Unable to mount Filevault drive after system crash My old 2011 Mac Book Pro crashed, the SSD drive is a few months old and the motherboard is displaying a light but existing burn mark... It's fair to believe the motherboard is dead and that the drive is not.

There are a few files I would like to recover on a new mac but it seems that there is a problem there too. Let's mention here that the drive is using Filevault. The current machine I have is using Sierra, but there is a possibility that the old one was using High Sierra (can this generate incompatibilities?).

GUI approach

I see two hard drives in Disk Utility when I plug the bad boy in. Just to give a quick view:

AppleAPFSMedia
> Preboot
> Recovery
> VM
Crucial_CT1050MX300SSD1 Media

For both main drives mount is greyed out, and First Aid works fine (no error), for the rest (Preboot, Recovery and VM) the First Aid gives an error.

Verifying storage system
Checking the container superblock.
Checking the space manager.
Checking the object map.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
Storage system check exit code is 0.
Repairing file system.
Checking the container superblock.
Checking the space manager.
Checking the object map.
Checking the APFS volume superblock.
File system check exit code is 0.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.
An internal error has occurred.
Operation failed…

Mount can be clicked there and VM and Recovery mount fine (and without password). I should mention here that VM contains a "sleepimage" file of 8.59GB+. Side note, I am wondering if removing this could help me boot in a "fresh state" on the old machine.

Command line approach

diskutil cs list only shows a tree from the current hard drive.

diskutil list gives the following (I removed the internal disks):

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.1 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk3         1.1 TB     disk2s2

/dev/disk3 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +1.1 TB     disk3
                                 Physical Store disk2s2
   1:                APFS Volume                         326.2 GB   disk3s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 21.1 MB    disk3s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                509.8 MB   disk3s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      8.6 GB     disk3s4

My guess here is that disk2s2 should be my target, but nothing seem to work

➜  ~ diskutil mount disk2s2
Volume on disk2s2 failed to mount
If the volume is damaged, try the "readOnly" option
If the volume is an APFS Volume, try the "diskutil apfs unlockVolume" verb
➜  ~ diskutil apfs unlockVolume disk2s2
disk2s2 is not an APFS Volume
➜  ~ diskutil apfs unlockVolume disk3
disk3 is not an APFS Volume
➜  ~ diskutil apfs unlockVolume disk3s1
Passphrase:
Unlocking any cryptographic user on APFS Volume disk3s1
Error unlocking APFS Volume: The given APFS Volume is not encrypted (-69593)
➜  ~ diskutil apfs unlockVolume disk2s2
disk2s2 is not an APFS Volume
➜  ~ diskutil mount readOnly disk2s2
Volume on disk2s2 failed to mount
If the volume is damaged, try the "readOnly" option
If the volume is an APFS Volume, try the "diskutil apfs unlockVolume" verb
➜  ~ diskutil mount readOnly disk3
Volume on disk3 failed to mount; if it has a partitioning scheme, use "diskutil mountDisk"
If the volume is damaged, try the "readOnly" option
If the volume is an APFS Volume, try the "diskutil apfs unlockVolume" verb
➜  ~ diskutil mount disk3
Volume on disk3 failed to mount; if it has a partitioning scheme, use "diskutil mountDisk"
If the volume is damaged, try the "readOnly" option
If the volume is an APFS Volume, try the "diskutil apfs unlockVolume" verb

I am open to suggestions.

And the answer is ... please upgrade to High Sierra because whatever is called APFS is not a fixed thing that is supposed to be compatible accross systems implementing it.


Some songs can't be played using Music app on iOS When I open the music app, some songs have stop signs next to them, and whenever I want to pick a song it goes past it and then past a few more and then stops at a different song.

Also I can't hit the back arrow to go backwards through songs — the screen will go back temporarily and then remain on the song it was originally on.

How do I fix this? I can't listen to songs I want, and I can't move around with ease, it does it all for me.

The stop sign shows that the file can't be played. This is usually due to a corrupt song. When the music app attempts to play one of these corrupt songs, it fails and skips to the next song. This is why you can't go back a song, since when you go back it attempts to play the song, fails, and goes forward (back to the song you started at).

Make sure that the songs play in iTunes, then delete the songs from your device and re-sync them from your iTunes library, making sure that the sync is complete before disconnecting the device.


In Microsoft Word 2011, Shift seems to be acting as a Command - how do I make it stop? Some specific behaviors I'm observing in Microsoft Word 2011 on my Mac:

Shift + F moves the cursor into the Find box on the toolbar, instead of typing a "F" character.
Shift + 9 opens help instead of typing a "(".

It seems like the Shift key is functioning as a Command key. I haven't made any changes to my Word settings to customize keyboard shortcuts. I did install another IME last night and configure the shortcuts to switch between IMEs, but the behavior only occurs in MS Word.

Any ideas on restoring default functionality?

It's possible you could try resetting the default shortcuts from the settings...

This is an excerpt from a Microsoft support article on the Office shortcut settings...

  Reset all keyboard shortcuts

  On the Tools menu, click Customize Keyboard.

  To restore keyboard shortcuts to their original state, click Reset All, and then in the confirmation message, click Yes.

  NOTE   Keyboard shortcuts for tasks are reset.

Source


How to set MacBook Pro to use integrated video card during initial start up? When I turn on my macbook pro late 2011 I want it to use the integrated video card(not discrete one).

Is there some sort of setting I can set or a driver I can install or some bios setting to achieve this?

Yes, you can achieve that modifying certain EFI variable. I answered this other question with the full procedure to permanently disable discrete graphics card on startup.


Is iMessage tied to an apple account or a phone number? If I send someone a message through iMessage from my Macbook and they are to receive it on their iPad/iPhone, what will happen if that person has changed their mobile phone number since I added them as a contact?

Will they still get the message?

I initially contacted this person with an email address.

Usually iMessage is tied to the email associated with iCloud. If the person is using iMessage on their new number they would have logged in with their email address and hence receive the message.


Restore disk in single user mode I wonder if it is possible to restore one partition to another in command line? The similar operation can be performed with Disk Utility, but unfortunately I cannot boot in graphics mode (even safe mode does not work). Man page of diskutil does not describe such option. I use Mac OS X 10.7.

Normally you can't. If you boot into single-user mode you'll find that diskutil can't run because it's required modules aren't available.

You can try this: http://sabiancrash.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-run-diskutil-in-single-user-mode.html

But, the easiest way would be to use an OSX install CD. Boot from the CD (put it in, hold C at boot). When the installer first loads you can choose Disk Utility from the Tools menu.


See hundreds of installed font quickly Back on Mac OS 9 I used to have a great font browsing tool that allowed me to preview hundreds of fonts very quickly. Each font would only take up one line of text and everything was on the same page.
It could take some time to launch but you could simply scroll through all these lines to see every font very quickly.

I have been using FontBook for a long time but I'm not sure if there's a way to do this with FontBook... or with a font browsing app.

You could simply fire up an iWork app, select some text, and browse through the font list in Keynote, Pages or whatever app. They only render the font’s name in the font itself, though, not arbitrary text you type in.


After restoring all of my files are sitting under my documents. How can i clean up? I had to erase and reinstall everything on my macbook pro.  I was having issues restoring from timeline so I did a manual copy over from an external hard drive onto my computer.

The issue is that I don't see the Pictures, Music or Movies folders in Finder any more so I just put all of my files inside "My Documents".

I thought that itunes would reorganize my files when i imported everything into itunes but it doesn't seem like it as the machines still thinks i have 200+ GB of documents. (see screenshots) and it doesn't show any movies or music.

So my questions are:

how can i get these other folders (Music, Movies) to show up in My Finder (on the left side bar)
what is the "right" place to store my music, pictures, movies (assuming sitting in "My documents" isn't correct

You need to go to Finder's preferences, then to the sidebar tab to re-enable folders on the sidebar.

The correct place to put

Pictures: Pictures folder
iTunes: Music folder
Videos: Movies folder
Documents: Documents


Prevent admin/Jamf Pro from accessing/deleting 2nd partition The company I work for wants to install Jamf Pro on my "work" Macbook.

I want to create a 2nd partition on my Macintosh HD (with its own Mac OS version) for personal use.

If Jamf Pro is installed on the 1st partition, will/can it have access to the 2nd partition?

I guess if Jamf Pro is given admin rights, it can do whatever it wants, even delete the 2nd partition from within the 1st one, so my question is can I protect my 2nd partition in some way, before Jamf Pro is installed on the 1st one, so that it has no way of deleting/acccessing the 2nd partition ?

Thanks

Having 2 different "OSes" on 2 partitions should allow you to encrypt them indivually.

If you create a new partition, install mac there, and enable Filevault there, it should not be readible from the other boot partition.

I don't think you can stop it from being deleted though. If the software has admin access it can do what it wants with the disk.


Apple Push Notification Service: misbehaviour On a new test iMac (running Mavericks 10.9.2) I discovered 2 repeated errors related to apsd (Apple Push Notification Service daemon).

Repeated failing connections

A netstat command displays a huge number of not correctly terminated tcp connections. All these dead connections are toward a domain at Apple, and using port 5223/tcp.Actually I have 400 of them:

$ netstat -An
Active Internet connections
Socket           Flowhash Proto Recv-Q Send-Q  Local Address      Foreign Address    (state)
[...]
ffffff8024040d88 c23b1438 tcp4       0      0  •••.My_IP.••.50929 17.149.36.133.5223 ESTABLISHED
ffffff8022ef8d88 31793d40 tcp4       0    106  •••.My_IP.••.50604 17.149.32.8.5223   FIN_WAIT_1
ffffff8022cc2d88 c977e8ee tcp4       0    143  •••.My_IP.••.50491 17.172.232.142.522 FIN_WAIT_1
[...]

Repeated invalid certificates

Every each 90 minutes, apsd is telling it can't recognize a certificate. A large grep on system.log logs display this repeated error:

$ zgrep apsd /var/log/system.log.[0-6].gz
[...]
/var/log/system.log.0.gz:May 25 00:48:01 ••.My_name.My_domain.•• apsd[106]: Unrecognized leaf certificate
/var/log/system.log.0.gz:May 25 02:18:22 ••.My_name.My_domain.•• apsd[106]: Unrecognized leaf certificate
/var/log/system.log.0.gz:May 25 03:48:44 ••.My_name.My_domain.•• apsd[106]: Unrecognized leaf certificate
[...]

