How to set (restore) the com.apple.quarantine attribute? There are questions with good answers that explain how to remove the com.apple.quarantine extended attribute but I was wondering how does one restore / set it back again?

I tried this:

xattr -w com.apple.quarantine $VALUE /Applications/AnApp.app

but apparently not knowing what attribute's value should be this achieves nothing.

I guess it is all about the attribute's value, which is of the following format:

com.apple.quarantine: 0061;53822fd4;Google\x20Chrome;C1022EC2-E1B2-4896-AF74-B68F4BF97779

What I want to do is make Gatekeeper ask me again whether I want to run this app or file, or not. Restore the same behavior as if the file was just downloaded from the Internet and it is run for the first time.

You can copy an existing com.apple.quarantine attribute of an arbitrary file to a proxy file and then apply it to arbitrary other files. If you open certain file types (e.g. .txt files) the quarantine attribute will be ignored though.

Example:

xattr -p com.apple.quarantine /Users/user/dnscrypt-osxclient-1.0.12.dmg > quarantine.attr
xattr -w com.apple.quarantine "`cat quarantine.attr`" test.command

This will apply the data gathered from the .dmg to the .command file - including download date and download app of the original dmg file. The original download date/app of the .command won't be restored though.

Source: Using xattr to set the Mac OSX quarantine property

Format of the quarantine attribute:

flag;date;app_name;UUID;

at least 0001-0003 rises the "Do you really want to open this file..." dialog, but 0062 doesn't.
date (in Unix hexadecimal timestamp at least 00000000-1c000000 are unknown dates, an early date which works is 1d000000: 02 Jun 1985 05:47:44 GMT)
app (any app name allowed)
A UUID related with a file download which can be found in /Users/user/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEventsV2 (obviously facultative)

So using 0001;55555555;Klanomathiner; in the proxy file mentioned above and applying it to a file (in the example test.command) will rise:

or 0001;66666666;A Cyborg from the future;

After opening the file the first "flag" will be set to 0041 and reopening it  won't rise anything.

With some bash/SQL-magic you may even recover the original UUID and the download date/app by querying for the file name in the sqlite database - which the file com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEventsV2 represents - and restore the original quarantine attribute. But I'm too lazy to draw this up now. Someone else has done similar/related work already:

Read com.apple.quarantine

/usr/bin/xattr -p com.apple.quarantine "${file}"

Set com.apple.quarantine

application="cURL"
date=$(printf %x $(date +%s))
uuid=$(/usr/bin/uuidgen)
/usr/bin/xattr -w com.apple.quarantine "0002;${date};${application};${uuid}" "${file}"

Insert UUID into Database

download_url="http://example.com/file.zip"
date=$(($(date +%s) - 978307200))
/usr/bin/sqlite3 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEventsV2 "INSERT INTO \"LSQuarantineEvent\" VALUES('${uuid}',${date},NULL,'${application}','${download_url}',NULL,NULL,0,NULL,'${url}',NULL);"

Check if UUID exists in Database

/usr/bin/sqlite3 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.LaunchServices.QuarantineEventsV2 "SELECT * FROM LSQuarantineEvent WHERE LSQuarantineEventIdentifier == '${uuid}'"


Why can't Wacom tablet touch gesture work like Magic Trackpad I recently got a Wacom graphic tablet, Wacom Intuos Art with multi-touch feature, this is my first ever graphic tablet, and I immediately fall in love with it, the stylus drawing side of it.

Here is the thing, before I buy, I am keep comparing it with Magic Trackpad's touch capabilities. The only gesture of the Wacom tablet that I feel really close to work like Magic Trackpad is two fingers fluid scrolling. The others, like mouse tracking with one finger, can't really track small movement nicely/precisely, only large movement will work well.

The tablet also provide four fingers swipe left/right to switch between desktop spaces. If you use Magic Mouse/Trackpad you can intercept in between the animation, you can reverse it if you want. But, the Wacom tablet kind of like just triggering the shortcut CTRL → when you perform the gesture.

I am so new to graphic tablet, I want to know is there any 3rd party software/driver I can use to enhance the experience of this graphic tablet?

Though I lack a Wacom tablet to test it myself, this post seems to indicate that BetterTouchTool supports Wacom tablets to some degree.

BetterTouchTool has a variety of features that will allow you to configure and bind gestures to actions.


Do iOS devices have a pop-up Japanese-English Dictionary like on the Macintosh? On the Mac if you three-finger tap a word, a dictionary definition appears. I'd like to know if I would be able to get this on an iPad specifically for the Japanese dictionaries.

Yes, on iPad on iOS5.1.1. At the moment, I am having trouble getting the same functionality on iPhone on iOS6.0.1, though. Japanese dictionary is there, but I can't get the English-Japanese one. Your mileage may vary, of course.

EDIT May 27 2013: To restore Japanese<->English dictionary, you will need to jailbreak the device and delete the Japanese<->Japanese dictionary. These dictionaries conflict, and the Japanese<->Japanese dictionary wins almost every time.

I have also asked if it is possible to only temporarily jailbreak an iOS 6.1.2 iPhone 4 for purposes of removing the mentioned dictionary. As of the time of this edit, this has not been answered; I am nonetheless linking to that question in case someone answers it by the time someone reads this.


How do I unhide and remove disk mounts from Login Items? Some time back I added some network disk mounts as Login Items for my MacBook Air (Mountain Lion).

When I'm away from my network, though, I'm constantly bothered by warning boxes saying "Can't connect" to those mounts.

I went to my Login Items screen, and rather than deleting them, I hid them. I failed to understand the +/- buttons and the checkbox.

Now I can't find a way to "unhide" those disk mounts from my Login Items, and successfully remove the automatic mounts.

As shown in the following image, you can remove Login Items by selecting them (highlighting them) and clicking the "-" button. Hiding an item (by selecting the check box) in Login Items means that it is opened, but hidden.


"Setting up your Mac..." at every login (10.15.5) Every time I log into my Mac, I see the desktop/dock, then the "Setting up your Mac" screen appears over the top of the desktop. After a few seconds, previously launched applications start and can be used as usual, but the "Setting up..." screen remains and covers the desktop.
Additionally (and possibly related?), the set of application that re-opens at login appears fixed and is not affected by ticking/unticking the "reopen applications at login" box on the logout/restart confirmation popup.
This issue doesn't present itself when I start in safe mode.
Based on OSX 10.13.4 'Sets up your Mac' every login, I attempted to uninstall my anti-virus software (Eset endpoint security), but this had no impact on the issue.
I also tried creating the file /private/var/db/.AppleSetupDone as mentioned in How to stop Setup Assistant from showing up on every restart on Mac Mini with OS X Mavericks?
I'm fairly sure that some 3rd party software is causing this issue, as reinstalling OSX resolves the issue, however I'd like to find out what the real problem is.
Is there anything else I can check/try?

Following jaume's comment, I checked my login items (https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/mac-a-blue-screen-startup-problems-mh21210/mac).
It turns out that Setup Assistant had ended up in there, and was impossible to quit once opened. Removing it from Login Items and rebooting solved the issue.


Is the sudo bless --mount command in macOS deprecated. If so, what is in use now? After installing some other operating system like Linux, I would use some version of the sudo bless --mount command like

$ sudo bless --mount /Volumes/EFI --setboot --file /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi

to make macOS the default boot system again.

While the command still works, I was wondering if the sudo bless --mount command has been deprecated like some articles say it has.

https://krypted.com/mac-security/dont-use-bless-to-change-startup-disks-any-more-in-os-x/
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7740130

If it has, then what should I be using as a replacement command for making macOS the default boot method again?

No.  There is nothing (that I could find) from Apple indicating that bless has been deprecated.

The two articles you posted:

Don’t Use bless To Change Startup Disks Any More In OS X
Setboot? Formerly bless? Command line OS switching?

are a blogger's opinion about what to use instead of bless and a thread in an Apple Discussion forum in which a random person is asking the same question; the articles are from July 15th, 2015 and November 8th 2016 respectively.  Needless to say, they are woefully out of date.

This does serve as a opportunity, however to highlight an important factor:  Apple won't deprecate something (especially as critical as bless) without notifying the public about it (i.e. in the release notes, updated man pages, etc.)

Why?  Well, how would devs and sys admins be aware of the changes and begin planning their transitions?

Deprecation notifications will come from Apple, not random people opining on the Internet.


What is the format for logging into a domain account in OS X? At the login screen, how do I login to a domain account?

For example, on Windows the username might be something like louis@contoso.local, where the domain is contoso.local.

Edit: The AD username happens to be the same as a local username.

You need to set up Network Account Server settings in Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Options.

In the company I work for I can either use DOMAIN\username or username@DOMAIN when logging in to the AD on from a Windows Machine, but on the Mac this is not required. I just type in username and my AD password, and it logs me in.


Monitor GPU performance on OSX Is there an application or tool that can monitor GPU performance on OS X? Specifically I would like to see the current speed/utilization and temperature of the integrated NVIDIA chip.

For Windows, there is CPU-Z and MSI Afterburner. I cannot find anything for OS X, not even an NVidia control panel app.

You can use Activity Monitor that comes with MacOS in Applications>Utilities

Choose Window>GPU History

or press ⌘4


Gave daughter my macbook pro and 6plus for college & she is getting msgs etc under my name. What to do? I gave my daughter my macbook pro and my older 6plus for college/ seemingly still knows me because she is getting msg photo library etc for me. Was it not wiped totally? Help please. I do still see two iphones when my devices are listed.

At a minimum you will need to make sure both devices are completely signed out of iCloud.  This will require your daughter knowing your iCloud password if she is not close by enough for you to do it.  I would recommend changing it immediately after if you do tell her.

Personally I would also do an Erase All Contents and Settings on the iPhone and a clean install on the MacBook Pro as well.


Read files from vintage DOS 3.3 .dsk I have a .dsk file, as used by Apple II emulators. It's DOS 3.3 format. How can I get the individual files off it as single files?

Nice would be either an existing tool or documentation of the sector structure of DOS 3.3 (I don't mind writing code, not at all).

(I used tag apple2gs since it already exists, and rep 101 not enough to make new tags.)

