Is there a way to extend the time you can talk to Siri for? If I start Siri and ask to send a message or email, it will ask who to, takes the name from me etc etc.

When I come to saying the message I can only say a few words before being cut off. I then need to say edit to start again, or tap the message to edit manually.

However if I were to create a message without using Siri, and then tap the microphone button, I can talk to the voice recognition for longer, and manually stop it listening.

Is there a way to change the length of time Siri leaves after you have finished talking or a way to change its sensitivity to sound?

You can prevent Siri from cutting you off in the command mode by holding down the Home button until you're done speaking.

Normally you activate Siri in the command mode by holding the Home button until Siri responds, then releasing the button and talking.  In that mode she'll cut you off pretty quickly.  Continuing to hold the Home button bypasses that limitation.


Split a column in Numbers by extracting text in parenthesis I need to extract everything from "ORIGINAL COMBINED" that is between parenthesis and place it in the SPLIT A and place the remainder in the SPLIT B column. For example:

In order to accomplish this task, we need to use a combination of Text functions in our formulas. See Apple's documentaiton for more details on using these functions.

TL;DR the formulas are beneath the explanation.

So we need to identify the (XX) in each text string.  In one column, display only the parens and numbers between them, and in the other column, omit them.  This will require combining several text functions into a single fomula.

'Split A' Column

In the original 'string' each character has a position starting at 1.  So for example in the following string, the ( has a position of 3.

1 (23) Large Broom

So what we need to determine is at what position is ( and ) in each string.  We can use Find() to do this.
FIND(search-string, source-string, start-pos)

So using the example string above:
=FIND("(", "1 (23) Large Broom")
returns: 3

Then we can use FIND() to get the positon of ) too.  In this case it returns the position of 6.
We can now use this with the MID() function to retreive the number with parens.

MID(A2,FIND("(",A2),FIND(")",A2,)
// Where A2 contains our original text
result: (23)

Now, if there are no () we will get an error so to handle this we wrap the whole formula in the IFERROR() function.  If there is an error return an empty string.  (or anything you wish)

IFERROR(MID(A2,FIND("(",A2),FIND(")",A2,),"")

Paste this formula in your 'Split A' column.

'Split B' Column

We can use the REPLACE() function to substitue an empty string for our number in parens.  So this: (23) becomes this: "". (The quotes won't show.)
REPLACE(source-string, start-pos, replace-length, new-string)

To remove the (23), we need to add 1 to the position of ) then subtract the position of (.  So in this case 7 - 3 to get 4, the length of our number/parens string.
REPLACE(A2,FIND("(",A2,),(FIND(")",A2,)+1−FIND("(",A2,)),"")Breakdown:

REPLACE(
  A2, ← the source string cell reference
  FIND("(",A2,),
    (FIND(")",A2,)+1−FIND("(",A2,)), ← resulting in 4
"") ← replace with empty string

Wrap this also in a IFERROR() and now the result is 1  Large Broom  (Note the extra space.  This can be eliminated if we add 2 instead of 1)

TL;DR - So here we are. Whew! the formulas with our nested functions to solve this:

Split A

IFERROR(MID(A2,FIND("(",A2),FIND(")",A2,),"")

Split B

IFERROR(REPLACE(A2,FIND("(",A2,),(FIND(")",A2,)+1−FIND("(",A2,)),""),"")


Mobile data keeps switching off I am on a iPhone 5s with iOS 12.4.8. The problem I am facing, if I go to Settings > Mobile Data >  and then switch the toggles for apps such as Google Maps to enable mobile data, next time I am checking there, the toggles are switched off again.
Is anyone else facing a similar problem?

I solved the problem by resetting the settings.


Change Account Password to Blank I recently changed an account password by accident, and was wondering how to set it back to a blank password via the shell. I have root privileges. Please help :)

passwd USER doesn't accept blank passwords

The passwd command rejects the idea that you can have a 0 length password.

Instead use dscl which is more accepting of the notion that the password is nothing.

dscl . -passwd /Users/foo

You can press enter to make the new password blank and then may get an error and have to enter the old password if you are not root

Once you authenticate (or are root already) the blank password will be set for the account in question.


There is no Credit/Debit Card on the Apple Online Store associated with your Apple ID When visiting developer.apple.com to renew my Apple Developer Program membership, I see the following error:

There is no credit/debit card on the Apple Online Store associated with your Apple ID to auto-renew your membership.
Add a credit/debit card to maintain membership benefits and keep your apps available on the App Store.

When I click "Add Card", I am taken to appleid.apple.com.
But when I go to edit the Payment & Shipping information, my details are grayed out and cannot be edited. "Apple Pay" is possibly selected, and I see no way to add a new Credit Card.
How do I add a credit card?

I talked to Apple Support on the phone. They directed me to visit the url:

  https://www.apple.com/shop/browse/account/home

Under "Account Settings", click "Shipping and billing".

This brings you to a much older Apple website, still styled with aqua controls!

  https://secure1.store.apple.com/shop/account/setup_default

I was able to add a new credit card on this site.

When I return to the Developer Program site, the red banner has gone away.


Can using Little Snitch make my mac Less Secure than its "out of the box" settings? Short Question
Im thinking about configuring little snitch to allow all processes incoming and outgoing network traffic.

By allowing "any process” incoming / outgoing rights will this make my Mac less secure than its default settings (default out of the box, eg. not using OSX’s in built firewall tool)

Longer Question with background

The reason i want to do the above is because i want to block incoming and outgoing network traffic for a few applications. I can do this no problem with Little Snitch, but if i turn Little Snitch on it will by default block all network traffic and require each connection to be manually approved. To get around this i would setup the "allow any process" incoming and outgoing traffic rights.

This way all incoming / outgoing is allowed as a global rule, but certain apps are blocked as a specific rule.

Would doing the above make my Mac less secure than its default settings (default out of the box, eg. not using OSX’s in built firewall tool)

Little Snitch can work alongside macOS firewall. If a connection is permitted by Little Snitch, but is still blocked in the macOS firewall, it'll still be blocked. Little Snitch doesn't bypass the macOS firewall, so Little Snitch can't lower the security when the macOS firewall is still enabled.


Outlook 2011 and autoaccepting meetings So I’m about to ditch Outlook for Mac because I’m missing too many meetings.  I’m not sure if anyone is experience the same issues but when using Outlook on Windows, if I get a meeting invite sent to me it automatically gets added to my calendar as “tentative”.  When using Outlook for Mac, unless I physically accept, decline, or tentative the meeting it doesn’t show up.

My understanding is that this is a server side setting so I’m not sure what the issue is.  Even the iphone when pulling down mail marks me as tentative and syncs it back to the Exchange server.  Its almost like when the mail is pulled down into Outlook for Mac, the client side does something to the invite.  No idear.

