Does the Health App in iOS sync intraday to iCloud? I'm doing a Corporate Challenge where I count all my steps every day and enter them into a website.

The other day I had backed up my phone the night before, and had a problem with it that meant it had to be replaced. When I restored my phone, all my steps for the day I had the defect had been lost.

All my data for other apps that sync with iCloud was preserved for that day. (Things, Tweetbot etc).

My question is: Does the Health App in iOS sync intraday to iCloud?

Edit: This is different to the other question that is similar because I'm asking about intraday app sync, not daily device backups.

Your Health data is backed up to iCloud as part of your device's backup. (Your device backup includes data stored on your phone by apps, your Settings, the layout of your home screen, etc.)

I'm guessing you have iCloud set up to automatically back up your device each day, which it typically does each night when you're at home connected to Wi-Fi. So when you restored your phone, the iCloud backup you restored from probably had all your Health data up to about the end of the previous day.

This is different from how other apps sync with iCloud. When you (e.g.) create a new task in Things, the Things app probably saves that data to iCloud right away so that you can see it on your other devices, etc. So unlike your device backup, which was only current up to the previous night, your other apps/services that use iCloud were probably current up to the moment you experienced your problem.


Can i use my ipad adapter cube and a usb cord together without any damage to the phone? Is using the two together going to damage my phone in any way?

The short answer is that any USB charger is safe with any USB device; a smaller (iPhone) charger may not charge a bigger (iPad) device. You can also connect your device via a USB extension cable.

The longer version is that Apple's USB chargers (whether sold with the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, Apple Watch, or new MacBook) are all essentially the same, the difference is how much electrical current they can supply. The chargers are all regulated (meaning they incorporate circuitry to maintain a constant voltage), which means the connected device will simply draw as much current as it needs and no more.

This means you can easily charge a lesser device with a greater charger; a MacBook (the new USB-C MacBook, not the older MagSafe models!) charger will quite safely charge an iPhone, as will an iPad charger. (You will, of course, need a USB-C to USB adapter, as the charger has a USB-C port and Apple doesn't yet make USB-C lightning cables.)

You can also charge a greater device with a lesser charger, though charging will be slower. An iPad will work with an iPhone charger, but will charge much more slowly, or not at all. An iPhone charger will not damage the new MacBook, but it also probably won't supply enough power for it to run, let alone charge.

You can also connect the device to the charger with a USB extension cable (though not a hub!), but I'd recommend not exceeding 5 m total cable length (from the USB port on the charger, to the port on your device).

Other USB devices can also be powered or charged with an Apple USB charger; I often use my iPhone chargers to charge my 3G WiFi modem, charge Bluetooth headphones, and run a Raspberry Pi.


Make a 2 way sharing folder with my PC I've been trying to make a sharing folder with my PC for so long and it seems to complicated. In windows 7 there is Homesharing and the configuration is so easy.

I would like to make a folder which will work both ways (Windows input will appear in mac and mac input will pop out in windows)

Is there a way to do this? I have tried the System Preferences -> Sharing -> Files Sharing option but it does not seem to get connected to my windows, it says the connection could not be established.

Please help me get over this frustrating compatibility issue.

If the folder is shared from Windows and is accessible from other Windows machines then it should be accessible from your Mac as well. There are two possible causes to the problem you are describing:

You are using OS X 10.8.0 and you are trying to connect to smb://<machine> instead of smb://<machine>/<share>. If this is the case then the solution is to connect to smb://<machine>/<share>.
You are using any version of OS X and you are trying to connect to smb://<machine>/<share>. If this is the case then you probably aren't entering the username correctly. On your Mac when connecting to a Windows file share you should try entering the username as WORKGROUP\<username>. (Case may matter)

NOTE: I got into the habit of always entering the username in that format way back in OS X 10.3 (maybe even earlier.) It could be that it is no longer required, but it has never failed me, so I just stick with what works.


How to backup external NTFS drive via Time Machine? I currently have an external, HFS+ drive as my time machine storage that backs up my Macbook Pro Retina (Mac OS Mountain Lion 10.8.1). I also have another external NTFS drive (that I share with my Windows Desktop) which has all my photos etc which I would like to backup via Time Machine.

i.e.
Current

Macbook Pro Retina ===> external Time Machine drive

Desired:

Macbook Pro Retina ===\
                       +====> external Time Machine drive
External NTFS drive ==/

If I go into the Time Machine preferences, I see the external NTFS drive (as well as all other NTFS/HFS+ drives) inside the exclude list. I can also remove the NTFS drive of interest from this exclude list - thereby including it into the backup list.

The problem is that the settings aren't sticky. When I reenter the Time Machine preferences, the external NTFS drive is again seen on the exclude list. And the actual files themselves aren't backed up either.

So, how can I backup the data on my external NTFS drive via Time Machine?

The only way you could would be to hack the OS to recognize and handle the NTFS filesystem. If the content of the files were small, you could automate copying them using rsync or another tool to an HFS + extended volume (boot or otherwise), but this just isn't something Time Machine has the code to handle.


What does iCloud Mail sync actually do? Can someone explain to me please what the 'Mail' feature of iCloud syncing on macOS, iPad, and iPhone etc actually achieves?

I have searched online, and some articles from a number of years ago suggest that this syncs an apple @me.com account or similar (which i do not have)..

Obviously, in 2020, pretty much all mail services are online (Gmail, Outlook.com, Yahoo, Office365, Etc.) don't actually require 'syncing' via iCloud...

However, it would be nice to change settings for each of these accounts on device #1 (iPad), and perhaps see that reflected on device #2 (iPhone), etc..

The apple site is not actually that helpful in this matter..

Thanks!

This Mail button is used to have your Apple mailbox (@icloud.com/@me.com/@mac.com) on your device. If you turn it on your Apple mailbox will just show up in the Mail app.

Note that this option does not synchronize the other mailbox you might have, so in your case it will not be useful. You can find more informations about it here.


I installed Oracle Java JDK 8 but java command line is still reporting it is version 7 I installed jdk 1.8.0 u5, but the command line java is reporting 1.7:

$ java -fullversion
java full version "1.7.0_51-b13"

$ which java
/usr/bin/java

$ ls -l /usr/bin/java
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  74 Oct 23  2013 /usr/bin/java -> /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Commands/java

Here is what is installed

$ ls -l /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/
total 64
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   10 Oct 23  2013 1.4 -> CurrentJDK
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   10 Oct 23  2013 1.4.2 -> CurrentJDK
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   10 Oct 23  2013 1.5 -> CurrentJDK
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   10 Oct 23  2013 1.5.0 -> CurrentJDK
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   10 Oct 23  2013 1.6 -> CurrentJDK
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   10 Oct 23  2013 1.6.0 -> CurrentJDK
drwxr-xr-x  8 root  wheel  272 May 13 10:21 A
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    1 Oct 23  2013 Current -> A
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   59 Oct 23  2013 CurrentJDK -> /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents

also:

$ /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Commands/java -fullversion
java full version "1.7.0_51-b13"

The java control panel applet reports 1.8, but in /Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/

Any idea where it went?

I had the same problem on OS X Yosemite 10.9.

The problem was solved by installing the Java SE Development Kit 8.

I had installed the other version that is not a SE development kit and it was just working in web browsers, not for the terminal.


SSH port forwarding not working in macos catalina (10.15) Something in macOS Catalina (10.15.1) is interfering with ssh port forwarding (needed for localhost debugging and developing against a web server system deployed in AWS).

I assume something with the enhanced security features, but I've been unable to figure out what from searching and poking around.

The tunnel seems to start up fine, but when a client tries to connect the connection is denied.  The tunnel & app startup commands are the same as what was working fine in all previous releases of the os, afaik, but are failing on this new 10.15 install (nothing ported, fresh setup of tools.  I did change my default shell back to bash.)

Network configuration:  There is a redis server in an AWS VPC that's not publicly routable.  We have a bastion server that is publically routable that can forward the connection via ssh.  I can connect to the bastion server for an interactive session, so the keys and passphrases are all ok as far as I know.  There's no VPN to AWS, so the bastion host is the only way into the private subnets.

Here's the command we use to start up the tunnel (prodbastion is defined in .ssh/config):

ssh -v -N -L 6399:redis.<HOSTNAME>:6379 prodbastion

This logs verbosely in the shell, here's the end of the supposedly successful authentication startup, followed by the repeated client connection failures

debug1: Authentication succeeded (publickey).
Authenticated to <bastionprod hostname> ([<bastion prod ip>]:22).
debug1: Local connections to LOCALHOST:6399 forwarded to remote address redis.<HOSTNAME>:6379
debug1: Local forwarding listening on ::1 port 6399.
debug1: channel 0: new [port listener]
debug1: Local forwarding listening on 127.0.0.1 port 6399.
debug1: channel 1: new [port listener]
...
debug1: channel 2: free: direct-tcpip: listening port 6399 for redis.<HOSTNAME> port 6379, connect from 127.0.0.1 port 51454 to 127.0.0.1 port 6399, nchannels 3
debug1: Connection to port 6399 forwarding to redis.<HOSTNAME> port 6379 requested.
debug1: channel 2: new [direct-tcpip]
channel 2: open failed: administratively prohibited: open failed
debug1: channel 2: free: direct-tcpip: listening port 6399 for redis.<HOSTNAME> port 6379, connect from 127.0.0.1 port 51457 to 127.0.0.1 port 6399, nchannels 3
debug1: Connection to port 6399 forwarding to redis.<HOSTNAME> port 6379 requested.
debug1: channel 2: new [direct-tcpip]
...

The client is a nodejs web app, needing data from redis.  the logs there just say more or less cannot connect:

2019-12-09T17:13:51.286Z - info: Client Redis connection: {"host":"localhost","port":"6399","database":"4"}
2019-12-09T17:13:51.299Z - info: mongoose connected
2019-12-09T17:13:51.332Z - error: Redis error occured: AbortError: Ready check failed: Redis connection lost and command aborted. It might have been processed.
2019-12-09T17:13:51.473Z - error: Redis error occured: AbortError: Ready check failed: Redis connection lost and command aborted. It might have been processed.
...