There are two utilities with source code here:

FID - "File Developer" for .DSK images of DOS 3.3 disks
FID is a file manipulation utility for DOS 3.3 disk images in .DSK format.

a2tools
a2tools is a utility similar to FID: it can do a "CATALOG", "DELETE", "SAVE" and "LOAD" on Apple II .DSK images.

a2tools seems at least compilable, but I don't have any .dsk files to test it with.


Macbook Pro Early 2011 SSD very slow when in main hardrive bay but very good via USB I have a MacBook Pro Early 2011 and I have upgraded to SSD when on Mountain Lion. Installed Yosemite as soon as it was out. The SSD works perfect until day before yesterday. Mac has become too slow, every click takes 15 seconds to respond, boot takes 5 minutes. I then cloned the SSD to a normal HDD and replaced it with it. It boots and works very well from the HDD. I have tried fresh install on the SSD by placing it in the same main harddrive bay and left it for 10 hours but it won't finish installing.

Then, I have tried placing it in a SATA to USB cable and tried installing Yosemite on it. It finishes within 15 minutes, boots and works very well. I placed it again in the harddrive bay and its totally slows down. I then figured that the problem could be with the SSD and its compatibility with my mac.

So, to check, installed windows on the SSD while keeping in the harddrive bay of the MBP. It installs and works perfectly. So, it ain't a hardware compatibility issue.

Finally, after quite a testing, the problem is when the SSD is placed in the main harddrive bay of the MBP and Yosemite is being installed or installed. With Yosemite and the SSD in an USB, it works perfectly.

Has anyone experienced a similar issue or have any suggestions for a fix?

Details: Macbook Pro 8,1 (Early 2011), ADATA 128GB 6gbps SSD

The problem seems to be only with that particular SSD and Mac OS X, because it works with other SSDs. My feeling is that garbage collection or TRIM are to be blame in this case. TRIM is disabled by Apple for third party drives and ADATA SSD I had didn't have any inbuilt garbage collection.

Bought a Samsung EVO now, it has inbuilt garbage collection and doesn't necessarily need TRIM. If you have an SSD which can't do garbage collection, there are options to enable TRIM on Mac OS X, look for them and enable TRIM.


How do I interpret the output of Mac's 'sample' tool I have a process that is running on OS X which has some problems and the 'sample' tool on the Mac seems like the best way to debug the problem. Unfortunately, the only documentation I can find for it is the man page which says nothing about how to interpret the results.

Are there any good places that document the output and how to interpret it? If not, can someone give me a very basic tutorial?

I just checked the Man page on sample
and it looks to me like a half-decent call-stack sampler.
It claims that its output is the call-tree, so that should not be too hard to comprehend.

I say half-decent because collecting call-stack samples is a good thing. The criticisms are:

It doesn't say if it collects samples when the process is in a system call, like waiting for I/O. It is important to do so, unless you want to be blind to needless I/O.
It falls for the fiction that what matters is accuracy of timing and you don't want to miss any functions, so samples have to be really frequent. It's a fiction because the goal is to find big stuff, not to measure little stuff. Any function that doesn't appear certainly doesn't cost enough to care about.
The consequence of this fiction is there are too many samples for you to look at, so it has to try to find a way to summarize them, so it chooses a call-tree. The fact is, if you are allowed to actually examine a small number of the samples (like 10 or 20) you will see exactly the reason(s) for the slowness. The summarization is the problem. It smears out and hides the information.

So, the long-and-short is, it appears to be a good tool for collecting call-stack samples.
If you can figure out how to actually see a selection of them, it will tell you what the problem is.


OS X Lion behaving oddly after upgrading to 16GB RAM Just upgraded Early 2011 Macbook Pro w/ 4GB RAM to 16GB RAM. System now sometimes runs smoothly and other times pauses frequently.

Terminal keeps giving me 'System is low on disk space/memory' error. I have 12GB free disk space and 16GB RAM for God's sake. Activity Monitor says I got 10GB RAM free. So why is it saying I'm low on disk space? Lion also says sometimes that I'm low on disk space.

This often happens when spotlight finishes indexing, I guess then system think it's low on disk space (even though I have 9 gb free at that point), then it appears that spotlight trashes its index, systems becomes smooth again, spotlight re-indexes, and same thing happens again.

My theory so far is that if I have 16GB RAM, then the OS is for some reason trying to reserve atleast 16GB Swap Space on disk 'just in case I run out of the 16GB RAM'.

Is this true? Does this make sense?

I really don't want to free up more hard drive space. I already have a 128GB SSD which is small enough as is, and 16GB RAM should be plenty enough for the OS' memory needs.

Thoughts?

Thanks!

I got the "System is low on disk space/memory" error as well as a number of other intermittent problems when I upgraded my original apple memory.  It turned out to be either bad memory, or marginal timing specs.

Startup disk has no more space available for application memory?

When I put the original memory back in, the problems went away - so try that if you've exhausted your other options.

I did eventually do a little more research and found a 16GB set that very closely matched Apple specs for my early 2011 macbook pro 17 memory, and it's had no problems for several months now.

I suggest trying out the original apple memory and seeing if the problem goes away.  If it does, return the memory you have, and see if you can get a different set that works better.


Unable to format my memory card/SD - error -69877 couldn't open device I can't seem to able to format my PNY 32 GB SD card

When I go to Disk Utility and try to erase it gives me error: Unmounting disk, Couldn't modify partition map and operation failed

I successfully unmounted disk2 (the SD card) via terminal but when trying to erase it it shows  error -69877 couldn't open device

I also tried command sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 bs=1024 count=1024 but it shows permission denied

System: OS X El Capitan 10.11.6

Can you help please?

I had the same problem, but per this Mac Forum discussion, SanDisk Micro-SD to SD Adapters has a 'Lock" slider that is easy to miss. After unlocking the card, I was able to reformat the microSD card with no problem.


Force window to appear on a select screen Is there a way to make a window in OS X Lion always initially appear on a select screen? So that when the window appears, it'd automatically appear on the screen I select?

If by screen, you mean desktop, I think this is how you can do it:

Go to the desktop you want.

On the doc, right click (or control-click) the item you want to appear on a certain screen.   There should be a menu with "options" on it.  Select options, and from the submenu select "this desktop".

Return to any other desktop and verify, that if you were on, say 'desktop 2' when you selected 'this desktop', the options will have 'desktop 2' checked.

Then if you click the app on the dock from whatever desktop, your desktop will switch automatically.  Results may not be the same when you open the app with some different method.  For example, when I tried from a terminal window "open -a Bean"  it opened Bean in the right desktop, but did not swithch automatically.  When I tried to open Firefox with open -a, basically nothing happened (apparently).

(I'm on Lion 10.7.4, but as I recall this also worked in a similar way on earlier distributions.)


Why does my Qi charging base squeal as my iPhone 8 charges? I just purchased a iPhone 8 and I was trying to charge it using my Qi charging base that I used on my former Nexus 6. The base worked fine on the Nexus 6 but on the iPhone, it squeals (not sure whether it is the iPhone or the base, but it sounds more like the base) and stops charging regularly. The charge level does go up during this process, but it is so irritating that I have to stop as I also fear damage to the iPhone. I used both the Nexus 6 and the iPhone USB power adapter and the result is the same. For me it seems that the iPhone pulls more power than the Qi base can support. It there a way to reduce the power drawn by the iPhone via wireless charging?

The Qi charger is a Itian model A2.

EDIT:
I found a solution to stop this Qi charger from squealing. I added a small padding on the bottom where the iPhone sits (around 1 cm or half inch) and the iPhone now is aligned well against the coil, which has stopped the squealing and charges at the expected rate.

It could possibly be that the Qi base isn't actually a certified Qi product. As far as I can tell, the only certified Qi charger from Itian is the K10. In addition, lack of Qi certification can mean incompatibility with some Qi devices, and at worst, potential damage to the device.


Questions regarding disk format I'm doing a fresh install of Yosemite on my mac, but stopped at format step: I noticed various options:

plain format
encrypted
case sensitive

So, I'd like to know:

Is it possible to install Yosemite on an encrypted partition? If
   yes, there are downsides?
Is this equivalent to installing on unencrypted disk and perform
encryption from OS with FileVault? If not, may you explain the
difference?
I'm tempted to choose Case Sensitive to have a more "true Unix"
environment. May this cause issues with OS and apps?

I googled, but those answers are rather difficult to find.

Thanks a lot.

You can install Yosemite on an encrypted partition. To use encryption, you also have to use core storage. If you do not use encryption, then the use of core storage is optional. If you encrypt after installing without core storage, then a conversion to core storage will take place. Fusion drives require the use of core storage. Yosemite can only be installed on a partition that is case insensitive. Personally, I have avoided using core storage. I do not see any advantages to using it unless you have to.


Write cron script to open and exit application I'm trying to write a script that opens a brand new instance of safari, displays a webpage for 10 minutes, then quits safari.
I think I can follow this Stack Exchange to do steps 1 & 2 of my goal.
For the "display 10 minutes piece," I wasn't sure how to do that except to schedule a separate cron job to quit safari that executes 10 minutes after the first script.
Any idea on how to write a cron script to quit safari? Or to make this process easier? I'm a newbie at cron and would love to learn more.
Thanks!

As an example, the following commands can be used in a shell script to accomplish what you've expressed.
/usr/bin/open -na "/Applications/Safari.app" "https://www.google.com/"
pid=$(/usr/bin/pgrep -xn "Safari")
/bin/sleep 600
/bin/kill $pid

Notes:
Obviously you'd change the value of the URL in the open command.

open -na - Assuming another instance of the target app is running, opens a new instance of the target app, and if not, just opens the target app.
pgrep -xn - Gets the pid of the newest instance of the target app, so you know which instance to terminate.

pid=$(...) - Command Substitution, $(command), allows the output of a command to replace the command name. In this case, assigns the pid of the target app to the variable pid for use as $pid with the kill command.

sleep 600 - Sleeps for 10 minutes.
kill $pid - Terminate the process by its pid.

 I recommend you read the manual pages for open, pgrep, sleep and kill. You can read the manual page for command in Terminal by typing command and then right-click on it and select: Open man Page

cron example:

From the manual page for crontab:

(Darwin note: Although cron(8) and crontab(5) are officially supported under Darwin, their functionality has been absorbed into launchd(8), which provides a more flexible way of automatically executing commands. See launchctl(1) for more information.)