Its an issue when I get backed up on emails from being either out or in meetings all day and I miss an invite.

From Microsoft Support:

  If you have an exchange server, you can set that under the calendar
  settings in the ECP for each individual user. But it will only accept
  them tentative: "Automatically place new meeting requests on my
  calendar, marked Tentative"

  Its under Options > Settings > Automatic Processing (Right).

  Make sure your url reads http://exchangeserver.com/ecp not
  http://exchangeserver.com/owa

You can try something.  Use the OWA server, instead of the ECP server.  If that doesn't work, contact your system admin to make the change above.


White on black without inverting colors? When using Mac OS X, is there a way to have white text on black background without inverting the other colors?

Create a Custom ICC Profile

Theoretically this is possible by creating a custom ICC profile for your monitor. However, creating an ICC profile is not trivial.

You can see this ability by looking at some of the specialised profiles in /Library/ColorSync/Profiles/. The Gray Tone profile for example compresses all the colours into a single black to white strip.

The Lightness Increase profile's 3D representation demonstrates how any colour can be mapped to any other colour.

There are a number of problems to this approach. Mac OS X's text is anti-aliased. Inverting just black with white will likely result in outlined text; the gray pixels surrounding each letter will not be inverted.

An Alterative Approach: Editing System.clr

An alternative approach is to alter the colours returned by Apple's NSColor class. This class provides the colours and patterns used across Mac OS X. The file that stores the Developer colours is located at /System/Library/Colors/System.clr.

Looking at Apple's Color Programming Topics guide, I suspect a developer may be able to load the file into a NSColorList instance, alter the colour, and write back the file.

This goes against Apple's advice not to alter files in /System, but it is probably your best solution. The modification task requires someone with Objective-C knowledge and available consulting time.


Gmail App on iPhone 4S doesn't complete entire "Push" of email So the Gmail app on my iPhone 4S notifies me with a badge that says I have 1,2,3...n unread messages.  In true push format, when an email is sent to the account it notifies me fairly quickly, but when I click into the app it still has to download them so it's a bit of a pain to have to wait the 2-10 more seconds to able to READ the actual email.

Is this the way it's designed or is there a setting I'm forgetting about?

No, it was designed that way.

The only notification are the badge and the sound.

But only Mail can push notify you and download the message in the background. For App Store app, you'll have to open them for the mail to be downloaded.


How to remove right side space in TextWrangler? In TextWrangler, I have a lot of white area in the editor that goes right well past 100 characters. Then it continues into this gray area. That creates a huge horizontal scroll bar.

I really only need it to about 85 characters to the right. Is there any way to restrict this?

Text Wrap

You can enable Text Wrap to have the text soft wrap and avoid the horizontal scroll bar. Use the menu item:

View (menu) > Text Display > Soft Wrap Text

See Ryan Rampersad's Text Wrapping in TextWrangler for more details about this feature.


NTFS Read/Write Broken Under El Capitan? I'm trying to enable macOS El Capitan's built in read/write support for NTFS, but it doesn't seem to be working. First of all; I'm aware it's not the fastest, and no officially supported, but my needs for it aren't critical (nor the data super important, it's just games).

Anyway, I've followed the usual guides to enabling support, and my /etc/fstab looks like:

UUID=E2E3FA2C-5B6D-4510-B4F6-E370A09B0AF6       none    ntfs    rw,auto,nobrowse

However, when attempting to mount the drive with diskutil mount disk0s9 I get the following error:

Volume on disk0s9 failed to mount
If the volume is damaged, try the "readOnly" option

If I remove the fstab entry the volume mounts just fine in read-only mode, and under Windows I can confirm that it is undamaged. It's strange as this is the exact method I've used successfully in the past (not with the same partition though).

Here's the diskutil info output for the partition:

Device Identifier:        disk0s9
Device Node:              /dev/disk0s9
Whole:                    No
Part of Whole:            disk0
Device / Media Name:      Windows_NTFS_Untitled_2

Volume Name:              Games

Mounted:                  No

File System Personality:  NTFS
Type (Bundle):            ntfs
Name (User Visible):      Windows NT File System (NTFS)

Partition Type:           Microsoft Basic Data
OS Can Be Installed:      No
Media Type:               Generic
Protocol:                 SATA
SMART Status:             Verified
Volume UUID:              E2E3FA2C-5B6D-4510-B4F6-E370A09B0AF6
Disk / Partition UUID:    0C407B03-62D7-4C64-BC5C-3C57668C2F2E

Total Size:               249.2 GB (249152208896 Bytes) (exactly 486625408 512-Byte-Units)
Volume Free Space:        0 B (0 Bytes) (exactly 0 512-Byte-Units)
Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

Read-Only Media:          No
Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (not mounted)

Device Location:          Internal
Removable Media:          No

Solid State:              Yes

In case it may be relevant; the partition was formatted natively by Windows 10.

The only suspicious thing to me is the device/media name of Windows_NTFS_Untitled_2, whereas for a Windows OS partition it is 'Basic data partition', but I'm sure that's important.

Any ideas why this isn't mounting in read/write mode? I had hoped to use built-in support to avoid having to install FUSE etc., which I assume still involves disabling system integrity protection?

Duplicate

This issue is not a duplicate as proposed; the other issue only asks how to enable read/write, however I already know how I'm supposed to be able to do it using the built-in driver, but am unable to do-so. In other words this question is asking why setting the rw option in /etc/fstab no longer appears to work (and how it can be fixed), rather than how can I get read/write support in the first place.

It is absolutely not an exact duplicate of the proposed original.

afaik (ntfs) writing is not supported in osx and macos.
use a ntfs driver, check its compatibility for your os.


User directory taking up an additional 100GB+ of space This is on my 2013 15" Retina MBP with the 256 SSD.

Before you ask, yes, I'm including the ~/Library folder.

My home directory is using ~175GB of space, which is pretty significant. I'm in a spring cleaning mood - however, I cannot seem to get even close to this value when hunting down the largest offenders.

Craigs-MBP:~ Craig$ du -shc *
 27M    Applications
 88K    Desktop
4.2G    Documents
8.0K    Downloads
198M    Google Drive
 25G    Library
8.0K    Movies
4.3G    Music
 11G    Pictures
8.0K    Public
408M    apps
3.2G    projects
 49G    total    <-- Note the convenient total

Just to be safe, I also check the .* files:

Craigs-MBP:~ Craig$ du -shc .??* | grep total
3.8G    total

So, roughly ~55GB.

I have booted into the recovery partition, and used Disk Utility to run First Aid on both the volume and partition, but it didn't pick up any invalid volume count/block sizes. Everything looked good.

I booted up Disk Inventory X hoping that it might find something I didn't, but it turns up the same values:

If I'm missing 5-10GB here or there, no big deal. But nearly 120GB of missing space? That's completely unreasonable. (And half my hard drive.)

