Equivalent to alt-. in terminal I am curious as to whether there is an equivalent to the Alt-. command on Mac. On my computer it inserts the following character: ≥, instead of showing the preceding lines final parameter.

You have to change the Terminal’s behavior to the alt key acts as a meta key (like in X11 Terms). After you check that, everytime you press alt + ., you’ll get the last argument from the previous command. (You can repeat that command n times)


After Effects very slow This isn't the kind of slow when I get the pinwheel, this is slow like previews are INSANELY slow. The problem with this is that Final Cut Pro X works perfectly fine, however After Effects does not. The settings are set so After Effects can have up to 6 GB of RAM. Here is my graphics card info:

  Chipset Model:    NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675MX
  Type: GPU
  Bus:  PCIe
  PCIe Lane Width:  x16
  VRAM (Total): 1024 MB
  Vendor:   NVIDIA (0x10de)
  Device ID:    0x11a2
  Revision ID:  0x00a2
  ROM Revision: 3707
  Metal:    Supported

Please help!

There are many different reasons After Effects slows down. The link will show you some ways to fix the problem.

Useful Website

It's says to:

"Make sure that you’ve installed the current version of After Effects, including any available updates. To check for and install updates, choose Help > Updates."
"Make sure that you’ve installed the latest versions of drivers and plug-ins, especially video card drivers. To download updates for drivers and plug-ins, go to the provider’s website."

There are many more too.


What you're seeing here is some fancy behind-the-scenes scriptery that Apple added in OS X 10.11 to set the Terminal window title based on the current working directory. Since set -x shows what commands are being executed by bash, it also winds up showing all this normally-behind-the-scenes stuff (in painful detail). It's fairly easy to disable it, though:

unset PROMPT_COMMAND

... and then you can debug in peace, but your window title bar won't update any more. If you're done debugging and want to re-enable title bar updates, just reset the variable:

PROMPT_COMMAND=update_terminal_cwd


Measuring page download speed Network Link Conditioner I'd like to use Network Link Conditioner in conjunction with a local page download speed tool so that I can see how long certain elements take to download when I restrict connection speeds.

Can someone recommend a page download speed tool (with waterfall visuals) that works well with Network Link Conditioner?

I am a big fan of using Safari's built in Web Inspector for this sort of task.

Open Safari preferences, go to Advanced and tick the check to show the Develop menu in the menu bar.

Now you can refresh a page and see detailed information on the Timelines section to graph page load times, delays and whatever sequence of steps was needed to render the current page.

You can also use command line tools like curl in conjunction with the time command or using curl's internal timing options curl --trace-time to pick apart some of the files or scripts if you want to get a statistical level of repeatability as opposed to a broad overview of an entire page load.


How to get the hash linked to a GeneratedUID in El Capitan? Trying to find the GeneratedUID in OS X still works (see example below):

dscl localhost -read /Search/Users/<username> | grep GeneratedUID | cut -c15-

But entering the following into the command line, replacing <GeneratedUID> with the GeneratedUID found above:

cat /var/db/shadow/hash/<GeneratedUID> | cut -c169-216

leads to nowhere. This worked in earlier versions of OS X.

Where is the hash located in El Capitan now?

The hashes of the users are stored in a different place since 10.7:

/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/<user>.plist

To get the shadow hash enter:

sudo defaults read /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/<user>.plist ShadowHashData | tr -dc '0-9a-f ' | xxd -p -r | plutil -convert xml1 - -o -

or directly through directory services:

sudo dscl . read /Users/<user> AuthenticationAuthority

and

sudo dscl . read /Users/<user> dsAttrTypeNative:ShadowHashData


AppleScript basic date/time format and filename I'm trying to wrap my head around AppleScript. I have a simple project to capture screenshots every several seconds and save them to a folder.

I found this helpful script on GitHub:

https://gist.github.com/jonobr1/a91c166a94a65e64c9b7

I've altered it a bit in an attempt to change the file name to this format:

screen_shot 2019-04-05 at 5.23.13 PM.jpg

Yet, I end up with a filename like this:

screen_shot0Thursday

I could use some help sorting out how to properly use the date and time functions within the script.

Here is the script:

set dFolder to "~/Desktop/screencapture/"
set theDate to current date

do shell script ("mkdir -p " & dFolder)

set i to 0
repeat 960 times
    do shell script ("screencapture " & dFolder & "screenshot_" & i & theDate & ".jpg")
    delay 5 -- Wait for 5 seconds.
    set i to i + 1
end repeat

If you really want to do everything in AppleScript, then you should try:

to date_format(old_date) -- Old_date is text, not a date.
    set {year:y, month:m, day:d} to date old_date
    tell (y * 10000 + m * 100 + d) as string to text 1 thru 4 & "-" & text 5 thru 6 & "-" & text 7 thru 8
end date_format

to time_format(old_time)
    set {hours:h, minutes:m, seconds:s} to date old_time
    set pre to "AM"
    if (h > 12) then
        set h to (h - 12)
        set pre to "PM"
    end if
    return (h & "." & m & "." & s & " " & pre) as string
end time_format

set theDate to (current date)
set dateFormatted to date_format(date string of (theDate))
set timeFormatted to time_format(time string of (theDate))
set filename to  "screen_shot " & dateFormatted & " at " & timeFormatted & ".jpg"

Note: With regards to AM/PM: I haven't tried this in the evening, but it should work

It would be way easier, however to use do shell script for this, e.g.:

set formattedDate to (do shell script "date +'%Y-%m-%d at %H.%M.%S %p'")
set filename to "screen_shot " & formattedDate & ".jpg"

or even in one step by using:

do shell script "screencapture \"/Users/yourusername/Desktop/screencapture/screen_shot $(date +'%Y-%m-%d at %H.%M.%S %p').jpg\" "

Make sure to replace username with your actual username, and also that the folder screencapture exists. In summary, this results in:

set i to 0
repeat 960 times
    do shell script "screencapture \"/Users/yourusername/Desktop/screencapture/screen_shot $(date +'%Y-%m-%d at %H.%M.%S %p').jpg\" "
    delay 5 -- Wait for 5 seconds.
    set i to i + 1
end repeat

Note the importance of properly wrapping the filename in double quotes, which then needs to be escaped within AppleScript by a leading backslash: \"


Mac Mail - Mountain Lion - How does one remove the name from the sender heading? Instead of From: listing { "Name"  }  and showing up on recipients email as such,   I would like to only have the email address shoe up so the above would be  -  { ,xxx@yyyy.zz }.

I have three domains I send and receive from I would like to keep one of them private, without my name showing.

Thanks
iciarch

Mail (menu) > Preferences... > Accounts > select the target account and under Account Information in the Full Name: field put the email address not the full name.


How does iTunes Match handle metadata? When I purchase songs from iTunes, I often times hate the way the MetaData is presented. For example, I prefer the format

Artist          Song Name
-------------------------
artist_name     song_name f/ featured_artists

But songs purchased from iTunes usually come in the form

Artist                                    Song Name
---------------------------------------------------
artist_name feat. featured_artists        song_name

My concern is that once I use iTunes match to match all of my music with the music that exists on Apple's servers, iTunes is going to use the MetaData as stored on their servers as opposed to the MetaData that I have meticulously set in my library.

If it is going to use Apple's MetaData instead of my own, this is a complete deal breaker for me.

Does anybody who has signed up for/used iTunes Match know the way iTunes Match behaves in this regard?


Official OSX client for Twitter, https? Does the official OSX client for Twitter (the one available in the App Store) use https? I'm unable to find any info about this on the Twitter site and my searches aren't turning up much either.

wireshark says yes, the Twitter OSX client is using https.

  199.59.148.139    TLSv1   Server Hello, Certificate, Server Hello Done

I did not check if it has anything to do with the https account settings, so it might use http if you didn't opt-in for https.


28 pin SSD adapter or enclosure needed for Late 2014 MBP I've been trying to find an adapter for a Late 2014 MBP Retina SSD. Standard msata didn't fit, and from a few consumer reviews of other enclosures and adpaters, it seems to be uncertain if one exists. Its a "mini PCI-e" interface, but its been hard finding an enclosure using that term that doesn't end up being an msata one. The SSD installed has 28 pins (12+16). I've seen some mini PCI-e to usb adapters, but they are from sketchy sites with no product reviews. I was hoping someone here had experience with this and could recommend one that worked for them.

Seems like OWC Envoy Pro is what you are looking for.
Though it is kinda pricey avout 140$ now.

Compatibility table is like this so yours is included.


Is there a way to see the automator script in text? If i create some type of workflow on Automator, can I see the script in plain text?

For example, maybe get the script and push it out through Apple Remote Desktop to a remote computer?

While you could look at, copy and transfer, the contents of the document.wflow file found inside the filename.workflow bundle or Automator filename.app bundle, it's just XML, I'm not sure how much good it will do you as it will not open in the Automator.app.  It will open  with the Automator Runner however it may not run as intended, depends on what's in there.


What is "xART Remote Storage Daemon" in macOS? I found in my newly installed macOS system there is a service running on port 61500 and the process command is /usr/libexec/xartstorageremoted
I issued man xartstorageremoted and found the manual of this deamon. After reading it I still don't understand what is this deamon used for. I searched Google and there is nearly nothing about it. Does anyone know something about it? What it used for in a common user's perspective?

The xartstorageremoted executable is a daemon intended to listen for save/fetch requests from the CoProcessor. This daemon is required for multi-partitions and multi-users support.
xartstorageremoted must not be unloaded and should only be run via launchd when a request must be handled.

In the MacBook's with Touch Bar there is a new processor, Apple’s T1 processor.
The deamon xartstorageremoted talks with the T1 processor.
Secure Enclave is part of it meaning it’s tied explicitly to the Touch Bar and Touch ID. It’s also in charge of your webcam, a small but important difference.


Greyed out/inaccessible files on File Sharing server on Mac OS My company has a single file sharing Mac Pro computer that every user connects to. Occasionally a user will drop a file in a folder for another user to access, but the the files will be greyed out and are inaccessible to the other user, while a different user can see and access it as normal. Sometimes dropping a file will cause a user to just have spinning ball and will not drop.

It has worked well enough for a few months now, but this problems has been becoming more frequent.

Everyone, which is about 20 users all with iMac or Mac pros, connects to the file sharing Mac Pro using the same registered username and password. I have everyone connected via SMB. The file sharing Mac Pro has a Drobo via USB that hosts all the files. All the permissions are set to write and read for everyone.

