Is there a way to silence phone calls but not text messages on an iPhone 6? I would like to have my text messages still make a noise, but I do not want phone calls other than my contacts ringing. I don't think Do Not Disturb will do this, but is there a way that someone else has discovered?

You can set Do Not Disturb to Everyone, No-One, Favourites... or any Contacts group


Making it easier to copy webpage text to the clipboard (in iOS)? I have a web page that updates occasionally with new information (I made it myself - simple HTML page - nothing special).

I regularly have to copy this page to the clipboard on my iOS device to paste its contents into another iOS app. My current strategy is to make it a home screen icon, so I can:

1) Tap it to launch

2) Tap and hold on the text to begin selecting

3) Click 'select all'

4) Click 'copy'.

I am wondering if there are any HTML/JS tricks I can enact on the webpage side, or alternatively any apps/iOS tricks I can do on the client side, that would reduce the number of total clicks/steps involved (anything fewer than the four taps above would be a 'win' for me!). If it helps, I always want to copy the page in its entirety.

This might be too simple an answer, but using an AppleScript or possibly Automator, or both to automate Safari should do the trick, and you could then use cron to schedule the task for you.


Trackpad malfunction after last macOS update (Sierra 10.12.3) I am looking for information / help from someone who might experienced similar issue in the past or has knowledge about the problem described below.

During last week I have been experiencing issues with trackpad on MacBook Pro Retina 13' Mid 2014.

It all have started the next day after latest macOS Sierra 10.12.3 update.

Symptoms:

not registering multitouch commands, like thumb + 3 or 4 fingers, swipes
freezes on the movement just to pick up a second later
stops to respond at all
moves and send click signals by itself without touching

Some/all of this happen when I try to use trackpad. When left alone, with external usb mouse plugged in, I can use the software mouse without any issue (using external mouse).

I have tried to fix it with:

Restart
NVRAM reset
SMC reset
macOS reinstallation

sadly, none of above helped.

Valuable Info: Apple Diagnostics tool shows that I have problem with memory (PPM002 error code and potential PPM003 and PPM004). Apple code reference page says nothing more about them but to contact nearest Apple Authorized Service Provider.

I will appreciate any form of help.

And yes... My warranty expired just two weeks ago.

My unrecognized trackpad and keyboard issue fixed after cleaning up desktop. A file was corrupting the start up process.


Is there anyway to turn off the dreaded slot machine date picker in iOS? The date picker in iOS is awful.  Every time I put something on my calendar it's a "game of chance" if I will notified about it.  Combine that with a touch screen and you have a recipe for scheduling disaster.

I would prefer to select a date from a calendar, or heaven-forbid, type it in using the keyboard!!!!!

Is there any way to turn this thing off?

Simple answer: Nope.

Sorry to disappoint you. I also dislike this new picker. It is found all over the new UI and it is just terrible. Whoever decided this was good design missed the boat.


I updated to 10.11.4 (15E65) and now I suddenly have 100 more GBs of space free? What could be the cause of this? The only thing I can think of would be mobile Time Machine backups, but I have no idea.

I think you might be on to something here, the .MobileBackups folder is supposed to be invisible, but sometimes does actually take up storage space. The other thing is caches, they can easily grow to gigabytes in size, though I wouldn't expect them to take up 100 GB by themselves...

Whatever the case, if you still have your files in your home folder, then you're probably good! But I hope you made a backup before installing the update anyways, right?!


What are your favorite Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts? What are your favorite keyboard shortcuts on Mac OS X?

ctrl+F2: Access the menu via the keyboard (Windows alt+space equivalent).


Can stolen iPhone still be tracked using Find My iPhone after restoring? My iPhone has just been stolen. The chances of the thief resetting is high but will still be locked to my iCloud.

If they reset it and connects to a Wi-Fi in hope it's not locked to iCloud will Find My iPhone tracking still work?

You can't restore an iPhone which has active Find My iPhone using iTunes.
If the iPhone is restored outside of iTunes, then Activation Lock will be enabled and you can still track the device providing a SIM card is inserted or the device is connected to Wi-Fi.


Customize accents when holding down a key I just noticed that if I hold down a key in mac when typing, that I get some custom bar that let's me choose between accents.

I'm a mathematician, and I like writing unicode math symbols directly (like α). Is there a way that I can customise the toolbar that pops-up, so that I can put my own mathematical unicode symbols in this toolbar ?

Navigate to /System/Library/Input Methods/PressAndHold.app/Contents/Resources/.
Backup the Keyboard-en.plist file.
Append the following to the Keyboard-en.plist file (before the closing </dict></plist>), changing the keycaps to be your desired space-delimited list of characters.

<key>Roman-Accent-t</key>
<dict>
    <key>Direction</key>
    <string>right</string>
    <key>Keycaps</key>
    <string>× ÷ √ π ∴ ∵ ≈ ≠ ∞</string>
    <key>Strings</key>
    <string>× ÷ √ π ∴ ∵ ≈ ≠ ∞</string>
</dict>

Feel free to change the Roman-Accent-t to any character you wish, providing it does not already have Press & Hold keys assigned. Also see shortening the Press & Hold time if you're using it regularly.


Is it safe to use frayed MagSafe with outer insulation part is broken I have a frayed 60w MagSafe with outer insulation / coaxial part is broken where some wires are cut (some are not). There's no problem with inner insulation part and the MagSafe working just fine when plugged to my MBP (I seal up the broken part with electrical tape).

My question is, is it safe to use MagSafe with broken outer insulation (some wires are cutted out)?
Will it damage my MBP especially the logicboard in long term? What the purpose of the outer insulation part?

Update : I have already sealed the cable when I created the post, so I will use image I found on the net to illustrate the situation.

This is my magsafe look like after sealed by electrical tape

Will it damage the logic board?

No.  The shielding is also the ground conductor.  So, you need it for two reasons.  If you cut it, you’ll be breaking the MacBook’s connection to ground which of course will affect it’s ability to function.  It’s like disconnecting the negative battery terminal from your car or any other battery power source - it will fail to function.

Will the "cracked" wire of a MacBook charger eletrocute me

It’s not “dangerous” to you, but if you were to somehow send voltage down this line you could damage your charger and/or Mac.  However, those vintage Mac laptops had a separate (replaceable) DC-in board that would take the brunt of any surge.  If there was damage, it would be contained there.


Realtime SCART input with audio on an iMac I was just wondering if there's any hardware I could purchase which would allow me to basically use my iMac as a television, for analogue signals mainly as I can already watch digital content on it without issue.

It'd be mainly for watching VHS, over SCART, so the hardware solution would ideally allow synchronised audio, as well as full screen display. A small amount of latency wouldn't be an issue really.

Thanks in advance.

For cheap & cheerful, maybe something like this - http://www.amazon.co.uk/ClimaxDigital-VCAP800-Capture-Mavericks-Mountain/dp/B00466VIB4

I've never tried it myself, so I've nothing to go on other than the reviews, which seem varied.


Notifications from Apple on MacBook air So, I tried to install newly purchased iPhone 5 and after logging into my apple ID account, a pop up message notified me that a verification code has been sent to macOS Sierra, where can I access the code on my laptop?
Furthermore I cannot now even verify the account because it is impermanently blocked as I tried too many times to enter a password for my Apple ID. Now I remembered it btw. So, to reset the apple ID password they ask me to enter a password for my macbook AIR, I am very sure of the password because I use the laptop every day, but when I enter the MacBook password the pop up message gives me an error and notes, that the entered password is incorrect. Do I even understand correctly that I need to enter the password which I enter when try to log into my computer, is there any other password am not aware of?

Now I manage to log into the phone and install different apple ID, but I have a problem to reactivate the old apple ID on my mac and also the phone, because on both devices they ask to verify the code sent to the other device, which I cannot access.

I've had multiple Mac computers and iOS devices and when I get a new device I get a pop up similar to what you mention (it just appears on the screen, as shown in the image below -- so I don't have to "do" anything). I have 2-factor authentication enabled, and you may check if you do as well. This site has more details.

You write that you are asked to "enter a password for my macbook AIR". That may be true, but also be careful to distinguish between the verification code they send and your MacBook Air login -- two very different things, and if you confuse one for the other I could imagine the frustration.

You may also find this page helpful as it specifically deals with Apple ID sign-in on different types of devices and (at the very bottom of the page) gives links to help in the situation you describe regarding forgetting your Apple ID.


Is it unusual for "Verify Disk" on Disk Utilities to take so long on a Time Machine drive? I have an external 3TB FW800 drive set up to be my Time Machine drive. I noticed some unusually high drive activity, and opened up Time Machine to see if it was backing up. Nope, TM showed previous backup was done about 30-40 minutes prior, and there was no activity in the app.

So to be overly cautious, I popped open Disk Utility, selected the external drive, and started a "Verify Disk." I've done this hundreds of times before on this and other drives...not talking about deep, hardcore tech support here. Simple stuff.

Well, for some reason, it's taking a VERY long time. It's been moving along, progressing through the various steps, but after 30 minutes, it still estimates another 1hr 35mins to go. It has gotten to "Checking multi-linked directories" and been sitting there for about 10-15 mins.

The drive has worked flawlessly for over a year, and is about 85% full (hasn't started deleting old backups though), but I don't ever remember it taking THIS long to verify.

Is there something about TM volumes that makes Verify Disk take longer, or should I be concerned about the hardware? What could be the reason for drive activity if TM wasn't backing up?

The storage mechanism where each backup is a full backup is what takes so incredibly long to verify a Time Machine drive. The multi-linked directories is precisely why Time Machine makes the check so slow and precisely why each backup doesn't save two copies of the same file.

You can benchmark this by timing your Mac and see how long it takes to verify the source drive. That process is limited by the IO rate (or latency) of the storage subsystem. It doesn't read the contents of each file (which would measure the bandwidth of the storage subsystem).

The number of input-output operations per seconds (iops) can be graphed in Activity Monitor if you select that option.