Where do I go next?

Take a look at Time Machine, it may be keeping local snapshots.

From Apple Support:

  Because Time Machine removes local snapshots as needed, Finder and Get Info windows don't include them in their calculations. To see how much storage space local snapshots are using, choose About This Mac from the Apple menu, then click Storage. The space used by local snapshots is labeled Backups.

You can disable them, but they get automatically deleted if you need space:

  If less than 20% of the total storage space on your startup drive is available, Time Machine removes local snapshots, starting with the oldest, until you have more than 20% free space.
  If less than 10% or less than 5GB of storage space is available, Time Machine removes local snapshots more quickly. When only one snapshot remains, Time Machine stops creating new snapshots. As free space increases, Time Machine at first replaces the previous snapshot with a new one, then eventually resumes creating snapshots as normal.


Archive gmail messages from the notification center on an iphone I have an iPhone SE, model number MX9D2LL/A running software version 13.6.1.  On it, I have installed the Gmail app version 6.0.200712.  When I receive a banner notification for a new email, I can swipe down on the banner and see the options Archive and Reply.  However, when I later view that same notification in the Notification Center, I can not swipe down.  I can swipe right to open the message, swipe right gently to see the option Open, or swipe left to see the options Manage, View, and Clear.  Is there any way I can change my settings so that I can get the Archive and Reply options from the notification in the Notification Center?

Swipe left
Select View
The options Archive and Reply appear

It appears that I did not understand what View meant.  I thought it would open the message, but instead it views the notification.  In retrospect, it seems obvious that they wouldn't use the terms View and Open to mean and do the same thing in the same place.


Is installing Mavericks on Hackintosh legal? As we all know Mac OS X Mavericks is now free of charge officially! Does this mean that it is now legal to use Mavericks on non-Apple hardware?

It is not in accordance with Apple's license to run OS X on a non-Apple hardware as per Apple's license agreement for OS X Mavericks. Since this question is not about a preinstalled version of OS X (which is only on new Macs), the Mac App Store License section is applicable, along with the Other Use Restrictions section that is common for both kinds of installations. The license agreement states (emphasis mine):

  2. Permitted License Uses and Restrictions.
  B. Mac App Store License. If you obtained a license for the Apple Software from the Mac App Store, then subject to the terms and conditions of this License and as permitted by the Mac App Store Usage Rules set forth in the App Store Terms and Conditions (http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/ww/) (“Usage Rules”), you are granted a limited, non-transferable, non-exclusive license:
  (i) to download, install, use and run for personal, non-commercial use, one (1) copy of the Apple Software directly on each Apple-branded computer running OS X Mountain Lion, OS X Lion or OS X Snow Leopard (“Mac Computer”) that you own or control;

  ...
  H. Other Use Restrictions. The grants set forth in this License do not permit you to, and you agree not to, install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-branded computer, or to enable others to do so.

See the SOFTWARE LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR OS X MAVERICKS PDF for more details. You can also get to this agreement by going to the Software License Agreements page, then navigating to Operating System Software Tools and Server, and choosing OS X (Mavericks).
As an additional point, even though OS X Mavericks is free for Apple Mac users, it's only because Apple has changed how it accrues revenue from Mac hardware sales by adopting the subscription model (which has been in use for iOS devices for longer), wherein Apple defers accruing a portion of the revenue from Mac sales for providing software updates in the future (including free apps and such). Apple has defined this deferral as two years for iOS devices and four years for Macs. This is the only way for Apple to adhere to accounting laws in the U.S. Searching for "apple subscription accounting" on the web would yield many results on this topic.

Whether using Apple's software in violation of Apple's license is illegal is a question with potentially different answers in different legal jurisdictions.


Can I use an iMac in target display mode with an Apple TV? Target display mode appears to require a <4K ThunderBolt or DisplayPort connection. Apple TVs exclusively use HDMI output, but Apple sells ThunderBolt to HDMI adapters. I was wondering if it would possible to use one of those to display Apple TV content on an iMac. However, these adapters always seem intended for use with ThunderBolt input and HDMI output.

I don't know if it's possible to use any adapters to produce ThunderBolt output. Even if it is, I'm not clear whether the iMac can be used with arbitrary ThunderBolt video input, or whether it requires some additional metadata or protocol that must come directly from another Mac.

Is there any iMac which may be used in target display mode be used as the display for any Apple TV, with the right configuration and adapters?

Displayport is the protocol for video over thunderbolt.

https://www.apple.com/thunderbolt/

http://www.cablestogo.com/product/54179/hdmi-to-displayport-adapter-converter

Get the above converter and then connect the cables with whatever cheap adapters and cables are required to fit all the physical connections. All told, less than $200 of cables and adapters are needed to do what you ask.

Basically, you have a video capture station/tiny computer resampling the HDMI signal and re-encoding it into the DisplayPort format.


Can Aperture auto-delete photos after import from an iPhone I'm trying out Aperture to see whether I should upgrade from iPhoto. I take a lot of photos on my iPhone and have always imported, then deleted these using iPhoto. After importing photos from my photo with Aperture I didn't get an option to delete the originals from the phone. Am I missing a config option somewhere, or does Aperture not offer this functionality?

Aperture does not seem to offer this functionality for the iPhone. So after importing it does not give you the option.

See picture here: Aperture Import finished

But after importing you can always use Image Capture to delete the photos in one go:

See picture here: Image Capture


I can't paste a file into system directory I want to paste a file into /System/Library/Java/Extensions path but there is no "paste" button

. So I tried to change permissions, but when I checked I already have the permission to read & write. to this folder. Finally I tried to paste this file via Terminal. But this time it says "no such directory or file"

.

How can I solve this issue?

You have run into System Integrity Protection ( SIP ) which protects certain system folders from being changed.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204899

To make the copy anyway, you turn off SIP.  Be sure to turn SIP back on when done. It's a hassle.

https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/mac/how-turn-off-mac-os-x-system-integrity-protection-rootless-3638975/

I'd look for an alternative folder to place the file. I'm not a Java person.  I did find:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12842063/where-to-install-jar-files-on-os-x-so-other-java-applications-will-find-them

https://aldoblog.com/2002/05/where-to-put-java-extensions-on-mac-os-x/


OS X Mavericks Upgrade: Wait or Download Straight Away? Is there any particular reason(s) why people shouldn't upgrade to OS X Mavericks straight away from Mountain Lion, Lion or Snow Leopard, rather than waiting say a period of 2 months eg for reasons of bugs etc (which maybe fixed in this time) ?

Edit:

I am looking for legitimate reasons only (obviously).

Having used every Mavericks beta since beta 1, including the GM, as well as the final version, I can quite confidently say that everyone should upgrade straight away.