Any idea on how to fix this? Do I have this setup correctly?

Everyone, which is about 20 users all with iMac or Mac pros, connects
  to the file sharing Mac Pro using the same registered username and
  password...All the permissions are set to write and read for
  everyone.

Emphasis Mine

This one paragraph sums up the issue you are having; you do not have this setup correctly at all.  What this sounds like is that even though everyone has read/right priviliges, the file gets locked so that only one SMB client can access it at a time.  When two clients access it - even with the same credentials, which client has the correct changes?  SMB solves this for you - the one that got there first.

What you should have is a unique user account for each person that needs to access the file share/server.  If you want to maintain a single login for your users across all servers, look at implementing a directory server of some sort.  I prefer Active Directory as I work in mixed environments; second in line is LDAP.


2010 27" iMac - ambient sensor connection on cpu fan 2010 27" iMac - regarding the ambient sensor connection on cpu fan housing - What is the proper contact position of the sensor with relation to the bracket that secures/holds the sensor in place?

The image below was taken from page 238 of the Apple Technician Guide iMac (27-inch, Mid 2010). There are other images regarding the sensor cable in the document.


iTunes updates and Ping I'm not very savvy.  I usually accept all iTunes updates to get any important fixes.  But I don't think I need Ping - never signed up and don't use social networking.
Should I reject iTunes update # 10 and its follow-ups, i.e., 10.3?

You don't need to use the Ping feature if you don't want to. You can still update iTunes. After updating, just click the icon at the bottom-right of the iTunes window to hide the Ping sidebar and de-select the Ping checkbox in the General tab of iTunes' preferences window.


Use more than one PS4 Dualshock controller over bluetooth I have two Playstation 4 Dualshock controllers and am thinking of getting two more. They have both bluetooth and usb connections, but prefer bluetooth to avoid cable salad — and of course to be able to conveniently play games on the big screen from the couch. Am thus far unable to use both wirelessly at the same time.

How to connect and use both controllers using bluetooth at the same time?

Tested on macOS High Sierra (10.13) and macOS Sierra (10.12) on two separate 2015 model Macbooks.
Can pair with both controllers individually, if turning bluetooth off/on between.
Cannot connect with both at the same time.

As soon as one controller is connected, the other is basically ignored. As soon as the first controller is disconnected, the second one can be connected, and vice versa.

Would prefer not to use third-party (especially closed source) software.

Note: using Apple's Bluetooth Explorer (part of Hardware IO Tools for Xcode, Apple Developer login required) I can reset the bluetooth stack, clear device caches, restart blued etcetera. This has not helped in this case, but am also not familiar enough with this advanced tool to know all the tricks.

I've so far been unable to use 2 PS4 Dualshock controllers over Bluetooth with my 2016 Macbook Pro running Mojave.

Pairing either one with my mac would make the other unable to pair. Renaming the Wireless Controller connection to something more decent did not help.

What helped somewhat was upgrading to the dreaded Catalina - I was able to pair both controllers BUT couldn't play any games with them. The games didn't consistently receive commands from either controller, I was unable to move any of the controlled characters more than a couple pixels on the screen, it was a nightmare. I assumed this was because the controllers kept interfering with one another

What totally helped was replacing one of the PS4 controllers with an XBOX One wireless controller. This worked & fixed all issues, we got no more interferences, and the response time was fine.

Note: all tested controllers were connected wirelessly via BT, games used were Cuphead and Knights & Bikes running on Steam.


MacPro - Can the two network interfaces be assigned to? Is it possible to control which applications/processes use which network card? So, for example, I could assign different things to different interfaces? Also, is this possible for the different types of connections e.g. Bluetooth PAN, firewire networking and so on?

Only if the application itself supports this.  If it does, it will have config files that allow you to specify either an IP address to bind to, or an interface name to bind to.

You would then find out your internal IP address by checking the Network control panel or the interface by checking ifconfig through the terminal.

As far as I know.


How to recover TextEdit files? I just quit TextEdit and forgot to save my files that I have been working on for 2 weeks. I'm about to cry.

Please tell me how can I recover them?

If you quit TextEdit, then reopening TextEdit will re-open all your documents. If it didn't give you an option to save, then they were stored by Restore in the Saved Application State. When you next open the app, they should have been there as the application state is restored. If this did not occur, then something else went wrong and the application state was either not saved or not restored correctly (e.g. force quit whilst opening will cancel restoration of application state).

If you closed TextEdit, then all the documents will be closed, and clicking Don't Save will delete them and you will not be able to recover them.


Setting Outlook.com contacts and calendar on OSX There are similar questions regarding the synchronization of Outlook.com on AskDifferent, mostly related to the native OSX Mail app. However, I'm particularly interested in connecting the Contacts and Calendar apps on OSX to my Outlook.com account.

Is there a way to use my Outlook.com account to integrate with the contacts and calendar apps?

I am aware that Outlook.com does not implement the native Exchange protocol, however considering adding an Outlook.com account on iOS seems to work just fine for mail, contacts and calendar entries, there is perhaps a decent way to achieve the same on OSX?

For desktop usage, Outlook.com uses IMAP for mail.  However, it doesn't provide CardDAV or CalDAV access for contacts and calendars.  For mobile usage, Outlook.com uses Exchange Active Sync.  I'm not aware of any Mac desktop apps that support Exchange Active Sync.

You should tell Microsoft that this is important to you.  When you login to Outlook.com, click the settings icon and then click on Feedback.  Tell them what you want, why it matters, and what you will do in lieu of having this available to you.  For example, I said this in my feedback to them about this topic (feel free to borrow this, although I'd recommend changing it to whatever is important to you):

  I want to be able to sync my calendar and contacts across all devices
  that I use.  I can get my calendar and contacts on my phone, but not
  on my Mac.  Please make it possible for me to see my calendar and
  contacts on Mac desktop clients.  Gmail can sync my calendar and
  contacts to my Mac desktop applications, which makes it very difficult
  for me to use Outlook.com instead of Gmail.


Force relaunch of Finder from terminal into background For some reason, Finder is no longer running and will not relaunch using conventional methods.

I can, however, get it running with the following command in the Terminal:

  prompt$ open -g     /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder &

Despite the fact that I'm ending the command with an ampersand and passing the -g flag to open, the resulting Finder opens attached to a completely new Terminal window that, when closed, causes the Finder application to also exit.

How can I relaunch the Finder from the Terminal, ensuring that it will run in the background without spawning a new shell?

The open command exits after it opens Finder. Even if it didn't, closing a shell would close background processes. You could try using disown:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder & disown $!

Or launchctl submit:

launchctl submit -l my.finder /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder

launchctl remove my.finder removes the job.

Have you looked at log messages or crash reports? If you have tried to load or unload /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Finder.plist, try removing entries for Finder in /var/db/launchd.db/com.apple.launchd{,.peruser.501}/overrides.plist.


Disable Genre Art in iTunes 11? New iTunes bumps up the font size and adds Genre images to Genre column view. I make custom Genres for sorting and don't need the visual hinting. Anyone know how/if I can disable this? I'm not able to find anything.

Otherwise I guess I'll just be using the Song view. I really liked the three column Genre sort up until now. :(

You can remove the genre-*.jpg files in the application bundle. iTunes will use the cover art of tracks for the genres though.

It also breaks the code signature and could be overridden by updates.


How can I prevent TextEdit from saving previous versions of a text file? I've got a simple text file that I keep in Dropbox for holding important notes.  I've name it so it shows up at the top of the directory, so that it is quickly accessible from anywhere - on my Mac, tablet, phone, etc.

The problem is, when I edit it on my Mac, TextEdit appears to be saving previous versions using some weird file naming scheme.  For instance, my file is called 000-Inbox.txt, and I see lots of files with names like 000-Inbox.txt.sb-abc123cb-XaedKL.  Currently I am counting twenty-two (22) (!) of these "backup" files.  This really messes up my directory listing; now all the other files which are supposed to be easily accessible at the top of the listing are pushed down out of site on my mobile devices.  My directly looks unsightly as well.  I don't want or need these files: Dropbox saves previous versions anyway, now it presumably is saving previous versions of previous versions which is just silly.

I've tried deleting these files, but it is rather a chore to have to delete a file every time I save a file.  Is there some way to disable this previous version saving?

Another issue it presents is if I change the file on another device, I have to close the file and reopen it, because reverting to the previous version is going to the previous version TextEdit has saved, not the latest version on disk.

TextEdit and other app have a auto save feature enabled.

You can disable that in System Preferences:

Open the General preferences and enable the "Ask to keep changes", so it wont auto save, but ask you if you want to save it. This one would be system wide.

To do it only for TextEdit:

To disable autosave in TextEdit.app, run the following command in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.TextEdit ApplePersistence -bool no

To turn it back on replace the no with yes.


Changing ID on an ipad 2? I am using IOS 7 ipad 2. I have no longer got access to the email associated with my ipad when I bought it so I have changed my iTunes id to a new email address but cannot seem to shift the old email address which my ipad keeps asking for. Help!! How do I get my ipad to accept the new id. I can't switch off "Find my ipad" because it wont let me as it keeps asking for the password  for the old id which is goodness knows what. I need some serious help!!

Whether or not you have access to your email does not affect your Apple ID, except that you cannot receive marketing emails. To answer your question, you must go to Settings>iTunes and App Store, sign out and then sign back in. You can also reset your password or change your email at:
https://appleid.apple.com

Once you have access to your account, you can log into iCloud and remove that device from Find My iPhone if it shows as offline or just remove Find My iPhone from the Settings app.


Mobile Me Family Pack Accounts: Do Sub-Accounts have their own syncing features? Merry Christmas.

In a MobileMe Family Pack, do the subaccounts have their own, independent syncing features (dock, bookmarks, etc - as seen in the MobileMe system preference?).

I could really use the syncing features, but I don't need a full individual account. My brother has an individual account, and we were thinking of upgrading it to a family, so I could get the syncing features (I have a work mac, and a personal mac).

The Apple Website is a little vague on this:

  A Family Pack subscription includes one Individual account with 20GB of combined email and file storage, plus four Family Member accounts, each with its own email address and 5GB of storage. Convert an Individual account to a Family Pack anytime you like — you just pay the difference.