Each backup interval doubles the number of tops required by Disk Utility. Suppose your Time Machine backup drive contains two months of backups and your Mac doesn't sleep:

24 backups - one per hour
31 backups - one per day (the rest are deleted/pruned)
4 backups - one per week (the rest are pruned)

I could be off by one or two, but you're in the neighborhood of 60 copies of each file on your Mac that gets backed up (not all of them do - so maybe the discount is 15% of files don't back up). So if Disk Utility takes 15 minutes to check your Mac - the Time Machine drive will take 15 hours to check. That assumes the external drive is rated for the same iops as the internal drive - that typically isn't the case. You might estimate external drives are a factor of 2 slower due to iops being slower.

Now you're 30 hours waiting (or 25 hours if you discount 15% of the files).

In practice, I can't check my Time Machine volumes since I have three macs backing up three months (or far longer) to one drive. I simply can't wait for that drive to get "verified" or "fixed". Instead I buy a second drive and rotate them weekly or monthly.


AppleScript: How to extract section from string (based on defined characters)? Example:

set theText to "I ate an apple at 11:54 pm without the skin."

I would like theTime to be a string that contains the text: 11:54

So, I would like the opening text item delimiter to be at_ and the closing text item delimiter to be either _pm or _am, depending on which period exists in the string. (Note - Every instance of an underscore in this post is meant to represent a space because I am unable to represent a space in the Stack Exchange code formatting.)

The contents of theText will vary greatly. For example, it might be:

set theText to "I ate two navel oranges at 6:30 am with a glass of water."

But the time format will always remain constant. The time will always be preceded with an "at " and that "at " will always be the first instance of an "at " in the string. Similarly, the time will necessarily be followed by either " am" or " pm".

You can do it with pure AppleScript, even though the shell script method presented above is very nice:

set theText to "I ate an apple at 11:54 pm without the skin."
set the_colon_location to offset of ":" in theText
-- now we know where the colon is.
-- The Time is going to be on either side of it.
set the_starting_point to the_colon_location - 2
set the_ending_point to the_colon_location + 5
set the_time_string to characters the_starting_point thru the_ending_point of theText as string
-- in case the hour is not two digits, the first character will be a space
if character 1 of the_time_string is " " then
    set the_time_string to characters 2 thru -1 of the_time_string as string
end if
return the_time_string


Weird text alignment in System Information on Yosemite Somehow the text field in System Information appears truncated:

If I reduce the overall size, the content of the bottom pane disappears, kind of goes below the left-hand pane:

It kind of seems like there is a missing horizontal scrollbar below the bottom pane, but I am not sure if there should be one there.

This doesn't affect only Audio, but many other ones fields.

I removed the font caches (although it is unlikely that it is caused by font issues); fixed the permissions (nothing that seemed related), but no go...

This is on a Retina Macbook Pro 13" (mid 2014) running OS X Yosemite 10.10.3, and the issue was also present on 10.10.2.

Any idea what is going on?

As determined in comments above, it seems as though your scrollbar settings were the problem :)  I guess System Information is doing something unconventional with its window size due to the space taken up by the scrollbar when it's set to show Always...


"Play/Pause" button on remote does nothing, Apple TV 4K The "Play/Pause" button in the lower left corner of the remote control for the Apple TV 4K has no effect. Previously it stopped and started videos playing in apps such as Netflix.

Workaround: Clicking the physical button under the touch surface stops and starts the playing of videos.

Is there a feature, some setting, that may be altering this button’s behavior?

I am on the Apple’s beta channel for this Apple TV. Could this be some new feature in tvOS 11.3 beta recently installed?

Thankfully they have just fixed this issue.  If you update to the latest Beta version, it works again.


MacBook Pro Bluetooth Audio balance keeps changing by itself I've got a MacBook Pro (mid 2014) and Bluetooth earphones (TaoTronics TT-BH07). I'm usually good with noticing changes with audio in general. A few days ago, I've realized that sound was a bit like balanced to the right. I've thought it was just me or my ear, or the song that I was listening. Then it kept, and I went to the audio settings just to be sure. Here is (approximately) what it looked like:

I've changed the slider to center, and the problem went away. I've thought I've accidentally changed it somehow.

Today, I've started listening music and immediately realized that sound was again off to the right. Went to settings and it was again biased right like the screenshot. This time I'm 100% sure that I haven't messed with it accidentally.

I've fixed it again and currently I'm having no issues. But why would this keep happening? I'm on macOS 10.12.2.

UPDATE: Yes, I've seen Audio balance is being changed randomly in a MBP retina 15'' mid 2012 but my case seems to be isolated to Bluetooth Audio in particular. Never had (or at least realized) that this is the case with wired earphones or internal speakers. In addition, I use the same Bluetooth earphones with my iPhone and Apple Watch, and I'm not having any problems with them.

This is not the solution to the bug, however, there is an open source MacOS app that is a workaround. It watches for balance changes and centres immediately.

Disclaimer: I made the application. I had similar problems with both Bluetooth headphones and normal headphones.


software for autoslicing a song I'm searching a program for slicing a song (MP3, wav, whatever) automatically in different patterns.

I hope I understand correctly, you are trying to edit a song, perhaps for a ringtone or something ?

You could try Garageband that ships with your Mac,

Or you could try this Program, Audacity, I find it very useful.
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Hope it helps

Karl


Replace Apple In-App purchase with custom bitcoin based prefill system? Am I allowed to use in my iOS app a prepay system, where user can upload bitcoin to use in-app premium services? I want to avoid pay 30% for Apple.

According to the App Store Review Guidelines (under section 11.2), anything that circumvents the in-app purchase API can and likely will be pulled and/or rejected. Going around Apple and using your own system would be a bad idea with the possibility of you being ejected from the developer program.

Hope this helps!


Fullscreen Browser App without navbar I'm looking for a fullscreen browser app for iPad with no navbar, so the user can only navigate on the same page but not go anywhere else. Does anybody know an app for this? Or is it possible to do this in standard Safari?

I do not know how to disable the navigation bar on Safari for iOS. However, applications exist for iOS that may satisfy your requirement. You may want to search the internet for terms such as "kiosk browser ipad" or a similar query.

One of these applications is called Amtel Secure Browser Kiosk. I have never personally used it, but it is free.

  Amtel provides a secure restricted browser & kiosk application for iOS
  users. Browser policies can be configured such that only whitelisted
  links are made available to the end users. The application is designed
  to help IT departments at Healthcare organizations, Financial
  institutions, Education sector, Libraries, Hi-tech, Fleet management
  etc manage browser security on the iOS devices. The Administrator can
  customize the settings to stop blacklisted sites on the devices or
  allow only favorite sites on the browser. The kiosk mode is designed
  to give the users the benefits of mobile device technology with fewer
  distractions & security risks. The configuration of browser settings
  is done at Amtel Mobile Device Management console - MDM.


Stop AppleUSBMultitouchDriver From Trying I am having problems with the multitouch subsystem of my MacBook Pro. But I am happy working with an external USB keyboard. But: that multitouch driver keeps trying to load, I think. Sometimes it affects my external mouse and keyboard performance. So, therefore, I'd like the AppleUSBMultitouchDriver to stop trying.

I get these messages in Console, about once a second:

Sep 17 17:57:24 jmbp kernel[0]: AppleUSBMultitouchDriver::_getFeatureReportInfo - DeviceRequest returned error 0xe00002c0 (interface 1, reportID 0xa1)
Sep 17 17:57:24 jmbp kernel[0]: AppleUSBMultitouchDebug: _getFeatureReportInfo returned an error in AppleUSBMultitouchDriver::_deviceGetReportWithLookUp
Sep 17 17:57:24 jmbp kernel[0]: AppleUSBMultitouchDriver::_getFeatureReportInfo - DeviceRequest returned with result 0xe00002c0 - retrying (reportID 0xd9)
Sep 17 17:57:24 jmbp kernel[0]: AppleUSBMultitouchDriver::_getFeatureReportInfo - DeviceRequest returned error 0xe00002c0 (interface 1, reportID 0xd9)
Sep 17 17:57:24 jmbp kernel[0]: AppleUSBMultitouchDebug: _getFeatureReportInfo returned an error in AppleUSBMultitouchDriver::_deviceGetReportWithLookUp

Going to sleep sometimes helps, but sometimes not. And this driver problem even affects how easy it is to go to sleep, the depth of sleep. So an effective method to just keep this loop from happening would be appreciated!

I have an older OS X, but try with:

sudo kextunload -b  com.apple.driver.AppleUSBMultitouch


What caused iPad Air to go black screen and not power up? When I was on my iPad Air last night an Apple warning appeared.
Usually I can go into settings and clear it.
This one kept flashing.
I clicked the button on bottom left to re-log in.
After, I entered my password, the tablet went black and unresponsive.
Now it won't power up?

I am unsure of what to do now, any help is much appreciated.

It could be many things. I would go through this checklist and possible ask a follow on question when one item fails or you can't complete the checklist to rule out common reasons for this:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201412


iPhone: Settings > Safari > Databases no longer visible All,

I'm trying to see the local storage databases on my iPhone.

A variety of Google searches made this clear - if you go to "Settings", then "Safari" - you'll see a "Database" panel (just under "Accept Cookies...")

However, on MY iPhone - "Databases" is not listed.

I'm 99.9% sure that I HAVE databases on my phone:

I'm testing an HTML5 application that uses a database. According to the app, the database exists, and I can write to and read from it
I use Gmail through Safari - I'm virtually certain that it uses a database

I'm also virtually certain that I recall seeing the "Database" options in the past.

I just upgraded to iOS 4.3.5 - is it possible that this version moved the function to view the databases to someplace besides Settings > Safari? If so, where?

Or, is it a bug that the databases aren't getting displayed?

Thanks in advance!

I was getting a little frustrated... I knew there were local safari databases on my phone, even though they weren't shown in the Settings > Safari panel.

So - as a last resort - I powered off my phone, and restarted. Sure enough, there they were, right where I expected them.


Security implications of user owned directory in /Applications I was checking the content of /Applications and I saw that some directory are owned by root and some are owned by myUser.
Eg:
$ cd /Applications
$ ls -l
$ drwxr-xr-x   3 myUser  admin   96 Sep  1 11:30 myApp
$ drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel   96 Sep  1 11:30 myOtherApp

Are they any security implications of having an user owned directory in /Applications?
Maybe I am wrong but if the directory is not root owned, then any script can just change its content and swap the binary for example. Same for any directory in /myUser/Applications.
Or does macOS have an integrity protection for that?

