Non native 3rd-party apps not loading on Apple Watch Apps like DataMan, Carrot Weather or Runtastic Pro are stuck on the loading screen and eventually crash if I wait long enough.

I'm using watchOS 2.1 with 16 apps installed and have it paired to an iPhone 6 running iOS 9.2.
I've already tried unpairing the watch and then pairing it again, reinstalling the apps on both watch and iPhone as well as soft resetting both devices.

I have found these steps describing to fix the issue of not loading for native apps:

Step 1: Perform an encrypted backup with the paired iPhone, using iTunes.
Step 2: Erase all content and settings on your iPhone.
Step 3: On the Apple Watch, go to the Settings app and select Erase All Contents and Settings.
Step 4: Now restore your factory default iPhone from the iTunes backup.
Step 5: Once the restore is complete, pair your Apple Watch with the iPhone.

But before going through the steps of completely resetting my iPhone I wanted to make sure that there's no other way.

Thanks in advance.

I have just found an unusual solution to this problem:

Deleting all music from the Settings app on the iPhone and then soft resetting both devices solved the issue.


Help - Have I bricked my MacBook Air? I have a late '10 MacBook Air with 64gb ssd, it was getting very slow and very full so I decided to wipe and start afresh.
I followed some online instructions, signed out of everything then erased the drive. The MacBook did its thing and updated via Wi-fi then I came to the point of installing Lion OS X.
My problem started when I was asked to select a disk to install the os, there wasn’t one to choose. When I look on the Disk Utility, left hand pane shows 60.67gb Apple ssd TS064C Media with a sub heading of disk0s2.
If I click on this it states Not mounted, verify disk states Verify volume failed:Unrecognised file system.
Under this in the left pane I have disk1 with a sub heading of Mac OS X Base System. This amounts to 1.39gb.
My question is how do I get the Mac to recognise the drive to reinstall Lion?
Any help would be massively appreciated.
Thanks

I fought with an early Air that had been fully wiped by a well-meaning (but clueless!) IT person - he wiped not just the user partition (which I had already erased!) but also erased the reinstall partition. The only thing that worked to fix it was to find an original install image for the computer, place that on a bootable USB drive, and run from there, reformatting the internal drive as HFS+ in the process. If you can see the drive in Disk Utility, you should be able to reformat it.
If the drive WAS converted to apfs, you may need a newer version of Disk Utility to fix the format before you can drop to the Lion installer and start over. Use a bootable drive with macOS High Sierra or Mojave diskutil, dropping to command line to convert back to HFS+.
diskutil list to locate the APFS container
diskutil apfs deleteContainer /dev/disk#s# to kill the APFS container (replace disk#s# with the appropriate disk and partition)
diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ "Disk_Title" /dev/disk# to reformat the now-destroyed APFS container
See here for more detailed info.
After that's done, you should be able to use the Lion installer to see and select the newly-recreated HFS+ partition as the install target.


.htaccess protected site cannot be accessed by iPad I have been working on a website on a test server test.domain.com for a few weeks now. I was always able to access the .htaccess password protected site using my iPad mini as well as my iPhone or using the Simulator.

.htaccess used:

AuthType Basic
    AuthName "Test Server"
    AuthUserFile /usr/local/www/test.domain.com/.htpasswd
Require valid-user

Somehow today I could not access the site anymore from my iPad mini. The site kept on loading, but no response was given to the GET request at all. No pop-up asking for the password either.

This was so weird. I tried reloading many times. Then I tried to access the site using Chrome on the same iPad where I was asked to enter the .htaccess username and password and it did work. For some off reason I had to enter the details twice, but anyways.

I decided to ask my partner to turn of the .htaccess password protection et voila! Access was granted again.

How come that I was not asked for entering the details again in Safari on the iPad? Where can I check how these details were stored if they had been?

Consider clearing Safari's cache of cookies and site specific data. This should clear Safari's record of login information used for your test web site.

Clear Cookies and Data

Tap Settings;
Tap Safari;
Tap Clear Cookies and Data.

Apple publish further steps for clearing other Safari information in iOS: Safari web settings.


Trouble with photo syncing between iPhone and iPad Sometimes when I take photos in my iPhone 5s they automatically show up on my iPad. But most of the time they don't.

How can I analyze and solve this?

Two options:

Using iCloud:
- On your iPhone go to Settings > iCloud > Storage & Backup
- Turn iCloud Backup on and wait for it to back up completely
- If you've already used your iPad, on there go to Settings > General > Reset, tap Erase All Content and Settings
- When you're setting up the iPad, it will ask if you want to restore from an iCloud backup—just choose the iPhone backup

Using a computer with iTunes:
- Sync your iPhone with iTunes—this will also make a backup
- If you've already used your iPad, on there go to Settings > General > Reset, tap Erase All Content and Settings
- Connect your iPad to your computer and follow the steps in iTunes to restore from the iPhone backup

Follow this guide with steps and demo if you need it:
How to Transfer Photos from iPhone to iPad


How to configure Xserve to go into sleep mode when Energy Saver setting don't work? This question relates to an earlier question, but as it seems a unique and contained problem I thought it merited its own.

To review I have a home office network comprised of:

Time Capsule
27" iMac with dual cores running Mac OS X 10.6.8 and
2 Xserves each with 2 quad cores running Max OS X Server 10.6.8
All networking by Ethernet

I access the Xserves through Finder -> Share Screen.  This works fine.

I use the Xserves to run parallel calculations for about 5 minutes a day. As the machines run hot and loud as well as use a considerable amount of power, I want them to "Sleep" when I don't need to actually run the calculations, even better if they fall asleep on their own!

So, I went into the Xserver's System Preferences, opened Energy Saver, and configured the settings as you can see below:

The Xserves should fall asleep after about 5 minutes of inactivity. They don't.

Not even when I have the "Share Screen" window closed.

Note, I need "Wake for Ethernet network access" checked because I want to use "Wake On LAN" capability to wake the Xserves from a remote computer.

I can put the Xserves to sleep manually from the "Share Screen" window, but having to do that just seems silly.

Any ideas of what I need to do get them to fall asleep?

Well, XServes are servers after all, designed to provide user services 24/7/365. I bet that there are some services (web serving, mail, iChat, etc,) turned on by default that you must first turn off before the Xserve can sleep. If you didn't setup these Xserves yourself, (or even if you did,) this Snow Leopard Server Getting Started manual may help you to find out how to look for these services in the Server Admin app to shut them down. This Snow Leopard Server Installation & Setup Worksheet may also provide you with more insight.

Through Network Utility on the Xserve itself, or on the remote machine using the Xserver IP address, you could use the Port Scan tab to find out which services are being advertized, and thus which services are running. Here's a handy chart of the ports Snow Leopard Server uses.


Is there a workaround to enable streaming music to multiple speakers from iOS? It is well documented that you cannot stream to more than one AirPlay compatible device through iOS. (In an early developer build of 4.0 the functionality was put in but was taken out in the GM).

I am aware you can stream iTunes content to multiple devices and even use the Apple Remote App to control multiple devices.

However, I am looking for a solution that allows me to play a Pandora/Spotify/Slacker/Songza app on my iOS device and allow me to stream that music to multiple devices.

The only solution I have found right now is a complex solution using Rogue Ameoba's AirPlay Speakers app on the iMac but there is about a 4 second lag and additionally, once you have captured audio, you have to manually go to the computer to cancel the connection to allow for other connections.

Does anyone have other workarounds or solutions to this challenge?

So far I haven't found a good all-digital solution.  I typically use an audio splitter at the computer, and a whole house FM transmitter plus speakers so I hear the sound locally and through FM radios I place wherever I want the sound.

Since everything is transmitted real time, there's no sync delay as you move from room to room, and the transmitter I have is strong enough to receive using a boombox out in the yard while I'm working outside, without risking any expensive equipment in case it gets kicked around the yard or rained on a little bit.

I use a modified Belkin Tunecast transmitter.  I disassembled it, and added a length of wire to the antenna connection to stretch the distance it transmits a little.  There are some legal ramifications to this depending on the country you live in.  If you want a more professional solution, there are a few places that sell whole-house FM transmitters fairly inexpensively.

You could also connect the transmitter to the airplay receiver, entertainment center, iPad, Android phone, windows PCs, or any other audio device, and the receivers are cheap - you can get an FM radio from the dollar store for a dollar, and amplified speakers for a dollar, so expanding the system is cheap.  It's very flexible.

The biggest drawback is quality.  It's not bad, but you can't expect even CD quality from it, nevermind high quality audio.  It's ok for music and voice, but audiophiles will be offended.  Airplay is CD quality, and the difference would be noticeable.


How to automat the selection of usb disk based on size I am trying to automate a process where teachers delete content on memory sticks with different name then put the right content back (same each time) and rename the memory stick to UDISK.

I want to add a formatting of the disk in the process, and because the students keep changing names on the sticks, I can´t use name tags and if the teachers have more than one disk on their Mac I am worried if I use "disk1" for instance I suddenly format the wrong partition. So therefor I am wondering if it is possible to choose the right disk based on size.

I am using this code: sudo diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 UDISK MBRFormat /dev/disk1

This is the script of a similar bulk erase/copy routine I made with the help of klanomath in this related question - Find specific attached disk, not volume, by Applescript which you need to reference to see how the device name is extracted.

I saved the script as an Automator Service, which I then tied to a non-trivial, in fact very hard to do by accident   Cmd ⌘   Opt ⌥   Shift ⇧   F19    key command in
System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services
so I can manually trigger each operation & not be at risk of it being fired accidentally.

