month or two, I don't get any notifications while I'm on my home wifi network.  If I connect my iPod to any other wifi network (open private, public hotspot, etc), I get flooded with all the past notifications.  I have tried restoring my iPod numerous times, tried downgrading to 3.1.2, tried different combinations of DNS servers (as mentioned on the net), but nothing works.  Any ideas on how to go about getting push to work when I'm at home?

Your push-port (5223) could've been closed. Try to open it in the router-interface.


Retrieving Time Machine backed up files I have a Time Machine drive which was previously used to back up my old Mac. Since that machine died I'm using it to back up my new Mac. This means there are two folders in the time machine's backup folder - one for the old machine, one for the new machine.

The new machine's Time Machine app does not show me the content of the old machine's backups.

I would like to rescue/extract the important files (such as Pictures folders etc) from the old machine's backups.

I know TM files are not stored contiguously but as it does not provide a granular management tool, is there a way to extract/copy files from a Time Machine history which the current machine does not see?

You can use the Migration Assistent found in Application/Utilities folder. This program will allow you to copy files, pictures, folders, programs, settings and more from a Time Machine backup.

Edit:
Open Migration Assistent and choose Time machine option, then click continue. Connect the time machine backup disk and choose it from the menu. Then select things to copy.

Read more here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204350

This is a similar question:
Restore files from Time Machine to a different Mac


iOS "stuck" while erasing I recently decided to start off with a fresh install of iOS due to my springboard crashing often and everything being messed up. I went to Settings > General > Reset to reset the device, and it started out OK. Currently, it's been sitting with the spinner icon (The one you get when you power down) for over half an hour with no progress. Is this normal? If not, what should I do? I have an iPhone 5s, 32 GB storage, but only about 6 GB is actually used. The spinner icon isn't frozen, it's still moving.

This should not happen. What you can do is, press and hold the home and power key for 10 seconds. The device will enter recovery mode and now you can connect to itunes and install the iOS operating system from scratch.


Change predictive text language independently of keyboard? Can I change the language used for my iPhone's predictive text input independently of the layout of the keyboard?  I want French spelling suggestions but I still want to type on a QWERTY keyboard.  The iPhone is a 5S, if that is relevant.

Go to Settings → General → Keyboards.
If French is not in the list, add it using Add New Keyboard → French.
From the list of keyboards which have been added, choose French, then select the QWERTY layout.

You can remove other keyboards you no longer wish to use by sliding them from right to left.


How do I install rEFInd on a MacBook running macOS Sierra? I've disabled SIP and tried to install rEFInd on my MacBook, which is not partitioned in any way by boot camp and is one single drive. The install of rEFInd says it is installing to /Volumes/ESP for the EFI boot and completes successfully. After rebooting, however, rEFInd menu does not come up when holding option key or anything. How do I get that installed so that it is usable?

After reading through the refind-install script (at version 0.10.4), I discovered that all I needed to do was make sure that the EFI partition was mounted.

From the terminal, run diskutil list to find the EFI partition. In my case this was /dev/disk0s1.
Mount the EFI partition from the location identified in step 1. For me this was mount /dev/disk0s1
Run the rEFInd install script (from the unzipped rEFInd directory): sudo ./refind-install

I got friendly output in my terminal: Installation has completed successfully. After this rEFInd worked on my MacBook Pro.


Audio output limiter for Mac? NOT volume control I'm often victim to some loud sound playing on my computer all of a sudden when I have my volume level turned up already to watch a quiet video. I can't turn everything down to the level of the quietest video I will ever watch; that's impractical. I can't even control the volume level of some applications.

Is there an audio proxy or some other plugin that can limit how loudly a sound will be outputted from my built-in audio card? I'd like an audio output level limit control in addition to the system volume control. For example, if I have my volume up all the way to watch a quiet video, any loud sound that plays should sound as if my volume is set to half or something. I've got my Mac connected to external speakers with an analog 1/8" cable.

For a free solution to add a compressor/limiter to the system-wide audio, you can use Soundflower along with Apple's AU Lab:

https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases

https://www.apple.com/itunes/mastered-for-itunes/

Following these steps:

Install Soundflower and AU Lab.
Open System Preferences > Sound, and set both the Sound Effects and the Output to play through Soundflower (2ch).
Open AU Lab, and in the Document Configuration window, under Factory Configurations, select Stereo In/Stereo Out.
Set the Input to Soundflower (2ch), and the output to Built-in Output.
Click Create Document.
In the Output 1 channel strip under Effects, select Apple > AUDynamicsProcessor.
Adjust the settings in the Dynamics Processor window as desired.

A similar setup using the AUDynamicsProcessor is possible with the commercial Audio Hijack:

https://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijack/

The Hear app also has a limiter, and seems to use less CPU resources than the above. However, it's no longer in developoment and has limited support:

https://www.prosofteng.com/download/?hearmac

While these are answers to the question of how to add a compressor/limiter to the overall system audio, there are some drawbacks. One is that the above solutions may use significant CPU resources. Another is that you'll most likely need to remember to turn it on and off when watching a movie. Otherwise, having the compressor on all the time may reduce the overall dynamic range and sound quality of your computer, for example when playing music.

Rather than compressing or limiting the overall system audio, another approach is to compress then boost the quiet parts of movies so that you don't have to turn up the volume level on your speakers. I use mpv ( https://mpv.io ) to play video, which has several options for precise dynamics control including the "lavfi compander" or the "acompressor.lua" script, with very little impact on CPU usage. VLC also has a built-in compressor found in Preferences (Show all) Audio > Filters > Compressor.

Audio Hijack can be used to route the audio of an app that has no native compression options through dynamics processing. There are also other options with Audio Hijack, such as routing your movie's audio to external speakers, while routing everything else to internal speakers with a separate volume control.


Does iOS encrypt all the data on my device when I set a passcode to my iPhone Excuse my stupidity, I know less than nothing about mobile phones OSes but I have been told that iOS encrypts your data when you set a passcode to your phone. This means even if someone stole your phone, took the storage unit out of the phone and mount it he will NOT be able to to examine your data as it encrypted. Something similar to what *nix OSes do when you choose to encrypt your home folder during the installation process.

My concerns are:

What type of data does it encrypt? it's hard to believe that my iPhone decrypts all my photos once I enter my passcode (assuming that iOS encrypted them)
How difficult is it to crack an encryption that is based on simple four digits?!

Yes, your iOS passcode will encrypt your phone's data.

  Data protection enhances the built-in hardware encryption by protecting the hardware encryption keys with your passcode.

Source: iOS: Understanding data protection

Whilst it was generally unclear exactly what was encrypted in older versions of iOS, Apple have made it clear in their new privacy policy with regard to iOS 8:

  On devices running iOS 8, your personal data such as photos, messages (including attachments), email, contacts, call history, iTunes content, notes, and reminders is placed under the protection of your passcode.

Source: https://www.apple.com/uk/privacy/government-information-requests/


Skype on iPhone - does phone have to be awake / unlocked to receive calls? I have just installed the Skype app on my iPhone 5 running iOS 10.3.3.

To recieve Skype calls does the phone have to be awake/unlocked?