On macOS, root doesn’t play much role as any user that is an administrator functions with the same power. When you type any admin user and that admin password in a permission dialog, that makes any user  (even a non-admin user) root.
Some apps have a script or framework to change ownership to root, others don’t change it (like when you copy an app from Downloads or a disk image)
The information you show makes no difference security wise. This is just permissions on a folder and package that anyone can read and execute. Other mechanisms check for known bad software and validate that parts of the application have not been tampered with.


On dual-boot macOS/Ubuntu Mojave install failed with "This disk cannot be used to startup your computer." My box is mid 2012 MacBook Pro, 1 TB HD, Sierra 10.12.6. It has dual-booted with Ubuntu using rEFInd until the High Sierra installation failed, after which I only used Ubuntu. After uninstalling rEFInd I'm attempting to upgrade the macOS side to Mojave and get the error above. I've already run First Aid on the Macintosh HD. Here's the partitioning:

# diskutil list disk0
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            500.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:           Linux Filesystem                         498.8 GB   disk0s4
# gpt -r show disk0
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         MBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640   977270656      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   977680296     1269536      3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   978949832   974313152      4  GPT part - 0FC63DAF-8483-4772-8E79-3D69D8477DE4
  1953262984      262151
  1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
  1953525167           1         Sec GPT header

Is there a way to install Mojave without reformatting?

I deleted the Ubuntu partition and then used macOS utilities, Disk Utility and diskutil to recover that space. Then the upgrade to Mojave proceeded normally. At that point I used these utilities to resize the Macintosh HD partition to half the disk and created a following spacer partition of 128 MiB (see rEFInd forum). I then reinstalled rEFInd from macOS and Ubuntu in the remaining free space. The result is a working Mojave/Ubuntu dual-boot system.


How to mount nfs drive on macOS with read+write access? I'm trying to mount a drive from Linux on my macOS El Capitan laptop. I try a command like this:

sudo mount -o rw -t nfs nfs.subdomain.employer.com:/ifs/home/username /private/workspace/
cd /private/workspace/
echo "hello" > test.txt
-bash: test.txt: Permission denied

where username (the text, not the uid) is the same on my laptop as it is on the server (controlled by my employer). Unfortunately, while I can read files, I'm not getting write access. A colleague of mine said he tried that command from linux as my account and said it worked, but he doesn't know much about macs.

I have this setup, please do the machine/folder names translation according to your case.
In /etc/exports on server side (mine is a centos 7):
/workspace_guest/02.code
172.20.0.1(rw,sync,insecure,all_squash,anonuid=1000,anongid=1000)

From client side (macOS Catalina Version 10.15.6)
$ sudo mount -t nfs -o resvport,rw,noowners 172.20.0.100:/workspace_guest/02.code /Volumes/C76/02.code

There is a good explanation in this post as "all_squash will map all UIDs and GIDs to the anonymous user, and anonuid and anongid set the UID and GID of the anonymous user.". I make it on the client side as "noowner" is to apply the current user/group as the "anonymous". You can also refer to the other post for the configuration.


Jailbroken iPhone 3G Wi-Fi is greyed out, no 3G, need to open a mobileconfig file or load pan editing I have a friend’s iPhone 3G that does not and has not at any time had the Wi-Fi connection available. It is greyed out with "No Wi-Fi". I have restored it a dozen times to no end. He wants me to put his phone on Straight Talk, but to do so I need to open a mobileconfig file which is usually emailed, or edit the APN with a tethering app through Cydia. I have installed the apps into Cydia through Cyder II, but Cydia still cannot load them without internet. Help me please, I've been hunting for and trying work-arounds for hours.

I have heard many times of wifi greyed out, and generally it was right after updating their iOS with a new version. No amount of DFU seemed to fix it, and I think it is because the issue was with the firmware killing the iPhone's wifi.

I am fairly certain Apple repairs these types of problems, you might even call them and see if they will replace it as their update possibly caused it.

For the second piece, If you are trying to get a network connection without wifi, prepare for some fun. It looks like you will need to run some sort of proxy service on your computer, modify some plists, and then run a few commands.
The first link has some more mac os x specific stuff, but they are both worth a read.

http://alk2blog.blogspot.com/2008/08/ssh-to-get-your-iphone-online-via-usb.html
http://modmyi.com/forums/general-iphone-chat/323281-how-internet-iphone-through-usb-no-wifi-no-edge.html


iTunes says I can't back up iPhone because I don't have enough space...but I do I'm trying to move my iphone data from my old iPhone 5 to an iPhone 6s. To start, I'm trying to back up my iPhone 5 to my Windows 7 computer running iTunes. It connects, starts the backup, but about 15 minutes into it I get a message saying there's not enough space on the computer to do the backup.

I have 582GB free on that drive (It's backing up to the C: drive).

So, needless to say, I'm confused. I've found a few articles that talk about issues with iCloud and wireless backing up, but this is connected direction to my PC so I don't think that's the issue.

The official Apple documentation says to "free up space" which isn't the issue, or contact support. So, no real help there, either.

So after much swearing and several hours of fiddling, I finally discovered what the issue was.

Windows appears to have a limit on how many files can exist in a directory tree. iOS backups consist of tens of thousands of individual files. And if you have several backups in your backup folder, we're talking a whole lot of files.

The solution ended up being fairly simple:

find your backup folder on your hard drive
move most (or all) of the backups that are in that folder to a separate folder and/or drive.

Then try backing up again. For me, that solved it and I was able to get the backup to run.


How to fix Quicktime that is not playing videos from Apple's website? I have a windows 7 system and would like to watch one of Apple's keynotes.

I have downloaded Quicktime player version 7.0 and it automatically starts as soon as I click on the video. But after starting nothing seems to be happening. I just see a Quicktime loading screen and that is it. No video seen.
I have problems playing any Quicktime video for that matter especially from the Apple website.

What could be going wrong and how to fix?

In the past I had ad blockers that picked up on Apple's website videos (not the keynote that you have mentioned specifically) but worth checking if you have any extensions or addons installed that is currently doing that


Have find my iphone istalled in ipad and it's working, can't log into icloud my ipad was recently stolen, I setup find my Iphone app and have it activated, but when I try to log into Icloud it tells me I have to setup a device with that account. If I have log into itunes and have activated the find my iphone app, doesnt that mean I have activated a device with that id?? If any could help I'd appreciate it.

Maybe someone steal your iPhone and disable wifi and gps, and also cancel your Apple ID(you know this days hacking iPhone password is very easy. Are you sure you set up "find my iPhone" on your device but not "find my friends"?


How to disable DNS over HTTPS (DoH) and DNS over TLS (DoT) network-wide for Apple iOS and macOS I am running an the Open Source OpenWrt router firmware and wish to disable DoH and DoT for the whole network. In my network lots of latest iOS and macOS devices.
To disable DoH for Firefox is used this guide Canary domain - use-application-dns.net. I search for a similar solution for Apple based devices.

Operating systems Apple
Apple's iOS 14 and macOS 11 will support both DNS over HTTPS and DNS
over TLS (DoT) when they are released in the fall of 2020.

There's no similar network-wide opt-out canary domain feature for iOS and macOS in general. However, if you use for example Firefox on macOS, you can use that feature to disable it for that one browser in particular - unless the user opts-in to DoH/DoT in which case the feature does not do anything.
You can usually block DoT in your OpenWrt router by blocking outgoing port 853. You can usually block DoH by blocking port 443, however that would also mean blocking most web sites.
Note that if you do block port 853 in your router, iOS will give the user a warning that encrypted DNS is being blocked by the network!
If there's a specific DNS server (or smaller list of servers) that you do not want to be used on your network, you can block all traffic to that IP address in your OpenWrt router. Similar warnings apply.
Finally if you have control over the Apple devices yourself, you can use MDM to change their DNS settings. In particular you could for example enable DoH and point it to your own server - or point it to a server that doesn't exist - effectively disabling it.


Why does the Kind column show the Chinese characters 文件 for Markdown files? Finder shows the Chinese characters 文件 next the md text in the Kind column for Markdown files:

Same is shown in the inspector:

Through Google Translate I found that the characters 文件 mean file in Chinese.

Why is Finder showing the word file in md file in Chinese?
How can I revert it to English?

Here I've uploaded a sample file that shows this behaviour on my machine.

I'm on macOS 10.15.3, the preferred system language is English (UK). No other files show any Chinese characters.

What I've tried

Per suggestion of bjbk I've set the Open with to Visual Studio Code and restarted. This did not change the Kind column contents.

Per suggestion of WGroleau I checked if file README.md returned the same Chinese characters. It does not, it simply returns:

README.md: UTF-8 Unicode text

I've tried using the mdls command on the file, it shows that the content type is com.unknown.md. Maybe that's can help pinpoint the issue?