The routine finds the potential target by using the device name of my USB card reader, reducing the risk of formatting at least the wrong disk, though it has no safety measure for the individual SD card & will act on any card in the reader when I hit the key combo.

on run {input, parameters}
    -- see https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/207089/find-specific-attached-disk-not-volume-by-applescript/207103#207103 for BSD Disk workings

    global diskName
    set diskName to "DISK_NAME"
    global BSD_disk
    --using ioreg...
    set BSD_disk to do shell script "ioreg -l | grep -A 10 SD/MMC/MS/MSPRO | awk '/disk/ {gsub(\"\\\"\",\"\"); print $NF}'"

    if BSD_disk is not "" then
        try
            --FAT 16
            do shell script "diskutil eraseDisk \"MS-DOS FAT16\" " & diskName & " MBRFormat " & BSD_disk
        on error
            try
                --FAT 32 [>2GB cards]
                do shell script "diskutil eraseDisk \"MS-DOS\" " & diskName & " MBRFormat " & BSD_disk
            end try
        end try

        delay 2
        tell application "Finder"
            set x to (POSIX file "/Users/[user]/BatchFolder") as alias
            try
                set dest to (POSIX file "/Volumes/" & diskName as string) as alias
            on error return
            end try
            duplicate every item of x to dest
            delay 1
            if disk diskName exists then
                eject disk diskName
            end if
            beep
        end tell
    else
        return "no SD Card detected"
    end if

    return input
end run


Prevent Mail.app from opening in split view After installing macOS Mojave, Mail.app always opens in split view when I am in a fullscreen space. Two examples:

I am in fullscreen Safari and click a mailto link: an email composition window opens in split view.
I am in any other fullscreen space and I click a notification of a new mail: the mail opens in split view.

Is there any way of preventing that from happening and instead opening Mail.app in a normal window?

Go to Mail -> Prefrences:

Then click on general and untick this box:

After unticking the box mail should return to its previous behaviour.


Compass in maps and app always wrong When I use the direction in maps the direction is almost always ~90° off, occasionally it will be 135-180° wrong but mostly it looks like I'm travelling sideways. The phone is flat.
Is there something wrong with the hardware? Or can I manually calibrate it (like tell it to offset by 90°)? Or tell it to ignore the compass and just use the direction of travel.

Also the compass app gives the wrong direction but it doesn't even match the incorrect direction in maps.

For example I was travelling along this road, away from the motorway.

I had the same problem, what you will need to do is re-calibrate the compass multiple times and it will get closer and closer with each calibration.

Make sure you are calibrating in the correct way, most people I have seen do it wrong, and it is not very clear from the diagram on the phone. There is a YouTube video which will show you how


Wireless keyboard for mac keeps losing connection My wireless keyboard for mac keeps on losing connection from mac. It automatically gets disconnected and gets connected again. I have gone through multiple threads here on SE and also on apple forums and I have tried following things so far:

Removed the keyboard from list of bluetooth devices and tried adding it back
Removed bluetooth plist file
Did SMC reset
I also bought a new keyboard thinking that it could be an issue with my existing keyboard, which is not the case.
My keyboard battery is 100%

Is there anything else that I can try to deal with this issue?

Connect a wired USB keyboard / Mouse to the Mac (most any USB keyboard will do).  While holding Option + Shift click on the Bluetooth menu bar icon.  Go to Debug.  There is an an option to reset the Bluetooth module as well as factory resetting Apple Bluetooth devices.

Make sure your Mac is up-to-date with macOS and all updates
Charge the Apple Bluetooth devices fully
Perform the SMC Reset first
Reset the Bluetooth Module under the Bluetooth Debug menu (holding Option + Shift while clicking Bluetooth menu bar item)
Factory Reset the Apple Bluetooth Devices (Keyboard, etc.)
Re-pair the Apple Bluetooth devices from scratch

Check for any nearby devices that might be putting out a radio signal or EMF (Electro-Magnetic Field) Such as motorized fan, space heater, an old monitor, a radio transmitter, etc. Move them away from the Mac and your bluetooth devices. Don't plug them into the same power strip, etc. Check for other devices plugged into the Mac such as 3rd party docking stations, especially ones not actually certified by Apple (HP, etc.) try disconnecting them for awhile see if the problem goes away.
The Mac Mini M1 was plagued by bluetooth issues on Big Sur prior to 11.3.x. Latest release fixed all the bluetooth issues. Recommend using a tool such as SilentKnight to verify your firmware is up-to-date. There have been issues with Mac's updating macOS but failing to update the firmware. SilentKnight will let you know if you are missing the appropriate firmware update among other security updates.  You can find the free SilentKnight on the Eclectic Light Company website. https://eclecticlight.co make sure you search the site for "bluetooth" there are several blogs talking about disconnect issues and tooling to help trouble-shooting. Some USB3 devices have been known to disrupt Bluetooth. When connecting USB 3 devices to a USB-C port, Apple recommends using the front port on the left-hand side, or any USB-C port on the right side of the Mac. Use a longer USB-C cable and move the USB3 device further away from the antenna's for Wi-Fi / Bluetooth. Apple has a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support page https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201542


Keep iCal open without minimising it This used to be default behaviour for iCal (as with most other applications): you click the red button to close the open window but it will still run. A small dot remains under its symbol to show that this is the case. iCal could then pop-up notifications. For a while now, iCal closes when I hit the red button. There is no point under its icon in the dock.

How can I keep iCal running without having to minimise it -and live with an open window in the dock-, to get notifications of my events?

I checked and my preferences have Events set to notify me 10 minutes before. iCal is set to start at login. I'm running Sierra 10.12.6

You don't need iCal or Calendar to be open at all anymore. Open System Preferences and select Notifications. Then be sure to review Calendar settings and any Do Not Disturb settings.

Here is the Sierra article on how to use the notification center:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25142

You might put the Calendar at the top and remove any widgets you don't care for so they do not clutter up notifications.


apple numbers Filling data into a table using AppleScript I have a document on numbers with 3 sheets.

1-data entry table (based on the "data" sheet).
2-copy dada table with:

--   I.an additional column containing the following formula

        if(reference no of data entery=reference no of this row;1;0)

--  II.filter table, greater than 0

3-data table

I want to use Applescript in order to fill the data from sheet 1 to sheet 2

tell application "Numbers" to ¬
     tell table 2 of sheet 1 of document (1)
          set getRef to the value of cell "A1"
          set fileinfolder to the value of cell "A2"
          set Outof to the value of cell "A3"
          set valqora to the value of cell "A9"
          set valqno to the value of cell "A10"
          set valQout to the value of cell "A11"
          set valcomment to the value of cell "A13"
          set valnoclue to the value of cell "A14"
          set valhard to the value of cell "A15"
          set valok to the value of cell "A16"
          set valeasy to the value of cell "A17"

end tell

tell application "Numbers" to ¬
    tell table 1 of sheet 3 of document (1)
        set the value of cell "K2" to the value of fileinfolder
        set the value of cell "L2" to the value of Outof
        set the value of cell "M2" to the value of valqora
        set the value of cell "N2" to the value of valqno
        set the value of cell "O2" to the value of valQout
        set the value of cell "P2" to the value of valcomment
        set the value of cell "Q2" to the value of valnoclue
        set the value of cell "R2" to the value of valhard
        set the value of cell "S2" to the value of valok
        set the value of cell "T2" to the value of valeasy

end tell

i keep recicing  Syntax Error- Can’t get value of true

For your second block of assignments, remove the second 'the value of' from each line so that they look like this:

set the value of cell "K2" to fileinfolder

That second 'value' is redundant.

As an aside, the error is peculiar in that it should probably be a 'script error' that can't get the value of '1.0', for example. So whichever cell is generating the error is probably indicating to the script that it's a boolean or something. But this isn't the source of your problem, just a symptom.

NB To test this, I simply used a column of numbers ranging from 1 to 17 to supply the first block of assignments.


MacBook 12" mirroring on iMac I have an old MacBook Air, which, when using Thunderbolt cable, I am able to mirror the screen on my iMac.

However, I cannot do the same for my newer MacBook 12".

Any ideas?

Ensure that under System Preferences > Displays > Arrangement (this tab only shows up if your computer detects an external display), the "Mirror Displays" checkbox at the bottom is checked.

This checkbox determines whether your secondary display will act as an "extension" or as a mirror of your primary.


Weird "Network" folder on lion's sidebar After swapping my HDD to an SDD (and using CarbonCopyCloner to clone the disk), there's this weird "Network" folder appearing on my sidebar.

If I click it, it shows a folder for a split second and then it goes back to the previous folder I was in. I can't remove it from the sidebar by right clicking it (it shows no menu).

I attach a screenshot of the problem. Anyone have any ideas?

I don't know how that folder got there but you can try to get rid of it by holding Command and dragging it out or trashing ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.sidebarlists.plist (it will reset the Sidebar to default) and reboot if necessary.


Onscreen keyboard at startup Can’t login to iMac, because wireless keyboard not found thus I can’t enter password. Is there any way to turn on onscreen keyboard at startup...so I can at least get logged in?

The information below, which applies macOS Big Sur 11.0, was taken from this Apple website.
Turn on accessibility options in the login window on Mac
You can turn on certain accessibility options in the login window to make it easier to log in to your Mac.

On your Mac, choose Apple menu   > System Preferences, then click Users & Groups.
If the lock at the bottom left is locked , click it, then enter an administrator name and password. If your Mac supports it, you can also unlock it using Touch ID or your Apple Watch.

Click Login Options, then click Accessibility Options.

Select the accessibility options—such as VoiceOver or Zoom—you want to turn on in the login window.
The options you select are enabled in the login window for all users of your Mac.
If you select the Accessibility Keyboard or Switch Control option, your current keyboard or switches settings are applied in the login window for all users (until another user turns the options off or on in their Login Options preferences).

Click Apply.

If you change your keyboard or switches settings in Accessibility preferences and want your changes to apply to the login window, display the login accessibility options in Users & Groups, then click Apply.
Anyone who logs in to your Mac can temporarily turn the options on or off in the login window by pressing Option-Command-F5 (or if your Mac has Touch ID, by quickly pressing Touch ID three times) to display the Accessibility Shortcuts panel.
If you use an option in the login window and would like to use it whenever you work on your Mac, you can set the option in Accessibility preferences. On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Preferences, then click Accessibility.
See also
Change Shortcut preferences for accessibility on Mac
Set Accessibility preferences on Mac
Control your Mac and apps using Voice Control
Use Switch Control on Mac
Use the Accessibility Keyboard on Mac


How can I change the orientation of a picture in the printer menu? In the printer menu I can change the orientation, but that only rotates the paper not the image on the paper. How can I rotate the image itself?

