How can I create a Mac boot disk? I ran a disk check on my hard disk and the Disk Utility tells me "Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Start up your computer with another disk (such as your Mac OS X installation disc), and then use Disk Utility to repair this disk.".

The last physical disk I had was the Leopard -> Snow Leopard upgrade and I now do not know where that disk is.

Is there a way that I can create a bootable CD, DVD or flash drive, boot the computer from that and repair the hard disk?

I have Snow Leopard 10.6.8.

To boot the computer, you need an already-formatted disk, which could be a DVD, a USB drive, or another hard drive.

If you do not already have one of these (and do not have another Mac that you can use) then your options are fairly limited:

Buy Snow Leopard on DVD. You can get it from Apple for $30, free shipping, but it won't ship for 3-5 days.
Buy DiskWarrior [$100] which is probably your best bet if you want to try to save the current hard drive.
Buy Lion on a USB drive $70 from Apple. Note that this is a terrible solution, IMO, because you will not be able to download Lion from the Mac App Store nor will you be able to use Lion's "Recovery Partition" (which, if you had it on your Mac, would most likely have solved your problem).

The rest of this answer is strictly opinion.

Personally I think your best option is #2 and #1.

DiskWarrior is an essential tool for trying to recover from hard drive errors. If your drive is having problems, I would not trust it for very long. Copy an essential files to another drive and then run DiskWarrior. Even if DiskWarrior is able to correct its errors, I would be sure to start making regular backups using either SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner.

The problem is that if DiskWarrior finds problems that cannot be fixed, then you are going to need to replace the hard drive and reinstall Mac OS X… which means that you are going to have to buy Snow Leopard on DVD (assuming that you don't have a friend who can make or loan you a copy).

The $70 USB stick from Apple is a terrible deal. If you want to move to Lion, buy your own USB drive, find a friend with a Mac, ask them if you can use it to buy Lion from the Mac App Store, and make your own Lion USB drive using one of the many how-tos posted online, such as this one from TUAW.com.


iPad autofills incorrect information Why does my iPad think I am in another state? When I go to Maps, it shows the correct location. When I want to order something off the internet, it autofills Oregon and I am in California. I did buy a refurbished iPad. Is there a setting I am not finding?

AutoFill data is unrelated to your physical location as it's just stored addresses, phone numbers, etc.

You can adjust or remove AutoFill data under Settings > Safari > AutoFill. Generally it's from a contact card that you have selected as yourself.


Is it legal to use 2 authorized computers in different households? I would like to share my music with my girlfriend. Can we share a single apple ID?

What does the following really mean?: "Apple is the provider of the iTunes Service, which permits you to purchase or rent digital content ("iTunes Products") for end user use only under the terms and conditions set forth in this Agreement." (From Itunes' Terms of Use)

Does it mean that the person who owns the account and buys the music is the only one who can be "end user"? Because if I share a single account with my girlfriend, she (the account's owner) would have the right to be end user but could she legaly give me part of that right too? At least for one of the 5 computers she can authorize?

(note for future anwswers: we are NOT in the same household)

This is covered under the USAGE RULES section of the iTunes Terms of Service, which reads, in part:

  USAGE RULES

  (i) You shall be authorized to use iTunes Products only for personal,
  noncommercial use.

  (ii) You shall be authorized to use iTunes Products on five
  iTunes-authorized devices at any time, except for Content Rentals (see
  below).

  (iii) You shall be able to store iTunes Products from up to five
  different Accounts at a time on compatible devices, provided that each
  iPhone may sync tone iTunes Products with only a single
  iTunes-authorized device at a time, and syncing an iPhone with a
  different iTunes-authorized device will cause tone iTunes Products
  stored on that iPhone to be erased.

While I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, I do not see where it limits usage to one person, or declares that all these devices and authorized computers must be owned or operated by only one person.

I suggest you carefully read the entire legal agreement if you want to resolve this for yourself.


How to read the technical specs for the iPhone 3G correctly I saw people wrote these technical specifications in iPhone 3G (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_3G)

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
(850 900 1,800 1,900 MHz)
Tri-band UMTS/HSDPA 3.6
(850 1,900 2,100 MHz)

So how to read the above technical specification correctly (ie to clarify these info so that the customers can understand)?

4 channels of AM radio

  Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
  (850 900 1,800 1,900 MHz)

3 channels of FM radio

  Tri-band UMTS/HSDPA 3.6
  (850 1,900 2,100 MHz)

Except that GSM+ and UMTS+ are a little more complicated than the old radio standards, but what you really need to explain to customers is what carrier they select means that not all of these channels and flavors of radio encodings will be active at any one time.

The capital letters are at the most basic, just different speeds of transfer on the same frequency channel so you might just gloss that over until the carrier coverage is compared to make sure that high or medium speed data will be provided.


black screen with white spinning wheel after High sierra login Thank you in advance for any useful hints.
After login I get a totally black screen or one with a spinning wheel.
I have tried the following things.
Zap nvram
Smc reset
Deleted as single user login peers.
Start as another user that was installed for migration
Verbose mode... too fast to read and ends up in the same thing

Did try shift ore safe mode.. same result. Shift makes No difference to the boot process

Started into recovery mode which doesn't want to let me repair my disk. The stupid High Sierra installation made it encrypted. Can't remember that it asked me.. it was certainly not that I wanted it.

I had restarted because Lightroom kept crashing

I have been struggling for 8 hours now and I am at wits end

NO. there is no other working mac and internet installationis not possible because I am on a 3g phone line in rural Costa Rica

There is only 1 thing that works.. the useless guest login boot into Safari mode

You could try creating a new user account by tricking the computer to going through the initial setup process.

Instructions on re-running Apple Setup Assistant

By creating a new user this way you can check that the issue is specific to your user account, and not your installation of macOS. If this account can login you could copy the files from the other user and the issue is resolved.

If not then you need to find a better internet connection and reinstall, someone could download the files onto a USB stick for you perhaps?


Can the current (08/2011) 27" iMac support two extra screens without additional hardware? I am currently considering a new iMac, but I was wondering if this would be able to support two extra monitors.

The setup I am considering:

iMac built-in 27" monitor.
Current Dell 27" monitor @ 2650x1440 (Dual-link DVI via adapter)
One of the Thunderbolt displays @ 2560x1440 (via one of the two thunderbolt ports)

This is really two related questions:

Is the above setup viable at all?
Will the available resolution be restricted by the video card?

Yes, it can. Here is an example of a 27" iMac with two 30" Dell displays.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/03/apple-imac-hands-on-with-dual-30-inch-displays-video/


Macbook Pro 16" fried all USB-C ports after using a Samsung 43" monitor I'm trying to understand what happened to my MBP because it's a rather weird situation.
I hooked my MBP to a Samsung CJ89 43" monitor directly through USB type C. It worked for a while and then suddenly the built-in screen started flashing and then the connection to the monitor was lost. While connected, the laptop's fans were running hot but I didn't give it a thought, it usually gets hot even without it connected to a monitor since I run a lot of demanding tasks on it.
After this, I realised that the MBP won't charge anymore on any port. The right side ports wouldn't do anything, while the left side ports would still charge my phone, for example.
I used the original USB-C cable from Samsung, not anything cheap, so why did this happen?
I'm mainly asking because I got the laptop fixed but I'm afraid of hooking it back up to the monitor.

Without putting hands on with the proper test and diagnostic equipment, there is absolutely no way to tell.

I used the original USB-C cable from Samsung, not anything cheap, so why did this happen?

Until you test the cable, you have no idea whether or not it's at fault.  However, if you have any doubt as to the functionality and reliability of said cable, cut it in half (to prevent it from being used by others) and throw it away.  Replace it with another from a known good, reputable brand.

This could have been a failure on your monitor's part - it just dumped way to much power into your Mac.

This could have been a failure on your Mac's part.

USB controller that negotiates power/charging died in some way
The SMC (and related circuitry) could have had a component failure

I'm mainly asking because I got the laptop fixed but I'm afraid of hooking it back up to the monitor.

If I had to guess, my money would be on the Mac failing and not your monitor.  However, you can get a rather inexpensive USB-C power meter to "see" what your laptop's drawing and what your monitor (or other power source) is delivering.  These run from $20 to $40USD online.

It's it "pro grade?"  No.  Those cost hundreds and would be way overkill for what you want.  But it's "good enough."  We're not looking to measure microvolts or check for negotiation packets.  It will tell you, however, if something is majorly wrong so you can take preventative or corrective action.


Change shortcut key for "Highlight URL" function in Chrome I recently got a Mac in addition to my Linux laptop. I've tried to change around settings so that I don't have to use new shortcuts.

The issue I am facing is that I use Control+L to highlight the URL all the time in Chrome. In Mac, the default shortcut is ⌘+L.

I've changed up some Chrome shortcuts using the App Shortcuts option in  Keyboard Preferences. This triggers menu items when you use your custom keyboard shortcuts. However, there is no menu item for highlight URL, and hence I am not able to use this option.

I've also tried the extension Shortkeys, but it has no function to highlight URL.

I'd like to use the Control+L shortcut on my Mac as well. How do I do this?

The menu was actually called Open Location.

I then used App Shortcuts in Keyboard Preferences to set it to Control+L.


How to Copy a range of data from google sheets using an Applescript I was wondering if someone could help me with a script that would copy a range of data that is constantly updating on google sheets.  The site would be open and active in Safari. So I wasn’t sure if I needed to command activate.
This was my attempt, but I know I’m not doing the Safari part right.

`tell application "Safari"
 select worksheet "Sheet1"
 select range "a1:h1" of worksheet "Sheet1"
tell application "System Events" to keystroke
  "c" using command down
tell application "Safari"
end tell

Although possible with JavaScript interaction, AppleScript is not the best tool to use.

I would suggest using the Google Sheets API.  You can easily read data with their API.  Since the API supports Java, PHP, etc. and not AppleScript it is off-topic for this site. I would suggest asking on StackOverflow.