Full mdls output below:

_kMDItemDisplayNameWithExtensions      = "README.md"
kMDItemContentCreationDate             = 2020-01-20 21:18:03 +0000
kMDItemContentCreationDate_Ranking     = 2020-01-20 00:00:00 +0000
kMDItemContentModificationDate         = 2020-03-14 17:21:13 +0000
kMDItemContentModificationDate_Ranking = 2020-03-14 00:00:00 +0000
kMDItemContentType                     = "com.unknown.md"
kMDItemContentTypeTree                 = (
    "com.unknown.md",
    "public.text",
    "public.data",
    "public.item",
    "public.content",
    "public.plain-text"
)
kMDItemDateAdded                       = 2020-03-14 17:18:56 +0000
kMDItemDateAdded_Ranking               = 2020-03-14 00:00:00 +0000
kMDItemDisplayName                     = "README.md"
kMDItemDocumentIdentifier              = 0
kMDItemFSContentChangeDate             = 2020-03-14 17:21:13 +0000
kMDItemFSCreationDate                  = 2020-01-20 21:18:03 +0000
kMDItemFSCreatorCode                   = ""
kMDItemFSFinderFlags                   = 0
kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon                 = (null)
kMDItemFSInvisible                     = 0
kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden             = 0
kMDItemFSIsStationery                  = (null)
kMDItemFSLabel                         = 0
kMDItemFSName                          = "README.md"
kMDItemFSNodeCount                     = (null)
kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID                  = 20
kMDItemFSOwnerUserID                   = 502
kMDItemFSSize                          = 97
kMDItemFSTypeCode                      = ""
kMDItemInterestingDate_Ranking         = 2020-03-14 00:00:00 +0000
kMDItemKind                            = "md"
kMDItemLastUsedDate                    = 2020-03-14 17:21:05 +0000
kMDItemLastUsedDate_Ranking            = 2020-03-14 00:00:00 +0000
kMDItemLogicalSize                     = 97
kMDItemPhysicalSize                    = 4096
kMDItemUseCount                        = 21
kMDItemUsedDates                       = (
    "2020-03-13 23:00:00 +0000"
)

The reason you have that text is two-fold:

An application you installed (might even be Sublime Text) defined a new type - namely kMDItemContentType of "com.unknown.md"
CoreServices read the localized description from that app and makes it available to Finder.

To fix this, fix, update or uninstall the app that defined com.unknown.md as a core file type paying attention to the localized text it provides to Finder to display.

Tracking this down will take a little sleuthing since you haven't disclosed the identity of the app that has exerted control as the default app to open that file type. That should be shown in the cropped portion of the get info you showed in your question.

Also, there are layers of programs that can "ask" to open a file type, and layers of file type on each file (shown as kMDItemContentTypeTree) - so depending on the order in which you install apps, the same Mac with the same apps installed might get different results based on the order in which the apps installed, and how you use the apps and if you change and of the spotlight / CoreServices defaults.

To pick this apart, I use a tool lsregister to dump the entire launch services database and parse out items. It's a bit painstaking, but you can always do this if you can't find the app you installed, right click on the icon in question and use Open With... to change the default app to one you prefer how it shows in Finder. Also - now that you know which app Finder is trusting to "name" that new file type/kind - you can open a support request with that software maker to change what's displayed - they likely made a bug in the localization and listed Chinese text for the UK English localized text.


launchctl config file location? I'm trying to configure a NetBoot image so that a script will automatically launch on the target machine after it boots from the image

I've been using this article as a reference:

https://medium.com/@fahimhossain_16989/adding-startup-scripts-to-launch-daemon-on-mac-os-x-sierra-10-12-6-7e0318c74de1

my question is: when the following command is run...

# -w flag permanently adds the plist to the Launch Daemon
sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.startup.plist

...where is the resulting permanent configuration entry stored on the hard drive?

To clarify: I'm not asking for the location of the .plist file, I'm asking how/where does the system remember the .plist files that you've configured to run on startup using the 'sudo launchctl load' command?

You shouldn't need to explicitly load your daemon in this situation;
  plists in /Library/LaunchDaemons/ are auto-loaded at system startup
  (provided their format, permissions etc are correct). You only need
  launchctl load if you want to load a daemon after startup, or if it's
  been explicitly disabled and you want to override that.

– Gordon Davisson


Numbers: Line graphs for cell values across multiple worksheets I want to create a line graph whose reference data is across multiple worksheets.
For example: I have 5 different worksheets (named W1 to W5)
In each of the worksheet, a specific cell (Ex: B2) in a specific table (Ex: Tab_Summary) is of interest to me.
I want to plot a line graph to show trends of (Tab_Summary:B2) across each of the worksheets W1 to W5.

Hopefully someone knows how to source data from multiple table inputs, but I just use brute force and make one table that contains all data I need to chart. Tables can refer to data from multiple other tables, so now with your charting data in one table, charting becomes a snap.


How can I recover iPhone data lost after iOS upgrade? I've had my iPhone 4  for about 3 months and when I connected it to my computer today I was prompted to update the iOS, so I did. But somehow I didn't realise that it meant I was going to need some kind of password once the update had been downloaded etc... having failed to remember it after a few attempts I simply left iTunes to get some troubleshooting advice. When I got back it seems that the password prompt had disappeared and my phone seems to be back to its original settings.

How can I restore the data that was on the phone?

Right click your iPhone in your iTunes' sidebar, then select "Restore from Backup". iTunes should ask you now what backup you want to restore from, just select the latest one (should be preselected) and it should start restoring all you data.


Why is Mac OSX temp. directory in weird path Comparing to Linux systems OSX default temporary directory seems to be in a weird path.

I want to know why that is, at least how is this organized. Here are my observations:

My echo "$TMPDIR" output is /var/folders/pd/l3jkqy0s6_59p4vhlbx3__dr0000gp/T/.

When I cd to /var/folders/ and ran tree from it and noticed the following structure/pattern:

├── pd
│   └── k7jkgy2s3_99p4vhlbx3__dr0gp
│       ├── 0
│       │   ├── com.apple.CalendarAgent
│       │   ├── com.apple.LaunchServices-231-v2.csstore
│       │   ├── ....
│       ├── C
│       │   ├── com.avastsecurelinehelper
│       │   │   └── com.apple.metal...
│       │   ├── avast.passwords.PasswordsHelperApp
│       │   │   ├── avast.passwords.PasswordsHelperApp
│       │   ├── ....
│       └── T
│           ├── AudioComponentRegistrar
│           ├── TemporaryItems
│           ├── VSCode\ Crashes
└── zz
    ├── 55g2846x3r5_sp1w7xvd81ch0000gn
    │   ├── 0
    │   │   ├── com.apple.LaunchServices-231-v2.csstore
    │   │   ├── ...
    │   ├── C [error opening dir]
    │   └── T [error opening dir]
    ├── zyxvpxwx6ckaln_n000006w00011q
    ├──  ...

The TLDs like pd and zz are noticeable. Also the single charactered directories like 0, C, T.

What do they mean or what convention do they follow?

The reason for having these folders instead of a more simple /tmp that you might know from other systems is to prevent a number of security issues. Mainly some programs create files/folders/pipes in /tmp that could be used to exploit that program or user data. Therefore these programs need to ensure that the file permissions on those files are such that other user's programs cannot access them.

The problem is that this is sometimes forgotten or ignored, and this creates security holes. This is not only the case on macOS, but also on Linux that you mention as your comparison. There exist similar solutions on Linux to this problem, but contrary to macOS, they're usually not installed by default on a home user setup. On Linux these solutions are known as "polyinstantiated /tmp directory" and "PrivateTmp".

The solution on macOS is to have a seperate temporary files folder for each user. This way one user cannot interfere with other user's temporary folders (due to name clashes or intentionally).

The placement in /var/folders is most probably just to keep it away from /Users, which would otherwise be a logical place to store something for each user. The reasoning is that this folder contains things that are temporary of nature, and therefore you do not want it in /Users, which could be a network share on a server, and most probably included in backups, etc.

The odd name "k7jkgy2s3_99p4vhlbx3" you see is actually just generated from the unix uid (user id, 32-bit) and the users uuid (universally unique identifier, 128-bit). Those two are concatenated and then converted into a file name by mapping each set of 5 bits to a character from the set '0123456789_bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz'. This makes it harder for programs to intentionally opening up file paths for other users, as they would need to know this name in advance.

The folders "pd" and "zz" that you call TLDs are simply the first two characters of the above mentioned encoding. The idea is that if you have a large corporate system then you wouldn't want to have thousands of folders (one for each user) inside the same folder. Instead you have fewer folders that are combinations of two characters (like pd, zz, bc, etc.) - and in each of those you then have for example hundreds of folders for those users.

The folders below that again, "C, T, 0" are just identifiers to specify that the contents of those folders are "caches", "temporary files" and "user files" accordingly.


Easiest way to connect two non-thunderbolt monitors to my Macbook Pro 2017 and charge it at the same time? I started a new job working remote recently. I've been provided a Macbook Pro 2017 (EDIT: model is 13", non-touch, with 2 Thunderbolt ports) and two non-Thunderbolt monitors (Dell P2217H). I have bought two docks/hubs so far, and before I buy a third that still doesn't work how I want, I think I need to ask for help.

I want to be able to run my two external monitors, with three USB-A peripherals, all with the laptop charging as well. The second hub I bought (this model from Satechi: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XRVX3XM) seemed like it should allow this. It uses both the Macbook's Thunderbolt ports and provides HDMI, Thunderbolt, and USB-C out, along with two USB-A. The monitors have two USB-A ports as well which I thought would work if connected by Thunderbolt.

However, the monitor connected by Thunderbolt doesn't seem to be sending USB-A signals. More significantly, the USB-C port on the hub doesn't work for charging OR for display. Am I doing something wrong? Is a Thunderbolt port needed just to CHARGE the damn thing?

I found a hub for $500 that passes through both Thunderbolt ports, but that seems like overkill. Is that really what's required to get something like this working? I feel like I have to be missing something because this doesn't seem like an unusual use case at all. Thanks in advance.

Regarding your Satechi hub and the monitors:

"the monitor connected by Thunderbolt doesn't seem to be sending USB-A signals"

This is correct. You're not actually connecting the monitor by Thunderbolt, as the monitor does not support Thunderbolt at all. The monitor supports VGA, DisplayPort and HDMI, so you probably have a USB-C to DisplayPort cable or similar connecting the hub and the monitor. That cable will transfer a picture to the display, but it won't get the USB-A ports on the monitor working. To get the USB-A ports on the monitor working, you need to connect the upstream USB-B port on the monitor to one of the USB ports on your hub.

"More significantly, the USB-C port on the hub doesn't work for charging OR for display."

The USB-C port on the hub is not supposed to work for transferring a display signal. Only the HDMI video output port and the Thunderbolt 3 port on the hub have a display signal in them. This is also visible in the graphics in the link you have provided.

The USB-C port on the hub is also not supposed to work for charging. This is listed in the product description on your link: "Please note the second USB-C port is for data transfer use only." - i.e. no power delivery.