I already tried rotating the image itself, but that did not help. It still wants to print the image with the wrong orientation.

Switch off Auto Rotate / Automatisch drehen

You may need to then adjust the Scale to fit the page better - it may depend on whether the entire actual page content is visible.


Can AirPods be be used with multiple Charging Case units? Can I use one pair of AirPods with two or more Charging case units? Can I take turns charging the case, and deposit AirPods into either without any bother?

Apple sells a Charging Case for USD $69.
Apple announced their intention to soon sell a Qi charging case upgrade for AirPods.

Yes, you can use multiple charging cases. Put the AirPods in either charging case to see the AirPod charge level and the battery level of that particular charging case. At the moment, once of my cases shows 94%. Moving the AirPods to the other case shows a 100% case charge level.


Mac doesn't remember my password My Mac doesn't remember my password anytime I try to login to my computer. I always use my recovery key to open the Mac each time I want to use it. I have tried reseting my password but it ends up forgetting my password again. Please what can I do?

Since you are referencing having to use a recovery key to log in, it sounds like your Mac has FileVault 2 encryption turned on. Are you expecting to turn on your Mac and have it automatically log in as you?

If that's the case, the encryption does not have that as an option. You must provide your account password or the recovery key in order to unlock the encryption before the OS can boot.

If my understanding is incorrect, would you please provide more details about the problem you're seeing?


Is defragmenting an SSD drive a bad idea? I have heard that defragmenting SSD drives will shorten the life span of a drive. Just wondering if there is any truth to this and if so could someone elaborate as to why this happens.

Your best bet is to not "defragment" SSD storage.

Eventually, SSD will lose capacity slowly and gracefully as the controller can’t write the data correctly to exhausted cells, but the repair data from 2011 through 2018 shows that Apple SSD are orders of magnitude more reliable and have longer life than HDD storage currently or in the past could achieve.

What happens at the user/OS level when an SSD finally wears out?

The life span of the drive is a function of how the controller decides to write data and how much of the capacity is held in reserve to hide small errors over time. An SSD in general will wear out due to write exhaustion before a hard drive will as the magnetic media can withstand several orders of magnitude more writes than SSD memory cells. So the life span is basically set, and defragmentation means more writes than are needed and may in practice increase the chance your storage will degrade before something else causes you to stop using it, Granted, most people are not going to wear out their SSD - especially when you consider the warranties for OEM parts are often longer than one year / three years in the case of AppleCare - but reducing things that can cause thousands (or millions) of unnecessary erase and re-write operations is prudent advice.

But it gets worse for defragmentation than simply adding wear to the memory.

Since an SSD has no moving parts, retrieving a block of data has no penalty due to one block being stored on one chip versus another. The distance electrically to all the data is basically a constant. This is not true for a traditional magnetic drive with spinning platters and a movable read head.

On a spinning drive, the distance between two blocks is affected by head armature movement, rotational timing and cache status. Retrieval time is not at all constant, so "fragmentation" has a performance impact on traditional hard drives due to the mechanical nature of the storage.

Furthermore, SSD controllers selectively manage storage so defragmentation is not only unlikely to speed things up, might actually act counter to the normal storage prediction algorithms, and slow down access since the controller decides where to store data using the extra overhead. Since the device cannot erase just a block of storage, when you "delete" something on SSD, it often is just marked free and will not get actually erased until all of the data next to it is marked as free or the drive runs low on space and triggers a clean up on it's own.

Letting the SSD manage it's fragmentation works better than trying to have the OS micromanage storage that doesn't match traditional hard drive storage mechanics.


How to exit a page without reinstalling Chrome? It doesn’t allow me to tap on the tabs, so I am stuck on this page. I also don’t want to tap OK as I suspect that it could trigger some malicious JavaScript code and steal my information. I also can’t go to private mode. What should I do?

Update: I tried to turn off data but it seemed like the page loaded anyway. And since I cannot reach the menu, I can’t clear the cache.

Tapping OK won't trigger malicious JavaScript code that steals your information. It is safe to tap OK.

Just tap OK and then close the tab.


External disk automatically reconnects after unmounting I have a weird problem on my 13" MBP (Early 2015) running MacOS 10.14.3 Mojave.

I have an external USB disk with a MBR partition scheme and one big exFAT partition that allows me to exchange files between MacOS and Windows.

Whenever I try to unmount / eject this disk, the single data volume gets unmounted, the disk gets powered down. After a fraction of a second, the disk however powers up again and starts spinning. So there's no way for me to cleanly eject this disk.

What can I try?

The problem no longer occurs once I upgraded to macOS Catalina.


Will Time Machine store the same data twice in this situation? I had 80 GB of movies on my internal HDD. Time Machine backed them up to an external HDD, along with everything else on my drive.

I then moved those movies to another external HDD (which is not being backed up). The movies were kept in the TM backup as there was still space on the backup drive.

If I move these files back to (another partition on) the internal HDD (which is included in TM Backups), they will be backed up by TM. But being that the exact same data is already stored on the TM drive, is TM going to be smart enough to realize this? It wouldn't need to take another 80 GB on the drive, it could just hotlink to the existing files (until changes happen, of course). This is what it does for the "past" backups when they don't differ from the current version of a file (otherwise the backup drive would get full very fast).

Does TM have any such space saving feature for when the exact same data is backed up from different directories?

No, if you move the files back to another location on the disk backed up by Time Machine, the next backup will create a new copy of these files on your backup volume. This may even occur if you put them back into the same place (because the files will get a new creation timestamp which AFAIK triggers Time Machine to create a new file on the backup drive).

What you can do though is to navigate to the folder which originally contained the movies, open Time Machine from there, navigate back in time until the movies are displayed and then delete all backed up versions of them.


Deleting my Recovery HD? So I'm running the latest Mac OS Mojave version on my ~4 yo MacBook Pro. I have, and I had for a while now this "Recovery HD" that takes aout 70,3GB.

So 3 questions here :

I'm getting kind of narrow with the limited disk on my laptop and was thinking : could/should I remove this partition, that I never used and that I'll probably never use ?
If so, would it be doable to just merge those 70GB with my main hard drive ?
If I somehow someday need a "Rescue Mode" on my macbook, could I just flash a USB stick ?

Thanks.

First of all, this recovery partition usually takes less than a gigabyte of storage, as researched online and in my early 2014 MacBook Air. You may want to look more into why your Recovery HD partition is that large.

First of all, this partition is incredibly useful if you accidentally destroy your MacBook somehow, for example deleting your MacOS. It allows you to recover and restore your MacBook without having to either bring it to the Apple Store or download the MacOS installation of some sort and install it yourself. Although, if you are concerned about your security, you can delete this partition, because others can boot your MacBook into the Recovery partition and erase your data. So it's just your choice to delete it or not.
Now, I don't think merging is a great idea since you won't be able to boot from the Recovery HD partition after you merge. The extra 70 gigabytes that are now in your main hard drive are basically a waste of space now, so no don't merge.
Here I'm not sure about this, so you may want to check with others before taking my advice. You can create a separate flash drive installer for MacOS, but I don't know if it requires the Recovery partition. According to Apple Support, it does, but I think there are other ways to install MacOS without the partition.

I hope this helps. :)


How To Change Apple ID associated with Apple TV? I'd like to change the Apple ID that is associated with my Apple TV HD.  It appears that this can't be changed in the UI.  Do I need to do a factory reset?

You shoul find it in Settings > Users and Accounts > then click on the iCloud bar where's written the email of the currently active Apple ID and then you have the option to sign out. Then Sign back in with the account you prefer.


Change subtitles on Apple TV? How can I change the subtitle language on an Apple TV?
I’m using the iPhone Remote app as the remote.
The Apple TV is 3rd gen.

Slide down with one of your fingers inside the area representing the touch surface in the Remote app on your iPhone and a menu including Info, Subtitles, etc. should appear at the top of the video playing on the Apple TV.
Move to Subtitles using the touch surface in the app again and move onto and tap on any of the subtitle options that would appear. If the menu at the top of the video does not disappear after choosing a subtitle, tap on the MENU button in the app so that the menu at the top of the video disappears.


Shift key damaged how to disable it at boot? I recently spilled water on my computers keyboard, and as a result the left shift key seems to be stuck in the on position. This means that the system always boots into safe boot unless I hold down the option key. I have managed to change my password to one which is all caps and once I login I use keyremap4mac but it is still very annoying. Is there anyway which I can remap the keyboard during boot? Possibly with a startup bash script or something similiar? If that is not possible is there any way to use a script to bypass safe boot? I was planning on installing a new bootloader anyway in order to dual-boot linux, I don't know if this will help. Advice is appreciated.

You could enable a firmware password.  When a firmware (EFI) password is active it prevents modifier keys during the boot process unless you first disable the firmware password.  Apple's KB article detailing this behavior - HT1352

I'm going to assume that you can't boot to your recovery partition, or an installer disc, thanks to the stuck shift key.  Typically you would enable the firmware password from either of these options, however it's still possible to do from the OS.

To enable the firmware password while inside your OS, 10.7 or newer:

Enter the following string in Terminal.  This enables the debug menu in Disk Utility. defaults write com.apple.DiskUtility DUDebugMenuEnabled 1
Open Disk Utility and choose "Show every partition" from the Debug menu.
Your Recovery partition should now be visible on the left side of Disk Utility, select and click Mount to mount it in your system.
In Terminal, enter the copy & paste the following command to load the Recovery disk image. open /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg
The Recovery disk should open in a new window, browse to it's /Applications/Utilities folder.
Locate the Firmware Password application and double click to launch it.
Follow the on-screen instructions to enable a firmware password.  I would recommend keeping this password very simple and easy for you to remember.  The firmware password CAN be bypassed but the difficulty of doing so varies between Macs.