I'm not sure whether to read it as 'a family pack is a glorified email account' or 'a family pack is a full mobile me account (with syncing features) but less space for each user'.

Yes a family pack allows you to create 4 additional usernames that have all the features of the main account, the only difference being that they are limited to 5gb of storage.  I upgraded to a family pack and used one of the 4 additional accounts for my girlfriend so she could use Find My iPhone (before it was free with an AppleID) she can also sync her bookmarks, dock, prefs, etc just like my account.

The only thing I am not 100% sure is if she can also create alias email addresses like I can on my main account but I believe she can.


How to change the default domain suffix for iPad Pro on screen keyboard? As title, how can I change the default domain suffix to .com for my iPad Pro on screen keyboard (Safari browser) as shown below? Because I use the suffix .com more than other domain suffix. Every time I type the URL, I required to hold the .co.uk key in order to get .com which is quite inconvenient. I try google search but I didn't get any related result. Any solution? Sorry for my bad English.

Here are some additional information of my device

iPad Pro 12.9 inches
Version 10.0.2
iPad Language : English (U.K.)
Region : Malaysia
Keyboard : English (UK) QWERTY
Application : Safari Browser

It's defined by the keyboard locale you select. It can't be changed independently of this. The .com TLD is used on the US keyboard. To change to a US keyboard, go to Settings → Keyboards → Keyboards → Add New Keyboard → English, then use the globe button to switch keyboards.


Compatibility of iMac G3 hard drives, to try to recover data I have an old iMac 400MHz slot-loading G3 model #M5521 that won't power up (think it's a dead power supply), and I'm trying to get the data off my hard drive.  I also happen to have a 333MHz tray-loading G3 model #M4984 and am wondering if I can put the HD from the 400MHz into the 333MHz, just to use to boot up and back up my data onto a flash drive.

Here are the specs:
iMac #1 (the one with all my data on it):  400MHz slot-loading G3, Model #M5521, 20.4GB hard drive (may not be the original HD - think it originally came with a 13GB), 320MB memory (256 and 64 cards), dvd drive, serial #RN9445BXHCW, and is running OS 10.3.9.  The hard drive says on it: Maxtor HD model # 92049U3, 20.4GB, manufactured 15 July 2000.

iMac #2: 333MHz tray-loading G3, Model #M4984, 6GB hard drive, 288MB memory, CD drive, serial #XB9361VUGSQ, and is running OS 9.2.2.

The questions we have are whether the 400MHZ iMac hard drive can be put into the 333MHz iMac and, if so, whether it would be able to boot/run it given it is running OS 10.3.9.  We are trying to do this ourselves, as we are money-limited, and my husband is capable of changing the hard drives, however the 333MHz iMac is the only other machine/method we have to use to try to recover the data.  Any info you could provide on the compatibility of the two hard drives/iMacs would be very much appreciated.

Thanks a lot,
Cindi

Well, while newer iMac drive will work in older one, there is no guarantee it will boot.

There was a limitation during the times of Classic Mac OS on size of boot partition which has to be below 8GB. You have Mac OS X 10.3.9 on that drive so I can't say if it still applies. And maybe if it does apply you might had it partitioned just the way it need to be to overcome it.

Then again getting HDD from that iMac and into it is not that easy. Not that it really hard but still it is not a Mac Pro or standard PC case.

And also keep in mind that you might just break cables when disassembling since it is long time when it was put together and they probably aged and aged cables don't like when you bend them.

So if you are not afraid of the idea of making another iMac unusable or brave, experienced or just curious then go ahead and try. Do not forget to remove power cord, then press power button to get excessive electricity from capacitors off and get yourself grounded.

Still there is an option and it is just buying a used (they are cheap since practically nobody use them) or getting for free a USB enclosure (it could be USB 1.1 or USB 2 — it doesn't matter since that iMac only has USB 1.1 ports anyway yet USB2 enclosure will work too. It even can be 5.25" external CD case provided it internally uses PATA/IDE interface) case for 3.5" PATA/IDE HDD.

After putting your HDD into it you should see content of it. Provided it is not dead, of course.

So good luck and keep us posted.


Big Sur 11.2 upgrade stuck in boot screen My Mid 2014 MBP decided to install 11.2 Big Sur update yesterday evening. After rebooting, it stuck in the boot screen. Left it there overnight but nothing changed.
Then I force-powered off it and booted it in Safe Boot. It completed the update and Software Update shows I have 11.2. However, if I reboot to normal mode, it gets stuck in boot screen again.
Took a look to the logs but didn't see anything definitive.
Any help is appreciated.
Some updates:

SMC clearing did not work.
PRAM clearing did not work.
OS Reinstall did not work.
Moving 3rd party extensions out of /Library/Extensions didn't work.

Invalidating kext cache didn't work either.

There's a /System/Volumes/Update folder with success logs.

I still don't know what the problem is.

Make sure you have at least 35GB of storage free.


Duplicate a Safari tab along with associated browsing history (OS X) Is there a way to duplicate a Safari (Safari 7 for OS X) tab and carry its browsing history to the duplicate? Like, when I do Cmd-L, Cmd-Enter the copy has no history, as if I just pressed Cmd-T and pasted the URL of an existing tab.

Any suggestions on how to implement such a feature in case none exists will also be highly appreciated.

Not a solution (yet), but fyi you might want to keep an eye on this, if it gets implemented: https://github.com/thiemo/duplicatetabbutton/issues/2


How do I increase the size of the main partition? As indicated in the screenshot I can't increase the size of the main partition.

Try the following steps:

Shut down the computer and reboot it while pressing  Alt/Option.
In the boot picker choose your recovery partition (name can vary, depending on your language settings).
In the recovery partition launch disc utility and perform the steps you tried already.


iPhoto '11 vs. iPhoto '09 keyboard shortcuts In iPhoto '09 looking at a picture in an event, I could hit Esc to get back to the event. It appears that this no longer works in iPhoto '11.

Is there a different keyboard shortcut that works?

After fiddling around a bit, it seems that ⌘+← works.


Changing MacOS's IP Address While Booted Off Another Drive My server lives in a data center, 1,000 miles away.
This Mac has two hard drives, a primary and a backup. Both are bootable and have the same network settings, so I can switch back and forth between them, remotely. (Screen sharing, System Prefs, Startup Disk).

I just put a new server in service today. Before boxing it up, I use a keyboard and mouse to change the server's IPs from my LAN IPs, to my public IPs. Server went in to service and all was good. Until I rebooted.

I forgot to change the backup drive's network settings. So when I boot off of the backup drive, the computer is live on the internet with an IP of 172.16.0.7. No bueno.

I was able to get the server booted back up off of the primary drive, so I'm in service for now. But I have no physical access to this machine. What I need is:

A way to change the IP address of both ethernet interfaces, on the Backup hard drive, while I am booted up off of the Primary hard drive. If I'm lucky, there's a .plist somewhere I can edit and life will be good. If I'm unlucky, Apple will have some truly insane way of storing IP settings, and it won't be possible to do this at all.

Note: This is an El Capitan install.

Network configuration information is stored in

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist

To change the manual IP address assignment, change the string value at

NetworkServices:GUID:IPv4:Addresses:0

To find the right GUID, see the UserDefinedName value for each service.

If ConfigMethod is set to DCHP, the Addresses array is ignored. See the screenshot below for an example of DCHP configuration (Wi-Fi) vs manual (LAN).


Are apps that use LSUIElement in their plist causing google account problems? I've noticed a pattern with some apps not logging into my Google account when they are hidden. After some digging, I think I have identified a common thread - the LSUIElement which is basically a flag telling Mac OS X to not show an "agent" app in the dock.

Many things that I always keep open (RSS, Mail, etc) I will hide from the dock by using the LSUIElement key in the app's Info.plist. But, for some reason, I noticed this causes login problems.

My two problem apps in heavy use, Sparrow for email, Reeder for RSS work fine when not hidden. When I hide them, they fail to log in to my Google account.

What might be causing this?
Can I prevent it?
If #2 is no, is there an alternative to LSUIElement?

Modifying the Info.plist of an app usually invalidates its code signature, so it's not allowed to access the keychain automatically.

You can see if the code signature is valid with for example codesign -vv /Applications/Sparrow.app. An invalid signature can be replaced with sudo codesign -f -s - /Applications/Sparrow.app.


Will I be able to use Find iPhone if my battery is dead? Will the location of my iPhone be updated if the battery is dead? Is there any way to know if the battery on my iPhone has died?

On iOS 7 and a newer version of Find My Phone/iCloud, the battery level is reported so you can know approximately how much longer the tracking might be active without a recharge.

When this question was asked, the battery level was not shown so the answer then was no.

Either way, once your iPhone runs out of power, it will shut itself off. There is residual power left in the phone to run the screen and respond to buttons for a while, but once that last remaining power drains, eventually the voltage in the battery is not sufficient to run even the button sensing part of the device.

Plugging it into power will re-start your phone and once it establishes a network connection, find my phone will resume.

In your case - if Find My Phone says your device is not found - you can't really tell if it was turned off by intention or automatically or has lost network connectivity (by having a SIM removed or just being out of range).


How to add an .icc colour profile to OSX 10.15 In OSX 10.13 i can add an .ICC profile to the OS by copying and pasting a .ICC to libary/colourSync/profiles
But in OSX 10.15 the above folder structure does not exist. Any idea how i can add a colour profile to the OS in 10.15 ?

The folder /Library/ColorSync/Profiles does, or should exist on macOS 10.15.
(Note the / at the beginning, signifying the root level of the volume, the US spelling of 'color', and the correct capitalization.)
It's possible, or even likely, that the similar path inside the User account may not be there. E.g. /Users/<yourUserName>/Library/ColorSync/Profiles
You can create either of these folders, if absent, and the OS will use any profiles contained inside.
You can check the location of installed profiles with ColorSync Utility. In the Profiles tab, select a Profile in the Sidebar, and the location will be given as part of the information provided.

If the root level Library is really missing the ColorSync folder, then I would suggest reinstalling the OS, as you don't know what else is missing. Or restore it from your backup, assuming it used to exist.


Apple Watch Series 2 will not pair with iPhone 11 Pro So I just upgraded my iPhone to the iPhone 11 Pro and went to pair my existing Series 2 Apple Watch with it - I have reset the Apple Watch to factory defaults, and attempted to pair it using the normal flow through the Apple Watch app on the iPhone.

