Removing 3rd party extensions I found that I have a lot of unknown 3rd party plugins installed in my Mac.

I thought they are Safari extension, but Extensions popup menu in Safari do not show these extensions.

How to remove these unknown extensions? I don't remember I install some of the extensions (especially those Chinese extensions); how come they ended up in my Mac?

They're built-into the OS. Just leave them switched off & ignore.

See how to delete extensions Youku, Tudou, etc... which pretty much says the same thing. Especially pay attention to anything Linc Davis ever says; he's the closest thing to an actual authority on the Apple forums.


How does TRIM Enabler work? I recently bought a third part (OCZ) SSD and used Trim Enabler to, well, enable TRIM. I've noticed that some software updates can cause TRIM to be disabled, and have thus been curious about how TRIM Enabler works.

Does it replace some default KEXT with a custom one to support TRIM or does it simply toggle some PLIST setting?
Either way, is there a file that, when locked, can ensure that TRIM remains enabled (without any negative consequences)?

The Trim Enabler patches the following Kext-File

/System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage

which checks if the ssd is a 3rd-party or Apple Branded SSD:

you can also enable trim manually by looking for all 'Apple' occurrences in the file and patching them in a hex-editor or via terminal:

##1. Backup old file
    $sudo cp /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage
/System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage.original

##2. Patch the file to enable TRIM support
    $sudo perl -pi -e 's|(\x52\x6F\x74\x61\x74\x69\x6F\x6E\x61\x6C\x00{1,20})[^\x00]{9}(\x00{1,20}\x51)|$1\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00$2|sg' /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOAHCIBlockStorage.kext/Contents/MacOS/IOAHCIBlockStorage

##3. Clear the system kernel extension cache

   $sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel

   $sudo kextcache -system-caches


Will reinstall macOS delete the current OS? Will the current OS be deleted after I reinstall the new version OS by command+option+R?

Yes and no
The update will install new things and modify existing ones. Your data and all your programs should stay the same though, but depending on your update some programs (for example 32-bit) will stop working.

You can't just downgrade to/simultaneously use the older OS if thats what you'd be trying to do after upgrading.

Yet, with a TimeMachine backup or a clean install you can get the older OS or the OS your computer shipped with.


Can a Mac's separate audio-in and audio-out ports be reversed in software? Recently my Mid 2009 15 Inch (2.66 GHz) MacBook Pro's audio-out headphone port has gotten physically "loose". When I plugin anything it easily slips out changing the audio output from "Headphones" to "Built-in speakers".

My audio-in port has not been used very much, and the same mini-jack plugged in there sits tight.

I might be wrong, but I always thought that the audio-in/out ports did not differ much from each other hardware wise, so I was wondering if it is somehow possible to configure my MacBook Pro (software wise) to reverse these ports.

If I could output audio through the audio-in port I would be happy. It would be ideal, but not a necessity and that the Mac would then accept audio through the headphone port.

Every Mac with two headphone sized jacks has one for in and one for out as the hardware is specialized for one direction. You don't need to repair the computer to remedy this if you are OK with an external DAC such as the Griffin iMic.

The Mid 2009 MBP have identical physical connectors soldered on to the logic board, so even if the jack parts themselves are physically identical, they are wired to different parts of the sound in/out circuitry for both analog and digital and replacing that mounted part that would require a high level of soldering skill. The cheapest repair for this issue is the flat rate repair from Apple but even that is pricey when you could use tape or some other physical aid to keep the headphone in the jack as the metal latch no longer holds the pin properly.


Can't boot after El Capitan Installation Partly installed El Capitan on my Mac Book Air and was unable to finish the installation due to time. Now when I go to log into my computer the home screen with my personal icon is white, and when I put in my password the screen fills with code.(black bars with white writing) Then an Apple Page comes up saying my computed wont start because of an error. That it needs to be restarted. Every time I restart it or shut it down the same thing happens.

How can I fix it please?

Shut down your computer. Press the power button and before you hear the boot chime hold down the Command (Apple) key and R at the same time.
This will boot you into Recovery Mode. You should then be able to connect to your network and reinstall the operating system.


Is my Macbook Pro 15 Early 2011 Logic Board goosed? I have a Macbook Pro 15" 2011 2.2 i7. Was running like a dream until I tried to add a second drive with an optibay. To cut a long story short a puff of smoke came out of the airport card. After the initial shock I rebooted to find no airport and the machine was running super hot when plugged in running off the mains. My dilemma is the machine works perfectly but is a potential fire hazard. As I soon as I plug into the mains the temps hit 70 quite quickly, too hot to touch underneath. When switched off it comes on by itself when plugged in also. So it has become a big silver coaster. Apple say they will replace the logic board and airport for £465 (which is actually not a bad price) but could it be something simpler. Any help would be appreciated. My household insurance will not cover 'mechanical' parts. If I had spilled coffee, dropped it or was stolen I would be fine. Any help would be much appreciated. I have Applecare also which makes it worse.

Since you've paid for AppleCare - send it in. It doesn't make sense you would be charged for a repair unless there was some sort of external damage, so perhaps you misunderstand the quote.

Perhaps the pricing was for an estimate if the fault was not covered so you could be prepared in case that were the case.

Call back and ask to have your situation cleared up or drop by a store with if one with a Genius Bar is convenient. I would remove the third party RAM and accessories (as Apple will ask you and inspect for before beginning service) before presenting your Mac for service. Inform them you have had a second drive in the optibay and offer to let them have / evaluate the part if desired to ensure it didn't cause the malfunction.

Here are the North American terms of service - and you can see that Apple may charge you a diagnostic fee if you send them a Mac and the failure is due to third party parts being the cause.


Why doesn't my name show when I send a text message? When I send a text message, my name does not show up to the recipient; only my number.
Is there some way to change the settings to have my name show up instead of the number?

The recipient would have to have your contact added in order to associate your name to your number.

Also, sometimes the format of the number would matter: it's better if the recipient copies the number as it appears when you send him am SMS.


Apple ID Conflict With iCloud Locked iPhone I recently decided to restore my iPhone to the latest iOS 7.1.1 and got stumped by a serious problem. It’s an iPhone 5 and when I got it, I had it linked with an Apple ID/email that I no longer have access to.

I decided to change the account linked with the Find My iPhone app on my iPhone to an email/account I now have access to. On attempting to restore my iPhone, I get a message that my iPhone was setup with the previous account and I need that account's Apple ID and password to activate my iPhone. The Apple ID is masked but I can still remember some string of text of the Apple ID email, but not the password. I have no idea what to do, I have searched and searched for a way to contact Apple by mail all to no avail.

The iPhone is mine and already has Find my iPhone linked to the new account but was first activated with the old Apple ID. I'll really appreciate if anyone can point me in the right direction on how to contact Apple.

You can contact support in three possible ways:

by phone
by chat
or you can even try this online support request


Stop mouse interfering with Cmd + Tab menu When pressing cmd + Tab the mouse can steal focus of a program icon. This is frustrating.

Is there a setting to make the cmd + Tab ignore the mouse?

Keyboard Maestro provides an Activate Application Switcher action that you can map to cmd + tab in a macro to replace the OS X application switcher.

Within the Activate Application Switcher action there is an option Enable mouse rollover selection that is on by default but can be disabled. This won't be a seamless replacement to the OS X application switcher but it's something to try and see if you like it.


Yosemite black screen with cursor after log in Running the Macbook6,1 with Yosemite installed. I have my macbook set up so that when it powers on, it automatically logs into my account. When I boot up my macbook, it goes to the log in window and shows my desktop background all blurred (like it is meant to) and attempts to log me in. After that, the screen just goes black and my cursor remains on screen.

Boot into the recovery mode (CMD+R) and in Disk Utility repair both the disk and the disk permissions. Once done, restart the computer and see if it works properly again. :)


How does TimeMachine store Calibre's metadata and backup files? This thread is related to the thread To recover Calibre library from backup? which is discussed also with Calibre's active community as How to recover Calibre from Backup? where theducs says:

Restore the Entire Library folder (and ONLY from a single backup). The DB records and title folder (paths) are 1<>1 Pairs. which is why you never mix.

If you need books from a second backup:
1)open as a separate Library and use the Copy to Library context Menu tool
2)Use Add Books.

The first does a great job of maintaining your metadata, which might not have been inserted into the book

BetterRed says that I need to [may need] to recover your configuration data.
I run commands in the backup folder getting no outputs:

find ./ -iname "Calibre"
find ./ -iregex "Calibre"

How can you find Calibre's OSX configuration data of TimeMachine?

To manually dig through the paths, start at
/Volumes/[TM drive]/Backups.backupdb/[drive name]/Latest.
'Latest' is an alias - I'm not sure how that will resolve on nix.

The following all depends on the alias resolving correctly, as the actual locations are not 'fixed' but each may be in a different 'dated' folder on the TM drive itself.

Assuming that resolves correctly, then the Calibre plist is at [relative refs to your current folder]
~/Library/Preferences/net.kovidgoyal.calibre.plist.

Calibre Library itself is straight in your user folder ~/Calibre Library.

Prefs are in ~/Library/Preferences/calibre.


Putting display to sleep with AirPlay crashs apps in macOS High Sierra I use AirPlay everyday and put my display to sleep if I leave my desk in macOS Sierra.

However, putting display to sleep with AirPlay crashes all the apps after upgrading to macOS High Sierra.

I tried finding errors in console log message, but it was cleared after I woke my Mac. I can't find the details in console log messages.

How do I resolve this issue?

I have had the same issue, but it got fixed after upgrading to macOS High Sierra 10.13.4.

I use AirPlay daily at work to connect to AirServer running on a Windows PC that has an external monitor attached, so that I can have a second external monitor on my MacBook Air. And when I walk away from my desk, I either Lock Screen with the Command + Option + Eject shortcut or using hot corner to put the display to sleep with password protection. When I would come back, I would have to login again and all apps were restarted. No kernel panic, but the OS itself appears to crash.

I discovered that the WindowServer itself that was crashing. Opening Console.app, and looking under "System Reports" in the sidebar, I found crash reports for WindowServer at the exact times that I had locked my Mac. I sent the crash report to Apple yesterday via their feedback form, but then I also decided to upgrade to 10.13.4 to see if there's any chance the problem had been fixed already, even though there was no mention of it in the release notes.