Whilst the many betas of Mavericks have had many bugs, the GM seemed to do away with almost all of these. For example, in every beta before GM, I suffered from an awful bug whereby you couldn't actually put the Mac to sleep - it would have to be shut down, since clicking Sleep or closing the lid wouldn't do anything. This was fixed along with many more bugs in the GM.

With my poor internet, I was considering keeping the Mavericks GM for a while, since I saw no incentive to update - there wasn't any problem that I was hoping that the public version would fix1.

It would appear that Apple's done it right this time, using the GM as the 10.9.0 and the public release as the 10.9.1.

In conclusion, I believe that people should upgrade from Mountain Lion to Mavericks without hesitation - there's no massive bugs from what I can tell, and I see no major reason for Apple to expedite the release of 10.9.1 to fix a serious problem.

1 (unlike my experience with the Mountain Lion beta - the public release couldn't come soon enough)


What is the "Verifying XXX.app" dialog and how do I get passed it? I'm trying to open a new app that I downloaded on OS X Yosemite 10.10.  Specifically, it is Android Studio.app version 0.8.13.

When I open it, I see the following dialog "Verifying Android Studio.app...":

The progress bar has been at 100% for about 10 minutes and it hasn't gone away.  Granted, this app is rather large at about 25gb of SDK that needs to be included in the directory.

How do I get passed this dialog?

One option to close stuck verification dialogs is to select CoreServicesUIAgent in the Activity Monitor's list of processes and kill it.
Or type in Terminal
 killall CoreServicesUIAgent


How can I search within documents from the Finder? I scan documents (receipts, etc) PDFs and the software does OCR to make them searchable. I can search them from within Preview, but I'd like to be able to search within the documents in Finder (or Spotlight). Is there a way to do this? Or a third-party app that does it?

There is a free app, EasyFind, that will let you search files. Its available from the app store. It has a fast search engine and you can select where to search. Click the setting button on the top left to select which file extension to search in.


Can the iPhone 7 Plus battery be damaged by the use of an external battery charger? When I bought the iPhone 7 Plus, I also bought a Mophie External Battery Charger, the Powerstation 2, I haven't used yet, so far the iPhone battery lasts long enough for me, but I read on an article that external battery chargers are one of the reasons cellphones' batteries get damaged. Is this true, or it's only with certain chargers?

I bought and used an external battery charger on mu iPhone 5s and believe that it did damage my phone's battery. I now get only a few hours of power before the phone is depleted. This happened directly after using the charger for a week.


How to change native Resolution on MBP 2015 running Mojave? My problem is I would like to change the native resolution of the built-in screen of my MBPR 2015 running Mojave to 1920 * 1080. The thing is I don't want the output to be scaled, I just want this resolution to gain performance. Any way to achieve this ?

Thank you

While you can't "change the native resolution", you can use the displaymode command line tool to change to the native resolution instead of scaled resolutions.

Download the displaymode binary from the "releases" section on github, and extract it if necessary.  Then from Terminal.app, cd to the directory the displaymode file is in and run:

./displaymode t 1920 1080

You can also run:

./displaymode d

to get a list of supported resolutions.


Find size of a window When I have a window for an application open I would like its size, height and width. Is it 900 * 625, 716 * 456 or what?

The reason I need to know is just for some usability testing.

Any tips how I get this info?

If you want it in a UI use Accessibility Inspector. It's in Xcode > Open Developer Tool > Accessibility Inspector (It requires to install Xcode).


Double sound notification when plugging in iPhone X with Fast Charge I recently purchased an iPhone X, and along with it I also purchased a 29W USB-C Power Adapter and a USB-C—Lightning cable. This setup is supposed to enable Fast Charging of the iPhone X.

However, always when plugging in the iPhone X to this setup, the phone gives a way the "charging" sound notification twice. Is this normal behaviour?

I don't get the double sound notification when plugging in via normal Lightning-to-USB-A to another 12W adapter, nor when connecting the phone with a Mac.

I'm thinking the second sound notification may have something to do with switching over to Fast Charge, but I haven't been able to find a definite answer. Or perhaps some component is faulty?

This thread (external link) has people asking the same thing:
https://forums.imore.com/iphone-x/396144-fast-charge-apple-ac-adapter-cable-double-sound.html

Yes, when fast charging iPhone gives the charging sound ("Ding") notification twice. And definitely you will not get sound notification twice when you have used the 12W iPad charger.
12W Charger => The downside is that while it’s faster than the brick that comes with your phone, it’s still not quite the true quick charging speed that a USB-C brick should offer. Simply you could not get the true fast charging. But it is better than what comes with the box.

29W Charger => Apple isn’t saying what the maximum fast charging speed is for the new phones — only that it achieved those fast charging results with its 29W, 61W, and 87W USB-C chargers for the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros. These chargers offer the best fast charging power where you hear the charging sound twice.

References : (EasyAcc, 2017), (Apple Inc., 2017) , (The Verge, 2017).


Cannot share media file to PC I want to share my media files on my Mac to my home network, however when I tried to access them from my PC I was asked for username and password. I'm sure I entered them correctly (I mean I can log out and log in my Mac no problem), but it kept saying unknown user name or bad password. What could possible cause the issue?

That is an excellent start but you may still get the same error message as Windows will often want to know the domain of the username (not "Domain" with a capital D).

When you log into a PC over the network from another PC your username will often take the form of:

[PCNAME]\[USERNAME]
[PASSWORD]

So if my pc was called stevespc with a username of steve and a password of 1234:

stevespc\steve
1234

This is so that the PC will know where to get the authentication information from. If you leave off the [PCNAME] then it will assume that it is using credentials from the computer you are logging in from and not the username and password that you want to get to (with a username/password from the target PC).

so you may have to add the computer name of the mac. If you can't recall it you can use the IP address as well. Like this:

192.168.0.1\steve
1234

It's annoying and can be confusing at first but once you learn the trick its no big deal.


Cannot unmount disk0 resource busy I am unable to wipe my hard drive and install new OS X as the resource is busy. I would imagine this is because I have Recovery open on this disk and that's why it is busy.

I've tried:

diskutil unmount disk0
hdiutil detach disk0

My disk parts look like this:

/dev/disk0
0: GUID_partition_scheme                   *250.1GB    disk0
1: EFI          EFI                         209.7MB    disk0s1
2: Apple HFS    Macintosh Hard Drive        249.2GB    disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot   Recovery HD                 650.0MB    disk0s3

/dev/disk1
0: Apple_partition_scheme                   *1.3GB     disk1
1: Apple_partiton_map                        30.7KB    disk1s1
2: Apple_HFS    OS X Base System             1.3GB     disk1s2

I am also unable to install from appstore as this Macbook 2010 Unibody does not have an operating system on it.