If your version of Mac OS X is 10.6 or older:

While booted to your OS, insert the gray restore disc labeled "Install Mac OS X".
Open Terminal and copy & paste the following command, this will open a window showing the Utilities folder from the system installer. open /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X\ Install\ DVD/Applications/Utilities
Double click the Firmware Password application to launch it.
Follow the on-screen instructions to enable a firmware password.


How to kerberize services on Mac bound to Kerberos KDC on Linux? I'm trying to kerberize services on an iMac that is bound to an external Kerberos KDC on a Linux computer.

I assume that I have to use sso_util and do it like this:

    sso_util configure -v 7 -r EXAMPLE.COM -f /LDAPv3/kdc.example.com -a diradmin/admin all

where EXAMPLE.COM is the name of the realm and kdc.example.com is the Linux computer which hosts LDAP and Kerberos.

I get the following error message:

GetRealmFromDir: looking up the realm name in the KerberosKDC config record in node
/LDAPv3/ldap.keps.de
GetRealmFromDir: Couldn't get attributes of kerberoskdc record
GetRealmFromDir: didn't find a KerberosKDC record, looking in the KerberosClient record
GetConfigFromDir: failed to find the KerberosClient config record in the directory error = 4101
GetRealmFromDir: didn't find a KerberosClient record either, returning NULL
GetRealmFromDir: realm is :(null)
Invalid Realm Name

It looks like I must put some configuration data in the LDAP database but what data according to what schema?

You don’t need to bind a mac to use Kerberos. In fact, binding brings a whole host of issues, one of which is lack of clarity at which problem you are chasing down.

To test and validate Kerberos tickets and transactions are operational at the command line use kinit and klist (both of which have quite adequate manual pages that describe the detaults. You will want to point kinit at your service principal with the -S or --service argument the first time you initialize Kerberos.)

Perhaps I don’t fully understand what you are trying to accomplish - if so, please comment and/or ask a follow on question with those details. We’re using this to great benefit at work and haven’t needed to bind any macs and have ripped out the binding on all but a few that need to share out files as servers and they don’t need kinit or klist - just to be bound properly one time.


Safari's Request Desktop Version of webpage missing in iOS 9 iOS 8 added a great feature in Safari: if one visited a webpage, and then tapped the search bar on top (to get to the bookmarks page), then swiped down, the user would see the option to "Request Desktop Version" of the webpage.

However, when I try to find "Request Desktop Version" in Safari on my iPhone 5S running iOS 9.0, nothing appears. I swipe down and the page just "bounes" back up. There's nothing there where "Request Desktop Version" should be.

Was Request Desktop Version removed or did iOS 9 just move it somewhere else?

Even as we have entered into the mobile era hook, line and sinker, our penchant for desktop will always remain. And we would always compare our experiences of browsing internet & surfing websites on mobile and desktop/laptop computers. With the growing number of smartphone users, websites are accessed on the mobile browser. And that is a different experience altogether.
Web designing agencies provide a responsive design to users, who can check the websites on their smartphones. But they would always like to go back and check how the same website appears on their desktop computers. Well, if the desktop or your lappy is handy, you can easily check any website. But what if you don’t have access to that large screen of desktop? Can you still access the desktop version of a website in iOS 9 Safari on your iPhone or iPad?
With the latest iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, browsing a desktop version of any website in iOS 9 Safari is easy and simple. Follow a couple of easy steps and you are done.

Open m.yahoo.com in your Safari browser.

Now tap on the Share button.

You will see two menus with different options. Swipe the lower menu to its right.

Tap on Request Desktop Site.Tap On Request Desktop Site in iOS 9 Safari
This action will show you desktop version of Yahoo! website on your iOS 9 Safari browser. If you want to go back to mobile version, simply tap on the Back (〈 ) arrow.

Here is another simple way to access desktop version of any webpage in Safari on iPhone running iOS 9

Open any website in Safari browser on iPhone.

Once the web page is fully loaded, long press (for 2 seconds or so) the Refresh button on top right
A menu will pop up at the bottom with an option: Request Desktop Site.
Tap on this option and you can see the desktop version of the same website on your iPhone.

Please note that if a particular website or websites do not have responsive designs, they will appear as desktop version by default in your iOS 9 Safari. Otherwise, you can easily access desktop version by following the above steps. If you are using iOS 8, you can check our post; how to access the desktop version of a website in iOS 8 Safari.


Is possible auto-refresh the Shared Links sidebar in Safari 7? Is possible to set auto refresh for the Shared Links sidebar in the new Safari 7.
There's in "View" menu > Refresh Shared Links, but this doesn't have a shortcut to refresh. So either a way to have the list auto-refresh or assigning a shortcut would help.

This has been fixed in Safari 7.0.1 (which is included in OS X 10.9.1):

About the update
The OS X Mavericks v10.9.1 Update is recommended for all OS X Mavericks users. It improves the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac. This update includes:
…

Includes Safari 7.0.1

…

Updates Shared Links periodically when open in the Safari Sidebar

Source: About the OS X Mavericks v10.9.1 Update


New MBP with Sierra, /usr/local/bin no longer accessible unless root I just got a brand new MBP with a fresh macOS Sierra install. I installed Elm, which simply puts 5 files in /usr/local/bin. However, when I try to run any of those files, they aren't found:

Scotts-MacBook-Pro:~ scott$ elm-make --version
-bash: elm-make: command not found

I search for them in /usr/local/bin and I don't have permission:

Scotts-MacBook-Pro:~ scott$ ls -lh /usr/local/bin
ls: bin: Permission denied

I have to use sudo and I see they are all owned by root:wheel:

Scotts-MacBook-Pro:~ scott$ sudo ls -lh /usr/local/bin
Password:
total 85536
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   2.0M Nov 10 18:46 elm
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    15M Nov 10 18:46 elm-make
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    11M Nov 10 18:46 elm-package
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   7.2M Nov 10 18:46 elm-reactor
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   7.0M Nov 10 18:46 elm-repl

I can list the contents of /usr/local without being root:

Scotts-MacBook-Pro:~ scott$ ls -lh /usr/local
total 0
drwx------  7 root  wheel   238B Nov 19 22:33 bin

I just migrated from a MacBook with macOS Sierra also and /usr/local/bin was accessible from my user account. Elm assumes that to be the case on all Macs.

Why was this changed? What should I do? Are we not supposed to use /usr/local/bin like this anymore? Should I change permissions on /usr/local/bin? I assume there's a reason /usr/local/bin has been changed in this way... Should I move the Elm files to /usr/bin?

In my almost default install of macOS (10.12.0 > updated to 10.12.1) the directories have the following owners and permissions:

drwxr-xr-x   4 root  wheel  sunlnk            136 Oct  2 22:42 . #/usr/local
drwxr-xr-x@ 13 root  wheel  restricted,hidden 442 Oct  3 01:01 .. #/usr
    com.apple.FinderInfo     32
    com.apple.rootless    0
drwxr-xr-x  26 root  wheel  -                 884 Oct 17 03:36 bin
drwxr-xr-x   5 root  wheel  -                 170 Oct 17 03:35 share

There is no obvious reason why the permissions are set that tight - Apple explicitly states that third-party apps and installers can continue to write to /usr/local. If a normal user wouldn't be able to read or execute files there, the directory would miss its point.

So simply change the permissions of /usr/local/bin (and /usr/local if necessary) to 755.


apps free but card is charged i have saved one card details with my app id as it does not allow u to browse the itune store without that .

Now i try downloaidng few free apps for ipad . After sometime i recivied notifcation from my bank that a purchase has been made on my card for the same FREE app .

Why if a app is free , am i charged for the same ?
or if it is not free , why does it say free on the itune store .
Not a very good itune store experience :(

These free apps that you downloaded, did you run the app and buy something within the app?

Nowadays, apps can sell you certain features (like more functionality or tokens in case of games). These purchases are called In-App Purchases (IAP) and they are charged towards your card.

If you downloaded apps or games that have In App Purchases and you want to make sure that you don't make these purchases by mistake (kids make this mistake many times), then go to you iPhone's Settings --> General --> Restrictions --> Enable Restrictions and then under Allowed Content, turn off In-App Purchases. This will stop anyone from spending money.

If, however, you are being charged for the app itself, you should contact Apple support and they will look into the matter and explain what is happening, maybe even give you a refund.


“Failed to install SGD client” when accessing the secure global desktop from OS X I am having an issue since I have upgraded to OS X Yosemite.

I used to previously remotely access my work's Windows system from my Mac (OS X Mavericks). I had installed XQuartz and Java and was using Firefox as my browser.

Since I upgraded to OS X Yosemite with both Java and XQuartz installed I can access the secure global desktop site and can also enter my log in details.

The screen then moves to "loading" and then freezes with a final message that states "Failed to install SGD client".

Any ideas as to what I am doing wrong? Never got that message with OS X Mavericks.

I had the same issue with "Failed to istall SGD client" and found the following reference to XQuartz issues - it seems to fix this issue as well.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6616720


MacBook will not boot to recovery after setting boot args I booted to recovery using Command R.

I was trying to get to safe mode so I opened a terminal window here and ran:

nvram boot-args="-x"

and then I rebooted. The system did not go to safe mode.

Rebooted again pressing Command R, but the system will not boot to recovery. All I get now is a circle with a line through it. How can I fix this?

Boot with ⌘S to boot to single-user mode.
Remove the boot arguments by running nvram -d boot-args.
Reboot by running reboot.

For future reference, you can boot to safe mode for a specific boot by holding ⇧ on boot without needing to set any boot arguments.


Chrome on MacOS started rejecting self-signed certificates Starting 4 days ago (the date might be relevant if some updates came along),
Chrome on MacOS started rejecting self-signed certificates. It includes things like Vagrant boxes and the Synology NAS web interface.