Does the Skype app have to be open/launched? I periodically double click the home button and close / swipe up all open apps. I presume if I do this to Skype I can't receive calls?

To receive calls does the Skype app have to be the currently open app? Or can I use other apps, with Skype open in the "background"?

Skype doesn’t have to be open. I have tested it. There have been known issues with this which you may be experiencing.

In iOS 11 a feature was introduced that enhances third-party calling, so updating should fix the issue.


Red tint and flicker in Macbook LCD For some time my aging 2008 Macbook's LCD has been "flickering" a bit but since it goes away after a while I've ignored it.

But in the last few days a red tint (might be pink - I am color blind :( ) has appeared in the bottom left corner that extends to about the half way point of the LCD. Initially it is quite red but after a little while it fades away though not completely, there is still a noticeable difference between the left and right corners if you look carefully.

It this a sign of the end? Is there anything I can do? My google search reveals similar red tints but with the entire screen.

It's the motherboard the video chip has came unsoldered known issues with them


2020 MacBook Pro won't mount WD external hard drive It's formatted HPS+. Mounted fine yesterday (and for a long time before that). Now, the light on the drive blinks on-and-off and it sometimes briefly shows up in the output to diskutil list as /dev/disk3. I've tried diskutil eject disk3 and similar variants.
The drive automatically mounts on linux without issue.
I do not see fsck running (I checked with ps auxw and top from a terminal). I did not find any interesting log messages via the Console program.
We had trouble about a year ago. Apple support recommended upgrading the OS and I think that worked. We also bought a second cable for the external drive, but ended up not needing it. I just tried the second cable and it didn't make a difference. There was an upgrade OS available and we tried that after talking to Apple support this time, but it didn't make a difference. The drive mounts fine on a ~2016 Mac Air.

A few days after posting this, we got a usb-c cable for the drive and had no trouble using the drive with a direct connection. A few days later, the hub that we were using to connect the drive completely died. So, the hub was clearly the problem.


Services Using com.apple.geod I blocked the com.apple.geod process with my software firewall but after 2 days of non-stop 1 second attempts I just pkill'ed it.

I want to know what services are using this so I can disable them from running com.apple.geod if possible.

Edit:
Scratch the pkill.  That didn't keep it away for long.

Making an exhaustive list of all processes that call a specific API or process would be technically challenging even for one single release point of MacOS. You would either need access to the source code of all of MacOS and every single app - both first party and third party - or you would need to debug/reverse engineer all processes as they run and expose those calls.

The application Little Snitch does that for the network stack - so you might have better luck just blocking network access to Apple servers rather than trying to block the calls to the service locally.

Even if you were to process all the geo location aspects on developer.apple.com - it's widely used - far greater than just the Core Location API - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation.

Weather
Calendar
Address Book
Maps
Siri
iCloud (finding the best data center to route uploads)
Store (which geographic region should your content be)
Time Zone and Night Shift
Safari location


Using Gdal on my mac high sierra I used to use smoothly Gdal on my mac from the terminal before the update to Mavericks. Since that, I have struggled. I am now using High Sierra, and my computer can't find the software. If I run:

brew install gdal

then I hit the problem

 brew already installed

Following the recommendations in https://github.com/Homebrew/legacy-homebrew/issues/23424, I reinstalled it, unlinked it and relinked it. It still does not work. Please see picture. Has anyone experienced similar issues? DO you have a fix for this?

The gdal package doesn't install a gdal binary:

pse@Mithos:~$ ll /usr/local/Cellar/gdal/2.2.4/bin
total 2088
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin   2203 May  4 11:52 gdal-config*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  39580 May  4 11:52 gdal_contour*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  34432 May  4 11:52 gdal_grid*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  35188 May  4 11:52 gdal_rasterize*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  40932 May  4 11:52 gdal_translate*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  40852 May  4 11:52 gdaladdo*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  38852 May  4 11:52 gdalbuildvrt*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  38672 May  4 11:52 gdaldem*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  41432 May  4 11:52 gdalenhance*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  34988 May  4 11:52 gdalinfo*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  46360 May  4 11:52 gdallocationinfo*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  34984 May  4 11:52 gdalmanage*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  39400 May  4 11:52 gdalserver*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  45936 May  4 11:52 gdalsrsinfo*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  45864 May  4 11:52 gdaltindex*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  40040 May  4 11:52 gdaltransform*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  39364 May  4 11:52 gdalwarp*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  40136 May  4 11:52 gnmanalyse*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  49772 May  4 11:52 gnmmanage*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  34624 May  4 11:52 nearblack*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  55228 May  4 11:52 ogr2ogr*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  46364 May  4 11:52 ogrinfo*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  69388 May  4 11:52 ogrlineref*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  50428 May  4 11:52 ogrtindex*
-r-xr-xr-x  1 verence  admin  35316 May  4 11:52 testepsg*

There is also no man page:

pse@Mithos:/usr/local/Cellar/gdal/2.2.4/share/man/man1$ ls
gdal-config.1       gdal_pansharpen.1   gdaladdo.1          gdalsrsinfo.1       ogr2ogr.1
gdal2tiles.1        gdal_polygonize.1   gdalbuildvrt.1      gdaltindex.1        ogr_utilities.1
gdal_calc.1         gdal_proximity.1    gdalcompare.1       gdaltransform.1     ogrinfo.1
gdal_contour.1      gdal_rasterize.1    gdaldem.1           gdalwarp.1          ogrlineref.1
gdal_edit.1         gdal_retile.1       gdalinfo.1          gnm_utilities.1     ogrmerge.1
gdal_fillnodata.1   gdal_sieve.1        gdallocationinfo.1  gnmanalyse.1        ogrtindex.1
gdal_grid.1         gdal_translate.1    gdalmanage.1        gnmmanage.1         pct2rgb.1
gdal_merge.1        gdal_utilities.1    gdalmove.1          nearblack.1         rgb2pct.1


How to permanently disable "reopen windows"? I never want to login and be bombarded with the old windows I had open last time I was using my Mac. It is distracting and it is counter to my understanding that the computer is here to serve me, not the other way around.

My Mac is set to automatically shutdown at night. So there is no way for me to uncheck the "restore windows" box when I shut down. I don't ever want the checkbox because I never want this "feature".

How can I banish this "feature" from my Mac?

Just disable the corresponding checkbox in the "regular" shutdown dialog (hold the power button for a few seconds). The setting is carried over to the auto-shutdown dialog.


Closing 128 new Preview documents without saving I opened 128 .png files in Preview, hoping to use it to create a PDF out of them, as I believe was possible in earlier versions using the New from clipboard trick, but apparently, on Yosemite, not any more.

Now I want to close the newly created documents, but it'll require me to click Don't Save 128 times.

Is there any way around this?

As of Yosemite, at least, there's a much easier way. Just choose Quit from the File menu.

Preview will ask you if you want to review changes. If you say no, you're done!


Playing alert sounds from terminal Is there a way to play OSX alert sounds from terminal? The alert sounds that are listed in System Preferences > Sound > Sound Effect Tab

If you have "audible bell" enabled in your Terminal Settings under Advanced, BEL control characters will sound the default alert sound.