I'm mentioning this because I personally prefer to use launchd over cron as it's the preferred method that Apple endorses.
If you want to use cron, have a look at Scheduling Jobs With Crontab on macOS and crontab guru.
I tested a shell script with the above commands and triggered it both as a cronjob and as a launch agent under macOS Catalina, and it worked for me as coded.
To create the crontab, I did the following in Terminal:
EDITOR=nano crontab -e

I use that instead of just crontab -e because I prefer nano over the default vim.

In nano I added the following:
30 18 * * * /usr/local/bin/codetest

Then pressed ^O to save and ^X to close nano.
As set, cron ran the job at 6:30 PM executing the /usr/local/bin/codetest and codetest had a #!/bin/zsh shebang and the commands above, at the start of this answer, in it.
Notes:
I recommend you read the manual pages for cron and crontab. You can read the manual page for command in Terminal by typing command and then right-click on it and select: Open man Page

From Scheduling Jobs With Crontab on macOS:
Setting cron jobs requires a specific format.
* * * * * command
* - minute (0-59)
* - hour (0-23)
* - day of the month (1-31)
* - month (1-12)
* - day of the week (0-6, 0 is Sunday)
command - command to execute

(from left-to-right)

You can also use sites like Crontab.guru to generate cron expressions.

launchd example:

For launchd, have a look at: Creating Launch Daemons and Agents
As a launch agent, in Terminal:
cd "$HOME/Library/LaunchAgents/"
touch com.me.new.instance.safari.plist
open -e com.me.new.instance.safari.plist

I then added the following:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.me.new.instance.safari</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/codetest</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <false/>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>18</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>45</integer>
        </dict>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Saved the document and then back in Terminal:
launchctl load com.me.new.instance.safari

Then at 6:45 PM launchd executed the /usr/local/bin/codetest shell script.

Notes:
I recommend you read the manual pages for launchctl, launchd.plist and launchd. You can read the manual page for command in Terminal by typing command and then right-click on it and select: Open man Page
Once loaded, it will automatically load when you login to your account, so you shouldn't need to do it manually again under normal circumstances. To unload it, use the unload subcommand with the launchctl command.
After unloading it, you can delete the .plist file, if/when you want to undo changes you've made to your system.


Turn off the built-in monitor on MBP El Capitan with clamshell open I usually plug my MBP 15" late 2011 (El Capitan 10.11.2) with an external monitor, and I only use that. Also I need to use the trackpad.

So I need to turn off the built-in monitor with the clamshell open. Possibly using a terminal command. How can do it?

I already tried this solution (for Yosemite) but doesn't work on El capitan: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/154600/90762

And I already tried DisableMonitor app but it reduces the brightness of the monitor to 0 and it remains on! So probably it consumes more. Is there a way to completely turn off?

You can also just mirror the display of the MacBook screen to the external one and then turn off the brightness of the Macbook screen (so it turns fully black).
Then you can keep the lid open of your MacBook AND use the TrackPad.

System Preferences > Displays > Arrangement > Select "Mirror Displays".


Can't access /etc folder in OS X Mountain Lion In OS X Mountain Lion's Finder, I can see a grayed-out /etc folder, but cannot see inside.  Using Terminal's ls command, I can see the existence of a file that one of my programs is trying to find (Free Pascal's fpc program has a fpc.cfg file in /etc).

How can I change parameters for this folder to enable more open access?

Hit ⌘+⇧+G (or select Go - Go to Folder... from the Finder menu bar) and enter /etc or any existing and readable path as the target location to browse it.

Given you enabled showing of hidden files, while double-clicking etc from Finder does not work, you can still right-click it and choose Open from the context menu.

The system-wide configuration files in /etc are best to be treated with caution just as all the other hidden system files and therefor I'd certainly not recommend changing permissions for them, but if you do need to view or edit them I would suggest doing it from the Terminal. This will also make it easier to gain the necessary root privileges for changing them by using the sudo command.


Turn on light when camera active I'm looking for a method to have a light bulb turn on when my camera is active on my macbook-  sort of an "On Air" light.  I know there are arduino solutions for activating the light- I'm just not sure how to begin the search for the method of telling arduino/automator/etc: hey the camera is activated now do this....

Oversight is a product by Objective-See that performs low-level detection of when the camera is used. I posted a screenshot from a talk by Patrick Wardle that discusses this specifically, along with some sample code of how to invoke this via AVFoundation notifications. The portion most relevant to you starts at 43 minutes.

If this application you're describing is for personal use, then I think it's fine, but note that the type of callback you're looking for is that the same one that malicious tools can use to also record your Facetime/Skype video and upload it to a third party. So, please note and understand the full context of what you're proposing if you're not already aware of it.


Make iMac remember monitor positions after restart I have an iMac with the following specs:

I have 2 20'' hp monitors that are always connected to my Mac. They are connected with 2 DisplayLink USB to VGA adapters. I keep the monitors positioned as follows:

Unfortunately, everytime I restart my Mac, the screen positions revert to the default settings of:

This is very frustrating.

How can I make my Mac remember and reapply my monitor positions when I restart?

FYI, I also have 2 Thunderbolt to DVI adapters that I can use but it results in the same problem.

The obvious thing would be if the preference for your user that stores the setting is corrupt.

To test this, turn off auto login, make a new user, log in to that user  and arrange the monitors as you like. Log out of the test user, restart the Mac and log into the test user. This will let you know if the system problem or if it's a user problem.


How can I empty the trash with old backups in it? Since my backup disk is full, I wanted to delete old backups to free space. Since I didn't figure out how to do it on TimeMachine itself properly, I selected all the folders with backups on the TimeMachine disk and put them in the trash.

Now, however, I can't empty the trash/ delete those items. Whenever I try, it shows that "Library is in Use", even when I close all tabs and applications.

How can I empty the trash and really delete those old backups so the space on my backup disk is free?

Okay, before I get into more detail, let me quickly tell you this:

You should not delete TimeMachine backups yourself like this!

The filesystem on a HD formatted for TimeMachine works differently from what you're normally used to. Without going into too much detail, the main difference is that it uses hard links. That means that files that look like they're a simple copy, are actually just links, pretty much like an Alias that you can create in the Finder. That's how you can see each backup folder as a full mirror of your system (or all files that are backed up) without really having x copies of them (where x is the number of backups taken). This saves disk space (by a lot).

Instead, you should simply let TimeMachine sort this out on its own. Once it runs out of disk space, it automatically starts removing older backups.

Btw, for the same reason you probably don't want to store anything else on the TimeMachine partition. It's simply not a "normal" disk, from the perspective of the average user.

To actually answer: There are several ways to force delete from/clear the trash bin. The first one I'd try is to open it, right-click the problematic file(s) and chose "Delete immediately..." Other methods usually involve Terminal and require some shell knowledge. A quick google search revealed this, which also covers your system version it seems. In short: running

sudo rm -rf /Volumes/YOURTMDRIVE/.Trashes/*

in Terminal should work, but again, I think you shouldn't go down that path anyways. (YOURTMDRIVE would be the name of your TimeMachine volume, watch out for spaces, those must be escaped with a preceding \)

(That being said I don't think you're running risk of ruining anything fatally, but TimeMachine will now probably take a while to fix the backups when it runs the next time).

Last note: You can read up a bit about how TimeMachine works here


How to use USB wifi adapter on a MacBook Pro running on Mojave I need to create a wifi from the wifi my computer get, I bought a tp link USB adapter, used the USB to USB-c MacBook Pro adapter and connected it to my computer, then I downloaded the drivers but I can't make it work, because I cannot connect the USB wifi adapter to the wifi.

Please could someone help me !

I believe what you are trying to do is called Internet Sharing.

You can not forward your Mac- WiFi to another WiFi, but you can set up sharing.

Important note:
The one big limitation is that you can’t both be connected to a Wi-Fi network and host a Wi-Fi network at the same time. So what you are trying to do with the USB WiFi is not possible using your mac-WiFi.

But you can use Internet sharing if your Mac is connected to the Internet through an Ethernet adapter.

Enable Internet Sharing and Configure Your Hotspot

The Wi-Fi hotspot option is part of the “Internet Sharing” feature in macOS.

You’ll find it in the System Preferences window.

Click the Apple menu, select System Preferences, and click the Sharing icon. Follow the instructions there.


How to enable arrows in landscape keyboard in iOS 11? Up to iOS 10, the screen keyboard in landscape screen orientation had arrow keys which moved the cursor left and right.

After upgrading to iOS 11, these keys are missing:

Can I add them back to my keyboard?

I have iPhone 6.

This feature was removed by Apple on all known iPhone screen sizes (4.7" (iPhone 6, 6s, 7, 8) as well as 5.5" inch (iPhone 6 Plus, 6s Plus, 7 Plus, 8 Plus).

Unfortunately there is no way to turn it back on in iOS 11.0.

If you miss the arrow keys from iOS 10 please provide feedback to Apple using the feedback form. Apple actually reads these messages. :)

iPhone/iOS Feedback (Apple)


Time Capsule disappears from Finder My time capsule is disappearing from my Finder list (left side) occasionally.. it is very odd.  I have my iMac plugged in to it via Ethernet cable.  How do I force my iMac to connect to it when it misbehaves like this?

If it's connected via Ethernet the most likely cause is the drive has fallen asleep and your system has lost its connection with the drive. The remedy: open the drive about once every two or three hours to keep it awake.


Watch movies from Time Capsule on Apple TV I just acquired a 2 TB Apple Time Capsule and copied over all my movies onto the device, using the method described in this video.

My question is this: Can my Apple TV device access videos on the Time Capsule, and play them on my TV?

I searched the web and found this help thread, but when I try to drag and drop files into the Movies folder of iTunes like it says to, nothing happens.

Yes, but you just need a client that is able to play your video files.
I'm not sure which Apple TV generation you use, but if it's 4th gen you can download an app called "Infuse 4" https://firecore.com/infuse

If you use an older generation you can use another solution by the same vendor (I don't have any experience with it) https://firecore.com/atvflash-black.

This guide mentions how to connect to your Time Capsule:
https://support.firecore.com/hc/en-us/articles/215090977-Streaming-From-Other-Devices


Set up an iPhone 6 with non-working Home button My brother recently gave me and iPhone 6 and he reset it before before handing it over. I turned it on and it says "Hello, Press home button to unlock and get started". But the Home button on the iPhone isn't working.