While with Chrome under Windows I can still click "advanced" and chose to "accept the risk and continue", that option is missing under Mac.

Is there any Flag or Setting to reintroduce that option?

Try to run the following command from the terminal and relaunch Chrome

defaults write com.google.Chrome EnableCommonNameFallbackForLocalAnchors -bool true

This can help you to solve your issue.

Or

If you need a workaround to get the site working without replacing the certificate you can do the following.

Download the certificate from the server (using another browser or with openssl)
Install the certificate into Keychain Access under the login store
Set the certificate to "always trust" by double clicking on it once it's been installed.


How do I make different email accounts use the default sounds again? On an iPhone running iOS 6.0.1, I used Settings → Notifications → Mail to set different "new message" sounds for different mail accounts. Now I want to make all mail accounts again follow the default sound set under Settings → Sounds → New Mail. How can I do this? When I change the "New Mail" alert sound, the individual mail accounts no longer change.

I have tried manually setting all the mail accounts to use the same sound and vibration setting as the default. However, they still don't change when I change the default setting.

It's not a direct answer, but by deleting an App, you remove the local cached copy of the emails and don't lose any messages on the Mail server.

This has a side effect of clearing the preference for sounds, so when you add the account back - it now follows the default sounds as set in the UI.


Deleting Stuff Off Of Camera Roll And Photo Stream If I were to delete all of the pictures on my photo stream, would I still be able to keep the copies on my camera roll, or would they also be deleted from there?

The camera roll on an iOS device is totally independent of your photo stream.

So, if you have an iPhone 6s for example, and you've taken 1,234 photos on it, these photos will remain in your camera roll until you have manually deleted them yourself. Even if you have used iCloud's Photo Sharing feature to share 500 of those photos and then decided to delete them from the shared album, those photos will remain in the camera roll unless you delete them from there as well.

In a nutshell, any photos taken on a particular device and stored within that device's camera roll will remain stored in that camera roll until they are manually deleted from that camera roll. It is irrelevant whether you have deleted them from a photo stream, a shared album, etc.


Permanently remove sidebar that pops up every time I open a tab in Safari How can I permanently remove the sidebar that pops up every time I open a tab in  Safari 9.1.3 on OS X El Capitan?

Open a new tab, then go to View → Hide Sidebar ⇧⌘L.
The sidebar will be hidden on new tab pages until you show it again.


No Data via Cellular iOS 10.2 I did a All Setting Reset and after the reset the data via cellular is not working ( 3G & LTE not showing in the status bar ) only via wireless , tried to reboot the device ,reset network setting but still not working ....

Any Solution from your side ? Note i don't want to update my iOS

Like all data issues, your best bet is to contact the carrier. They have access to your account, the cell tower logs and diagnostics and can resolve service issues most rapidly.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201415

Steps to fix service issues in rural American is generally different then in the city in the United States. As is Europe and Asia and around the world, each region and each carrier has different ways and levels of serviceto troubleshoot and help you.


Best way to recover/restore Time Machine Backup to a second HD? My Macbook HD got corrupted and it couldn't be repaired. Being a 2011 Macbook model, I decided to buy a SSD to be the primary HD and a second 1TB to be used instead of cdrom (using a kit from maxupgrades).

So far, so good. Problem is: now I want to recover/restore a Time Machine backup to this new 1TB hard disk (that isn't the primary one). Which is the best way to avoid data loss in the process? Can I just copy the files from /Backups.backupdb/Latest?

Well... the answer when you posted this question WAS yes.  You could just turn off auto-backups and copy the backups folder to a new drive and set Time Machine's prefs to use that drive.

But if you've migrated to Mojave, good luck. Apple has seen fit to remove that ability from even an admin's hands.  You don't have the ability to modify the Backups.backupdb folder or contents, even with SIP disabled.

EDIT: I think I found a workaround.  You can't modify Backups.backupdb, but you can delete it and replace it.  Back up your backups, if you feel the need.  Create a folder named "WhosTheBoss" or "ImTheBoss" and put any backups that you want to keep in there (with the same directory structure).  Delete the original Backups.backupsdb folder and make that the name of "WhosTheBoss".  Point Time Machine and/or Migration Assistant to that location and you're good to go.


How can I run a command which will not survive terminal close? I want to send a notification in X seconds to future me, but I don't want to send the notification if I closed the terminal.

So let's say I want to send myself a notification in 10 seconds:

yourscript.sh:

#!/bin/sh
sleep 10
terminal-notifier -message "timeout" -ignoreDnD
exit;

If I run:

./yourscript.sh &

I will get what I want, but if I close my terminal (command+w) I'll still get the notification.

I know that if I'll exit the iterm application entirely (command+q) I won't get the notification, but that isn't really what I want.

Anything I can do?

I'm using Catalina (10.15.2)

Open a new terminal tab
Run your command without the trailing &
Switch back to the first tab and continue working

To cancel the notification just close the tab it's running in afterwards.


Will iMovie erase my work if I quit it? I have been making an iMovie on OS X El Capitan for the past few days. Unfortunately, I have not saved even once, I just left it open and it would always be there when I clicked on the icon. Now, I deleted many pictures from the movie, and I saw the spinning wheel of death. I thought it would go away soon as it always does, but twenty minutes later it was still spinning. I can't click on anything in the app.

I don't want to force quit, because I will lose all of my work, right? What can I do to save my work?

Sadly, you've passed the point where you get to save your work.

Luckily, iMovie periodically saves the application database / library so you are unlikely to lose everything if you decide to shut down the Mac or force quit the application. Once you regain control of the application (you already know you can't do anything with it stuck in a state where it's no longer responding to messages, input - a.k.a spinning wheel of death) you can see if the changes you made are missing.

If they are, a call to apple support might be needed to restore the backup copies of the library it has made internally since Apple doesn't document how to restore a previous iMovie library publicly.

Going forward, you can set a timer and periodically save/quit iMovie and then back up the files. Time Machine allows you to make local snapshots if you don't have your backup volume connected.

sudo tmutil enablelocal

Then to make a point in time snapshot of all the files, quit iMovie and then run in terminal:

tmutil snap

That saves a neat point in time version of all your files that you can then recover later using the Time Machine interface.


Touch Bar no longer allows for switching between media controls in High Sierra? Prior to updating to High Sierra, the touch bar would display any media that is currently playing (such as iTunes) and allow me to expand it and control it.

As I'm typing in Safari, the touch bar displays no options to control the music that is currently playing in iTunes. Obviously I could expand the control strip to display the play/pause button but previously the blank space would display the media.

It's annoying when you have two sources playing simultaneously such as iTunes and YouTube. Previously I could switch media control between the two of them so that when a YouTube video is playing I could pause iTunes from the touch bar without switching to the app. Currently there is no way to switch media control without having it in the active window more recently than all other media.

Is this something others are experiencing or an issue with my machine?

This has been fixed. Running Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.1


Is it possible to connect a microphone to an iPhone/iPad via WiFi and use it instead of the built in one? It is possible to connect a microphone to an iPhone/iPad using bluetooth, BUT would it be possible to achieve the same kind of connection with a microphone but over a WiFi network?

To explain: I have a microphone that is connected to an router via WiFi, would it be possible in some way to connect the iPhone/iPad to this microphone and use it instead of the built in microphone?

it is possible to do it through bluetooth, dock connector, and 3.5mm headphone jack!

in order to use it though wifi you need a compatible application and i have never heard of such thing! after a little goggling all i found was bluetooth connected ones, because it offers a P2P connection witch is much more reliable!

(sidenote) mics though wifi routers could, be unreliable, specially in poor connection!

however there are mic's that include a dock connector dongle for a stable P2P connection
something like this


Could I use an older iMac as a second monitor for a Dell Latitude E7250 w/mini display port? I have a 21.5" iMac from late 2009 that runs great. For work I have a Dell Latitude E7250 that has a mini display port. The mini-display port cable fits into the iMac but is this a "Thunderbolt" port and not really a mini-display port at all?? Are they the same thing?
If a had a mini display port to mini display port cable would I be able to use the iMac as the second monitor?
Is that the correct cable?
What keystrokes would I need to get this going?

Thanks in advance for your consideration of my question.

The Thunderbolt port can be used for Mini-DisplayPort. In theory, you should be able to use Target Display Mode because you are using a Windows machine as your primary display. [See Use your iMac as a display with Target Display Mode and How to transmit my PC onto my iMac?. However, as mentioned in the latter link, you can use Microsoft Remote Desktop. Therefore, you could try using a Mini-DisplayPort to Mini-DisplayPort cable, but Microsoft Remote Desktop would be a safer bet.

Instructions for Target Display Mode:

Update: the Late '09 iMac can accept Mini-DisplayPort connections, so you should be able to use a Mini-DisplayPort cable.

  Make sure Make sure both computers are turned on.
  Connect the Mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt cable between the two computers.
  Press Command-F2 on the keyboard of the iMac that you want to use as a display.
  To exit, press Command-F2 on the keyboard of the iMac that you want to use as a display.

(from https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204592)

Instructions for Microsoft Remote Desktop:

  Download the Remote Desktop Client from the Mac App Store.
  Set up your remote PC to allow remote connections. (Allow Remote Access in Control Panel)
  Create / Edit Remote Desktops, or add Remote Resources using the Remote Desktop client.

  Creating a Remote Desktop

  On the Connection Center screen, click New.
  In the Edit Remote Desktops window, enter information for the remote desktop connection
  Click the close button to save the remote desktop.

(from https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn473012(v=ws.11).aspx)


High Temp at Startup after Upgrading to High Sierra After upgrading to High Sierra (I have clean installed it), my mac (Macbook Pro 2010) needs unreasonably longer time to login. As a result, I have noticed that the temperature increases to around 100 C during the startup time (I have checked this right after login through Istat Menus). Meanwhile the fans are at 2000 rps. Apparently , the reason why fans do not speed up is because the system as a whole is within the safe temp with the only exception of the CPU temperature as CPU is busy processing all those startup processes. So the fans assume everything is alright and do not speed up.