I am stuck in Recovery HD and wonder what my options to get running again are.

A couple of thing are not making sense in your description. When you boot to Recovery HD, you should also have about 15 lines of df output with devices running from disk0 to disk12 or more (it varies between OS X 10.8 and 10.11).

In your example, if you want to wipe all contents on what's normally named Macintosh HD and in your case is disk0s2/Macintosh Hard Drive - you could issue the command:

diskutil eraseVolume JHFS+ Macintosh\ HD disk0s2

The \ is needed to escape the space between "Macintosh HD" - quotes would work as well if you prefer that. I would just use Disk Utility to erase the volume and rename it Macintosh HD since that is far easier, there in the main menu of items, and doesn't need any care with spaces, quotes or messing up the disk0s2 and erasing the wrong area of the drive.

The reinstallation problem might be solved by erasing the storage, but that's probably a better stand alone question.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

The above article walks you through how to use Recovery HD to erase and start over if that's your eventual goal.


In iOS 9 why is some text from speech to text underlined in blue? When I dictate text to my phone, sometimes to avoid having to type it, some of it is underlined with blue dots.
It looks real pretty, but the purpose of this is lost on me: if these words are treated differently from other words, or if the underlining means something, I have no idea what it could possibly be.

At first, I thought that it was because during voice dictation, the software had understood a couple of different things and that I could then chose between different options, but that's not what it seems to be.
If I click the words that are underlined, it doesn't give me anymore options than when I click non-underlined words.

Maybe it's app-specific? Although it looks like it would be system-wide. The app used in this screen cap is What's App.

You are actually correct as the highlighting appears for words that the system doesn't think that it fully recognized. If it can determine similar words to suggest than when you tap the segment of text, it will provide those alternates - to a remarkable degree of accuracy at times. However, if it cannot determine other possibilities, the text simply becomes highlighted when you tap it so that replacement of the erroneous word becomes very easy: just tap the word and type the correct one.


Bind Volume controls to non-Apple keyboard without 3rd party software on macOS Sierra All the software I could find that does this is broken on macOS Sierra and will probably break again in the future, so I need a solution to set the system volume in the same increments as the volume keys without needing a 3rd party app running.

If my understanding is correct, keyboards with generic media controls work without software, if I could rebind my PrintScr and Scroll Lock keys as volume up/down that would be ideal.
(I'm using a fullsize Majestouch 2 with ANSI layout.)

If that isn't possible, any Service or other Workaround is welcome. I can actually work without the bezel as long as the increments are the same.

Karabiner was one of the apps I used before, it doesn't work either and isn't likely to be fixed soon: macOS (10.12) compatibility #660

Karabiner has options that let you use the Function keys (with or without ‘fn’) on external non-Apple keyboards just like the special function keys on Apple keyboards. This means pressing F11 and F12 (‘fn’ depends on your options shown in the screenshot) to decrease and increase volume. The HUD shows as usual, and F10 works for mute too.

I am yet to see Karabiner fail to function due to an OS update, even day-one beta OS updates seem no trouble for these ‘standard’ features of the app (there's more customisable functionality which may have problems from OS updates but are fixed swiftly).


SMS on iPad. Doesn't see popup I would like to activate SMS on my iPad but when I go on my iPhone, this one tell me to enter a code which appears on the iPad.

But I have no popup on my iPad.

I have the same iCloud account on both devices and activate FaceTime.

Why I don't see this popup ?

Here is one thing to try, from MacRumors:

...you need to have your email address turned on for iMessage on your iPhone in order to enable Text Message Forwarding. If you don't, the numeric access code will not appear on your iPad or Mac during the setup process.
As soon as you enable your email address for iMessage (you only need to do this on your iPhone) the numeric access codes appear as expected. Once you have text message forwarding setup you can disable your email address again in iMessage as it seems to only be necessary for the numeric access code setup step, not the actual text message forwarding itself.


FaceTime option not showing on FaceTime user's contact One of my contacts just switched from Android to an iPhone and they have activated both FaceTime and iMessage. We both have iPhones SE and are both running iOS11.2.1. However, even though we can communicate through both iMessage and FaceTime, the option for the latter doesn't show in their contact card on my phone (their contact details on my phone are their FaceTime details). The option does appear on their contact on my MacBook Pro and all my contacts are syncing via iCloud.

I have tried to restart the phone, turning both FaceTime and iMessage off and on again and even resetting my network settings, but still the Facetime option is not available for their contact.

Further more, when I go into the FaceTime app and to my FaceTime contacts, the only available option is to call them on regular phone. I have no issue with any other iPhone/FaceTime user in my contacts.

I was wondering if anyone came across a similar situation and knew what is causing this?

This is an Apple software glitch, as long as you are able to call them then you should be fine. The Facetime image is supposed to detail if said person is available to video chat on that device at the moment. Apple hasn't really addressed the issue since its cosmetic.


How to deal with commands of conflicting names listed in `brew doctor`? So after brew doctorI`ll get the following without any recommendation:

Warning: You have external commands with conflicting names.

Found command `brew-cask` in following places:
/usr/local/bin/brew-cask
/usr/local/Library/Taps/caskroom/homebrew-cask/cmd/brew-cask.rb

Is there a way to settle that conflict?

Important December update (from https://github.com/caskroom/homebrew-cask):

Homebrew-Cask will now be kept up to date together with Homebrew.

If you haven’t yet, to switch to the new system, run:

brew uninstall --force brew-cask; brew update


Unable to add self-ripped HD+SD encodes to iTunes 11 For a while now, iTunes has supported the concept of "HD+SD" files.  Instead of having two separate files, one for the SD version and another for the HD version of a movie or TV show, iTunes can "bundle" both versions under one single file entry, which is labeled as "HD+SD", and iTunes automatically chooses the "right" version of the file to use for a given situation (e.g. use the HD version when streaming to my Apple TV, and use the SD version when syncing to my 16 GB iPad mini because I have "Prefer standard definition videos" checked in the sync settings).  Here is a video describing this feature and how to use it.

I am using HandBrake to do the encodes, using the "Devices -> Universal" preset for the SD encode, and the "Devices -> Apple TV 3" preset for the SD encode, and am using IDentify 2 to do the metadata taqging.  The problem comes when I attempt to add these files into iTunes.

In previous versions of iTunes this process was pretty straightforward: assuming that the HD+SD encodes are properly tagged with the same cnID (which mine definitely are, I checked), just select both the SD and HD encode in Finder, and drag+drop them onto iTunes, and it will automatically create an HD+SD entry for that movie/TV show/whatever.