How can I get past this without replacing the Home button right now, and set it up with the Assistive Touch, until I get it fixed.

There is no way to access Assistive Touch until the device is done past the initial setup. The only way to get through the first step is to have a working Home button.

You'll have to get the Home button fixed before you can setup your iPhone.


Does TimeMachine backup iCloud Drive files? Does TimeMachine backup the files I have in iCloud Drive? I want to use iCloud Drive more for files I don't use a lot. But it is important that there is a regular backup.

iCloud Drive is a folder located in the Library folder: ~/Library/MobileDocuments.

This folder will be back-upped but there are a few strings attached to it:

As long as the files are stored locally it will be backed up.
When there is a cloud icon next to the file it means it's stored in the cloud and not longer locally. It will not been backed up.


Playback on ipod touch When I synch downloaded podcasts eg BBC History magazine podcast, they playback so fast on the ipod touch it is unlistenable even though it sounds normal on my laptop. Is there some setting on the ipod I need to change. Audio cds work fine on both.

When playing a podcast, a single tap in the album art area toggles the top bar on and off. The top bar shows position in the podcast, has an email icon on the left and a rewind 30 seconds icon in the middle. The icon on the right toggles between 1x, 2x and 1/2x speeds, so check that this is set to 1x. The icons on this bar are different for music tracks than for podcasts (repeat, genius and shuffle).

It's possible the ipod has got into 2x speed mode. I had this the other day, and either toggling the speed mode or pausing and playing again solved it, don't remember which.

Edit: today I had this problem. It seemed that the fast foward button was down, because the pause button was behaving oddly with this weeks "PC Pro" podcast, and the x1 x2 button didn't fix it. Strangley, clicking the home button until the spotlight search appeared seemed to be a temporary fix. Then playing with the transport buttons fixed it completely.


Solution to rescue a Macbook pro 15 2016 I was trying to update my macbook pro from macOS sierra to macOS high sierra and suddenly it freezes. I tried to to restart it but all I get now is a flashing interrogation point :/

P.S. : This is my first experience with a mac.

Where i can get a fresh copy of macOS high sierra and make a bootable usb with it on a Windows PC?

I had this problem as well when installing High Sierra (on day one of public release o the OS). After experiencing issues with Recovery OS as well, I took it into the Genius Bar where they were happy to help. I believe they ended up installing the OS from a recovery drive. As it was the brand new OS they had to take it overnight and contact Cupertino engineering I was told, although I would expect it to be a smooth support process by now. Best of luck getting it working quickly.


How can I make my Mac Mini 1,1 display 1080p? I have an early intel Mac Mini (1,1 Late 2006) that I'm resurrecting for the purposes of a media centre (intend to replace with a modern device when finances allow). This model is furnished with a DVI output, I'm going direct to VGA via DVI-VGA cable. It is giving me a headache because it will not connect at 1080p. Running 10.6.8, fully updated.

I'm getting a huge list of possible resolutions in Display Prefs, each with different freq's, here are the some:

1280 x 1024 (displays correctly)
1344 x 1008 (no display)
1400 x 1050 (displays correctly)
1600 x 1200 (displays correctly horizontally, must be scaling vertically)
1920 x 1440 (no display)
2048 x 1536 (no display)

I've tried using ScreenResX, but when I add a custom resolution of 1080p and restart, the custom resolution is not available "not activated - invalid?". According to tech specs the mini is capable of outputting to 1080p. How can I get this machine to output correctly?

I can successfully output to this LCD TV at 1080p (native res) from:

Powermac G5 2GHz (directly via DVI->VGA cable)
Macbook Pro (miniDisplayPort->DVI adaptor, DVI->VGA cable)

Many thanks for any suggestions!

As answered in the comment by bispymusic, this was resolved by using a DVI->HDMI adaptor or cable. The Mac mini was able to output a whole new set of resolutions, and jumped straight to 1080p as the most suitable. Thanks.


iPhone 5S and iPad 4 I purchased 20 GB extra of storage for my iPad and iPhone on iCloud. But my devices say they are still full. How do I get the storage to show up so I can download an update, apps etc.?

You bought extra cloud storage, not extra phone/pad memory [which is not possible].
The two are utterly unrelated.

You need to transfer some data to a computer, or delete it, to free up extra space on the devices.


I have tried to erase all data from my MacBook Pro and erase and re install osx disk Does my Apple MacBook Pro have to have been previously connected to my wireless connection to connect it to that network to complete an internet recovery?

Short answer: no. Any Mac that supports Internet recovery could theoretically boot to Internet recovery even with the hard drive removed. Press and hold command-option-R immediately after powering on the mac. If it does not detect a physical network Internet connection, it will prompt you with a drop-down menu displaying a list of available wifi networks. Once joined, it will take a REALLY long time to boot, but eventually it will load a recovery OS. Here you can reformat your hard drive (or find out if one is installed), reset your password, access Safari and, of course, reinstall your OS.


Bottom of iPhone screen unresponsive The screen of my iPhone 6 suddenly stopped responding to any touches registered below the middle of the screen. I can still use the home button and the other buttons, but the lower half of the screen is totally unresponsive. I had just gotten the phone slightly wet and am concerned that I may have damaged the hardware somehow.

There are several causes for behavior like this, but in this case, the fix was really simple. My phone has a two-piece Anker protective case in which the front part covers the entirety of the screen, much like a screen protector. Some of the water got between the front of my phone case and the screen and was screwing up the touch screen responsiveness. All I needed to do was remove the phone case, wipe the water off of the front of the screen with my sleeve, and voila! Good as new. This has happened to me before but I forgot about it, so here is the fix for anyone else with this simple problem.


Disable window shadow on 10.11 / 10.12? Like in the title, I've used ShadowKiller (very old but worked until 10.11) but it doesn't work in 10.11 and 10.12 as well (tried disabling SIP).

I've tried using the command line trick, toggle-osx-shadows from github and couple of others, it seems that something changed in 10.11

Does anybody have a solution?

edit 01-11-2019: Works on Mojave.

There is a solution - plugin called winBuddy which is available through MacForge (previously known as mySIMBL).

It allows you to turn off window shadow and/or window borders for every app.

I've just tested it and it seems to work properly, there are some minor glitches here and there but nothing major.

Minor glitches include:

You can't change window options for apps which don't have menu - like Bartender for example
You can't change window options for some apps, as winBuddy does not show up under 'Window' in menu.


In Aperture, is there a way to confirm faces in bulk? In the Aperture 3 "Faces" view, when clicking on a person, there is a section "John may also be in the photos below". By clicking on the "Confirm Faces" button, you have the ability to click on each image to confirm. Is there a way to select multiple images or do this in bulk? I'd expect shift-clicking on the images to do it, but that doesn't work. There must be a better workflow.

Instead of clicking on the "Confirm Faces" button, simply select all the photos that match (using shift-click or any other method) and then drag them to the space above the grey bar that says "John may also be in the photos below".   This has the affect of bulk confirming your selection as being John.


Is it possible to be notified when a prerelease album is available on Apple Music? I have downloaded an album on Apple Music several months ago when it became available on pre-release. At the time, only one song was available to listen to. I had forgotten all about it and it sat amongst my albums and the release date came and went.  Weeks later, I was scrolling through my albums and I saw it there.

Is it possible to get notified when a pre-release album is fully released? I'm using both iPad and iPhone on iOS11.

Not sure if you’d get notified if the pre-release turns into a proper release, but you can get notified when artists you usually listen to release new stuff. Chances are that the upgrade from pre-release to actual release generates a notification as well.

You can configure the notifications by following the Apple Support Document, Get Apple Music notifications.


How can I tell that a certificate is a root certificate? Are these certificates root certificates or not and how can I disable them if they are?

You may want to refer to Lists of available trusted root certificates in iOS on Apple's website. This resource also provides links to lists of root certificates for specific versions of iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.

Typically, to remove a root certificate on an iOS device one would follow this process:

Open Settings
Tap on General
Tap on Profiles (NOTE: if the Profiles screen is empty then there’s nothing to delete)
Select the Profile you want to delete
Tap on Delete Profile
Enter your passcode
Tap on Delete again to confirm the deletion

Based on your screenshots and tags it's clear you're referring to a device that is controlled by a Mobile Device Management (MDM) process. If you can't remove the certificate(s) you want to with the above process you will need to contact your employer/school/etc to seek assistance.


bash-command not found; for every command == fear i could screwed up the path here is the output of echo $PATH

/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin

and when I gave cat /etc/paths this is the output

/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin
/usr/local/bin

I am not sure whether that /usr/local/bin is creating the error (command not found)

Thank u for your suggestions

Commands you run in Terminal need to either in one of the directories included in $PATH or you need to call them with ./command if you are in the directory the command is stored in.


Bluetooth keyboard always wants to pair I have a MacBook Air in my office that prompts to pair to a BlueTooth keyboard every 5-10 seconds.

I turned BlueTooth off/on. Made sure it is not discoverable. Restarted. Run updates. Reset PRAM. Reset SMC. Deleted com.apple.bluetooth.plist (~/Library/Preferenes/ and /Library/Preferences/). Removed the offending  and  from the above plists. With no luck.

I have also taken another computer up next to the MacBook Air running iStumblr as well as the Set Up Bluetooth keyboard and the keyboard cannot be found by either the MacBook Air or the other Mac. But the prompts still persist on the Air.

I have not been able to find any other suggestions re: how to stop the prompts.

Finding the keyboard is going to prove tricky as it is in a large office environment.

Any other suggestions?