Alternatives

Instead of the Satechi hub product, you could look a other products that fit your requirements better:

For example the OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock takes up a single Thunderbolt 3 port on your laptop - leaving the other one free. It does so while providing a display signal for both monitors, charging your laptop and providing an addition 5 x USB-A ports, 1 x USB-C port, SD-card reader and Ethernet. It is priced at approx. 295$.

Another example is the CalDigit Pro Dock that similarly takes up a single Thunderbolt 3 port on your computer while allowing you to connect two displays, charge the laptop and have access to 3 x USB-A ports, 1 x USB-C, Ethernet and SD card reader. It is priced at approx. 200$.

Multiple similar Thunderbolt 3 docks exists at various price points from various manufacturers.


How do I run a terminal command for different values How do I have to label i such that the do command is repeated for all values of i.

E.g.

if i =2:
cd /Users/xxx/zTree; wine explorer /desktop=1,640x480 zleaf.exe /language english /name lab1
cd /Users/xxx/zTree; wine explorer /desktop=2,640x480 zleaf.exe /language english /name lab2

But somehow this does not work, where is my mistake?

display dialog "how many leafs?" default answer ""

set i to the text returned of result as integer
repeat while i > 0
  tell application "Terminal"
    do script "cd /Users/xxx/zTree; wine explorer /desktop=$i,640x480 zleaf.exe /language english /name lab$i"
    set i to i - 1
    activate
  end tell
end repeat

medbot is right that you should really do this as a shell script but since it's hard to do dialog boxes like in Applescript here's the answer:

display dialog "how many leafs?" default answer ""

set i to the text returned of result as integer
repeat while i > 0
    tell application "Terminal"
        do script "cd /Users/xxx/zTree; wine explorer /desktop=" & i & ",640x480 zleaf.exe /language english /name lab" & i
    end tell
set i to i - 1
end repeat


iCloud account locked for security reasons I've been having troubles with my iCloud account on my iPhone lately and it recently became really annoying in the sense that i can't do basic things such as updating apps.

Basically i have been told that due to security reasons i had to verify my account. Following that procedure i was given a security phone number entry to get some sort of key to reinitialize my account's password. Here's the twist though : I no longer have that phone number and I don't have any sort of key recovery either. Ultimately i just thought of logging out of the iCloud account - side question here, can anybody tell me what kind of data I exactly lose when I log off the iCloud session on the iphone ? - but then i realised that to logg OFF the account i had to logg IN that same account I do not have the logs of. Am I doing something wrong or is this kind of an irrelevant way to deal with people who lost their logs ?

Thank you for reading/helping out.

It looks like you have to work with Apple to recover your account. Start here and when you get to the two-factor authentication steps, there will be a button with text along the line of "I don't have access to my authentication device" and by clicking this you can start a process which will allow Apple to manually verify your identity and restore control of the account to you.


How to open a Zoom link in a non-browser app without being prompted? URLs have long been the domain of web browsers, but some apps challenge this assumption by asking your browser to open a link in their dedicated app.

Problem: Safari Keeps Asking Permission

For example, I use Zoom.us, a videoconferencing service. They give me a link associated with my conference call that's easy to throw into a calendar invite, like https://ibm.zoom.us/j/9747900418. When I click the link, my browser opens it, authenticates me, and asks me permission to open the link in Zoom.us.app, which I've already installed.

After opening hundred of meetings this way, I'm sick of it asking me permission. I want Safari to remember that it's allowed to open zoom.us/* links in Zoom.us.app.

What I've Tried

Under Safari > Preferences > Websites, I escalated privileges for Zoom-related items:

General > Auto-Play > ibm.zoom.us was "Stop media with sound"; set to "Allow Auto-Play"
Plug-ins > Zoom Launcher 3.0.1 > ibm.zoom.us was "Ask"; set to "On"
Plug-ins > Zoom Launcher 3.0.1 > support.zoom.us was "Ask"; set to "On"

This had no effect. So how can I get Zoom links to open correctly?

Have you tried rewriting the URL so that it uses the zoommtg:// protocol?
You rewrite a URL of this format ...
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/123456789?pwd=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

... like this:
zoommtg://zoom.us/join?confno=123456789&pwd=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

If you have the Zoom app/client installed on a Mac, using URLs with the zoommtg protocol should cause them to open directly in the Zoom app, no matter where the URL is clicked from. Personally, I use this URL format in the Notes field of Calendar events, and it works great.


What's this separate "Phone" task section in app switcher? I was unable to google what the possibilities of this separate "chrome on mobile" task in the cmd-tab app switcher is. What's it supposed to do?

That allows you to open a browsing session active on your phone in Chrome on your Mac in Chrome


How to add a drawer of apps on the dock? There are way too many app icons on my dock.  Is there a way to add drawers of apps on the dock so each drawer contains a list of apps?

While the Dock doesn't have the concept of "folders" for the apps that are pinned to or running in it, as of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard the Stacks feature can provide something similar.

Dragging the Applications folder from the Finder into the "Stacks section" (right of the white-dashed line) of the Dock will add it as a Stack. You can then click the folder to see something like this:

If you want subsets of your Applications as separate Stacks, you can create folders for each somewhere in your filesystem, and add aliases for the desired applications. (Note that dragging an app from the Applications folder to another folder makes an alias by default. Convenient!)

The results look like this:

All this being said, an alternative if you have OS X 10.7 Lion is to use Launchpad to organize and access your apps, keeping the contents of your Dock as minimal as possible.


Unable to update to Mojave Where I work, there is an iMac Pro with a broken hard drive. My company doesn't want to dish out money to fix it, so I took it and installed Mac OS High Sierra on an external hard drive and booted from it. Everything works well even though there is some lag due to the USB connection.

I'm unable to install Mojave update due to "you may not install to this volume because it is missing a firmware partition" error. I have tried erasing and reinstalling Mojave from recovery but it doesn't work as well.

I tried installing Mojave on the hard drive using my Macbook and installed and booted fine, however, when I try to boot the iMac from it, it doesn't work.

I'm not sure what else to do. I also tried installing Sierra then updating to High Sierra, however that didn't do any firmware updates.

Below is the iMac specifications:

Model Name: iMac

Model Identifier:   iMac15,1

Processor Name: Intel Core i5

Processor Speed:    3.5 GHz

Number of Processors:   1

Total Number of Cores:  4

L2 Cache (per Core):    256 KB

L3 Cache:   6 MB

Memory: 16 GB

Boot ROM Version:   IM151.0207.B07

SMC Version (system):   2.23f11

Having come across a similar error myself, I found that it won't install Mojave onto an external hard disk due its need for the EFI partition to be on a local disk. The EFI partition is only 200MB+, so in theory you could get away with installing a very small hard-drive internally and just stick the EFI partition there. Once Mojave's installed, you can move the EFI partition to a USB (probably needs to be placed before any other partitions).

I use Linux/Gparted to change partitions for this purpose. You can do that entirely from e.g. the Ubuntu install USB without having to install Linux at all. You probably have an EFI partition somewhere on your USB drive, so simply copy it to an internal hard-drive. Since it's probably only 250MB, you can get such drives for extremely cheap off eBay if you don't have a drive lying around somewhere from an archaic machine.


Sierra Automator KeyboardViewer App Shortcut KeyboardViewer app is saved from this AppleScript.

on run {input, parameters}
    if application "KeyboardViewer" is running then
        quit application "KeyboardViewer"
    else
        activate application "KeyboardViewer"
    end if
    return input
end run

Dock toggle save. Adding shortcut to above, needs some work...

Syntax error Can’t set application "KeyboardViewer" to some object. Access not allowed.

tell application "System Events"
    set application "KeyboardViewer" to (keystroke "K" using control down)
end tell

Thanks all! process whose frontmost is true and visible is true froze Keyboard Viewer behind a Finder window that also froze - 2 freezes in 2 days. Following seems to work quite well, in macOS 10.13.2. Simply add the delay 1.

    on run {input, parameters}
        if application "KeyboardViewer" is running then
            quit application "KeyboardViewer"
            delay 1
        else if application "KeyboardViewer" is not running then
            activate application "KeyboardViewer"
        end if
        return input
    end run


How to turn on Dark Mode in Pages I just updated to Mojave, and I am really enjoying Dark mode. Today I opened Pages for the first time. When opening Pages I see a splash screen that says what is new with Pages and Dark mode is listed, but for some reason Pages is not showing in dark mode.

Anyone have this issue, and have been able to resolve it?

I resolved the issue. Turns out that my dark mode preferences switched back to Light mode. When I turned Dark Mode back on, Pages switch to Dark mode as well.

Looks like I have a different problem... My Dark Mode seems to be switching back to light mode from time to time.

I resolved this toggle issue here:
https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/337808/183752


How to change bookmarks in Firefox shortcuts with right mouse button? If I right click on a bookmark in my shortcuts, there are no options to modify it. Usually in other operating systems, you can change a bookmark with the right mouse button.

(The only way I found out to modify them is via the main menu.)

If you select 'Show All Bookmarks', the Bookmark Library will open.  You can then right-click there and change.

You are quite right in that you cannot right click a menu item in OS X and have it perform a secondary function (not in any of the major browsers anyway).

So the quick way to achieve what you want is - Shift-Command B to bring up the Bookmark Library.


Why am I seeing emojis under my "frequently used" section that I've never even used? Recently I've been seeing emojis under the frequently used section that I've never even used before. Is it possible I'm seeing my husbands frequently used emojis on my phone somehow?

The list of frequently used emoji is literally a list of emojis that you've used most often. This list does not synchronise over iCloud. The only other way emojis could be in the list is that the frequent list is pre-populated when restoring iOS with a standard set of emojis.


How can I dismiss a frozen "Deleting Trash" dialog box? I have the trash dialog box up, and it's frozen. What process needs to be killed in order to remove it, without having to restart?


When I open Terminal, I get an "I have no name!" prompt Suddenly, this morning, I open a Terminal window and I get this:

I have no name!@macbook:~$ whoami
502

** I am not a number!  I am a human being! **

What gives?  Anyone know what I need to do to get my name back?

I suppose there are two problems here, one is that my hostname is undefined, the other is that whoami reports my name as a number.