Unfortunately I can't seem to get this to work in iTunes 11.  If I drag both the HD and SD encodes onto iTunes, it results in only one of them getting copied.  (seems to be random, sometimes it's the SD version and sometimes it's the HD version)  If I then try and drag the other file in, it does not copy the file in nor does it create the HD+SD file entry.

iTunes 11 definitely still supports HD+SD files, as the ones that I added in previous versions of iTunes still work fine.  I just can't seem to figure out how to add these HD+SD files in iTunes 11, because the way I've been doing it up till now no longer appears to work.

OK, after many many hours of experimentation, I've come up with a trick that (so far) seems to work.  Not sure if this is the best way of doing it, but here it is.

Go to the "Music" section in iTunes (I know, this sounds counter-intuitive, but trust me), and create a new playlist.  I call mine "New Movies Test Bed."  Set the View to List View (this makes it easier to work with, again just trust me).
Drag the SD version of your encoded media into the playlist you just created.  It should add the file and copy it to your iTunes media library like normal; however it won't show up as an HD+SD entry, since you obviously only copied in the SD version.
Now select the HD version of your file, and while holding down Alt (Option) drag it into the same iTunes playlist where you dragged the first file.  It should magically turn into an HD+SD entry; however it has not yet copied the second (HD) version of the file into your iTunes library (you can verify this by right-clicking and choosing 'Show in Finder"; you should only see the SD version of the file in the window that appears.)
In iTunes, right click on the file you dragged in, choose "Consolidate Files" then click the "Consolidate" button in the dialog that appears.  You should see iTunes start copying the HD version of the file into your iTunes library.
Verify that both HD+SD versions are in your iTunes library by once again right-clicking and choosing "Show in Finder."  You should see two files, one of which should be named "Movie Name (1080p HD)" (or presumably "Movie Name (720p HD)" if you did a 720p encode).
Finally, go to the Movies section (or TV Shows section if you're importing a TV show).  You should see one, and only one, entry for the file you just imported.


OPEN RECENT FILE command vanished in Word for Mac Office 2008 I am running OS Maverick 10.9.3 on my Mac Book Pro and have worked happily on Office 2008 through several versions of OSX. After a recent "update" by Apple, my "Open Recent Files" vanished from my File pull-down menu. An unfamiliar "Open from Document Connection" now appears there. I have no idea what "Open from Document Connection" means. My "Open Recent File" command was important for me because I work on many multiple projects, and I want that command back. Can anyone tell me how my Open Recent File command vanished and how I can get that back?

That sounds like your Office Preference file got damaged.

Look in Office Preference setting to make sure the show recent files is checked.

If it is and you still don't see them, the Reset your Office preferences:

There are few procedures available online describing how to, and where the files are stored.


Paste and Match Style - Default? I find that "Paste and Match Style" is more often useful than just "Paste" when I am copying text. Is there a way to make this the default behavior? The (long) keyboard shortcuts are also inconsistent between applications and difficult to remember. For example:

TextEdit - ⌥+⇧+⌘+V

Chrome - ⇧+⌘+V

This will do the trick:

Go to System Preferences / Keyboard / Keyboard Shortcuts / Applications.
Click the + button.
Choose All Applications, from the drop-down list.
On the menu title field add the exact name of the menu bar item.
Pick your keyboard shortcut and click Add.

In case you overwrite the default Command+V shortcut, if the application lacks the Paste and Match Style option, paste will work as usual.


Preview freezes on clicking inside (very small) PDF files I have a bunch of small PDF files, which are a few hundred pages but generally less than 2 MB or so in size. Scrolling is perfectly smooth in Preview.app, but if I click anywhere inside the PDF, macOS freezes for a couple seconds. The issue is perfectly reproducible and happens every time for certain PDF files.

I'm running the 2016 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. This really shouldn't be a hard task for the CPU, so I suspect there's some deadlock going on, like trying to contact some random cloud service. Does anyone know a fix for this issue?

Though I never figured out what caused the problem here, and none of the proposed fixes worked, I was able to avoid the problem by switching to Skim, which is generally less buggy than Preview.

The problem likely has something to do with LaTeX, since all the affected files were built with it. Unfortunately, the problem described here is now moot, because a new bug causes both Preview and Skim to freeze whenever almost any document made with LaTeX is opened.


My Mac Mini HD been wiped out Here is the scenario: I was bouncing music and got a warning Macintosh HD is almost full! By the time I empty the trash my my froze.
So I restart it and that infinite white progress bar below the gorgeous Apple never end progressing.

I reboot in single user and tried a fsck check but in seem to only check for OS X base system which appear OK.

Tried the verbose and got stuck within a pause.

Then tried to reach for my users in terminal within recovery booting and there was nothing there, no users, no hidden files, nothing but a .forward and a Library. I didn't cried !

I'm ok with the reality of a Hardware failure.
I'm not so ok with the fact of loosing music that I made that came out of the blue from spontaneous inspiration. So for this last part, I will do everything necessary to get to those files.

So I started my OLD MB Pro (2007) and FW target boot from it.
Here's what disk Utility have to tell about it;

Any cue is more then welcome

Use Internet Recovery on your Mac Mini and try repairing Macintosh HD with Disk Utility.
If that fails to fix the boot issue, connect your Mac Mini in target disk mode to a mac running OS X 10.8 or later and see if you can at least copy the files off your Fusion Drive.
In the future, set up a Time Machine.


How can I hide an Application from the Updates Tab in the Mac App Store? I had an app on my MacBook that I never used. I recently did a clean install of Mountain Lion on the same MacBook (not using the Migration Assistant or anything to copy my old data). I reinstalled the apps that I wanted from the App Store (and obviously didn't install the ones I used to have that I no longer wanted).

Now the App Store shows one of my old apps in the updates tab, even though I have never touched that app since my reinstall. There is only one app doing this, there are other apps that I didn't end up installing that I used to have, but they don't appear as updates like this one.

I have tried everything to get rid of the app from the updates. I have even succumbed to the frustration and clicked update, which installed the app, then I deleted it from my computer, and then the app reappeared in the updates immediately.

Any help on how I can get this app to leave me alone forever would be appreciated. Is there a way I can hide an app from the updates tab?

Go to Purchases in the Mac App Store, locate the Application you want to hide, right-click on it and choose Hide Purchase.

After a clicking the Hide Purchase button in the prompted screen, the item will fade and you no longer will receive update notifications of that Application.

To unhide it just go to Mac App Store / Store / View My Account, then click on View Hidden Purchases from the Account Information Page, and click the Unhide button.

In both cases you'll need to be logged in.


UHD Blu-ray playback on iMac 5K 2017? I recently saw that there are already UHD 4K Blu-ray drives (with SATA) available, like this one from Pioneer which should (combined with appropriate USB housing) make mounting the disks in macOS possible. So I was wondering if I can get UHD Blu-ray playback on my new iMac 5K 2017 working?