EDIT: Console

11/03/14 3:11:28.000 PM kernel[0]: ### ERROR: opCode = 0x0406 (Disconnect) -- send request failed (err=0x0012 (kBluetoothHCIErrorInvalidHCICommandParameters))
11/03/14 3:11:28.000 PM kernel[0]: [0xffffff8016117200][free]()
11/03/14 3:11:31.000 PM kernel[0]: ### ERROR: opCode = 0x0406 (Disconnect) -- send request failed (err=0x0012 (kBluetoothHCIErrorInvalidHCICommandParameters))
11/03/14 3:11:31.000 PM kernel[0]: [0xffffff8013f74700][free]()
11/03/14 3:11:40.000 PM kernel[0]: [0xffffff8014ae4200][free]()
11/03/14 3:11:40.000 PM kernel[0]: ### ERROR: opCode = 0x0406 (Disconnect) -- send request failed (err=0x0012 (kBluetoothHCIErrorInvalidHCICommandParameters))
11/03/14 3:11:44.000 PM kernel[0]: ### ERROR: opCode = 0x0406 (Disconnect) -- send request failed (err=0x0012 (kBluetoothHCIErrorInvalidHCICommandParameters))
11/03/14 3:11:44.000 PM kernel[0]: [0xffffff801409d800][free]()
11/03/14 3:11:52.457 PM coreaudiod[149]: Disabled automatic stack shots because audio IO is active
11/03/14 3:11:52.631 PM coreaudiod[149]: Enabled automatic stack shots because audio IO is inactive
11/03/14 3:11:54.718 PM librariand[657]: MMe quota status changed: under quota
11/03/14 3:11:54.862 PM com.apple.security.pboxd[661]: Bug: 12F45: liblaunch.dylib + 23849 [2F71CAF8-6524-329E-AC56-C506658B4C0C]: 0x25

Your Console shows:

1- The kernel is trying to turn off BT but gets refused!

2- Your os x install has a bug?

They might or not be related.

Reinstall your OS X (12F45) update. ->Check.

Reset your SMC. ->Check.

If problem continues Log in as Guest. ->Check.


Looking for a tool for creating or editing file and folder bookmarks (finder aliases) I created a bookmark / Alias (via finder) for an smb share after mounting it. That's quite fine and working for me at it's best. It automatically mounts the smb store when acessing the alias and I can browse into the share without huddle.

But: Other users are not very familar with it and would be pleased to get such a link pre-installed.
The problem is, that my bookmark automatically contains personal information (username in SMB:// URI and in some cases personalized path names for the share.

I'm not able to edit this (binary) mac bookmark file in vim and it includes lots of unreadable information.

The question is:
Is there any tool that will allow editing such a Mac System Alias (Bookmark) file so I can create presets for other users?
You aren't able to edit this in Finder natively nor through any text editor.

Rather than attempting to edit an alias directly, you could look at making a tool that creates the alias for the user.

Using Automator you could create an application that uses the following built in actions:

Ask for Text
Connect to Servers
New Aliases

And when the app is run, the following would happen:

The user would be asked for the server address (you could pre-populate a default answer for this).
The share point would be mounted. A dialog would pop up asking for the users login credentials, which could then be stored in the keychain (more secure than having these details contained within the tool itself).
An alias would be created at a specified location, e.g. the Desktop.

You would then save this as an application and share it with your users.


kate editor with built-in terminal For programming it is very convenient to have a built-in terminal inside a text editor. Therefore my favorite text editor on KDE-Linux is kate which has great ability of a built-in terminal below the text which is synchronized with the text path. Navigating through the open files and do terminal commands with them is then extremely easy.

I have installed kate via macport on OS X 10.10, but the terminal does not appear even though it shows its icon. Any idea if this a a kate bug or 10.10? If kate is not fully compatible with OS, is there any other text editor on Mac with a built-in terminal?

Thanks!

I don't know about Kate, but with emacs you can do : Alt + X - Shell and you have a terminal inside a text editor inside a terminal :)

https://www.masteringemacs.org/article/running-shells-in-emacs-overview


Highlight object groups in keynote I have 3 groups on a slide that I want to highlight 1 at a time.  Is there a good way to do this?  My slide has a gradient background so putting a rectangle over the objects and faking it mucking with their transparency doesn't seem like a good approach.

Is there a way to make objects start out opacified?  If so, I can use the opacity action on the objects, but when I tried to use an opacity action, on transition, with duration 0, it didn't work.  Having a short (0.1s) duration causes kind of a jarring flicker.

I also thought about using multiple slides with magic-move handling the opacity changes, but I didn't see a way to change the opacity of a group.

I'm running Keynote 6.5.2 on Yosemite (the most recent releases of both I believe).

I've built a small demo Keynote file (v5.1, on Mac OS 10.6.8, hope you can open it) -- this does what you're trying to achieve. At start only group 1 is fully opaque, then after each click, group 2 and 3 gain full opacity while the other groups are 50% transparent.
I've solved the 0.1s flicker by putting a copy of the groups underneath group 2 and 3 and setting it to 0% transparency at the beginning.
It could use some tweaking, I'll admit that, but that was just a quick 2am demo.


Is there an easier keyboard shortcut for taking a screenshot on OSX 10.5? I'm running OSX 10.5 and was wondering if there is an easier way to make screenshots which save to clipboard?

I know I can use:

CMD+CTRL+SHIFT+4

However this is hard on the fingers.

You can set up a custom shortcut, for example a key, for that purpose.

Open System Prefrences, go to Keyboard -> Screen Shots (or navigate to the Screen Shot-options), and double click on the shortcuts you want to change to change them to the keys you use less frequently. If you have a huge keyboard like me, you can for example set the F5 and F6 to be the shortcuts.

Here is a screen shot of the settings window where you set the shortcut (captured with those as well!) The "Copy"-screenshots are the ones with Control+Shift.


Ensuring consistency and minimal interference during benchmarking? I am attempting to measure the performance of a common piece of software on the current line up of 13” and 16" for the purpose of comparison between models.
Analysing the specs “on paper” may not be ideal since CPUs and memory can perform differently depending on how the software utilizes them, and obvious metrics (clock speeds, cores, memory type and memory GB) don't always correlate with actual performance.
I am working on some simple, reproducible tests to benchmark performance on across MBPs and generate some real, empirical data. They will resemble real-life workflows, and be focussed on heavy compute and heavy memory use. All up they will take under 2 hours per machine, and they don't require Internet.
Question: how should each MBP be prepared before each test is run? There is a strong desire to ensure maximum consistency/accuracy across tests and therefore a fair comparison.
Some things I have considered so far:

WiFi and bluetooth off
Consistent room temperature and (sun) lighting conditions
Close as many unnecessary applications as possible, leaving open only what is necessary for the OS and for the testing software
I am not sure what else, or if there is any established 'best practice'. I am particularly concerned about any 'background' tasks which I may not be aware of which could run during the test and affect the results

Items you've considered are already good! Disabling internet stops lot of stray processes.
You can try Safe mode to do the tests if they don't need the services disabled in that mode. Also consider making a new user account for doing the testing.
https://support.apple.com/HT201262

Safe mode prevents your Mac from loading certain software as it starts up, including login items, system extensions not required by macOS, and fonts not installed by macOS. It also does a basic check of your startup disk, similar to using First Aid in Disk Utility. And it deletes some system caches, including font caches and the kernel cache, which are automatically created again as needed.

That's the closest you can get to a brand new Mac.
Also, if the tests' results use huge storage, its best to delete them after every run since remaining storage also affects VM usage and increases memory pressure.


Can a singe Dropbox'ed 1Password db be shared between 1Password v4 & v3? I share my 1Password db on Dropbox across a number of machines.  If I upgrade some machines to 1Password 4, will the 1Password db no longer work with 1Password 3 instances.  Caveat: One of the machines can no longer support OS upgrade beyond Lion.

See How do I use 1Password 4 in Snow Leopard or Lion?:

1Password 4 for Mac requires Mountain Lion or later.
If you are still rocking an older Mac, we’ve got you covered. We know that you store your most important information in 1Password — we do too! — so we made sure you could still use 1Password 3 for Mac on your older Macs if you need to. 1Password 4 for Mac can sync its data with 1Password 3 for Mac using Dropbox so there’s no issue using both. Access all your data, even on Macs that cannot be upgraded to Mountain Lion. Rock on!


Parental controls not logging off user We are successfully using Parental controls to limit our childrens time by the computer.

However I can't seem to be able to make the system log off the user when the time limit runs out. Since there are four people using the same computer it ends up being unusable as the kids run games, chat software, music software etcetera and after half a day the memory is stuffed with unused processes and the CPU is running HOT.

I have verified that the Fast user switching feature of the OS is turned off. Still the user that is locked out due to Parental controls time limits is not automatically logged out.

I also tried to change the security setting "Log out user after XX minutes of inactivity". I set it to 10 minutes and it works fine for the user that is currently using the computer but all locked out users are still logged in (however "inactive" they might be).

This is driving me nuts. I end up having to interfere with the children several times a day restarting or logging in or out different users. Please help!

Ah, some info: MacMini Late 2012, OS X 10.8.2

Looks like you are doing everything right. Auto logout will only work for the user that is currently logged in.

The easiest way is to reboot the system. Either automatically at night or if you need to get the system under control quickly.

I found this discussion on the apple support boards (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1402679?start=0&tstart=0) that advocates using Activity Monitor to kill the process.

Or go hardcore and write a script that will occasionally kill all processes of the kids users:

killall -u username


When I type a capital P in pages or safari, there is a bar above my keyboard that says an explicit name. How do I remove the bar and/or the name When I type "P" on pages and safari, there is a bar above my ipad keyboard that says an explicit result.

How do I remove the bar or the explicit result?

You can't remove individual words from QuickType. To clear the custom dictionary, go to Settings → General → Reset → Reset Keyboard Dictionary.


How does iMessage work? I'm interested in a good general overview.

How does iMessage actually work?

In a nutshell, iOS sets up a persistent connection to the Apple Push Notification (APN) servers if you elect to use iMessage, iCloud, Notifications or other push services. From there, the phone checks in with the servers anytime it has a network connection and listens for messages that the servers wish to push to your device. Furthermore, iOS then registers which applications on your phone should get specific messages. All the messages pass through the notification center system in case you have elected for them to be posted to specific places such as the lock screen, the notification tray or just passed off to the end application for each message as appropriate.

That's it.

There's a server. (likely many behind a load balancer)
There's a connection that your device opens to the server.
Things can then arrive through the connection.


Does anyone know how to create an Apple ID? Account creation is failing I'm a software engineer who's trying to create an Apple ID so I can download a copy of macOS that I can use for development - but, I'm not sure how to create an Apple ID - I'm, not smart, and, I need help.

I've tried creating an Apple ID via:

The web browser; and
The App Store on my MacBook Pro.

I've used two different networks to do this, but, alas, I have failed myself, and those around me.