To try this, issue the echo command followed by control+v control+g.  If you type it right, it will look like this:

$ echo ^G

and when you press return, the alert will sound.

(control+v is a shell escape for the immediately-following control character.)

The afplay command can also be used to play a specific sound file:

$ afplay /System/Library/Sounds/Funk.aiff


How to use Hungarian tax reporting application called ABEVJAVA on Mac? I have installed Hungarian tax reporting software called ABEVJAVA. I put into my home folder. Then for test it I downloaded a report template called NAV_1408.jnlp On windows I have to double click it, and after that in ABEVJAVA a new item will appear to use the new report.

But on Mac I can not double click it. I tried to run run jnpl file from terminal with JAVA like this below, but I get an error. What can I do now to get it work on Mac?

Ks-MacBook-Air:~ kukodajanos$ java /Users/kj/Downloads/NAV_1408.jnlp
Error: Could not find or load main class .Users.kj.Downloads.NAV_1408.jnlp
Ks-MacBook-Air:~ kukodajanos$

I couldn't run by double clicking the JNPL file. Other way needs: right click + Open With + JAVA WEB START

I found it in the manual on NAV's website: http://nav.gov.hu/data/cms126069/sugo.pdf

You can look up the 'Mac' keyword.


What could happen if I upgrade an iPod to iOS 5 and what is the likelihood it will happen? I've been nagged to update an iPod to iOS 5 for weeks now. Since it's not mine, I want to be as careful as I can. I'll follow the procedure exactly as Apple recommends, and the device has never been jailbroken. For all intents and purposes, a normal iPod.

However, I'd like to inform this person of all the possible risks that this could have. Since I've never done this upgrade before, I have no idea how it'll go.

So, my question to you: What could happen and what is the likelihood that it will?

(I don't need impossible-to-find statistics, though they might be helpful; I'd just like something like 'Oh yeah, I updated 150 devices and 3 were xyz')

BTW, this is the second-latest iPod and it currently has iOS 4.latest.

Don’t worry about it, nothing will happen.

In the off chance that something does go wrong, you’ll always be able to reset the iPod to factory settings and start over with a fresh iOS 5 install.

It’s virtually impossible to break an iPod just by upgrading it the recommended way.


Show menubar in fullscreen Yes this is different than other "show menubar in fullscreen"

I have a program where i make my own tests for people in class
and when opening it i have to close all my programs that's ok for me
but when in the program i can't swipe to left or right and can't see the menubar. so my question is is there anything possible with the info.plist to change it to let me show the menubar? (i have a MacBook Air 11inch early 2015 with Mac osx Sierra)

In SystemPreferences->General check "automatically hide and show the menubar".
Then it works like this: you do the app full screen with the green button, the menubar is hidden, move the mouse pointer to the top of the screen and the menubar becomes visible above everything.
added: It works also even when you do not check "automatically hide and show the menubar", a tid bit slower perhaps.
added; you can also set a key combination if you want.


Connect a Thunderbolt display and a DisplayPort display to the same MacBook Pro I'm trying to connect the old generation LG UltraFine 4k Display (USB-C DisplayPort) and the old generation LG UltraFine 5k Display (USB-C Thunderbolt) to a 13" MacBook Pro from 2019 (with 4 Thunderbolt 3 USB-C ports).

Here's what works:

If I connect just the 5K display through its Thunderbolt USB-C cable, it works fine.
If I connect just the 4K display through its DisplayPort USB-C cable, it works fine.

Here's what doesn't work:

I can't seem to daisy-chain the 4K display of the 5K display as there's no incoming DisplayPort/Thunderbolt port on the 5K display.
If I connect both displays to the MacBook using two different ports, it just registers and uses the one I plugged in first.

I suspect that the Mac somehow either can't handle or don't understand running both Thunderbolt and DisplayPort at the same time - but maybe it's a configuration issue? I haven't been able to find anything online about this.

Your model MacBook Pro can power external displays at 60Hz in the following combinations:

One display at 5120 x 2880 resolution with over a billion colors
Two displays at 3840 x 2160 resolution with over a billion colors
Two displays at 4096 x 2304 resolution with millions of colors

So, to use both the 5K and 4K displays you need to be mindful of the resolution they're each at. To change the resolution:

Since you're trying to use a 5K display and a 4K display, I'd start by only connecting the 5K display first, preferably in one of the left ports
Go to Apple > System Preferences... > Displays
Make sure the Display tab is selected
Select the Scaled radio button
Now choose one of the scaled options that appear below (Hint: You can view the selected pixel dimensions below the image of your display on the left)
Once you have your display set at 4096 x 2304 (or below), exit System Preferences
Connect your 4K display to one of the right ports
Now go back to Apple > System Preferences... > Displays
Make sure the Display tab is selected
Now hold down the option key to see the additional scaled options for the second display
Now choose one of the scaled options for the 2nd display
Exit System preferences

See the screenshot below for reference:

REMINDER: If you're wanting to use billions of colours, then at Steps 5 and 11 you need to set your resolution at 3840 x 2160 or lower. Otherwise, if you're happy to use millions of colours, you  can set the resolution for each display as high as 4096 x 2304 each. Keep in mind the actual resolution choices you get will depend on your displays and the adapters you're using.

Let me know if you're still running into problems and we can troubleshoot from there.


Macbook Pro Retina and Dell u3011 video driver problem i have a macbook pro retina with OS X 10.8.4 (12E55) , and i'm connecting it to a dell u3011 monitor using a mini-display to displayport cable , it was working great until today whenever i connect the cable my monitor goes to energy save mode , i thought this was a cable problem so i bought a new one and the problem still remains , i connected to the monitor using HDMI and its working fine , is it a video driver problem?

Incredibly late answer, but I had the same issue and what worked for me was to reset the NVRAM.


Why doesn’t the fourth generation iPod touch have a wireless window? I was watching the keynote today and noticed that the fifth generation iPod touch has a wireless window. This was also on the 3rd and previous generations, and also on the cellular iPad.

But why doesn’t the fourth generation iPod touch have a wireless window, but fifth generation does?

As I'm not part of the engineering team I can't tell you why they've resited it, but in the iPod Touch 4 they'd moved the antenna toward the front of the display, rather than toward the back as they had with the previous generations. I'd imagine they've tried it in both locations but due to the way they've slimmed it and moved other components around they probably found that it was a better trade off to have the window back in place.

Step 19 shows how it'd been moved for the iPod Touch 4. I imagine as soon as iFixit has the new one we'll see some more information about why the window is back in relation to the other components.


How can I delete the "Recents" pictures when selecting a profile photo? How can I delete the photos within the recent section?
I tried pressing the delete button, but it didn't delete the image from the list.

The process is a bit complicated.

To delete the Photos in recent, you need to first navigate over to:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ImageKit.RecentPictureService/Data/Library/Images/Recent Pictures

(Finder > Go > Go to Folder)

There you will find all your recent pictures. However, you can't just delete those pictures. You have to also delete it from the plist file available at:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ImageKit.RecentPictureService/Data/Library/Images/Recent Pictures/Recents.plist

Just open it in Xcode or any text editor, and delete the dictionaries under the array.