And after a bunch of testing today, it looks like the problem has been resolved. I've now connected to AirPlay as usual, and locked my screen multiple times both with the Command + Option + Eject shortcut and using a hot corner to put the display to sleep, and in both cases, the Mac was able to wake up, and I could log back into my running system, with all the apps still running, as expected.

Weirdly, I'm experiencing different behaviour now depending on whether I lock via the keyboard shortcut or via the hot corner:

Keyboard shortcut: Disconnects from AirPlay display altogether. On wakeup, Mac will auto-unlock via the Apple Watch, although it takes a bit longer. I have to reconnect to AirPlay display.

Hot Corner: Doesn't disconnect from AirPlay (at least not immediately, it just shows a black screen). On wakeup, I'm presented with the login screen asking for my password, but the Mac does not auto-unlock via the Apple Watch. I don't however have to reconnect the AirPlay display.

I'll send the feedback for the aforementioned issues but the crashing appears to have gone.


Why is my iPhone clock running behind 20 min? My iPhone clock is at 15:32 when the actual time is at 15:52! why is it twenty minutes behind?
The time zones are all correct and I have a screenshot that I will upload soon.

I recently had a similar problem and this solved it.

Check that your time is set automatically by going to Settings.app -> General -> Date & Time -> Set Automatically to 'ON'


Listening to music with MacBooks lid closed My headphone is connected to my 2019 MacBook Pro. Is there any way to listen music when it's lid is closed? I am using a Beats studio wireless.

Your MacBook will normally always go to sleep when you close the lid, and that unfortunately will stop the music playing.

But there is a way to stop your Mac from going to sleep when you close the lid with a simple shell command.

Disable sleeping when lid is closed:

sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1

Re-enable sleeping when lid is closed:

sudo pmset -a disablesleep 0


Localhost to custom page I am running macOS 10.12.5 and I am setting up a localhost and everything looks correct.  I used brew to install Apache (httpd), MySQL, and PHP.  I have changed the hosts file to point the localhost to the custom site and changed the vhost to:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host.example.com
  DocumentRoot "/Users/me/site"
  <Directory /Users/me/site/>
    ServerName me.com
    ServerAlias www.me.com
    ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host.example.com-error_log"
    CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host.example.com-access_log" common
</VirtualHost>`

I have updated httpd.conf to include the vhost file and the appropriate php modules needed.

When accessing 'localhost' by either 127.0.0.1 or the site name itself I receive the It Works! page instead of the files located in

DocumentRoot "/Users/me/site"
<Directory /Users/me/site/>

You actually have some errors in the config snippet you posted, try this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host.example.com
    DocumentRoot "/Users/me/site"
    ServerName me.com
    ServerAlias www.me.com
    ErrorLog /private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host.example.com-error_log
    CustomLog /private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host.example.com-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

You don't need to <Directory> section for these directives, and you were missing the closing </Directory>. This might have caused Apache to not load your config and serve the default virtualhost instead.


Can I use non-apple headphones with an iPhone? Is it okay to connect non-Apple headphones to an iPhone (a 5s, in this case) or do I need to use apple branded or authorized headphones for some reason?

Here is the visual comparison of Apple TRRS plug and a standard TRS plug.

On the top you can see a 4-pin headset connector. A headset connector needs to be using the same TRRS standard, or it will not function properly if at all.

On the bottom you can see a 3-pin headphone connector. Any headphone connector will work fine.

Standard 3.5mm jack stereo headphones have a 3-conductor configuration of TRS (Tip, Ring, Sleeve). The pinout for these connectiors is: Left Audio, Right Audio, Ground. Connectors for headphones with a mic have an additional ring which results in a 4-conductor TRRS configuration (Tip, Ring, Ring, Sleeve).

There have been different TRRS standards:

The original OMTP configuration, which was created by Nokia and has a pinout of Left Audio, Right Audio, Mic, Ground.
AHJ (American Headset Jack) with a pinout of Left Audio, Right Audio, Ground, Mic.
CTIA, named after The Wireless Association, which replaced AHJ and has the same pinout. CTIA jacks have improved compatibility to support not only AHJ but also OMTP. CTIA is by default required for Android device manufacturers.

Source: All About Windows Phone

Wikipedia has a short overview for which device uses which standard.

At last a few points to note:

Plugging an OMTP headset into an AHJ jack, and vice versa, will result in the audio-out being inaudible or very quiet. Converters to switch between the two types of headsets are readily available, but do add extra bulk, and may not work reliably with remote control functionality.
Apple uses a CTIA/AHJ connector arrangement, but uses a non-standard microphone and volume control signaling method. Simple commands like Play/Pause and Skip however should work across modern mobile devices.


My mother changed her session password and now the system can't unlock the "login" keychain The title says most of it. My mother changed her password through the Accounts pane of System Preferences to a lengthy one (17 characters) about three weeks ago. Then, the next day, she left for Spain, and she came back today. I'm pretty sure she didn't log out between the time she changed her password and the time she shut down her computer on the day she left.

Now, when she logs in, the system shows a dialog box that says it can't unlock her login keychain, and suggests that she either updates the password or create a new login keychain. I tried with her old password, a variation of her old password, her current password and a few variations of her current password and nothing does it. My only conclusion is that somehow, something changed her session password to something that is neither her old password nor her new password. The question now is, what could have done that, and what can it be?

17 rang a bell and I typed her password one character at a time and tried after each character, and the login keychain password had apparently been set to the first 16 characters of her password. I'm not sure how that could happen and I was not able to reproduce it on my machine, but there. Now she thinks I'm the best son in the world.


Why does new Time Machine & Migrate fail with SD My MacBook Air had a Time Machine backup of my 60g partition on 80g partition of SD card. The drive needed reformatting, but when I tried to restore the TM backup after disk was erased, CMD-R wouldn't boot the SD card--it would see it but not boot.

Now, I've destroyed that TM backup and completely started over both with a new encrypted 80g system partition (OS X 10.11.5 El Cap) on the Air, and 95g Time Machine partition  (exfat) on the SD.

Last night I did a complete TM backup. But this AM when I attempted to test a restore via Migration and CMD-R at startup both attempts failed.

Migration app could not recognize the SD, CMD-R would see the SD volume but when I'm at the Select System Backup screen, the file browser window shows the message, No system backups were found."

This seems to be more complicated than I expected. Should I be doing more reading at Apple support or is there a simpler answer?

A common Time Machine backup drive (with the root folder /Backups.backupdb/Computername/... only) itself is no bootable system. You always have to boot from Recovery Mode, Internet Recovery Mode or another bootable drive containing a bootable base or full OS X.

Booted to one of the mentioned systems allows you to restore the Time Machine backup to your main volume.

Additionally bootable systems require a GUID partition table and the volume has to be formatted with either HFS+ or HFS+ journaled. The latter is recommended/required for Time Machine backup drives. You may use an ExFAT volume but this needs additional configuration: you have to create a sparsebundle file, mount it and choose this one as backup volume.


Finder slow or frozen while connecting HD (10.8.4 on SSD) Since some days it occasionally takes Finder seconds to minutes to show up files in folders. Now and then iTunes and Mail freeze as well, just like core apps like Disc Copy. Quite unusable.
Possibly related:
• It seems the problems appears especially (or only) when opening/showing content in sym-linked folders on the HD in my discdrive.
• As well problems seem to have become more present and waiting times longer since I'm staying at friends with a complex network.
• Trim is not enabled (no idea why, perhaps after an update - the wiseguy-friend installed it together with the SSD). Trim is again active.

My system: MB 2.4Ghz 13" late 2008, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD (OCZ-VERTEX4), 1TB HD (7200 HTS721010A9E630) in disc-drive with 10.8.4 (mountain-lion) installed.

Things I tried:
• restarted several times
• repaired permissions on SSD drive twice (2nd time no issues) (greyed out on 1Tb drive)

Disable the Spotlight for the folders and or drive in question.
That should speed things up.

Or you can try to completely disable spotlight to see if that was the problem

Go to your Terminal and paste this

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist

Once satisfied you can enable the spotlight

sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.metadata.mds.plist


Faster than cmd+Tab way for app switching? Is there a faster way to switch between currently-open applications on the Mac than using cmd+Tab/cmd+Shift+Tab?

I tend to have a lot of different apps open at a time and I have to keep switching between three-to-four of these apps all the time. And having to repeatedly hit cmd+tab,tab,tab seems like a waste of keystrokes. It would be nice if there was a faster way to achieve this application-switching.

This does not have to be built-in Mac functionality. I'd like to know about any app that does this job better.

PS: I'm running Mavericks
PPS: I'm looking for a keyboard shortcut and not a mouse-related solution.

Thanks! :)

This is a really old question but just thought I would add to it anyway!

I use apptivate.

Really simple toolbar app that can open/switch to almost anything with custom keyboard shortcuts.


Can I have My Photo Stream upload only? I have a iPad and a iPhone. My iPhone don't have enough storage so I want to disable downloading photo from Photo Stream. However, I do want iPhone to upload the photos to Photo stream and access & download it on my iPad. Is their anyway I can do this? Thanks!

What you want to do is enable iCloud Photo Library on all devices, and then disable photo stream (or at least optimise storage) on your mobile devices. iCloud Photo Library is the actual cloud storage, while Photo Stream is just syncing between your devices (and not the cloud).

Note that Photo Stream only keeps your last 1000 items downloaded on a device. Photo Stream provides no backup if you lose all devices at the same time (if you carry them all with you and something happens).


Collect results in for loop when run shell script I try to collect results of "svn info" for selected folders by run shell script,like this:

for f in "$@"; do
    svn info $f | tee -a $log_file
done

But it's not work. How can I collect each result in for loop?

The problem is that "Automator" is not support some encoding such as GB18030.Once your file name encoding with them, they can't be convert to utf-8 , it returns a error.


Can I use the same Apple ID from my iPod for my iPhone? I just got the iPhone 6 and I had the iPod 5. Would I be able to use the same ID for both so every thing is transferred on to there?