Whenever I try to create an Apple ID via the web browser, account creation fails immediately after I submit the e-mail verification code - it says "your account could not be created at this time".

Whenever I try to create an Apple ID via the App Store, account creation appears to silently fail at the end of the process. It looks like there might be a pop-up raised immediately after I try to create an account, but, it disappears after 10-15ms and I can't tell what it says.

I've tried to create an account via each mechanism 3-5 times/each.

My e-mail address is <name>@<name>.ca, maybe that's not supported yet?

Does anyone know how this works?

You should go to https://developer.apple.com and look for the Account link at top of the page. You should be able to create a free developers account. If you are developing for macOS or iOS you'll need this account sooner or later anyway.


Switch between sound profiles iPhone? I have found no way that iPhone is able to do what I need here. I have iOS 6.x (jailbroken).

I would like to set 3-4 Sounds themes (basic feature of all Nokia). Example I need:

Normal: vibrance ok, sounds normal
High tone: volume up
Silence: vibrance ok but only with a single low tone to alert of SMS, email etc
Dead: no vibrance, no sounds.

Is there any app or somethign that let me set this 4 profiles?

I have not been able to find a way to do this with either jailbreak tweaks nor with the built in iOS.

(Please note I know I can switch between silence and do not disturb, but I want to personalize this profiles, also I need high tone profile)

SBProfiles will let you set up profiles for lots of settings on your phone - including sound and vibration. Here's a YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlGjZ6UACFs

Intelliborn once had an app called MyProfiles (http://intelliborn.com/myprofiles.html) but it has been discontinued and only works on iOS 4


Can I run Yosemite after I install the Mojave firmware updates? I'm very hesitantly getting ready to "upgrade" from Yosemite to Mojave because I worry that it will break things I still need. So to give it a try I've decided to install Mojave on an external drive first.

Before I do that, I need to know if I can run my current Yosemite installation after I let the Mojave installer update the firmware. If I install Mojave on an external drive and suddenly can't boot my current Yosemite setup, I'll be hosed!

Can anyone confirm the firmware updates won't break Yosemite?

Yes, such a downgrade is possible.

Once shipped the firmware updates really change very little in terms of hardware capabilities.

Those firmware updates in Mojave seem to be really mostly about adding support for APFS. Whether Appel included more substantial changes to existing hardware, like security fixes, are mostly unknown, due to the standard lack of transparency regarding update from Apple.

That means in personal testing I have never seen a device not booting the system it came with originally, despite numerous upgrades. The most extreme example being 10.13 on a MacBook Pro that shipped with 10.6.

The lack of problem reports for official Apple solutions (Apple: Use the Mac operating system that came with your Mac, or a compatible newer version) and other solutions (How to downgrade macOS from Mojave to an older version) indicate that the Mac itself should be able to run al those supported versions.

Caveat:

That means it should be fine for an Apple computer and an Apple system software to mix and match as you desire. (Boot 10.9 one day, try out Mojave the other and then go back to Yosemite.)

That doesn't mean that a possible security fix in one of the firmware updates (eg for how Thunderbolt operates) might not break interoperability for one of your other third party hardware peripherals. But even for these possibilities a problem report seems hard to find.


MAMP nginx.conf - invalid number of arguments in "user" I am having issues starting up Nginx with the MAMP Pro application.

When I press start Nginx I get the following error message

invalid number of arguments in "user" directive in /Library/Application Support/appsolute/MAMP PRO/conf/nginx.conf:7

looking at the configuration file

  /Library/Application Support/appsolute/MAMP PRO/conf/nginx.conf

I notice the following line has multiple users

user rob COMPANYWORKDOMAIN\Domain Users;

However changing it to just one user (rob) does not work because it gets overwritten and reverted back next time I start up Nginx via the MAMP application.

I'm a  bit stuck as what to do here?

Your host is part of the domain COMPANYWORKDOMAIN and user rob is a domain user (probably admin, network, managed) but no local admin user.

nginx.conf line 7 is determined by the "Run server as:" settings in MAMP Pro and mustn't be edited manually:

Since your user is no local admin account using rob will fail.

So either use the standard Unix users (www/www) or a local admin account (which requires to log out as rob and log in as another local admin user) to run MAMP Pro:


macOS: Disable promiscuous Wi-Fi scan and/or display of unwanted list of Wi-Fi networks? I am annoyed by a display of all nearby Wi-Fi networks around me, when I know I am looking to connect to one among the couple of known networks.

Is there a setting to disable detection of new/unknown networks? I looked at System Preferences app → Network → Wi-Fi → Advanced, but could not find anything relevant to this requirement. It is more of a matter of reducing clutter than any major hindrance.

Is there a setting to disable detection of new/unknown networks?

No.

Entering password to connect to known access points is a one time activity. May I ask, apart from aesthetics, what's your rationale for suppressing the display of the list of discovered networks?

There is no built-in setting to suppress the display of list of discovered, non-hidden Wi-Fi access points in iOS. But ever if it were there, it will only make things hard when you'll wish to connect to a new network (which, varying from person to person can still be a common use case). You'll have to manually enter the SSID and password for the access point.

Also, if it were possible, you won't be able to benefit from the Wi-Fi password sharing feature available since iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra, which lets you quickly join Wi-Fi networks your contacts present nearby are already connected to.


Self hosted VPN solution with Mac client Rather than pay an additional monthly fee, I'd like to take advantage of the existing cloud computing resources I already have and host a VPN on Amazon or Linode, and access that from my MacBook while I'm on public wifi networks to encrypt my traffic. Are there any recommended solutions with a nice Mac client to optimize the experience?

Specifically, I just saw Cloak on Hacker News, and wondered if there was something similar I could set up myself.

OpenVPN appears to be one option with minimal licensing fees (free for single user use) and a Mac client. Anyone have any experience with it for personal VPN use?

Edit: I did come across this post that explains how to set up the l2tp vpnd service that ships with Snow Leopard, but haven't had a lot of luck getting it to work myself yet. A number of commenters on the post have succeeded though, so others reading this should give that a try.

On the client side, it looks like all you need to do is add a VPN network interface in System Preferences, so once the server is working, that part is pretty easy.

I do have my own OpenVPN server running on Linode, and I use Tunnelblick to connect to it. Works flawlessly.

There's a guide on Linode's library to help you set things up.


E-Mail notifications only work for first e-mail account (GMail)? Currently I finally - way too late - noticed that still in iOS 6, the Apple Mail app is not sending me push notifications - or any notifications for that matter - for any of my e-mail accounts except the first one, which happens to be my GMail account.

The other ones (of 6 total) are: Another GMail account, a Nate(.com) & Daum(.net) account and two domain names I bought (one via GoogleApps, the other not).

My settings are: Push and "Fetch every 15 minutes", with Fetch activated for all email accounts named above.

So as I get no notifications (and thus today missed an important e-mail in the afternoon, even though I kept an eye on my phone), I wonder how to troubleshoot this?

Finally I wonder why "push" is still not a reality? I mean in all my settings there is no "push" option, for whatever of the above accounts I use. Is "push" only possible when you have a Blackberry or Sharepoint or sth. ?

I know push works for iCloud email accounts (@me.com), but as for the other ones, I'm not positive.

You can configure your email notifications by tapping Settings > Notifications > Mail. After you are there, you will notice a list of email accounts. It appears that you have to customize each individual mail account separately. Tap on a email account, and you can configure it to alert you exactly the way you desire to be notified.

You can also use VIPs (under the list of email accounts mentioned above, or accessed by by tapping the arrow to the right of the VIP mailbox just under All Inboxes in the Mail app) to customize notifications depending on if particular senders are consistently urgent.


Limitations on running Windows on latest Macbook Pro I'm strongly considering to buy latest Macbook Pro because of the hardware (i5 with Quad core) and design. I'm a Windows IT Pro and virtualization is a hard requirement for me, in addition to running Windows 10 most of the time. Would there be any limitations in terms of virtualization or other functionality in Windows I should be aware of or would it be just like buying any other high end computer?

You need macOS to download the drivers needed to install Windows 10. Once you have the drivers, you can install Windows 10 with or without macOS. Windows 10 will EFI boot and operate the same as any other new PC. There should be no limitations in terms of virtualization or other functionality in Windows.


Can you stream photos from a PC to an iPad? I have more photos then I want to download onto the iPad.  Is there a favorite app that allows users to browse photos from a Windows7 machine to view on my iPad over wifi?

FileBrowser from the App Store lets you browse your shared network folders.


on iOS, will reinstalling Skype delete my chat history? I'm having an issue with Skype on my iPhone, that appears to have been solved for many people by deleting and reinstalling the app.  But I'm hesitant to do this for fear I will lose all my conversation history.

Does anyone know for certain if the chat history on my device will be deleted if I delete the app?

It will not delete your chat history.

I reinstalled Skype on a different iPhone and the chat history was restored.


Is there a way to get a modal display when ⌘-⌥-→ and ⌘-⌥-←? When switching between applications with the keyboard (i.e. ⌘-tab) a modal display is shown with graphical representations of each application.

Is there a way to get a similar modal display when switching between tabs of an application (i.e. ⌘-⌥-→ and ⌘-⌥-←), such that some summary is displayed (e.g. in a browser the tab text, in sublime the filename, etc)?

Witch can do this, but its development has been a bit stale (I don't know if it still works).

Window switching is fast and fun
With Witch installed, a pop-up panel shows all open windows—even windows in other Spaces, if you're running 10.6. From the panel, simply select the window you'd like to activate. There is no step two!


Could Apple (OS X) wallpaper be licensed for commercial use? Does anyone know who owns the Zebra Wallpaper that comes with MBP Retina Display (and Mountain Lion)? Although this is my specific task (to hunt down who owns one specific likely copyrighted image), it would be nice to know if there is a way to read the image's metadata or otherwise track in general who owns what image that ships as part of Apple's OS.

Apple and/or Apple’s licensors own the images, as stated under Apple's Software License Agreement for Mountain Lion:

  The Apple software (including Boot ROM code), any third party software, documentation, interfaces, content, fonts and any data accompanying this License whether preinstalled on Apple-branded hardware, on disk, in read only memory, on any other media or in any other form (collectively the “Apple Software”) are licensed, not sold, to you by Apple Inc. (“Apple”) for use only under the terms of this License. Apple and/or Apple’s licensors retain ownership of the Apple Software itself and reserve all rights not expressly granted to you.