A picture in the plist will look something like this:

<dict>
    <key>cropInfo</key>
    <dict>
        <key>cropViewInfo</key>
        <dict>
            <key>PRS</key>
            <dict>
                <key>px</key>
                <real>0.0</real>
                <key>py</key>
                <real>0.0</real>
                <key>r</key>
                <real>0.0</real>
                <key>sh</key>
                <real>0.390625</real>
                <key>sw</key>
                <real>0.390625</real>
            </dict>
            <key>cropViewSize.height</key>
            <real>200</real>
            <key>cropViewSize.width</key>
            <real>200</real>
            <key>zoomValue</key>
            <real>0.0</real>
        </dict>
    </dict>
    <key>cropSize</key>
    <string>{200, 200}</string>
    <key>original</key>
    <string>68937D05-204D-4AD8-A98F-2DB8E9EF945F.png</string>
</dict>

You can delete each dictionary/picture manually by looking at the string parameter.


Get everything back on OSX I really need your help.
I've tried to improve my graphic card with the help of this Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5EKzHq4pAk&t=117s

  cd /S*/L*/Ext*/AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.kext/C*/M*
  sudo cp AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB.backup
  sudo perl -pi -e 's|\xC7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x20|\xc7\x45\xBC\x00\x00\x00\x40|g' AppleIntelSNBGraphicsFB
  sudo touch /S*/L*/Extensions

But after this, my mac doesn't see my HD3000
How can i get everything back using kernel?

Boot into recovery mode and reinstall OS X on top of your existing installation. This shouldn't delete your data (but you have that on backups anyway, right?), just repair your OS.

If you also downloaded some random software from obscure russian servers as suggested in the link you posted and gave that software admin access to your computer, you might want to wipe your system and do a fresh install. It could easily have installed malware.

And maybe don't patch your kernel with instructions from YouTube without knowing exactly what you're doing in future? (And questions like this go on http://apple.stackexchange.com/ as it's not programming-related but just general how to use a Mac stuff.)


Graphics card confusion and pro apps I'm doing a report and researching various Mac graphics cards and how they would work or not work with pro apps. I'm very confused by all of the terminology and specifications, so I hope I can formulate this question clearly.

I'm looking specifically at Final Cut Pro. The graphics card requirements (as described in http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4664), are as follows:

- OpenCL-capable graphics card or Intel HD Graphics 3000 or later
- 256MB of VRAM  (1GB recommended for 4K)

The top item isn't the issue. The 256MB of VRAM is tripping me up.

On this page (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3246), Apple describes dynamic allocation for memory. For example, a MacBook Pro with Intel Iris Pro graphics "dynamically allocates up to 1.5 GB of system memory." I understand that the 1.5GB comes from regular system RAM. Does that memory act as the "VRAM" that Final Cut Pro needs? I'm confused because I read that the Iris Pro also has 128MB of its own memory.

For the discrete graphics cards (NVIDIA GeForce 320M for example), it says that a base of 256MB is allocated. Does this mean that the discrete graphics card has 256MB on its own, but can also receive more from the system memory, a la the integrated cards?

Lastly, how different would the performance be for Final Cut Pro (or similar apps) between the Iris Pro graphics and the discrete card? If someone wants to use Final Cut Pro, is the discrete card a necessity?

Does that memory act as the "VRAM" that Final Cut Pro needs?

The integrated Intel Iris graphics chips contain onboard memory that act as L4 cache this helps speed up access to the shared system RAM, but doesn't replace it as the backing store for graphics data.

  Does this mean that the discrete graphics card has 256MB on its own, but can also receive more from the system memory, a la the integrated cards?

The discrete card has its own RAM, placed near to the GPU and connected to the GPU with a private buss. Additional RAM from the system memory cannot be used with discrete cards. Really, you wouldn't want to -- it would slow down its processing capabilities.

  Lastly, how different would the performance be for Final Cut Pro (or similar apps) between the Iris Pro graphics and the discrete card? If someone wants to use Final Cut Pro, is the discrete card a necessity?

This is hard to answer definitely. It depends on what a user is trying to do in Final Cut Pro. Certainly the discrete should out perform the integrated graphics setup when the workload starts to turn more demanding but OpenCL performance is proving to be almost on par for the integrated cards with the discrete cards in the latest Retina MacBook Pros.

Here is an article that has some discrete vs. integrated FCP benchmarking information in it. It points to this other article that has a choice quote in it:

  In the past we sneered at the integrated GPUs and their puny performance. Not any more. The Intel Iris and Iris Pro are every bit the match or master of discrete NVIDIA Mobile GPUs -- at least when it comes to OpenCL acceleration.

Where the discrete cards win is in OpenGL-based workloads.

Ideally you'd run your own benchmarks on the hardware with representative workloads. If this isn't feasible, you're stuck relying on the benchmarks done by others like those two sites above to make your decisions.


iMac Won't Boot Any Disk — Keeps Restarting I'm trying to fix an iMac that won't boot any disk.

The Verbose Boot option is on and a few lines are logged, but then it stops. A couple of seconds later, the computer restarts all over again with the bootup chime.

The restart happens so quickly I couldn't read it all, but captured a photo of the display:

I've reset the SMC and the PRAM. Holding down Shift for Safe mode, or Cmd-R for Recovery mode does the same thing.

If I hold down the Option key, I can get to the Startup Manager screen showing the "Macintosh HD" and also a bootable USB (El Capitan Installer) disk. Whichever disk I choose to boot from, the same thing happens.

If I hold down D for the hardware Diagnostic mode, it runs for about 2 minutes and reports "No issues found". From there, it tries to boot into Recovery mode but the same failure occurs.

Have I tried everything?

It's definitely a hardware problem — either the system board or the video card.

I took the iMac to an Apple Store today. It actually passed all their in-store hardware tests, but the technician still couldn't get it to boot and agreed it was a hardware issue. He'd never seen a problem exactly like this before, and said there wasn't even a standard Apple repair code for it.

Fortunately, it's still covered by Apple Care and they'll fix it for free — they said it should take about five days to get parts and perform the repair.


Install Apple's Podcast app on iOs Simulator I want to debug my podcast feed but don't have an iPhone. I run iOS simulator on my Mac but the iPhone 6s that it runs does not have Apple's standard Podcast app installed. The iOs version is 9.1. How can I install it?

Your best bet for debugging on iOS devices may be to acquire a cheap iPod Touch.


Upgrade to High Sierra fails leaving the Macintosh HD unbootable I just tried to upgrade my Macbook Pro 2016 from Sierra to High Sierra, and the system hung in the upgrade process (screen was black, but keyboard backlight was still on).  After I rebooted the system, it booted directly into the Recovery partition.

The Macintosh HD volume shows up greyed out when I start the disk utility, but I'm able to mount it (after putting in my encryption password).  However, when I set the Startup Disk to the Macintosh HD and reboot, it still boots into the Recovery partition.  Holding down the option key during boot only shows the Recovery partition as an option for bootable drives.

I'm able to access my files by booting my Mac in Target Disk mode, so at least I can recovery my files using another Mac as a last resort...

Any idea how I can recover my system?