Is it possible to turn permanently off annoying MacOS update notifications? I have Mojave. I found that I can silent all notifications if I go under notifications and specify do not disturb all day. However I think this also means that I will not get any important notifications. I'm fine that this particular machine being hacked, exploited or whatever, seriously, I just don't need updates on this particular machine. Or at least warn once a month, not every 24 hours. On windows and linux its 3 clicks, is Mac capable of something like this?

Here are some things you may try:

This site offers a solution by going to System Preferences, Software Update, De-Select "Automatically keep my Mac up to date".

Alternatively, try going to System Preferences > App Store > De-Select "Automatically check for updates"


Set Mail app so it won't mark messages as read on the server I am accessing my colleague's work email account (on gmail) using IMAP. The problem is that whenever I read one of the messages first, it is marked as read on the server and he often misses it. I would like to keep it unmarked on the server and mark it as read only at my Mail app.

Is there any way how to setup Mail app so that this behaves like this?

I am accessing his email because he often gets information that is important for me as well and this saves time because he isn't always online and he would have to forward most of it to me anyway.

This mechanism is a feature of the mail protocol that you are using, and isn't a local feature that you can choose to set within Mail.  You are likely useing either IMAP or Exchange, the the replication of mail states for things like location, unread/read etc is a part of the normal operation.

I am not at a Mac, so I cannot test for features, but the best you can hope for is a configuration in Mail that will allow you to either change what action marks the mail as read or not (Might be mere selection, might be opening the time specifically, might be viewing the message for more than X seconds etc) or extend the time that it takes for the action to complete (viewd for 5 seconds, or 10, etc).

You can of course simply right click on a read mail and then mark it as unread again.


MacOS pf equivalent to iptables rule I am looking to implement a rule like the following iptables rule on my Mac.
sudo iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -d 10.244.1.8 -p tcp --dport 4369 -j DNAT --to-destination 127.0.0.1:4369

Context: In my current setup I am port forwarding a container in k8s through kubectl port-forward and I am trying to, when I ping the IP of the running erlang node on the container be able to translate this IP into the localhost to carry the processing (the setup can be found on this post https://www.mendrugory.com/post/remote-elixir-node-kubernetes/)
Thanks in advance!

After having struggle with this issue for a long time I was able to achieve the desired effect by:
sudo ifconfig lo0 alias <ip>
rdr pass on lo0 inet proto tcp from any to <ip> port <port> -> 127.0.0.1


Showing the taskbar in Parallels Coherence mode I just installed Parallels 6 and upon launching it for the first time, it started up in coherence mode and I saw the taskbar overlayed the Mac OS X UI. After a few seconds, though, it disappeared. I tried enabling the relevant settings I found related to this, but I was never able to get the taskbar to appear again.

How can I show the taskbar in Parallel's Coherence mode?

Switch to Coherence view.
Hold option and click the Parallels button in the Mac OS X system tray.
Navigate to View > Show Windows Taskbar.


Can't connect to some sites over VPN When I'm connected to my company's VPN, some websites won't load. For example, both imgur and tumblr will just hang trying to connect:

$ curl -v http://imgur.com
* About to connect() to imgur.com port 80 (#0)
*   Trying 23.23.110.81...
* connected
* Connected to imgur.com (23.23.110.81) port 80 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.24.0 (x86_64-apple-darwin12.0) libcurl/7.24.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8x zlib/1.2.5
> Host: imgur.com
> Accept: */*
>

Other sites, like twitter and the AWS console will load eventually but without any CSS applied (some pages will load properly though).

The VPN uses PPP and so pretty much all of my traffic shows up in Wireshark as PPP Compressed Datagrams. ppp.log doesn`t show anything but connect/disconnect info.

I had been using this exact same setup for a month or two without any issues. It was in the last week or two that I noticed this issue. Running iOS 10.8.4.

Any idea on how to debug this?

Talked to a coworker who had the same problem. The issue was that the mtu was set too high on the ppp0 interface.

$ ifconfig ppp0
ppp0: flags=8051<UP,POINTOPOINT,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1396
        inet 192.168.0.207 --> 192.168.0.200 netmask 0xffffff00

I changed it from 1396 to 1250 and it now works fine. To make the change permanent, I did the following:

$ sudo <your_text_editor_of_choice> /etc/ppp/ip-up

#!/bin/sh
/sbin/ifconfig ppp0 mtu 1250

$ sudo chmod 755 /etc/ppp/ip-up


Windows shortcut support for macOS Sierra I recently have to work with both a mac and a windows PC. Because I have worked my whole life with PC, I'm used to work with default Windows shortcuts.
So I'm trying to get these shortcuts running on macOS, because I'm obviously too dumb for switching my typing behaviour between both systems.

My main focus are following shortcuts: Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-A, Pos1, End, Ctrl-left arrow, Ctrl-right arrow

I found the great software called "Karabiner" which should support all of these shortcuts. Unfortunately it is not working on macOS Sierra
and the new "Karabiner Elements" does not support all functions I would need.

Does anyone know a good replacement for "Karabiner"? Or any other way to get the Windows shortcuts running on macOS Sierra?

Swapping Command ⌘ and Control

NOTE: If doing the other keys, do this last. You'll have to do it again on the virtual keyboard otherwise.

Go into System Preferences.

Go into Keyboard.

Click on "Modifier Keys…"

Click on the menu adjacent to "Command (⌘) Key".

This menu should show up. Just remap Control to Command ⌘, and vice versa.

Non- Command ⌘ / Control Keys

Quite frankly, a large number of apps already support the Windows keybindings, and Mission Control makes Control+Arrow a small nightmare. But, if you must, this is how you do it.

In Karabiner-Elements, as shown by Clemsam, these combos are what you should map various keys to:

Home (Pos1): fn+control+←

End: fn+control+→

Control+←: Option+←

Control+→: Option+→

The JSON to do that is the following:

{
  "title": "Most Windows Behavior.",
  "rules": [
    {
      "description": "Change Home key to Windows behavior.",
      "manipulators": [
        {
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "key_code": "home",
            "modifiers": {
              "optional": [
                "any"
              ]
            }
          },
          "to": [
            {
              "key_code": "left_arrow", "modifiers": ["fn", "left_control"]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "description": "Change End key to Windows behavior",
      "manipulators": [
        {
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "key_code": "end",
            "modifiers": {
              "optional": [
                "any"
              ]
            }
          },
          "to": [
            {
              "key_code": "right_arrow", "modifiers": ["fn", "left_control"]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "description": "Change Control+Left Arrow to Windows behavior.",
      "manipulators": [
        {
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "key_code": "right_arrow",
            "modifiers": {
              "mandatory": ["left_control"],
              "optional": [
                "any"
              ]
            }
          },
          "to": [
            {
              "key_code": "left_arrow",
              "modifiers": ["left_alt"]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "description": "Change Control+Right Arrow key to Windows behavior.",
      "manipulators": [
        {
          "type": "basic",
          "from": {
            "key_code": "right_arrow",
            "modifiers": {
              "mandatory": [
                "left_control"
              ],
              "optional": [
                "any"
              ]
            }
          },
          "to": [
            {
              "key_code": "right_arrow", "modifiers": ["left_alt", "right_arrow"]
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}


How do I show a percentage battery indicator on the iPhone? How do I show a percentage battery indicator on the iPhone?

iOS 4 and later natively provide a setting to toggle display of remaining battery percentage in the status bar of iPhone/iPad/iPod touch.

iOS 9 and later: go to Settings app → Battery → Battery Percentage.
iOS 4 – iOS 8: The option is made available under Settings app → General → Usage → Battery Percentage

Apple Knowledge base article Show the battery percentage on your iPhone or iPad.

iPhone X cannot display the same in the status bar due to presence of the notch. To view remaining battery percentage on iPhone X, simply swipe-down from top-right corner of the device to open Control Centre to view the reading on-screen. A brief video with the action can be viewed in the CNET article iPhone X: How to view your battery percentage.

iPhone 3Gs

Instructions: "Settings > General > Usage – and toggle the Battery Percentage setting to On."

iPhone 3G

Jailbreak then install SBSettings. Select Extras & Options → Numeric Battery


Is there a way to see what kernel task is doing? I found a question (and answers) about What exactly does kernel_task do?. What I want to know is how I can inspect what kernel_task is doing at any given moment in time?

Does it get logged so that I can inspect what is been doing for a while or can I even observe it at realtime?

There are few places that information is available, but since kernel is a multitasking beast one has to look in multiple places:

The simple one is the Console log "type kernel in the filter box", but not all activity is reported there since Kernel issues millions of instructions in a Milli-second.
Also the Activity Monitor is a good source of information.
You could use the ps -A > process.txt to see all running processes.
You could use the sudo iosnoop to see all disk activity.
You could use kextstat > ~/Desktop/kexts.txt to see all loaded drivers.

In other words, it is too busy for you to follow and a continuous output file would not make senses.


Disabling Java plug-in globally? After following the instructions in this answer (briefly: Java prefs pane → Security → disable "Enable Java content in the browser") to disable the Java plug-in globally, I'm presented with an admin password prompt dialog, followed in turn by this dialog:

How do I change this setting for all users?

The answer is at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/jweb/jcp/properties.html (Java 7) and http://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/deploy/properties.html (Java 8), though the instructions could be more explicit.

They say to set the deployment.webjava.enabled to false in your deployment.properties file, whose location is defined by the deployment.system.config property in the file ${deployment.java.home}/lib/deploy/deployment.config.

I found that you can just create deployment.properties in ${deployment.java.home}/lib, which I guess is a default location.

This raises the question of what the value of ${deployment.java.home} is, and it's not what I expected. I'm using OS X 10.7.5, and the value of deployment.java.home for me is /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin/Contents/Home.

I created a deployment.properties file there with the contents:

deployment.webjava.enabled=false
deployment.webjava.enabled.locked=true

Now, when I open the Java Control Panel and go to the security tab, I see this:

There is that nagging "Only disabled for this user" still, but I think that's just a UI bug. If you log in as other users, you'll see that it's disabled for everybody.


How to update Java JRE in Lion? Sofware update says everything is up to date, however Java Preferences says it's running Version 6 Update 29.