It seems to have the same failure with the system ssh or openssh installed with brew.

Update in response to questions:

It was my error all along, the hostname in the tunnel command didn't exist but my bash history led me to believe it did
firewall was off
telnet could not connect to 6399 with the tunnel up to a bad hostname
telnet (and our redis-using app) could connect with the right hostname.
argh and sorry about the confusion!

From What's ssh port forwarding and what's the difference between ssh local and remote port forwarding:

  I have drawn some sketches ssh tunnel starting from local

  ssh tunnel starting from remote

  Introduction

  local: -L Specifies that the given port on the local (client) host is to be forwarded to the given host and port on the remote side.

  ssh -L sourcePort:forwardToHost:onPort connectToHost means: connect
  with ssh to connectToHost, and forward all connection attempts to
  the local sourcePort to port onPort on the machine called
  forwardToHost, which can be reached from the connectToHost
  machine.
  remote: -R Specifies that the given port on the remote (server) host is to be forwarded to the given host and port on the local side.

  ssh -R sourcePort:forwardToHost:onPort connectToHost means: connect
  with ssh to connectToHost, and forward all connection attempts to
  the remote sourcePort to port onPort on the machine called
  forwardToHost, which can be reached from your local machine.

  Examples

  Example for 1

ssh -L 8080:localhost:80 SUPERSERVER You specify that a connection made to the local port 80 is to be forwarded to port 8080 on

  SUPERSERVER. That means if someone connects to your computer with a
  webbrowser, he gets the response of the webserver running on
  SUPERSERVER. You, on your local machine, have no webserver running.

  Example for 2

ssh -R 80:localhost:8080 tinyserver You specify, that a connection made to the port 80 of tinyserver is to be forwarded to port 8080 on

  your local machine. That means if someone connects to the small and
  slow server with a webbrowser, he gets the response of the webserver
  running on your local machine. The tinyserver, which has not enough
  diskspace for the big website, has no webserver running. But people
  connecting to tinyserver think so.

  More examples

  Other things could be: The powerful machine has five webservers
  running on five different ports. If a user connects to one of the five
  tinyservers at port 80 with his webbrowser, the request is redirected
  to the corresponding webserver running on the powerful machine. That
  would be

ssh -R 80:localhost:30180 tinyserver1
ssh -R 80:localhost:30280 tinyserver2
etc.

  Or maybe your machine is only the connection between the powerful and
  the small servers. Then it would be (for one of the tinyservers that
  play to have their own webservers):

ssh -R 80:SUPERSERVER:30180 tinyserver1
ssh -R 80:SUPERSERVER:30280 tinyserver2
etc


-bash process suddenly taking 75% CPU in htop When I open a terminal and run htop I am seeing a -bash process that is taking up 75% of my CPU. I am not running any scripts or anything like that. I constantly have 3-4 terminals open and I have never seen this happen before. I tried to kill the process but it doesn't go away.

What should I try next?

Most run-away processes can be killed with kill -9 PID. Any unsaved data kept by the process will be lost.


A purchased and downloaded iTunes television show will not play A heads up - I am a complete layman with absolutely no knowledge of operating system or hardware stuff aside from the fact that I have no knowledge of it. Any answers that are given I would prefer to be in simple, nontechnical English.

Here is my quarry: I have purchased a season pass for Gotham on iTunes and have downloaded the newest episode. Upon completion of the download, I pressed the play button. The screen was completely black, there was no audio, the progress bar wasn't moving and the show was registered as playing. I have no idea what version of the apple operating system I am using and the only knowledge I have of the hardware is that it is a MacBook Air that is at least two years old.

I have already tried several things in an attempt to get it to work, to no avail. They are, in order of when I tried them:

Uninstalling and reinstalling the show
Closing and reopening the iTunes application
Turning off and back on my laptop
Unauthorizing and reauthorizing my computer
Waiting it out for twelve hours

Nothing I have done has in any way altered the problem which presents itself when I try to watch the show. I have no problems watching videos on YouTube; it is simply shows purchased via iTunes which refuse to work properly. This problem has not occurred prior to today, though when I tried to watch a different show (I forget off the top of my head which one I clicked) that didn't work either.

Since I posted this 24 hours ago I have managed to successfully use iTunes to play music. I downloaded Star Wars episode I and tried watching that, but alas, movies do not work either. The 30-second bit that plays as a trailer for the new episode of a television show, however, did manage to play succesfully after a minute of there being a black screen like what I described, leading me to maybe suspect that this is a buffering problem.

I opened the App Store and found iTunes update to version 12.6.1.  Ran the update and now my TV shows are playing.  Hope this works for you as well.


Does charging and CPU usage affect each other? If I use the CPU heavily while charging a Mac, how much slower will the charging be? It would be interesting to hear if someone has data how many minutes it takes to:

Charge 0-100% while using ~0% CPU
Charge 0-100% while using 100% CPU

PS! Another interesting question (probably a separate question) would be: If a heavy 100% CPU job takes 1 hour on a 100% charged machine, how long does it take on a charging machine?

The CPU is boss of the power scheme and will get all the power it requests. The charger is boss of the maximum power it will output.

Only thermal conditions throttle the CPU.
If the charger is offering more power to be delivered than the charging controller is being asked to provide to the CPU, you have excess power available.
When the battery needs replenishment and excess power is available, the energy will be applied there in the usual non-linear LiPo charge curve off fast charge to roughly 80 percent capacity then slow charge.

The CPU can pull from two sources and the charger can deliver to two sources.

It’s a pretty simple systematic first glance, but the nonlinear charge and variable CPU/GPU loads make si ole linear time estimates not match reality.

So, if your charger is not providing the power needed to keep the CPU fully powered, the battery will drain and eventually the Mac will shut off because there’s no more battery to make up the deficit in power.  And that is why the CPU can run at full speed.

I don’t think there is any general common timing even if you restrict yourself to only USB-C charging models. But, the great news is you can just open the terminal and check the current power budget and time estimates and not rely on me or anyone else rule of thumb on the internet.

 pmset -g sysloadlog
 pmset -g thermlog
 pmset -g pslog

Those three commands show engineering summaries and details for the overview of the system state (sysloadlog) and the thermal CPU throttling (thermlog). The last power log will answer the specifics of any charge scenario for any model Mac and the charger you have connected.


osascript bug: AppleScript's initial "choose from list" dialog is unselected I run the following code in Terminal:

osascript "/Users/Me/Desktop/Run this script on wake.scpt"

If the first dialog of my .scpt file is a choose from list dialog, then this dialog will be unselected. That is, I cannot simply hit the enter key to press "OK"; I must first click anywhere on the dialog to make the top bar of the dialog change from white to grey, and only then can I hit enter to proceed.

To be clear, the dialog comes to the front just fine - it is simply not selected.

However, if the first dialog is a display dialog or display alert dialog, then the dialog is automatically selected. It just so happens that the initial dialog of my .scpt file is a choose from list dialog.

I tried writing activate me on the line above the choose from list dialog, but this did not do anything.

When I run the "Run this script on wake.scpt" from within Script Editor, the choose from list dialog is in fact selected. Hence, we know that the issue is related to osascript.

Does anyone have a workaround to force the choose from list dialog to be automatically selected?

I've tried implementing a default selection by inserting the default items parameter in the choose from list command (even though I don't actually want a default item to exist in this case). I thought that doing this might force the dialog to be selected. But, still, the list dialog is unselected.

As a last resort, I suppose that I could use AppleScript to mouse-click the center of the screen (where the dialog is located). But, I'd prefer a more elegant solution, as AppleScript can be unreliable when it comes to mouse clicks.

If you are wondering why I am employing osascript in the first place, it is because I am using SleepWatcher to automatically run an AppleScript when my computer wakes from sleep. (Here is a very helpful guide that I used to set up SleepWatcher.)

This is the full text of my .wakeup file:

#!/bin/bash
osascript "/Users/Me/Desktop/Run this script on wake.scpt"

This is weird..  For now, I'd recommend that you save your script as an executable. This can be done by opening your Applescript in the Script Editor, then clicking the File menu, then Export, then choosing "Application" in the File Format dropdown box.  You could then create an Applescript that executes this application.


Is there a list of menu shortcut icons? For example, see the screenshot below. The menu items have keyboard shortcuts associated with them, but where can I find a list of what keys the icons are referring to?

The quickest way to get the entire list is to use Finder's help and search for "Symbols used in shortcuts" and refer the to the canonical list of symbols. It's also in the user manual for your mac online and I believe is still shipped with all Macs in the box.

Finder contains six icons in its menu bar and safari has a couple more which visually represent a key on the standard keyboard from Apple (most of which do not share the same icon when made as a physical key cap).

Finder: ⌃ ⌥ ⇧ ⌘ ⎋ ↑
Safari: adds two more ↓ and ⇥

So the list of common symbols is pretty complete as follows:

Control: ⌃ (also ctrl or ctl)
Option: ⌥ (also alt or alternate)
Shift: ⇧
Command: ⌘ (historically the "Apple" key)
Esc: ⎋
Up Arrow: ↑
Down Arrow: ↓
Tab: ⇥

We also have some references on the "meta" side of the site where we talk about how to differentiate between what is printed on the keys and what software draws in the Menu bar (and other places).

Keyboard icons & terminology


My storage on iPad doesn't add up I can't understand what's taking all my storage as the apps listed don't add up and I don't download videos or music etc.
My iPad says I've used 12.2GB with 209MB available yet when I added everything up my total usage was 8GB. CONFUSED

Most likely it's the operating system, in this case, iOS. The operating system needs a certain amount of space on the iPad.

In this way, you don't get the amount of storage that you pay for, since iOS tends to usually take up anywhere from 1 to 4 GB of storage, depending on which version you're running.


Decrease GPU memory on MacBook Air I own MacBook Air (early 2015) where the GPU and its memory reads as following:

Intel HD Graphics 6000 1536 MB

I think that the amount is a bit too high so I would rather decrease it to 1000 MB or something lower so I can benefit from higher RAM for applications.

Is there a possibility to do something like that?

Simple answer: No.

The Integrated GPU in the MBA can allocate up to 1.5 GB of system memory.

There is no way for the user to change this in macOS.