Related documentation

I found here the way to shut up this daemon:

How to disable Apple Push Notification Service (apsd) on OS X 10.8?

I didn't find here any explanation on how this daemon is working, how it is started or stopped:

man apsd

I found here a correct explanation of the behaviour of apsd seeing a wrong certificate:

Unrecognized leaf certificate.

Questions

This daemon is clearly misbehaving and typical of many security problems
(bad connection, bad certificate validation, data leak…).

How should this daemon work?
Which service is it useful to?
Is this daemon functioning with these repeated misbehaviours?
How may I check it?
How might I have fired this misbehaving daemon?
And finally, shouldn't I stop it definitively?

The service is used for delivering you push notifications. Push notifications usually appear in the Notification Center in the top right corner of your desktop. Read more about it here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5362

If you disable the service, you'll probably lose notifications for events such as received iMessage-messages, Facetime calls and notification from websites that you have requested notifications from.

From what you write, there does not seem to be a weighty reason for disabling it. It is a normal, system service that should not pose a problem to your system.

The connections in FIN_WAIT_1 state does not pose a problem to your system. You can safely ignore it (in those numbers).

You can also safely ignore the log message. The log message does not indicate that there has been a "data leak" as such.

The reason for the log message is that Apple uses a large number of servers for sending your push notifications. Your computer will connect to a (somewhat) random of those servers. The server will present a generic certificate for the service, and not one customized to the exact "sub-server" you have connected to. That is the cause of the log message. This is something Apple needs to fix on their servers, but it is a known bug and not something you yourself can do anything about.

This does not mean that you lose encryption or anything like that, but it might mean that your system could be vulnerable to a Man-In-The-Middle attack, where you could be sent falsified Push Notifications. Whether that is indeed the case would require further research. It is most likely that Apple employed some sort of certificate pinning or similar to avoid this type of exploit. The likelihood that you should be attacked this way is pretty low anyhow. I.e. don't worry about it.

I don't see why you say the daemon is "misbehaving". It is not misbehaving more on your computer than on any other computer. You could say that it is misbehaving, but it is doing so by Apple's design. So instead, create bug reports with Apple to let them know that you're seeing a problem.

Of course, if you do not actually use Push Notifications for anything, you can safely disable it.


iPad Mail app doesn't completely search inbox or contact I tried to use my Mail app connected to Hotmail and Gmail to search for emails in my inbox and contacts, but the app doesn't fully search my emails in the inbox nor the contacts I have saved. What should I do to fix this?

Same experience. The only way I found was to go back to the good old desktop.


Keyboard macros with Quicksilver I would like to use Quicksilver to insert a given text in the active window at the current cursor location. Is this possible?

One solution might be that I have a collection of files with the required text snippets and when I type the name I get a command that says something like "Insert content of file in current document." However, I could not find such a command in the default list. I also tried to install the "Text Manipulation Plugin", but it appears that it doesn't offer this kind of functionality. One answer on Superuser suggests that this might still be possible, but did not reveal how: https://superuser.com/questions/113645/keyboard-macro-program-for-os-x

Alternatively, I have looked into Applescript and it seems to be an easy exercise there. But I wonder if there is any alternative to writing dozens of Applescripts and triggering them using Quicksilver.

Sounds like the exact use case for the Shelf Plugin for Quicksilver. That plugin gives you a place where you can put stuff (can be anything you can have in the first pane in Quicksilver, but in your case it will be text snippets) and then easily call them up again and use them.

For that to work you need to install both the Shelf Plugin and the Clipboard Plugin.
Then you can call up Quicksilver, enter a text snippet in the normal Quicksilver text entry mode and choose "Put on Shelf" as action.

To see what's on the shelf, you call up Quicksilver, and use the shortcut ⌘+⌥+s. That brings up a little window showing you all the things on your shelf. when that window is open, you can also use the mouse to drag any text to that window to add it to the shelf.

The best way to use the things on the shelf is this: Set up a trigger with "Shelf" as the object and "Show contents" as action. That opens the contents of the shelf in the normal Quicksilver interface, so you can search them or just scroll through them. Once you selected the text snippet, you can use the "Paste"/"Paste as Plain Text" actions to paste it in your document.

There are some more cool things about that plugin: If you use the mouse from time to time, you can have easy access to the shelf window by dragging it to the side of the screen. If it's close enough to the edge of the screen, the window will slide into the edge and hide there. To call it up again, just move the mouse to that edge of the screen and it will slide out again. You can then use the mouse to drag-and-drop stuff from the shelf to wherever you need them.

The Clipboard Plugin has a similar window that provides a history of what you copied and pasted, which is also very handy.


How to download entire iCloud photo library to external drive attached to my MacBook I have a large iCloud photo library (60K + images).  I want to keep my iCloud library as it is and make a copy of it onto an external drive (attached to my MacBook, running Big Sur).  What is the easiest way to do this please?

Sure. Once your library is safely moved to the external, change the setting in Photos to download all images.

Can i store and access iphotos library on external hard drive (and still have it backup to my cloud network)?
https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/download-photos-to-your-mac-from-icloud-phtfa50fd1ec/mac
Verify you’re backing up your Mac and the external drive
Wait a week and then delete the old photos library from internal storage so you can free up that space and not have two libraries and metadata hanging around

Apple documents step 1 as well - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201517


NTFS appears every time Every time I boot my Mac, an "NTFS for Mac OS X" window appears.
In the settings I can't change this.
Here is the window

I have El capitan 10.11.4
I found this:

To resolve the issue you need to delete the service which is starting Preferences Panel with NTFS for Mac OS X.

Go to Applications - Utilities
Open Terminal
Type in

sudo rm /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.paragon.NTFS.notify.plist

Press Enter and provide Administrator password
Press Enter again

Preferences pane will not pop up again.

But the file com.paragon.NTFS.notify.plist does not exist.
Any solution?
PS: sorry for my english, im from Argentina
PPS: It does not appear as part of the Login Items

Try this:

Go to System Settings -> Users and Groups
CLick the Login Items tab.
If the program is listed here, you should be able to hide it when logging in by check the box next to the program item or if you don't want it to open automatically (in case you don't need to access NTFS formatted drives) you can highlight the item and click the minus in the bottom og the window right under the list of items.


Dell mouse triggering double-click on almost every single-click My generic Dell mouse behaves pretty strange compared to all other mice I have used with my MacBook. Almost every single-click is treated as if it were a double-click. Both the right and left button. The same mouse does not exhibit this behavior under Windows nor Ubuntu Linux.

I have searched and found hints that I should reduce the double-click speed setting in System Preferences: Mouse. But the setting is already as low as it can go.

I find this mouse very comfortable and want to continue to use it. I hope someone can offer another suggestion on how to correct this odd behaivor.

Unless this mouse behaves differently on a different computer, I would say that the mouse is bad.

I work for a company that uses Dell almost exclusively, and I can tell you that this is exactly what happens when the mouse starts failing. They begin intermittently processing single clicks as double clicks.

We throw them away when this starts happening.


How can I rotate a video by a few degrees? I've taken a fairly tilted video and want to rotate it to be level, how can I do this?  I'm open to any third-party apps but purely apple solutions are better.  I have FCPX, but I don't know if I can use that.

Import the video in FCPX (don't worry about creating optimised/proxy media, etc).
Create a project and add the clip.
Use Transform (⇧T) to rotate (and scale) the clip as appropriate.
Export.


Sudden greyscale shift on Macbook Air I think this is a duplicate of an old question without a good answer: Display appears different on two accounts using same color profile
My child was doing schoolwork on her school-issued Macbook Air. Suddenly lighter greys are totally white. This generally gives the images on the screen a vague feeling of being "off", and pixellates all curved edges. The biggest problem is that text on some of her sites is unreadable.
I've checked the following:

Color profiles - it looked like it was using the default, but a cycled through a few built-ins. I could see noticeable changes to color balance, but the light greys remained the same as white. Also deleted contents of ~/Library/ColorSync/.
Accessibility - my child has accidentally inverted colors before, this isn't that. No other accessibility settings seemed related to color.
Display settings - Modifying brightness was also fruitless. The screen overall got brighter or darker, but still couldn't distinguish between light grey and white
Rebooting - colors look fine until shortly after logging in - seems connected to user profile somehow.

Here are some images to demonstrate the issue. This is a generic color test image:

On the Mac, it looks like this (simulated with photoshop):

Any solution would be appreciated, but if there is a keyboard shortcut that can cause this, it would be the most likely explanation (8 year old says they "might have rested their arms on the keyboard" during a class meeting)

Best guess is Display Contrast.
That will affect the on-screen image, but will not translate to a screenshot. Screenshots are taken before that filter is reached. The on-screen image will be affected similarly to your Photoshopped version. [It will actually compress the blacks a bit too, so not exactly the same as your image.] Almost like putting a really agressive curve on it -

System Prefs > Accessibility > Display. [from Mojave, things may have moved a bit in Big Sur]
Set Display Contrast hard left for 'normal'. All other checkboxes in there should be off, except shake mouse.

There is a key command for it, though I would expect that by default this would be inactive…
System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Accessibility


Shortcut to open just saved PDF in Preview I find myself often having to search for a PDF I just created to open it in Preview.  This waste of time is begging for automation, though can't figure out how to do this in Keyboard Maestro, for example.  Any ideas on how to automate this so that a keyboard trigger will open it?

Regardless of how you are creating them, you can create a Finder window with a smart search that shows files created within the last day, and then sort that window by creation date. The most recent file you've created will be on the top.


extract the top-level domain and the second-level domain from a URL I'd like to extra the top-level domain and the second-level domain from a URL like "https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/ask"

Example URL with desired result below.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/ask
   stackexchange.com

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/science/5g-cellphones-wireless-cancer.html
   nytimes.com

https://nextdoor.com/news_feed/?post=117602&ct=-A17-ghvVOF0tfn9vptW_5a7JOBEyP4w6_hJAZUnMQqN56952&ec=OWKiQRDj9vEHefhwfGYAE0s%3D&lc=1002&is=tpe
   nextdoor.com

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007B60SCG/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1
   amazon.com

http://www.verizon.net/index.php
   verizon.net

I'm ignoring those multi-tier domains. I'd prefer to use Bash on macOS.