The Java website says there is a newer version: Version 6 Update 31 with critical security fixes.

Is there any way I can update this or do I have to sit around and wait for Apple to release this through software update?  It is a critical security fix isn't it?

Thanks! :)

From Oracle Java downloads:

  Apple supplies their own version of Java. Use the Software Update
  feature (available on the Apple menu) to check that you have the most
  up-to-date version of Java for your Mac.

I seriously recommend not to use any other way, but OS X Software Update.


Using RVM and installing rspec gem for Ruby I think I installed rvm correctly. When I type in rvm -v it outputs

rvm 1.25.33 (stable) by Wayne E. Seguin <wayneeseguin@gmail.com>, Michal Papis <mpapis@gmail.com> [https://rvm.io/]

However, I am trying to install the gem rspec. I type in

gem install rspec

but the output is

ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::FilePermissionError)
You don't have write permissions for the /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.0.0 directory.

What should I do? What is going wrong? I can't understand the rvm docs either!

RVM controls which Ruby your current shell points to, but it doesn't install a user-controlled Ruby for you by default. If you haven't installed any specific Ruby versions via RVM, the only Ruby you have is the one OS X installed and that requires sudo permissions to write to.

You can see available Rubies with:

> rvm list

rvm rubies

=* ruby-2.1.2 [ x86_64 ]

# => - current
# =* - current && default
#  * - default

In my case I have 2.1.2 installed and it's both the current Ruby and the default Ruby when I start a new shell:

> which ruby
/Users/ian/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.2/bin/ruby

To install a Ruby version with RVM do:

> rvm install ruby-2.1
No binary rubies available for: osx/10.10/x86_64/ruby-2.1.3.
Continuing with compilation. Please read 'rvm help mount' to get more information on binary rubies.
...snip...
Install of ruby-2.1.3 - #complete
Ruby was built without documentation, to build it run: rvm docs generate-ri

Now that you have an RVM-managed Ruby installed that's owned by you specifically you can gem-install anything you like without needing to use sudo:

> rvm list

rvm rubies

 * ruby-2.1.2 [ x86_64 ]
=> ruby-2.1.3 [ x86_64 ]

# => - current
# =* - current && default
#  * - default
> rvm gemdir
/Users/ian/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.3
> gem install packer-config

That gem has been installed for the 2.1.3 version of Ruby that RVM put under ~/.rvm for me. If I was to switch to the 2.1.2 version via rvm use ruby-2.1.2 I would not see that gem, I'd have to re-install it to make it available to that Ruby version.

You can also manage gems as sets so they're not even shared with a Ruby install. See the gemset basics on the RVM web site for more details.


How can I get a me.com e-mail address? Was this a service only offered with Apple's Mobile Me? Is there anyway I can still get an e-mail address ending in @me.com?

It's basically not possible to make a new MobileMe account while the transition to iCloud is happening. There are some loopholes (like adding a new account under an existing Family account) - but most will have to wait until iCloud is released. The official word on that is a vague - in the fall of 2011.
From the Apple preview page covering Contacts, Calendar and Mail as part of iCloud:

Mail that delivers. Free.
When you set up iCloud, you get a free me.com
email account. iCloud automatically
pushes new email messages to all your
devices, so your inbox is up to date
everywhere you check it. And iCloud
keeps all your folders in sync, no
matter which device you’re using.

That was posted June 6, 2011, and I think that's pretty definitive. Free me.com accounts for all. It's unclear if you can get a new one today, but when iCloud opens to the public, you'll be able to sign up for one.
The sign-up page for MobileMe was disabled when iCould was announced at WWDC. People with unredeemed paid memberships can request a refund as they can no longer create a new account. Also, the free trials are suspended - presumably until iCloud opens this fall. The MobileMe transition FAQ documents this in detail and should be updated if things change before iCloud details are released.
The only way to get an account is if you already have a Family Pack with unallocated sub accounts. It is not clear if and how that sub account will transition to iCloud, but that may be an option for some to establish MobileMe email after June 6, 2011 and before iCloud opens for business.


Touch Bar no longer working in Chrome Data

Brand new Macbook Pro 13.3" running macOS Sierra
New install of Chrome
No Touch Bar settings ever modified

Problem

Initially, Chrome would show custom touch bar icons. Like full-colour previews of each tab to switch between them. WhatsApp Web would have text auto prediction.

Suddenly, this isn't showing at all. In fact, in Chrome, there are no icons in the Touch Bar whatsoever, just the Escape key.

Question

Since then, I've tried playing with the Touch Bar settings and reinstalling Chrome, but nothing's made a difference. Any ideas how to get it back again?

The first things I would do are reset your NVRAM followed by resetting your SMC. See below for further info.

Resetting the NVRAM on Late-2016 MacBook Pro models

Older Macs had what's called Parameter RAM (PRAM), newer Macs use Non-Volatile Random-Access Memory (NVRAM). To reset the NVRAM on all Late-2016 MacBook Pro models (with and without Touch Bar) follow these steps:

Shut down your machine. Yes, a full shut down, not just logging out.
Press the power button and then immediately press the commandoptionpr keys.
Keep these keys pressed down for at least 20 seconds!
Let go of the keys and let your Mac reboot normally.

Note 1: When you log back in you may need to readjust some of your system preferences (e.g. speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, time zone information, etc).

Note 2: These steps will also work to reset the NVRAM (or PRAM) for all Macs. However, the late-2016 MBP models actually required the commandoptionpr keys to be held down for 20 seconds, while earlier Macs did not require this, but doing so does not cause any problems either.

Reset the SMC

Your MacBook Pro has a system management controller that can easily be reset. To do this on your particular model, follow these steps:

Shut down your computer
Keep the power cable plugged in.
Press at the same time shiftoptioncontrol (on the left side of the keyboard) and the power button
Let go
Turn your computer back on with the power button.

Let me know how you go after doing both resets.


How to set a default font for outgoing messages in Mail on Lion Mail in OS X 10.7 (Lion) doesn't allow me to set a default font for outgoing messages, and it's finicky when I change it in the message.

When I show the font bar (by clicking the A button at the top right of the message window), the font bar doesn't retain its value if I set it before typing any text.  If I change it and then start typing, it changes to what I set it as, but if I delete all my text then it reverts to default (Helvetica).

How do I get around this?  Is there a plugin to solve this, is it considered  a bug...?  I found the Universal Mailer plugin, which is now open source.

Mail has lacked the ability to set a default outgoing font via its Preferences since at least 10.4.  Users who really need this, often switch to Outlook/Entourage or Thunderbird. There are also some plugins, such as Universal Mailer or Message Font that can do this.


No Simcard installed - iPhone 5 I've got an iPhone 5 running the latest iOS 7 version. (I don't feel like testing the first pre-released iOS 8).
The iPhone randomly displays me "No sim card installed" in a pop-up and I have no provider in the left-top of the menu.

What have I tried:

Toggling AirPlane mode (this does not work)
Hard reset (this works)
Removing the sim card using a paperclip and placing it back (this also works)

What I didn't try:

Restoring the device I don't see why restoring my iPhone would solve this problem.

What can cause this issue?
I'm still under warranty by the European law (which is 24 months for an iPhone)

This is often caused (but by no means is this the only possible cause) by a badly fitting sim card, or sim tray.  That doesn't explain how a hard reset would make it work though.  I would see if you can borrow a friendly sim and tray from another iPhone 5 users, and see if you can get the same results, or improved results, by using different combinations of sim card and tray.  When you get one that works, run away and leave your friend with the duff bits ;)


Yosemite /etc/resolver/env.domain.com not working We have a site to site VPN connection setup in the office to two development networks

dev
stage

I want to be able to let people in the office not be on VPN for dns resolution to work. Each environment also has its own dns server. So I can't give the whole office a single dns server via dhcp and call it a day.

I tried the following

echo 'nameserver 10.122.3.10' > /etc/resolver/dev.domain.com
echo 'nameserver 10.121.3.10' > /etc/resolver/stage.domain.com

the OS seems to be picking it up

ip-10-1-1-116:~ username$ scutil --dns
DNS configuration

resolver #1
  search domain[0] : google.com
  nameserver[0] : 8.8.8.8
  nameserver[1] : 8.8.4.4
  if_index : 4 (en0)
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : Reachable

resolver #2
  domain   : stage.domain.com
  nameserver[0] : 10.121.3.10
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : Reachable

DNS configuration (for scoped queries)

resolver #1
  search domain[0] : google.com
  nameserver[0] : 8.8.8.8
  nameserver[1] : 8.8.4.4
  if_index : 4 (en0)
  flags    : Scoped, Request A records
  reach    : Reachable

The issue is I can't resolve anything on the stage.domain.com domain search

ip-10-1-1-116:resolver username$ nslookup mongo-arb.stage.domain.com
Server:     8.8.8.8
Address:    8.8.8.8#53

** server can't find mongo-arb.stage.domain.com: NXDOMAIN

I can hit it going right to the server

ip-10-1-1-116:resolver username$ nslookup mongo-arb.stage.domain.com 10.121.3.10
Server:     10.121.3.10
Address:    10.121.3.10#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:   mongo-arb.stage.domain.com
Address: 10.121.15.116

EDIT

I'm using 10.10.4

You could see here why nslookup does not work.

To check your configuration, try instead:

dns-sd -G v4 mongo-arb.stage.domain.com


Suddenly, menu bar applications have blue badges I am using a MacBook Air 13' bought in 2017, running Mojave 10.14.1 (18B75). I recently removed malware and plugins named Weknow.ac. Now, several of the application badges and indicators in the menu bar appear with a blue background. I've tried different things to remove the background color, mainly by upgrading and re-installing the apps affected, but nothing seems to work. Any help would be much appreciated.

Examples include;

NTFS for Mac (gear icon on the top right corner)

Google BackUp And Sync (three dots on the top right corner)

CleanMyMac X (local storage disk drive icon on the top left corner)

I see the same thing for Google Drive. Blue around the dots. I don't think this is a problem with your system, more that the highlight color selected in Preferences is being added to a menu item because of the way the company coded the app. Some apps are great at integrating (e.g. Dropbox, which went to great lengths to get a custom sidebar icon) and others are not (e.g. Google, which has weird bugs like this in the display of some apps).