Something in memory got corrupted, and the mapping between your userID (502) and your username (ipd) was lost.  I've seen it happen (usually when I've manually killed hung system processes), although I'm not sure exactly what causes it.  launchd maybe?

Because that mapping is lost, whoami can't convert your ID into a username so returns the ID, and your prompt defaults to the "I have no name!" message because you effectively don't have a name.

Logging out and back in might fixit, but restarting is the best way (as you discovered).

Basically, it's a symptom of another problem, and not a problem in and of itself.


How To Record CPU and Memory Usage Data I want to profile the execution of a program to see what in particular is slowing it down - whether it hits a memory cap or if my CPU is not powerful enough.

Activity Monitor (the one that comes with OS X) is great, but I don't think it can record data (i.e. I think you can only see current RAM and CPU usage, not usage from the past).

I want the usage broken down by process if possible, so I can control for other things spiking in usage.

Do you know of any application that has this functionality?

To see if CPU or memory is the issue you might start with iostat and vm_stat  You would run these from a Terminal.

To get it to continually record you need to run it as

iostat n

where n is the number of seconds between executions.

If you need to look at memory usage then you would want

vm_stat n

If you want to get information on a particular program then you would probably need to write a script that called something like

ps wwaux | grep your_program_name

over and over.


iMessage message routing I had a question on how iMessage message routing works.

Assume this setup:

Thing1:
iPhone 555-555-5555
Apple ID: thing1@me.com

Thing2:
iPhone: 999-999-9999
Apple ID: thing2@me.com

If Thing1 sends a new iMessage and selects Thing2's Cell as the destination, the iMessage appears only on Thing2's iPhone.

If Thing1 sends a new iMessage and selects Thing2's email address as the destination, then the iMessage appears on Thing2's iPad and iPhone (and at this point, there's two separate conversations from Thing1 on Thing2's iDevices).

I had assumed that since the Apple iMessage servers know that Thing2 can receive iMessages at both their iPhone and iPad (via their Apple ID) that it wouldn't matter if the iMessage was addressed to either cell or email (and that iMessage would route it to all associated devices).

Is that not correct?

You are assuming Thing2's iPad and iPhone are both acting as 'Thing2'. That is only partially true. Assuming the iPad is WiFi capable only, it can only receive messages on its e-mail addresses (the address of the iTunes account or other e-mail addresses). The iPhone, however, can receive messages at its phone number or linked e-mail addresses.

Now when an iMessage is sent to a phone number, the message will only appear on the iPhone as the iPone is only capable of receiving those iMessages. The phone number is linked to the iPhone, not to the iTunes account.


Automatically relaunch a closed application I have an application that opens when I login.

Is there a way to relaunch it automatically if it crashes or if I close it inadvertently?
(the application in question is Transmission if there is any solution specific to this app)

In a perfect world, it could even be launched even without me opening a session.

thanks.

Here is my launchd script to keep SomeApp always running. It is in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ and called SomeApp.restart.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>KeepAlive</key>
        <true/>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>SomeApp.restart</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/path/to/SomeApp.app/Contents/MacOS/SomeApp</string>
        </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Load it once with

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/SomeApp.restart.plist

Launchctl will run this after reboots.

RunAtLoad will launch the application the first time launchctl runs this
KeepAlive will restart it if the application quits (CMD+Q or crash)

Should run forever. If you want a GUI tool to help, Lingon works even though development has stopped.


Why does my Automator service work in Automator but not when called from the OS? I have made an Automator service that runs an Applescript with the Run Applescript module. This is the script:

# Press ^F8
tell application "System Events"
    key code 100 using control down
end tell

delay 0.1

# Press "down"
tell application "System Events"
    key code 125
end tell

delay 0.1

# Press ^F9
tell application "System Events"
    key code 101 using control down
end tell

When I have the service open in Automator and press Workflow -> Run all works as it should.
However, when I open the service from the menubar, i.e. in Safari, by going to Safari -> Services -> script name nothing happens.
Nothing is written to the Console, so I can't figure out why the service is not working. How can I track down the error and make the service run outside of Automator?

What is ⌃F9 meant to do? This worked for me when I wrapped it in a service:

tell application "System Events"
    key code 100 using control down -- ^F8
    delay 0.1
    key code 125 -- down
    key code 125
    keystroke return
end tell

You could try running the workflow with automator -v:

$ automator -v ~/Library/Services/lock.workflow/
Starting Automator…
Run AppleScript is running

Run AppleScript is finished

The Automator workflow has completed.

There are several issues with using Automator services to assign shortcuts to scripts though. See this question. If you run the service with a shortcut that has modifier keys, there might not be enough time to release them before the key code commands.

You could also use a script like this:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "SystemUIServer"
    tell (menu bar item 1 where description is "Keychain menu extra") of menu bar 1
        click
        click menu item 1 of menu 1
    end tell
end tell


Prevent windows and Desktop icons from rearranging with multiple monitors? I connect and disconect my MacBook Pro from a number of external displays each day. Each time I connect or disconnect the size, shape, and positions of windows and Desktop icons become disorganized and they end up in different places scattered all over the place. How can I keep my windows and icons from moving when connecting and disconnecting from external displays?

Are there settings in Lion to control this? Are there third-party apps that fix this?

Disconnecting the external display should not affect the positioning of windows and icons that are not on the external display, unless you have it set as your primary display. To set the internal display as primary, go to System Preferences → Displays → Arrangement and drag the menu-bar image (the white stripe) to the internal display. This will, of course, cause the menu bar and Dock (unless your secondary display is below your primary display) to be on the internal display.
For a window that is positioned on a secondary display, if you minimize the window to the Dock or hide its application before disconnecting, and reconnect before making it visible again, then the position of that window will be preserved. I find this quite useful.


iTunes splitting albums containing songs from multiple different artists As seen here, my iTunes is splitting my albums up. More specifically, albums that contain songs that have different artists names in the tags. Those "Avengers - Age of Ultron" albums are supposed to be one album.

Rocket Music player, as well as every other multimedia application I have used besides iTunes, all recognize and sort my albums correctly.

This is extremely frustrating and I was wondering if there was a way I could solve this without resorting to incorrectly tagging my music with the same artist as other songs in the album.

This may help.  Select the affected songs and invoke “Get Info” (Cmd-I, I think). On the resulting panel, click the “This album is a compilation” box (something like that). Close the info panel and hopefully you’ll be in business.


Macbook Pro just started overheating and losing frame rate It's strange because I've had Diablo III for a couple weeks now and I've been able to play it just fine without any performance problems. Starting today though, I've experienced some serious performance problems. I can play for at most a minute, during which time the computer will get hotter and louder, until the frame rate completely drops off the map and I'm forced to quit. It's a similar story with HD youtube videos.
I tried letting the computer just sit idle and cool down, but that doesn't seem to fix the problem. Only restarting seems to fix it, but that only gets me another minute of play time before I need to restart again.
Update
Forgot to mention
It's a mid 2010 Macbook Pro 15" with 8 GB of ram

This sounds to me as a problem with the graphics processor getting overheated. I burned two of them playing WoW.

Replacing the thermal paste, cleaning the fans and using the laptop in the right place (not holding it against the legs, in bed, or using it on a glass table) made a great difference.


Install older compatible version of apps on iPhone 4 having iOS7 I have iPhone 4 with iOS 7. Want to install apps as Facebook and Viber. Current version of those apps not supporting iOS7.

But is there a way to get older version of those apps?

Or is it possible to install it from older version of those IPA files?

If possible by IPA where we can get it and how can we do it?

  I seen some guide through itune. But latest version of iTune not
  allowing that approach.

It's unfortunately not possible to download apps on an unsupported operating system, unless you have access to an older version of iTunes or an iOS device with a supported version of iOS. Even though the apps install fine once you have bought them.


Unable to Install Update; An error occurred installing iOS 8.2 I have an iPhone 6 128 GB which is not jailbroken. The current version of iOS on the phone is 8.1.3 and yesterday I wanted to update to iOS 8.2.  The download went through without any problem but while installing, it gave the error:

  Unable to Install Update
  An error occurred installing iOS 8.2

Tried installing after switching Off and ON and also tried Hard Reset (Holding Home button and On/off switch).  Same error displays every time.

Also the Touch ID has stopped working and I find that the Settings - Touch ID & Passcode - iPhone Unlock is OFF.  When I try to switch it ON, the system displays the error

  Failed
  Unable to complete Touch ID setup. Please go back and try again.

Is anyone facing this problem?  I live in India.

Power off the phone, and hold down the power button and home button at the same time until the device powers on.  At that time, release the power button, but continue to hold the home button, which should start your phone in recovery mode and show an iTunes/USB Plug icon on the screen, which indicates for you to plug it into your computer with the USB data cable (computer with iTunes installed on it and open.)

Once you plug in the USB data cable to your phone/computer with iTunes, it should detect a phone (your phone) in recovery mode, and you should be able to fully recover your phone by restoring the latest iOS version to it.


Is Magsafe strain relief covered by warranty? I own a macbook 2012 and the cable snapped due to strain relief. I have not wrapped the cable around the charger box tight considering this could happen but it did anyways.

Is this covered by the warranty?

This happened to me as well. Because my computer was more than 1 year off the shelf, it was out of warranty; they charged me $60 rather than the $80 shelf price for a new Magsafe charger. Hurry to Apple Church before your warranty expires!
Their Support page for this: http://support.apple.com/en-us/TS4127


"FileName" is damaged and can't be opened. You should move it to the bin" when opening files from Finder I have tried re-downloading Microsoft Word, Excel multiple times and restarting before trying. However, this problem still persists.

This problem is applicable to all my documents, even PDFs too.

However, when I Command + O in the app itself, the document can be opened and functions normally.

The problem happens if I directly double-click or open the files from Finder.

Please advise me on how I can solve this issue.

Apparently the document has a quarantine flag. You can verify the same by running the following command in the Terminal.app:

xattr <path_to_the_document>

which should display the following:

  com.apple.quarantine

To remove the quarantine flag from a document you trust is coming from a reliable source, run the following command:

xattr -r -d com.apple.quarantine <path_to_the_document>

The Terminal.app would ask you to enter your admin/login password. You can verify that the flag is removed by re-running the former command mentioned above.