Intel HD Graphics

Apple computers using newer versions of Intel HD Graphics as the primary GPU dynamically allocate up to 1.5 GB of system memory.

Products with Intel HD Graphics 6000:

MacBook Air (11-inch, Early 2015)
MacBook Air (13-inch, Early 2015)
iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2015)

From this Apple Support document.


How to get sound to both headphones and USB speakers? I have a USB Speakers and I want to record the sound from WNYC Radio to listening to it offline on my iPhone.

I'm able to alternate them, but not listening to both at the same time.

Can anyone please advise?

I believe Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba does this, but I'm not certain. They have a free trial, so you can make sure that is possible before you buy it.


Is it normal for it to take hours to delete a Time Capsule "sparsebundle" I'm trying to make room on my time capsule to make backups (it currently tells me it's full).

I got help in this question with how to delete individual backups, but it didn't solve the problem.   Even after I'd deleted all the backups Time Machine sees, I still have a ~700GB sparsebundle on the time capsule.

So, I'm trying to manually delete it, but it doesn't appear to be making progress.  I had this for about an hour:

and then it switched to this:

I realize that might seem like progress, but note the lack of blue filling up the progress bar.  It's been like that for hours now.

Is this normal?  Is there a better way?

Note that I really don't want to reformat the TC because I have other files that I've manually saved there, plus my wife's TC backups.

EDIT: Nothing was happening.  It was apparently too much for Wifi.  Once I connected via ethernet, I was able to delete, but it took the better part of a day.

It is theoretically possible if the drive is near full that a delete operation may take a lot of time. You can try to delete the file via the command line, which bypasses the Finder and does it the Unix way.

In any case there must be hard drive activity during the process. If the drive is not making any noise or light, then it’s not doing anything and that’s not good. But be patient.


Alternative to iWeb? It seems that iWeb is now long dead, so I am looking for alternative WYSIWYG web editors. Free or open-source would be great, but I wouldn't mind thinking about paying a small fee for a mature piece of software either.

iWeb Alternatives

DreamWeaver -> http://www.adobe.com/in/products/dreamweaver.html
Flux 4 -> http://www.theescapers.com/
Web Acapella -> http://www.webacappella.com/
Sand Vox -> http://www.karelia.com/sandvox/from-iweb-to-sandvox.html


How do I delete files when I can only boot into Safe (single-user) mode I have a 9 year old MacBook Pro that has died. I want to recycle it, but I want to wipe any sensitive and personal data before it leaves my hands. I am only able to boot into safe (single user) mode using Cmd-S. I get the terminal prompt, but for some reason the file system is read-only. I need to change the file system to read-write so I can delete the Users files. I have exhausted my limited knowledge of commands, chown, chmod, etc. but the constant message I get is that files cannot be deleted because the file system is read-only. Is there a way to get the file system to a state where I can deleted files or even better wipe the drive completely?
Thanks,

To make the filesystem writable, you would use mount with the u and w options.

/sbin/mount -uw /


Using 2133 ram on mid macbook 2012 To be more specific, i'm thinking on buying this ram for my mid 2012 macbook pro. According to this post it seems possible to run 2133, though i'm still not sure if it's really running 2133 and would it give better performance rather then 1866? I'm running heavy virtual envs. on my macbook, and my current 8gb ram is way not enough.

Realistically the speed difference between 1866 and 2133 isn't going to make a significant impact on your overall system speed. It's a 266MHz difference but this does not affect overall performance in the same way a 266MHz CPU speed bump would.

You say you are running virtualised environments, so upgrading to 16GB - whatever the RAM speed - will have more of an impact than the RAM speed itself.

If you're looking for the maximum performance from your setup you do really need to be running an SSD in addition to the 16GB RAM, if you're not already.


Completely deleting an app from my iPhone to download a clean copy I'm trying to delete the Firstrade (financial brokerage) app from my iPhone 8 (iOS 12.3.1) so that I can re-purchase it cleanly from the App Store.

I believe the app I originally purchased was somehow corrupted during original download. The app works on my iPad but does not start on my iPhone, only flashes the splash screen.

How do I get rid of the suspected corrupted copy and download a clean copy of the app? After I delete the the app from my device by going to Settings app → General → iPhone Storage → Firstrade: Trade, Invest, Save, the App Store always shows it with a down-arrow-cloud.

Does anyone know of a way to completely and fully delete this (any) app?

That arrow just means that you have downloaded that app before and it is linked to your purchase history.

  But you may have also found apps that have a cloud icon in place of the price, and you might be wondering why. This indicates that the app has already been purchased with your Apple ID (This includes free apps. Even free apps are “purchased”, they just have no cost.) Once you have purchased an app with your Apple ID, you own that app forever, whether you choose to delete it at some point in the future or not.

https://www.solveyourtech.com/cloud-icon-next-app-app-store/


Trying to recover data from an external RAID drive I have a 1 TB Western Digital external hard drive that is old but works fine, I also have a 4 TB WD RAID (2 x 2 TB hard drives in one casing) that stopped working which I'm trying to recover. I must say it turns on when I plug it, but mac doesn't recognize it.

I pulled out HDD #1 from the 4 TB RAID, then connected it via the SATA connection to the housing of the 1 TB. Physically, it connected without a problem, but my Mac doesnt recognize the "new" drive.

Any ideas what I should do in order to see the data from the 2 TB HDD?

If your RAID is 4 TB from 2 x 2 TB then it is RAID 0, a stripe set where one 2 TB drive is an "extension" of the other. Each 2 TB drive won't work by itself. If any of them fails, the other is useless. This setup is useful for write and read speed, but it decreases confidence in the set.

So, if you pull any of the 2 TB drives from the set and tries to use it, it won't work. You need to repartition the drive as a single drive (no RAID), but then the other drive will be useless forever (you destroyed on of the drives in the set.

If it was RAID 1 (mirror), you would have 2 TB from the 2 x 2 TB set, but each drive would be an exact copy of the other and you should be able to use each one by itself. This setup seems a waste of space but it increases confidence in the set since any 1 drive failing would still allow you to access your data.


When switching to a different space, OS X sometimes just switches back to the previous space. Is there a fix for this? I've got a curious problem with my computer, which is set up with 2 spaces. I use the Move left a space and Move right a space shortcut to switch between them.

Quite often, particularly the first time I switch spaces after rebooting, OS X just switches back straight away. The sliding animation finishes, and then - just as the desktop icons would ordinarily start to fade in, or the key window would appear highlighted - it switches back, putting me back where I was. Subsequent switches work fine.

For something so minor-sounding, it's surprisingly annoying. Has anybody else had this, and managed to fix it? I'm not really sure where to begin looking. There are no messages in the console.

OS X Lion 10.7.5.

I have the same issue on High Sierra and only just figured out what's causing the issue for me. It happens when I:

have the same application open in both desktops/spaces, Chrome windows in this example
switch from Chrome to another application
change desktops

It will revert to the previous desktop and make Chrome the active application. Now when I change desktops it will not switch back. I have not yet found a solution to this issue, other than making the application that is on both desktops, the active application before switching.


Managed, Mobile account on Mac not giving me the option to change password when Admin is unlocked? I'm trying to change/access mobile and managed accounts on a Mac network system. System Preferences won't give me the option to change a password of a mobile account. How can I view or change this password?

A managed / mobile account is controlled from the directory so you can't change that password unless there's some sort of integration with a tool like Apple Enterprise Connect or Nomad (https://nomad.menu) where the tool calls to the Active Directory to make the password change.

All Mac accounts have their password encrypted and obfuscated, so you'd have a hard time cracking them.

How can I recover a standard user's password using the admin password?

Best bet is to get your admin staff to assist you in resetting the passwords or letting you be the administator of this Mac and set up local accounts.


How does Apple count app downloads? If a user downloads a game but then deletes it, does it still count as a download?
Will if affect the ranking of your app?

Yes, if the app is deleted after being downloaded, it still counts as a download. Deleting the app does not affect the ranking of the app.

If you download the app over and over again using the same Apple ID, it will still count as one download. You cannot improve your rating by downloading the same app over and over again unless you use different Apple IDs.


How to get inode from alias file? In this MacWorld forum thread aliases are described as

  Aliases can reference an object in the file system either by a
  persistent ID or by path. Generally they will contain both
  pieces of information.

Is there a way to access the persistent ID an alias is pointing to with either AppleScript or bash?

Try:

set aliasPath to "Mac OS X:Users:John:Desktop:test.txt alias"

tell application "Finder"
    set myalias to file aliasPath
    set myFile to original item of myalias
end tell

set filePath to myFile as text
set inode to first word of (do shell script "ls -i " & quoted form of (POSIX path of filePath))


How can I change from app store Germany to App Store Spain Trying to download Pokerstars.es, but I always get German App Store and in Spain Pokerstars.eu can not be played.

go to Setting and choose "iTunes Store and App Store"
Tap your
Apple ID and in the popup that appears tap "View Apple ID"
Insert your password
Tap Country/Region and again Contry/Region (if you have an active subscription as Apple Music, you cannot change the Country)
Choose the country from the list, and complete all the form that appears.
When you'll finish, you can use the Stores from that country.

P.S.
All your purchased are related to the country where you bought them, so you won't find any purchase in the dedicated section, when you'll come back to your country, you'll find all your purchases.

here's the official article Change your iTunes Store country or region


Terminal: “Invalid Argument: dirname” (El Capitan) I noticed the issue when I first went to run

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

in OS X Terminal (10.11.2) but this was returned

bash: /usr/bin/defaults: Invalid argument

I'm not sure what is going on with defaults, but I also have a similar issue with brew:

/bin/bash: /usr/bin/dirname: Invalid argument

I clearly broke something (or perhaps malware), but not sure how I did it or when it happened. This is causing all sorts of issues. Any thoughts on fixing it?

My PATH variable looks like this:

/Users/username/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/MacGPG2/bin:/usr/texbin:/Users/username/.rvm/bin

EDIT:
I noticed my issue is similar to this one: OS X Yosemite Hard Disk Errors even after Repairing them but there's no resolution.

Found a solution! I reinstalled El Capitan from the recovery partition (hold command-R while restarting). The errors are now gone.