I think the upgrade process failed trying to do something with the FileVault encryption on the disk, because the disk was left in a weird encryption state that wasn't bootable.  I was able to recover my system by reverting the "Macintosh HD" CoreStorage logical volume back into a normal physical volume (which decrypts the volume as part of the "revert" process).

Recovery steps:

1) Boot into the recovery mode and open the Utilities -> Terminal

2) Run "diskutil cs list" and find the line that shows the logical volume UUID.  For example:

Logical Volume 5ACC8C0D-005C-4693-9EC6-9F6725A42D66

The logical volume UUID in this example is 5ACC8C0D-005C-4693-9EC6-9F6725A42D66

3) Run diskutil corestorage unlockVolume <UUID> -stdinpassphrase to unlock the volume.  When prompted for the passphrase, you need to input the disk encryption passphrase.

4) Run diskutil corestorage revert <UUID> -stdinpassphrase to revert the CoreStorage logical volume back into a normal physical volume.

You can see in the photo below, that the conversion process is "Paused":

Since we're running these commands from the recovery partition, I guess the CoreStorage volume manager isn't running by default, so this will just sit here forever in the "Paused" state without actually doing anything...

5) Open a new Terminal tab and run /usr/libexec/corestoraged in this second terminal window.  The corestoraged volume manager will stay running in this second window until the volume has been completely reverted.  Just leave it for now.

6) While corestoraged is running in the second window, switch back to the first terminal window and run diskutil cs list.  You should see that the conversion process has started now!  You can keep running the diskutil cs list command repeatedly to check the status.  This will probably take an hour or two to complete.

7) Eventually, the conversion process will complete and the corestoraged process in the second tab will return to the terminal prompt.  If everything worked correctly, when you run diskutil cs list, you should NOT see any volumes listed.

8) Quit Terminal

9) Go to the Apple icon, choose "Startup Disk" and pick Macintosh HD.  Reboot the computer.

10) When the mac restarts, it should boot from the Mackintosh HD instead of the recovery partition.  You should now be able to login as normal to the decrypted disk.


Dollar sign on danish keyboard I'm running a macbook pro on English language, with a danish keyboard (Microsoft Ergonomic 400) - for the life of me I cannot figure out how to get the dollar sign out of it.

I'm used to press AltGr+4 to get it. Now it just gives me the £ sign.

It seems the layout may have been modified.

Try using AltGr+Shift+3.

You can also check what key combinations produce what characters by enabling the On-Screen-Keyboard :

  Open System Preferences and go to “Keyboard”, and look under the “Keyboard” tab
  Check the box next to “Show Keyboard & Character Viewers in menu bar”
  Enable the virtual keyboard input in Mac OS X
  Pull down the newly visible Keyboard menu and choose “Show Keyboard Viewer”


Playlist not transferred in order I created a smart playlist in itunes of songs with a playcount less than X, limiting to 3gb selected by album.  This seems to work properly.

When I sync with my 2nd generation ipod touch and look at the playlist on it, the playlist is in alphabetical order, sorted by album name and then by song name within each album.  I'd like to have everything in the same order as shown in itunes, or at least play the songs on each album in track order rather than alphabetically within each album.

How to?

I'm on windows xp

Try these steps :

Click the Smart Playlist.
Setup the sort order and arrange as desired.
Right-click the Smart Playlist and choose Copy to Play Order.
Sync the device with iTunes.

This article from Apple talks about the Copy to Play Order function


What is the "ls" directory in my home directory? I was just exploring the directory structure on my Mac and there's a directory in my root/home directory, named ls.

[~]$ ls -l .
.
.
drwxr-xr-x   6 XXXX  staff       192 Dec  8  2018 ls

[~/ls]$ pwd
/Users/XXXX/ls

Could someone help me understand what this directory holds and why is in the  root?

The ls command should reference the /bin/ls command, I'm guessing. Anyone have any ideas?

That ls/ directory is not standard on Mac, so its something you or another user on the Mac have created (either directly, or indirectly by being created by some third party program).

It hasn't got anything to do with the ls command. However, it could reasonably have been made by someone in the middle of a mkdir command thinking that they should just list the directory first - and then erraneously running mkdir ls.

By the way - the directory /Users/xxxx is not called the root directory, but rather the user's home directory.


Can Steam games be available to the Guest account? Is it possible to make Steam games playable on the Guest account? It would be nice to be able to let visitors entertain themselves with e.g. Portal in a sandboxed setting.

Edit:

There may be terms-of-service issues involved.  I will contact Steam.

It's highly doubtful that it would work with a guest account, since everything is deleted upon logout.

If you created a "friends" user account with no password and gave them "standard" user access, it might be possible (though it certainly won't be pretty).

First, because Valve apparently has no idea how easy it is to use NSDistributedNotificationCenter to broadcast messages between user accounts, they've set the Steam app up to prohibit multiple instances from running. In other words, for a guest to be able to launch Steam.app in the friends user account, it cannot be running in any other user account. If it is, you'd have to go into that user account first to quit it, then go back to the friends user account. (It honestly takes about 10 lines of code to have Steam broadcast a message to all other user accounts that the Steam that you're launching now is in control, and all other instances could quit themselves, but Valve is fairly challenged with such things).

So, provided it isn't running in another user account, it would work. However, given the ridiculous amount of files and data Steam wants to be able to write to inside its own application bundle (inside the Steam.app bundle), you might be better off creating a separate copy of the application altogether, specifically for that user. Reason being, the Steam application will take on the ownership of whoever first installed it, and when another user tries to use it, they won't have write permissions to the application bundle. You could also try modifying the bundle to give it less restrictive permissions. (This whole thing could be handled by using a simple, privileged helper tool).

So, provided you have a copy of Steam which the friends' user account has write access to, then we move on to the real fun, which is the several GB worth of .gcf files that make up the content of the game. By default, the game files are stored in:

/Users/< username >/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/

Since one user doesn't have access to another user's files (for obvious reasons), you would need to re-download all of the needed files, or copy them over from the other user account. You could also try re-locating the SteamApps folder to a common location that all users have access to, such as the /Applications/ folder. (I've written an application that helps with creating the symbolic link after the relocation process: http://www.markdouma.com/sourcefinagler/). You'll then run into the same issues with permissions as with the app itself, so you'd need to change them to make sure they're writable to the users in question.

For a guest account, it might work if you had everything in a central location, and then had a global login item or a launchd job in the /Library/LaunchAgents/ folder that would perform a couple of operations in the guest user account upon login. It would need to copy the files inside the /Users/< username >/Library/Application Support/Steam/ that are responsible for saving the Steam user account and password to the guest user's Application Support folder, so that the user would be able to login automatically without having to enter your Steam ID and password each time. It would also need to make sure there was a "SteamApps" symbolic link inside the /Users/< guest >/Library/Application Support/Steam/ to point to the location of the game content files.

In short, what you would like to do, i.e. be able to play Steam games from another user account on the same Mac, is a perfectly reasonable desire. As far as I know, it's something that is already possible in the Windows version of Steam, without having to jump through 100 hoops first. It's also something that's entirely possible for them to have done in the Mac OS X version by using a central data location along with a privileged helper tool (I've been using such an approach in my own application for the last 7 years and it works well). In its current implementation, however, it's not possible to do this in the Mac version without some pretty ugly workarounds.