The iPhone will not accept the geometric pattern displayed on the Watch for pairing, it simply does nothing when I present it to the iPhones camera during the pairing process in the Apple Watch app.  I have tried various lighting levels and locations, distances from the Watch etc.

If I choose the manual flow, I am asked to choose the Apple Watch to pair via the 5 digit name, which displays correctly on both Watch and iPhone - the iPhone then asks me to enter the 6 digit code which is displayed on the Watch, but the watch never displays any code (it does not update from the "Use this name to select your Apple Watch for manual pairing").

This Watch worked perfectly on my older iPhone 6S Plus literally until this morning.

Things I have tried without success:

Updated iPhone to latest iOS 13
Reset Apple Watch again
Closed all apps on iPhone
Rebooted iPhone
Forgot my current wifi network

I was able to solve the issue on my end...

Problem: new iPhone 11 pro with iOS 13 won't pair with Apple watch series 2.

So the problem was that my old iPhone 6s was on iOS v10 and watch on v3 and iPhone wouldn't upgrade my watch to the newer watch OS, probably due to OS compatibility.

Unfortunately there is no option to upgrade iPhone to version 11 or 12 - you can upgrade to the latest version only. I've took a risk and upgraded my old iPhone 6s to the latest iOS hoping that as long as it is paired with watch it would upgrade watch OS, but it didn't work out and I've got 2 phones unable to pair with my watch.

I found a friend, who was on iOS 12 and used his iPhone to pair. Before pairing it asked to upgrade watch OS (iOS 13 didn't offered this option). After upgrade watch OS I was able to pair it with any iPhone running iOS 13.

So I'm all set now.

Hopefully this info will be useful for others.


Early 2013 Retina display on Late 2013 MacBook Pro 13 inch compatibility Does a MacBook Pro 13 inch Retina late 2013 work with an early 2013 Retina display? As far as I know just the webcam cables are different. Does that mean that the display works just without the webcam (which I don't need)?

Browse ifixit.com and you can see ifixit's part numbers for these two 13" Retina MacBook Pro machines.

The "Display LVDS cables" on the two MacBooks carry the same ifixit part numbers. The two models' "Screen Assemblies," however, show different ifixit part numbers.
Because the screen part numbers are different, I think the answer to your question is "Probably not."

If I were in your shoes and really wanted to resurrect my MacBook Pro, I'd look for the specific part that fits your model MacBook Pro, or a used MacBook Pro of the same model from which you could remove and reuse its screen.


Many apps missing after restoring iPad backup to migrate to iPad 2 Needing to migrate an original iPad user to an iPad 2, I used the backup and restore mechanism in iTunes (on a PC)

However, the following steps resulted in many of the apps being missing on the destination device:

Backed up an original iPad to iTunes on a PC
Factory-reset an iPad 2
Connected the iPad 2 to the same PC, and restored from backup

Some time later, the iPad 2 claimed to be set up, but many of the apps were missing. Instead of there being 3 screen-fulls of apps on the restored device, there was only one, and this was mostly the original Apple apps.

iTunes didn't report any errors throughout this process.

What can I do to fix this?

The original iPad was on iOS 5.0, and the destination was iOS 5.1.

I ended up having to upgrade the original iPad to iOS 5.1, and then repeating the whole backup & restore operation.

After this, all the expected apps were present on the destination device.


Your computer is disabled. Try again in 60 minutes I need to factory reset a MackBook Pro.
Every time I start it up it takes ages to load and then I see this:
Your computer is disabled. Try again in 60 minutes.

I tried to restart the Mac with CMD + R but it won't boot in repair mode.
Any alternative command?

Efter dyas of works I found the solution here.

Here are the steps to fix the problem:

Go here and download the A USB flash drive image file
Unzip the file
Insert a USB stick into your Mac or Linux
On a terminal run diskutil list and find your USB key (for me was /dev/disk2)
Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk2
Run dd if=refind-flashdrive-0.11.4.img of=/dev/disk2 and in 1 minute you will have the rEFInd Boot Manager on your USB stick
On another USB stick put MacOS Mojave following this guide.
Now insert both USB Sticks on your Mac, fire it up and keep the button Option pressed down
Now you will see 3 things: Your Mac HD (in my case was formatted), Mac Mojave USB installer and the rEFInd Boot Manager. Click on the rEFInd Boot Manager.

Choose the Gparted button and follow this guide step by step in order to create a GPT Partition Table with gdisk in EFI Mode

Now if you are back in the rEFInd Boot Manager is time to move the cursor to the Mac Mojave installation, press Tab or F2 and choose the option "Boot macOS in single user mode"
A terminal will open and you need to enter these commands in succession:

nvram -c

nvram -xp

nvram -c

nvram -c

nvram -c

nvram -c

nvram -xp

Yes you need to clear the nvram several times in a row! (nvram -xp just lists what is in nvram) Then type in exit and wait.

The laptop should continue booting in that command window until it switches over to the GUI window and you end up at the general OS Installer window.


What determines when my Apple Watch uses a haptic tap for a notification? Some notifications on my Apple Watch (e.g. Viber) use a haptic tap when they appear on my Apple Watch. Others (e.g. Facebook) do not. What determines whether a haptic tap is used or not? Is this something I can change?

From this Apple Discussion:

There are variations. The 3rd party app developers have some control over what you get, but they won't have been able to check it before launch - they'll have been using a simulator.

This can currently not be changed by the user.
To turn haptic feedback of:

Open the Settings app.

Scroll down and tap Sounds & Haptics.

Turn Haptic Alerts on or off.


Are there any features like Winamp's auto tag exist for iTunes? It took me 3 months to ID3 Tag all of the MP3s (artist, album, released year, etc) in my iTunes library.  It was annoying.  I saw that Winamp solves this problem with an "Auto Tag" feature.  Is there a plugin for iTunes on OS X to do the same? Or does iTunes itself support this?

P.S: I would like the program or plugin or whatever else to be compatible with iTunes.

MusicBrainz Picard works quite well, it uses the same database as iEatBrainz but is still actively developed.  It's free, and I've had great luck with it fixing tags on some 40GB of music I had laying around from my Windows days.

The interface is somewhat arcane unfortunately.  Check out this link that will give you some other alternative ideas.

on edit:
I went back to check out the newer version of Picard (0.12 vs 0.11), and the workflow is much improved.  A lot of the annoying things from before have been automated.  If you take a few minutes to set all the preferences to your tastes using the online help as reference, this really is a great automated tagging app.


Can you turn GPS off on a Apple Watch Series 2? Is there any way to turn off GPS when doing a workout to save battery?
Cheers

According to Apple, the built-in GPS of the Apple Watch series 2 will not kick in if the iPhone the watch is paired to is within range.

So, depending on your workout, having the iPhone with you (or nearby) will result in the iPhone doing the grunt work to conserve power usage of the Apple Watch.

Also, even if your iPhone isn't nearby, the Apple Watch GPS will not kick in unless you're actually doing a workout. For example, if you forgot your iPhone at home when you went to work and did nothing but sit in a car or at your desk the whole day, then the GPS would have never kicked in.

As for a setting to manually switch the GPS off, there wasn't one in the beta versions of WatchOS 3, but there are rumours that a future update may add this option.

Hope this helps.

[EDIT]

I just wanted to clarify that whether the Apple Watch GPS kicks in or not will also depend on the actual workout. Basically, if it's an indoor workout it won't, if it's an outdoor workout it will (i.e. if your iPhone isn't nearby). However, if it's a swimming workout the GPS only kicks in if it's an open water swim (i.e not in the pool) and you're doing freestyle. Any other stroke the GPS won't kick in.


Macbook Pro fans spinning until I close the lid TLDR : Fans randomly start spinning like crazy and calm down only if I close the lid.
Hello there !
At work, I have a MacBook Pro 15" mid-2015 (2,5GHz Intel Core i7, 16Gb 1600MHz DDR3).
I have basically the same apps open all day long and it works fine with the CPU at roughly 50°C.
A few times a day, while I minded my business and doing nothing in particular, then fans start spinning very loudly (but the CPU temperature stays the same).
The first times it happened I thought there was something like the time machine working in the background but I checked and its not. Moreover, if I bear with it and don't do anything, they keep spinning like crazy for hours and never seem to calm down.
The weird part is : If I close the lid of my computer (which is plugged to another screen, so it doesn't shut down or anything), the fans calm down slowly. If I open the lid again while they're calming or when they're done, the problem doesn't come back immediately (but will eventually, a few hours later).
I've read about people having fans spinning WHEN closing the lid, but I don't know what to do about this problem in particular.
Any idea ? :D

You may as well ignore the fan thing unless it really bugs you. What I would do is download Macs Fan Control. Once the app is running, keep it running in the background. When the Mac fan starts up again, open the app and set the fan to a certain speed, and then reset it to automatic.


Cannot factory reset a MacBook running OSX 10.5 using Disk Utility I just bought a used 2007 MacBook running Mac OS X 10.5, 2GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo. I want to return it to factory spec to erase all previous owner's information and start fresh.

Disk Utility's Erase buttons is greyed out.

How can I do this? I have no startup disc.

There is no recovery partition on that one so no "Internet Recovery." you will need to make an installation DVD or USB key.

Log onto the app store and see if you have the option to download MacOS Lion (the latest version compatible with that Mac).

Failing that and a friend with the ability to download a compatible OS install for you, you might want to see if an Apple Genius can help you get that OS downloaded.

Failing that, it's time to hit Craigslist or eBay


What should I do about outdated BootCache playlists? In /private/var/db/BootCaches there are old 'bootcache playlists' (not clear what these exactly are as they also have some sort of user component apparently) for Coriolis Systems (which in the past had iDefrag and iPartition, but which now has been shut down because of APFS). I've removed as much as I could find from Coriolis Systems software, but this remains and rebuilding the boot cache and rebooting hasn't changed that.