What is the iOS developer payment schedule? I'm planning to release an iPhone app next week. I have read that Apple pays out 45 days after the end of month (if threshold is reached). My developer account is linked to an address in India if that makes any difference.

So, if I reach the threshold in May, is it safe to assume I will get paid in the beginning of July?

Developers get paid within 45 days of the last day of the month. For example, the amount you earned in March should be paid to you before mid-May. For my case in March, 2015, I got paid on April 30.

Also note that the minimum threshold depends on the currency and country pair Apple set. If you decide to get paid in the pair Apple set (e.g. HKD in Hong Kong or JPY in Japan), it's $10 USD or equivalent. If not, it's $150 USD.

This information is from Apple's documentation in iTunes Connect.

  When will I be paid?

  Payments are made within 45 days of the last day of the month in which
  book purchases were made. To receive payment, you must have provided
  all required banking and tax information and documentation, as well as
  meeting the minimum payment threshold.

  If your bank and bank account currency is listed in this table, you
  must exceed a minimum payment threshold of $10 USD. All other bank
  countries and bank account currencies must exceed a minimum payment
  threshold of $150 USD.


How to add Quick Look support for OpenDocument file formats? I prefer OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice to MS Office because MS Office is expensive.

But OS X Quick View functionality that allows a preview of a file by taping space bar doesn't show an OpenDocument file's contents but just an icon.

How can I add Quick Look support for OpenOffice files, like .ods, .odt and .odp ?

I know OpenOffice can write MS Office documents but it would be nice to have Quick Look understand the OpenDocument formats.

Note: ods are spreadsheets, odt are word processor documents and odp are presentations.

There's a longstanding request for it at
https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=68600

And an early implementation is at http://eric.bachard.free.fr/mac/aquavcl/patches/aqua_February2008/quicklook/

To install, place OOoQuickLook.qlgenerator from that site into /Library/QuickLook and wait a few minutes for QuickLook to detect the new generator.


iBooks management of PDF files I’ve always used “Open in iBooks” to view PDF files I come across on the internet. I don’t do anything explicit to save these files, but it seems something does because when I open iBooks, those PDFs are all there. I have hundreds of these PDFs, but iBooks doesn’t seem to support folders to organize the files. The first problem is that I can’t seem to get an app like PDF Pro to see the PDFs that I viewed in iBooks.
Does iOS save these PDF files, and where are they save?
Using Collections is inadequate for my needs. Does iBooks support nested folders? How would one create the folder structure, and populate it with the PDFs?

Usually the .pdf files can be only viewed in Safari without opening in iBooks, and this is as such since I remember, and this is default in any browser.
To save them, you have the option to "open in iBooks" and they will copied there, and the different Collection items is the only possibility to categorise them in iBooks.
But in Safari there are another possibility: from sharing symbol, choose "Save to Files" - and there you may create any number of folders, nested or not, as you wish/need.
The good news is you can move those .pdf files from iBooks: go Library -> Collections -> Edit and select the files you intend to move to Files and again, from sharing symbol choose "Save to Files" - then delete them from iBooks.


How to have arrows for moving the cursor right and left when writing text on iPad? On an iPhone, I was writing text. Among the keys, I have seen arrows for moving the cursor right and left.

How can I have these keys on iPad ?

These would be very useful.

Why aren't these keys present on iPad ?

At this point, there is no default functionality on the iPad for arrow keys. (I suppose the idea is to tap the text to position the arrow). There is a chance that there is a 3rd-party keyboard for iPad that would include arrow keys.

Those arrow keys, from what I have seen, are unique to the iPhone 6 (and Plus) while in landscape mode.

Because of the way that the iPad can be typed on (two-handed vs. two-thumbed on the iPhone), there is a chance that arrow keys will never be brought to the iPad's default keyboard.


Kernel SMC::smcReadKeyAction error I just looked in the OS X Console, and noticed that there's a huge number of errors looking like this:

6/12/12 8:33:16.000 PM kernel: SMC::smcReadKeyAction ERROR F1Mn kSMCBadArgumentError(0x89) fKeyHashTable=0x0xffffff800a715000

There's one almost exactly every 5 seconds. Any ideas?

Are you on OS X 10.7.4 ?
Then an explanation and possible solution might be found here on CNet:

Tackling SMC console errors after OS X 10.7.4 update

"Might", because it didn't work for me - even after uninstalling iStat Menus v2.x, so it must be some other application(s) on my part that is causing this...


Use open firmware mode with external monitor (Powerbook G4) I am trying to install Debian from USB to a Powerbook G4 with a broken screen. If I boot to the Mac, the external monitor works without problems. But in boot select mode (holding down 'alt' at startup) and Open Firmware (cmd + alt + O + F) the external monitor does not come on. Any suggestions on how to fix this?

I solved my problem by using a magnet to trigger the lid closed switch (upper middle of the touchpad in my 17' model)

An external keyboard would have worked as well.


How can I change the priority of number and symbol keys? I am a programmer and I use symbols more often than the number keys. I'd like to change the priority of the top row keys so that hitting "1" gives me "!", and holding shift and pressing "1" gives me "1".

I'd prefer a built-in solution even if it requires more effort.

To make the keyboard behave differently, you need a different keyboard layout.

You could create one by editing an XLM file manually, or you could use a third-party tool to create the keyboard layout (you don't need to be running a third-party program indefinitely once they layout is created and installed).

Ukelele is known for making it fairly easy to create new keyboard layouts for the Mac.

In any event, you want to switch the number keys (0-9) and the symbols attached to them. Save your new keyboard in ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts, and then select it as your keyboard.


Is It possible to move or transfer an encrypted iPhone backup between computers? I have a new MacBook Pro and backed up (encrypted) my iPhone on the machine. I would like to transfer that backup to my iMac desktop and open it in iTunes on that machine. Is it possible to transfer the encrypted backup on the MacBook to the iMac? Thx.

Definitely! The iPhone backups are stored in your user account's app data section.

Open Finder, and select the “Go” menu at the top of the screen. Hold the Option key, and select the “Library” menu option from the Go menu. (On OSX Lion and above, Library will only appear with the Option key held.)
From Library, navigate to Application Support -> MobileSync -> Backup.

(In iTunes preferences -> Devices, you can also right-click on the backup and select Show in Finder on Mac.)

In here, your backups are folders named with the device id for the iPhone (and a date after it sometimes). Make sure you grab the whole folder, and put the folder in on the new computer in the Backup folder there. You can make the folders if iTunes hasn't yet.

Here's a blog post I wrote about it on Mac and Windows, and matching up the UDID to your iPhone.
https://deciphertools.com/blog/where-are-iphone-backups/


Why is iBooks.app taking 650 MB memory on macOS 10.14.5? I am using macOS Mojave 10.14.5. Books.app shows 650 MB memory being used in Activity monitor even when it is not opened. I have books of around 110 MB but I haven't used the app very much recently.

I tried opening and quitting the app. And quit the process from activity monitor too. It didn't stop. Then, I had force quit the process from Activity Monitor. It fixed it for some days and now it is back in the same state.
In the "Open Files and Ports" of Activity Monitor, ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooksX/Data/Documents/BKLibrary/BKLibrary-1-091020131601.sqlite is an entry along with .sqlite-wal and .sqlite-shm with the same file name.
I booted into Safe mode and worked for about 30 minutes during which the app didn't appear in Activity Monitor. It came back in normal mode after around 2 days.
New find is that, when I open iBooks, another PID of the same app is created with around 50 MB. All the further actions like, opening a book, closing it, networking processes etc affect only the newly created PID. Quitting the app kills the newer PID, not the older one.

What is triggering books.app to start and use that much memory?

I note that Books is using a similarly small amount of memory on my Mac, too, despite not being launched. So, I'd categorise this as 'normal'.

My general approach to memory issues is "Is this an actual problem?"

If memory pressure is low; and you're not seeing high levels of swap and associated  performance issues: then I'd be tempted to let MacOS do the system management.

You could try launching the app, and letting it 'work' for a bit, then quit it, and see if that improves things. There do seem to be a couple of other reports on ASC about Books running wild with memory - the DiskSpaceEfficiency plugin seems to be the culprit. But no solutions given. FWIW, I don't see the behaviour in Catalina. It's likely to be a bug.


What parts do I need to build a iPhone I'm soon planning to build a iPhone 6, but before ordering random parts, I've made a list of parts needed to have an nice overview.

A list of what parts are needed:

Housing
LCD Screen + digitizer
Motherboard
Battery
Volume button flex
Power button flex
Home button + flex
Volume, Power and Home button spacers
Vibration motor
Audio and Dock connector
Front camera, sensor + flex
Back camera
GPS

Am I missing some parts for the build? I so, can you please let me know. Is there maybe a list of the iPhone parts somewhere on the internet?

I'm not sure you'd be able to build one from scratch using totally new parts, but you may find this iPhone 6 teardown useful.


Disable Shift Cmd Q for logout I would like to disable  Shift+Command+Q keyboard shortcut for Log Out.

I am using Karabiner at the moment, but I only managed to disable it completely using the following xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
    <item>
        <name>Disable COMMAND SHIFT Q for Logout</name>
        <identifier>disable_CMD_SHIFT_Q_private</identifier>
        <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::Q, VK_SHIFT | VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::NONE, KeyCode::VK_NONE</autogen>
    </item>
</root>

but I would like to have the keyboard combination available in emacs (in ESS for debugging).

Is there some way that I can effectively unmap the keyboard combination?

The following works for me on 10.9.5:

System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts.
'+' to add a shortcut
Application: All Applications
Menu Title: Log Out [Your Name]…  Here, copy the exact text shown in the Apple menu, replacing [Your Name], and note that the ellipsis … must be typed with alt-;
Keyboard Shortcut: ctrl-shift-cmd-Q (or whatever you prefer: something different to shift-cmd-Q)
Log out and in again.
Note that the keyboard shortcut has changed in the Apple menu, and shift-cmd-Q no longer triggers the menu.


Can a thunderbolt cable transmit power? Is it possible for thunderbolt to transmit power to or from a Macbook Pro. Perhaps to power/charge it or power/charge an external device?