There are lots of pages on getting the full domain name:

Extract domain name from URL using bash shell parameter substitution

https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/get-extract-domain-name-from-url-in-linux-unix-bash/
echo http://example.com/index.php | awk -F[/:] '{print $4}'

https://stackoverflow.com/a/11385736/1360075

I do not need this level of perfection.

https://github.com/john-kurkowski/tldextract

As you are already using awk and are looking for a simple solution:

awk -F/ '{n=split($3, a, "."); printf("%s.%s", a[n-1], a[n])}' <<< 'http://www.example.com/index.php'
      ^ ^   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^                  ^^^^^^^^^^^^
      | |          |                                  |
      | |          |                            last two elements
      | |          |
      | |          +--- Split the 3rd field (aka the part after //) into
      | |               the array 'a', using '.' as the separator for splitting.
      | |               Returns the number of created array elements in 'n'.
      | |
      | +-------------- The awk code between the '' gets run once for every
      |                 input line, with the fields split by -F/ stored in
      |                 $1, $2 etc. In our case $1 contains "http:", $2 is
      |                 empty, $3 contains "www.example.com" and $4 etc. the
      |                 various path elements (if there are any)
      |
      +---------------- Split the input lines into fields, separated by '/'


How do I access my google chrome sync'd bookmarks on my iPhone while I'm out n about? I once used Foxmarks, then delicious and now google chrome bookmarks.

I think each one has sucked in different ways, but i'm at a stage where i'm using google for hosting all my core info, it makes to put bookmarks with them too.

Delicious just never innovated in chrome, and stayed a FF thing.

I like google chrome bookmarks cos they're with my google account and they sync nicely and quickly. Organization is nice too. Oh, and free

But how do I access it from afar?

Ever use X-marks? I use it for firefox and it's free and easy. Whenever you close firefox it syncs. If you need to access it from a different browser, you just go to xmarks.com and put in a name and password, and it takes you to your bookmarks as clickable links.


App to display IP address in menu bar? I deal with a lot of external servers where the firewall must be configured to allow SSH access.  I frequently need to know my external IP address, and it changes often.  Does anyone know of an application that will determine my external IP address and display it in the menu bar?  preferably with a copy to clipboard option?  I'd write one myself but Objective-C is not my thing.

This small application runs in the background and shows the current IP
  dddress of your Mac in the menu bar. There are options available to
  customize the appearance of the menu entry. The IP dddress is updated
  regulary. Switch on the Router option if you are behind a router or
  gateway. You can still see your local IP address in the menu.

https://www.monkeybreadsoftware.de/Software/IPinmenubar.shtml

  Do you need your computers IP address often? If so, IPMenulet is
  likely the quickest way to have the number handy all the time, it’s a
  free and simple menu item that displays your current external IP
  address in the Mac OS X menu bar, there’s no other frills or features.

  You can download IPMenulet now (direct .dmg download – link changed
  visit dev site instead) or visit the developers website here for more
  information and to view the simple tools source code.

http://osxdaily.com/2011/06/30/show-ip-address-menu-bar-mac/

And the associated Google Search :

https://www.google.fr/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=ip+menubar+os+x&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=N-0WVve4KMe7bpKHpogO


How can I identify files and programs connected to the kernel_task process in Mac OS? I understand that the kernel_task process is linked to several .kext files found in System/Library/Extensions (and possibly Library/Extensions ?)  How can I identify which files are contributing to the 400+ MB memory usage identified in Activity Monitor?  Is there anything I can do to uninstall or delete unneeded processes to reduce memory usage here?

I looked for some generic commands that display/manipulate kernel extensions. kextstat got my attention and based on its output, the 4th column is

  The number of bytes of kernel memory that the kext occupies.  If this is zero, the kext is a built-in part of the kernel that has a record as a kext for resolving dependencies among kexts.

The only problem was that its size was in hexadecimal. So I converted the hexadecimal to decimal and printed only relevant information (like kext bundle id).

kextstat -l -k | awk '{n = sprintf("%d", $4); print n, $6}' | sort -n

Breaking it down:

kextstat -l -k - print a list of loaded non-built-in kexts
| awk '{n = sprintf("%d", $4); print n, $6}' - pipe the output to awk, convert the 4th "size" column from hexadecimal to decimal, print that and the kext bundle id.
| sort -n - pipe the output to sort command and sort the list using numerical comparison (so that "10" is not less than "1 ").

You can pipe the output to tail -n 3 to get top 3 memory hoggers. Here are mine:

1757184 com.apple.nvidia.driver.NVDAGK100Hal
2572288 com.apple.nvidia.driver.NVDAResman
3923968 com.apple.driver.AirPort.Brcm4360

Update: you can also pipe this to grep -v com.apple to see which non-apple kexts are loaded.


What does "Other" represent when looking at iTunes representation of free space on an iDevice? In the graphical space representation of my iPhone, the Other category takes a pretty big chunk.

How can I find out what is in the Other category?  If it's text messages from the last 4 years that I've owned iPhones, how can I browse them?

What is the Other space

On an iPhone, the Other storage can be classified as one of the following:

    Browser cache
    Mail cache
    Mail messages
    Mail attachments
    Safari's Reading List
    iTunes Backups
    Effects of jailbreaking your iDevice
    Game data
    Saved data files
    Call history
    Notes
    Media
    Voice memos

How to Remove It

Just follow these steps (Check the articles listed below for more information):

Delete the browser cache (and Reading Lists in Safari).
Delete and re-add your mail account.
Remove unimportant text messages.

This will allow you to remove the majority of the extra "stuff" that clogs your space. PhoneClean, referenced below, is a great tool that will do it all for you, so if you just want to remove the most amount of space in the least amount of time, just use that.

Links and Resources

http://appducate.com/2013/01/reclaim-other-storage-space-on-ipad-iphone-and-ipod/
http://www.imobie.com/support/what-is-the-other-on-my-iphone.htm
http://www.cultofmac.com/133183/how-do-i-get-rid-of-the-other-data-stored-on-my-ipad-or-iphone-ask-macrx/

PhoneClean is some freeware that frees up space by removing hidden files. I can't vouch for its reliability, but I've heard some good things about it, so check it out.


gptsync showing blank GPT and MBR partition table background

I have Lion 10.7 and Windows 7 64 bit (Boot Camp) installed on my Mac Mini.

They both boot fine. But when I tried to run Windows 7 from Parallel using existing Boot Camp, I encountered problem stating PRL_ERR_DISK_FILE_OPEN_ERROR (0x80021014).

After some googling, I found it is caused by GPT and MBR misaligned and can be corrected by using gptsync tool of rEFIt.

I installed rEFIt in my Lion partition and Partition Inspector shows a report with GPT and MBR misaligned.

    Current GPT partition table:
     #      Start LBA      End LBA  Type
     1             40       409639  EFI System (FAT)
     2         409640    740644007  Mac OS X HFS+
     3      740644008    741913543  Mac OS X Boot
     4      741914624    976773119  Basic Data

    Current MBR partition table:
     # A    Start LBA      End LBA  Type
     1              1       409639  ee  EFI Protective
     2         409640    740644007  af  Mac OS X HFS+
     3      740644008    741913543  ab  Mac OS X Boot
     4 *    741914624    976771071  07  NTFS/HPFS

problem

The problem is when I boot Mac mini in rEFIt and run gptsync in shell it only shows

    Shell> gptsync
    Error: Not Found returned from gptsync.efi
    Current GPT partition table:
    Current GPT partition table:

So...

What was I doing wrong? And how could I sync GPT and MBR table with or without gptsync.

Update

I manage to run gptsync on Mac using enhanced gptsync from here. Now the problem changed to

Writing new MBR...
gptsync: Data write failed at position 0: Bad file descriptor

I boot Fedora 13 Live CD and use terminal to do the following

su
gptsync /dev/sda

and my HDD has GPT and MBR synced!!

Now I can use parallel with existing (boot camp installed) Windows in my Mac mini.


Extended Desktop to Mac book from Macbook pro I have two Mac one is mac book and other Is Mac book Pro and i am looking for a way so i can use macbook as a extended Monitor for MAc BOok Pro.

is there a way to do it .

thanks in advance

It is likely not supported.

This article (apple.com) says how to use an iMac as a second display but makes no mention of using a MacBook(Pro) as one. Which usually means it is not supported.


Connecting from OS X 10.8 to MySQL I have a local network at home and am trying to develop some program. The program is cross-platform and it should connect to a MySQL server.

The server is set up on the Linux box and it accepts remote connections as I can successfully connect from Windows machines with Connector/C library. The server accepts connection on the standard port 3306.

However, when I try to connect from a Mac laptop (running OS X 10.8) to MySQL a connection is not established. I initially thought that this is due to the fact that my Mac does not display its host name/computer name in the router and therefore the network is confused. But even after applying what was suggested at this link, I still can't connect.

So now I'm wondering if OS X is running some kind of firewall where I need to unlock an outgoing port 3306 so that the connection will go through. Or there is some other thing that prevents the connection.

The port is open on the router, so there is no issues there.

So is there anything I can fix on the Mac side or at least check?

Edit:

I'm trying to connect using Connector/C from my program compiled with Xcode. An exact same code works fine from Windows (i.e. connection is established). All 3 machines are on the same home network. Calling mysql_error() does not produce any errors, but MYSQL pointer is NULL after calling mysql_real_connect().

Edit 2:

Here is what ifconfig shows:

MyMac:dbhandler igorkorot$ ifconfig
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
    options=3<RXCSUM,TXCSUM>
    inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
    inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
    inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
gif0: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1280
stf0: flags=0<> mtu 1280
en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
    ether b8:e8:56:21:e0:c0
    inet6 fe80::bae8:56ff:fe21:e0c0%en0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4
    inet6 2601:140:4003:860:bae8:56ff:fe21:e0c0 prefixlen 64 autoconf
    inet6 2601:140:4003:860:65c6:8063:98a:4650 prefixlen 64 autoconf temporary
    inet6 2601:140:4003:860::1088 prefixlen 64
    inet 192.168.1.3 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
    media: autoselect
    status: active
p2p0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 2304
    ether 0a:e8:56:21:e0:c0
    media: autoselect
    status: inactive

So opening Network Utility and trying to scan for 3300 - 3310 at 192.168.1.3 does not produce anything. It just says this:

Port Scan has started…

Port Scanning host: 192.168.1.3

Port Scan has completed…

Trying to scan the machine where MySQL is I get following:

Port Scan has started…

Port Scanning host: 192.168.1.2

     Open TCP Port:     3306        mysql
Port Scan has completed…

Step one is to ensure your ports are open and there isn’t a network issue.