Yes, use the same Apple ID, do not create a new one. The Apple ID is what 'ID's' you to the Apple system, allows backups, preferences, purchases, etc to be sync'd between devices. If you create a new Apple ID, you will lose all your purchases, etc.

You can use a different Apple ID for the App store than your Messages, iCloud, backups etc. Before Family share, you could have an Apple ID that was shared with your Family for purchases (everyone got access to the app or song), while maintaining different, personal Apple IDs for Messages, iCloud etc. However, with Family Share, you do not need to do this, as Family share allows you to include personal Apple IDs in a purchasing 'group'.


Uncompressed panoramas on iPhone as of iOS 7.1.x I want to use the trick with HiddenSettings7 to have a panorama for my lock screen, which scrolls as I move the phone (something similar to the feature included in the iOS 7 beta). However, as of iOS 7.1.x, as the Internet tells me, file browsers (more specifically afc2add) do not work, meaning I can't get uncompressed panoramas by inserting them onto the file system's wallpapers folder by using a PC file browser. Saving to the camera roll creates lots of compression, and it's a route I'd rather not take. Is there any way I can fix this?

afc2add's successor, Apple File Conduit, provides the same (and more) functionality as it's predecessor, and supports iOS 7.1.x.


Why does 128GB iPhone have 113GB capacity? On the side of the iPhone packaging, Apple defines 1GB as 1,000,000,000 bytes (rather than 1,073,741,824 bytes), so you end up missing 9,438,953,472 bytes (~9GB) calculating it this way for 128GB of space (128,000,000,000 bytes is ~119GB).

My iPhone says that it has 113GB of capacity, but it should be 119GB, so where did the other 6GB disappear to?

The other 6 GB are OS itself. The given capacity is a value for the physical storage that the phone has, not the amount that can be used by the owner. iOS is about 6 GB in size on its own.

Also, the formatted capacity is less than the size of the chips that are manufactured into the device. It's in a very small footnote at the bottom of the tech specs for each iOS device. Typically note #1

As you can see on the following link, each OS differs between versions, device type and device size so the gap in specs to usable space isn't a fixed constant.

How large is iOS?


How do I increase the font size in Activity Monitor? I've tried cmd+ and cmd-, and I've looked through all the menus.

I'm aware of "accessibility zoom" and it is not an answer to my question.

Activity Monitor does not provide any method of adjusting the font size.
You can provide feedback to Apple here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html


runaway distnoted process Sometimes I see a distnoted process suddenly spin up and chew up 100% CPU (on one core) and a ton of memory, often in the neighborhood of 1.5G or so. This happens a few times a day, starting a month or so ago.

The command line is /usr/sbin/distnoted agent, and it's started by launchd, neither of which help much. It's usually been running for somewhere between 4h and 24h before it spins up and pegs the CPU.

Web searches say distnoted manages notification delivery, and lots of other people report the same problem with it, but I haven't yet found a fix. Some people find that closing a culprit application (e.g. Skype) stops it, but I haven't found a culprit on my machine yet. I'm usually only running a few apps: Emacs (24.2 from Homebrew), Firefox, Adium, and Dash.

I'm on Mavericks on a late 2012 13" Retina MBP. Thanks in advance!

Update:

I've turned on distnoted logging in the system log by touching /var/log/do_dnserver_log, but it doesn't help much. I see lines like these (uid 501 is me, 89 I haven't found yet):

distnoted[80011]: # distnote server agent  absolute time: 48754.144787848   civil time: Wed Nov 20 10:52:03 2013   pid: 80011 uid: 501  root: no
distnoted[20]: # distnote server daemon  absolute time: 2.808112262   civil time: Tue Nov 19 09:52:24 2013   pid: 20 uid: 0  root: yes
distnoted[444]: # distnote server agent  absolute time: 16.656997509   civil time: Tue Nov 19 09:52:38 2013   pid: 444 uid: 501  root: no
distnoted[1271]: # distnote server agent  absolute time: 52.518265717   civil time: Tue Nov 19 09:53:14 2013   pid: 1271 uid: 89  root: no
distnoted[689]: Interruption - exiting now.

I've also run sudo dtruss -p PID on a spun-up distnoted process, and it spews lines like this:

kevent64(0x3, 0x7FFF7C3FD130, 0x1)       = 1 0
workq_kernreturn(0x20, 0x0, 0x1)         = 0 0
workq_kernreturn(0x20, 0x0, 0x1)         = 0 0
kevent64(0x3, 0x7FFF7C3FD130, 0x1)       = 1 0
workq_kernreturn(0x20, 0x0, 0x1)         = 0 0
workq_kernreturn(0x20, 0x0, 0x1)         = 0 0
kevent64(0x3, 0x7FFF7C3FD130, 0x1)       = 1 0
workq_kernreturn(0x20, 0x0, 0x1)         = 0 0
__disable_threadsignal(0x1, 0x0, 0x0)    = 0 0
__disable_threadsignal(0x1, 0x0, 0x0)    = 0 0
__disable_threadsignal(0x1, 0x0, 0x0)    = 0 0
kevent64(0x3, 0x7FFF7C3FD130, 0x1)       = 1 0
workq_kernreturn(0x20, 0x0, 0x1)         = 0 0
...

I've seen this too.  Emacs 24.3.1, Mavericks 10.9.

I've found that the distnoted process calms down within seconds after I quit out of Emacs.

I've filed an Emacs bug here: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.bugs/80836


Why does a video file get bigger after editing it with iMovie? Input File:

Kind: MPEG-4 File
Size: 305 MB
Dimensions: 640 x 360
Codecs: H.264, AAC
Duration: 52:07
Audio Channels: 2

After using iMovie to trim a bit from the beginning and end of the file, I tried to export the file via File → Share → File… with the following settings:

Format: Video and Audio
Resolution: 720p (iMovie only offers me 540p as alternative)
Quality: High (according to an answer to a similar question this means H.264)
Compress: Better Quality

The estimation on file size shown by iMovie is 4.35 GB. My questions:

How come the file size increases after I cut something from it, encoded both with H.264?
Why does iMovie not offer me the input resolution as an output resolution?

I'd like to be able to trim a video and save it with roughly the same size/time ratio.

720p resolution is 1280×720, which equates to quadruple the number of pixels vs. your original 640×360 (360p) movie. This alone would account for a huge jump in storage size.

You'll want to output in 540p instead (960×540). However this will still produce a video with 2.25× the number of pixels, so the resulting video may or may not still be larger.

As to why you can’t output in 360p, this appears to be a design decision by Apple (possibly to steer us towards Final Cut Pro), because earlier versions of iMovie allowed more granularity. In fact, in iMovie 10.0, 480p was still available, but as of iMovie 10.1, it’s gone. I suggest you voice your concerns to Apple.

Lastly, I should point out that Low, Medium and High Quality settings  all encode in H.264. They just use different encoding profiles/levels, with varying bitrates. From the figures you provided, I’d say your original video wasn’t produced using a profile equivalent to iMovie’s High setting. So you’ll probably want to try Medium or even Low.

If you still can’t keep your file size down encoding in 540p and using a lower profile, you can still down-sample it through Handbrake. However the upscaling-downscaling is sure to lower your video quality by some token amount. So it's a tradeoff.


Escape character ^] not working from Mac terminal If I ssh into an Ubuntu machine from my Mac with a "UK extended" keyboard and run telnet localhost 4730 I see:

me@ip-10-xx-xxx-30:~$ telnet localhost 4730
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is '^]'.

But ctrl + ] does not work from a terminal on Mountain Lion. How can I resolve this?

Turns out if I hit return after Ctrl+] it works.


Reset custom Mail UserHeaders settings in Terminal How do I reset the following command?

defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '{"Reply-To" = "reply-to@address"; }'

I had to use this workaround for a problem with the hosting provider that used the same IP address for all outgoing mail. Because of that, my mails kept ending up in Junk mailboxes. That problem is solved now. So how do I reset this command?

To remove all customisations to UserHeaders, use the delete verb in your defaults command:

defaults delete com.apple.mail UserHeaders

To replace the single Reply-To value with a blank entry, use:

defaults write com.apple.mail UserHeaders '{"Reply-To" = ""; }'

The defaults manual page explains other available verbs.


Does Apple's Out-of-Warranty Replacement cover iPhones regardless of condition? I have a water-damaged iPhone 6. I took it to a non-Apple repair shop after the plunge (the Apple Store was too far away for urgent service), but it still does not work. It powers on, but the screen is always black or only backlit. Overall, the phone is in very good condition cosmetically.

On to the question. The repair shop removed some heat shields from the logic board during the cleaning process. Can I still bring my iPhone to the Apple Store for an out-of-warranty replacement? The service is currently listed on their website for $299, but are there special conditions I should be aware of before making the trip? Will a technician open the phone for inspection before offering a replacement?

No, it does not. Out-of-warranty service is provided for phones which have not suffered what is defined as "catastrophic damage" and additional fees on top of the OOW service fee may be charged up to the replacement value of the product.

Please review Section 3 of the ERS/OOW Terms page: Source

Note that in this response, I am not qualifying your repair as either OOW or beyond that and needing to pay replacement fees. That is just a potential outcome, and is meant to highlight that not all OOW damage is covered.


How to configure proxy settings for a specific network? A network I connect to requires configuring proxy settings to reach the Internet.

When I configure those settings within the Automatic location, it applies to every network I connect to.

Is there a way to apply those settings only to this specific network so when I connect to it those proxy settings work and when I connect to another network they do not?

You need to make specific network configuration:

System Preferences > Network > Location: > Edit Locations...

left down + button,
enter a new netowrk configuration name, for example Office / Wi-Fi + proxy,
choose it and configure it with the proxy setting you need.

You will have to make 2 network configurations one to go through your proxy, and one without. Example: Office / Ethernet + proxy, Home / Wi-fi - proxy.

You will notice that you have a new menu entry:

 > Location

and you will be able to choose the correct network configuration which fits your actual network use.

To avoid most of the problems caused by the Automatic predefined network configuration, I advise you to inactivate completly network interfaces you don't use. For example Bluetooth doesn't have to be configured and open to network access if you don't use it yourself, and you don't control who uses it.