Is there a way to change the icon color in the Finder navigation bar? I've been a happy mac user for a couple of years, because I'm visually impaired, and very glad that Apple built in very good accessibility tools into all their operating systems.

But after installing lion, I noticed that the icons in the navigation bar at the left of the Finder, lost their color, they're just grey. I'm still able to see them, but my eye is less drawn to them, I can't see as quickly where I should click. I can't find a secret in the secrets app to change this.

Is there a way to revert this change?

This MacOSXHints article may help. To summarize

Install SIMBL (version 0.9.9)
Download ColorfulSidebar
Copy ColorfulSidebar.bundle from the Disk Image to /Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins (or ~/Library/Application Support/SIMBL/Plugins
Restart Finder

It also seems that the change may get wiped out after a reboot, there's an example for a LaunchAgent script to prevent this on the MacOSXHints site.


How to extend the time that a screenshot remains on screen on macOS Mojave? After taking a screenshot. The screenshot goes to the bottom right hand corner. It disappears after 5 seconds (yes I timed it). How can I extend this time?

I know this is slightly off-topic and not quite a direct solution to your question, but this option may be of interest to you. You mentioned taking screenshots for tutorials… . I use Take screenshot selection, upload to imgur. + more cool things almost exclusively.

The imgur-screenshot utility, straight out of the box without configuring any options, uploads the screenshot to Imgur , opens a browser window of the uploaded screenshot (for easy access if you need to manipulate the image), copies the URL of the screenshot to your clipboard, and also stores a local copy of the image.

I actually created an AppleScript application, and included.. imgur-screenshot.sh into a script libraries folder in the application bundle…

on imgur_screenshot()
    set imgUR to (path to me as string) & "Contents:Resources:Script Libraries:imgur-screenshot.sh"
    set imgUR to imgUR as alias
    set imgUR to POSIX path of imgUR
    set imgUR to quoted form of imgUR
    do shell script imgUR
end imgur_screenshot

imgur_screenshot()

From here, with enhanced dictation enabled, I selected the new AppleScript application in Finder, and simply spoke the command “Make This Speakable”, and configured the newly created dictation command… now anytime I need to take a screenshot, I simply say “Upload Screenshot” which sets the whole process in motion


Why I have not the option to open the web Inspector interface - Safari? I want to open this interface to look the source code or response, like below:

But, when I want to open the localhost:8080/xxx's page, I found I do not able to open that, it is gray:

So, how to resolve it in Safari?

There's another way of showing the Web Inspector.

Right/Secondary click on a web page and select: Inspect Element or Review the elements.


Missing "Move to Dropbox" contextual menu option A while ago, I lost the "Move to Dropbox" option in my Finder's contextual menu, and, originally, I didn't make much of it since I read that it was an issue/bug in OS X, which Dropbox reported to Apple. I recently installed Dropbox on my work Mac and noticed that the option displays as expected, so I'm trying to restore it on my home Mac.

EDIT: Image for reference

I'm currently running Sierra beta 5, but the issue also occurred in El Capital. So far, I've tried the following coupled with killing the Finder process each time:

Toggling the Finder integration via Dropbox
Uninstalling Dropbox with AppCleaner and reinstalling
Deleting ~/.dropbox folder
Deleting ~/Dropbox/.dropbox.cache folder
Deleting /Library/DropboxHelperTools folder, which Dropbox recreated
Toggling Finder integration in System Preferences > Extensions
Toggling System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services > Folder Actions Setup...
Disabling (and later re-enabling) csrutil
Restarting Mac

The latest version of Dropbox doesn't have the "Fix Permissions" option anymore, so I can't try that, but I have in the past. What I find strange is that the contextual menu options within the Dropbox folder display as expected, while not in my local folders.

As you can tell, I've done my research to no avail, so any help would be appreciated!

I discovered that the contextual menu option only displays within folders on the primary drive. Since my Documents, Downloads, etc. folders are on a secondary drive, it doesn't display, despite the fact that my Dropbox folder is also on this secondary drive.


How do I enable ntpd to serve ntp clients (using macOS 10.14 Mojave)? So on macOS High Sierra 10.13, this answer worked fine: How to enable ntpd to server ntp clients (using High Sierra)

Now I am running macOS 10.14 and they have removed both ntpdate and ntpd-wrapper (which was what the org.ntp.ntpd-legacy.plist LaunchDaemon was using).

Is there a solution to configure a similar ntp relay with macOS 10.14?

I am using a Mac Pro (Late 2013) which has 2 ethernet NIC's, and have one NIC with internet access, which is syncing to time.apple.com.  I need the second NIC that does not have internet access to act as an ntpd server for the devices on the private network segment that does not route outside it's private LAN segment.

From Macrumors (in the Mojave 'All the little things' thread):

Time sync: ntpd has been replaced by timed: not the old school unix one, but a new apple invention.

Have linked the timed Man page for ya:

https://www.unix.com/man-page/mojave/8/timed/


Is there a fix for seeing two black screens using TeamViewer on macOS 10.14.6? We're using TeamViewer at work to allow people to work from home. We've one issue we're chasing with support and I wanted to share here in case someone has figured this out.

Macs at work have two displays and same at home. The home computer running Full Client connects fine, but they see total black screens for both Host (work) screens. Vendor support is very windows centric and most of their articles mention one of the screens being black and not both.

macOS 10.14.6 on both host and client
TeamViewer Host 15.4.4445
TeamViewer Full Client 15.4.4445

Things work for a while, but at night when the work machine logs out, we're seeing a good chance that a black screen is presented through TeamViewer in the morning. The release notes say this version addresses this issue, but we're not so sure. Since we're remote, it's hard to know what's on the actual screen.

Has anyone dug in to this or have a workaround?

The fix is to update TeamViewer host to 15.13.7


Unable to fully maximize Terminal window I am trying to maximize my Terminal window so that it goes from edge to edge. I do not want to take it full-screen.
However, I am observing that I am unable to do so and despite by best effort, there's a tiny gap that remains at the bottom of the window. The same can be seen in the screenshot below:

I do not encounter this behvior with other macOS apps, just the Terminal app. Is this by design? or could this be a possible bug with the app?

Terminal windows are always sized to show full text lines (you can check this by resizing the window manually to see that it resizes in steps), so for example if your text height in Terminal is 10pt and your screen height is 1275pt there will be a 5pt gap at the bottom (numbers not real and ignoring menu bar, window title etc, just to show the principle).


iMessage off and on on computer I keep my iPhone on airplane mode nearly all day. I usually text via iMessage with the Messages app on my mac. I was wondering if there was any way I can turn off iMessage on my computer and then turn it back on later and get all the missed text messages (with my iPhone on Airplane Mode during this whole process). I tried signing out of iMessage but when I sign back in, I don't get the missed text messages. Thanks!

It is not possible to forward text messages to your mac while
  your iPhone is turned off or in airplane mode.

  While iMessages are "just being moved" within Apple servers, text
  messages must be first received from your carrier, then synchronized with
  iCloud so that your mac can receive it too.

  With your iPhone being turned off, the chain of delivery is broken.

The following steps show the iMessage way.

Make sure you sync your messages with iCloud on iPhone and Mac.

iPhone - Sync Messages with iCloud

1. Go to settings
2. Click on your Account at the top
3. Choose iCloud
4. Activate iMessage

Deactivate iMessage on macOS

1. Open iMessage
2. Go to settings with CMD + ;
3. Unselect «Enable this account»

Reactivate your account by selecting «Enable this account».

When you reactivate iMessage on macOS, you'll be notified on your iPhone:

  Your Apple ID and phone number are now being used for iMessage on a new Mac. If you recently signed in to "«MAC_OS_NAME»" you can ignore this notification.


Is there a way to add a note to the iOS Health app? Is it possible to add a comment or note to the Health app? I could see this ability as a useful way to interpret or supplement the data.

For example, if I'm sick for a few days, it could explain a change in my diet or weight. ("Today was Day 3 of flu symptoms, but I'm feeling better than yesterday.") Or, if I'm on a medication, I might want to make notes of any observations. ("I forgot to take my X pill last night; today, I have a headache.")

Adding notes in Health.app

No, as of iOS 10.3.x you can't add comments to Health.app and its database.

Alternative (3rd party apps)

If you want to enter any notes or observations you need to rely on a third party app to do so.

Ideally, this app should be able to export your notes in a non-proprietary format like XML. Not all apps (e.g. Pillow) with a notes feature allow you to do that. (Thanks @Mark)

Alternative (use unused fields)

You may use unused Health.app fields to store your observations. Below are special data types that exceed the usual 'one value + one time stamp' values.

With graphs

UV Index (one number, start time, end time)
Sleep Analysis (three values, start time, end time)
Blood Pressure (two numbers)

Without graphs

Carvical Mucus Quality (five values)
Menstruation (four values + one boolean (yes/no))
Ovulation Test Result (three values)
Sexual Activity (three values)

You could totally add 'UV Index' (value + duration) for headaches and 'Vitamin B12' for forgotten medications. Add them to Health.app's Today view using the 'Add to favorites' toggle and you're done.


Terminal "ls" command sorting flagged files ls -lO

lists "restricted" flagged files as well as the rest

Is it possible to limit the list just to these files and/or to list them sorted first or last in the list?

You can grep for ‘restricted’ to restrict the results to just restricted files.

$ ls -lO | grep restricted
drwxr-xr-x@   5 root  wheel  restricted         160 21 Sep 05:05 System
drwxr-xr-x@  37 root  wheel  restricted,hidden 1184 21 Sep 05:17 bin
⋮

To sort by file flags, pipe to sort -k 5

$ ls -lO | sort -k 5
total 20
drwxr-xr-x    2 root  wheel  -                   64  1 Sep 15:47 AppleInternal
⋮
dr-xr-xr-x    2 root  wheel  hidden               1 14 Dec 22:10 home
⋮
-rw-r--r--    1 root  wheel  hidden,compressed  313 18 Aug 01:55 installer.failurerequests
⋮
drwxr-xr-x@   5 root  wheel  restricted         160 21 Sep 05:05 System


How does "..." while replying works? I realised that in iOS-5 sms app, if I send an sms to my friend and he is replying, there will be a "..." showing.