How do I really clean this up? Here is the output of ls

bash-3.2# ls /private/var/db/BootCaches
72499DE8-BFC3-4A73-AC46-2EFBCAA4F257    PreheatedUser
FFFFEEEE-DDDD-CCCC-BBBB-AAAA000000F8    Root.logical_playlist
FFFFEEEE-DDDD-CCCC-BBBB-AAAA000001F5    RootExtra.logical_playlist
Login.logical_playlist
bash-3.2# ls /private/var/db/BootCaches/*
/private/var/db/BootCaches/Login.logical_playlist
/private/var/db/BootCaches/Root.logical_playlist
/private/var/db/BootCaches/RootExtra.logical_playlist

/private/var/db/BootCaches/72499DE8-BFC3-4A73-AC46-2EFBCAA4F257:
Login.playlist
app.com.agilebits.onepassword-osx.playlist
app.com.apple.ActivityMonitor.playlist
app.com.apple.Console.playlist
app.com.apple.Safari.playlist
app.com.apple.Terminal.playlist
app.com.apple.TextEdit.playlist
app.com.apple.systempreferences.playlist
app.com.backup42.desktop.playlist
app.com.coriolis-systems.iDefrag.playlist
app.com.coriolis-systems.iPartition.playlist

/private/var/db/BootCaches/FFFFEEEE-DDDD-CCCC-BBBB-AAAA000000F8:
Login.playlist

/private/var/db/BootCaches/FFFFEEEE-DDDD-CCCC-BBBB-AAAA000001F5:

/private/var/db/BootCaches/PreheatedUser:
Login.playlist
app.com.agilebits.onepassword-osx.playlist
app.com.apple.ActivityMonitor.playlist
app.com.apple.Console.playlist
app.com.apple.Safari.playlist
app.com.apple.Terminal.playlist
app.com.apple.TextEdit.playlist
app.com.apple.systempreferences.playlist
app.com.backup42.desktop.playlist
app.com.coriolis-systems.iDefrag.playlist
app.com.coriolis-systems.iPartition.playlist

These files are used for boot-time optimisation. The cache is also measured for hit rate, and stores the request pattern into a "history list" for being adaptive in future. If the hit rate is too low, the caching is disabled.

To look under the hood and examine the hit/miss rate

 sudo bootcachecontrol statistics Print

The actual impact of files like app.com.coriolis-systems.iDefrag.playlist should be really minimal.

However, if the application is otherwise completely gone, it is safe to delete all instances of these coriolis-related cache files in /private/var/db/BootCaches/

If these files get recreated it means that there are remnants of the application left, and active.

(Observe this effect by deleting /private/var/db/BootCaches/PreheatedUser/app.com.apple.Safari.playlist It will be created instantly once you relaunch Safari)


Unable to send messages from iPod to users with non-Apple devices I have an iPod touch 5, and it won't let me send messages to non-Apple users. I've tried to find help in a lot of websites, but my iPod is still not letting me text non-Apple users.

The iPod can only send iMessages, not SMS. iMessage is a service from Apple that only work on Apple devices. It is possible to send regular SMS from an iPod if you have an iPhone on the same Apple-ID and on the same Wi-Fi network. If you do not have an iPhone all messages is sent from your e-mail address not a phone number.


Which files are involved in Mac App Store update checking? I've got a phantom update notification in Mac App Store which I really want to get rid of. The notification is for AngryBirds but I don't have this app installed anywhere on my mac. The issue is pretty much like this question: Phantom Update Stuck In Mac App Store

I have tried to contacted Apple Support but they failed to help me solve the problem. The conclusion of Apple Support is that this really needs to be fixed locally and there's nothing to do with the push server.

So to trace the real original and make this question to be more generic, I would like to ask this way:

Which files are involved in the mechanism of update checking process of Mac App Store?

Once I get to these files, I can filter them and maybe I can delete the leftovers that causes the problem.

I'm not sure exactly, but /Library/Receipts/ & especially the file in there called InstallHistory.plist would be a good place to start


iPhone 5 still has previous owners itunes info I bought an iphone 5 off kijiji and was able to restore it however the previous owner still had it connected to itunes therefore am unable to use it. Hiw do I completely wipe phone clean nd start fresh creating my own itunes account

Have you tried this?

  Settings > General > Reset > Erase All Content and Settings
  (c.f. http://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT4137#erase your device)

If you cannot erase this way, Apple says (down a bit on that page) that you ought to restore using iTunes, which won't be helpful without the original owner's iTunes backup.

If the device is locked via "Find My iPhone Activation Lock", then you'll need to go through this process:

  http://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201441

which requires the previous owner to log into their iCloud account, at http://www.icloud.com/find , then click on the device they sold you, then "Remove From Account".

In general, its a good idea to have the previous owner go through these steps as they're selling the device to you:

  http://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT201351

Good luck with this!


Mounting SMB network share from Mavericks recovery mode I would like to be able back up my macbook on a weekly basis doing the following:

boot into recovery mode
mount a windows SMB network share
use disk utility to save a disk image to the network share
possibly automate this process

This seems like it should be possible however when I try and mount the SMB share I get this error message:

-bash-3.2# mount_smbfs
dyld: Library not loaded: /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/SMBClient.framework/Versions/A/SMBClient
   Referenced from: /sbin/mount_smbfs
   Reason: image not found
Trace/BPT trap: 5

I have also attempted to copy the framework folder from the main system volume. However the recovery partition is read-only.

Am I incorrectly trying to mount the SMB share or do I have to make a custom recovery image thats supports SMB?

This is, because the binary for the framework that’s required is not part of the Recovery System.

I have been trying various things for over an hour now and the only thing that works appears to be AFP:

mkdir /Volumes/VOLUMENAME
mount_afp afp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@000.00.000.00/VOLUMENAME /Volumes/VOLUMENAME

One important thing that kept this from working for me was that I had used /Volumes/VOLUMENAME instead of the correct /VOLUMENAME in the afp URL.


Where is a video stored after it is deleted from my iPhone? If I take a 60 second video and send it to someone via SMS/iMessage and then delete the video from my Photo Library, where is the data stored?

Is it still stored on my iCloud, the iCloud of the person who received the message, both, or is it possible that it is stored somewhere else?

The video is then stored in your Messages application as opposed to your photo library. If you have iCloud enabled for messages it is stored in iCloud as well for both people, since you both have the message.

To see photos stored in Messages, go to [Settings] -> General -> iPhone Storage -> Messages, there you will find a section for Photos and Videos:


How to get Fake.app to return 2 types of OSX notification? I am trying to automate a 'title' search on Amazon (kindle category) using Fake.app.  The search is conducted every week for about 100 titles. I followed the below 2 posts from Fake.App developer and I am stuck.

Question 1
I have created the workflow and it loops through successfully grabbing the title from my text file.

How do I return a progress message via OSX notification?  I want to return "searching for ${Title}", where Titles is held in a variable

Question 2
How do I check the search page results to see if it contains ${Title} (e.g. found the book), and return Book found ${Title}?  I am not sure if this is even possible using Fake.App.

I have found a Firefox Browser and Cloud App (Distill.io) that does this (monitors a web page based on text criteria). Distrill.io does have an api ( but I do not know if Fake.App can do this or I have to work out how to call this api to do this step. The result I would like to return via OSX notification if possible.

Post 1
How to force Fake.app to connect an HTML element by XPath (instead of “id” attribute)
How to force Fake.app to connect an HTML element by XPath (instead of "id" attribute)

Post 2
Fake.app: How to loop thru the rows in a CSV file and use the data in my Workflow?
Fake.app: How to loop thru the rows in a CSV file and use the data in my Workflow?

The Wait for Condition action will allow you to check the page's title. Add the action to your workflow at the bottom, and chose the "Title Equals" option; then you can but the variable ${Title} into that action.


Can't watch and download video from iTunes I am experiencing a problem while trying to watch an iOS development course in iTunes on macOS. You can find the course here:

https://itunes.apple.com/ru/course/developing-ios-10-apps-with-swift/id1198467120?l=en

If I try to click the play button and watch videos 1 to 6, iTunes just does nothing. It seems to ignore my action. If I try to download the videos, it looks like they are downloading, but they turn out to have formatting problems.

Here is a screenshot:

If I try to open this video I get this message:

The movie could not be opened.
An invalid public movie atom was found in the movie.

or this:

The movie could not be opened.
The file is not a movie file.

But interestingly, if I try watch online or download video from the 6th one to the last one they work properly. I can watch them as well as download them.

What is the issue here? What am I doing wrong?

If I skip something feel free to ask

I had this exact problem with the Stanford iOS 10 course on iTunes for Mac. I eventually gave up and downloaded the videos on iTunes for Windows.

However, I more recently fixed the problem by reinstalling macOS. You can do this by holding Command+R on startup, clicking on "Reinstall macOS" or "Reinstall OS X", and following the prompts.

Note that this will not destroy any of your files or programs. It simply reinstalls the system applications, but any settings, files, or applications that you have on your computer should not be changed.

(You may consider making a backup first.)


how to select multiple consecutive files in icon view in finder? in Windows it is easy, just shift + click, but in Mac I cannot do the same trick. I am fed up with cmd + click every single file

There's no exact equivalent that I'm aware of; I usually rubberband-select a region and then command-click the ones I don't want.

Mouse down at the top left of the area you want to select, drag to the bottom right of the area, release.  A rubberband will be highlighted as you drag the mouse; all icons within the rubberband will be selected.  It's also possible to chain these by holding Shift or Option for the second and successive selections, so you can add additional selections or deselect icons selected previously.


Finder not working and desktop completely blank in macOS High Sierra I was working 2 hours ago on a project in Xcode 9 and suddenly the simulators stopped working and the Main.storyboard looked awkward.

I decided to restart the Mac thinking it would resolve the issue but now I can't work at all. The finder doesn't open, the desktop icons are missing, when I go to Disk Utility (after reboot with Cmd+R) at first I can't do the "First aid" to my internal HD because it says that is unmounted.

I can mount it with any problem and then the Disk utility's "First aid" says that the HD is ok. When I restart the Mac again the problem is not solved and if I access to Disk Utility again the HD is unmounted again (yeah, a lot of agains, sorry for my english).

I'm trying to boot in safe mode now but I want to know if some of you have experienced this problem before while I wait.

Thanks in advance for any suggestion.

Ok...
For anyone searching for an similar answer reinstalling macOS (press Cmd+R on boot) [CALM DOWN BECAUSE IT WONT ERASE ANY OF YOUR FILES] did the trick.

In my case Xcode was failing too and after removing it and reinstalling all return back to normality.

Thanks.