How can https:// sites be accessed from an iPod Touch behind a proxy server that requires authentication? On my iPod Touch 4th generation (latest generation as of the original time of this posting), when I'm at work, I can successfully access the Internet by connecting to my office's wi-fi network.  The network requires a set of basic authentication credentials to access the Internet.  When I open the browser on the iPod Touch and attempt to access an http:// site, I am prompted for my credentials; after successfully entering my credentials, I am able to continue and access the site.

However, I cannot access any https:// sites.  If I attempt to access https://owasp.org/, for example, I never get prompted for credentials; instead, the browser just does nothing -- the spinning "loading..." indicator up at the top of the screen appears, but otherwise nothing happens.  (I can get to this same site fine from my laptop PC connected to the same wi-fi network.)

The problem appears to be that the iPod Touch software only supports proxy servers that require basic authentication over http, but not https.

Is there any solution or workaround allowing an iPod Touch to access https sites through a proxy server that requires authentication?

Can you authenticate while accessing a http site and then enter a url for an https site?

As in, does the proxy remember your credentials for subsequent sites visited in a single session?


New Mac Machine is asking apple id New Mac Machine is asking apple id on start up of machine is it really required or mandatory to have an apple id to start with this? if so can i create an apple id without providing any credit card info?.
Please guide this newbe...

The AppleID is used for a number of services such as iCloud storage and purchasing apps from the Mac app store. An AppleID isn't required to create an account, however, so you should be able to skip the 'create an AppleID step'.


Disable shift key slow animations from command line The sole answer for Remove shift key augmentation for Mission Control animation that works is a GUI-based answer. I like to store all of my mac configuration in a version-controlled dotfiles repository so I can quickly get back to ground zero when I make a new mac.

How can you disable the shift key slowness that occurs when you do Ctrl+Shift+Up Arrow and Ctrl+Shift+Down Arrow from the command line?

I've tried defaults write com.apple.finder FXEnableSlowAnimation -boolean false; killall Finder, which I found at How to disable slow motion effect in Mac OS X (shift key)?. This does not work for me.

I believe you'll have to log out and back in for this to work.


Photos Shared Album sort order I want to use a shared album to combine photos taken on different cameras and by different people.  I would like the photos to be sorted by the date/time they were shot.  Instead, Apple is sorting by upload date, which is almost useless.  (That would be a photo-stream and is a very different use case.)

Is there any way to have photos in a shared album sort by the photo date instead of the upload date?  Is this really not an option in Apple's photo sharing scheme?  The only way I can think of to achieve what I want is either to switch to some other technology, like Picasa, or to download all the photos to Photos on a laptop and then upload the sorted photos to the shared album.  That seems ridiculous in 2015.

As a follow-up, what is the best way to deliver feedback to Apple?  The "Provide Feedback..." option that used to be there in iPhoto is missing.

There is not really a way to sort a shared album by date taken. I don't think that will be a feature because Apple is trying to make it like Instagram where the posts pop up in the order they were shared and not the date they were taken.


How can I turn on opening a link in another app again? I'm using iOS 9.2 and I once accidentally tapped “don't allow” or something similar when WhatsApp was opening a link for Citymapper. It used to launch the Citymapper app, but now it goes to the less useful web interface.

I've looked through all the settings but I can't find any record of this preference to reset the permission.

Metadata on page:

<meta property="al:ios:url" content="citymapper://directions?endcoord=51.56819%2C-0.086512&region_id=uk-london" />
<meta property="al:ios:app_store_id" content="469463298" />
<meta property="al:ios:app_name" content="Citymapper" />
<meta property="al:android:package" content="com.citymapper.app.release" />
<meta property="al:android:app_name" content="Citymapper" />
<meta property="al:android:url" content="citymapper://directions?endcoord=51.56819%2C-0.086512&region_id=uk-london" />

If I'm reading the documentation correctly, when the web interface pops up in Safari, there should be a banner across the top of the page that essentially says, "Hey, you could view this info in the app instead!" If you tap OPEN on that banner, it's supposed to re-establish the universal linking to the app instead of the website. Here it is in Apple's words:

  When a user taps a universal link that [an app] handle[s], iOS also examines the user’s recent choices to determine whether to open [the] app or [the] website. For example, a user who has tapped a universal link to open [the] app can later choose to open [the] website in Safari by tapping a breadcrumb button in the status bar. After the user makes this choice, iOS continues to open [the] website in Safari until the user chooses to open [the] app by tapping OPEN in the Smart App Banner on the webpage.

Source: Universal Links in Apple's App Search Programming Guide


Centralized update for third party apps I kind of hate it when applications, which I start, at first search for updates. It's not the updates. Well I fire up an app because I want / need to use it (now). I liked the centralized, system wide update which Linux offered. And SoftwareUpdate just checks Apples software.

Is there a way to centralize the updates of the third party applications?

So far I know about Macports and Fink which update quiet like Linux, but I also use e. g. iTerm, Transmission etc. which would still be left out.

I also heard little about Appcasting, which uses RSS to announce updates, and which is used by some apps I use, but I don't know any URLs.

I use AppFresh. It's nearly perfect. A lot of apps are recognized, even new ones and widgets and prefpanes too.

It's backed up by iusethis to check for update, but can also check for Apple or Microsoft Office updates.


Enabling location services for Exposure Notification Availability Alerts California finally rolled out an Exposure Notification app for iOS. I turned it on, but there’s a setting for “Availability Alerts” that I can’t enable because it says Location Services is turned off in Settings. Thing is, it’s not. Every other app on my phone is able to use Location Services. I can’t see any disabled app or service that might be relevant to Exposure Notifications.

On my buddy’s phone, it’s enabled. Any ideas?

For "Availability Alerts" to be enabled, I believe you need to have 3 settings turned on:

Location Services
Location Alerts
Significant Locations

It looks like you might not have "Significant Alerts" turned on.  Go to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services and turn that on.

Image courtesy of MacObserver.


Always enable Smart Quotes in TextEdit? I like smart quotes and curly quotes (unlike most people of the internet, apparently). I'm on macOS Mojave, Version 10.14.3. I have both of these preferences turned on:

TextEdit preferences:

System-level keyboard preferences:

However, whenever I launch TextEdit, Substitutions > Smart Quotes is turned off, and as I write, my apostrophes and quotation marks don't get converted into curly ones:

Currently, I have to manually turn on Smart Quotes every time I launch TextEdit. How can I make TextEdit always have Smart Quotes enabled at launch?

Thank you!

TextEdit saves the state of that switch in each document, apparently; so to get round that you need something along the lines of this - Applescript Won't Invoke Shortcut Command - to test for it each time [The link contains a lot of 'live' research & guesswork, but the last answer at https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/209219/85275 is the one that finally nailed it]

Using that as a base, try this…

tell application "System Events" to tell process "TextEdit"
    set v to (value of attribute "AXMenuItemMarkChar" of menu item "Smart Quotes" of menu 1 of menu item "Substitutions" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Edit" of menu bar 1)

    if v = "✓" then
        click menu item "Smart Quotes" of menu 1 of menu item "Substitutions" of menu 1 of menu bar item "Edit" of menu bar 1
    end if
end tell

You could save it as a Service & invoke with a key command.

Late thought:
Make sure you are working on an rtf document, not plain text, as you have the pref set to only be 'smart' in rtf.


Easy way to get gcc and make in OS X I want to install a few CPAN modules in OS X.

It filed since the module I want requires make and gcc to be installed. A quick google on the subject tells me that I need to install "Apple Developer Tools".

Do I really have to install the entire Xcode package (it's a 3 GB download) just to get make and gcc?

I would highly recommend installing the developer tools. They are free from Apple.

If you really don't want Xcode after the fact, you could just remove the Application itself. You may also be able to not install any documentation, which I think also takes a bit of space.


Can I backup a device to a Mac iTunes and iCloud I want to back up my iPad and iPhone to iTunes on my Mac. I also want them to back up to iCloud in case anything goes wrong with the Mac. Is this possible and how?

I have accomplished this by plugging it into iTunes, selecting "Back up to this computer" and hitting Apply. It performs a backup to my computer and then I change it back to Back up to iCloud. As far as backing up automatically, I'm not aware of a way to do that.

’Course, I mostly rely on iCloud, but should get in the habit of doing this a little more often just to keep a copy on my computer.


How do I get back my bookmark folder? I accidentally deleted a folder I need in my bookmarks in Safari. I back up my phone using iCloud. How do I get this folder back on my phone now?

On your iOS 9 or iOS 8 device: Go to Settings > iCloud > Storage > Manage Storage, then tap your iPhone listed under Backups to see the date and size of its latest backup. Go to Settings > General > Reset, then tap “Erase all content and settings.” In the Setup Assistant, proceed to “Set up your device,” tap Restore from a Backup, then sign in to iCloud. Proceed to “Choose backup,” then choose from a list of available backups in iCloud.

WARNING: Don't continue to the second, Reset, step if your iPhone does not show any available backup sets from which to restore. If you reset your phone and erase all settings without having a backup with which to work, you'll end up losing all your data rather than just bookmarks. If there is a backup set available, you should be okay to proceed with the restore.

More information here:

https://support.apple.com/kb/ph12521?locale=en_US


Macbook Pro: Two displays - two different full screen applications Is it possible to display two different applications on two displays in "extended" mode.

What i mean:

Xcode and Google Chrome have a button "arrows" in the top right corner.

"On click" mac create a desktop, named "application" (Google Chrome or Xcode).

I want to display both of them in full screen mode on two displays.

Is it possible?

At the moment this isn't possible.

You can only have one full screen application running at a time when using full screen mode, irrelevant of how many monitors you have. With Lion you could only have the full screen application on the primary display and with Mountain Lion it was changed to allow the full screen up on any of the monitors connected to your machine.

I suspect this feature might be introduced in the next version of OSX.