How is it possible that I could be notified while he is replying? How does it work?
If my friend types one character and "backspace", do the dots disappear?

This works just like other IM apps which do this. Skype and WhatsApp come to mind. If you have the option to send these notifications turned on, and you start typing, your iOS device sends a message to the device on the other end that you're currently typing a message, which gets displayed as "typing..." or "..." to the user.

This is possible because the Messages app on iOS works on both the phone's SMS network and Apple's proprietary iMessage IM network. The app automatically figures out whether to use the iMessage IM network or SMS, based on who you're sending the message to.

If the person is using iMessage, it defaults to that, saving both of you money. If all you have for the person in Address Book is a phone number that isn't an iPhone with iMessage set up, it uses plain old SMS. Pretty smart. BTW iMessage messages are blue, SMS are green.

Messages sent over iMessage move over the internet, rather than the cellphone's SMS network, so it'll use either your cell phone's data plan, or Wi-Fi, and maintain a relatively persistent connection to the user on the other end.

Because of this, it's trivial for your iOS device to periodically ping the device on the other end, and show the user that message, while you're entering text. This wouldn't be easy over the SMS network. AFAIK, the "..." shows up as long as you're entering text at the keyboard. If you stop typing, even if there's text already entered, it'll disappear, then reappear when you start typing again.


Hide finished iBooks? I have a lot of books in ePub and PDF format in iBooks on my Mac. I sync the next few ones I want to ready to my iPhone and iPad and read them there.

Is there a way to set up a workflow so that when I finish reading a book, it "goes away" from iBooks, everywhere? I'd like the list of books to keep shortening so that once I'm done reading a book, I don't see it anymore.

It seems like a natural feature to have in a book reader, to not see books that one has already finished reading. Syncing of current page works great across all my devices, but automatically hiding / deleting read books is something that I'd like to have as well.

Why not put the finished books in a folder?

That’s an easy way to get them out of the way. Also, since you are on a Mac you can easily export / delete / file them outside the app so you have a backup that’s easy to manage and a clean slate for new reading.


Is there any way to use sleep mode on WatchOS 7 without do not disturb activating on my iPhone? I want to use my Apple Watch for sleep tracking, and want to use sleep mode so the watch display is completely off while I sleep.
However, I need my iPhone to NOT turn on Do Not Disturb (I need to be able to hear certain app notifications) when sleep mode is activated on the watch. I haven't been able to get this to work yet. Is this possible?

No options seemingly exist to do this combination yet.  I too need the same thing.


How does Disk Utility repair corruption? How does Disk Utility repair corruption?

When you run First Aid, it logs things like "checking fsroot tree", checking the EFI jumpstart record", etc. How does it know if something is broken, like does it have a correct version to compare things to? What if the correct reference gets corrupted as well?

I have often asked myself, if a disk or volume is corrupt. And, if so, would I be better off backing up files before or after running repair software. In other words, could the repair destroy a file that otherwise could have be copied. Therefore, I would like to separate the detection for corruption from the possible repair of corruption. Depending on the version of OS X/macOS, the Disk Utility may or may not offer this option.

The Disk Utility basically runs the command diskutil repairdisk device, where the device is usually disk followed by an positive integer. If you right click on a drive shown in the Disk Utility and select "Get Info", the device is the "BSD device node" shown in the popup.

Older versions of OS X/macOS allowed you to select a disk verification. This option was eliminated from the Disk Utility in the latest versions of macOS. However, you can still run disk verification by entering the command diskutil verifydisk device in a Terminal application window. Again, you will need to replace device with the appropriate "BSD device node".

You can also apply the same to just a volume. You will need to replace repairdisk and verifydisk with repairvolume and verifyvolume. Also the device will usually be disk, an positive integer, the letter s and finally another postive integer. For example, disk0s2.


Unable to repartition my data disk Last week I started having problems with my Mac (a mid-2010 Mac Pro running OS X El Captain), after searching for the cause I realized my OS X partition was corrupt.

A while back I turned on FileVault, and 2-3 weeks later all of a sudden my Mac started slowing down. In the end, 5 minutes after booting up my Mac simply froze, I wasn't able to do anything any more.

I decided to reinstall OS X but to my horror I realized that I couldn't select my original disk any more. No matter what I tried (I even booted up using a Windows 10 install disk to remove all the partitions on the disk) , I couldn't get OS X to reinstall on the same disk.

I finally gave up, installed it on the 2nd disk, installed Paragon Hard Disk Manager which allowed me to finally create a new partition on the disk, and started using it as a data disk.

I thought I had solved the problem, until I wanted to turn on encryption on the disk. I got an error message, which Google told me meant I didn't have an EFI partition on the disk.

So I googled around for a solution, found one but it made everything worse. Now even Paragon Hard Disk Manager can't create a working partition any more.

So... How do I clean up this mess? I have a working OS X install, I just want to create another partition on my other disk and encrypt it...

How can I fix this?

Output sudo gpt -r show disk1:

       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34        2014
        2048  1953519616      1  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  1953521664        3471
  1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
  1953525167           1         Sec GPT header

When I first executed diskutil list the list said there was a "Microsoft Basic Data" partition" on  the disk. Probably the partition Paragon app tried to create:

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE               IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk1
   1:       Microsoft Basic Data                         1.0 TB     disk1s1

I'm not certain the disk isn't failing, but my current problem started after me trying to recreate the EFI partition, so I'm assuming it's still a logical problem rather than an actual hardware problem.

To enable FileVault on a non-system disk you need an EFI partition, an HFS+ volume and a Boot OS X partition. The last one will be built while enabling FileVault.

Your disk contains none of them.

Open Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities), choose the appropriate disk (not any inferior volume!) and hit erase in the toolbar.

Choose a name, "OS X Extended (Journaled)" as format and "GUID Partition Map" as scheme. Then hit the erase button.

If the partitioning fails, close Disk Utility and open Terminal.app. Enter diskutil list. Then enter sudo gpt -r show diskX with diskX: the disk identifier of the stubborn disk. Below I assume the identifier is disk1.

If you are sure that you have chosen the stubborn disk (I.e. the one with the 2048  1953519616      1  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7 partition) enter:

diskutil umountDisk disk1
sudo gpt destroy disk1

Enter exit to terminate the Terminal session and quit Terminal. Open Disk Utility again and repeat the steps to partition the disk mentioned earlier.


How to set Apple TV's language back to English? So, our daughter thought it would be funny to change the Apple TV's language setting. She is now complaining that she can't watch TV shows. Of course she can't, because nobody can figure out how to sign in to the account again, since the menus are all in... Nepali? I'm not sure.

Anyway, I think our OS is the most recent version, so can someone else with an Apple TV in English please post images showing how to navigate to the language setting, so that I can change the language back to English?

And isn't it about time Apple established a universal indicator for language settings so that no matter what language is set, one can navigate to the settings and change them? If one must understand the current language in order to change the language, isn't that a usability problem? Sure, most of us don't screw around with the language settings for fun, but then there are those of us who have kids...

Edit:

The model, when looked up via serial number, is listed as:
Apple TV HD

The top item in the main settings menu is General > on the next page you want Language, which is item 1 (of 2) in the 4th group.

If you ignore the groups, it's item number 14 on mine.


Apps Stuck in Security & Privacy > Accessibility I was messing around with using AppleScript for GUI manipulation so the apps I was making had to be granted access. The very first one I did showed up in Security & Privacy > Accessibility as 04F05B1B-23E7...6027D697DF.app (not the name of the app). So I copied it's contents, deleted the app, and made a new one with the same name. That worked (it showed up in Security & Privacy > Accessibility as the correct name), but the other name was still there, even though the app was gone. AND if I tried to check the box to allow it to control my computer, it would instantly uncheck itself. So not only should it not be there, but it performs weird as well. Now that was my only problem until today, when I noticed that every single one of the apps I had made had its name transformed into some string of numbers, capitol letters, and hyphens. So I copied the folder the apps were in to some other spot and deleted the originals, that didn't make them go away. Then I zipped up the copy folder and deleted the unzipped one, that didn't work either (yes I have restarted my computer). I have no idea how to fix this and I didn't have any success trying to google it, so here I am. Here's four of the five that exist.

EDIT: Also, could anyone tell me if files related to those applications left on my computer is the reason the apps won't leave.

Within Terminal you can run the following command to see the current entries in your system.

sudo sqlite3 /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/Tcc.db 'select * from access'

And then this command to remove an entry you don't want any longer.

sudo sqlite3 /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/Tcc.db 'delete from access where client like "%YOURAPPNAMEHERE%"'

So, for example, I ran the following command which removed Automator from the list.

sudo sqlite3 /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TCC/Tcc.db 'delete from access where client like "%Automator%"'

And just to give credit where credit is due, I found the solution on Apple's discussion forums here.

Another option to find a list of applications which have requested Accessibility access is the following command. This will give you the list of application which have been allowed and the ones that haven't.

defaults read com.apple.universalaccessAuthWarning


iTunes: The song could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it? I've deleted cached Apple Music files as I've needed to free up some space on my Mac.

Now whenever I try to play a previously cached (and deleted) song from Apple Music, I get the following error:

When I click Cancel, it starts playing normally (starts streaming as if it wasn't cached before), though I get the same error for every single song that have been previously cached.

How can I make iTunes understand that none of those songs are there on disk and need to be downloaded on demand?

Have you tried consolidating the files? Go to "File" -> "Library" -> "Organize Library" -> "Consolidate files". Afterwards iTunes should know that none of those songs are on your disk.


How to open "BigTIFF" files? I'm looking for some software that would open BigTIFF files on a mac - ones that are 6GB or bigger. (I'm not opposed to writing some code to do so, but I'd prefer a prewritten solution.)

Does macOS have any built-in software to handle this sort of thing? If not, are there any commonly-used external programs or libraries that I could employ?

I just need to view the images and be able to zoom in - I don't need to edit them.

NOTE:

Just to be clear, I am not wanting to view large TIFF images. I am specifically referring to bigTIFF images. If you are not familiar with these, please refer to http://bigtiff.org/

Yes, macOS includes the Preview app which can open large TIFF images.