How to diagnose why plugins don't show in Photoshop? I have some Photoshop plugins in a folder PSPlugins in my home folder.  When Photoshop runs, it doesn't see them.  I did put the correct path into the preferences.  Is there some way to determine why Photoshop doesn't see these plugins?  Does it really not see any plugins, or does it see them but doesn't like how they taste?

Does PS write a log file stating where it looks, what it finds, and any error messages?

One thing to try is to find the Photoshop application, and Get Info on it. You can do this by selecting it in your Applications solder and pressing Command I or right clicking and choose Get Info. If you see a check box marked Open in 32 bit mode try selecting it, and then launch photoshop again.

Plugins for all programs generally need to be 32 bit if the host app is running in this mode, or 64 bit if the app is.

This is from experience with Logic plugins, which would refuse to acknowledge some older 32bit plugins when running in 64 bit mode.

Having typed this, I've since found this relevant page: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/828/cpsid_82824.html#main_32%2064%20bit%20launch


Images have an older (correct) timestamp within the Photos app but exported files show the current date and time I have about 300+ photos taken in 2012 and it shows so in the Photos app. However, exporting it as original to a folder completely replaces that date with 2016 July. Not sure why, but even trying to extract EXIF data does not show the original 2012 timestamp.. So running EXIFTOOL to modify the dates would not work here, as the EXIF data with original creation date is not there.

Any idea how can I force extract photos with the relevant timestamp shown in the Photos app?

For example, the following shows in Finder :

But in Photos, I get this :

And using REGEX.INFO, there are no date values in the EXIF :

At least with Photos v3.0, it does export the photos with the current date and time (which is undesirable) but the photos still have the original (correct) timestamp inside the EXIF data. That sounds like it may differ from your experience, so go ahead and check with Photos v3.0

If when you do export your photos again they still retain the correct EXIF timestamp but show the wrong Created timestamp on the file, then try using "Better Finder Attributes" app to first copy EXIF date to creation date, then to copy the creation date to the modification date.
(I have no affiliation with the "Better Finder Attributes" app, I'm simply a user of it).


Error while entering Apple ID (entered someone else's ID) My wife received a used iPhone and decided to set it up herself. I thought that there would be no problems: what could go wrong there? but everything turned out to be much more serious
Briefly about the sequence of her actions:

The old Owner has left iCloud.
Setup for FaceId, and entering the confirmation password(twice).
Next, enter iCloud - and here the epic fail happened. The wife switches to the numeric keypad and enters the password (6 digits) from step 2 :).
Then he asks to enter the password for unlocking. The password that was set in step 2 is not suitable - it blocks when entered for 5/15 minutes. There is no way to go back to entering another AppleID.
As I understand it, at step two someone's real ID was entered (I just didn't know that you can enter it in the form of a 6-digit code) and now you need a password to unlock.
There is no password for this and there is no way to find it either.

can "Recovery mode" help me? if yes - is it not dangerous?
or do I need to use dfu?
What can be done in this situation?
Any advice - I will be very grateful.
p.s. a very scary decision if the user can make a mistake here - but there is no way to go back.

You seem quite panicked and distraught. Your question was very confusing and you may have misunderstood the situation, but from what I could have gathered I can provide these pieces of advice:

The old owner may have incorrectly removed the device from their iCloud account. This is a very easy mistake to make and has happened many times before. To correctly remove it, both you and the old owner need to carefully follow the instructions here (under "If you no longer have your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch") otherwise the device may never be recoverable.
You may have misread the instructions and inputed the incorrect information into the incorrect fields. Press the back button on the screen until you return to the language selection screen and setup using the instructions here. Preferably, to reduce confusion, use quick setup, to auto-setup wi-fi and iCloud, if your wife (not you) have an iOS device, other iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, running iOS 11 or later. You can find the version number by going to Settings > General > About > Software Version.
You may have somehow broken the setup instance and the device needs to be reset. To do this follow the instructions here while making sure to choose update (if available, otherwise choose restore), when prompted. Note, this requires you to enter recovery mode, and should be perfectly safe provided the connection isn't interrupted (e.g. unplugging or turning off your computer) while the device is restoring. You shouldn't have to use DFU mode. Once you return to setup, follow the instructions above in part 2 to setup your device.

If after following these steps, you still can't setup the device, your best option is to go into an apple store and get them to correctly assess the issue your having and get them to fix it.


How to type in Cantonese in OS X? In System Preferences | Keyboard | Input Sources, you can add any languages you like by tapping + button. The list contains Simplified and Traditional language, but it doesn't have Cantonese.

I wonder why it does not contain Cantonese, even though it has some too minor languages like Telugu, Oriya, or even Ainu.

Is it still possible to type in Cantonese in OS X, with possibly pinyin?

You can use 3rd party input method named "RIME".

You can download RIME by goto: http://rime.im/
Unzip downloaded file and run Installation.
After install was successfully, you need to login your account again.
Click on Squirrel Input Method icon (on top menu) and choose Settings....
You will see list of setting files, open file named default.yaml and edit like below:

After editing, save file and close.
Click on Squirrel icon then choose Deploy.
You now can type Cantonese!
zuk nei cing gung -> 祝你成功

Sorry I can attach only one photo.


Merge two partitions I've 2 partitions on my mac

350GB
150GB

What I need to do is to delete the 150GB permanently and put it back into the 350GB

Any help would be highly appreciated.

For merging partitions, it isn't possible, as partitions are not designed that way. You would have to delete the second partition (back up data if there is any on it), resize the first to fill the space, then restore the data of the second on the first. There unfortunately isn't any easy workaround to this.


How can I use Gmail as the default mail client app in Mac OS X? I use Gmail as my e-mail client, but when I click on a "mailto:" link, the Mail.app is opened.

Is there a way to avoid the Mail.app opening in this case? Can I open Gmail instead?

You do NOT need to install a third party app.

Both Google Chrome and Firefox support this functionality. (ok, technically these are third party apps, but lets assume you are not using safari.)

Chrome:

Open gmail in chrome.
In the address bar next to the "bookmark star" you should see a grey diamond. Click on the diamond
Select "use gmail".

If you do not see the gray diamond, follow the instructions below.

If you made a mistake and selected "No" and you really wanted to select "Use Gmail"

With Chrome open, copy and paste this into your address bar at the top: chrome://settings/handlers
Under the Ignored protocol handlers section, Click on X to the right to delete.
Close and open Gmail.
Answer the question correctly this time. :)

Source:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/hnRteY7bHfE

Alternative way, if you need to do this programmatically.

Firefox:

See @Am1rr3zA answer on this question. Click here to jump to his answer.

Safari:

See @fpotter's answer on this question. Click here to jump to his answer.


USB flash drive recognized as "iPOD" My USB flash drive is recognized as  "iPOD" but on Windows it works ok.

Can I remount this from Terminal? Does OS X has an option such as "select driver"?

I couldn't find much related information.

It looks like the vendor has named this device "iPOD". If your Mac was genuinely detecting your USB flash drive as an iPod, it would appear in iTunes and would also have the correct capitalisation ("iPod"). The manufacturer is listed as "i-FlashDrive", so it's not unreasonable to think that they'd set the device name to "iPOD".

As long as the USB flash drive is appearing as a disk, the correct driver has been selected and there is nothing to worry about.


How can I move the Downloads toolbar button in Safari 5.1 and newer on OS X? In Safari 5.1 on my Mac, the Downloads button appears on the toolbar at the right of the search bar when you download a file for the first time:

I want to move that button elsewhere on the toolbar, so I open View > Customize Toolbar... and drag it to where I want it. The other toolbar controls move to make way for the new spot, but when I drop it, nothing changes; the Downloads button returns to its original position.

Interestingly, I don't have this problem on Safari 5.1 on Windows; I can move the button anywhere I want. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with these observations:

The list of downloads appears as a window on Windows, but as a popover on OS X.
The Downloads button appears by itself in the Customize Toolbar window on Windows, but not on OS X, where it only appears in the default toolbar set instead.

How can I reposition the Downloads button in Safari on OS X?

Drag the other controls around it; as long as you don’t grab the Downloads button itself this will work.


What is the most classic keyboard shortcut for switching between input sources (languages)? What is the most classic/used keyboard shortcut for switching between input sources (languages)?
Except for cmd+space of course which is used by Spotlight.

If you want your shortcut don't interfere with spotlight you can use option + cmd + space or something else.

but as you said cmd + space is really good as myself use this and replace control + space for spotlight, and use option + space for QuickSilver.


Restore mail account password from iOS I want to trick IOS to use my IMAP server so I can help my buddy retrieve his mail password (which he forgot, but is still stored on the iPhone).

So he has a Yahoo Mail account configured and working and I just want to edit the settings file so the Mail app will use the IMAP server that I just set up to intercept his password.

I tried modifying the file /private/var/mobile/Library/Mail/metadata.plist and "Envelop Index", changing imap.apple.yahoo.com with my server, but these two files seem to act more like a cache, they got rewritten when he did check mail.

Any ideas what file I should change or any other way to get the password? I know the password is kept encrypted in the keychain database, but it's too difficult to decrypt that.

It'd be a lot easier to just sniff packets from his iPhone on your wifi and get the password. (With this?)

Change the DNS servers on your wifi to point to your DNS server and tell the iPhone that mail.yahoo.com (or whatever) is your PC's IP address. Also, you might want to uncheck "Use SSL".


Does Automatic Downloads on iPhone 6 use cellular data on international roaming? Under Automatic Downloads for iTunes & App Stores, there's a setting for downloading app Updates.

Does it use cellular data while on international roaming?

Whether to download app updates over Mobile Data is a user configurable setting. Go to Settings app → iTunes & App Store and turn off Use Mobile Data. This will ensure that app updates are not downloaded over mobile data even if it is enabled.

This setting doesn't take into account device roaming status (which itself is configurable under Settings app → Mobile Data).

Even if Use Mobile Data is enabled here, it still needs the Mobile Data itself to be enabled under Settings → Mobile Data.