In the Finder, open /Applications/Utilities/Network Utility.app

Then choose "Port Scan". Enter the IP address (or the name if DNS is set up in your network) of the Linux Box and scan all ports less than 4000.

A success would look like your results:

Port Scanning host: 192.168.1.2

     Open TCP Port:     3306        mysql
Port Scan has completed…

That should be a quick check that the network and/or DNS are working. It's almost certainly not being blocked - you have to do a lot of non-default work to block arbitrary outbound ports.

If not, you’ll need a follow on question with enough details for someone to help.

If the network is working, you can be assured it’s not related to OS X and perhaps focus on a code level question on Stack Overflow.


Switch Windows in Pages So I'm using Pages on my Mac and I once was able to switch the windows (NOT the application, but the windows in Pages) with the shortcut command + < or command + >. Now, they apparently removed this function.

In other applications like Safari it does still work. Do you know how I can activate this function again?

Thanks in advance!

It looks like Pages overwrites the command + < shortcut to zoom out the view even though that's the default shortcut for moving focus between windows on a German keyboard.

You can go in to System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortucts to redefine that shortcut in Pages. Click App Shortcuts, click the + button, select Pages from the Application list, enter your equivalent of "Zoom Out" for the menu title, and enter a new keyboard shortcut.

In my example, I assigned command + back tick to Zoom Out and now in Pages that shortcut zooms out the view instead of switching windows.


Disk Utility Image from "BOOTCAMP" creating empty dmg I have a very complicated and time consuming Windows 10 install on my mid 2018 Macbook Pro (running 10.14.6 Mojave) Bootcamp partition.  Virtualization (including Parallels 15 with Metal support) is not an option as this install is for Oculus Rift development which requires a very specific driver setup and as much video memory as possible from my eGPU.

I am also using Parallels 15 to run from the bootcamp partition when I'm in Mac OSX and I don't need to run the Oculus (again the drivers are different for display so this is useful to modify files, or do development when I do not need to run the Oculus).  I only mention this as maybe there is something Parallels does to the partition that confuses Disk Utility?

I would like to create a backup of the bootcamp partition in order to restore later if needed.  I have seen several people use Winclone, SuperDuper as well as vanilla Disk Utility with dd and hdiutil.  I would prefer not installing any external software as I know this should be totally possible with the already installed software.

When I follow the instructions online here.  The first step is to simply create a dmg image of the bootcamp partition with Disk Utility by right clicking on the Bootcamp partition and selecting Image from ... where '...' is the name of my Bootcamp partition.  I leave Format: as read-only and Encryption as none.  When I hit save it unmounts the partition and gives me an alert to grant permission for the operation:

diskimages-helper wants to make changes.  Touch ID or enter your password to allow this.

I would prefer to grant Disk Utility and any helpers permissions so I don't have to allow every time as I'm curious if this is part of the problem.  Once I do grant permission Disk Utility continues with creating the disk and reports that is was successful.

here is the detailed output:

Creating disk image from “BOOTCAMP” (disk0s3)

Unmounting “BOOTCAMP”
Preparing imaging engine…
Reading Master Boot Record (MBR : 0)…
   (CRC32 $90E6AEF8: Master Boot Record (MBR : 0))
Reading  (Apple_Free : 1)…
   (CRC32 $00000000:  (Apple_Free : 1))
Reading  (Type 72 : 2)…
   (CRC32 $6B3CCE6A:  (Type 72 : 2))
Reading  (Apple_Free : 3)…
   (CRC32 $00000000:  (Apple_Free : 3))
Adding resources…
Elapsed Time:  1.864s
File size: 11023 bytes, Checksum: CRC32 $A711D232
Sectors processed: 500469760, 11 copied
Speed: 3.0Kbytes/sec
Savings: 100.0%

Operation successful.

The problem, however, is that I am trying to do this on a 256 GB Bootcamp partition but the dmg created is only 11kb.  It only takes a second to generate it as well.

Why is Disk Utility not copying the drive?  Can I use dd directly on the bootcamp partition instead?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT:

I noticed that although my dmg is only 11kb when I continue on and use hdiutil:

hdiutil convert -format UDTO -o BOOTCAMP.img BOOTCAMP.dmg

The output:

hdiutil convert -format UDTO -o BOOTCAMP.img BOOTCAMP.dmg
Reading Master Boot Record (MBR : 0)…
Reading  (Apple_Free : 1)…
Reading  (Type 72 : 2)…
Elapsed Time: 36.230s
Speed: 6.6Gbytes/sec
Savings: 0.0%
created: /my path to my folder/BOOTCAMP.img.cdr

The output file is 115GB.  Perhaps someone with more knowledge about Disk Utility could explain how the dmg works?  Is it just referencing the Bootcamp partition in some way?  Or is this 115GB file just garbage?

Disk Utility's ability to do block-copy was never very good, and was further hamstrung when APFS entered the scene and the job of handling DMGs was handed over to the Finder. It has always had troubles dealing with non-Apple file-systems, which is the main reason Winclone was born.

You're dealing with a container-ised NTFS volume, there aren't any tools in macOS that can do more than send files back & forth. Tim Perffitt's method was to give Winclone its own APFS-and-NTFS-savvy rsync framework, and to the best of my knowledge is unique.

One thought does occur though: You could pop one of Microsoft's free Windows 10 VM images into VMware Fusion or Oracle's VirtualBox (instead of running the Boot Camp install through a VM engine), mount your big NTFS partition into the VM and then use a Windows file-transfer method (e.g. Macrium Reflect or something rsync-based) to shuttle your stuff from the internal partition to an external target.


Software to record and playback mouse movement/clicks and keyboard presses? I was wondering if there was any software out there that could record mouse/keyboard input and allow you to play back the input that was made?

I've tried using Automator but for some reason it's not picking up all my input and when I play it back it does the wrong thing and gets into a mess. I've also tried using Systems Events in AppleScript but I can't get the "click" command to work at all.

Thanks!

Keyboard Maestro supports both creating macros by recording them and recording and playing back temporary macros:


Headless Mac mini: Share Screen + FileVault At the office we have a Mac mini that will be used to run a Teamcity agent. It is a requirement from our security department that we enable FileVault on this machine.

I will also need to manage remotely (via Screen Sharing) this Mac mini from my laptop. I don't want to have to plug in a monitor + mouse + keyboard to manage the build agent.

On this Mac mini, we have 2 accounts: 1 admin account, and 1 teamcity account (standard user). Since the plist file that will run the agent is located in /Users/teamcity/Library/LauchAgents, I currently need to log in (via the login screen) as teamcity for the agent to start.

My problem is that after I restart the Mac mini, I can't "Share Screen" with the Mac mini.

The only solution around this that I found is to manually log in (from the login screen) to the teamcity account. Of course, I don't want to have to plug in a keyboard + monitor to start the agent.

My question is: how can I remotely "Share Screen" to a FileVault-enabled Mac, if the target user (teamcity) is not logged in?

Other answers here are correct - it is not possible to remotely access a freshly-booted Mac with FileVault enabled without physical access (FileVault operates 1 layer closer to actual software than a 'traditional' BIOS or firmware password).

It is, however, possible to remotely reboot a Mac and force it to allow remote access even with FileVault enabled, provided you issue the correct command:

sudo fdesetup authrestart

Apple calls this 'Authenticated Restart' official semi-documentation is available here, with a more in-depth view from C|Net gives a high-level description of its workings.

Note that if a Mac is not restarted with this command (a regular restart, powerloss, or otherwise), physical access will be needed to access the Mac. The command also (obviously) requires admin privileges to run.


How can I determine what application is asking "Where is GrowlHelperApp.App?" I recently upgraded to OS X 10.9 Mavericks and am now seeing a "Choose Application" dialog pop up every minute or two asking: "Where is the GrowlHelperApp.app?". I don't particularly want to buy the new version of Growl, so how can I determine which application is looking for it so that I can change it's preferences or remove it?

Update: It turns out that it was an old Dashboard widget that was looking for Growl. I found this out by deleting all of my Dashboard widgets since I haven't used it in a while, but I'd still be interested in finding out how one would discover what is launching this dialog.

You could have used sudo opensnoop to see what files are being opened or fseventer to see what files are being modified.

Those dialogs are often shown by AppleScripts that have reference a missing application. You could also have tried running mdfind GrowlHelperApp, but it doesn't search the contents of compiled scripts or scripts saved as applications.


Soundflower replacement on M1 Macs In the past, Soundflower has been a great way to record audio generated by applications on my Mac. Soundflower's GitHub page indicates that it does not (yet?) support M1 Macs. In the absence of this great utility, how have M1 Mac users gone about recording computer audio?

BlackHole is similar to Soundflower. Rogue Amoeba is better, but not free.
There's a discussion regarding Apple Silicon compatibility at
https://github.com/ExistentialAudio/BlackHole/discussions/227
I've never tried it myself (prefer RA) but it might be worth a shot.


Open Sans Chrome and Safari Render bug The "Open Sans" font for some reason just started looking terrible on both Chrome and Safari (on Mavericks 10.9.2), becoming some super thin and light font. Does anyone know what's up? I tried resetting my font cache, but it didn't work!

See the images below, (1) On Todoist.com (which uses Open Sans), and (2) On Google Docs, where my body text uses the Open Sans font. You can see in the 2nd image, the word "Rhapsody in Red" in the body is Open Sans Italics, which looks vastly different from the regular Open Sans. The problem does not affect the Italics version, only the regular version.

Try restoring the system fonts using the Font Book.app

Open and click Restore Standard fonts.


Does my Time Machine backup disc need to be dedicated? I have an external HD that's about 60% full. The remaining space is more than enough for a Time Machine backup of my hard drive. If I enable Time Machine using that disc, will it erase my existing files, or just use the free space?

If you want an encrypted backup, Time Machine will erase the contents on the drive as part of the encryption process. (It is a full disk encryption.) In that case, yes, you'll need a dedicated blank drive.


can you add an SSD without removing the original HD Possible Duplicate:
  Replacing SuperDrive with secondary storage?

I just bought my first Mac (MBP) and Id like to add an SSD drive without pulling or replacing my original factory drive.  Is it possible to fit and use both types?  early 2011 MBP 13.3 2.3 GHZ.

If the goal is to keep the HDD and add an SSD, articles document ways to replace the Superdrive with a SSD. If the goal is to keep all the machine's factory-installed parts intact, it would appear you would have to use an external SSD.