_complete:96: bad math expression: operand expected at end of string in iTerm and Terminal on Tab kypresses Mac command line say "bad math expression: operand expected at end of string"

Previously asks the question however the solution of restarting my computer has not worked.. I was hoping someone might be able to help me debug or provide an understanding as to what is going on and how to resolve.. this is super dev ops for me unfortunately..

_complete:96: bad math expression: operand expected at end of string

Is the error message whereby this occurs on tab hits and sometimes even cd, ls 's kind of commands.. originally used iTerm but thought issue might be isolated to this software however is occurring in terminal as well..

I recently ran brew upgrade and reinstalled yarn and as a result had to reinstall sass gems.. so I'm not sure but if I had to bet it's something to do with that..

Ask requested in the above linked answer below is my $PATH:

➜  luckyme-scrollmagic git:(jimmy) echo $PATH
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin

I don't understand what any of this means unfortunately..

Any help or guidance on how to solve would be gr8ly appreciated

Jimmy

A basic shell error message consists of a comand, a colon, a operand/filename, a colon, and a message, like

command: operand/filename: error message

as an example

ls foo
ls: foo: No such file or directory

These error message may contain multiple commands and/or error messages, as an example

ls | fake_command
-ksh: fake_command: not found

and without a operand/filename. But they are usually not that difficult to digest. In your case, your shell completions are producing the error message.


Making MacPorts Think A Dependency Is Already Installed I like to install some packages by hand that are also available through MacPorts. When I do this MacPorts still wants to install that package even though its binaries are in the path.

Is there any way to install let's say Python without MacPorts and than install a package that depends on Python via MacPorts without installing MacPorts Python?

No, this is not supported by any standard way. The maintainers of MacPorts care a lot about reproducibility of the builds and thus, MacPorts does not allow any other software to fulfil the requirement.

These entries in the MacPorts FAQ should answer this question in more detail:

Will MacPorts link to system libraries rather than its own?
Why is MacPorts using its own libraries?


View contents of a ICO container file on macOS ICO file extension is a container file format that may include several icon images of different sizes. I'd like to know how I may access and view what is inside a ICO file, i.e. the different images it contains, and possibly any metadata.

The built-in Preview.app can handle ICO files and show the contents of the container. It can also show the file metadata. To view file metadata, use the keyboard shortcut, Command + i.

Right click on one of the images, select Export As... and select the desired format.


Creating a test environment for Mac software My company develops commercial Mac software. Our flagship product runs on OS X 10.6.8+. We want to improve our software quality with better and more comprehensive testing.

What hardware and OS's should we supply our tester with? My thought so far is either a Mac Mini or an iMac with an SSD, lots of RAM, and either Parallels or VMWare so that he can run OS X 10.6.8, OS X 10.7, OS X 10.8, OS X 10.9, and OS X 10.10 in virtual machines.

Is this feasible? Recommended? I'd love to hear your feedback.

I use VMWare Fusion Professional for software testing. Virtual machines make regression testing and replay of problems wonderfully easy.

I run a copy of VMWare Fusion on my older Mac Pro and it performs well. The professional edition allows for linked virtual machines – linked machines can share common content to save on disk space. Machines can quickly require ~20GB if no content is shared.

Snow Leopard Server

Be aware that Mac OS X 10.6 Server is required for a virtual machine. The standard client edition is not permitted to run within a virtual environment.

OS X 10.7 and later can all be legally run within a virtual environment, so long as the underlying hardware is an Apple computer.

Maximise Resources

You are right to opt for as many resources as possible for your Mac. Running virtual machines can push your Mac. Try not to require needing multiple virtual machines running at once.

Graphical Limits

Graphical applications or those needing OpenGL support are not yet well supported by either VMWare or Parallels. OS X copes but falls back to software rendering; this may not best match your customers' environment.


When in Fullscreen OSX Yosemite won't hide the dock I don't have "auto hide" enable for dock. In all previous version dock, it will hide if I enter in full screen mode for VLC player or for chrome. Now that's no longer the case.

If I enable "auto hide", then it hides it but that's not what I am looking for as I like to see dock all the time except full screen mode.

Open Terminal and type:

killall Dock

This will restart the process.


How much overhead (%) space requires migrating a iPhoto library to a Photo library? After migrating an iPhoto Library to a Photos App Library, they see actually share space by using hardlinks. So even the Finder says each folder use some amount of space, they are actually sharing it. That only applies if they are in the same volume. For example, both in the internal disk or both in the same partition of  the same external drive.

However, migrating could share the actual pictures but each program has specific extra structure. It could be from thumbnails, index and other cached information.

How much extra space do I need, for example, for migrating and 150Gb iPhoto Library in an external drive?

It's important to know if the iPhoto library is in volume, let's say, with 170Gb. Will be the remaining 20Gb enough for the Photo App index?

The situation is particularly important for many Macbook air users as many of them, having small SSD disk, store their pictures in an external drive.

No overhead at all.

The Photos library created by migrating uses "hard links" that point to the actual files. This causes it effectively just point to the exact same files as the iPhoto library contained.

In my case, my iPhoto library was 40 GB. So is my Photos library. But I only had 10 GB free space. After doing the migration, I still have 10 GB free space.

(Note that you can then safely delete the iPhoto library afterwards, the file system is smart enough. See https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/182799/172153.)


Upgrading new Mac Mini to have SSD. Do I have to buy Lion, or can I just re-download from App Store? EDIT: The accepted answer below works, but I can also confirm that just booting the stock machine and visiting the App Store, you can just re-download it and make a boot USB drive before swapping out the hard drive.

I just bought a new i7 Mac Mini and will be upgrading the hardware to a 256GB SSD and 16GB RAM.

OSX Lion comes pre-installed on the stock 1TB hard drive. When I swap out the drive with my new SSD, I'll obviously have to install Lion onto it. If I boot my Mac Mini with my stock drive and visit the App Store to download Lion, will I have to pay for it, or will it assume I've already paid since it's installed, and allow me to re-download it so that I can make a bootable USB?

Macs introduced after 10.7 was released (and mid-2010 to mid-2011 Macs with a firmware update) support internet recovery: if you start up with a new hard drive, you are shown a gray screen like this and something like the contents of the recovery partition are downloaded over the internet:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

If you happen to encounter a situation in which you cannot start from the Recovery System, such as your hard drive stopped responding or you installed a new hard drive without OS X installed, new Mac models introduced after public availability of OS X Lion or OS X Mountain Lion, automatically use the OS X Internet Recovery feature if the Recovery System (Command-R method above) doesn't work. OS X Internet Recovery lets you start your Mac directly from Apple's Servers. The system runs a quick test of your memory and hard drive to ensure there are no hardware issues.
OS X Internet Recovery presents a limited interface at first, with only the ability to select your preferred Wi-Fi network and, if needed, enter the WPA passphrase. Next, OS X Internet Recovery will download and start from a Recovery System image. From there, you are offered all the same utilities and functions described above.

You can then install the OS your Mac came with for free or restore the old installation from a Time Machine backup.


Lion Safari's enabled and disabled button contrast is so low it's hard to see the difference Is it me or is Lion's buttons' contrast way too low? The back button (enabled) and forward button (disabled) are almost the same shade of gray.

Is there a way to increase the contrast between enabled and disabled? I tried System Preferences - Universal Access - Display - Enhance contrast, but it doesn't really enhance the contrast of the button.

Nope, sadly, there is no UI control for changing such contrast. You'd have to play within the app's insides and it may cause problems down the way, and might have to be done every time the app is update. Therefore, much less trouble to live with it than change it. :-)


What are the risks if you install an app that's not from the App Store? On my iPhone (iOS 8.2), I installed an app that wasn't coming from the App Store. I chose to trust it because a serious news website had spoke about it, but now I'm a little bit worried of what this app might have done.

Are the apps like this one still prevented from accessing my personal content?
Could they install anything without my authorization?
Now that I've deleted it, is it okay or is there still a risk anyway?

With the improved Masque attack, it is possible to perform many actions, including full kernel and user memoryspace traversal, which would include any sort of temporary or permanent backdoor against jailed iOS, including version 8.2 (i.e., this does not require a jailbroken device). When combined with a shim, this can be a devastating attack against other previously-installed apps, perhaps even without memoryspace access. Futher combined with OS X DLL hijacking (another new attack), things get really clever.

Today, as of March 2015, nearly anything is possible. The entire security of the iOS platform has been undone due to Enterprise certificate attacks (i.e., improved Masque), repackaging apps (e.g., Theos), library shimming (i.e., the load operation), and lazy binding abuse. This could lead to function hooking on a jailed device, which could lead to subversion of many concepts, including subversion of the KeyChain, TouchID, and much more than forensics tools are currently capable of (even assuming a lockdown certificate is set and no recoverable lockdown cert or backup is possible on, say, jailed iPhone 6 with iOS 8.2).


Repartition hard drive with bootcamp on it I currently have this setup on my Mac- OS X Mavericks 10.9.3, Windows (bootcamp) and a Recovery HD. My question is can I repartition my hard drive to have another partition, using disk utility (resize the OS X part and have a new part created with that space)- disk utility warns me I might get kicked out of Windows booting for doing this, and I want to make sure if that's really going to happen.

Thanks!

Yes, this is dangerous and uncertain. Just to be safe, and to plan for the worst, expect that all your partitions will be destroyed by the process, and that you may need to reformat your entire hard drive and re-partition it to the new partition scheme that you require, after which you will have to restore your Mac OS X volumes and your Windows Boot Camp partition and restore your Windows installation to that new partition.

You had better make a complete backup of every partition to external hard drives before you do anything. You can use the donation-ware utility Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your existing Mac partitions (Macintosh HD and the hidden Recovery HD) to an external hard drive formatted for Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

You should purchase whatever Windows software is necessary (Symantec Ghost, etc.) to clone your Windows partition while booted into Windows itself. You should clone it to a different external hard drive formatted for Windows NTFS.

Only once you are sure that all your partitions are backed up should you undertake the re-partitioning in Disk Utility. If you are fortunate, everything will go well and you will not need to re-install anything. But since you cannot be sure that this will happen, you would be very wise to have backups of everything first.