According to Apple, yes, it can carry power for devices in some circumstances. Specifically:

  7. Does the Thunderbolt port supply power to connected devices?

  Yes. A Thunderbolt port supplies power if that Thunderbolt port is part of a device that is connected to an AC power outlet or is operating on battery power. If your Thunderbolt devices have their own power supplies, you should connect the power supplies to them for optimal functionality. If you are using Thunderbolt devices that get their power only from the Thunderbolt bus, computers running on battery power will experience battery drain more quickly.

The Thunderbolt specs on the Wikipedia page for Thunderbolt currently say the copper-based version of the Thunderbolt protocol can deliver 18 V at 550 mA (9.9 W max). Presumably all Thunderbolt cables are built to this spec and can handle that kind of power passing through them. Whether the connected device can supply that kind of power is another question that can only be answered by looking at specific devices.

Thunderbolt over an optical, instead of copper, connection would not be able to carry any power with the data signal. I note this only because Thunderbolt was original designed to be an optical protocol; though its since been adapted to copper which is a good thing.


Approve a device without having another Apple device I have a company MacBook Pro, so I am a little bit restricted in administration setting.

By the way, I need to access iCloud, that was created with the previous MacBook Pro (changed some weeks ago) and where there are important documents that I would like to sync with this new one.

The problem is that when I try to sync iCloud it is asking for the Apple ID login, the iCloud login and then to go to another device signed in to iCloud and approve this device.

Now, if I log in to iCloud, and also Apple ID, I can only see this new device registered in both my accounts, as the old MacBook was previously removed as no more used.

I have already tried to remove this new MacBook to have no device registered in any of the accounts (iCloud and Apple ID) and tried again the procedure. Correctly, when logging in, I am receiving the SMS with the code to my phone (not Apple) for the 2FA, but then the procedure tells me every time to go to another device signed in to iCloud and approve the current MacBook. Only at this point, in both the accounts, I can see that this new MacBook has been added again to the devices section.

As you can imagine, I do not have any other Apple device to approve this new MacBook and the solution proposed else where in this website, are not helpful because they suppose you have another Apple device or they just say what I have already tried and wrote above.

Is there anything that I can try about that?

This is an iCloud keychain prompt. In order to allow you to sign in to the Mac, you'll need to approve it. If you only have one device on the account then you must have had another apple device in the past that you used to set up keychain. Often times some users will turn keychain on and then realize they don't know what it is or what it does so they turn it off. The moment its turned on, you activate it and it identifies itself with your Apple ID.

If you don't care about iCloud Keychain, the screen should get you an option to reset iCloud Keychain. It should say "Can't approve from another device". Once you click on that, next it will say "If you can’t approve this Mac from another device, you can reset your end-to-end encrypted data to finish setting up iCloud". That data is your keychain passwords, wifi passwords, Messages saved in iCloud and credit card numbers (more info below). If you don't care that it will erase that information from your account, then have it reset the keychain and it will allow you to continue to the phone setup.

iCloud keychain is a secure management feature that keeps your account names, passwords, Messages in iCloud and even credit card numbers stored behind 256-bit AES encryption on Apple's iCloud servers. Then that data is synced between authorized iOS/iPadOS devices and macOS devices.


Terminal won't open after brew upgrade (dyld library not loaded) I ran "brew upgrade" from the terminal, before upgrading finished the battery ran out on my MBP and the computer restarted. Now when I go to open a terminal the terminal window flashes up for a split second before closing. I managed to capture the terminal output before it closed:

dyld: Library not loaded: /use/local/lib/libgdbm.4.dylib

How can I fix this?

Please note that I cannot open a terminal to issue any commands!

Install iTerm.app You can set up a profile that you can set the start up program do be /bin/bash

Or create a new admin user and use that to restore or reinstall files. I think you might be able to use dscl from that user to change the original users' shell


My AppleTV is in standby and still connects to Apple servers. Why and how to switch off? I use OpenWrt as router software and see this while AppleTV is in standby since weeks:

DuckDuckGo finds

17.57.144.53 is an IP address operated by Apple
Port 5223 Details: Port used by Apple to maintain a persistent connection to APNs and receive push notifications. Some Apple applications that use this port: MobileMe, FaceTime, Game Center, APNs.

Just saying 1.2 MB is a lot traffic.
Why this behavior and how to switch off?

Why? It's checking for the above-mentioned data.
Standby does not mean 'off' on any device these days. Your smart TV & cable TV box will be doing just the same sort of thing - Updating TV schedules, checking for messages from various services, checking for OS updates, etc etc.
Note: the entirety of 17.x.x.x belongs to Apple. You can really just allow the entire subnet.


How can I change the language for automatic spelling correction? I set my input source to be US English. And the flag showing on the taskbar is also an American flag.

But whenever I type something in Mail.app or Notes.app the spell check still corrects my spelling to British English:

e.g. it highlights my "organize" and suggest s"organise".

Please, how to make my Mac (OS X 10.8) an American?

To add to what gentmatt said, in the case you need to keep "Automatic by Language" because you happen to write in different languages, click on "Set Up…" in the list shown for the Spelling option.

On the dialog box that appears, you can change the order for the languages. In my case, this is the order I chose.

Now, I can write organize, and the word is not corrected, nor do I get a suggestion for writing organise. (It happens that organise is shown as incorrect.)


iPhone 4S/iOS 6: Every message received turns into Group MMS with me as a recipient I have a annoying problem since I updated my iPhone 4S to iOS 6:

when I sent a message to someone and I get the reply, the reply is not added to the normal conversation but a Group MMS will be created, with the replier and me as a recipient.

So here are the two annoying things about it:

the whole conversation overview is split into two conversations, one conversation only with my messages and the replier's Group MMS with his/her reply. No overview about the whole conversation at all
Every time I reply in that Group MMS conversation, the iPhone also sends me an own message, having me as a recipient. That is just annoying because then I have my message twice and I have to delete the extra message in order to keep the conversation clean and of course the phone rings and vibrates when I get my own message.

I cannot merge the two conversations and I didn't find an option to turn Group Messages off or to delete me as a recipient. And it happens to every message sent, so probably not an iMessage bug.

As a carrier I have SoftBank from Japan. In Japan they use e-mail addresses instead of numbers, maybe this is causing the whole thing. But I doubt it a bit because before the update everything went fine.

Can somebody help me?

I had the same problem and I, too, was frustrated as there seems to be no available information on this topic. Not to mention its annoying as hell.

Anyway, this worked for me and it might work for you too.

Open Settings
Tap "Messages" settings
Scroll down to the MMS Email Address.
Make sure to enter the MMS Email Address EXACTLY as it is specified with SoftBank. You can find that information if you login to MySoftbank. https://my.softbank.jp/msb/d/top

I actually had this problem when I bought a new iPhone 5. The girl at the shop who set up my phone unbeknownst to me added a space at the end of the MMS email address. Ah well.

Hope this works!


Apps won’t download or install on iPhone My iPhone won’t download apps from the App Store. They say loading under them and it never starts downloading or installing. At first I thought this was a problem with my internet but I tried downloading small apps (around 70-100 MB) with data and on different WiFi hotspots but I still had the issue. What is this problem and how can I fix it?

(iPhone 6S with iOS 11)

Restart the iPhone 1st. Most of the time that encourages it to look for the network. How you know if it works is if 1 app is updating. If you have folders you'll need to look for that app and see if its in a pie like circle and is moving. If non of that occurs then delete the apps and then reinstall them (I'd do a backup 1st). If you cant reinstall them then sign out of iCloud and then sign back in. Reseting network settings is a good idea as well but you will need to know your password for wifi.

If none of that is beneficial then the last resort is to back up your iPhone with iCloud backup (Settings -> Your Name -> iCloud -> iCloud Backup -> Backup Now - Unless it has already recently backed up), then make sure you get your wifi password and Apple ID password.

***If your Apple account sends you verification codes all of the time you need to add another number to your account in Settings -> Your name (or iCloud) -> Password & Security -> Edit to add trusted phone number (you wont be able to get the code when you sign back in)>.

After you've backed up. Sign out of iCloud, erase the iPhone (Settings -> General -> Reset -> Erase all Content And Settings) and then set up the phone, but restore from the iCloud backup. You'll need wifi, Apple ID account login (and a verification code from another trusted number if your account sends you verification codes). Once thats done the phone will look the same, messages, apps, photos, notes, calendar events, etc.


how to maximise windows in mountain lion like windows 7? In Windows 7 you can stretch the window to whole screen by holding the window at top edge and dragging it to the top edge of screen

You can also stretch it half of the screen size and align it to the respective side by holding the window at top edge and dragging it to the left or right edge of screen

how to do this in mountain lion?

No default option aside from the fullscreen button in the top right corner of some applications. The three colored buttons in the top left of windows also give you some control.

However, there are third party tools available. I found them because I love the snap feature. After trying out a few, I settled on BetterSnapTool because it was the simplest to use and had the most features. Set it to start on bootup and you're all set. I love it.

I don't remember if I bought it in the Mac Appstore or from their website, but the link above is a download from CNet.

Hope this helps. Good luck.


How do I know if I've copied a photo from camera roll to album? Let's say I have 500 images that can be categorized in 5 albums: cars, houses, vacations, family. So I went to my camera roll, selected about 100 images related to "cars" and added them to folder "cars". Now I go back to the camera roll and I notice another picture of a car, but I'm not sure if I selected that one and copied it to the album.

Is there a way to know what pictures in camera roll were added to an album?

I have iPhone 5C, iOS 8.4.1.

They won't be duplicated. Albums only reference the pictures in your Camera Roll, they aren't actually copied.


Get country specific app by restoring from iPad backup I have an iPad 3 that I bought while I was in India on which I have apps that I have purchased with an Indian credit card. When I came back to Singapore, I removed the Indian credit card information and added my Singapore card. I also updated my address to Singapore.

Now, the Singapore store does not have say for example, the Kindle app but the change in card or address did not remove any of my apps from the device.

I bought an iPad mini yesterday, logged in with the same Apple id but I am not able to install the Kindle app since it is not available in the Singapore store.

I want to know what would happen if I restore my iPad 3 backup onto my ipad mini. Will I be able to get back all the apps installed on the iPad 3 onto the mini?

Application data is included in backups. I would say that yes, if you restore a backup with that app on it you will have it back.