Why doesn't my iPod touch (5th Gen) have FaceTime? I bought my iPod touch (5th Gen) and there is no FaceTime icon on the home screen. I tried checking it in Settings but it's not there. How do I find FaceTime?

You should at least see a FaceTime icon in Settings:

If you don't, FaceTime may not available in your country. According to Wikipedia and Apple these countries don't support FaceTime:

Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates
Pakistan

If that's not your case, please check this document. It explains what to do to troubleshoot a missing FaceTime app. This is the relevant section:

Note that FaceTime may not be available on devices purchased or used in certain countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
In Settings > General > Restrictions, verify FaceTime and Camera are On.
Disabling Camera also disables FaceTime.
Update to the latest version of iOS.
Restore your device:

Back up your device to iCloud or iTunes.
Tap Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings.
Note: This will erase all user data from your device.
When complete, configure your device by selecting your region and language and then restore your data using the iCloud or iTunes backup.
Note: When setting up and restoring a backup from iTunes, ensure that your computer's language, country, and date and time are set correctly.

If you still cannot locate the FaceTime app, try turning it on at Settings > FaceTime.


Can you, what I'm calling, "snapshoot" videos of activity on one's iPhone screen? You know how you can press the home and side button simultaneously to take a snapshot of the screen, well, can you "snapshoot" a video of activity on your iPhone, like, a segment of a YouTube video (sometimes, something like t=1m45s on the end of a YouTube link doesn't get pushed to that time when clicked on certain devices) or "snapshoot" a process. That is, if I wanted to demonstrate steps quickly and easily I could press some buttons simultaneously and start recording, then do some things on my iPhone, then press some buttons and then it stops, and now I have a video of that activity in my videos. Is that a thing?

With iOS 11, you can use Screen Recording built in to the OS.

Go to Settings → Control Center and add Screen Recording.
When you're ready to record, swipe from the bottom of the screen to show Control Center, then tap the Screen Recording button. 3D Touch the icon for additional options such as recording the microphone.
Continue using your device and your display will be recorded.
To stop the recording, tap the Screen Recording button once more. The video is saved to your camera roll.

If your device is jailbroken, you can use Display Recorder which performs similar functionality for older versions of iOS.


Navigate on pop up windows When I was using Windows I could navigate with tab to pop up windows for choosing 'Yes' or 'No' faster. Now on OS X  I haven't found a way. In some cases I can choose the first letter and it will be accepted. But in examples like in the picture below, there's no such a thing.

Go to the System preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts.

Then you can enable Full Keyboard Access to All Controls !


Multiuser - can process of background user kept running? On my Mac I use three user accounts. From what I understand when I'm logged in as one the processes of the other accounts are suspended. I switch between them with fast user switching.

My question is - can one assure that some processes keep running? Searching I found a few hints how to do on command line - but I'm considering to let a graphic application - like Steam - update itself for one user, and work as another user at the same time.

I'm confident your premise is false.  When another user logs in to Mac OS X using the fast user switching, the GUI processes of other users are not suspended, but do continue to run in the background.  As long as you don't log out of the other accounts, their Finder process and programs launched as that user should continue to run in the background.

For instance, as I type this with my primary cwrea account on my Mac mini, I have another sampleuser account logged in (at the same time), and that user has a Safari window open that is playing a YouTube video.  Right now.

Then, if I load Activity Monitor while having my account cwrea in the foreground and select to view "Other User Processes", Activity Monitor is reporting consistent ~8% CPU usage by a specific process named "PluginProcess" owned by the sampleuser account.

Moreover, if I switch back to sampleuser's login session via fast user switching, the video is at a time location beyond where I left it, consistent with where it would be if I hadn't switched to my main account in the interim.

For what it's worth, the sound (and video, obviously) of the other background login session are suppressed, in that I don't hear or see either, but I can't find any evidence that graphical programs necessarily are suspended or cease operating in the background.


macOS partition disappered after installing windows 10 using bootcamp I use a macbook pro 2015 with macOS High Sierra. I installed windows 10 using bootcamp, which resized the macOS partition and created a 80GB windows partition. The machine boots into windows just fine.

Unfortunately I can't go back to macOS because the macOS partition is not selectable as a boot source in bootcamp and "boot into X" boots into windows again.
When I start from recovery (ctrl+R) I can see both partitions in diskutil.
I tried to repair the macOS partiton but it had no effect.
How can i resurrect the macOS partion so I can choose which OS to start?

Update: I can start macOS by booting with option/alt pressed and chose the mac partition.

diskutil list output:

Capsicum:~$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         170.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                80.3 GB    disk0s3
   4:           Windows Recovery                         503.3 MB   disk0s4

/dev/disk1 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +170.0 GB   disk1
                                 Physical Store disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            101.3 GB   disk1s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 20.2 MB    disk1s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                506.6 MB   disk1s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
   1:                  Apple_HFS Passport                2.0 TB     disk2s1

thanks a lot for any clarification what is wrong!

If you use APFS, then your macOS boot volume may not appear as a choice in the Windows Boot Camp Control Panel pane. The following procedure can be used to fix this problem.

Since the Windows Boot Camp software can detect bootable "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" volumes, the follow instructions create such a volume. Instead of placing macOS in the volume, a third party boot manager, called rEFInd, will be substituted. This boot manager will then be configured to silently boot the macOS stored in the APFS container. Finally, macOS will be instructed to not automatically mount this new volume at startup.

Below are the steps. The commands need to be entered into a Terminal application window.

Create the new volume.  The diskutil command, shown below, shrinks the APFS container (170000M, i.e. 170 GB) by 300 MB (169700M) and creates the new 300 MB "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" volume labeled "Macintosh HD via rEFInd".

sudo diskutil ap resizeContainer disk1 169700M JHFS+ "Macintosh HD via rEFInd" 0

After the command completes, restart the Mac.

  Note: If you get an error message which includes the phrase "perhaps caused by APFS Snapshot usage by Time Machine", then see the question: 200GB unused, but can't change APFS container size due to minimum requirement.

Download the rEFInd Boot Manager software from this SourceForge web site. Enter the following commands to install the software to the "Macintosh HD via rEFInd" volume.

cd ~/Downloads/refind-bin-0.11.2
./refind-install --ownhfs /dev/disk0s3

  Note: The error message Could not set boot device property: 0xe00002bc was expected and can be ignored.

Configure the TextEdit application. Open TextEdit, then navigate to the "Preferences..." window. Uncheck all the "Options", as shown below. When finished, quit TextEdit.

Use the command below to navigate to the folder containing the refind.conf file.

cd "/Volumes/Macintosh HD via rEFInd/System/Library/CoreServices"

Make a backup copy of this file.

sudo cp refind.conf refind.conf.orignal

Add write permissions to the CoreServices folder and the refind.conf file.

sudo  chmod  a+w  .  refind.conf

Open the file in the TextEdit application.

open -e refind.conf

Add the following lines to the end of the refind.conf file. You should be able to just cut and paste these lines. When finished, save the changes, then quit TextEdit.