Jailbreaking a locked iPhone 4s with iOS 6 I received an iPhone 4S as a gift, branded by Orange UK. It runs iOS 6 (6.0.1(10A523)).

I didn't unlock it yet; I'm using it without a SIM and I'm enjoying the apps, but I want to jailbreak it.

What should I do know? I want to use it locked, but is there a jailbreak?

As of January 2013, there is no jailbreak for iOS 6. The reason is that iOS 6 introduced new security mechanisms and fixed the exploits that made the jailbreak possible on iOS 5.

You will have to wait.

Recent articles (December 2012):

Pod2g breaks silence on iOS 6 untethered jailbreak » Phone Reviews
Hacker: jailbreaking iOS 6 hard, 6.1 may prove impossible | iPodNN

Other good and curated jailbreaking news can be had at:

http://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak (especially this thread on 6.x jailbreaking)
https://twitter.com/planetbeing
https://twitter.com/chpwn


How can I move through words when typing a command in iTerm2? I'm in Lion

with iTerm2, Zsh and Oh-My-Zsh

but I cannot move through words when pressing: ALT+left arrow or CMD+left arrow or something

instead, when I press "ALT+right arrow" it prints [C
and when I press "SHIFT+ALT+left arrow" it prints D0

how I can config iTerm2 to behave like any other program when moving through words?

I finally found the solution to this problem here: https://coderwall.com/p/h6yfda. The necessary steps are shown below:

Go to Preferences, Profile, Keys.
Set your left ⌥ key to act as an escape character.
Locate the current shortcut for ⌥ ← or create a new one, with the following settings:

Keyboard Shortcut: ⌥←
Action: Send Escape Sequence
Esc+: b

repeat for the ⌥→ keyboard shortcut with the following settings:

Keyboard Shortcut: ⌥→
Action: Send Escape Sequence
Esc+: f


Mac OS: Bluetooth headphones lose sound but not connection When I connect a bluetooth headset (I have this with several headsets) it connects fine and sound goes over the headset.

But after a certain time (sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes half a minute) the headphones lose sound. The headset stays connected an still appear when I check my bluetooth settings. Reselecting the headset in 'Sound' settings doesn't change a thing.

When I turn them off and on again then it will work for a certain time again.

Restarting doesn't change a thing and the following fix that I found for other problems also doesn't fix it:

 sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext
 sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleHDA.kext

Anyone have an idea how to solve this?

This is not necessarily a macOS or Apple problem.  My thought is that you have an issue with the Bluetooth device itself.

The BT device being connected isn’t a big factor here (well, you obviously need to be connected to transmit data, but that’s not what I’m referring to, here).  The radio signals BT uses isn’t that much different than two way radios used way back when (think of CB radios back in the day)...

Theres a frequency the two devices negotiate to communicate on (breaker one-nine, breaker one-nine)
There’s a broadcast, a handshake and an acknowledgement to communicate (got your ears on, good buddy?  I’m broadcasting in the clear, come on back!)
Then there’s is an exchange of data (there’s a Smokey on your six, be careful.  I’m looking for some go-go juice and to put some groceries down my neck)

In a BT audio device, there’s a DAC, or digital audio converter that translates the digital data to audio.  Think of it as a translator sitting next to converting CB lingo to normal speech (Smokey = police; go-go juice = fuel; groceries down neck = food)

What I believe is happening is this DAC portion of your BT device is crashing.  The connection is still there, but there’s nothing to translate digital to analog and then amplify it so you can hear.

We can confirm this because nothing you do to the Mac has any effect, however, if you restart the BT device, it works again.  You need to replace the BT device with a new one.


Can't open a PDF from Terminal on Mac because it ‘couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console’ I tried to use the command:

open <filename.pdf>

but the message I got was

  Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console

What can I do?

Were you literally typing in the “<“ and “>” characters in that command, or did you mean:

open FILENAME.pdf

Where FILENAME is a place holder variable for potentially any file name?

The redirection characters of < > have special meaning to and get interpreted by the shell and their use as you described might well cause that error message as your command in that case means something akin to ‘make the standard input file descriptor for the open command to be filename.pdf and make its standard output file descriptor to be UNNAMED FILE’

That probably accounts for your error.

F.


Exporting iTunes smart playlist definitions I have 30 or so smart playlists defined in iTunes on the PC. What I'd like to do is export all of these definitions. To clarify, I don't want to export the songs in each of these playlists, I want to export the definition (e.g. "Artist contains Foo").

I have a lot of conditions defined for each playlist, and would prefer a solution that doesn't involve manually performing the same steps 30 times. For example, if I could export registry settings, this would be the best solution.

If you select a smart playlist, then choose File > Library > Export Playlist... and choose the XML file format, you can then use the corresponding Import Playlist... command from another iTunes library to import the smart playlist definition.

Unfortunately, iTunes only lets you select one playlist at a time, so there's no way to select multiple playlists and export them at the same time. You can do the "Export Library..." which does everything, but then you have all sorts of extra stuff you don't want.

If you're comfortable hacking around a bit though, you could export the whole library, then use PlistEdit Pro to edit the file and remove all the playlist and track dictionaries that you don't want, leaving just your smart playlists. Then you'd have all the playlist definitions in a single file that you can import into another iTunes library.


Replacing optical drive in macbook with SSD: does it matter where the SSD drive is installed? I've just replaced my MacBook Pro's optical drive with an SSD. I used OWC's Data Doubler kit. I've moved my OS and all my data onto the SSD, and I'm now using it as my boot volume.

In other threads, some people have swapped the positions of the drives, so that the HDD is installed where the optical drive was, and the SSD is installed at the HDD's original location.

Is there any good reason to do this?  Does it matter where the SSD drive is installed? In particular, would this configuration have any impact on battery life?

Yes this does matter depending on the sata speed of your hdd, ssd and the laptop.

My 2011 MacBook Pro supports 6 Gb/s to the original hdd and 3 to the Optical drive.

My ssd supports 6 Gb/s and my original hdd supports 3 gb/s.

Obviously, I did not put the ssd in the optical bay caddy (which would have been less work). Instead, I moved the original hdd to the caddy an placed the ssd where the hdd originally used to be.

This way, my ssd runs at 6gb/s and my hdd (still) at 3 Gb/s.

Good luck!


Can Recovery Mode install OS X onto a blank SSD? I want to install a new Solid State Drive (SSD) into the Mac. Can I just build in the SSD, start the MacBook in Recovery Mode and install OS X from there on?

After reading a lot on the internet I still have some doubts…

My HDD crashed, I can't repair it using disk utility or the fsck methods as mentioned on the internet.

According to New Macbook Pro 2012 Operating System onto new SSD? it should be possible.

I know how to replace the HDD with the SSD. I would go for the Samsung 850 EVO SSD - 500GB. My Mac is a MacBook Pro Mid 2012, model A1278.

The answer is "yes."

I want to install a new Solid State Drive (SSD) into the Mac. Can I just build in the SSD, start the MacBook in Recovery Mode and install OS X from there on?

It's called Internet Recovery.  You basically hold ⌘ Command⌥ Option R to launch an installer sourced from Apple over the Internet.

OS X Daily has a good write-up about it.

I have done this personally on several MBPs.  One caveat to keep in mind is that it will install the latest version of OS X that is linked to the account/machine.  If it was Mavericks or Yosemite, that's what you will get.  If you didn't have El Capitan, you will have to upgrade to it once the install is finished.

Internet Recovery is also a bit slow (dependent on your Internet speed/bandwidth).  What I have done is create a USB installer of my image and then put it away for safe keeping.  When I have to fix someone's Mac and reinstall, instead of going though the hassle of installing an out-of-date OS X then upgrading to the latest, I just install the latest from scratch via USB.

Create a USB Installer

After downloading the Installer Application, Using a blank USB flash drive (8GB or larger for El Capitan, 16GB or larger for Sierra/High Sierra), issue the following command (replace "Untitled" with the name of the volume that gets mounted if different):

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/Untitled --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app

The example above uses Sierra as the Installer.  The instructions are the same for El Capitan and High Sierra with the only exception being the path; modify accordingly.


Touch Bar on my MBP isn't context-aware I have a 2020 MBP 13" running macOS Big Sur 11.1 Beta.
The Touch Bar no longer shows icons relative to the active app - for example, when using Safari I'd expect to see Safari-specific actions. Mine just shows the default set (brightness, mission control, media controls, etc).
It definitely showed app-specific actions previously - I'd expect to see them for Safari, Pages, Numbers, PhpStorm etc. No idea when this stopped.
I've tried resetting it to the defaults in System Preferences, but it's not the defaults that are the issue - it's when in an application.

It took me a while to solve this, but the solution was:

Open System Preferences
Open 'Keyboard'
Change 'Touch Bar shows' to 'App Controls'

I'm not sure how this had been changed, but it had been set to 'Expanded Control Strip'


Login screen will not show list of users After I upgraded from Catalina to Big Sur 11.2 on a 2019 iMac, the login screen no longer displays my username but instead the Username and Password prompts.
I have List of users selected in Users & Group and I do not have FileVault enabled.

How do I get macOS to display my username again?

Have you tried deliberately selecting the Name and password option in System Preferences > Users & Groups, rebooting, then re-selecting the List of users option, and then rebooting again?
In my experience, some munged-up preferences files (.plists) can be 'fixed' in this manner.


Assign all desktops? I'm trying some of the tips from the Cult of Mac iTunes 11 tips blog post. I don't see Options > Assign To > All Desktops when I right click my iTunes 11 icon. Any ideas? Using OSX 10.8.2, that matters.

  Here’s a nifty tip for using iTunes 11 in multiple Spaces or monitors: right click the iTunes icon in your dock and select Options > Assign To > All Desktops. Now when you use iTunes in full screen mode, you can also open the MiniPlayer separately and have it run in a different space or monitor. So you could have iTunes running full screen on your big external monitor while the MiniPlayer is on your laptop screen.