Sites blocked in /etc/hosts often doesn't work I'm using a Macbook Pro as a productivity/work machine and have Facebook and reddit blocked with /etc/hosts:

##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1       localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost
fe80::1%lo0     localhost
0.0.0.0         facebook.com
::0             facebook.com
0.0.0.0         reddit.com
::0             reddit.com

This has worked for a while in all browsers, but recently stopped working in Firefox and Safari, and I can't figure out why. I was previously using 127.0.0.1, but when that stopped working I tried 0.0.0.0 instead, no dice.

I did install Avast just recently so I thought that could have been the problem, what with its web security features, but I uninstalled the browser add-on in Safari and Firefox and I was still able to access Facebook and reddit just fine.

And I just tried uninstalling the add-ons again, and restarted the computer. Now, Google Chrome can access Facebook, but not reddit. Firefox can't access either, and Safari can access both...

I'm using OS X 10.7.5.

I solved my problem. It seems I need to block both the domain website.com and the address www.website.com. I didn't know that was necessary. I edited them in there and now the blocking is consistently working everywhere.


How do I set podcast release date in iTunes using Applescript? I would like to add the release date to podcasts that I've imported into iTunes, but my applescript is returning an error about the date object.

    tell application "iTunes"
    set theSelection to selection
    if theSelection is not {} and (length of theSelection) is 1 then
        set theTrack to item 1 of theSelection
        log release date of theTrack as text
        set release date of theTrack to date ("2011-12-23T08:00:00Z" as string)

        refresh theTrack
    end if
end tell

The line set release date of theTrack to date ("2011-12-23T08:00:00Z" as string) gives me this error

error "Invalid date and time date 2011-12-23T08:00:00Z." number -30720

How do I make the string 2011-12-23T08:00:00Z into a date object that applescript won't complain about?

Unfortunately, it is not possible to change the "release date" tag within iTunes using Applescript because the property is read-only.


Activation Lock - Apple Watch I have recently sold my Apple Watch on Ebay. Before posting it i went through the following proceedure:

Keep your Apple Watch and iPhone close together.
Open the Watch app on your iPhone and tap the My Watch tab.
Tap Apple Watch, then tap Unpair Apple Watch.
Enter your Apple ID password. If you forgot your Apple ID password, you can reset it.
Tap again to confirm.

If you can't access your iPhone or Apple Watch, or if your Apple Watch isn't paired with your iPhone and you need to turn off Activation Lock:

On a computer, go to iCloud.com.
Sign in with your Apple ID, and open Settings.
Under My Devices, click your Apple Watch.
Click X next to your device.
Click Remove to confirm.

The customer has recently emailed me to inform me that he cannot connect and it is still registered to my Apple ID.  I have checked my Devices on the website and I don't have it registered to my account.

Does anyone know a fix for this?

Have you tried to "hard reset" the Apple Watch?

Launch the Settings app on your Apple Watch.
Tap on General.
Tap on Reset.

Tap on Erase All Content and Settings.
Type in your passcode (if required).
Tap on Continue to confirm the reset.


3rd party videos in iOS app, legal issue? If I were to make an iOS app that whichs primary function is to play specific 3rd party YouTube videos, is that okay to do without asking for their permission? Or do I need to have a legal agreement with each publisher?

There is a setting in youtube called public.

That means anyone can view it, including downloading or from other apps ect.

If the owner wants to prevent that he/she can do that in youtube settings.

As long your app is not breaking the youtube T&Cs and you are fine.

Consider following: many websites contain link to youtube and many even allow embedding the videos, so it is up to the owner to allow or not.


If my iPhone model doesn't support certain bands, can I still use it with this carrier? I have an iPhone SE (1st generation) in which Sprint was the previous carrier.  I'm trying to figure out what other carriers may be compatible with this phone.  I found this web site -- https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/Will-my-iPhone-SE-work-on-another-carrier, that says there is T-Mobile 4G compatibility but "Missing bands: 66, 71".
What does this mean?  Does this mean if someone uses this phone with a T-Mobile 4G network that there may be intermittent call drops or network outages because of the missing bands?

Carrier bands are analogous to TV or radio station "channels."  Each carrier operates a specified network technology and are assigned bands in which they can operate.  In order for your phone to connect to a carrier's network, your phone must be able to connect to at least one of the carrier's bands.  The more bands, the more ways to connect to the carrier network.
Depending on how many of that carrier's bands you can connect to determines the quality and availability of the service.  It doesn't necessarily mean that you'll have poor connections with the carrier, but rather you may not get signal in a particular market.  Whether or not you get dropped calls or poor service has more to do with the capacity, saturation, and signal strength than the number of different bands.
For example, you might be able to get excellent coverage in the city, but if you go to the outskirts of the suburbs or into a rural area, you may lose coverage.  They may be using band 66 (this is an arbitrary example and not necessarily the actual case) out in the farmland or countryside.  Since your phone doesn't support band 66, you won't be able to use this band to access the network.


Downloaded InstallMacOSX.pkg gives an error of "This version of OSX 10.11 cannot be installed on this computer." Why? I downloaded InstallMacOSX.pkg to create a bootable USB drive and install OSX El Capitan on a separate computer.  That computer was shipped with El Capitan.

So, I am not installing it on the computer that is creating the bootable USB drive.  Why does it assume that the OS is being installed on the computer that is creating the bootable drive ?

So in order to create the bootable USB drive, I have to run it on a computer that is also running El Capitan, which is weird.

Is there any way around this?  I'm thinking of maybe using Pacifist?

Can't you just do a reinstall of macOS on the other Mac by reinstalling OS X El Capitan that came with a Mac. This link will explain: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904.

Also, make sure that the disk is formatted HFS or HFS+ not APFS.

Good luck!


Why won't terminal let me ssh in to my lan server when Windows/Putty works fine? I have a development server on my LAN with a static IP address. My DD-WRT flashed router assigns the domain 'server.local' to the static IP of the server. Everything worked fine with my setup. I could connect to the server via ssh, ftp, http, ping, or even samba.

I just did a clean install of CentOS on the server, and everything is working fine when I connect to it from any of my Windows machines. However my Macbook won't connect any more. I can view my development versions of my websites in a browser, but I can't ssh in to the server.

I cleaned out ~/.ssh/known_hosts to make sure the old server's information wasn't mucking things up. How are the Windows machines and Mac browsers able to find the server, but Terminal can't?

Edit #1:

~: ssh root@server.local
ssh: Could not resolve hostname server.local: nodename nor servname provided, or not known
~: ssh root@192.168.1.200
root@192.168.1.200's password:

Edit #2:

I already tried flushing the DNS cache by dscacheutil -flushcache.
I'm on OS 10.6.

Ok, so why is Terminal confused about the domain name when browsers are not?

Adding 192.168.1.200 server.local to /etc/hosts fixes the problem. I'm just wondering why it's not able to rely on the router's DNS.

Mac OSX 10.6 does not respect DNS responses with a TTL (time to live) of 0 (which is what DD-WRT based routers are set to by default).  You will need to go into the DD-WRT router and into the Administation -> Services tab.  You will see a box called Additional DNS options.  Add the following value to this box :

local-ttl=5

Save and reboot your router and your Mac, and you should be able to see server.local in terminal (without having it in your hosts file).


Unreliable iPad car connection cable I own a 2008 Scion (made by Toyota) which has a built-in port for connecting iPod/iPhone/iPad to the car's stereo for audio and remote control. I purchased the recommended adapter cable which connects the car's console to the the 30-pin connector on my iPad 3. (Link to interface cable PT546-21062 by Toyota)

After a week or so, it started losing the connection if the iPad moved, so I started sliding the iPad between the seat and the center console to keep it still. This worked as long as I didn't bump it.

Starting this week, going around a turn has been enough to cause the connection to completely fail even when the iPad is held in place. I've noticed the end of the adapter plugged into the iPad easily wiggles back to front.

How can I be sure the problem is the cable and not my iPad?

I can still connect the iPad to my computer using the 30-pin to USB cable that came with my iPad, but that only uses 5 or 6 of the 30-pins the cable supports. I also unscrewed the console in the car and checked that the internal wiring there is all solid.

What would be the best way to try to fix this? Are there 30-pin extension cables that have more sturdy connectors that would lock into the port on my iPad better?

Is this something I could get help with at the Apple Store or would they not help since the adapter is made by Toyota rather than Apple?

After testing with a friend's iPhone I replaced the cable an it is working now. The connection feels tighter than the old one did even when it was new, so the old one may have just been defective.


What techniques for disk, volume and file system management are possible with OS X, but troublesome within Disk Utility? In the past, Disk Utility was the best starting point for the vast majority of disk-related tasks.

As technologies within (or possible with) OS X have developed – without equal development of Disk Utility – so it may be useful to have:

a shortlist of actions that are best attempted/begun without Disk Utility.

This question

I'd like answers to form something like:

a shortlist of things that appear illogical or impossible in Disk Utility.

I'll seed at least one answer to exemplify what I have in mind.

For some of the things mentioned, there will be answers elsewhere in Stack Exchange – so here, commentary may be minimal.

Background

Maybe more noticeable with Mountain Lion than with Lion:

some capabilities that are integral to the operating system are
misrepresented or impossible within Disk Utility
some capabilities that are added by third part software are misrepresented within Disk Utility

… and so on.

I'm fairly familiar with routines for HFS Plus and for ZEVO implementations of ZFS. Less familiar with routines for other file systems (both native and not native to OS X).

Recall that features such as Core Storage and FileVault 2 are relatively new, and without native support in Snow Leopard, so let's be gentle in our observations – for any peculiarity, assume that an overriding mantra of 'first do no harm' is applied by Apple.

Beyond this question

A redesign of Disk Utility, by Apple, is desirable but that will be beyond the scope of Ask Different so please: no design suggestions here.

Discussion in Ask Different Chat

2012-07-28
2012-07-29

Additional context (November 2015)

http://forums.macrumors.com/posts/22209602 for a public record of what was originally a private enhancement request (ER), made through AppleSeed in 2012.

Things not within a logical volume group (LVG) appear to be within the LVG

Affected: some applications of Core Storage, including but not limited to FileVault 2 in Mountain Lion.

Example

Disk Utility 13 (426) in Build 12A269 of OS X 10.8:

Volumes swap and spare are JHFS+ and truly not within the LVG.

disk0s3 is an Apple_Journal, currently unused and truly not within the LVG.

Disk Utility misrepresents all three as being within the LVG.