Lion Server iCal Location/Resource Calendar I have a Lion Server with iCal enabled.

Trying to set up some location and resource calendars, accessing them from Ubuntu clients, how can I work out the URL of these calendars?

I have worked it out for a user already (http://lions:8008/calendars/users/user123/calendar/), is there a way perhaps to see URLs on the server?

In iCal create a calendar entry with your resource or location in the invitation. Select the resource and click on the disclosure (the downward pointing triangle). Choose "Copy Invitee Address", your clipboard will have the uuid (unique id) of the resource, something like:

urn:uuid:0d426b70-8294-41a7-8b34-c2ee24cde743

Now remove the urn prefix ('urn:uuid:') and plug this into your browser for more details like so:

https://server/principals/__uids__/0d426b70-8294-41a7-8b34-c2ee24cde743/

Or for a caldav url use:

http://server:8008/calendars/__uids__/0d426b70-8294-41a7-8b34-c2ee24cde743/calendar

Unfortunately, on Lion Server I wasn't able to have users subscribe to this url due to permissions. Hopefully you will have better luck than I on that part.


File Access over https safe I have a mac mini server at home that has a USB 3.0 storage device attached where I store all my files. Anything from iTunes, iPhoto, documents, etc.

I want to know how safe it is by creating a VPN connection from my MacBook from anywhere in the world and accessing https://webdav.myserver.com and writing/reading files?

Is there anything I can do to make reading/writing more secure?

https://webdav.myserver.com will not be accessible over the web unless there's a VPN connection.

You could try to access your files using SSH (we call it SFTP).

To enable this feature on your server, navigate to System Preferences -> Remote Login and check it. You can also select which account has access to your server.

To access your file using SSH, you can either use command line (ssh) or GUI, for example Transmit (paid), CyberDuck (free)


Macbook not discovering Apple TV for Airplay after Mavericks update After updating my Macbook to Mavericks, the system is not longer discovering the Apple TV. What is the problem?

I think I found the problem, my Macbook is mid- 2010. Mavericks multiple-displays through Airplay only works for Macbook early 2011 or newer, as Apple states in this page

  Multiple Display with Apple TV and an HDTV works with Apple TV (2nd generation or newer), iMac (mid 2011 or newer), Mac mini (mid 2011 or newer), MacBook Air (mid 2011 or newer), MacBook Pro (early 2011 or newer), and Mac Pro (late 2013).

However, an app named AirParrot works for older systems.

More information in Apple Forums


I can't log into my iChat After iChat is open, I click the menu named 'iChat', inside it says "log into pancake44@me.com" (which is my Apple ID). I've clicked on that item but nothing else prompts me for a password afterwards.

The buddy list still says 'Disconnected'. I am using Leopard (10.5.8). I have changed my password before, but I'm never prompted to actually log in and update it.

I might not be understanding your problem correctly, but in the iChat menu, try selecting Preferences. From there, click on the Accounts tab. If you click on your account, there is a place to enter (and store) your password. Try entering your correct password there.


skill -KILL -u $user Command on Max OS X? Is there an alternative for the skill -KILL -u $user command on the Mac OSx. The basic requirement is I want to log out my current logged in user at end of shell script

This program logs out Linux log in user .

From the man page of skill

  These tools are obsolete and unportable.  The command syntax is poorly defined. Consider using the killall, pkill, and pgrep commands instead.

so you could use pkill -KILL -u uid.

But why kill every process with the KILL signal? You can just call exit after your script:

script.sh ; exit


2019 iPad 10.2" (128gb) vs iPad mini 5 (64gb) - which one to choose? I have an iPhone 7 and MacBook Air. Now planning to buy an iPad. But stuck between these 2 models. I will buy it mainly for Games, YouTube and Reading. I want to know the Pros and Cons from 1st-hand user experience. Please help.

You can compare all the model's specs from this page: https://www.apple.com/fr/ipad/compare/

It depends mostly on your budget, but I'd take the 2019 iPad for the wider screen which is better if you play and read a lot. You can connect an Xbox controller on both iPad, and they have the same battery life.


Unable to send text to another iPhone on same account I'm having issues sending messages/texts to my to wife's iPhone but she can send them to my iPhone and they show up with my ID?

Can anyone tell me why and how I can fix it?

To address this issue I'd recommend checking the iMessage settings on both phones. If they're both using the same Apple ID for iMessage, they may have trouble sending to each other. Changing the iMessage Apple ID will not mess up anything else (like the Store, iCloud, etc).

To check it, go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive

A button at the top of that screen will show you which Apple ID is being used for iMessage. If they're the same on both phones, you'll need to sign out on the one you wish to change. To do this, tap the "Apple ID: " button and then choose Sign Out.

Then you'll be able to sign in to iMessage with a different Apple ID, existing or new. I hope this helps!


Apple insisting my ID info is not correct, but it is, what to do? My Apple ID is an old email. I have just tried to update some apps but it's telling me my password I entered is wrong (it isn't).

Then I tried to reset my password. As my Apple ID is a no longer a working email, I chose the option to answer a security question. I put the answer in and it tells me my information is incorrect.

I know my Apple ID is an old email, but I also know that my password is NOT incorrect although they say it is.

What should I do? I know the information I'm giving is correct but Apple isn't accepting anything except my Apple ID (now a disfunctional email address) and my birthdate?

I second that you should contact Apple support about this. There could be a few reasons why this is happening, but it's likely because the actual account name has been changed since you set up the account.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HE34

If you follow the steps in the article above it will tell you if there still is an Apple ID named after your old email address.


Stitch PDFs with a small overlay I have large A1 sheets that I want to digitise. With an A3 scanner I was able to get four PDFs

--------------
| 1    | 2   |
|      |     |
--------------
| 3    | 4   |
|      |     |
--------------

Is there a (simple) tool on macOS that I can use to stich the four PDFs in one single page? It would be nice if the tool would consider the small overlapping parts on the border to merge them in a nice way (as for panorama photos).

Edit

PDF is not a constraint, I could get the original in other formats
The files are old, hand drawn plans of a house (not panorama pictures)
I have more or less 20 of them, the process can therefore involve manual tasks
I just thought that this could be a pretty common task and that I was using the wrong search criteria for a tool (having documents bigger that the scanner). All what I find a tools to merge multiple PDFs with PDFs with multiple pages (but this can be easily done with Preview).
I also found some instructions with Photoshop (or Gimp) but they all seem (to me) to complicated for a task like this.

Whilst I am unaware of any easy to use software dedicated to stitching smaller images together (I'm sure there are some tool available on GitHub to do this); it is possible to do what you require simply using the stock Preview app, following the steps below:

Firstly, ensure your A3 images are saved as images rather than PDFs. Then, open the first A3 image in Preview.
Select all (⌘ + A), then copy (⌘ + C)
Select "Tools" From the menu bar, then select "Adjust Size..."

Firstly, click the small padlock icon to make sure the size adjustments are not locked. Now, assuming you are using landscape images, enter : Width = 9933 Height = 7016 PIXELS (ISO A1 paper size). If you are using portrait; simply swap the values.

This will instantly stretch the first image to A1 size. Now paste in the original first image (⌘ + V) and position it to the top left hand corner, ensuring to use the arrow keys for fine adjustments.
Now, open the second image in a new Preview window, select all (⌘ + A), then copy (⌘ + C) and and paste it into the new image we are creating (⌘ + V) and move it to one of the corners, ensuring to use the arrow keys for fine adjustments.
Repeat the step above for the remaining two pictures until you are satisfied with the positioning.
Finally, save as a new image.

Hopefully, you should now have an A1 sized image made up of your 4 component A3 images. Of course, Preview is in no way regarded as a professional image editing application and has only very limited functionality. Therefore, if you are willing to invest some money (or already have), Adobe Photoshop makes virtually the same process a whole lot easier. Alternatively, you could use the GIMP package for a more dedicated and less costly image editor


Is there a way to setup Yahoo mail for push with iOS5? It seems to check it on a schedule, regardless of what I do.
I've tried setting it up to masquerade as Exchange, but was not successful.

Yes Yahoo mail supports push, but failing sometimes. This is how to enable it:

Go to "Settings->Mail, Contacts, Calendars"
Tap "Fetch New Data"
Slide "Push" to ON (you can select Fetch period whatever you like)
Also from "Fetch New Data" page, tap "Advanced" and see that Yahoo! mail account has Push text on the right

It is easy to do, but sometimes Yahoo push just doesn't work.


Can't install Homebrew on OSX I am trying to install Homebrew on OSX El Capitan.  All latest OSX and Xcode updates have been installed.

I am using this command in terminal:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

And I get this response:

curl: (1) Protocol "https" not supported or disabled in libcurl

Elsewhere I read that you can run this command to fix:

sudo port install curl +ssl

But this gave me:

sudo: port: command not found

Can anybody help?

I am summarising my answer from comments.

In your case it seems that something has installed a version of curl without into https support into your local folder. Maybe you tried to compile it yourself (the standard .configure && make && make install procedure installs programs into /usr/local for example.

You can force the command to use system curl by replacing curl by /usr/bin/curl in it, thus use:

ruby -e "$(/usr/bin/curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

When you have Homebrew successfully installed you can re-install the curl in your local folder by using:

brew install curl

There might be some additional steps as you have to overwrite files that are already there. You might need to use the --overwrite option.


-bash: Applications/mvim: /bin/sh: bad interpreter: Operation not permitted I am getting a weird error with the mvim script that is supposed to start the MacVim interface.

See below for the issue. /bin/sh is just fine, mvim was chmod +x'd, other /bin/sh scripts run fine... I'm at a loss here.

jan@MacBook-Pro ~ $ file Applications/mvim
Applications/mvim: POSIX shell script text executable
jan@MacBook-Pro ~ $ head Applications/mvim
#!/bin/sh
#
# This shell script passes all its arguments to the binary inside the
# MacVim.app application bundle.  If you make links to this script as view,
# gvim, etc., then it will peek at the name used to call it and set options
# appropriately.
#
# Based on a script by Wout Mertens and suggestions from Laurent Bihanic.  This
# version is the fault of Benji Fisher, 16 May 2005 (with modifications by Nico
# Weber and Bjorn Winckler, Aug 13 2007).
jan@MacBook-Pro ~ $ chmod +x Applications/mvim
jan@MacBook-Pro ~ $ Applications/mvim
-bash: Applications/mvim: /bin/sh: bad interpreter: Operation not permitted

Below you can see that /bin/sh scripts run fine...

jan@MacBook-Pro ~ $ vim test.sh
jan@MacBook-Pro ~ $ chmod +x test.sh
jan@MacBook-Pro ~ $ ./test.sh
hi
jan@MacBook-Pro ~ $ cat test.sh
#!/bin/sh

echo "hi"

Hmm, so it seems OS X thought it was a good idea to quarantine my script, for some reason, and not tell me about it.

jan@MacBook-Pro ~ $ xattr -d com.apple.quarantine Applications/mvim

fixes the issue.