Killing dock a couple times seemed to fix the problem:

killall Dock

In case Dock doesn't get restarted automatically run

sudo launchctl load System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Dock.plist
sudo launchctl start com.apple.Dock.agent


Will it slowly ruin the battery to leave a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013) plugged in at 100% all the time? I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013) that I use with an external 4K display so I tend to leave the lid closed and plugged in almost all the time.  Since it turns off external display when not plugged in when lid is closed.  Someone told me this would ruin the battery slowly and that Li-ion batteries should be discharged to around 10% and then charged to keep them healthy and that this model trickle charges the battery which is bad for it.  They suggested a docking station that would cut off the trickle charge.

Is this accurate information?  How should I best use this model with an external monitor to not damage the battery?

This questions risks inviting a lot of opinion, so some may vote to close this down.

However, to try and keep this to the facts, I refer you firstly to what Apple has to say about their batteries.

In a nutshell, the key indisputable points are:

Apple lithium-ion batteries use fast charging to reach 80% of their capacity and then switch to slower trickle charging to complete the charge.
Charge your MacBook Pro whenever you want. Many people believe you need to let them discharge 100% before recharging. This is not true.
Ambient temperature is one of the biggest factors in battery health/life. MacBooks are designed to work at their best when ambient temperatures are between 16° to 22° C (62° to 72° F).
It’s important to avoid exposing your MacBook to ambient temperatures higher than 35° C (95° F)
If you're ever going to store your MacBook for long-term without usage, it is best to store it totally powered down and at only about half charge.

Also, the latest research confirms one of the most important determinants of what ruins a battery is time. (You could purchase a brand new MacBook Pro battery and leave it unused in its original packaging for five years and then find it's capacity is nowhere near what it should be when you start using it)

Finally, since you're using your MacBook Pro in clamshell mode, you may find this general info useful.


Permissions on apache2 directory I was working through these instructions to get my web server working again and needed to change the /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file.

I needed to change the permission on httpd.conf file and did. Next I attempted to edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf. I could not because I didn't have permission to change things in the /etc/apache2 directory. So I tried a chmod 666 on the /etc/apache2 directory.  Now I cannot see any contents in finder in the /etc/apache2/ directory. The permissions I can see on the directory are: drw-rw-rw-. In Finder it shows as a custom permissions.

I need to change the permissions on /etc/apache2 but to what?

I didn't have permission to change things in the apache2 directory.

Because the directory is owned by root user and not the logged-in user.

  Now I cannot see any contents in finder in the apache2 directory.

Because the current permission is on apache2 directory is drw-rw-rw-, hence you cannot change (cd) into that directory, as you are missing the execute (x) permission bit. Add the execute permission to be able to change to apache2 directory. Execute the following command-line:

sudo chmod a+x /etc/apache2

To edit the httpd.conf (or any other file), use sudo, like:

sudo vim /etc/apache2/httpd.conf


How to upload large mobi file to iPad/iPhone I have a 63mb mobi format book.

Normally I get mobi books to my iPad/iPhone via the email share setting in Calibre. However the size of the book is too big to do that.

How else I do open up the mobi file? Any way to get iTunes to sync it to iBooks? or to use iCloud? I've got the file in Dropbox, but when I try to open the file in Kindle, it does not show up. iBooks is not given as an option.

I can’t say how to get it into the Kindle app, but the problem with iBooks is that it’s the wrong file format.

Calibre can convert it to ePub (Convert books menu), then you can get it into iBooks in a variety of ways. (control-click to get the context menu, save to disk, then drop on iTunes/iBooks)


How to delete iTunes once and for all from the command-line? I'd like to delete iTunes and never ever have it make it again in my OS X system.

On a fresh install of OS X 10.6.8 I had iTunes 10 and noticed that on the first "Software update" OS X wants to install iTunes 11.  I unchecked the box next to iTunes 11 and then I uninstalled iTunes manually:

rm -rf Applications/iTunes.app

The system rebooted fine and OS X seems to work fine.

However while opening Software Updates I noticed that iTunes 11 was checked again.  So if I didn't uncheck it again I take it it would have installed itself again.

Is there a way to delete iTunes and tell OS X / Apple to never ever install iTunes again and never check for iTunes updates?  Or are the updates suggestions made from Apple's side, no matter what you have (or have not) installed on your own OS X?

P.S: I'm using OS X on a Mac in my living room only to listen to my local music collection (never ever streaming from the net) using Cog and to watch movies and that's it.

I haven't tested this yet, but softwareupdate seems to support adding ignored updates:

softwareupdate --ignore iTunes

--ignore ...
            Manages the per-machine list of ignored updates.

--reset-ignored
            Clears the list of all ignored updates.

[...]

sudo softwareupdate --ignore iCal iPhoto

      Ignored updates:
      (iPod, SafariUpdate)

This might prevent iTunes from getting reinstalled when you upgrade OS X:

sudo rm -r /Applications/iTunes.app
touch /Applications/iTunes.app
chflags hidden /Applications/iTunes.app


Migrating iTunes library when replacing the hard disk I am replacing my Macbook's hard disk and I have already a copy of all files I want to transfer over except for my iTunes library.

Since I sync my iPad with it, and have some apps, what is the best approach to backup and migrate my iTunes library to the new disk?

I don't have a 2nd computer, so I can't use the migration assistant.

The simple answer is iTunes has really only stores two types of data:

iOS backups
playlists, ratings, music, books, apps, movies, etc...

If you don't just want to plug in your iPad and other iOS devices and transfer purchases, then you'll want a $8 drive connector to connect your old drive as an external to bring over the media, the backups or both. Yu can also get these files from time machine or other backup (offsite or local)

Even after swapping the old drive, you can still start iTunes pointing to the old backup library and run / restore or export parts of the library playlists and move over just part of your library.

It really depends on what exactly your setup involves (sync data over USB like calendars or photos) may require you to migrate some other data or watch/control the first sync to ensure your iPad doesn't lose unintended data.


How to scan a a QR code that is on your screen? Does anyone know how to scan a QR code that is on your screen? I am reading a online book with a QR codes and it is to much of a hassle to take another device to scan the codes.

Yes, you can do this without another device:

Take a screen shot of your screen and make sure the QR code is captured properly. Crop to the QR code in the screenshot and save the image file using Preview.
Open this image file in an app like Barcode Scanner and QR Code Reader. (Alternatively, you can upload the QR image file to an online QR code reader).
The app will decode the QR and provide you the data.


Change OS X server website default location I have OS X El Capitan and OS X server 5.0.4 installed. Both web and Xcode are enabled. Set web default location contains an index.html

When I open a browser and point to my domain like http://mydomain/ it directs to https://mydomain/xcode/.

How do I change this to make /mydomain/ point to /mydomain/index.html instead of /mydomain/xcode/? I already removed all Xcode stuff in /Library/Server/Web/Config/apache2/sites configuration file but it's not working.

This has to do with removing a configuration file, that is used by the server, for wiki and Xcode.  All that's in the file is a bit saying YES service is active, you could probably just change that to NO, but deleting the file works for starters.  And as long as you don't restart the Xcode service the file won't get recreated!

See this thread: Cannot change default webpage

  It appears to be a bug.  The short answer is to remove/rename this file:

  /Library/Server/Web/Config/apache2/other/COM.APPLE.WEBAPP.WIKI.conf

  Note, that you can turn the Wiki service on and then remove/rename this file and the Wiki and Web service will work fine (and with the correct index order).  However, turning the Wiki service off and back on will recreate the file and thus cause the issue to reappear.  To address that issue I wrote a simple BASH script to check if the file exists and if so, delete it.  I then made a LaunchDaemon to run the script every 15 seconds.

and:

  But as an added bonus, my problem wasn't wiki, it was Xcode, and the same goes >for removing:

  /Library/Server/Web/Config/apache2/other/COM.APPLE.WEBAPP.XCODE.conf

  I am thinking about changing the YES to NO in the file tho to see if that keeps >things on lockdown incase of restarts...


Time Machine — ‘Sparsebundle already in use’ error A few days ago, Time Machine on my Mac reported an error: ‘Sparsebundle already in use’. Manual unmount of the Time Capsule didn't help, nor a reboot of my machine. Removing and re-selecting my Time Capsule from the Time Machine Preferences window didn't help either.

After some research, I found the answer was pretty straightforward, though not obvious. As the error message hints, the problem is that the disk mount utility believes that there is already a user connected to the disk. To solve that, you can use a handy function present in Airport Utility 5.6 (but not in Airport Utility 6.1), named ‘disconnect all users’:

Open the Time Capsule pane by double-clicking on the Time Capsule item in the left list.
Select the ‘Disks’ tab.
Press the button ‘Disconnect all users…’

If you don't have the Airport Utility 5.6, you can either download it from Apple's KB (if you're on Mountain Lion you'll also need the Pacifist app to extract the app from the package) or just use your Airport Utility 6.1 to reboot the device.


Downloading High Sierra to a Mojave-capable iMac I have a late 2014 iMac that is running Yosemite and is ccompatible with Mojave. But I want to upgrade the OS to High Sierra, not Mojave.

How do I do this?

If you're in the US, go to this link.

Note: Links to all macOS downloads from Leopard to Mojave are listed on this page at Krypted.com.


Mac mini connected display not showing full screen I just got the new Mac Mini and plugged in my display, but it's not showing the full screen.

Here's how it looks like:

Is there any way to fix this?

Go to System Preferences → Displays and adjust the Overscan slider (or checkbox, depending on the screen model) so the content fits on the screen. Alternatively, you should be able to change the settings on the display itself to adjust the overscan.

For more information on overscan and underscan, see the Apple KB article:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5841


Lion: Dock settings revert after logging out or restarting I'm having problem with my user account in Lion. I want to remove some of the icons in the dock. Every time I sign out the dock will be "restored". Not to factory settings but always to the same appearance. I'm not really sure if this behaviour started when I upgraded Snow Leopard or before. Upgrading to Lion did not solve the problem. The behaviour even applies to some general settings and some Application. Adjustments just wont survive reboot.

To me, it feels like some permission glitch?

New user accounts works fine
Using the disk utility, repair permission didn't solve the problem
Clearing the Libary/Chache didn't do anything

Yes this sounds like a permissions problem - probably the permissions on the Dock's settings files are wrong.