Now my question is if this causes any harm to CPU as I think I read somewhere that quick fluctuations within a short range in the temp of CPU can cause damage to the CPU. I just wanted to know your ideas on this.

In iStat Menus, check the figure for 'relative to ProcHot' - so long as this is a positive value, all is OK in theory, though I would have expected the fans to ramp before that temperature was reached.

Maybe try resetting the NVRAM & SMC - Really confused about how to reset SMC and PRAM and NVRAM on my Macs and iPad and iPhone? has a comprehensive answer on how to do this for all Mac models.

Picture of where is shows on my machine, but as it's a dual processor Mac Pro no doubt it will look very different. [bottom half menu cropped off, to save space]


iPad or iPhone doesn't charge until unlocked? When I plug my iPhone or iPad into my laptop with the USB cable, it doesn't start charging until I unlock the device with touch ID or code. Is there a way I can change this behavior? I don't think it used to work that way (years ago), and now I often forget to unlock it, so I think a device is charging and then hours later realize it's not.

To clarify, I don't have to leave it unlocked. I unlock it, then the battery icon changes to indicate it's charging, then I can lock/sleep it again.

What you are observing is due to a security related change made in iOS 11.4.1.

Using USB accessories with iOS 11.4.1 and later

  Starting with iOS 11.4.1, if you use USB accessories with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, or if you connect your device to a Mac or PC, you might need to unlock your device for it to recognize and use the accessory. Your accessory then remains connected, even if your device is subsequently locked.

This setting can be accessed on your iPhone/iPad by going to Settings app → Face ID & Passcode → USB Accessories.

  When the USB Accessories setting is off, as in the image above, you might need to unlock your iOS device to connect USB accessories.

This is turned off by default for security reasons. If you turn it on, your iPhone/iPad will start charging instantly, without unlocking it's connected to your laptop.


Change AppleID to @me.com email address When I first got an iPod (several years ago) my primary email address was *@gmail.com and, thus, I used that as my AppleID. However, since then Apple has given customers new *@me.com email addresses to use with, say, iPhones and iPads. So, I was wondering what the reprecussions of using *@me.com as my AppleID would be? In other words, would I lose access to movies and TV shows that I've purchased, and would I lose access to my apps?

The key is to change the main Apple ID email address or add an alternate email address instead of creating a new Apple ID altogether.

If you logon to appleid.apple.com, you can change your primary email address. There really aren't many big repercussions, and as long as you don't create a new Apple ID you will have access to all of your previously purchased content.

If you have friends that iMessage your @gmail.com email address you will need to add that email as an alternate email address - something you can do from  appleid.apple.com.

What is interesting is that you can use your @me.com email address right now to sign into your devices. It is added as an alternate email address automatically. When you log in to appleid.apple.com you will notice that under your primary email address is an "Alternate Apple ID". This is probably your @me.com or @icloud.com email address. So, you can use that email address and your current Apple ID password to sign in to your Apple ID - either will work.

Note that you can't login to your Apple ID with your "Alternate Email Addresses", but you can iMessage from your "Alternate Email addresses".


How do I prevent image scaling when burning an iPhoto Slideshow in iDVD? In iPhoto '11, I have created a slideshow and sent it to iDVD 7.1.2 (Share > iDVD...).

iDVD does fine with maintaining the timing, the music, the transitions, etc. However, even though I have the project set to 16:9 and under iDVD's options I have disabled "Always scale slides to TV Safe Area" the images of the slideshow are stretched vertically, compressed horizontally. No toggling of any of these options has had any effect. Burning to DVD, "burning" to image, and preview all show the same thing: stretched/compressed images.

This is not a problem of my player's aspect ratio, or my TV's aspect ratio.

How do I prevent image scaling when burning an iPhoto Slideshow in iDVD?

The only way I've found to do it is to have iPhoto render the video, and then import the video file to iDVD rather than the slideshow directly through this "integration" of their apps and letting iDVD attempt to render it.

This worked fine, and actually didn't take as long to re-render from .mp4 to MPEG2 as I expected it would. I experienced no- or negligible loss of quality to the video during transcoding, although I'm sure that there was some as I was going from lossy to lossy format.


Using Itunes Match as backup I have a dilemma, I have over 80GB of music on my computer and I want to free up some space. I am looking at using iTunes Match as storage for my music instead of having it on the laptop but I have a couple of questions about it?

Once it is all uploaded to my iCloud and I delete it from my hard drive, will iTunes still work or will it be constantly be looking for the physical files.
If I can delete it, how do I upload new music I acquire, do I have to physically put it on iTunes, then upload and then delete?
How does it work with my iPhone as I will never have the capacity to load all my songs on the phone.  Is it easy to select an album or genre at a time to download to the phone?

Once it is all uploaded to my iCloud and I delete it from my hard drive, will iTunes still work or will it be constantly be looking for the physical files.

After uploading all your files to iTunes Match you can delete all your local files. iTunes Match needs not the original files.

  If I can delete it, how do I upload new music I acquire, do I have to physically put it on iTunes, then upload and then delete?

You answered your question by yourself. That is the correct workflow.

  How does it work with my iPhone as I will never have the capacity to load all my songs on the phone. Is it easy to select an album or genre at a time to download to the phone?

A selection by genre is not possible. But you can select by album, artist, playlists, ... .


How do you read /dev/tty.iap on iOS? I want to access data from a USB device attached to an iPad on that iPad. So far, I've written a basic app that detects whether files exist or not on the iPad. However, it says the /dev/tty.iap file does not exist when I connect the USB device to it.

Is there an entitlement issue for this? Or is this a TCP/IP issue?

Again, the ultimate goal is to read the file, but it's not even detecting it.

No, you can't read /dev/tty.iap file on an iOS device. At least as long as the device isn't jailbroken.

3rd party iOS apps are sandboxed and not allowed to read the device filesystem.

From File System Programming Guide:

  The iOS file system is geared toward apps running on their own. To keep the system simple, users of iOS devices do not have direct access to the file system and apps are expected to follow this convention.

Unofficially speaking, iOS however allows read-only access to some parts of the filesystem as noted in this reddit thread:

  Hello everyone, I’m an aspiring security researcher, and got bored. I decided to look at how far the sandbox really lets you go in terms of accessing parts of the filesystem that aren’t part of its designated container.

  PLEASE NOTE: In NO WAY does this at all allow you to modify, add, or delete ANY files in the areas I am about to talk about. These areas in the system are, in UNIX terms, “Read-only”.

  Which directories can you view?

  After combing the filesystem using an app I’ll mention later, these are the directories.

  /System/Library
  /usr/lib
  /Developer

The above explains, why you are able to read /Developer and can't read /dev/tty.iap.


Why is VLC verified every time I open a file that is supposed to open with it? I have downloaded VLC for Mac, and I installed it. Now every time I open a video that is supposed to be opened by VLC, it starts verifying again, like it is the first time and it will install it. I also don't see a shortcut in the Applications folder. What is the way around this?

If your Applications folder doesn't contain VLC.app, you probably didn't install it properly. The verifying process (trying to start VLC) indicates that a dmg containing the app has to be opened.

Since VLC is a self-containing app you don't have to initiate an installation. Instead open the downloaded VLC.dmg, drag and drop the VLC.app inside the mounted dmg to the folder /Applications. Then unmount the dmg and start VLC.


How do I transfer mp3 files from my Lumia 730 to MacBook Pro? I have read about Windows Phone App for Mac but sadly it is not available from the store in India? Is there any alternative software? Will using a VPN help?

Okay so I did a simple transfer from my SD card, inserting it in my mac! If anyone has a more elegant solution, do share!


How to untangle Multiple iOS devices sharing one Apple ID for iMessage I pay all our Internet bills and iPhone bills (3)/ just so you know when I ask this q I am not trying to get use off someone else's account.

We have a Mac, a Mac mini and MacBook

When I recvd my iphone, it synced with my husbands apple ID off his computer, now when I am asked for ID password I use his. (for app purchases etc)

I synced my new iPad 2 to my sons Mac mini, his ID is different, but I have his password also, as I said I pay it, so no one cares if I have their password.

I want to link my iPad 2 which I use all day long, to the iMessage app.
I was receiving my sons messages phone texts the day I started iMessage and I blocked it so I couldn't read them. I don't even remember how I blocked seeing them but I remember it was easy.
My question: can I sign into my iPad with his apple ID then list an added phone to see MY messages on my iPad imessage?

If it doesn't work I guess I could just delete the app and never use it?
My main concern is kicking my son off his texts on his phone.??

Multiple people in one household can use the same Apple ID in iMessage.  That is how my wife and I have it setup.

On my devices, I have my phone number and email checked for iMessage.

On her devices, she has her phone number and email checked for iMessage.

On the Mac, it is under Messages, Preferences.

On iOS, it is Settings, Messages, Send & Receive.

Which messages are delivered to each device is dependant on which phone numbers and emails you have checked in the preferences listed above.


Lion special characters input at Snow Leopard Is there any 3rd party app to enable special character input on holding key for Snow Leopard same it is at Lion?

Thanks a lot.

Unfortunately no, I was also looking for this.

The closest I found was going to System Preferences, then International, then in the Input Menu tab, select Character Palette.

If you have only one keyboard input, this will add a menu item on the top right.
If you have more than one keyboard input, this item will be added below the flags of your keyboard inputs.

When you open the Character palette, you'll see on its left the categories of characters. I often work with mathematics so the Math and Greek categories are useful to me. If you click on the bottom Character Info, it will show all related characters to the one you selected above in the palette.

e.g. if you choose the Latin 'u', you will see ü, û, ù, µ, etc. Double-click on any of those and it will paste itself on your working document.