By default, the Preview app is located within your Applications folder.

The Preview app actually offers a lot of functionality, including:

opening images and PDFs
editing images and PDFs
signing documents
sharing files
annotation

For more details, see this page.

If I've misunderstood your question, please feel free to clarify it.


How do you unschedule a task in automator? I scheduled an automatic backup with Automator, it has run properly and I receive a pop-up notification every day informing about it. Now, I want to stop the task but I do not know where to find the list of scheduled tasks and how to kill them.

Automator by itself does not provide scheduling facilities. You'll need to disable the scheduled launch of a workflow using whatever you used to schedule the workflow originally. For example,

if you used a recurring calendar appointment, you'll need to use Calendar to delete the appointment.
if you used a third-party application, you'll need to use that application to disable the schedule.


How can I find out the size of a video file on my iPhone 6 camera roll? How can I find out the size of a video file on my iPhone 6 camera roll without connecting it to a computer.

The Shortcuts app made this actually rather easy nowadays. Configure it as an extension for the share sheet, then activate it in any video (or photo) within Photos.

PS: Shortcuts is part of recent versions of iOS. For first time users it might help to have a look at the Shortcut Manual.


How do I remove or alter timestamps from Word 2011 (Mac Office) tracked changes? Is there an easy way to batch change a group of Track Changes edit and comment timestamps in Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac? Can I remove the timestamps altogether (ideally without removing my name)?

There are directions for Windows Word online, but they do not translate to the Mac  version.

In addition to above:

In the word document click on Review, than Turn off track changes.

That solution only applies to curent document.

While I do not support faking documents (not showing that they have been revised), I leave that to your personal decision.

Here are some instructions batch processin for multiple files = Pick a date!

Creation Date – Multiple files
How to change the creation date attribute of multiple files:

Note: changing the creation date attribute will also change the modified date attribute and set it the same as the creation date.

Make sure all the files you want changing are in the top directory of the same folder.  Do not place files in this folder if you don’t want them to be modified.
Start the Terminal application (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) or if you prefer use iTerm.

Type the following in the command line, but do not hit enter/return.

Replace YYYYMMDDhhmm with the desired date information:
touch –t YYYYMMDDhhmm

Open a Finder window and locate the folder containing the files you wish to modify.  Drag and drop the folder into the Terminal window, the folder and path will be added to the end of the line you just typed.

Add /* to the end of the command.  If you’re only targeting a specific file type include its extension (e.g. /*.jpg).  Y

If all is in order press the enter/return key.  The creation date should now be changed to the date specified above, as well as the last modified date, for all the files within that folder.

Modified Date – Multiple files
How to change the last modified date attribute of multiple files:

Make sure all the files you want changing are in the top directory of the same folder.  Do not place files in this folder if you don’t want them to be modified.
Start the Terminal application (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app) or if you prefer use iTerm.
Type the following in the command line, but do not hit enter/return.  Replace YYYYMMDDhhmm with the desired date information:
touch –mt YYYYMMDDhhmm
Open a Finder window and locate the folder containing the files you wish to modify.  Drag and drop the folder into the Terminal window, the folder and path will be added to the end of the line you just typed.

Add /* to the end of the command.  If you’re only targeting a specific file type include its extension (e.g. /*.jpg).
If all is in order press the enter/return key.  The last modified date should now be changed to the date specified above, for all the files within that folder.


How can I run Warcraft 3 on my new MacBook Pro I recently bought the digital copies of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne from the blizzard store. They are registered with my blizzard account but when I download the zip file it opens a downloader but my computer says it can't be opened because it is from an unidentified developer. What can I do about this?

The error is shown in this image

From https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/playing-older-blizzard-titles-on-mac-os-x-10-7-lion :

  Warcraft III will only run on Mac OS X 10.7 if your operating system
  was upgraded from 10.6.X and only if the Warcraft III installation was
  patched before the operating system was upgraded. There is currently
  no way to install or patch the game on Lion.

So you need a 10.6 system to bootstrap from.


How to change the spell-check to British -ize in Mac? It is possible to change the spelling dictionary to either British (-ise) or American (-ize) as shown in the solution to this post.

However, I would like to use British spelling with -ize variant (recalled as en_GB-ize in some dictionaries). Is there a way to set this language in Mac?

Try setting your spellcheck language to Canadian English.

An alternative would be to see if you can find a 3rd party dictionary that does what you want from sources like this.


How to display the full path of files found by the Finder "Find" function? I'm trying to use the Finder to search my code base. For example I would like to find every files that ends with ".m" and contains "keyDown".

Finder does this, but in the Finder window showing the results, the full path can not be displayed individually on each line, but only if you click on the file. In this case it's displayed on a status bar on the bottom.

Is there a way with Finder, or possibly another tool, to display the full path for each file next to the filename ?

HoudahSpot allows adding a column for either short paths or absolute paths.

See also this question at Super User.


Stream iOS camera live video to other device over Wifi Is there an app that can capture live video on one iOS device and broadcast it over wifi so all my other iOS devices can play it? Streaming it over the internet would be even better...

TJUNKS Video Camera

You can stream to other devices. This app does a lot, with video including uploading and sharing video on facebook, twitter etc but to stream video all the devices will need this app.

It also works across platform.

As far as personal experience goes I have only used it once to test it quickly, it workked accross a home WiFi network, other than curiosity I had no need for this.


Is there an iPad office suite that syncs with Google Docs? The app should support offline editing of documents, spreadsheets and sync them back to Google Docs.

You can go to www.docs.google.com and upgrade your account to a Google Drive account (I believe you can also do this from www.drive.google.com). Google has an iOS app for their Drive service (just search the app store for “google drive”. You get 5gb of free space for uploaded stuff, and docs created in google docs/drive do not count towards the 5gb. The iOS app has an offline storage option for files, as well as support for folders and starring and sharing


No audio in Safe Mode MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Mid 2014) Mojave.  I have been using Safe Mode to see if I can find out information about my trackpad. Then I quickly realized that I do not have any audio. In System Preferences under Sound it says No input devices found. Same for Output. Is this normal?

Audio is disabled during safe mode since not considered essential function.

Safe mode is considered bare bone operation for troubleshooting.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262


Easiest way to send multiple iWork attachments as Office documents My grandmother just switched from a PC to a Mac, and I suggested that she use iWork instead of Office for Mac. Now she is getting used to iWork, but all of the people that she works with use Office.

When she wants to send multiple documents, I told her that she has to open each one and got to Share => Export -> Word and save them to her desktop. After that she needs to attach each one to the email.

As I'm telling her this, I think to myself "There has to be a better way..."

So, I come here to ask: Is there a better way? Is there some way to make Mail convert these .pages documents into .docx, .keynote into .pptx, etc.? I always thought that's what "Send Windows Friendly Attachments" did, but I have found out that it does something totally different.

The sending of windows friendly attachments doesn't change the file, but it changes how Apple encodes the files into text for transmission. (think using tar and gzip instead of uuencode and compress).

If you send many documents in Word format, there's nothing preventing you from storing them all to the filesystem as .doc (or .docx) and letting pages import them when she edits. That way she does the conversion only when she needs to modify a file as opposed to having to do the conversion at send time.


Can't do in-app purchase in my new iPad Mini I just switched my old iPad to iPad Mini. When I'm on my old iPad, in-app purchases work fine, as well as with my iPhone 5 (they all use the same Apple ID).

How to make in-app purchases work on the iPad Mini?

Usually, when one device will not perform in app purchase, it's a setting under restrictions.

If you've checked and disabled that restriction or all restrictions - you can often fix this by signing out of the App Store entirely and powering down the device. When it starts cleanly, you can log in again. When you sign in, be sure to buy something (a free song of the week, a free app or even a paid app) to get through the verification questions. Once that's done, recheck an IAP (in-app purchase) to be sure things are functional.

As a last resort, you might need to contact Apple Support for Apple ID - but most times you can fix this without needing their help.


Can't see Dropbox folder within localhost I've setup Apache for web development on Yosemite. It's setup fine and I'm able to view folders within my documentroot using http://localhost as I'd expect to.

I now want to use my Projects folder within Dropbox using Apache so have moved my Dropbox folder within the documentroot. There are other directories within documentroot as well.

The problem is when using http://localhost to navigate around these directories, the Dropbox directory doesn't show in the browser. Nothing within it is accessible either. The directories sitting alonsgide are accessible as I'd expect. I think it's probably a permissions thing with the Dropbox directory.

I'm in the process of switching my dev environment from Windows (where this wouldn't have been a problem) to Mac so apologies if I'm missing anything. How do I make sure I can see and use this Dropbox directory when viewing its parent using http://localhost?

Open Info window (Command+I) and check Shared Folder.


Prevent Apple Double Format Files on Remote Share/Disk I have a web application on a local Linux Apache server that scans a folder for new files and then processes them.

I have an SMB share to this folder and I use Path Finder to copy files over from my Mac (10.6).

The problem is that when I copy files over a whole lot of "._filename" resource fork files get created on the share and then the web application gets confused when it encounters them. I could fix the web application to be a bit smarter and ignore them, but this is also annoying when archiving and copying to external drives.

I have managed to turn off .DS_Store files and I did see a similar question with an answer, but it seemed to be dealing with NTFS Streams and a nsmb.conf file.

There is an application called BlueHarvest that fully automates the clean up of these files.

http://www.zeroonetwenty.com/blueharvest4/

Alternatively, you can use terminal:

cp -X /sourcedirectory/ /volumes/destinationsmbshare/


Why does Xcode open when I start OS X? Why does Xcode open with this file every time I start or restart OS X 10.8.4? I close it each time, have never manually opened it, and have no .savedState folder for Xcode in ~/Library/Saved Application State/.

What else might be causing it to open?

You can see everything that is supposed to open on login in System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items. These will open even if you uncheck "Reopen windows when logging back in." in the logout dialog box.


Symlinked services in ~/Library/Services not working in Lion Does anyone know how to make symlinked services work in Lion? I used to keep all my services under version control in SL and symlinked into ~/Library/Services and this stopped working when I installed Lion. Once I 'installed' the services they work but even after they installed replacing them with the symlink doesn't work.