The easiest way to fix it is to delete these files. You'll find the config file at

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

Make a change to the dock and it will then regenerate them with the correct permissions. Do note that you shouldn't lose your Dock settings this way, but it is a possibility. In any case, the Dock is easy to configure back the way you want it.

If that doesn't work, try deleting:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.db

as well.

Hint: A clue that the permissions on them are wrong is if OS X prompts for a password when you try to delete these files - it shouldn't.


Apple pricing on screen repairs for Macbook Pro? I've cracked my new MacBook screen. A single staple that was lodged between hinges (not dropped damage). The screen is cracked and it wont display anything comprehensible. I've scoured the Internet looking for pricing ranges, from Apple Support to DIY screen replacement, no luck at all.

I don't have AppleCare+. Just purchased it last month from Best Buy. Any advice would help regarding my options for me to save some money.

Specs: 13 inch, I5, 120GB storage, no touch bar. Priced around $1200.

The Apple price depends how the repair is done. If you pay part by part or if you get tiered pricing.

Call or engage Apple support and they can quote you the pricing estimates for sure no matter where you are in the world. The last time I checked, tier 2 covered the display assembly and all parts and testing needed to return it to full warranty status.

You could even then get AppleCare and possible AppleCare+ once you’ve paid for the repairs.

Check your insurance to see if they will cover some of the costs - most have a higher deductable than the cost of a new Mac, but it’s worth checking.

Last time I sent in two damaged screens, the tier 2 costs in the us was about $750 for a 15 inch and $495 for smaller sized MacBook and Pro. This included all parts, labor, shipping and testing and they send a box to you so I didn’t need to deliver it or pick it up at any center.


How to install Windows 10 additionally to OS X and Ubuntu (triple-boot)? I have installed Ubuntu separately from OS X. rEFInd is already installed. Now I need to install Windows 10. I've created a separate partition for this in OS X. If I try to install Windows from USB, will rEFind recognize this? If not, how should I install Windows properly?

P.S. MacBookPro9,2

Sure that will work! Jus remember to download the specific drivers for your model on apples website download page, then pass them to an USB stick and install the software on your windows partition, also of your using an ISO or disk image I would recommend CAREFULLY using the dd command, boot the drive and install to the partition, then boot back to os x, get the drivers and then boot to the windows 10 partition, configure windows and install the drivers.


Where did Twitter and Facebook accounts go in iOS 11? so I did not realize I was lacking this until I couldn’t use Twitter or Facebook to login to certain other accounts. I can’t seem to locate the area in Settings where I once had Twitter and Facebook listed (separately from the rest of the apps) and could manage my accounts for those two services from there. I’ve been prompted to “go to settings” and log in multiple times. Does anyone know where these are located now, whether they have been wholly removed, or wherever I need to do something to restore them? Thanks.

Apple has removed these logins for Twitter and Facebook. From https://www.axios.com/apple-removes-facebook-and-twitter-integration-from-ios-11-2433996734.html:

  The bottom line: Now Facebook and Twitter will be treated like other apps, with the social networks forced to rely on the same iOS sharing extensions used by all those with whom they compete.

Apps relying on this central login logic need to provide an update for iOS11.


Microsoft Word right-to-left (RTL) support I have on my Mac - Microsoft Word 2010, now … I want to write from right to left ( not only text-align right, but direction ltr).

I'll be thankful for some help. :)

Word 2016 has this language feature if you can upgrade Word.

There's no right-to-left support for Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac presently. There are several alternative word processors that do support RTL, however:

OpenOffice
Mellel
Nisus Writer Pro


Is it possible to restore PATH? So I accidentally run in terminal command export PATH="/usr/bin/php/bin" which override my defaults and none of the commands aren't responding.

MacBook-Pro-Kil:home $ sudo
-bash: sudo: command not found

Is it possible somehow restore it? My system is 10.9.5

Assuming you’re not willing to give up your active terminal session, try to bootstrap your settings like this:

export PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin; source ~/.bash_profile

The part that says export PATH=… is there to bootstrap an environment for ~/.bash_profile, which might itself rely on one or more of the paths given.


Why my app use so much GB I don't know why my apps use so much storage I haven't downloaded anything.

Your spotlight database (or worse - filesystem) is corrupted.

I'll link to some other situations that cover this.

About This Mac -> Storage is wrong?
How can I figure out what's slowly eating my HD space?
Mac OS is reporting bad free space
Noticebly larger amount of free space reported compared to the graph in Storage view

The simplest way to resolve this would be to make a backup (if you don't have one), boot to Recovery HD and use Disk Utility to check / repair your disk. Then you can restart the Mac and let it rebuild the spotlight database overnight. Worst case, you can purge the spotlight database if the situation isn't a transient problem with the calculations.


Apple Magic Keyboard on Windows 10 not a Bootcamp! I'm using Apple Magic Keyboard on Windows 10 (not a Bootcamp, standalone machine) and overall it works fine with Bootcamp drivers from Apple but funny enough "functional" button is not functioning. Again, it is not a Bootcamp (I have it too, it works fine for me) and I already installed keyboard driver from Bootcamp package.

I tried this and this but those answers didn't work

I found Magic Keyboard Utilities and they work great, but it is not a lifetime thing, it is a subscription and I'm allergic to subscriptions

Do I have any other options? Did I miss anything?

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

update

I tried:

different flavors of AppleWirelessKeyboard and I wasn't able to make it work on Windows 10
uawks and it seems to be quite since 2010 (development stopped @2008)
to install bootcamp.msi but it's control panel didn't run and overall it was useless (see picture below):

I didn't try:
 - WinAppleKey because I can't use TESTSIGNING on my Windows PC

Have you looked at this: https://github.com/gered/AppleWirelessKeyboard/releases the project has been abandoned but it might work.

This might also work... https://uxsoft.cz/Projects/AppleWirelessKeyboard


iMovie 10.1.12 - Faster Export to File Is there a way to minimize time taken to Export to File a movie clip? Currently it's taking a long time. Is there a specific setting to switch on or off? Not reduction in resolution etc.

I think it is the new format for films (H.264) that will reduce the size of your film. That why it took you so long but the quality remains the same.


Where did folder "merge" or "keep both" go in OS X 10.9 Mavericks? Before Mavericks one could hold the ALT key and move a folder "A" onto a folder "B" where already an "A" existed. In this case Mac OS X asked in Lion if I want to merge - or on Mountain Lion if I want to keep both (which was also a merge).

I can't find this option in Mavericks.

Did Apple remove this useful feature?

Any hints?

(And yes: I own ForkLift, which can do it - I just sometimes still prefer the Finder).

OK. I found out myself... Luckily Apple did not remove the Finder Merge functionality with Mavericks. But sometimes it is not offered to the user. But let me explain:

Supose you have a folder named TARGET with a subfolder TARGET/SomeStuff. And you have a SomeStuff folder somewhere else. Now drag this second SomeStuff folder to the TARGET folder (without any modifier keys pressed) then the Finder will presented you the following dialog (Stop and Replace):

So, no merge here.

Now - if you instead press the Alt key while you drop the SomeStuff folder to the TARGET folder there are two possibilities:

1.) If the files in the two SomeStuff Folder have completely different (not overlapping) contents. In other words: no duplicate filenames. Then finder will give you these options (Stop, Merge & Replace All):

So, here you can merge. And the result will be a TARGET/SomeStuff folder with the content of both SomeStuff folders.

2.) But here comes what is sometimes confusing (and actually made me think merging is gone in Mavericks): if there exists at least one filename that is contained in both SomeStuff folders, then merging is not possible. Then the finder will offer you these options (Don't Replace, Stop, Replace):

So, no merge possible, here too!


MacOS partition shows up as FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF (Mojave) I suspect this this may be  a duplicate, but I'm not sure what I should do considering almost everyone else has another macOS version or other partition size and I'm not sure how to generalize another answer to my setup.

So I wanted to delete a Linux partition back to APFS on my main HDD, but it split up the APPLE SSD SM0256F Media. I'm still on my macOS system, but I know that if I reboot I won't be able to access it. I've made a backup but would like to make the partition bootable/accessable since I can't backup programs etc. I still have a 16GB USB drive for use if that's necessary. Also Macintosh wasnt split up as it is now. Macintosh was the main drive that showed up in Disk utility.

  /dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
       1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
       2: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF               205.8 GB   disk0s2

    /dev/disk1 (synthesized):
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +205.8 GB   disk1
                                     Physical Store disk0s2
       1:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            122.9 GB   disk1s1
       2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 45.8 MB    disk1s2
       3:                APFS Volume Recovery                517.0 MB   disk1s3
       4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk1s4

    /dev/disk2 (external, physical):
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *15.7 GB    disk2
       1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
       2:       Microsoft Basic Data SD CRUZER               15.5 GB    disk2s2

gpt -r show disk0

    start       size  index  contents
          0          1         PMBR
          1          1         Pri GPT header
          2         32         Pri GPT table
         34          6
         40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
     409640  401934440      2  GPT part - FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF
  402344080   87890639
  490234719         32         Sec GPT table
  490234751          1         Sec GPT header

This solution will work because you already have System Integrity Protection (SIP) disabled.

  Note: The current version of gdisk is version 1.0.4. This is the only version that will recognize Apple's new APFS format. So, if you already have an older version of gdisk already installed, then you will need to download and reinstall before proceeding.

The gdisk package can be downloaded by clicking on this link.
This should place the file gdisk-1.0.4.pkg in your Downloads folder. Before installing this package, enter the command given below in a Terminal application window to remove the quarantine attribute.

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/gdisk-1.0.4.pkg

Once gdisk is installed, you will need to enter the commands given below.

  Note: The sudo gdisk /dev/disk0 command may ask for your password.

sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
t
2
AF0A
w
y

An example is given below.