Epson Stylus Color Photo R200 won't print I have a Mac Mini (late 2012) with Mavericks installed. It is connected via USB to an Epson Stylus Color Photo R200 inkjet printer.

When I print, the print job window says

Stopped - Unsupported colorspace = -1, 2 pages

I have run Software Update.  This is the first time I have tried to use the printer, normally it connects to my old PC and works fine.

A new print driver for this printer was made available for Mavericks in September of '13. Have you downloaded and tried this new driver? I had to update the driver for a Epson Stylus Color Photo R300 for a client of mine to make it work on Mavericks.


Is there a way to encrypt a folder and then only allow certain processes to have access to that folder? I'm aware of technique for creating encrypted folders using disk utility.

But I believe once it is unlocked and mounted, any process owned as you or root could read that folder.

I'm looking for a way to encrypt a folder and then only allow certain procs access.

Here's a scenario:   Google chrome keeps a directory for cache data, bookmarks, history and the like.

I'd like to create an encrypted folder for this that is only unlocked for chrome.   And keep it encrypted for any backup software or scanners... things that could potentially be running as root that could override an filesystem perms.

As far as I know, there is no such software available on the net. You can turn on EFS encryption for your private folder, but Windows doesn't give you options to grant access rights for different processes, and EFS only works on NTFS partitions.

There is a third-party software called Lock My Folders, which works the similar way like EFS, and it lets you create a secure folder to transparently encrypt/decrypt the files inside. But it also lacks the feature of restricting process access to the encrypted folder.


Rstudio Server vs El Capitan I am trying to install RStudio Server in OSX El Capitan.

I did these steps from terminal

brew install openssl

brew install homebrew/science/rstudio-server

I have the login window at localhost:8787 but I can't login. If I run

sudo rstudio-server status

then I get

Could not find service "com.rstudio.launchd.rserver" in domain for

To check the installation I run

sudo rstudio-server verify-installation

and I get

21 Oct 2016 05:11:44 [rserver] ERROR system error 48 (Address already in use);
OCCURRED AT: rstudio::core::Error rstudio::core::http::initTcpIpAcceptor(SocketAcceptorService<boost::asio::ip::tcp> &, const std::string &, const std::string &) /tmp/rstudio-server-20161017-46697-nr3wo3/rstudio-
0.99.902/src/cpp/core/include/core/http/TcpIpSocketUtils.hpp:103; LOGGED FROM: int main(int, char *const *) /tmp/rstudio-server-20161017-46697-nr3wo3/rstudio-0.99.902/src/cpp/server/ServerMain.cpp:438

How can I fix this?

You forgot to install and launch the related launch daemon and modify some other things. To fix this do the following:

Copy a pre-made plist:

sudo cp /usr/local/opt/rstudio-server/share/com.rstudio.launchd.rserver.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.rstudio.launchd.rserver.plist

Check permissions:

sudo chown root:wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.rstudio.launchd.rserver.plist
sudo chmod 644 /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.rstudio.launchd.rserver.plist

Modify the plist:

sudo nano /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.rstudio.launchd.rserver.plist

and replace

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/usr/local/opt/rstudio-server/bin/rserver</string>
    <string>--server-daemonize=0</string>
</array>

by

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>/usr/local/opt/rstudio-server/bin/rserver</string>
    <string>--server-daemonize=0</string>
    <string>--auth-minimum-user-id=500</string>
</array>

This step is necessary because rstudio-server's default auth-minimum-user-id is 1000 and the common OS X user's first ID is 501, the second user's ID is 502 etc.
Copy a pam:

sudo cp /etc/pam.d/ftpd /etc/pam.d/rstudio

Launch the daemon and start rstudio:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.rstudio.launchd.rserver.plist
sudo rstudio-server start

Finally launch a broswer, enter localhost:8787 in the address bar and log-in with your OS X user credentials.

To stop rstudio server enter sudo rstudio-server stop. After a reboot you have to enter sudo rstudio-server start to start it again.

If you want the rstudio-server to be launched automatically while booting, stop the server, unload the launch daemon,

sudo rstudio-server stop
sudo launchctl unload -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.rstudio.launchd.rserver.plist

modify the file /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.rstudio.launchd.rserver.plist with nano and set the RunAtLoad key from false to true. Finally load the launch daemon again:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.rstudio.launchd.rserver.plist


How to open mailto: links in gmail / chrome instead of mail app? I would like to open mailto: links directly in chrome google web app instead of built-in mail app. Is possible

Have a look at your "Mail" app. Then Preferences, General, Default mail app.

Set it to Google Chrome.


Playing speed of podcasts set to super fast with no slow down option I have tried for about two months now to slow down the playing speed of my podcasts in Apple Podcasts on iPhone 6S (iOS 12.4.1) and have had no luck.
It always used to be the correct speed until one day podcasts started playing so fast you could barely understand them and they have never slowed down since.

I use VoiceOver and however much I turn the VoiceOver speed down it doesn't effect the podcast playing speed.

Any suggestions for how to fix this as I would like to be able to listen to podcasts again using Apple Podcasts? I cannot see a speed control anywhere.

Tap the sign 2x in the podcast app which you get in the app at the bottom left in Music Player overlay. It will reveal 0.5x, tapping again sets 1x, then 1.5x and then again 2x. You need to tap the music player first, not available in locked menu etc.

On the bottom, below the volume slider, there are three options: Speed, Airplay (or something that is used to set volume output device), and the three dots ( for more options). This order is from left to right. And on iPhone SE, and for most iPhones I guess, this fits the screen and doesn't need scrolling down. Scrolling further down, "Turn off after" and share menu etc appears.

https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT201859#listen


QuickLook blanks when displaying some images When using QuickLook to quickly look through multiple images (pressing space and then using the arrow keys to navigate), some images will not get displayed by QuickLook when hitting them up a second time (going back for example).

A GIF does a much better job than me showcasing the issue. So here's me previewing a few random images:

I have tried deleting

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.QuickLookDaemon.plist ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.QuickLookDaemon/Cache.db
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.QuickLookDaemon32/Cache.db
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.quicklook.ui.helper

and restarting, unfortunately to no avail.

Repairing permissions and restarting the Finder in 32-bit mode, as suggested  by others, don't appear to have any effect on this issue either.

This happens with all kinds of images, no matter their source or format.

This "blank Quicklook image" Bug is caused by the activation of the undocumented TextSelection-Feature.
As soon as I deleted that feature with this terminal command the blank images were never seen again ;-)

defaults delete com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection; killall Finder;

If this delete-command doesn't work for you, you could try to disable the feature with

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -boolean NO; killall Finder;


Force Mac to backup photos to iCloud I have recently enabled my Mac to backup photos from Photos.app to iCloud.

When I go to iCloud > Manage > Photos it says that there is 25MB of data in iCloud, however when I go to ~/Pictures and I right click on Photos Library and select Get Info it says that there is 1.1GB of data. I know this is true when I put them into another folder.

How do I force my Mac to upload my photos to iCloud?

This is not a duplicate of iCloud Photo Library - force upload since I have less then 250 photos so I am not exceeding the maximum limit.

I know this seems a bit stupid. I think it was because I was a bit impatient. My upload speed is 0.71Mb/s (that means it will take 3 hours 43 minutes to upload!). It has only uploaded 170MB/1.1GB. I have however had my computer asleep for a few hours though.

Even though I have posted this I would still like to know how to force upload incase I need to in the future.


Moving mail from 10.6 to 10.8... new computer I'm setting up a new computer and wanted to get my email contacts from 10.6.8 to 10.8.5 in Apple mail. I exported the mailboxes and I set up the accounts already... but no contacts show up when emailing. I tried copying the plist, but doesn't do anything. Will I have to copy the whole mail folder? I didn't want to muck this up since I already imported the mailboxes and set up the accounts?

If you're talking about the people that appear because they're previous recipients…

You can move these people by selection them from the Previous Recipients list (Window → Previous Recipients) then Add to Contacts.


Slow login on OS X Mavericks The login time period (the period of time between the password is entered and the dock is shown on the desktop) is extremely slow (~3 minutes). After the system is up it behaves normally.

How can I trace what login item(s) may slow the login process down?

Gil

Note the time when you enter your password to login.

Once logged in, run the Console application from /Applications/Utilities and look at the All messages log. Look back to the time you entered your password and what messages appear between then and now.

Anything seem suspicious? Any entries citing errors connecting to a network share, internet resource, etc?


How to get back old Wi-Fi-button behavior in Control Center? In iOS 11 when we disable the Wi-Fi in the control center it doesn't actually disable the radio. According to Apple, the device is disconnected from Wi-Fi and auto-join is disabled until

You turn on Wi-Fi in Control Center.
You connect to a Wi-Fi network in Settings > Wi-Fi.
You walk or drive to a new location.
It's 5 AM local time.
You restart your device.

When I disable Wi-Fi (or BT) I really want it off. Is it possible via some setting or application to get the old behavior back?

The Apple site you linked to indicates how to completely turn off Wi-Fi and Bluetooth:

  If you want to completely disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for all networks and devices, follow these steps:

  To turn off Wi-Fi, go to Settings > Wi-Fi and turn off Wi-Fi.
  To turn off Bluetooth, go to Settings > Bluetooth and turn off Bluetooth.

  For the best experience on your iOS device, try to keep Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on.


Alpine CDE-102 keeps iPod awake until battery drains I have an Alpine CDE-102 w/iPod cable (professionally installed) with which I use with an old 5th gen iPod Video 30gb. My goal is to just leave the iPod in the glove compartment and only remove it once a week or so to sync.

The problem is that when I turn the car off the iPod doesn't go to sleep, it just stays paused in the low power mode (display dimmed but not off). It will stay this way until the battery drains.