If you are concerned about using data while roaming, turning off Mobile Data under Settings will ensure that no cellular data usage will happen.


No partition scheme option when erasing a USB disk in MacOS High Sierra? In previous versions of MacOS, I recall that Disk Utility provided an option to select the partition scheme (GUID, MBR, or Apple).

If I formatted the USB key without changing the scheme to MBR, I could not read it on a Windows machine.

But now there is no option in High Sierra.

How do I format the USB key with FAT and MBR?

I thought I had the same issue but it's probably because in the view options at the top left corner of the Disk Utility window, "Show Only Volumes" is selected.

In order to change the partition map, it seems you have to select the actual disk. So simply select view - show all devices, then select the actual drive you're trying to reformat, then when trying to erase, you should have the option to choose a partition scheme.

Hope this helps!


Can I put out a cigarette on aluminum Mac Books? Would it damage to put out cigarettes on the chassis of aluminum mac books?

Yes, your cigarette will be irreparably damaged. You will have to replace it with a new one.


What built-in utilities are available in macOS for managing/monitoring process/disk/memory/IO/file? I think Activity Monitor can be used for managing/monitoring processes, but I am confused about the other four: disk/memory/IO/file.
Are all these four functions be managed/monitored out by Disk Utility?

There are a lot of tools, both in the graphical interface and at the command line, for viewing and configuring these various parts of macOS' operations. I'll give you a summary of the most relevant ones.
For viewing processes in the GUI, Activity Monitor is the primary tool. It can also view other per-process things like memory usage, and disk and network activity (and it also gives some overall stats at the bottom of the window). You can also view open files and network ports for processes you own by selecting them, and clicking the Inspect (circle-with-an-"i"-in-it) button in the toolbar, then selecting the Open Files and Ports tab. And it can kill (force-exit) running programs.
At the command line, top is my favorite tool. I use top -u -s5 to show top CPU-using processes (updated every 5 seconds, because the default of 1 second is too fast). top -orsize will show top "real memory" usage instead. And it shows overall stats at the top of the screen. ps is the other main tool; by default, it only shows your command-line processes, so use ps -A (or -ax or -e) to show all processes. Check the man page for lots more options. You can use kill to kill processes by PID, or killall to kill them by name (/program). (Warning: on some other OSes, killall does different, and much more lethal, things, so think before you type.)
A lot of the process management in macOS (especially running background processes) is handled by launchd, and you can query and manage it from the command line with launchctl (warning: this can be a bit confusing). Apple doesn't provide a GUI for interacting with this, but there is a third-party option: LaunchControl from soma-zone.
For memory: since that's pretty much used by processes, use the process monitoring tools to see what's going on. You can get some whole-system virtual memory stats from vm_stat (warning: these stats are in pages, not KB or MB or anything like that) or sysctl vm.swapusage (or if you want to drink from the firehose, sysctl -a vm). Memory management is thoroughly automated, so there aren't really any tools to configure it.
For disks: Disk Utility is the GUI tool of choice, both to see how things are formatted and to make changes (erase/format/partition/etc). At the command line, diskutil is its counterpart.
For files: if you just want to look around, it's Finder in the GUI. Apple makes a fair bit of the filesystem invisible in the Finder (which is sort of a "don't mess with this unless you know what you're doing" indication); if you want to see the normally-hidden parts, you can toggle show-all mode with Command-Shift-Period (this also works in standard open and save file dialogs). At the command line, it's ls (I use ls -AleO@ to show hidden files and various obscure attributes).
If you want to see what files (/folders) are taking up all your space, you can get a basic summary with Apple menu > About This Mac > Storage tab, and a little more info by clicking the Manage button there. There are a bunch of third-party utilities that give more detail. At the command line, it's df to show which volumes are getting full (df -h for human-readable sizes), and du to see how much space is used by each subfolder (and subsubfolder and...) (I mostly use sudo du -xhd1 /path/to/folder to give a human-readable listing that only goes one folder level deep). Note that you'll need to grant the Terminal Full Disk Access to let its commands see into "private" areas of the filesystem.
For file activity, in addition to Activity Monitor, you can use lsof to get a (huge) snapshot of which files are open (it las lots of flexible -- and confusing -- options), and fs_usage to get an (extremely detailed) running log of file accesses.
For I/O, it really depends on the type of I/O you're interested in. If you want to see what's connected, System Information (click the Apple menu, hold the Option key and choose System Information) will give you a huge amount of information about the system's configuration (and not just about I/O devices/attachments). system_profiler is its command-line counterpart.
You can use iostat to look at I/O throughput per device (mostly disk access).
For network I/O, use the per-process tools above (and sudo lsof -i to see open network ports). To view and change the network connection settings, use the System Preferences -> Network pane and its command-line counterpart networksetup. For detailed network status, use the Network Utility, netstat, and ifconfig.
Other I/O... is rather scattered around. Several types, like Bluetooth, Displays, Sound, etc have panes in System Preferences. If you have a specific type you're interested in, you'd have to specify it.


Connecting to Bluetooth earphone disables keyboard Just bought a third party wireless Bluetooth earphones. Whenever I pair it and use with my iPhone 6, I am unable to use my keyboard for any applications. Notes, SMS, whatsapp, in game typing etc. the keyboard just doesn't appear. But does whenever I off my Bluetooth. The earphone s costs a pretty penny but not being able to type while using it is a major hindrance, please help!!!

I think the problem is, the way the device was manufactured, as a physical keyboard. Problem is, in that moment, your "keyboard" are the bluetooth earphones, and it is considered as the default keyboard. That's why you cannot see anything.

What you can do is, go to bluetooth configuration, and you will see your headset. There should be a gear icon or something to access to configuration for that bluetooth device. THere, you can disable or enable media audio and phone audio, it should show something like "Input device", just disable that. That should disable the device as a keyboard.


Can Safari (iPad iOS 12.4.2) be configured to utilize SSH-Tunnel / Port Forwarding? Goal: from WAN, SSH-tunnel to home router (outfitted with SSH) and access remote LAN devices with iPad's web browser.

As I understand it, a SSH-tunnel (connection) must be established first, which I imagine would require an App?  The Ubuntu equivalent being:

ssh -f -N admin@server1.example.com -L 8080: server1.example.com:3000

Unless the app routes all web browser (port 80?) traffic through its tunnel, then there would need to be a setting in the browser that enable a tunnel proxy?

What are today's options? Solution preference is for simplicity & low-cost.  Simplicity comprises avoiding jail-break.

I don’t recommend using software for ssh tunnels since it’s less efficient than a VPN connection, but here are a list of software and options:

Which options exist for SSH tunneling clients on iOS?

Apple doesn't enable an sshd process on iOS so you'll need to alter or add software to accomplish this if you can't just set up a web proxy in the cloud or on a more traditional server and point your iOS device to that web proxy or ssh tunnel on an OS that presumes wall power.


iPhone display broken The display of my old iPhone 6s broke yesterday. I want to repair it by myself.

I've found many displays that can be bought on the internet but with a price of 30€ I don't think that these are original Apple Components.

Does anyone know if theres a way to get an original iPhone display without bringing the device to an appleStore?

You could buy a new (obviously) or used (probably this you want) iPhone and scrap it for parts (i.e. the original iPhone display).


No allow button in security and privacy preferences When trying to install VMWare in MacOS Catalina, under security and privacy system preferences and then general, I do not see a way to allow what it needs to work properly. Even when I unlock the system preferences, it does not give me an option to allow in order to complete the setup. I also recently tried installing parallels desktop, which requires the same procedure in system preferences, and I was not able to get that working properly either because the allow button is not there.
Anyone know why this might be?
Thanks so much for the help!

That's because it's not meeting the guidelines for the possible install sources.
Now, the remainder of this answer is going to assume you're a legitimate user of the box with Admin permissions (or access to an admin account on the box):
Easiest fix: when you launch the installer, hold down the option key. That should offer you a prompt to override the security restrictions.
More permanent, global fix: Launch your terminal, and enter the following:
sudo spctl --master-disable
This will provide you henceforth the ability to install untrusted app (read: not notarized by Apple) from any source.
Running
sudo spctl --master-enable

will reverse the process.


How to send several pings per second? (ping more quickly) I was looking into pinging a host 5 times per second. I've read the man page for 'ping' for Mac OSX, but I can't find anything that would allow me to do this. I tried setting the -W switch to 5, to try and force sending more packets faster than the reply is received, but no luck there.

  -W waittime
               Time in milliseconds to wait for a reply for each packet sent.

I ended up using liboping from homebrew.

Is there a reason why I can't control the time gap between ping attempts with the default ping utility?

ping -n -i 0.1 google.com

This should do it at 10/sec (works fine in my testing).  (-i sets the interval wait in seconds).


Set up global shortcuts for media keys (next, prev, play/pause) I've had the (mis)fortune to get a new work laptop with the O' so great Touch Bar which I so immensely hate and have changed the Touch Bar to display F-keys.
However one thing I do miss is my global Media Keys. I'm primarily listen to Spotify and I know it has shortcuts but that requires me to make the Spotify window active which it rarely is.

I've looked into both Google and the shortcut options Apple provides me and I have yet to find a way to set up a global shortcut for the Media Keys (Next, Prev. Play/Pause)

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

This solution is a bit of a workaround, but I think that it should work for you.

First, you can write some AppleScripts that will perform the actions Next, Prev., and  Play/Pause. I found some examples here. If you are on macOS Catalina, you will need to replace "iTunes" with "Music", unless you only use Spotify and don't want to check for other open applications.

Next, you can create a Quick Action (also known as a service) in Automator. I found some instructions to do that here.

For each AppleScript (Next, Prev, Play/Pause), you can either save it as an application, and set the service to open that application, or you can have your service run the AppleScript directly by using the Run AppleScript variable in Automator.

When you save each service, give it a name (like next, prev, and play), as that will be what shows up in the shortcuts menu.

Now that you have 3 services, you can go to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Services. You can now set a keyboard shortcut to run each service, which in turn should run the AppleScript to perform the Media Action you want. The services you just made should be in the General section, which is at the very bottom of the list for me.