#
# Added to make rEFInd silent.
#
menuentry "Macintosh HD via rEFInd" {
    icon \System\Library\CoreServices\icons\os_mac.png
    volume "Macintosh HD"
    loader \System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi
    ostype MacOS
    graphics on
}
timeout -1
hideui all
scanfor manual

  Note: If you are using encryption, then see the update to this step shown below.

(Optional) Enter the following commands to modify the /etc/fstab file. This entry will instruct macOS not to mount the volume labeled "Macintosh HD via rEFInd" at startup.

sudo bash
echo >>/etc/fstab
echo "LABEL=Macintosh\040HD\040via\040rEFInd none hfs rw,noauto" >>/etc/fstab
exit

  Note: The character sequence \040 is just the octal representation of the space character.

When finished, restart the Mac.

Now when choosing Boot Camp from the Control Panel, you should get something similar to what is shown below.

Update to Step 5 for an Encrypted macOS

Enter the command given below to get identifier of the booter disk.

diskutil info "Macintosh HD" | grep "Booter Disk:"

Your output should be similar to what is shown below.

   Booter Disk:              disk1s2

Use the identifier to get the boot disk volume name, as shown below.

diskutil info disk1s2 | grep "Volume Name:"

Your output should be similar to what is shown below.

   Volume Name:              Preboot

Use the macOS volume name to get the volume UUID, as shown below.

diskutil info "Macintosh HD" | grep "Volume UUID:"

Your output should be similar to what is shown below.

   Volume UUID:              2E0E6320-5D0A-4181-B465-ABFF2CBBFC27

Replace the volume with the boot disk volume name and add the volume UUID to the path of the loader, as shown below.

    #
    # Added to make rEFInd silent.
    #
    menuentry "Macintosh HD via rEFInd" {
        icon \System\Library\CoreServices\icons\os_mac.png
        volume "Preboot"
        loader \2E0E6320-5D0A-4181-B465-ABFF2CBBFC27\System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi
        ostype MacOS
        graphics on
    }
    timeout -1
    hideui all
    scanfor manual

Here the assumption has been made that there are no other APFS containers with a bootable macOS installed. If you do have another container, then by boot disk volume names may be the same. In this case, you will need to rename one of of the volumes. To change the volume name in this example from Preboot to Internal Preboot, enter the following commands.

First, enter the command shown below to mount the volume.

diskutil mount disk1s2

Your output should be similar to what is shown below.

Volume My Preboot on disk1s2 mounted

Second, enter the command shown below to rename the volume.

diskutil rename disk1s2 "Internal Preboot"

Your output should be similar to what is shown below.

Volume on disk1s2 renamed to Internal Preboot

Finally, enter the command shown below to unmount the volume.

diskutil unmount disk1s2

Your output should be similar to what is shown below.

Volume Internal Preboot on disk1s2 unmounted

The lines added to the end of the refind.conf file would then need to appear as shown below.

    #
    # Added to make rEFInd silent.
    #
    menuentry "Macintosh HD via rEFInd" {
        icon \System\Library\CoreServices\icons\os_mac.png
        volume "Internal Preboot"
        loader \2E0E6320-5D0A-4181-B465-ABFF2CBBFC27\System\Library\CoreServices\boot.efi
        ostype MacOS
        graphics on
    }
    timeout -1
    hideui all
    scanfor manual


Why does VTEncoderXPCService take up all my cpu? 2010 Macbook Pro. Pretty frequently, my mac will spend over 100% cpu on VTEncoderXPCService. It causes the fan to spin up and it causes the computer to get hot.

ps -ef | grep -i vtencoder

shows

01   879     1   0 Mon10PM ??       261:54.85 /System/Library/Frameworks/VideoToolbox.framework/Versions/A/XPCServices/VTEncoderXPCService.xpc/Contents/MacOS/VTEncoderXPCService

which doesn't shed much light on the situation for me.

I'm not doing anything with video when this happens, either.

Any thoughts on what this is doing and/or how I can get it to not heat up my laptop so much?

It seems to be related to pulling movies out of Photos.  I had a large movie I was trying to take out of photos to a folder and move to an external drive.  This process was using over 300% of CPU for several minutes.


install gpg with homebrew I want to install a new version of ruby via rvm.
To install that, I need gnupg2. I installed it using brew, but it could not be linked.

I get the following error message when linking with brew link gpg2:

Linking /usr/local/Cellar/gnupg/2.1.20...
Error: Could not symlink bin/gpg-agent
Target /usr/local/bin/gpg-agent
is a symlink belonging to gpg-agent. You can unlink it:
brew unlink gpg-agent

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

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

I have no idea what the gpg-agent does and if I can savely overwrite the link without destroying something that my system somewhere needs.

By default, macOS does not use anything under /usr/local, so yes you can brew link --overwrite gnupg safely.


Can I restart my Mac without an admin account? I don't have an admin account on my Mac. I don't know how it happened and now I want to add one because I cant do anything thing without it and I can't add a new user without an admin account.

OK - you don't need admin to restart, but let's get you an admin user anyhow. you need one and the time to do it is sooner rather than later.
This requires a restart to begin this process, please save your work and buckle up.
You didn't edit in what version, so we'll assume macOS Mojave version. You can always ask a follow on question if you discover you can't use the general advice. Be sure to list your Mac OS version, though or get local or Apple support if you can't find that out either.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202860
Might have accidentally change admin user to standard user
New MacBook had user accounts already; I deleted admin and can't get back in

The first is how you can make sure you don't have some admin user you can reset the password, the next two have awesome answers that are basically the same.
Restart in single user mode and mount the drive and remove one file. That causes the next start to offer you to make a brand new admin account, not erasing any data - but just adding a new user / password you know to make your existing account an admin.


How can I deactivate Google Voice on my iPhone? I have iPhone 5 and Verizon service.

I used to have Google Voice number but I haven't used it for 3 years and its no longer active. Couple of months ago I noticed a tone every time I dial a number to call out on my cell phone. My calls would then drop after couple of minutes in conversation with the person I was calling which is beyond annoying. Went to Verizon store, they changed my sim card, which did absolutely nothing.

Yesterday finally after a tone, I got an automatic message that the "Google Voice is ready to connect my call".

I deleted Google Voice app from my iPhone, and its still happening. I looked for settings all over the place and I have no idea how to deactivate this unwanted feature. Any thoughts?

You will have to deactivate the service by logging into the account via your computer. Refer to the following: https://support.google.com/voice/answer/2527649?hl=en


How to detect network change (unplugging/plugging cable)? I have read at multiple places that the folder /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration is supposed to "change" in case that I unplug a network cable.

Now, I have a MacBook Pro, so I use a USB3 adapter to connect a network cable.

Indeed, nothing changes when I plug or unplug it within this folder. I clearly see in "Network settings" that the LAN connection is established or dropped when I plug or unplug the cable.

Where should anything change? Is there some folder or anything else that I can use as trigger for AppleScript, when plugging/unplugging the network cable?