USB Boot Manager Won't Start A couple of weeks ago I booted a Mac Mini from a USB drive to install Ubuntu. Now I want to change it to Debian. I replaced Ubuntu on the USB drive. When I hear the boot chime and hold the option key, I get nothing on the display. If I'm slow in pressing the option key, it goes ahead and starts the installed Ubuntu image. I'm using the Etcher app to flash the drive. I also previously did it via terminal commands. I tried using the iso version of Debian and also converted it to a dmg. Neither work. If the boot manager didn't like the image on the usb, would it not come up?
The target machine is a late 2012 Mac Mini. I'm running the flash process on a Mac Pro with Big Sur.
This the file I'm trying to use that I got from the debian web site:
debian-live-10.7.0-amd64-standard.iso
I dug out an old Windows laptop. It's amazing it still runs. When I insert the USB drive, it doesn't appear in file manager or whatever it's called theses days. After a few tries, I got the boot manager and was able to select the USB Drive. I then saw a number of choices for installing Debian. I'm assuming the flash to the drive is valid.

I recommend installing the rEFInd boot manager as it recognises more OS's than those officially supported by Apple.
Once rEFInd is installed on your Mac it should present you with a list of boot options automatically each time your Mac is rebooted or powered on.


Cleanup apache config for Lion Server I have installed Lion Server on my box.  (broke my existing VPN setup, and I wanted to play around with it).

I had a bunch of stuff already setup in apache (some webdav for omnifocus, ical, etc).  Due to my customizations (I'm assuming) the server manager can't really do anything with apache (no ical, webdav, wiki, etc).  What do I need to do to reset to a place where the Lion server software is happy with the way I've got my box setup?

You can restore the web server to factory settings.

Turn off the Web Server service
Open Terminal and run sudo serveradmin command web:command=restoreFactorySettings
Enter your administrator password
Restart Web Server service.


Wrong caller ID showed for call and "000000" in calls journal My friend has an issue with her iPhone. For some reason, the phone app suddenly started to show the wrong caller name. After this she tried to logout/login into iCloud and then all callers in the call journal displayed as "00000000". In the Contacts app she can see the correct names with matching phone numbers. Sometimes, the call can have the name of one contact but photo of another one. Contacts are also sometimes shuffled for outgoing calls. Same problem with iMessage.

This is not a new phone, there have been no restores from backup recently, also there have been no new iOS devices connected to this Apple ID recently. She has been using the same phone company for a long time (Vodafone).

And these 00000000000 calls are not spam, it's a real people.

The phone was updated iOS 12.4.1 when she got this issue and it didn't help - she still had broken contacts.

Any ideas how to fix it?

I would suggest the following solution but you need to take care of it from Macbook which is using same Apple ID.

It is best to always have a backup before attempting something like this

Open the AddressBook folder located on:

~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook
In that folder, you will find three files:

a.  addressbook-v22.abcddb

b. addressbook-v22.abcddb-wal

c. addressbook-v22.abcddb-shm

Delete them.

Open Contacts and your list of contacts should quickly populate as the index is rebuilt.


Can only run AppleScript from Automator I have the following AppleScript which toggles the scroll direction on the trackpad:

tell application "System Preferences"
    activate
    set current pane to pane "com.apple.preference.trackpad"
end tell

tell application "System Events"
    tell process "System Preferences"
        click radio button "Scroll & Zoom" of tab group 1 of window "Trackpad"
        click checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of window "Trackpad"
    end tell
end tell

tell application "System Preferences"
    quit
end tell

This script runs without issues when the "play" button in Automator is used to execute it. However, when I make a service that runs it and assigned a keyboard shortcut to the service, it fails to run via the keyboard shortcut.

Wrapping it in a try block with some error reporting yields the following:

  Automator Runner is not allowed assistive access.

  Error number-1728

I found Automator Runner.app and gave it assistive access using the instructions found here.

It now appears with a checked box in the list of applications with assistive access:

However, the issue persists. I continue to get the same message notifying me that Automator Runner is not allowed assistive access. when trying to run the script using the keyboard command of the service that runs the script.

Update

I just succeeded at implementing this alternative script to accomplish the same thing, but it also only works when Automator has focus and has the same issue when it does not:

tell application "System Preferences"
    reveal anchor "trackpadTab" of pane "com.apple.preference.trackpad"
end tell
tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
    click checkbox 1 of tab group 1 of window 1
end tell
quit application "System Preferences"

Important note regarding AppleScript actions in Automator workflows.Hopefully this helps others who are looking for a fix.

Assistive Access
If your script uses things like tell application "System Events" to get UI data from app windows or send virtual keystrokes, etc, then it'll require "assistive access".
This may be called different things in different versions of Mac OS, but can generally be found in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility, under "Allow the apps below to control your computer".
Enabling assistive access for the Automator and Script Editor applications will allow your workflows and scripts to run from those tools, but not when saved as standalone apps. In theory, enabling access for any app should also let it talk to System Events.
Problem with AppleScripts run from Automator Actions
But as many have discovered, Automator often has issues creating apps that can be granted assistive access, when such apps contain AppleScript code. Not to mention the fact that services cannot be granted such permissions at all, since they aren't apps.
Workaround
However, you can build standalone AppleScript apps from the Script Editor application instead, and grant them assistive access without issue.
You can then run such apps as part of an Automator or shell workflow, like this:
AppleScript action in Automator
do shell script "osascript -e 'tell application \"My Granted App Name\" to activate'"

Shell Script
(can also be from an Automator action)
osascript -e 'tell application "My Granted App Name" to activate'

This also works for creating services in Automator. Just have your service run the permission-granted app, rather than trying to add permission-requiring code to the service itself.
Note that the tell app call doesn't require the ".app" extension, or even a path. If you have many apps with the same name, there should be a way to get the app by its bundle identifier, etc.
Other IDEs
I'm not sure if this is a problem specific to Automator, since I haven't tried calling fancy AppleScripts from apps built with tools other than that and Script Editor. Either way, the above should work for other IDEs/compilers/etc. as well.
Re-Building your App
In most cases, editing and re-building a granted app requires it be re-granted access. So it helps to test everything well in Automator/Script Editor before you build the standalone app, to save you the trouble. If your script is called by a larger project you routinely recompile, it's best to turn that script into its own app to grant it access once, and run the app from your larger project. At least until the larger project is finalized.
For apps used by multiple scripts, you could keep them in a consistent spot like a custom /Applications/Tools/Scripts folder. However, remember that any third-party code can launch apps and thus activate your potentially sensitive scripts. It's important to consider security implications when creating code that using assistive access.
When Re-Granting Doesn't Work
There are times when re-granting a rebuilt app doesn't "take". In such cases, renaming the app and re-adding it via System Preferences usually solves this. You should be able to re-name the app back to its original at a later time. This is a bug with how Assistive Access caches its list of apps, and the filename and/or path are involved somehow. If anyone knows how to clear this cache, please add a comment; it would be very helpful.


Google on my iOS devices is stuck in a different region than I live in For some reason, my browser always defaults to New Zealand. I've reset my location in the Store and in the settings, but it always pulls up google.co.nz when doing a search and the default map centers on New Zealand when I turn off my location.

Anyone know how I can set the region of the browser to match where I am?

I finally figured it out.

In Settings>General>International for some reason New Zealand was selected instead of United States. I had to close out safari, clear
browsing data and then re-search something from the iPad search bar and it finally worked.


Create and write to a .pages file using Terminal Is it possible to create and write on a .pages document file via Terminal.app?

I have tried it as explained below but it didn't work. As I understand, I was able to create a .pages file but the binary format wasn't correct.

 touch file.pages  #CREATE THE FILE
 open -a Pages file.pages #OPEN THE FILE WITH PAGES (Pages can not open file.pages)

I have had the same result with following:

ls -l >> file.pages
open -a Pages file.page

I have also tried using different extensions:no extension, txt, rtf, doc, but Pages.app cannot open the file.

How do I do it?

A Pages document is not a simple file, but a Zip archive.
A Pages document contains much more than just plain text. A blank document is still based on a template, with a set page size and other metadata.

Creating a blank document in Pages creates this structure:

To create a Pages document programatically, use AppleScript to tell Pages to do it for you.

tell application "Pages" to ¬
  save (make new document) in file "Macintosh HD:path:to:folder:Blank.pages"

To run AppleScript from the command line, use osascript.

osascript -e 'tell application "Pages" to save (make new document) in file "Macintosh HD:path:to:folder:Blank.pages"'


How Can I Set XCode to Correctly Highlight Multi-Line Strings for Shell Scripts? Quite simply I have a shell script that I'm editing in XCode, and it contains several strings which contain new-lines. Easiest way for me to do this was just to leave the string open so that it spans several lines in the file, and as far as I know this is perfectly valid for a shell script to do, or at least none of the shells I work with seem to mind it.

However, XCode doesn't like it at all, and treats only the first line of the string as a string, and interprets the rest as new commands. This has no particular effect on the script, but is a huge pain as it looks messy, and causes it to try to auto-complete things that are part of the string. XCode only accepts it correctly if each line ends with an escape character, but of course that eliminates the new line so is of no use to me.

Here's a stripped down version of one of my strings:

#!/bin/sh
USAGE="$0 [options] source [host:]target
Arguments:
source
    Path to the folder or Time Machine .backupdb to backup from.
[host:]target
    Path to the target to backup to, with host for remote backup via ssh."

echo "$USAGE"

Putting this in XCode will cause only the first line of USAGE to be highlighted in red (string), while the rest are black. Is there a way to force XCode to interpret these multi-line strings, or is what I'm doing somehow wrong and I should be formatting my strings another, more compatible way?

I don't think that there is a way to get Xcode to highlight this the way you would like, so I tried a couple of my favorite text editors. BBEdit did not handle this correctly, but TextMate did.


Iphone 7 wont turn on I have an iphone 7 and for the past 2 weeks it's been turning on and off. I did a hard reset 3 times and it was good for a little bit. Now last week it shut off and I tried doing a hard reset and it wont turn on. What do I do??

There might be an issue with your phone's battery. Check out Apple's iPhone Battery and Performance page and scroll down to the "Preventing unexpected shutdowns" section. They have a very detailed explanation of various factors that contribute to unexpected shutdowns.
If your phone is unexpectedly turning off even whilst connected to an AC power supply, then there might be an issue with your phone's hardware and you should contact some technical support for further help and inquiries.
If there's absolutely nothing wrong with your phone's battery or other hardware, then it might be some app or other piece of software that's causing the issue, and you should most probably do a complete factory reset of your phone. It's definitely not an iOS software bug, that much I can tell you.