Marlin:startup davidanderson$ sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
Password:
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.4

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): t
Partition number (1-3): 2
Current type is 'Unknown'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = AF00): AF0A
Changed type of partition to 'Apple APFS'

Command (? for help): w

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/disk0.
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Warning: The kernel may continue to use old or deleted partitions.
You should reboot or remove the drive.
The operation has completed successfully.
Marlin:startup davidanderson$

After restarting your Mac, you will need to enter the following command to reclaim the free space back to macOS.

sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0

When finished, you should enter the following command to enable SIP on your next restart.

sudo csrutil clear


Why is there a duplicate entry for my TextMate? I was changing the default program to open .txt files with and I noticed 2 entries for TextMate. Its one of those little things that annoy me. How can I fix it? I didn't see 2 directors of TextMate.app in /Applications.!

Mac OS X automatically keeps a database of all applications and their corresponding file-types called the LaunchServices database. You can examine where both of your TextMate executables are located by opening Terminal.app from /Applications/Utilities and entering:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -dump |  /Applications/TextMate.app/Contents/Resources/mate

This will open a long file full of all Applications that your LaunchService DB "knows" on your Mac in TextMate. Examine this file for the "path:" of your duplicate entires of "TextMate".

It´s quite likely that you´ve already removed the second "TextMate" but your LaunchServices still remembers it. I guess you should tell the Datatbase to rebuild by entering:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

into the Terminal and then restarting your computer. This may lead to your Mac forgetting some custom "open with.." assignments though.


What do I do when I get "Cannot Connect to iTunes store" when downloading an app? I'm using an iPad 2, iOS 5 and trying to download apps/updates. Occasionally I get the "Cannot connect to iTunes Store" message and my downloads cancel. The iTunes store loads, all my Apple ID services work, I can view app descriptions on the App store, but when I go to download or update, I get this message.

Sometimes it's intermittent, but I've gotten it every time I tried for a week now. This also happened the day after I got my iPad; in that case I had to do a factory reset of the iPad's settings.

Resetting to factory settings (not resetting data) didn't help at all this time. However downloading updates over my phone's mobile tehering does work so it's some combination of my home wifi and iPad settings. I reset my cable modem and wireless router to no avail however.

What else can I do to fix this?

What seems to work is signing out from my Apple ID (using the Apple ID link at the bottom of the App Store), then shutting off the device (hold the power button). Then I turn back on the device, go to the App store, enter my Apple ID info, and then try to download/update an app again.

Just restarting or relogging in to my Apple ID alone didn't seem to be enough.


Can't go fullscreen in any app For several weeks, I haven't been able to go full-screen in any app on my laptop.  I thought it was a Chrome problem with YouTube, because when I hit the full-screen button in a movie (bottom-right corner of the movie) it will expand to fill the browser window, but not the whole screen.  Then to restore, hitting Escape or the exit-full-screen button doesn't get the video to reduce down again.  Reloading the browser page works, though.

However, it's not just a browser problem - I recently discovered that no apps (e.g. Finder, Photos, Terminal, Console) can go full-screen by clicking on the circular green button on the left side of their window bars.

On a random cargo-cult recommendation I saw here, I trashed my ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist file & restarted the Finder, but no differences are observed.

When I hit the green maximize button in a Finder window, it seems to crash that window - I can no longer drag that window around & it doesn't respond to any clicks.  Other Finder windows stay fine.

To try to debug, I've poked around in various system logs, but I haven't found anything that looks relevant.  Maybe something to do with the WindowServer?

I'm on a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), running Sierra 10.12.5.

Tried a couple more things, and here's what worked: kill the Dock, then get it to restart.  I did this by doing killall Dock in the Terminal.  It didn't restart by itself, so e.g. Cmd-Tab didn't work to switch applications, my desktop had no background, and (of course) there was no Dock.

I launched the Dock again by going into System Preferences & clicking on the Dock pane.

Why did I try killing the Dock?  Because I also noticed that Exposé/Mission Control wasn't working either.  Some searching led me to this question, which suggested restarting the Dock.


How can I group applications? My Applications folder is getting pretty full and I'm starting to lose track of applications. I want to organize them in groups, but I've read that some applications don't properly handle being put inside a folder.

1) What is the truth to this statement? Is there a list of applications with known problems? Is this a thing of the past? Does FileVault have anything to do with it? (I have FileVault turned on)

2) What alternatives do I have? How do you group your applications?

I'm currently considering making some other folder in my home directory (maybe "Shortcuts"), with subfolders for groups, and inside of those subfolders making symlinks to applications in the /Applications directory. Then I would drag my Applications folder off my dock and replace it with the Shortcuts folder. Do you see anything wrong with that?

Is there any mechanism built into Snow Leopard for grouping applications?

A little off-topic, but I hardly ever launch Applications from the Finder.

They are either in the Dock, or you can get to them with Spotlight (or your favorite alternative app launcher).


Mac Pro 3,1 Non-Apple GPU upgrade but I grabbed a forgotten MacPro 3,1 2008 Quad 2.8 and brought it back to life it had a ATI GPU but this turned to be dead.

It's running pretty smooth after total clean up, but since I run with non-apple GPU- EVGA 760GTX 2GB, I can't install any other OS on it since I can't see the EFI OS Loader.

No refind, no refit, no nothing- I either see a black screen and then normal macOS login window, or - when trying to hack around legacy bios boot I see a gray background and a blinking cursor. Great.

I managed to install Clover (which normally is used to spoof mac hardware, irony) but it won't detect any usb sticks with installers and I cant start the normal macOS through it either.

I managed once to boot Manjaro from USB but I did that blindly and well, I dont want to do boot an OS blindly in 2017.

Currently my salvaged MacPro 2008 3.1 runs on El Capitan - but I want to install Windows on it and I simply can't figure out how to do it since it won't boot on that GPU with any Video output.

There must be a way to force to init the GPU, since, bootcamp does it and clover does it to.

Any Ideas?

If your desire is to boot ONLY Windows on the machine, you can do this based on the setup you described by installing a Boot Camp partition and just setting the boot drive to that.

Since you have OSX installed on the machine, you should be able to find a utility on the machine called "Boot Camp Assistant". This tends to be in the Utilities folder of the Applications list. You should have a DVD of Windows 7 to get going with this since that Mac doesn't technically support Windows 8+. You'll want to start with 7 if possible since that way you'll get Apple's software support on the Windows installation. After that, you may be able to upgrade to Windows 8.1 or 10 but I've never personally tried it.

Normally installation of Windows is not a big deal, but without a proper "Apple Supported" GPU you might run into problems where the machine attempts to reboot into Windows and either goes back to the Mac or gets stuck at a black screen. In general, try to keep the Windows 7 disc in the drive and give the Mac some time to boot into Windows before powering off; for some reason, it takes maybe 20 seconds or more for the Mac to boot into non-OSX and you can get anxious that nothing is happening. If you're adventerous, there are some guides on the internet which should be able to guide you through a disc-less installation process that leverages VirtualBox.

Once you've got Windows installed, telling the Mac to boot by default into Windows is trivial: go to the System Preferences, Startup Disk and select that you want the BOOTCAMP partition to be the boot disk.

Going back to OSX without an Apple GPU can be done one of two ways:

Have the Apple Boot Camp software for Windows installed. There is a tray icon which has a selector to allow you to boot back into OSX.
During the Mac's startup sound, hold down Command-PR (the P and R keys simultaneously). Wait for the startup sound to happen a second time. This zaps the PRAM which will cause the Mac to boot the first OSX partition it finds.

both of these methods will probably require you to do the "Startup Drive" -> "BOOTCAMP" thing again in preferences.

Got it working? Great! Now the one downside of all this: your GPU will always run at PCIe 1.1 speeds unless you do something to the card. With some specific models, there are people on the internet who have figured out how to physically modify the card to run at 2.0 speeds (The MacPro3,1 is PCIe 2.0 for the 16x slots). I think this may involve cutting a resistor or something; you're on your own here. The other way is that you (ta da!) flash the card with an Apple EFI.

All said and done, you can make your Mac boot into Windows by default and have a Windows machine in a Mac Pro. However, if you can find an Apple EFI for your GPU, I would strongly suggest doing it since it'll just make life easier.


How to change MPM prefork to worker on default Apache OSX installation? On CentOS, the Apache configuration can be found in /etc/sysconfig/httpd

How to change MPM prefork to worker on default Apache OSX installation?

i dont think its that easy with default apache, not without the risk of it reverting on a software update, the config files would be in /etc/apache2 though

its probably simpler and more reliable to install something like macports and install apache2 from there, that way it will be persistent of apple software updates and much more flexible in configuration


How to create a spotlight search for all files inside a folder? In Lion, you have All My Files to search everything in your home folder. However, when you activate finder's spotlight, via command + F you can start searching only by first typing something.

How can I search for everything in one particular folder (say, external HDD) without specifying a search token?

After some more research, it reminds me that finder's spotlight had boolean UI since OS X 10.5. You can filter for "not a folder"  for All My Files experience, or with a little bit more filter  for "all files".

It feels a bit hack-y though.


PM2 startup on macOS Catalina I'm trying to set pm2 to auto start on Mac OS like this pm2 startup

However I keep getting this error:
env: Fusion.app/Contents/Public:/usr/local/bin: No such file or directory

I tried the suggestion from this page: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26664282/how-to-use-pm2-startup-command-on-mac But the even using this command I keep getting the same error: pm2 startup darwin

How can I get pm2 to startup automatically on Mac OS Catalina?

Thanks!

What's probably happening is that pm2 isn't generating the correct script because your PATH variable contains spaces (most likely "VMWare Fusion" in your case).
Run echo $PATH, clean it up by escaping the space character using a backslash (\), then manually paste the resulting PATH variable in pm2's generated startup script.
So basically instead of running a generated pm2 script like this:
sudo env PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin /usr/local/lib/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2 startup launchd -u <user> --hp <user_folder>

run something like this:
sudo env PATH=<your `echo $PATH` output with escaped spaces>:/usr/local/bin /usr/local/lib/node_modules/pm2/bin/pm2 startup launchd -u <user> --hp <user_folder>


Understanding work-spaces on macOS - Why does it not save Applications and Positions This may sound a little weird but I'm using spaces on my MacBook (currently latest BigSur version) for a couple years and there are a few behaviour I don't understand.
I usually work with my MacBook + 1 external display. My "main" display is my external display. So I have 1 space on my external display and 3 spaces on my macbook display. Each space has a defined task for me (personally):

MacBook Space 1: One Chrome Window containing our Ticket System
MacBook Space 2: One Window of Microsoft Outlook 2019 - Mails
MacBook Space 3: usually has one Window of Microsoft Outlook 2019 - Events
external Display Space 1: I work here :-) Multiple Chrome windows, IDEs, Terminal, etc.