Save this script as an application and set it to run on startup. It will use some memory but the script is very light. You can delay even more. Mind that this routine will keep detecting the cable forever, so you must set other conditions inside your script to do what you need and stop until something changes.

on run {input}
    repeat
        set input to do shell script "ifconfig -a" as text
        set status to offset of "status:" in input
        set the_starting_point to status + 0
        set the_ending_point to status + 13
        set isCableConnected to characters the_starting_point thru the_ending_point of input as string
        if isCableConnected is "status: active" then
            display dialog "Ethernet On"
        else
            display dialog "Cable Unplugged"
        end if
        delay 1
    end repeat
end run


No sound with Bose QuitComfort 35 ii I had trouble getting sound in my Bose QC35 ii headphones connected by Bluetooth to my Macbook Pro 2015 running Mojave 10.14.6. After today, I don't get any sound at all.

The only way I get them to output any sound is to open System Preferences > Audio > Input and select the Bose as input. Then it plays, but it's noisy and sounds really bad. As soon I switch to another tab or close the window, after some seconds the audio output stops. The Bose is definitely selected as audio output device.

Internal sound and speakers connected to the line out are working fine.

What I have tried so far:

update the firmware on the phones
reset the headphones (following the Bose web page: switch off, wait, charge by USB, wait, switch on again)
deinstall all unused audio drivers (Apowersoft device) and restart.
disconnect all bluetooth devices and pair them again.
SMC reset
PRAM reset
ALT-SHIFT click the Bluetooth symbol in the status bar DEBUG -> Reset Bluetooth Module & Remove all Devices and pair them again
switch off BT and delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist* & ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.Bluetooth* files and reboot
disconnect external Display Port monitor to get rid of the audio device.

Everything to no avail. I am really out of ideas and my google foo ends here.

The headphones are connected to my Windows 10 PC as well.

During writing the posting's last line I thought just disconnect from the Windows PC.

Now it works!

Reconnecting Windows again. But now don't get sound from there. I thought pairing with two devices means getting sound from both, but that's obviously not the case.


iPhone display of incoming calls and texts My iPhone displays phone numbers on incoming calls. How do I get it to display the name of the caller

iPhone will displays the name of the caller only if the incoming number matches with that of any of the saved contacts.


Is scrolling considered a "keyboard input"? Context: I installed an app called "Scroll Reverser" which will allow me to use the natural scrolling setting for my trackpad and the opposite scrolling setting for my mouse scroll wheel. The application requires the Privacy permission "Input Monitoring". The description of this is to "Allow the apps to monitor input from your keyboard even while using other apps".

So does Apple just consider mouse inputs, like scrolling, an "input from your keyboard"?

The app was recommended by another user on this site: How to separate "mouse" and "trackpad" settings?

Scrolling can be a keyboard input. For example, using the arrow keys on a keyboard will often scroll the window.

While I have no experience with the Scroll Reverser app, a quick check shows the source code is available. And, according to its Read Me file:

  Scroll Reverser installs an event tap, which gives access to event stream, including scrolling events and gesture events. The main documentation is Quartz Event Services Reference.

  To distinguish between trackpad and mouse, Scroll Reverser essentially
  looks at the gesture events to determine whether there are 2 or more
  fingers on the trackpad. If so, it assumes it is the trackpad.

Since the app uses Quartz Event Services then it's basically monitoring low level inputs from users. More technical information is available on the Quartz Event Services page on Apple's Developer site.

But essentially, monitoring low level inputs also means monitoring keyboard inputs.


How to quit Trim Enabler? I just updated Trim Enabler after updating my Mac to OS X 10.8.5. The new version doesn't have a quit button, option or anything like that. How do I close it? I cannot remove it from the menu bar by dragging it. What can I do, short of rebooting?

You can use AppleScript to send the application a quit Apple event:

osascript -e 'quit app "Trim Enabler"'

Quit Apple events are also used by loginwindow to quit non-Cocoa applications when you log out.

If that doesn't work, killall Trim\ Enabler is probably also safe. It sends the process a TERM signal, which usually allows a process to terminate cleanly.


Can Mavericks Spaces support 3 windows spanned across 2 displays? Is it possible to have a 3-screen Space across two displays such that you can swipe to toggle between seeing displays 1 & 2 or 2 & 3?

Yes.

In Mavericks, each space (or full-screen application) can be assigned to any screen, and the 4-finger-swipe gesture will slide between spaces/apps on that screen only.

You can see this quite clearly if you open up Mission Control with multiple monitors; each monitor's spaces/apps are shown across the top of said monitor.

So, for example, you could put Desktop 1 and Desktop 2 on your left monitor, Desktop 3 on your right monitor. Swiping on your left monitor would change between Desktops 1 & 2, while the right monitor would remain on Desktop 3.


I want to know IP address I want to know IP address of my friend .It's possible without software? Could you tell me what I do and how to do

ifconfig from a terminal command line will tell you the internal IP address. Type ifconfig | grep "inet " | grep -v 127.0.0.1 to remove a lot of the unneeded text.
If you want your external IP address, just go to whatismyip.com or to Google and type 'IP Address' to show your public IP.
You can also find your internal IP address by going to System Preferences | Network and viewing your current connection (either AirPort for wireless, or Ethernet for wired, typically). Your status should display the current IP address.


MBP + iMac late 2012. Target Mode. Audio from iMac not working I'm using my MBP 16' in target mode to an iMac 21'5 late 2012.
I thought the audio could not be played through iMac speakers (or a digital output in this case) but when a enter Target Mode the first selection in Sound under System Preferences is the iMac. I can control volume, but no audio is heard.
Anyone can help me solving this?

I was able to get this to work using a 2013 iMac in Target Display Mode. The 2013 iMac was connected to a 2011 iMac by a Thunderbolt cable. I needed to make sure muting was not checked off and the volume was up high enough on both the 2011 and 2012 iMacs. I was able to access the System Preferences on the 2013 iMac by using Screen Sharing.
Below is a image of the 2013 iMac screen while the 2013 iMac is in Target Display Mode. The System Preferences window is shown for both the 2011 iMac and the 2013 iMac. The 2013 iMac System Preferences window is on the desktop of the 2013 iMac. The 2013 iMac desktop is being accessed through Screen Sharing.

Note: The 2013 iMac has both High Sierra and Catalina installed. The sound and display both work when booted to High Sierra and in Target Display Mode, but only the Display works when booted to Catalina and in Target Display Mode.


Error: -69711 this operation couldn't proceed because the target's boot helper was mounted; you may want to try again I have a MacBook Pro 8,1 (13", 2011 unibody) running Yosemite (no upgrades). Tried to partition my SSD hard drive and it threw an error when it was almost through saying it can't find the partition.

I searched and found this fix (Can't create partition on free space with Disk Utility) successfully got to step 11, but when I try step 12 I get the error -69711. Does anyone have any suggestions, I'm stuck.

This happens when you've booted to the recovery system on-disk (CmdR) instead of using Internet Recovery (OptionCmdR). Since the local recovery partition is associated with the stack you're trying to resize, and that partition is mounted, diskutil refuses to perform the operation.

(This may only apply to FileVault 2–encrypted volumes, which require a working recovery partition to boot, but I don't have an unencrypted computer to check with.)