How to delete photos from iPhoto/Phots with a particular filename format? I have a phone that stores 2 images every time I take a picture. One is a high resolution photo and the other is a low resolution photo.
When I connect my phone to the mac, it imports all the photos into iPhotos, Photos and into the Pictures folder.
I want to keep only the high resolution photos and delete the low resolution ones..
A sample of the file name format for the 2 images is shown below.

WP_20150402_16_44_11_Pro__highres.jpg
WP_20150402_16_44_11_Pro.jpg

I can very easily delete the low resolution photos from the Pictures folder.
How do I do the same in iPhotos and Photos app?

I'm not sure either iPhoto or Photos would be keen on you deleting pictures from inside the app folder framework.

They both expect to be 'in charge' of the editing & deleting process.

I think, long term it may be better, if you want your 'originals' in a single format in each of the 3 locations to use Image Capture to do the import, to a distinct 4th location; folder on the desktop etc.

Then do your file trimming & only afterwards import to iPhoto, Photos & finally move the files to your Pictures folder.

Automator might be best to do the initial file cull.

This example 'Folder Action' will throw out anything NOT containing '_highres'
Note the 'None' parameter in the filter, circled in red.
Folder Actions will trigger every time the Target folder is changed, by adding or removing content.


Does Safari have the feature "Select an element in the page to inspect it" as Chrome does? In Chrome, there is a very useful feature:

But I can't find it for Safari Browser. Is it possible to do that in Safari?

Thanks,

Yes, Safari (I'm using 10.1.1 on Sierra) has it, and it is the same shortcut (command shift c). You may need to have the debug and/or develop menu enabled. The debug console can be reached by pressing command option u.


Mac keyboard shortcuts Just for my curiosity and knowledge, I just learned that CMD + M will minimize and bring to the dock the active application.  But what is the opposite shortcuts in order to bring back the application to the screen from the dock?

Thank you so much and have a wonderful day.

No need to try all key combos until it works, because you'll be disappointed. Check out this page from Apple Support, and you'll find, sadly, there is no reverse key combo because Finder has nothing to work with - no focus for the command.

Once the window is closed, not even Command - Tab > [minimized app icon] will open the app window!

The only way to open the app is to click on its icon in the Dock.


Mid 2014 Macbook Pro randomly stops responding (keyboard and trackpad won't do anything) My girlfriend's MacBook Pro randomly stops responding - everything on the laptop keeps working as per usual (i.e. video will continue to play as if nothing was wrong) but absolutely no keyboard inputs or trackpad movements are registered - the only thing we can do is hold down the power button to force turn off the Mac then restart it.

I've tried resetting both the SMC and PRAM to no avail. It seems quite sporadic and I believe it's some sort of software issue rather than hardware (especially since the power button does actually work, even though nothing else does)

Any ideas please? Thank you!

This will probably sound strange, but I had a short of similar issue on my MacBook Pro.

It turned out I was somehow accidentally managing to trigger the "Swipe between full-screen apps" gesture just a tiny almost imperceptible bit. It took me ages to figure this out. But while it is partially through a swipe nothing else seems to register on the keyboard or trackpad.

If this is the problem you can just do a little horizontal three or four (depending on how you have it set) finger wiggle to reset it, or turn the swipe off in System Preferences.


macOS Sierra Volume Menu control strange behavior Anybody else have this issue after upgrading to Sierra?

Clicking the volume button and it shifts all the icons in the Mac menu... Never used to do that on El Capitan. The result is the mouse cursor doesn't line up with the control below it. I know they switched it to a horizontal control but I don't think it's supposed to shift all the icons right??

Is this fixable or Sierra bug?

Update: New gif.

i had this problem, and found a solution.It was happening because of the hidden mirroring option. just go to System Preferences> Display>untick 'show mirroring options' and the problem will get solved.


Is it possible to select which version of Swift to use in Xcode? There's an update for Xcode 6.3 and it includes a new version of Swift (1.2). If I update, do I have to migrate all my Swift code to 1.2 or can I select an older version of Swift?

You have to migrate all your code to Swift 1.2 if you're using Xcode 6.3.  If you go to Edit > Convert > To Latest Swift Syntax, it will help find many of the changes.  However, there's still a lot of manual editing to do.

In the long run, it will serve you better to keep your Swift code at the latest version so that future migrations are easier and so that you can take advantage of future enhancements to the language.


Disk Utility will not repair permissions I have tried to repair permissions multiple times using Disk Utility.app and also using the command-line diskutil.  I always get the same output, so apparently it's not fixing the problem.  I've also tried running it from the Recovery partition, and get the same result.

$ diskutil repairPermissions /
Started verify/repair permissions on disk0s2 yosemite
Permissions differ on "tmp"; should be drwxrwxrwt ; they are lrwxrwxrwt
Repaired "tmp"
Permissions differ on "Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Safari.help/Contents/Resources/index.html"; should be lrwxr-xr-x ; they are -rwxr-xr-x
Repaired "Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Safari.help/Contents/Resources/index.html"
Warning: SUID file "System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent" has been modified and will not be repaired
Permissions differ on "Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/SafariForWebKitDevelopment"; should be -rwxr-xr-x ; they are lrwxr-xr-x
Repaired "Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/SafariForWebKitDevelopment"
Finished verify/repair permissions on disk0s2 yosemite

The ARDAgent issue can be ignored, according to Apple.
The other three problems are all related to symlinks, and it seems to me like the current perms are correct.  Why does Disk Utility think there is a problem?

I'm on Yosemite 10.10.5.

Using answer space for formatting & 'comment size', I'm not sure this is really a full 'fix', but perhaps a pointer in the right direction. It can be updated/amended to get to the correct answer, if needs be.

Note: Permissions on symbolic links have no effect. You need to check the permissions on the target file/directory - though in fact the perms are 'correct' in this case, it's the links themselves that are not as expected.

Permissions differ on "Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/Safari.help/Contents/Resources/index.html"; should be lrwxr-xr-x ; they are -rwxr-xr-x
means that the Finder thinks that file ought to be a symbolic link, but it isn't - the link has been broken somehow.

On my machine, that link is to /Library/Documentation/Resources/Eagle/index.html

Fix == remake that link
From  OSX Daily:How to Create Symbolic Links at Command Line of Mac OS X

  How to Make a Symbolic Link
  The basic syntax for creating a symbolic link (or soft link) is as follows:

  ln -s /path/to/original/ /path/to/link

  That will point /path/to/link to the original location, in this case
  /path/to/original/

Permissions differ on "Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/SafariForWebKitDevelopment"; should be -rwxr-xr-x ; they are lrwxr-xr-x
thinks that one should just be a file... but it's a link.

Mine is a link too, on El Capitan - [which I'm assuming you're not on, as you still have a 'Fix Permissions' option in Disk Utility] - to
/Library/Application Support/Apple/Safari/SafariForWebKitDevelopment

I'm tempted to say in that case, leave it as is.
Checking perms on El Capitan from terminal gives no error on that one.

Edit:
I missed the first one -
Permissions differ on "tmp"; should be drwxrwxrwt ; they are lrwxrwxrwt

Mine is a link too - to /private/tmp so I'd leave that one alone too.


How to add a AppleScript file to the Finder toolbar to execute the AppleScript? I have written an AppleScript to do a little task in the current folder of Finder. I added it to the Finder toolbar by dragging it while holding CMD-ALT. But when I click it, it opens the AppleScript in the Script Editor instead of executing it.

The AppleScript file has following rights: -rwxr-xr-x@

The owner is the same user which is using it.

Of course, it's my intention to execute the file, not to open it on button click. What do I need to do to execute it?

If you want an AppleScript to run on its own, not in Script Editor, you need to change it from File Format: Script to File Format: Application in the Save As sheet when saving it.


About This Mac -> Storage is wrong? Per Apple->About This Mac->Storage, it says Apps - 276.79GB, yet when I do du -hs via Terminal, I'm getting something else:

alexus@mbp:~ $ sudo du -hcs /Applications/ /Library/
Password:
 22G    /Applications/
 10G    /Library/
 32G    total
alexus@mbp:~ $

same goes for Photos (31.79GB), Audio (29.68GB) and Movies (11.3GB):

alexus@mbp:~ $ du -hs Pictures/ Music/ Movies/ Downloads/
5.9G    Pictures/
 29G    Music/
496K    Movies/
 80K    Downloads/
alexus@mbp:~ $

I'm confused, how is it counting exactly, or what is it counting)?

alexus@mbp:~ $ df -h
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity  iused    ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1     465Gi  212Gi  252Gi    46% 55751222 66086376   46%   /
devfs          326Ki  326Ki    0Bi   100%     1128        0  100%   /dev
map -hosts       0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%        0        0  100%   /net
map auto_home    0Bi    0Bi    0Bi   100%        0        0  100%   /home
alexus@mbp:~ $ du -hcs ~
146G    /Users/alexus
146G    total
alexus@mbp:~ $

The Storage pane will show you information about files matching those categories inclusive of the entire drive, not necessarily only the files stored in those respective locations.

For example, if you downloaded a 5GB movie file, that would be +5gb in the "Videos" category, even though it might reside in ~/Downloads instead of ~/Movies

Source

That being said, your overall usage does not come anywhere close to what the storage is reporting, in terms of the entire drive having less used than you say for the Apps category alone (unless your question was not clear). To reset those values, perform a reindex of Spotlight:

Run the following command from Terminal: sudo mdutil -E /

OR follow instructions below:

Instructions


How can I replicate Account Preferences across multiple accounts? I'm working on creating a NetRestore Golden Image that will be used on about a dozen computers across our organization.

I need EVERY account to boot up with the same baseline preferences (screensaver, desktop, dock applications, etc).

What is the easiest way to replicate account preferences across each account?

As Robin says, most people would go for OS X Server, because it has tools specifically built to do just this, providing you bind the clients to LDAP.

Aside from that, OS X is designed hierarchically. You could try just adding the desired .plist files in /Library/Preferences instead of ~/Library/Preferences and then deleting said files, if they already exist, from ~/Library/Preferences (since files in ~/Library generally override those in /Library )

There is also the default "User Template" hiding in the System Folder, from which all new users' home folders are created. You could edit this, but the change would only affect accounts created after the imaged machines have their first boot.