I found that if I just switch the lock switch to unlocked and back to lock while leaving the iPod connected to the stereo, this "wakes" the iPod up and allows it to then go to sleep shortly thereafter without disrupting the "pause". I should note that I do not have any issues with the iPod going to sleep when it is not connected to the Alpine.

After playing with it some more, I discovered how to get it to sleep without touching the iPod. If I just turn the car off after running the engine, the iPod does as described above (paused but not sleeping). However, if I then turn the car back on to accessory (without starting the engine) and wait a couple of seconds for the stereo to begin to initialize (the 'Alpine' name appears on the display) and then turn the car off the iPod will go to sleep. There is something about just turning the engine off that leaves the iPod in an unsleepable pause.

Turning the car back on is a little awkward, but less annoying than opening the glove box and flipping the lock switch back and forth.

Has anybody else has similiar issues and found a better solution?

I've found that with my 5thGen iPod (30GB Video, same as yours) that if I hold down the "pause/play" button, it goes into a deep-sleep mode (display off). Then I quickly push the "lock" switch so that I don't turn it back on.

This seems to work well for keeping my iPod charged up.


How do I get Safari to stop launching an app automatically? I upgraded my iPhone to iOS 7. Previously, when I clicked on a link from an e-mail telling me about a group discussion in LinkedIn, it opened LinkedIn in  Safari and took me right there. Now, Safari launches, but then as it processes, it then launches the LinkedIn app. The problem is, most times the discussion in LinkedIn is really just a link to a webpage. I'd rather just stay in Safari, especially since the LinkedIn app takes forever to load. I'm sure Safari does this with other apps, however, the circumstances haven't come up yet for me. I can't find it in the Safari settings or LinkedIn settings to stop this.

Updated to add:  I have found that if I go back to Safari after it tries launching LinkedIn and force a page refresh, Safari will load the mobile (rather than app) version of LinkedIn as desired.

In iOS 9, I've had success doing a long tap on the link and selecting "Open" from the pop-up menu. That opens a link and keeps it in Safari rather than jumping into an app (recently tested with an IMDB link from Google search results).


Is the iPhone 5s physically similar enough to the iPhone 5 to use a close fitting case? I wonder if there is any reason why a close fitting iPhone 5 case wouldn't also fit the iPhone 5s? It would be helpful to know whether the cutout for the camera or the various buttons (mute switch, sleep, volume) and lightning connector are close enough for hard cases to fit between the models (or vice versa).

Per Ars Technica:

  "Every measurement, right down to the 3.95 ounce weight and 0.30-inch thickness, is identical to the iPhone 5."

Visually from looking at photos the ports, buttons, etc. are all identically placed. Also, one of the image captions in that article:

  "The leather cases for the iPhone 5S will also fit the iPhone 5. This should also hopefully mean that third-party cases for the iPhone 5 will continue to fit the 5S."

The only possible issue would be the iPhone 5 LED flash vs the 5s' dual-LED flash. But as long as the cut-out on the third-party case looks like Apple's does (i.e. it goes around the camera and the LED in one cut-out), there shouldn't be any reason they don't fit.


How can I paste the selected text on macOS? I have selected some text and I want to use shift+insert like I do to paste the currently selected text on Linux. How can I do that on a MacBook?

I found the answer on Stack Overflow: it's ShiftCommandV to paste selected text, without copying the text first. This might be all you need (I'm delighted it's even possible - I assumed it wasn't); however, you could if you wished remap this key combination to something more like ShiftInsert using one of the apps suggested in the answers to Re-map keys on keyboard.


How to manually add ssh key to keychain? In the past year I've been using dsa keys to access several remote machines. On one of these machine, dsa keys have been deprecated so I simply switched to rsa. In doing so it seems that my key is not stored anymore in the keychain, so everytime I restart my computer I get asked for the passphrase.

To add the key I tried this:

ssh-add -k .ssh/id_rsa

But also this:

/usr/bin/ssh-add -k .ssh/id_rsa

It works until the next reboot.
If I open the keychain and look there for ssh I see the dsa key, the old one.
Which would be the correct way to add the new one?

Try adding a new item in the keychain app by pressing the small + Button at the bottom. It should look like this.


Run Script on Logout Without Use of Logout Hook I've been looking into running a few cleanup commands when a user logs out, however the old logout hook feature, although still functioning, has been deprecated for some time now so may not be with us for much longer.

Unfortunately, although launchd provides a convenient alternative to login hooks, there is no such obvious replacement for logout hooks.

I've already experimented with creating a shell script that is launched on login, and simply sleeps until a kill signal is received, however this doesn't seem to work (the script never receives the signal during normal operation).

Otherwise I'm not sure what the best way to run a quick command on logout would be? I know there are some third party utilities that can do it, but is there a "correct" way to do this anymore?

It seems that Apple isn't interested in a logout hook replacement, as they closed my issue inquiring about one.

However, one of the improvements in Yosemite is that launchd now properly sends signals down to shell scripts. What this means is that you can now do a log-out task like so:

Here's an example logout.sh:

#!/bin/sh
onLogout() {
    echo 'Logging out' >> ~/Logs/logout.sh.log
    exit
}

trap 'onLogout' SIGINT SIGHUP SIGTERM
while true; do
    sleep 86400 &
    wait $!
done

This will simply sleep (asynchronously, doing it synchronously without the ampersand doesn't seem to work) until it receives one of the trapped signals, at which point it will execute the onLogout function.

All you need to do is launch that script using a RunAtLoad launch agent or launch daemon and it will run at log-out or shutdown, though it's important to bear in mind that tasks only have a limited amount of time to complete before they are killed instead, so this shouldn't be used to run anything that takes a long time, or requires a network connection that could be delayed etc.

Of course this is of no use to anyone on Mavericks or earlier, but under Yosemite this now seems to work as expected; so I was actually doing it right in the first place, launchd just wasn't sending the signals properly :)

NOTE: For this to work the shell scripts seems to need to be executed directly by launched, i.e - it shouldn't invoked via sh. So if it were placed in ~/Library/Scripts/foo.sh your program arguments might look like:

<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
    <string>~/Library/Scripts/foo.sh</string>
    <string>bar</string>
</array>
<key>EnableGlobbing</key>
<true/>


Will the new MacBook be turbo charged? The new MacBook 12" has been launched and on the apple store the processor says

  1.1GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor (Turbo Boost up to 2.4GHz)

Does this mean that the Core-M processor will run at 2.4GHz or will it run at 1.1GHz?

If the Core-M does run at 1.1GHz would you be able to manual turbo boost it to 2.4GHz through some software?

It will likely run higher than 2.4 GHz in bursts and then throttle itself as heat builds up and/or all cores are busy constantly at which time you should expect full load 1.1 GHz or better.

So - it will run at both speeds and many others.

There is no indication that the Intel CPU works any differently in the MacBook than all the rest recent Mac hardware. The lower number is a steady state / worst case / all cores are active and running and the heat being generated by the CPU is being removed as designed - you get 1.1 GHz clock rate for hours long calculations.

When you wake the Mac from sleeping, it will generally start in power savings mode and the CPU only spins up cores / clock rate when there is work to do, but it will ramp up to the burst GHz (or possibly higher) once you have one thread worth of work to get done.

If your work is single threaded, you can expect performance similar to a 2.4 GHz clock rate CPU unless/until the internal temperature near the CPU raises close to the design limit.

Since this product isn't shipping, only Apple's engineers really know how the case without a blower will cool the processor and what loads will run at which speeds.

No Apple software allows you to "boost" things on previous MacBook / Pro / Air - so it's hard to guess if they will continue that pattern.


Microsoft Office, Exchange, Calendar, Snooze issue, Resending Invitation So here is a weird bug, I've created a Reoccurring Meeting in OSX Outlook 2011 but every time I hit snooze using OSX Notifications the Meeting Invite is sent out again with the same time. Why is this happening?

I can't confirm that this is a common behavior in Mac Outlook or Calendar. It's working as expected.

  Why is this happening?

It's a incompatibility issue with your Exchange Server. e.g. a outdated MS Exchange server version. Somehow your Mac Outlook changes are ignored or not being synced. What Exchange Server version do you use? Also make sure that you are running the latest Mac Outlook Version.

The best way is to get in touch with your ISP or Server Administrator, so he/she could take a look at the debug logfiles.


Should I be charging or discharging my smartphone when I'm using it at my desk? When I'm at my desk and using my smartphone, it is better to keep it charged or discharged?

If I use it while it's discharging I will use up my charge cycles?

Obviously this would be subjective to the smartphone model I'm using, but generally speaking from a li-io battery point of view?

Does the iPhone offer a better charging/battery lifespan efficiency?

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

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

In a nutshell, the key indisputable points are:

Apple lithium-ion batteries use fast charging to reach 80% of their capacity and then switch to slower trickle charging to complete the charge.
Charge your iPhone whenever you want. Many people believe you need to let them discharge 100% before recharging. This is not true.
Ambient temperature is one of the biggest factors in battery health/life. iPhones are designed to work at their best when ambient temperatures are between 0° to 35° C (32° to 95° F).
Store your iPhone where the temperature is between -20º and 45º C (-4º to 113º F). Don’t leave it in your car, because temperatures in parked cars can exceed 45º C (113º F).

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


How an I confirm my Bluetooth 3.0 Keyboard is encrypted? I have a MacBook pro Retina 15, Late 2013 running Mojave. I also have an off brand Bluetooth 3.0 Keyboard ( GeneralKeys PX-4068-675 ).

The keyboard connects fine to the MacBook WITHOUT asking for a pin ... but I'm not clear if the connection is using/requiring encryption.

Is here a way to verify it is encrypted?

I suspect you should assume your keyboard is not secure. Much depends on who is likely to be attacking you – prankster or nation state:

  While Bluetooth has its benefits, it is susceptible to denial of service attacks, eavesdropping, man-in-the-middle attacks, message modification, and resource misappropriation.

These two questions on related StackExchanges give a good overview:

Is Bluetooth 4.0 traffic encrypted by default/design?
How secure is a bluetooth keyboard against password sniffing?

Hopefully you can secure the environment in which the keyboard can broadcast.

WireShark

The WireShark tool maybe able to intercept the Bluetooth traffic. See Bluetooth Smart Wireshark Plugin for a guide. Also see Bluetooth Smart Security for more technical details.


Linux Mint VM crashes when MacOS sleeps? I'm running Linux Mint on Virtual Box (.vdi on my internal SSD) on my rMBP (macOS High Sierra).