Hope this could (partially) resolve your question.


iOS / ipadOS app with share action for SCP / SFTP? I've tried a few clients that come up with a search, notably

WebSSH
SCP Client
FTPManager

All of which have the basic functionality of transferring stored files from the Files app, but from my testing none of these have implemented a the share action (i.e. it's not an option when you click the share button and you're presented with AirDrop, Messages, Mail, etc.). Do any of the other apps out there have this?

You can SFTP using iOS Shortcuts app.

Shortcuts can take input from a share action.
Shortcuts has an action ‘Run Script Over SSH’ and passes action input to stdin.
You can cat stdin to a file on the destination.


Why is Python version set with PyEnv global not picked up a default one? I have installed pyenv and used it to install Python 3.8.1 I had Python 3.7.6 installed manually before.

I have set 3.8.1 as global and, as this version is now markered with *, it was taken into account. However, which python3 and python3 -V are still outputting the values of 3.7.6! I have restarted the shell, but, unfortunately, the outputs are still the same.

Is this as expected behaviour? How to switch it to 3.8.1 properly?

NB echo $PATH outputs

/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Library/TeX/texbin:/opt/X11/bin

https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv#basic-github-checkout

  Define environment variable PYENV_ROOT to point to the path where pyenv repo is cloned and add $PYENV_ROOT/bin to your $PATH for access to the pyenv command-line utility.

$ echo 'export PYENV_ROOT="$HOME/.pyenv"' >> ~/.bash_profile
$ echo 'export PATH="$PYENV_ROOT/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bash_profile

  Zsh note: Modify your ~/.zshrc file instead of ~/.bash_profile.

-

  Add pyenv init to your shell to enable shims and autocompletion. Please make sure eval "$(pyenv init -)" is placed toward the end of the shell configuration file since it manipulates PATH during the initialization.

$ echo -e 'if command -v pyenv 1>/dev/null 2>&1; then\n  eval "$(pyenv init -)"\nfi' >> ~/.bash_profile

Restart Shell

exec "$SHELL"


Why I don't see all launchctl daemons/agents with "sudo launchctl list"? I wish to see all launchctl daemons/agents and found How to show all running launchctl daemons/agents?

This doesn't work:

> sudo launchctl list | grep -v com.apple.
PID     Status  Label
-       0       org.postfix.master
-       0       org.cups.cupsd
-       0       com.oracle.java.Helper-Tool
-       0       com.vix.cron
244     0       org.ntp.ntpd

I doubt that I have that less Non-Apple launchctl daemons/agents.

for example I have those installed and running:

> brew services list
Name     Status  User Plist
grafana  stopped
influxdb started fyodor /Users/fyodor/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.influxdb.plist
mysql    started fyodor /Users/fyodor/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist
redis    started fyodor /Users/fyodor/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.redis.plist
telegraf started fyodor /Users/fyodor/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.telegraf.plist

I don't see them with sudo launchctl list. How to get a complete list?

Your launchctl command only shows 'system' deameon/agents.  That won't include your homebrew daemons.  By experimenting, I discovered these two ways of running launchctl which will do what you want. For simpliciy I have not added your grep command.

To show system daemons/agents:

> sudo launchctl list

To show user daemons/agents:

> launchctl list

I like to use LaunchControl by soma-zone which allows me to control/change the agents and daemons as well as displaying them in 5 distinct lists:

User Agents
Global Agents
Global Daemons
System Agents
System Daemons


ntpd unable to create socket on en0 I have a mac mini running OS X Server (Mavericks, 10.9.1 - latest Server.app) and I keep getting these error messages in them system logs every few minutes. I am not sure if there is a real problem or not.

  Jan 22 08:20:54 myosxserver.com ntpd[???]: unable to create socket on
  en0 (????) for ipv6here

Is there really something wrong? or can I disable ntpd from logging these?

I believe I corrected this by using this in the terminal:

sudo ntpdate -u time.euro.apple.com


MacBook Pro crashed when inserting a USB cable connected to an Arduino Nano clone I plugged a USB cable (connected to an Arduino Nano clone) into my MacBook Pro (running OS X 10.11.2) and it crashed with an on screen message.

It restarted and reloaded all my apps (eventually).

It seemed to be working normally, so I tried the Arduino again, with similar results.

Console shows a very long list of messages. The first which seems possible is:

6/01/2016 11:43:39.355 AM mdworker[662]: LaunchServices: received XPC_ERROR_CONNECTION_INTERRUPTED trying to map database

Additional notes The Arduino required an additional driver which I installed a week ago (CH34X USB-SERIAL DRIVER). This seemed to be working OK.

Can anyone help with this. What can I check? (I can certainly live without the Arduino.)

Check the panic log in console. Every kernel panic is logged and you should be able to find it via search box.  I bet the serial driver is causing the panic. Maybe this tweet is of any help.

I use a serial usb adapter as well for my Beaglebone Black. I did not install a serial driver on OS X but instead am running a debian vm for communication with the beaglebone black. Debian/Ubuntu or whatever linux distribution are shipping with serial usb driver, so there is no need to install extra software.


Copying to external USB drive in Mac OS X 10.8.2 yields "Device not configured" and hard lock I am copying using cp or mv on the command line a large amount (>500gb) of files each sized between 600MB and 2.6GB to an external drive (a Thermaltake BlacX Duet), but after a significant but inconsistent amount of transfer (e.g. 121gb) the following happens:

A message pops up in a dialog box that says "The disk was not ejected properly. If possible, always eject a disk before unplugging it or turning it off." (There were no physical events that took place that would have resulted in a disconnection)
The copy fails for an item and all subsequent items, complaining with various errors including:

"device not configured"
"Invalid argument" (because the destination no longer exists)
"No such file or directory" (ibid)

The Terminal locks up
Executing 'Force Quit' on Terminal quits the Terminal, but it cannot be reopened
Finder locks up
No applications will start
Relaunching Finder causes the menu bar at the top and the dock to disappear
Rebooting does not succeed (i.e. one must hard-restart by holding the power button); variations on ejecting (before Finder locks) and unplugging the USB cable appear to have no effect on the inevitability of this result.

Note that roughly the same result occurs when attempting the same copy in Finder. In particular the dialog entitled "Copy" remains open, clicking the "Stop copy" "X" button causes an indefinite pause with "Stopping ..." showing. One can still access the Finder, and even read from the drive, but relaunching Finder causes it to display seemingly indefinitely "Application not responding" and in any case one cannot start new applications.

After rebooting, the destination has received most of the data. Disk utility reveals no issues with the destination drive.

I have Spotlight disabled for the external drive, if that makes any difference.

Obviously the expected behaviour from copying is not to have the computer hard-lock requiring a forced reboot.

For obvious reasons (Terminal being locked, applications won't start) it is hard to diagnose the problem.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

EDIT

I have had some success by repartitioning the drive into two main partitions of about equal size (460GB) on the drive at the beginning and end with a medium sized partition in the middle (as it seems that this error is occurring at around the "middle" of the drive size). However, I am uneasy about this very speculative solution. But if it works, I can get on with life. :) In any case, insight into the nature of the underlying issue is most welcome.

The most common problem with external usb drives are the small power adapter with 2A. I have various WD Drives and all give up after a time with the same error "The disk was not ejected properly...". Without power the hd disconects (for a short time). I bought a bigger power adapter with 3 A and have no problems any more.


Unable to unmount drive! Somehow my harddrive seems to fail, I am not able to startup anymore. When I started in verbose mode, I noticed that the harddrive return I/O Errors and the B-Node-Tree seems to be corrupted.

I was able to use the single-user mode to backup files to an external harddrive, but when I tried to repartition the harddrive from the recovery mode, after failing to repair the partitions in single-user mode, I get an error, that he is unable to unmount the drive.

(DiskWarrior 4.4 doesn't even recognize the Macintosh HD and the S.M.A.R.T Test results are alright)

I first thought maybe something is actually used on that drive, but even after trying to repartition from the Disk Utility on a Mac OSX Lion Installer DVD, he keeps telling me, that he is unable to unmount the drive.

(I had a bootcamp partition on the harddrive as well, that is still highlighted, so that seems to be the issue)

The system is an early 2011 MBP.

Open Terminal and try entering following:

df

which will give a listing of your mounted volumes similar to:

Filesystem    512-blocks       Used  Available Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/disk0s2  1951845952 1655141456  296192496    85%    /
devfs                477        477          0   100%    /dev
map -hosts             0          0          0   100%    /net
map auto_home          0          0          0   100%    /home
/dev/disk1s2  1952853344  754604936 1198248408    39%    /Volumes/Backup

depending on which drive you need to unmount you can then try:

sudo hdiutil eject -force /dev/disk1s2

which would force /Volumes/Backup to be unmounted.


What's a good place online to sell a used Mac? Where can I buy or sell a used iMac online?

EDIT:

I have a 21.5" iMac (Core 2 Duo, late 2009) and a MacBook which is about two months old. I'd like to sell both and upgrade.

If you're in the USA, gazelle.com can be a good place, but the prices aren't always great.


Why does Finder tell me Pixie is zero bytes in size, but takes up 406 KB? Pixie, the additional Xcode app for magnifying pixels of the screen and finding their values, takes up 406 KB of space. Finder, however, says that it's zero bytes in size. In the below screenshot, you see that under Size it says "zero bytes", followed by "406 KB on disk". What does this discrepancy mean?

I have relaunched Finder, but the problem persists. Pixie is fully functional.

I think that this could be the resource fork taking up the space.

See here for more details.


Is it possible to turn off the screen after 15 or 30 minutes on iPhone? I am using the latest iOS 14.2.  Sometimes, I have some notes or some game that I want to leave open for a while, such as 15 minutes or half an hour, without the screen turning off.
Right now, it is either 5 minutes or never, so if it is 5 minutes, then I have to keep on operating the iPhone to wake it up every 5 minutes.  If I set it to Never, then I have the risk of putting it aside, and fell asleep or went somewhere, and then wake up with 100% battery running down to 0%.  Is there a way to make it or tweak it to more of a "moderate" or medium term, such as 15 minutes or 30 minutes?