Concerning hardware there should be no problem with its Kaby Lake processor (required for decryption) and HEVC hardware acceleration, right? The AMD Radeon Pro 580 should also support HDCP 2.2, however I'm not sure about the built-in display…

Regarding software:
As of my understanding AACS 2.0 has not been cracked yet, so ripping is out of question at the moment. But there seems to be software for Windows which supports UHD BD playback, like the newest version of PowerDVD. However, I wasn't able to find an equivalent software for macOS.
I found serveral "guides" and "how to"s, listing software they claim to support UHD BD playback (and even ripping), but none of the companys official websites advertise such a feature.

Has anyone got playback of 4K Blu-Rays on the Mac working, tried it or has any experience on this topic whatsoever? Am I right about my assumptions regarding the hardware support?

Thanks in advance!

P.S.: I hope this is the right branch to post this question to. Please redirect if it isn't.

UPDATE: I just installed Windows 10 with Bootcamp and ran CyberLink's "UHD Blu-ray Advisor" to check my hardware. These are my results:

I'm not completely sure what to take out of this. Either there really are hardware problems or it is just some compatibility/driver issue with Bootcamp (that maybe doesn't occur in macOS). The Intel i7 7700K does support Intel SGX according to Intel but the feature could be disabled...?

It most certainly means that playback with PowerDVD (also from CyberLink) in Bootcamp will not be possible (at this stage).

Could it really be that HDCP 2.2 isn't supported due to the iMac's hardware? Does anyone know of a similar diagnostics tool for macOS?

Yes, you can get UHD working through that blu-ray drive. Copyright decrypting, hardware acceleration etc are all features implemented in prior chips so they're definitely in  Kaby Lake. Display is HDCP 2.2.

I think the biggest difficulty here will likely be in finding good software. I would plan on having to buy some, shop around and find the best one for you. I don't have any recommendations for software but I know that it should work & looking around there's at least some software that claims to do this.


Edge swipe gesture for opening Notification Center on macOS stopped working Recently the edge swipe gesture for opening Notification Center stopped working on my MacBook Pro. It happened around the same time I upgraded to Catalina, but not sure if it's related. I also confirmed the setting is still enabled (screenshot below). It works fine if I click the button on the top right. Any ideas on how to resolve? Thanks.

I managed to solve this by quitting Notification Centre using Activity Monitor.

Instructions here : https://osxdaily.com/2012/09/18/how-to-restart-notification-center-in-os-x/


Add to Existing Contact from Mail.app to Contacts.app I am looking for an option to add the choice "Add to Existing Contact" from the Apple Mail.app From address field.  As you all know, we have "Copy Address, Add to VIPs, New Email, Add to Contacts, and Services" as current choices.  I am hoping that I can find a way to have an additional choice of "Add to Existing Contact" to this list - maybe listed under Services.

I know that this is a choice when you use the smart detection feature from a signature.  I also know this is an option in iOS 6. So how can I get the same functionality for From: addresses in Mail.app?

This is a quick look at this,. which means it can either be refined or there is a better answer.

I will assume you know how to create an automator service. So here is an image showing the setup.

Applescript 1:

on run {input, parameters}
    set bigList to {}
    tell application "Contacts"

        repeat with i from 1 to number of items in input
            set this_item to item i of input
            copy name of this_item to end of bigList
        end repeat
    end tell
    return bigList
end run

Applescript 2:

on run {input, parameters}
    tell application "Mail"
        set eachMessage to item 1 of (get selection)
        set theExtractAddress to extract address from (sender of eachMessage)
    end tell
    tell application "Contacts"
        set thisPerson to first person whose name is item 1 of input

        make new email at end of emails of thisPerson with properties {label:"home", value:theExtractAddress}
        save
    end tell

end run

It will ask for permission to access the Addressbook the first time you run it.
And is a bit slow to return the search results. but worked in my test.


Horizontal flip animation in Keynote I want to perform a horizontal flip animation between two images in Keynote. How I can do this? The flipping should swipe images

Insert the two images (other object or group to be transitioned).
Select the first side and from the animation inspector add a Build Out effect of Flip. Disable Bounce.

Select the second side and from the animation inspector add a Build In effect of Flip. Disable Bounce.
Choose Build Order and set the second build (the build in) to Start: With Build 1.

Set the second side to be in front of the first side by right-clicking on the second side and choosing Bring to Front. Position the two sides on top of each other.


Automatic iCloud backup without locking iPad When enabled, iCloud will automatically back up your iOS device when it is plugged in, connected to Wi-Fi, and locked. This is designed so it'll very conveniently back up overnight. However, I use a night stand app, and I have it set to prevent my iPad from sleeping so I can see what time it is without having to fumble around with a passcode in the middle of the night. Because of this, iCloud will never back up automatically.

Is there any way I can get it to automatically back up without requiring my iPad to be locked? I have no wish to jailbreak it.

Unfortunately not. According to this knowledgebase article, Apple has it set up to only automatically back up when it's connected to Wi-Fi, connected to a power source and (unfortunately for you) the screen is locked.

You can, however, get in the habit of doing a backup before you go to sleep, kind of like setting your alarm clock. Just a suggestion, but I think this is the only way to make it happen daily without jailbreaking (truth be told, I don't know of a way to do this even if you did jailbreak).

Good luck.


Can I connect 2 external monitors to my 12" Retina MacBook (early-2015)? Can I connect two external monitors to my 12" Retina MacBook (early-2015)

How do I do it and can it be VGA or only HDMI

This MacBook can simultaneously support the internal display as well as up to 3840x2160 at 30 Hz or up to 4096x2160 at 24Hz on one external display.

In other words, connecting two external Thunderbolt Displays is not officially supported by Apple. The two displays are the internal display and an external display.

If you're still interested in connecting one external display, since this MacBook has a single USB-C port and no traditional video port, you'll need an adapter to connect the display. Apple provides support for both HDMI and VGA via the following respective adapters:

the Apple USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter for HDMI monitors, and also allows you to connect a standard USB device and a USB-C charging cable.
the Apple USB-C VGA Multiport Adapter for VGA monitors. Like the HDMI adapter, this also allows you to connect a standard USB device and a USB-C charging cable.

Once you have the appropriate adapter, it's just a case of connecting the cable between it and your monitor.

Of course, you may choose to purchase 3rd party adapters instead of the Apple branded ones.


Notes not syncing to and from iCloud from OS X Yosemite Okay, this is extremely frustrating and weird. I've had syncing of notes to iCloud turned on for a while, and I was never really able to figure out when the notes were synced. It always seemed pretty random. Anyways, my notes from iOS 8 on iPhone 5S are synced to iCloud just fine, but the Notes app on my Mac refuses to sync to iCloud. As a result, no edits/new notes are pushed to iCloud, and the notes from my iPhone are never synced to my Mac.