Anyone have any ideas to get this working? Or know why it no longer works?

I am using soft links if that makes a difference.

I would hard link a file to make sure it's disabled by design.

You could then decide to go that path or come up with automation to deploy changes to production - something simple like make or rsync or complicated like Puppet.


security cms for S/MIME? Can I use

  security cms

for encrypting and decrypting S/MIME mails? Or is there any alternative?

Yes, that is certainly possible with that command.

An alternative could be using the openssl-cms program (can be installed from homebrew or similar).


How can I control a Mac through TS-Gateway? I have a new Mac at the office. We have a pretty closed off firewall here but we allow people to work remotely through a TS-Gateway using RDP.  For a client I use iTap as it supports the gateway very smoothly.  Now that I've switched to a Mac, I can no longer attach to it remotely. This is a big part of my job, and if I can't figure this out I'll need to go back to MS at the office.

Is an RDP server already running on Mountain Lion?
If so, how do I turn it on?
If not, does Apple Remote Desktop come with one?  (I already bought it but I think it's overkill)

Macs share their screens using VNC technology where pictures of the screen are sent as opposed to RDC where drawing commands are sent (primarily). They do not integrate with TS-Gateway out of the box or with any software I've seen.

On the Mac side, you need either a location service (like Back to my Mac or Screens connect client) or a VPN tunnel to get your client past the firewall and back into the local network.

Also on the Mac side, you simply enable either Remote Management or Screen Sharing as both can turn on the VNC server and allow incoming network requests to be served.

Since I put a lot of OR options in the text, here is what you need:

Turn ON VNC in Sharing preference pane
Open VNC ports (or bypass the firewall with NAT/VPN or ssh tunneling) on the Mac and incoming from the network
A VNC client similar to iTap if it does not work with plain VNC implementations.


Separate User accounts, separate iCloud Music Library I have iMac with 2 user accounts. I want to have separate iCloud music Library for this two accounts. Since I have two accounts I have two Apple Music memberships.
And when I’m trying to turn it on on the second account i see this:

Yes It is - it’s link to my other account there. So I cannot really unlink it. Any way to separate accounts can have separate Apple Music through iTunes?

The whole thing is described at View and remove your associated devices in iTunes.
It seems Apple allows to connect several devices, without any problem, but at the same time it has some restrictions and limitations.

  You can have ten devices (no more than five of them computers) associated with your Apple ID and iTunes at one time.

You are getting this message because of their AppleID policy:

  When you try to associate another Apple ID with a device that was already associated, you might see a message that says, "This device is associated with another Apple ID. You cannot associate this device with another Apple ID for [number] days." Depending on when you associated your device with your Apple ID, you might need to wait up to 90 days to associate the device with another Apple ID.

The iTunes account scenario and a 90 day wait between transfers is a seriously ridiculous constraint. But it feels there's no other way-around as per discussion here: Multiple Apple IDs on one Mac


What are the implications of deleting all content of /usr/local? After many days trying to solve a problem related to the installation of the R package 'rstan' I came to a possible solution that requires "Delete all of /usr/local/. Reinstall all developer software again from scratch."
The image attached shows the top level contents of my /usr/local/ directory. Based on this info, can anyone please give me some notion of the implications of deleting all?
Thank you for any help!

The main issue here is that you use Homebrew.
Homebrew puts its files in /usr/local/ so deleting /usr/local will remove Homebrew
So if you are prepared to reinstall Homebrew then no real issue.
However if you are not installing R and rstan via Homebrew then you will get the same issue again. If you can install them via Homebrew than that is a solution.
Basically if you use Homebrew then do not install other software in /usr/local (e.g. via normal Unix make install) as they confuse each other.
If you have to use software that has to use its own installer to end up in /usr/local then I would suggest another package manager e/g/ Macports or Fink or build your software setting the install directory to be something other than /usr/local


Prevent preview from creating text boxes For some time now I have a problem in Preview.  Whenever something on a PDF looks like it could be a text box or field (such as a horizontal line) and I click in the vicinity of it, above or below the line, then Preview creates a textbox (assuming it is a form that I want to fill in).  This behavior is certainly pretty new in Preview, although it might have been around for a few OS updates.

I find this behavior rather annoying and would like to be able to turn it off (or at least I'd like to not have it triggered by a single click ... clicking with some control key pressed down might be useful).

Any hints what I might try, or where else I might look for help would be much welcome!

Open the Markup toolbar  and switch from Text Selection  to Rectangular Selection .

It's not possible to set this as the default — this must be changed each time you want to disable this functionality.


After upgrading iTunes all my media has disappeared I have just upgraded to iTunes 12.2 on OSX Yosemite. Initially iTunes refused to open at all so I rebooted.  Now I see that I have no media in my library (other than items bought from iTunes directly).

I have tried holding down the option key when opening iTunes so that I can choose my library, but that seems to make no difference.  I suspect it has flattened by .ITL file during the upgrade.

I thought the days of iTunes losing all of your music were over?  Apparently not!

What is the best way to fix this?  Do I have to manually re-add all of my music and movie files again?

I kind of fixed it. I signed out of iTunes, then my music appeared! It seems to remain in place when I signed back in, so maybe, all is good


What is com.apple.launchctl.Aqua? While troubleshooting a slow boot time in Lion (10.7), I saw these lines in the sys log:

8/21/13 8:47:45.102 PM com.apple.launchctl.Aqua: load: option requires an argument -- D
8/21/13 8:47:45.102 PM com.apple.launchctl.Aqua: usage: launchctl load [-wF] [-D <user|local|network|system|all>] paths...

So naturally I want to find out where this script is and why it has this error.  I searched the usual LaunchAgent and LaunchDaemon directories, and then searched the whole hard drive, but could not find a script by that name.

com.apple.launchctl.aqua is launchctl. If you run strings over launchctl in /bin/launchctl it returns Aqua in amongst other strings.

I would say another script is trying to load and launchctl is failing to do so which is why you've got that error message.

I would list what processes are loaded and see if anything that is in your agent/daemon dirs isn't loading as expected.


Dysfunctional trackpad on 2007 Macbook I have a 2007 white Macbook here, of which the trackpad gradually became less responsive to the point where you can't press it down anymore at all. Neither the left nor the right button will physically come down, and it's not making the clicking noise either.

When taken apart right to the point where the top case comes off, it suddenly worked again. Sure, the macbook was still off, but one could click it.

Then I started to re-assemble the thing again, and kept checking when it lost functionality. Turns out right at the very last step, when the battery was popped back in, it got stuck.

Upon closer inspection the cause is completely logical: the Li-ion battery pack was quite swollen, and was literally pressing up against the trackpad.

My question now is fairly simple: what should I do? What are my options?

Your best option is to replace the battery. They are $129 at apple. My wife's 17in MBP had the same problem, noticed that her battery was swollen as well. As soon as we changed the battery, the laptop behaved properly again.


Want to start a new Castleville account on my iPad I downloaded my friends Castleville account on my iPad. Now I would like to start my own Castleville game. I uninstalled her game and removed all the data from Game Center. Next I went to the App Store to install the game but it has the little cloud icon with the down arrow on it. When I install it the game is still hers. Is there a way to download a game as if it's never been used before on my device so that I can play my own game from the beginning? Thanks

This is likely because her Apple ID is being used for Game Center.  To fix will require that you have your own Apple ID.

Go to Settings
Tap Game Center
If you see her Apple ID, change it to yours

If that doesn't work, This is because the game either stores game data in iCloud or somewhere other than just in Game Center.  To fix will require that you check with the developer on which Apple ID affects game status.

If signing out of Game Center doesn't fix things, then delete the app and all of its data. Then re-download the app. Lastly, before launching, use your Game Center account/Apple ID.


How can I disable Safe Boot or the Shift Key? After a spill on the keyboard of my unibody MBP 17", the ⇧ key reports as always on.

Under Windows (BootCamp) and Linux (LiveDVD) I can easily get around the problem by using an external keyboard.

However, when trying to boot into OSX, the system always starts into Safe Mode (as is intended when holding ⇧). This prevents many features from working.

Disconnecting the internal keyboard from the main board will also disable the power switch, which is thus not an option.

Is there any way to disconnect the ⇧ key on its own or disable safe-boot altogether?

If you can afford it, I would recommend replacing the topcase and keyboard as Apple suggests. If like me, you can't afford it or are open to a hack fix, then read on.
The problem
Yesterday, a little water spilt on my 13" MBP keyboard. I turned it around immediately, drained out the water and used tissue to suck it all up but the keyboard was still acting funny. I turned it off and left it out in the sun for a couple of hours and turned it on again but problems remained. My warranty had run out just a month ago and I knew Apple would not cover this under warranty. I tried to clean the shift keys and left it overnight with some rice on them with hopes that the moisture might get sucked out. Nothing worked. (The rice bit is an urban legend that seems to work with some electronics). Went to the Apple Store this morning and was told that they wouldn't even take out the key and clean it, and that the entire top case would have to be replaced. A total bill of 156 Euros which I cannot afford. I had a USB keyboard that would let me use the Mac for the moment so I decided to try to work out a fix.
Symptoms

Boots in safe mode everytime (which I later found out was because the shift key is pressed)
Cannot login because password is in lower case or has numbers
Cannot boot in super user mode and try to disable keys or override password as some commands won't work in uppercase (I wouldn't recommend this anyway because its super user mode)
All text is in caps and numbers are symbols as though shift key is always pressed
Audio doesn't work
Keyboard viewer would not always show the shift key pressed. The key seemed to get pressed at random

Fix

Hold the Option button down on boot to bypass the Safe Mode ensure a normal boot

At the login screen, plug in a USB keyboard and enter your password to login. Switch to “French- Numerical” keyboard and use the Caps Lock key to invert uppercase to lowercase. Note the layout of this keyboard is different, make sure to look up an image of this layout before you type in your original  password.

Change your password to one that uses all caps and no numbers

Download and install KeyRemap4MacBook .

Use a combination of the functionalities of the Keyboard Viewer and KeyRemap4MacBook to figure out which shift key is the problem. In my case, I found out that it was only my left shift key.