Note: No applications are running in "Fullscreen mode". I always run everything in windowed mode.
Now when restarting my MacBook all window positions and sizes are screwed. When my MacBook is booted again, I have to rearrange all windows every day manually because neither position nor sizes are being "saved".
Is this the typical behaviour? Why is it like this? I mean I do understand that spaces/windows/positions are getting screwed when you connect/disconnect displays, but that is not the case for me. I start my MacBook having the same Monitors plugged in and I shut it down in the same state. I'd like to understand why it is the way it seems to be or ways to work better with spaces.
If you can't follow my thoughts fully, please let me know, I'd try to provide some screenshots.

There has never been any provision in Spaces for one app to be on more than one Space. It's simply outside the design spec.
You can pin an app to a Space but you cannot pin a window to a Space. Quit & relaunch & the windows will all fold into the same Space.
Window sizes should be remembered, but not if they wouldn't fit the display they opened on.
Sleeping the Mac should work, but will be dependant on whether the external display stays 'visible' to the Mac at wake. On Mac Pros here, desktops with multiple external displays, this works just fine. idk how well laptops handle this. Sometimes forcing the display to wake before the Mac succeeds in maintaining the connection.
One additional point - Macs don't really need shutting down or restarting all that frequently. Mine generally get rebooted for OS updates etc, the rest of the time they are awake or asleep. Maybe once a month or so, if I feel things might be getting a little sluggish, I will reboot. I've had Mac that ran a decade with little more than this. One never even slept, it was up 24/7/365 for 10 years with the occasional reboot for updates or a shutdown twice a year for a good clean.


Why has sound stopped outputting with VLC? Background: I tried recently to hook my Macbook Air to my TV using an HDMI cord and a converter. It worked completely using Netflix and iTunes but the audio did not work with ANY of the AVI files I tried using VLC, even when I connected the audio ports using a 3.5 mm audio jack cord.

A few days later I tried to use VLC when not hooked up my TV but the sound has stopped working and I don't know why. The files are not corrupt, because they work fine on my MBP using VLC. I deleted my version of VLC, downloaded the latest version and deleted my preferences in case I had changed something vital without realizing it.

I have confirmed that my audio output is set correctly in my settings, but I don't have external speakers so I haven't tried that yet. Has anyone ever come across an issue like this before?

Edit: It resolved itself after a few days and I have no idea. I guess I will leave this open because someone might know what happened and the question might help someone else?

This has happened to me before. I discovered that if you start VLC before you plug the HDMI cable in, it won't play sound out the correct output. This works consistently for me:

Plug MacBook Air in via HDMI
Verify proper output is selected in System Preferences
Start VLC up

Hope it helps.


List all homebrew packages explicitly installed by the user (without deps) Is there a way to list all the homebrew packages explicitly installed by the user (they they installed directly using brew install)?
Note brew leaves doesn't do this. Over time formula can change change their dependencies leaving orphaned leaves that were never explicitly installed by the user or adding dependencies on previously explicitly installed packages.

Seems that you can use brew bundle:
brew bundle dump --file /tmp/x
brew bundle list --file /tmp/x --formula

the temporary file can be avoided using pipes
brew bundle dump --file - | brew bundle list --file - --formula


Does Apple use containers on a Mac? When I snoop around the file system including within my home directory I see things that look like they are containers or have something to do with containers (as in Docker containers).  For example ~/Library/Reminders/Container_v1/...  I'm curious about these things.  I'm wondering if Apple has a container system with a MacOS inside the container rather than Linux.  Docker Desktop uses a slim VM just to run its containers because Docker containers want to have Linux based OS inside of them.  I'm wondering if Apple has developed containers which can run directly on the native system rather than inside Linux VM.  And if so, are there plans to make this available to the general public?

This container isn’t a ‘unit of software’ (like a Docker container, don’t get your hopes up!) but rather a container of data used for cloud synchronisation.

Other containers for sandboxing data exist at
~/Library/Containers and ~/Library/Group Containers:

Apple documentation of data containers and sandboxing exists at

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/cloudkit/ckcontainer.
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Security/Conceptual/AppSandboxDesignGuide/AppSandboxInDepth/AppSandboxInDepth.html


Softlink /bin/bash to a brew-installed bash It is a question related to this other one, but I can't comment.

I've updated to use bash 4 from brew installation. But I don't know if changing all the header scripts from:

#!/bin/bash

To

#!/usr/local/bin/bash

Isn't a portable solution.

Moreover, some scripts check if the shell is a /bin/bash shell (docker-toolbox in example)

Before writing, I was recommended to read this: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/119179/77314
But the path solution is neither portable nor can apply on docker case (no direct source).

So I still doubt: is really a bad idea to softlink the bash?

Obviously, targeting independent-version.

#!/usr/bin/env bash is the 'most portable' approach but #!/bin/bash is the standard convention on OS X and Linux. There are advantages to shebang with a stable system interpreter, and it's probably not worth using a newer Bash.


Uninstalled XCode still paused in 'Purchases,' will not resume or delete I was trying to re-install XCode, but have run into trouble. I first uninstalled it by deleting the .app file from the Finder, and then rebooted my machine. Upon returning to the App Store, I saw that XCode was listed as 'Paused' under purchases, with 0 GB downloaded, and will not resume or download again.

When I click Resume, nothing happens. There is no icon in the launcher, and running xcode-select -p outputs:

  /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools

But there is no 'XCode' in this folder.

I basically just want to uninstall everything to do with XCode, and re-install it. I'm running Yosemite 10.10, if that helps.

Edit: I also tried deleting the com.apple.appstore folder, to no avail.

Try clearing com.apple.appstore from the TMPDIR.

open $TMPDIR../C

and

open $TMPDIR../T

find com.apple.appstore and delete it from both the folder.  Then restart the App Store.


Generating a mask png from a color image? Apple requires certain icons to be monochrome masks with transparency in png  file format.

How (on macOS, using a built-in app, such as Preview, or an app in the App store, such as Pixelmator) can I convert an existing color image (png file), so that one color (a background) becomes transparency, and everything else becomes either pure black or pure white?

Is it then possible to invert a mask? (transparency becomes black or white, and any non-transparent areas becomes transparent)

You can do this in Photoshop, & I would imagine Pixelmator or any other decent graphics package could in a similar manner…
Invert Colour can also be done in Gimp - freeware, open source. If you want to use Gimp, then I'd recommend this Mac-specific build from https://www.partha.com/ which looks & feels far more 'Mac-like' than the official build.
Load your image, use the Magic Wand or equivalent to select the background.

Layer Menu > Layer Mask > Hide selection

You've now generated the basic mask shape.
The next bit is a bit fiddly, but you can automate it for future use.
Opt/click this new mask, then select all. Copy, click the picture item in the Layer, Paste. This will generate a new layer containing the black & white image of your mask.

Drag your original mask to the new layer (both thumbnails will then look the same.)
Disable your original layer to save confusion.
Click the main image in the thumbnail & Invert (Cmd/i)
That's your first mask. Save as png.
PNG with transparency is a 32-bit file rather than 24. Some apps differentiate this way, others including Photoshop have a dedicated "save Transparency" option which changes the bit depth for you.

Undo the Invert (or Invert again) then Opt/click the Mask & Invert.
That's your 2nd mask. Again save as png.

You could, of course, do each of these as a new layer, then saving your file as PSD or other native format would preserve all assets in a single file.


Keyboard does not work or light up MacBook Air 1534 12” 2016
Accidentally sparked trackpad.
Trackpad and keyboard no longer worked.
Replaced trackpad.
Trackpad now works but keyboard does not.
Could these two flex cables be the culprit?821-2697-A (Keyboard Backlight)
821-00507-03 (IPD)
I notice the trackpad and everything else besides the keyboard work when I disconnect Keyboard backlight flex.
When I disconnect IPD pretty much everything stops working and that’s normal. So this tells me the IPD is not at fault.
Could replacing keyboard backlight flex fix my keyboard problem?
IPD (left)
Keyboard Backlight (right)

Could these two flex cables be the culprit?821-2697-A (Keyboard Backlight) 821-00507-03 (IPD)

Yes, they could be the culprit.
Are they, however?  Who knows.  You have to do proper diagnostics to determine what is wrong.  Simply looking at something is just guessing.

Could replacing keyboard backlight flex fix my keyboard problem?

Possibly, if it is what's causing the issue.
You have to test the cables - that means checking continuity and resistance on each pin.  It can also be the keyboard controller.  It can be any number of things and only putting hands-on and doing actual diagnostics can you be certain.
It's understandable that you want some more certainty than guessing, but unless it's blatantly obvious like the cable is burnt or cut, nobody can simply look at a picture of an electrical component and tell you proof positive that it's the failure point.  If it were obvious, you wouldn't need to ask.


Maintain allocation of windows to spaces on restart and external monitor unplugging I use spaces heavily and I have my windows arranged in a particular order. If I restart every application will be launched in the same space with many empty spaces.

If I unplug my external monitor, instead of adding those spaces to the others, the windows in them get resized and dumped into the macbook screen. They may or may not go back at funny sizes when the monitor is plugged back in.

I'd like to keep windows in specific spaces regardless of what else is going on.

After some experimentation, I've been able to keep all windows in the proper spaces across unplug/replug by adding 1 extra blank space on my laptop screen.
While plugged in to external monitor, I have #1 on monitor and #2 & 3 on the laptop (call these 1a, 2a, 3a).  #2a is kept blank.
Upon unplugging, there is some merging and rearranging of the Spaces happening:

1a + 2a -> 1b   (This is why I left 2a blank)
3a -> 2b

End result when unplugged is my original stuff which was separated is still separated, I just don't have the extra blank display.
There's probably some way to extrapolate this merging behavior with more than 3 displays.