While I haven't pinned down a pattern, I think it breaks every time my computer wakes up from sleep. So, I assume its something to do with putting the SSD to some sleep-state which breaks Mint.

What setting can I enable/disable to keep this from happening?

This is expected behavior.

Your VM is not going to continue to run when your Mac goes to sleep.  In this case, your VirtualBox will attempt to save the state of the machine.  I have found FreeBSD to be forgiving in these cases, but Linux (Ubuntu) has never liked it when the Mac went to sleep and VB attempted to save the state.

The most effective solution is to disable sleep when your VM is running.


What gesture is triggered by wiggling your finger on the home button? I've noticed that if I wiggle my finger in an upwards and downwards direction on the home button on my iPhone 6S running iOS 9 half of the screen slides down; as shown here:

I can't find any documentation of what this is or any use for it (tapping the space just closes it, dragging it down pulls down the control centre). It's accessible from any app.

Would love to know what it is!

You're triggering "reachability" by double tapping a Touch ID enabled home button on iPhone 6 and later. It's designed to allow you to more easily reach the top of the screen when using a larger iPhone one-handed.

http://www.tekrevue.com/tip/reachability-iphone-6/


iPhone 5s Blue Screen of Death (Water Damage) I have an interesting problem with an iPhone 5s I'm repairing for a client:

Background
The iPhone 5s was dropped in water and completely submerged for a seconds (I'm not sure if it was on or off when it fell in, but I can find out), but was quickly retrieved and still worked for a few minutes before the BSOD appeared and the iPhone restarted. My client immediately turned the iPhone off and texted me about trying to fix it, I agreed to try my best, and I received it the next day.

Additional Problems
I was also told that it was having a hard time recognizing touch input, detected buttons being pressed when they weren't, and inaccurately recognized headphones being plugged into the headphone jack when they weren't.

My Repair
I began to disassemble it as soon as I got home. I disconnected the digitizer assembly, took out the battery, logic board, and Lightning dock assembly. I noticed corrosion on the bottom of the board on the back , which I cleaned best I could with alcohol and a toothbrush, but is still stained and around a chip on the top of the board on the back. I cleaned the Lightning jack assembly the same way, but when I connected it to the board and tried to charge the iPhone, it didn't work. I cleaned the port on the board and it worked. After a few hours (disassembling, cleaning, testing, cleaning again, testing again, etc., then reassembling, the iPhone was at least working better than when it was brought to me and all of the above problems were fixed.

BSOD
However, upon unlocking the phone and testing it more thoroughly, the iPhone crashed with the BSOD and restarted. I timed it and it always happens between 2 and 3 minutes after being unlocked, however never appears on the lock screen.

Additional Info

iPhone 5s is running iOS 9.2.1
No iWork apps are installed (some said that iWork apps, like Pages, caused the BSOD when syncing to iCloud)
I will try to relay any questions you have to my client

Any idea as to what is causing the BSOD and how I should fix it?

Update: I tested it with a different digitizer assembly (just the LCD and digitizer, no TouchID connected, no earpiece speaker, no front camera, nothing else) and to my amazement, it worked for almost 15 minutes before I decided to shut it off myself and put the old complete assembly back on. However, with everything (including TouchID) connected again, it went to the BSOD after a couple of minutes. I suspect TouchID.

Update 2: I believe that the above update was just a coincidence, as I just got the BSOD with the cracked screen.

After hours of testing many components, I think it's the battery at fault. Every battery has a processor inside of it which lets the iPhone know how much it's charged and handles other system-level battery stuff. The water must have majorly screwed up that processor and the battery itself, because I'll turn the iPhone on once and it'll read around 40% and it will work for 15 minutes straight, before I turn it off and then back on again. But then it'll either say something really low, like 12%, or really high, almost always in the 80%, but it will crash with the Blue Screen Of Death and restart itself. I put the battery from a family member's iPhone 5s in and it works, and no matter how many times I restart it, I get the actual charged percentage and no BSOD. I got this battery from iFixit, who I've had good luck with in the past.


iPhone Mail or GMail apps settings for Gmail label notification I am just wondering how can I set the settings of iPhone Mail App or even GMail apps that could make notification for new incoming message on particular Gmail label and not the inbox only.

I would appreciate if anyone could share how to accomplish this.

Thanks!

Presuming you are a free gmail account I don't think it is possible in either the mail or Gmail app.

It's possible using Exchange ActiveSync and the mail app but Google hasn't allowed this to be setup since 2013 for free Gmail accounts.

It should be possible if you are a google apps user.

Apple's instructions for setup for exchange account in mail.

Once the account is set up go to "Fetch New Data" in Settings > Accounts and Passwords. Click the account and select the mailboxes to be pushed.


Creating bootable usb drive with Sierra My mac is kind of a mess right now so I wanted to fresh install MacOS Sierra.

I bought myself a brand new 8gb pendrive since is pre req. But I cant seem to get it properly erased, I always get this message:

If I try by terminal following this tutorial I also get this error:

The operation couldn’t be completed. (com.apple.DiskManagement error -69874.)

I also tried Using Install Disk Creator but I think the same thing happens because he probably use Diskutil commands:

So I am kinda lost here and don't know what else to do.

P.S. I went to the store and changed my pendrive for another one and the same things happen

PPS In every retry I had to go on a windows laptop to format again. And it works just fine copying files and it show on my mac until the unmounting processes begin

PPPS I noticed that the pendrive does not have a GUID_partition_scheme as the others

Is there any other way I fix this?

Try formatting the USB stick twice as HFS+ (journaled)/GPT. Then use DiskMaker X to write the image. This is a piece of software that is updated very often and usually doesn't have any bugs (at least to my knowledge), so it might work better than the app you are using now. If nothing helps, then you probably have a broken USB stick - go buy something like a SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 (I have it and it works great).


How to make second monitor go black? I have a second display connected to my iMac and I want to make it go black some times, for example if I am watching a movie on the first monitor.

Apparently, there has been an app called Screen Commander but it is not available any more.

I run macOS High Sierra on an iMac from 2010 and have a 24" Apple Cinema Display attached via Mini Display Port, of course.

I can not imagine why there is no tool which does this! I know I can set up different spaces for the monitors but this is not what I want.

If you use VLC for playback, it has two options to black the other screen during fullscreen playback.
Use native fullscreen mode,  or
Black screens in Fullscreen mode

They are mutually exclusive, enabling native fullscreen disables the other.
Native requires a restart of the app, 'black screens' can be switched on & off at will.
I haven't tested, but one may work better than the other depending on whether you have Spaces set to move in pairs or separately, in Mission Control prefs.


Can I add all Junk Mail to Mail's home screen? In mail I can add views like All Drafts or All Trash to my main menu, but I don't see All Junk Mail. Can I add this to Mail's home screen?

You cannot add a Mailbox for all Junk mails, and the only option is to create different mailboxes for each of the accounts.


Connecting iPad 'crashed' the display - black screen but cursor responsive Difficult to describe exactly what happened, but best as I can...

Mac Pro 08 running El Capitan; all else up to date.
Plugged iPad into a USB cable coming via the wired keyboard.
Mac screen went entirely black. Mouse cursor was still active, but no keyboard input would be accepted - any command would give the 'oops, wrong key command' beep.
As far as I could tell, all apps were still running correctly, behind the scenes, though the only real evidence was that the internet radio was still playing in Safari.
Unplugging the iPad made no difference.
Prime consideration - I didn't want to hard power-off the Mac, risk losing work &/or [this has happened before] not being able to boot up until I'd fiddled with Disk Warrior/TechTool etc

Incidentally, the iPad shows as Not Charging. I haven't yet investigated whether this is because it's connected through the keyboard rather than directly.

I need to do further research to see what may have been the cause, but I'm going to post an answer myself as to how I got out of the black screen, in case it's useful to others...

Because I didn't want to hard power-off the Mac I had to do a bit of lateral thinking.

I was quite sure that the machine hadn't actually hung, as the radio was still playing, but that perhaps something had upset the Finder, which I think was the frontmost app at the point the iPad was plugged in.

A moment of revelation... what about dialling in remotely?

I went to my other Mac & tried to get in via Screen Sharing.
Success... or not... I could share the screen, but it was still black with just a working cursor.

What if I try to login as myself instead?

Joy!
Screen Sharing showed me the login screen.
I went to check the remote machine, it too was showing the login screen.
I logged the original user back in, rather than myself, & we were up & running again.

I rebooted at that point, normally, & the issue hasn't recurred.

I still have no explanation as to what caused it, but I hope this might help anyone else who sees a similar issue.


Can I uninstall stock Apple applications (e.g. Stickies) Is it safe to uninstall stock OS X applications that I do not use?  They're really just taking up space on my Applications list (and my SSD).  The applications I'm eyeing for deletion are:

Front Row
iDVD
Image Capture
iMovie
Mail
Photo Booth
Stickies
Textedit

Does OS X malfunction if these stock applications are uninstalled?

Yes, technically, you can, but you shouldn't.

Reasons you shouldn't:

Apple will sometimes update the applications in minor OS upgrades. As the rest of the application isn't there, you end up with only the files that were changed.
What if you decide you need them in the future? You'll have to reinstall the OS.
On Snow Leopard and later, the apps you mention take up almost no space - Mail is a measly 77 megs.

If you do decide to delete them, it's easy: drag them to the Trash or hit Command-delete just like any other file. Do make a backup before you delete things, and do also test the apps you delete or trim right away. You want the Mac to crash now while you remember what you deleted.

Be hesitant to delete Image Capture or TextEdit. The former controls scanning and importing pictures from any device and the latter is called for in some cases if you need to edit a system file. I'd also say leave Mail around - especially if you ever will set up a guest account and let someone use your Mac for a short amount of time.

You probably won't hose up too much with the rest. I should mention again that this is very much discouraged because it breaks the system that tracks what software was installed. Software installed by Apple gets recorded in a receipts database, and these receipts don't contemplate a partial uninstallation and you are gambling that there isn't a connection between these apps and others you may need later.

Why not look elsewhere to save some space? You can and should look in /Library/Application Support and delete some of the iDVD loops and Audio Loops for GarageBand. Also, compare the size of all the apps you intend to clean out and compare it to one music video or a few songs in iTunes. You probably can find much better targets to free up substantial space rather than getting rid of some essential system utilities that take up little to no space in reality.