Disable the left/right shift key on KeyRemap4MacBook and click on the 'Reload XML' button to make that take effect.
If only one shift key was the problem, then you are done. If both shift keys were shorted, then its likely other keys are too. In which case you should probably just replace the entire thing. If you think other keys are not affected, then you can use KeyRemap4MacBook itself to remap the shift functionality to a lesser used key like the Left Option key.

Under System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Items , add KeyRemap4MacBook as an application that should start on login. This will ensure that your disable/remap of the shift key is active every time you login.

Usage change/Things to remember

Remember to hold down the Option key everytime the computer boots or
reboots to bypass safe mode. The fix above is at the software level.
The key is physically still shorted at the hardware level and will
affect boot.
Remember that at the login screen, the disable/remap is    not
active. So your password now has to be all caps and only letters.

As soon as I can save some money, I will get my topcase and keyboard replaced but until then this solution works great with minimal change. Hope this helps!


Connect Magic Trackpad 2 without cable? I have a brand new MacBook Pro and Magic Trackpad 2. When I turn the Trackpad on it's not 'seen' when I open Bluetooth preferences on my MacBook.

I've read one solution is to connect the Trackpad to the laptop via the cable, but it came with a Lightning to USB cable, not USB-C, so I can't do this.

Should it be discoverable with Bluetooth? I've charged it for a few hours in case it was a battery issue, but it's still not working.

Make sure the power is on to your trackpad. You should have a BlueTooth icon on your menu bar.  Click on this icon and it should list all Bluetooth devices seen by your computer. Click on the Trackpad and then click on the connect button.


Altering screenshot filename When taking a screenshot using the keyboard shortcut shift+command+3 it yields a screenshot with a filename of Screen Shot 2014-11-23 at 3.25.36 PM.png. I would like to make a change so that the filename would be scr-20141123-152536.png. This would be the same exact date and time but altered to what I have been using for the past 13 years on other systems - it just works better for me. Is it possible to make this a permanent change? And, if so, how would I make this change?

UPDATE: I don't want to install Macports or Homebrew, or other package management system or apps that require the user to disable system security in order to run.

My system: Mac mini, late 2012, OS X 10.10.1 (Yosemite)

One approach that's forward compatible and will not get overwritten in an OSX update is to create a script that does ls -l Screen*.png (on the correct directory of course, I'm writing generically) if the list is empty the script exits, if not it uses mv to rename the file (and optionally move it if you also want to, you wouldn't need to since the renamed files won't match Screen*.png (the next time the script runs that is).  I would look at using an xargs to pipe the ls to mv. (I'll admit this would take me a minute to cook up, but it's do-able.)

Once you have the script working correctly use cron on a one minute schedule (hint * * * * *).  Since most of the time the script will exit after one command this will not use any measurable resources.

Previous answer:

One option would be to use fswatch to rename screenshot files as they are created.  This option really has the most forward compatibility as well.

fswatch as the name implies allows you to WATCH for File System changes within a script, and then pipe the output to some other command.   In this case probably xargs calling mv to change the name the way you want it to read.

I would reccomend this type of solution, as it is more update proof that modifying the way OSX names the file.  (i.e. that is let OSX do it's thing, then just have a script that watches and renames immediately).


Is there a way to stop the optimization process behind "Optimizing Your Mac"? Using OS X 10.9.5 I got this message after logging out and back in with different UID. Screen is frozen except I can move the mouse courser around just cannot select anything. Display sleep mode does work. How long does this take? Is there a key combination to stop optimization or reboot?

For more context please see link: What is happening when my Mac is being optimized after an OS X update?

Again, the screen is frozen including clock. Can move mouse and trackpad cursor but cannot select anything. Keyboard works only to wake machine.

Ok, so I tried the hard reboot option and that seems to have worked thus far. Then tried two soft restarts and no problems either. Been using Mavericks over a year now and never had a problem, so I''m  gonna run my antivirus software and backup before deciding on what to do with spotlight or the problematic user profile.
Funny, I've waited for Yosemite and iOS 8 to mature and was just preparing my machines for the upgrades.

What you describe is far worse than the normal optimization phase.

If your Mac is so sluggish that the cursor movement and launching of apps is unworkable (delays more than 60 seconds per action) and persists past a reboot, you'll need to get the hardware checked as the storage system is likely failing due to software or hardware failure.

To troubleshoot this:

back up all files you care to ever see again
disconnect the backup drive (and test restore to another Mac if that costs less in time and $ than you'd spend to recreate the files or compensate you for the loss - i.e. wedding and/or baby pictures, etc...)
Reinstall a clean OS - import no data, set up no network, no Apple ID, no iCloud. Run that system until it's idle in activity monitor and there's no delay launching apps from spotlight.
Test opening any three apps you care from Launchpad

If this OS is slow, troubleshoot the hardware further.

If this OS is fast:

connect to the internet
update all the software
install any critical software you need to work/test (this rules out a software conflict with the software you were running when the machine was stuck)
open Activity Monitor and be sure the system is idle and performs properly
now decide to import your user files, connect to iCloud and Dropbox and any other tools that can cause slowness and external dependancies. If you don't want to set things up by hand, you can wipe this test OS and reinstall and choose to restore your backup in one shot.

Good luck - troubleshooting hardware/software isn't a hard concept, but being organized, limiting change, and testing after each step is what makes it sometimes tedious and worth outsourcing.


Double-click doesn't "fill" screen I have a 2017 MBP connected to a monitor with HDMI. On my laptop screen, when I double click the top bar of a window, it fills the whole screen up to the Dock. However, when I do that with a window that's in the monitor's screen, the window fills the screen vertically but not horizontally. Meaning I have to still manually resize the window.

Is this by design or am I doing something wrong?

Only double click show you all content.  Press shift + double click fill all display :)


How to properly use drag and drop with MacBook Pro on OS X 10.7? It seems extremely hard to be able to drag and drop files between two finder windows with a single move on the trackpad - as soon you reach the end of the trackpad you'll drop the files,… in the wrong place.

How can you solve the drag'n'drop problem without using a mouse and still be able to use gestures?

You can use your thumb to click on the lower part of the track and the index finger to move. As long as you keep the trackpad pressed with the thumb you can release the index finger.


Mavericks: How to ADD Input Source via plists/defaults? I'm trying to automate my OS X setup but I'm stuck trying to programmatically add a new Input Source or keyboard layout.

I usually use two layouts: regular US and US International, so what I'm trying to do is just add the US International layout.

Here's what I noticed so far. When I manually add the layout, I see this entry being added to my AppleEnabledInputSources key on the com.apple.HIToolbox plist:

--- a/def0.txt
+++ b/def1.txt
@@ -17,6 +17,11 @@
                 {
             "Bundle ID" = "com.apple.PressAndHold";
             InputSourceKind = "Non Keyboard Input Method";
+        },
+                {
+            InputSourceKind = "Keyboard Layout";
+            "KeyboardLayout ID" = 15000;
+            "KeyboardLayout Name" = "USInternational-PC";
         }
     );
     AppleInputSourceHistory =     (

I got this output by doing defaults read com.apple.HIToolbox. I can confirm the same addition by directly opening ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.HIToolbox.plist.

So I decided that probably all I had to do was just add the same entry and it would all work. So I reverted the manual addition (and confirmed the entry from the plist was gone) and now tried:

$ defaults write com.apple.HIToolbox AppleEnabledInputSources -array-add '{InputSourceKind="Keyboard Layout"; "KeyboardLayout Name"="USInternational-PC"; "KeyboardLayout ID"=15000;}'

I confirm again via defaults read diffs that it adds the same entry to the plist, but it doesn't work!

I tried killing cfprefsd and SystemUIServer and even rebooting but none of these seem to work.

Does anyone have a clue about what might be happening here?

Turns out that the format I used for the AppleEnabledInputSources entry was bad because it considers everything as type string, but KeyboardLayout ID must be of type integer!

So the correct way of doing this would be via XML:

defaults write com.apple.HIToolbox AppleEnabledInputSources -array-add '<dict><key>InputSourceKind</key><string>Keyboard Layout</string><key>KeyboardLayout ID</key><integer>15000</integer><key>KeyboardLayout Name</key><string>USInternational-PC</string></dict>'

After running that command and doing a logout/login, looks like things work fine.


Cannot edit /etc/fstab to let NTFS drives write I have Mac Os X 10.9 Mavericks. I want to write to NTFS drives. I followed the instructions here.

The following command was not allowed to run:

$ sudo echo "UUID=7575C85E-F6F7-4ABD-B7FB-6180B795DD81 none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse" >> /etc/fstab
-bash: /etc/fstab: Permission denied

What should I do to edit /etc/fstab?

You need sudo to perform the write to /etc/fstab and not the echo. Try:

echo "xyz" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab > /dev/null

I added the > /dev/null to suppress the echoing of the long UUID (which I abbreviated "xyz" for clarity's sake). You can skip the > /dev/null part and it will function the same as the command you listed.

echo "UUID=7575C85E-F6F7-4ABD-B7FB-6180B795DD81 none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse" | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

....


How to access Edit functionality in new Photos application? In OS X Yosemite (update 10.10.3), there is the new photos application. I am unable to access the edit function when I use this application.

Image Menu > Show Image tools

or just select a photo & hit  Return⏎


Full height window is not full height El Capitan I have the issue that my windows are not really full height in OS X. I'm new to OS X so I don't know if this is new.

Here is an example image:

Watch the few bottom pixels, the background just shows there, because the window ends. This is obviously not the full screen mode for windows like in a separate space but this is the maximize with the option key.

I am on an Early 2013 MacBook Pro Retina if that is relevant. I'm using the smallest scaling so 1650x1050

Edit: Changing the scaling didn't fix the problem.

Apple designs the screens to leave a gap between the top window and the menu bar (especially noticeable with a dark menu bar and a bright background image) and also maintains a gap between the physical bottom of the screen and the window.

If I were to guess, it's to preserve shadows and "depth" of the interface and they made a conscious decision to implement windowing this way.

You might have to file some bug reports and gather use cases for how this is bad to get them to reverse this decision. It's hard to unsee once you notice it, but I don't think it's just a bug in their code.