Odd Xcode error: Objective-C garbage collection is not supported I have to administrate a remote macos machine. Today I logged in since some time off and I've got this error:

   $ make

  dyld: Library not loaded: @rpath/DVTFoundation.framework/Versions/A/DVTFoundation
      Referenced from: /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/xcodebuild
      Reason: no suitable image found.  Did find:
        /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/../../../SharedFrameworks/DVTFoundation.framework/Versions/A/DVTFoundation: cannot load '/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/usr/bin/../../../SharedFrameworks/DVTFoundation.framework/Versions/A/DVTFoundation' because Objective-C garbage collection is not supported
    Please review and agree to the software license agreements!

Amy idea what this is about?

I've already installed Xcode (macOS Sierra version 10.12).

Can it be caused by the Sierra upgrade? Since I've installed Xcode under the previous version (Lion), and now it's broken?

It seems odd since I've installed Xcode Sierra version.

Update:

Apparently the error is triggered every time I use some Xcode tool,
for instance accepting the license via cli triggers the exact same error.

I have not already had access to the machine directly, but I'll try to reinstall all Xcode building tools.

That is an odd error as the framework request in question is coming from an Apple app.

It seems your Xcode has been updated to a newer version and the licence agreement needs to be accepted. You can do this two ways:

Open Xcode.app and follow the prompts
In Terminal: sudo xcodebuild -license
(and with newer versions sudo xcodebuild -license accept to do it in one step)

Afterwards confirm xcode-select --print-path returns a valid result.

You should then be good to go, assuming your combination of macOS version and Xcode version are compatible.


Looking for a black/white only terminal emulator on Mac My original question on Stack Overflow can be found here. Basically, I ssh into my linux work station from my Mac and I would like to test my program (that runs on the linux machine) if color output is not supported on my terminal emulator. Currently I am using Terminal.app and I've tried setting Preferences > Settings > Advanced > Declare terminal as different terminal types but all of them still seem to print colors.

Does anyone know a black/white only terminal emulator for Mac? Is there a way to completely turn off colors on a terminal?

I use iTerm, which allows you to set styles, including black and white.


macOS Sierra Preview: Have the highlight colours for PDFs changed? The highlight colours in my Preview application appear darker just after updating to macOS Sierra Version 10.12.1. Is this a change introduced in the update or is this a bug?

Note: I'm using Preview Version 9.0 (909.6)

Yes, the colors have darker shades in macOS Sierra, compared to El Capitan. What you are seeing is not a bug.

This is true for all colors (yellow, blue, green, purple, and pink).


How can I customize the Lion login screen to remove the vignette effect? Just upgraded to Lion, but the new login screen needs some colour. I found someone online who posted the address of the image that's in the background, so I went and replaced that.

Only, after doing that, I realized that there's an additional overlay being drawn that adds a vignette effect by brightening the center of the screen.

Does anyone know of a way to remove this?

I suspect that the effect is actually something that's drawn programmatically. I dug around for a while and I can't seem to find it anywhere. My suggestion: Open your image in a graphics editor and modify it to account for the shadow.


Installing gcc without admin? Is there a place to install command line programs on OSX without an admin password? I've tried /bin and /usr/bin, and I have permission for neither. Like a ~/Applications, but for the command line.

Apps can run from anywhere, so if you don't want to authenticate as an admin user, you'll want to write it to /Users/Shared or ~ and expand your path to accommodate wherever you chose to land the package.

If you're working in a lab situation, you can make a USB drive called dev and a folder named bin to contain gcc would require something like this for the default bash shell:

export PATH=/Volumes/dev/bin:$PATH


In El Capitan: Safari wiped the extension database? I recently did a clean install of El Capitan & added Tampermonkey to my Safari. I added a few scripts in the morning and went to sleep. I woke up at night and got back to my Safari only to learn that all the scripts in Tampermonkey had disappeared into the ether.

When I re-added a script, this is what Tampermonkey told me:

  Tampermonkey detected inconsistencies that indicate that your browser wiped the extension database!

Is there a way to prevent this from happening again?

I use OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks) and I was preparing to ask:

Where, on disk, does Tampermonkey for Safari store user data e.g. scripts?

Your question seems to answer my question!

(I had used fseventer to monitor file system activity whilst installing a script, but nothing conclusive was observed.)

In my case I assume that Tampermonkey dataloss resulted from an uninstall, followed by a reinstall, of various extensions.

Background

Two sets of answers to frequently asked questions:

http://tampermonkey.net/faq.php
https://forum.tampermonkey.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=78

The Tampermonkey forum is limited, seeking Safari finds nothing:

  The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: safari …

http://tampermonkey.net/faq.php#Q106 explains how to export scripts, but I never imagined that losing (or removing) the database of extensions would also lose user data associated with any extension.


Disable HTML5 video auto-play in OS X Safari? I want to disable videos in Safari, as I have to pay for each byte downloaded.  Some videos I may want to watch, but I want to decide whether I use my precious bandwidth, rather than have it automatically play.  Is there any way to accomplish this?

This seems to work for me (macOS Sierra 10.12.2, Safari 10.0.2), courtesy of jeffreyv in an Apple Support thread:

In the Terminal, enter:

defaults write com.apple.Safari IncludeInternalDebugMenu 1

That enables the Debug menu in Safari. Then tick this menu item on:

Debug -> Media Flags -> Video Needs User Action


How do I include my own zone file in /etc/com.apple.named.proxy.conf When I enable internet connection sharing, a local named DNS nameserver is started that uses the file /etc/com.apple.named.proxy.conf for configuration.

My internet connection sharing is configured such that my Mac gets address 192.168.2.1

On my Mac, I have a local web server with several development vhosts. I would like to make their names known to devices that connect through the shared internet connection. I try this by including this section into com.apple.named.proxy.conf:

zone "local" IN {
    type master;
    file "vhosts.zone";
    allow-update { none; };
};

My problem is that the file /etc/com.apple.named.proxy.conf gets recreated on every new sharing session and any modifications I make to this file are lost.

Is there a source or template file from which com.apple.named.proxy.conf is created?

You need to add to the file /etc/hosts - this is read by the DNS server before it goes to any other source.

You will need to add a line

192.168.2.1   machine alias1 alias2 alias3

Obviously replace "machine" and the other items with the correct values.


Which FireWire cable do I need to connect an iMac (late 2009) to a Thunderbolt to FireWire connection to retrieve the data using Diskmode? I have an iMac (late 2009) with a broken graphics card. Fortunately, I have a new iMac (2019) which works fine.

I want to boot the old machine to Target Disk Mode to retrieve the data on the computer. I've read online you can connect them using a FireWire cable. Now the new mac doesn't have an FireWire connection but I think I can use a Thunderbolt to FireWire cable. So I thought I'll just order an FireWire cable, but there are a lot of different types. So my question is:

Which FireWire cable do I need to connect an iMac (late 2009) to a Thunderbolt to FireWire connection to retrieve the data using Target Disk Mode?

The iMac 2009 has a FireWire 800 port and the new iMac 2019 a Thunderbolt 3 port.

This requires three cables daisy-chained:

FireWire 800 - FireWire 800
FireWire 800 - Thunderbolt 1/2: Apple Thunderbolt-naar-FireWire-adapter
Thunderbolt 1/2 - Thunderbolt 3: Adapter voor Thunderbolt 3 (USB‑C) naar Thunderbolt 2

I found one source stating it's working: Le Target Disk Mode marche en USB-C, en Thunderbolt et en FireWire (en français, with pics) and another one stating more or less the opposite: Target mode between Macbook pro 2017 and Mac Pro 1.1.


How can I fix a low speaker volume problem on my iPhone 6s? I have a 6s with iOS 9.3x installed. Out of the blue, the speaker volume became barely audible. By speaker I mean the the loud speaker at the bottom of the phone.

I've used headphones and bluetooth to see whether those are affected as well - those continue to work fine.

I've done the following - none fixed the problem:

Restarted the unit multiple times.
I've cleaned out the speaker and headphone jack.
I've blown compressed air at the problem spots.
I've toggled Settings/General/Accessibility/Phone Noise Cancellation and Hearing Aids options.
Various miscellaneous things that I've read about here and there.

I know that if I take it to Apple store, they will suggest restoring a new phone, which I don't want to do. Other than reinstalling the OS, what else can I do to try and fix this issue?

Answering my own question.

Got it fixed. In case someone else has this issue, I took it to the Apple store. Turns out the speaker got clogged with microscopic particles (lint, sand, etc...) since I spend a lot of time outdoors. They have a very fine brush that can get those things out. The whole process took like 5 minutes.


Macbook Internal Speaker Option Gone I know there's a lot of other questions similar to this, but none of them seem to be right. My problem's nothing to do with the headphone jack - I haven't used it for ages and there's no red light - it's just the speakers not being an option in System Preferences or Audio MIDI Setup. Plugging in headphones changes nothing.

I've previously had Soundflower installed.

The problem started today when I was using Dropbox, which was installed on an external HD. My computer went to sleep and wouldn't wake up, so I force-restarted. All was fine but for the volume icon being grayed out.

The only option in System Preferences for sound output is Airplay, which I've never used. With this selected (I can't unselect it because there's no other options) the volume is no longer grayed out, but of course there's no sound.

I restarted on an external drive, and it had the same problem. Next step is to reinstall the OS, but I don't think it's going to help.

My computer is a white Macbook from early 2009 running Mavericks. I've recently replaced the internal HD with an SSD, and upgraded the RAM to 4GB.

I just recently has the same issue on my Macbook Pro 13" (late 2011). To fix the problem, I first reset my PRAM, and then my NVRAM. To reset your PRAM, shutdown your computer, press the power button, then immediately hold command-option-p-r until you hear the startup chime. To reset your NVRAM, keep the four buttons pressed in until your computer restarts again and you hear the chime one more time.

At this point, you won't see any difference; the audio will still be grayed out or not in your preferences window. Plug a headset, earbuds, or anything into the audio jack. Take them back out again, and your audio should be back to normal!