There's no setting higher than 5 minutes except the "Never" setting. So no, you cannot set it to 15 or 30 minutes with the current iOS software.
Note that the certain apps block turning the screen off while they're running. For example if you're playing a movie in Netflix.


The operation can’t be completed because the original item for “Foo” can’t be found I have a little NAS at home which makes some volumes available through AFP. This all worked great. Until I shut it down for a while and reconnected it recently.

I can see the device on the network and I can open it and select a share. But when I try to mount the share, I get the following error:

"The operation can’t be completed because the original item for “Foo” can’t be found"

I think this is because my little NAS changed to a new IP and OS X somehow cached the original (alias?) somewhere.

The fact that I can successfully open these shares from another Mac, which had never seen these before, confirms that I think.

Does anyone know where this is potentially cached? Is there anything I can reset or throw away to get past this error?

Apparently this problem can occur for many different reasons.  In my case it was solved by re-launching the finder.  A description and solution for this was at http://www.cnet.com/news/fix-shared-computer-not-found-in-finder/ .

  To fix this problem, you simply need to relaunch the Finder, and it will re-populate the list of shared devices. To do this, you can do one of the following:

  Hold the Option key and right-click the Finder icon in the Dock, then select Relaunch.
  Press Option-Command-Escape or choose Force Quit from the Apple menu, then select the Finder and click Relaunch.
  Log out and log back in to your user account.


Do some apps prohibit mirroring through VGA? I have an iPad 2, which was running iOS 5.x. I could mirror every app on a TV using a VGA adaptor. I recently upgraded to iOS 8.3 and, unbeknownst to me, the new OS's default settings also updated all my apps. Now I find most apps still mirror, including YouTube, but a couple apps (the kind requiring a monthly fee for streaming video content) no longer mirror video content.

I've looked here and elsewhere to figure out what's going on, but it's confusing. Did the content providers behind the apps change their policies about projectable content recently? Are the apps now providing content at a resolution too high for a VGA connection? ... Most importantly, of course, do I have any options to once again mirror these video outputs to a TV screen?

Short answer: Yes.

Some Apps (usually those with paid content) prohibit video output via AirPlay or AV-Adapters. There's no way I know of to get around the issue.
For some, not all, a HDMI adapter works because of "High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection"


sudo: setrlimit(8): Invalid argument after switching Mac OS shell from BASH to ZSH After updating to Mac OS Catalina some months ago, I followed the prompted suggestions and changed my shell from BASH to ZSH.

Since that time, whenever I use sudo in Terminal, I get sudo: setrlimit(8): Invalid argument. The sudo'd command runs fine, but this error shows every time.

I don't have any plugins or modifications to my shell - it's vanilla ZSH in default Terminal.app

I've searched the Googs but I can't really find anything that seems like a good match - only generic "increasing limits on sockets in osx". I could try that, but I don't understand why I should be having an issue in the first place when I have not and do not doing anything peculiar or fancy with shell - I use it for git, npm and occasionally other commands.

Does anyone have any ideas? Not sure what other information you'd need, but let me know if there is.

I had this message as well.

I think I've might have worked out a solution to it.

Check which version of sudo you have installed with sudo -V and if it isn't 1.8.31 download the newest version from here GitHub
You'll have to download this one here "sudo-1.8.31.mac1015.pkg"

Let me know if it worked out for you!


Is there a manual for Finder? I know the Mac's tend to work intuitively... ;)

Having said that, I often have wondered where the missing manual for Finder is hidden...

Does it exist?

Not really a manual but try this:

Switch to the Finder and select "Mac Help" in the Help menu.
Then search for Finder in the Mac Help window.

Try also the online help at http://help.apple.com/machelp/mac/10.11/ . (Use 10.10 for Yosemite and 10.12 for Sierra.)


Trackpad on MBA keeps automatically clicking I always keep 'Tap to click' off because I like the physical feedback when clicking and I tend to automatically touch the trackpad.

I reinstalled Mavericks last week, because I wanted to start completely fresh.

Now my trackpad automatically 'clicks' often. Sometimes I just move the mouse, and it will drag things, making it super annoying to use the mouse.

Is this a known problem, and is there a solution? I'm post-applecare so I hope I don't have to bring it in to get it repaired.

This sounds like either a faulty trackpad or possibly a swollen battery.  I know the battery suggestion sounds strange but the reasoning is that as a battery swells it puts pressure on the components behind it, which for most of Apple's portables includes the trackpad.  Basically it could be slightly pushing on the back of the trackpad at all times, causing even minor touches to register as a click.

The only way to check for this is to remove the bottom case, which you may or may not be comfortable doing.  iFixit has a guide for replacing the battery that shows the steps to remove the bottom case and provides a reference for what a healthy battery should look like.  If the battery is not swollen then the other likely hardware fault is the trackpad, which isn't common but isn't all that uncommon either.

Before you tear into your Mac though you can at least rule out software as the culprit.  You can boot to your recovery partition by performing the following:

Power down your Mac normally ( > Shutdown)
Hold option while you power on your Mac
You should see a list of hard drives, one of which is likely 10.9 Recovery, select that and press return.  If you're instead presented with a password request you will first need to enter your firmware password before seeing the list of drives.

Once you're booted to the recovery partition you can test your trackpad but clicking/not clicking on items.  If the issue persists then it's likely one of the hardware faults I outlined above.

Hope that helps!


Which application to replace Superputty / PuTTY CM in macOS Is there any application in macOS (MacBook Pro) which can work like SuperPuTTY / PuTTY CM does in Windows? I am looking for a free one.

What I need is to organize my ssh sessions. I can ssh to my machines using terminal but they are individual windows and kind of hard to get IP addresses / names every time I need to connect to them.

It can also be an application which uses terminal application in Mac for ssh ..

Look further into terminal before you give up on it. Under the Shell menu, you'll find New Remote Connection.... The list of default servers will be auto-populated via Bonjour, but you can still create and save new sessions for ssh, sftp, ftp, and telnet. Of course, the default services in UNIX also allow you to create your SSH keys so that when you log into a remote host, you don't have to enter your password.

You can also customize your windows with a lot of features not seen in simple Windows packages like PuTTY. Be sure to check out your Terminal > Preferences... for customizing colors, keyboards, shell commands, fonts, screen size, key mappings, terminal emulation, and a whole lot more.

Oh, you can also create new sessions in tabs, not just new windows; the second option under the Shell menu will do that.


Can a 21.5 inch iMac (non-Retina late 2015 - 2.8 Ghz, Intel Iris Pro graphics, model 16,2) drive two external displays? I'm currently running a Dell U2715H at its native resolution (2560 x 1440) via DisplayPort as an external display, and I'd like to add another at that same resolution. The Apple specs on this model don't say anything about two external displays.

Is it possible to run two external displays with this model?

Not according to EveryMac who are usually spot on with their info, including unsupported 'hacks', none of which are mentioned for this model.

  This model can simultaneously support the internal display at full native resolution and up to 4096x2304 on an external display in both extended desktop (second workspace) and video mirroring (internal display duplicated on the external display) modes.


How to set up "localhost" document root as Mac's "Sites" folder with MAMP PRO 4? The default MAMP's localhost document root is /Applications/MAMP/htdocs and I want to point it on my /Users/Me/Sites/ folder.

I can do easily with MAMP PRO GUI but it's not working after I restarted servers and it's showing me a red arrow (as an invalid destination):

I tried some solutions like:

Change default Apache port to 8888
Change default web user to me
Do an alias from MAMP htdocs folder to Sites folder
Do a symbolic link from MAMP htdocs folder to Sites folder
Try to set Sites folder owner (only) to me and group to Sites (but doesn't seem not work)
Set Sites permissions to 777, 755 and 750
Add an index.php file inside
Creating a new host

But MAMP still doesn't accept my Sites folder as document root!
I tried with websites sub-folders inside Sites or with other Mac's personal folders like Music, Pictures, Downloads or my own home and they are working! Only Documents or Desktop folders don't work either.

It's seems a permission issue, but I don't know how to resolve it. Does it because Sites folder is used by other macOS apps or services?

Edit (27/07/2017): I opened an issue on official MAMP bugtracker: http://bugs.mamp.info/view.php?id=5945

Edit 2 (10/01/2018): From an official MAMP bugtracker administrator: "~/Sites will be allowed starting v4.3." (adb - 04.12.2017)

Edit 3 (07/02/2018): New MAMP v4.3 (released 24/01/2018) allows "~/Sites" as localhost root folder, watch my answer below.

The localhost root folder to "~/Sites" is now allowed (from MAMP v4.3):


How to map a MacBook keyboard to write different characters? I have a MacBook computer with Japanese keyboard.
The only realistic way to use the keyboard is to change the input source to either British or Australian. So I changed it to Australian.
On doing so, I cannot write some characters I need on a daily basis. An example would be backtick (`) or tilde (~).
There is an option in Settings to replace the text with some other text. So I replaced OptionN with "~".
But the thing is it only works with some default Apple apps. I cannot use it on any text editor (and not even Terminal). Is there is any fix for this?

if you go to
system preference>keyboarder>input source

then click on >> option key (alt)
you are going to see all even in Japanese


OSX able to throttle down CPU on heavy usage? I have a company macbook with a 4 core 2,8Ghz i7 (to much power for a "laptop" if you ask me, whatever). Sadly the cooler seems not to be able to handle 100% cpu usage. Sometimes filevault stresses the CPU with the process "discimages helper". Every time this happens I hear the cooler goes crazy ... a few seconds later programs randomly crashes and shortly after the complete macbook freezes.

Any actions I can do to avoid too much heat on the CPU? Maybe limit discimageshelper to one core or software the holds back processes that consume to much CPU time?

You may want to run Software Update. It could be that you're missing a SMC update, which addresses freezing at (continuous) high CPU loads:

MacBook Pro SMC Firmware Update 1.5

Or this EFI update:

Macbook Pro EFI Firmware Update 2.3