Boot Camp not burning Windows support DVD So, I'm trying to get Boot Camp to work so I can put a partition of Windows 7 on my MacBook. I'm getting to the point where it's downloaded the supporting software and I have to burn it to a DVD. I have blank DVD in the SuperDrive but regardless of how many times I hit 'Burn' nothing happens. Am I doing something wrong?

Also, I'm a complete noob with OS X, so please be very explanatory.

Thanks in advance!

Okay, so I think I figured it out. Apparently it's a problem with Boot Camp 3.0.4 that came with the 1.6.6 update. I found a link to the discussion on Apple's forums and I'll post it as soon as I can use the MacBook again (it's installing Windows right now and I'm typing this on an iPad...).

UPDATE

Here's the link to the Apple forum discussion.


Some text messages showing phone number not contact name Suddenly, existing text strings are showing the contact number (not for all text messages), and not the contact name, on my iPhone 6. If I look for the person in my contacts, they are not listed. If I use their name to start a text discussion, their name and number show in the 'search' like if they were in the contacts.

I've seen this happen to me before. To fix it for myself I've had to disable iCloud Contacts and then enable them.

Although, it might be best to restart your device before disabling and then reenabling your iCloud contacts?

Steps:

Settings
Apple ID (top of settings)
iCloud (2nd set, 1st item)
Toggle contacts switch to disable
Delete from My iPhone
Toggle contacts switch to reenable


Moving files from a Broken iMac My 2013 iMac crashed and I can't access it any form. Not Safe Mode or Recovery. I removed the drive and want to access some of the files. It's old and was slated for replacement later this year. Should I be able to mount the drive on a different Mac and see its file structure, assuming the disk is okay?
Update:
Output from diskutil list, after attaching HDD as an external drive to another Mac.
/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk3
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            999.3 GB   disk3s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk3s3

diskutil cs list

CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group 879B94FC-E0C8-4DEB-838A-9F65078FFDA3
    =========================================================
    Name:         Macintosh HD
    Status:       Offline
    Size:         999345012736 B (999.3 GB)
    Free Space:   -none-
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 5CA40245-A547-42CE-A283-8A855191C7F5
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   (No properties)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume FF551275-7077-4759-870E-2AA51B847383
        ----------------------------------------------------
        Index:    1
        Disk:     disk3s2
        Status:   Checking
        Size:     999345012736 B (999.3 GB)

Yes you can, as long as you put the disc in a usb 3 enclosure, compatible with your new Mac.
Edit after result of diskutil cs list.
Your HDD is part of a Fusion Drive :
HDD present :
+-< Physical Volume FF551275-7077-4759-870E-2AA51B847383
                ----------------------------------------------------
                    Index: 1
                    Disk: disk3s2
                    Status: Checking
                    Size: 999345012736 B (999.3 GB) –

SSD absent :
+-< Physical Volume 5CA40245-A547-42CE-A283-8A855191C7F5
                | ----------------------------------------------------
                | (No properties) –


Can you Manually copy User Folder to new Mac? I've had an issue with an old Mac where I can no longer boot into it. I plugged the drive into another computer and I can access my user folder.

Is it possible to restore this whole user account on a new Mac?
Could I just paste it in the Users folder in the new mac?
Is there a way to create a time machine backup of that
user folder which I can then restore from?

If the drive is fine and only the old Mac broken, then you have several options. These are the steps I would recommend:

With the drive attached to your new Mac, open disk utility, hit view and select show all devices. Then choose the parent volume of the drive and click first aid. Do the same with its volumes. If an error occurs try again multiple times and/or in Recovery Mode.
Try simply booting from this drive. Shut down the Mac. Disconnect everything, then only reconnect the old system drive. Start your Mac and hold the opt. If the boot loader detects your old system drive to be bootable it show up and you can select it to boot from that drive. You can then do a TM-Backup or even continue using it that way if you want.
As already suggested by @nohillside you can also try using Migration Assistant.
If you want to completely control what files will be on your new Mac, then I suggest only copying specific files from your old drive to the new Mac (e.g. only the Home folder and no Apps).

To restore your user account I would recommend creating a TM backup, since this will also restore settings and all programs for that user account.
If you only want to restore the data of your user account, it is
perfectly fine to just copy the contents of the Home folder (e.g. the
Movies folder).


Is there a way to force `apfsd` to defragment all the files on a disk? As I understand, HFS+ and APFS volumes don't need to be defragmented, as files will automatically defragmented by the OS, but I'd like to leave a process running in the background that would do this to all files of the disk. Is there a way to check which files have more fragments or get a list of all files of the disk?

It is correct that on HFS+ volumes a technique named "On-the-fly" automatically defragments certain files when they're opened. However, it only applies for files that are less than 20 MB in size, are not busy, not read-only, have been unchanged for at least 60 seconds and has more than 8 extents (i.e. "fragments"). Typically those files will occupy a very small percentage of your hard drive.

In order to get statistics and list of fragmented files on HFS+ volumes, you'll want to use a tool like "hfsdebug" (free). It offers both listing of all fragmented files, as well as various statistics such as top lists of most fragmented files.

In order to get the list of all fragmented files that you seek, run the following command in Terminal.app after installing hfsdebug:

hfsdebug -f /

You can choose to see only the top 10 files like this:

hfsdebug -t 10 -f /

A newer tool named fileXray (79$) also exists that gives you much of the same features, and plenty more. As noted it is commercial software that requires you to purchase a license - note that it does not have a GUI, but has a textual interface similar to hfsdebug.

You can use fileXray to for example check if a file is fragmented or not:

fileXray filename

This will output a list of extents for the file "filename". If the file has multiple extents it is in theory fragmented. If the startBlock + blockCount of an extent lines up with the startBlock of the next extent, then in practice it doesn't matter much.

A simple way to do the actual defragmentation is to simply copy the file. Ensure that you have enough (non-fragmented) disk space in advance, and then copy the file to a new name on the same disk. The new file should be less fragmented (or not fragmented at all) - you can check that with the above mentioned command. After copying, you can remove the old file and rename the new file to match.

UPDATE: In the comments, you have expressed that you needed a free solution, and cannot use fileXray because it costs 75$. In that case you could use SleuthKit from HomeBrew instead - you'll find the ifind command from SleuthKit can list the number of extents as well. Another possibility is hfsinspect by Adam Knight, which can also list the extents.


Windows 10 BootCamp Drivers Would it be harmful to my rMBP if I installed Windows 10 when it is released?
I was talking to someone about it, and because Apple uses non-standard hardware voltages could cause damage using the drivers for Windows 8.1

I am currently using Windows 10 TP (Technical Preview Build: 10240) on my MacBook Pro Late 2011. I am using Boot Camp with the drivers made for previous Windows versions. I haven't had any issues with using it but after upgrading to an newer build I was needing to reinstall the driver package again to get it to work properly.

Also, as Steve Chambers said in his answer, it won't physically break or damage your Mac. Only remember that if you are upgrading from a previous Windows version, make a backup in case you need to go back or do a clean install. In addition, it could be a good idea to have the Windows drivers ready on a USB flash drive just in case.

This is tested with the latest TP (Technical Preview) build of Windows 10 but could change in the final version (unlikely but could). If you are not in a hurry, wait a week and then do a Google search and see if anyone had any issues with using the released Windows 10 version on Boot Camp.


Git hangs with a ssh remote URI after 10.15.4 update After updating to Catalina 10.15.4, git started hanging indefinitely when trying to push or pull from a repo that was previously accessible.

$ git push origin master
^C

The URL for origin looks like:

$ git remote -v
origin  ssh://git@gitlab.example.com:30814/username/project.git (fetch)
origin  ssh://git@gitlab.example.com:30814/username/project.git (push)

Attempting to ssh directly to the remote results in a hang:

$ /usr/bin/ssh -p 30814 git@gitlab.example.com -vvv
OpenSSH_8.1p1, LibreSSL 2.7.3
debug1: Reading configuration data /Users/username/.ssh/config
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config
debug1: /etc/ssh/ssh_config line 47: Applying options for *
debug1: Connecting to gitlab.example.com port 30814.
^C

Which seems to indicate the underlying problem with git is the ssh:// URI for the remote repository. I confirmed this by successfully cloning the repo using a https:// URI.

Debugging steps:

Attempted to connect with netcat:

$ nc -v gitlab.example.com 30814
Connection to gitlab.example.com port 30814 [tcp/*] succeeded!
SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.2
^C

Suspecting a broken ssh client, I installed openssh using brew:

$ brew install openssh
...
$ /usr/local/bin/ssh  -V
OpenSSH_8.2p1, OpenSSL 1.1.1d  10 Sep 2019

$ /usr/local/bin/ssh -p 30814 git@gitlab.example.com
Welcome to GitLab, @username!
Connection to gitlab.example.com closed.

After refreshing my shell environment to ensure that the new ssh is found in my $PATH, git operations began functioning as expected with ssh:// URIs.

Searching turned up this user submitted bug: ssh fails when using -p flag

The workaround detailed in the bug is to use the remote host's IP address instead of the DNS name. I can confirm that this worked for me:

$ /usr/bin/ssh -V
OpenSSH_8.1p1, LibreSSL 2.7.3

$ /usr/bin/ssh -p 30814 git@192.168.1.1
Welcome to GitLab, @username!
Connection to gitlab.example.com closed.

The apparent trigger for this bug is using ports greater than 8192 in conjunction with a host's DNS name.


Stream DVD audio through AirPlay Hi have a Bowers & Wilkins Z2 which supports AirPlay.

When I see DVDs on my MacBook Pro I would like to stream the audio to the speaker.

Is there a way for doing it?

While iTunes provides an icon for AirPlay, the same is not true for QuickTime.

VLC 2.1.0 has a command in the Audio menu (Audio->Audio Device->Airplay) however it doesn't work for me.

Go to System Preferences → Sound → Output and choose your speakers. Lagging will probably make it unbearable, but maybe you can adjust video/audio sync in VLC.


Can't open Firefox because a copy of Firefox is already open I have multiple users on my MacBook (OS X 10.9.5). One of them has parential restrictions, but is allowed to use Firefox. Now, despite that, she is unable to run Firefox: whenever she tries, an error box pops up with the message

  Close Firefox
  A copy of Firefox is already open. Only one copy of Firefox can be open at a time.

(needless to say that Firefox was not open, neither by her nor by any other user, and that none of the other users has that problem).

It appears this occured after a recent update of Firefox (to version 39.0).

What could be the cause of this?
How can I sort this out?

Here is what I did to fix the issue:

In OS X Terminal, find your currently used Firefox profile directory (something like):

$ cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Firefox/Profiles/
$ ls -l

if you have multiple profiles, list the one with the most recent date

$ cd rAnd0m.default
$ ls -la

remove the hidden parentlock file

$ rm -v .parentlock

try to start Firefox again

(If the problem was not related to the parentlock file, you will see:
rm: .parentlock: No such file or directory)

If you prefer to use the Finder, just make hidden dot-files visible first, so you can check for the existence of .parentlock and delete it.


Why have 3 songs from a recent download from iTunes got a ''! next to them and won't sync to playlist? We paid for and downloaded an album from iTunes store and 3 of the tracks have an exclamation mark next to them and we cannot move them to the playlist to sync with the ipod. Does anyone know what we can do about that?

Thanks

You are seeing the exclamation point because iTunes doesn't know where to find the song.

Using iCloud, you can download those three songs again without having to pay. You can do this by going to the iTunes store, navigate to Quick Links on the right, and click the Purchased link. Search for your songs and you can redownload them.


Re-install stock Net-SNMP? Apologies in advance if this has been answered.

What is the exact procedure to reset Net-SNMP to "factory defaults" on, say, OSX 10.10 - or any other OSX flavor?

A number of our Xserves were upgraded from 10.6 to 10.8 to 10.9 or 10.10 and in the process appear to have their Net-SNMP executables and/or configuration corrupted - e.g. snmpd daemons crashing frequently, not reporting CPU/mem loads, etc. Tried comparing folder structures between affected and unaffected nodes and haven't gotten too far.

Edit: just to be clear, this isn't about snmpd.conf - but about snmp executables, MIBs and what not.

Appreciate any ideas!

The canonical method to reset a net-snmp installation to factory defaults in Mac OS X (there's no difference between client & server in this case) is:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.net-snmp.snmpd.plist
sudo cp /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf.default /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
sudo rm /usr/share/snmpd.conf
sudo rm -rf /var/db/net-snmp

This resets the snmpd.conf file to the default & clears out any added users and instance data. This should be valid back to 10.6 or so, possibly earlier, but I'm not sure.

In 10.11.x Apple updated the net-snmp version from 5.6 to 5.6.2.1 which may cause some issues.


Disable automatic "overview scan" in Image Capture I have two scanners accessible from my machine (using Lion): a USB flatbed scanner, and a multifunction network printer. Whenever I launch Image Capture (either directly, or indirectly from Preview), it selects the first scanner (USB) and runs an "overview scan". Whenever I change the selected scanner (e.g. from the USB scanner to the multifunction printer), an "overview scan" is performed again.

This automatic overview is irksome:

It is slow and takes several seconds.
It is noisy.
Most of the time, it is totally useless (especially when I want to use the "document feeder" of the multifunction printer, since then the overview is done with the flatbed source of the printer, so I get a blank overview).
There is a nice "overview" button that I perfectly know how to click, if I really want an overview.

Is there a way to deactivate this automatic overview scan ?

If you (remember to) set the scan mode to document feeder, it won't do the overview.


What steps I should take for data security and prevent misuse of my lost iPhone? I lost my iPhone 4 and mistakenly wiped it using "Find my iPhone" from https://www.icloud.com/. Can i even track it? It was locked by password.

Now I think it's sure that I can't track my phone. I don't have bill of the phone and I also don't have IMEI number of phone.

Even that I have wiped it, should i worry about anything else? My one point if the phone can used for illegal activities it can be problem for me. Is it possible to track me by a wiped phone?

Call your phone carrier and disable your sim card and report the phone stolen to the police. If law enforcement finds evidence that the phone SIM, serial number or IMEI were involved in illegal activity, a dated police report is something they may consider when investigating a crime. Of course, a bad person could report a phone stolen and still use it for crime, so you can't really get the carrier or Apple to erase their records but just do what you can if you lose a possession.

You won't be able to use "Find My Phone" as you've erased all the data on the phone. So yes, you might get tracked down if there are records that you once owned or operated that phone.


'The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer' when connecting external hard drives I have a Synology NAS that has failed and I won't be replacing it. It had two 4TB Western Digital Red hard drives. I've bought a dual hard drive disk reader on Amazon and inserted both hard drives  but my Mac shows this error (below)

I want to be able to retrieve our data as it has family pictures and a lot of other valuable data stored on it.

When I check both disks with the DriveDx application they pass all tests, however I still can't seem to mount them.

Depending on the age of the DiskStation the HDs should either use EXT3/4 filesystem or Btrfs filesystem. Both filesystems are natively not supported in macOS (hence the "not readable" dialog). If the NAS HDs are formatted in EXT3/4 you can try the EXT filesystem package for macOS by Paragon software (trial is available).
https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-mac/

If the filesystem on the NAS HDs is Btrfs, no luck with macOS. There is no Btrfs filesystem "driver" for macOS available. You can then only try to mount the drives on a system capable of reading Btrfs (another Syno NAS/Linux box etc.).


Shuffle PDF 2-up in shell I want to make a new pdf from my old one: put portrait pages 1 & 2 on a landscape page 1, pages 3 & 4 on page 2, and so on.

Preview.app does this, but I need to do it in the shell.

jPDFtweak.jar also does this in GUI, but for no reason it fails to do it in terminal (for some of my files).

I do not know, how to use lp to print to pdf.

Thanks to @IconDaemon,
the solution is like this:

cpdf -twoup-stack my-file.pdf -o out.pdf
cpdf -rotate 90 out.pdf -o out2.pdf
cpdf -scale-to-fit "210mm 297mm" out2.pdf -o my-file-collated.pdf
rm out.pdf out2.pdf


How to "star" messages or mark them as important in iPad mail app? I would like to mark messages as "important" in the iPad mail app via my gmail account. The app can move messages to a new folder, so I can put them in Gmail's "starred" folder, but that moves it out of the current label. How can I "star" messages on the iPads email app?

Since the release of iOS 5, it it possible to flag messages using the "Mark" dropdown menu.


Mac keeps randomly getting shift key toggled on even with the button not pressed This is really annoying when I'm playing league of legends and i randomly can't use skills or click anywhere because shift is toggled on. By the time i notice it's usually too late. I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas what is causing it. I was thinking it was maybe because certain mac commands are still available during the game (league of legends).

I notice i can use cmd + shift + 3 to screen capture. Cmd + q to exit was available until i remapped Quit League of Legends to CMD + option + .

However, it's not just during the game. I also often get similar problems while typing in browser windows.

Is there a way to disable all mac keyboard shortcuts? or could there be some other reason for my problem? i'm tempted to just buy another keyboard to test if it's the keyboard. both shift and Alt have repeatedly gotten stuck on until i repress the key.

My OS is Yosemite if that helps. anyway I'm willing to try anything.  I checked hotkeys though and nothing maps to qwer + ctrl/alt/cmd/shift.

I really can't figure out what is going on.

Yes, you can disable Mac's default Keyboard Shortcuts by going to System Preferences->Keyboard->Shotcuts and unchecking them. Select the category from left pane like ScreenShots etc.

For shift key check if sticky keys are on (under accessibility):


How to increase the size of the system partition (container) on Catalina? This is on a Macbook Pro with a 250 GB disk that was originally split into two partitions, roughly 90 (Macintosh HD) and 160 GB (disk2). The machine is now on Catalina with the first partition being APFS and the second staying HFS. There is not enough space on the first partition and I am trying to add more space from the second to the first by following this guide:
https://www.macobserver.com/tips/deep-dive/resize-your-apfs-container/

After splitting the second partition into 2 with Disk Utility, I have an empty partition of 20GB that I convert to empty space by doing

sudo diskutil eraseVolume "Free Space" %noformat% /dev/disk0sX

as shown in the guide (on my system X is 5, not 3 as in the guide but this should not make any difference). Then when I try to resize the APFS container as shown in the guide by doing

diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0

it gives me

  Started APFS operation.
  Error: -69519: The target disk is too small for this operation, or a gap is  required in your partition map which is missing or too
  small, which is often  caused by an attempt to grow a partition beyond
  the beginning of another  partition or beyond the end of partition map
  usable space

disk0s2 seems to be the correct disk as shown in diskutil list

...
 2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk1         89.5 GB    disk0s2
...

Any ideas whether what I am trying to achieve is even possible and if it is, how to do it?

Conclusion: I went with the second suggestion by David Anderson and it seems fine. The only thing that I noticed is that the high-level folders in disk2 are owned by root after copying them back, but that doesn't seem to be an issue.

As always, make sure that you have reliable backup of your system before doing this

If you shrunk the second (visible) partition to create free space. The free space is directly below this partition. You can not add this space to the APFS container, because the free space is not adjacent to the APFS container. In other words, the partition with the HFS volume is between the APFS container and the free space. This prevents adding the free space to the APFS container.

One possible solution would be the following.

Move all the files from the HFS volume to an external drive.
Convert the partition containing the HFS volume to free space.
Add all the free space to the APFS container.
Shrink the APFS container and add a new HFS volume.
Move the files from the external drive to the HFS volume.

Another possibly better solution would be to replace partition with the HFS volume with a new APFS volume inside the existing APFS container. The steps are given below.

Move all the files from the HFS volume to an external drive.
Convert the partition containing the HFS volume to free space.
Add all the free space to the APFS container.
Add a new APFS volume to the APFS container.
Move the files from the external drive to the new APFS volume.

The external drive would not have to be a HDD or SSD. You could use a 256 GB flash drive (or maybe a smaller flash drive).