I have turned Notes on in my iCloud settings, but it doesn't work. I also tried to disable it and enable it again several times, but it just doesn't work. I have disabled Notes sync for all other Internet Accounts on my Mac, so it is only enabled on the iCloud account.

What on Earth is going on here? Thanks in advance!

From what I've seen from Apps like Notes, Numbers, and Pages... They're now acting as usual apps which looks for "filesystem" files. i.e. something on the local drive.

When you fire up an iCloud enabled app, then need to open a document, in your Favourites is "iCloud Drive" and now things are stored under there, under folders which correspond to their apps i.e. Numbers, Pages etc...

As to the syncing.. You needn't worry about this. Apple handles this.. Sadly, if you're looking to move directly over from App 1 on Device 1 to App 1 on Device 2 in 1 second, it won't happen.

edit

To resolve this, what I've done in the past is delete the container that the app in question lives in and start again.

e.g. in your case.. notes lives in: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Notes

Problem is, when you do this, you probably will lose the notes you have... The ones which are already in iCloud will resend back down to the Mac you deleted the notes Container from.

Do note that after you do this, it's HIGHLY advised that you do a  "repair permissions" on the drive so the sandbox permissions/ACL's are reset.


Boot Camp Windows fails to start after installation I'm using MacBook Pro 2017 Touch Bar with macOS Sierra 10.12.6..

I've installed Windows 10 via Boot Camp. After the installation, and restarting several times, I got an error "The computer restarted unexpectedly or encounter an unexpected error Windows installation cannot proceed to install Windows, click OK to restart the computer and then restart the installation"

In my Startup Disk PrefPane it already shows both boot volumes (Windows and my Mac). In storage it already shows the Boot Camp partition (40 GB). Tried to use Disk Utility and first aid but nothing happens.

Can someone help me with these problem?

these is the output diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                         500.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Untitled                458.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                41.0 GB    disk0s4

/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Untitled               +458.0 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 4B06A783-EA29-48E9-BD9C-51B15BF5C840
                                 Unlocked Encrypted

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
NOTE: Write test failed with error number 1. It will be impossible to save
changes to this disk's partition table!
You may need to deactivate System Integrity Protection to use this program. See
https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-turn-off-the-rootless-in-OS-X-El-Capitan-10-11
for more information.

Partition table scan:
  MBR: hybrid
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with hybrid MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help):

If use the diskutil command to delete the BOOTCAMP partition, the partitioning will change from hybrid to protective. When installing Windows, you can create a new partition for the installation of Windows. So, you do not need gdisk. Also, you do not have to disable System Integrity Protection. Enter the commands given below to delete the BOOTCAMP partition.

sudo  diskutil  unmount  disk0s4
sudo  diskutil  eraseVolume  free  n  disk0s4

I sure hope you properly copied the Boot Camp Support Software to your USB Windows installer flash drive.

I would encourage you to also create a partition for the Windows Recovery Environment (WRE). Although, a WRE partition in not required when installing Windows.

Recommended Proceedure

This steps given below are estimated to take about a hour, but this really depends on how fast you drink coffee.

Find a coffee shop with high speed internet.
Buy a coffee.
Erase everything on your Mac.
Reinstall macOS.
Enjoy the coffee.
Install Windows 10.
Continue to enjoy the coffee.

If you need clarification regarding any part of my answer, let me know.


Synchronizing apple id and google play store Can you link/sync apple id and google play store account? So for example, you can buy in-app purchases stuff in a google play store account then use it in the apple account?

Unless this feature is implemented manually by the specific developer of the app in question, no.


On Catalina, what should /private/tmp look like? This is my /tmp and /private:

# ls -lA /tmp /private/
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root  admin  11 Oct 18 18:48 /tmp -> private/tmp

/private/:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  121 root  wheel  3872 Oct 21 13:27 etc
drwxr-xr-x    2 root  wheel    64 Aug 24 19:01 tftpboot
lrwxr-xr-x@   1 root  wheel    11 Jul 26  2018 tmp -> private/tmp
drwxr-xr-x   29 root  wheel   928 Oct 21 08:08 var
#

This is on macOS 10.15.1 Catalina beta after restoring from a backup made during the early September beta of Catalina 10.15.0. The tmp file in /private appears to be a link to private/tmp, which doesn't exist. If it had a leading / it would be a circular reference to itself.

Two questions:

Should /tmp be a link to /private/tmp ?
(Assuming yes) What should /private/tmp actually be? A directory?

Thanks!

Here is how my Catalina machine looks:

Charlie:/ sfederman$ ls -lA /tmp /private/
lrwxr-xr-x@ 1 root  admin  11 Jul 16 14:05 /tmp -> private/tmp

/private/:
total 0
drwxr-xr-x  86 root  wheel  2752 Oct 19 19:43 etc
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    64 Jul  6 01:22 tftpboot
drwxrwxrwt   9 root  wheel   288 Oct 21 10:59 tmp
drwxr-xr-x  28 root  wheel   896 Oct  4 10:24 var

So:

Yes, /tmp is a softlink to /private/tmp
/private/tmp is a directory.


Apple/iOS: record videos via iPod touch; reduce video size? I have the latest gen iPod touch: which has an HD camera with mic. I
want to record class lectures and such but the files are massive that
it produces: 4+ gigs for 1 hour using the built in app. Is there a
setting or another app that will allow extremely high quality audio
and video without the cost of such a large file?

Currently I record, sync, encode then watch.  My 1 tb HDD is filling up quickly.

Any suggestions?

"Extremely high quality audio and video" will take up a lot of space, so you'll have to compromise on quality if you want to save on file size.

I would suggest using HandBrake to re-encode your videos at a lower bitrate or smaller size.


Will a deactivated iPhone still receive iMessages and emails? I lost my iPhone, I say lost because I don't have it. I suspect someone I know of taking it to check up on me. I tried "Find my iPhone" but it said my phone was offline (off?) I never turn my phone off, and I was using it 5 minutes before I curiously found it missing. I called Verizon and told them to shut my service down. I checked to make sure this was done by calling my number.

Can my disconnected phone still recieve iMessages? Everything I have been told and read says yes! This is a nightmare! Is there a way to find out if this "person I suspect" really does have it? And is there anyway to stop the I messaging coming to that phone?

Also, does the person with my disconnected iPhone read my emails? In other words are my emails still going to the disconnected phone?

If your phone gets close to any WiFi network it has been connected to before it will reconnect and receive whatever is pending (iMessages, Mails etc.). Depending on your Notification Center settings and/or the strength of your password (if any) the person holding the phone will then also be able to read them.

But

are you sure the phone is gone and not just laying somewhere you haven't been looking at?
you still can use Find My iPhone to erase everything on the phone (which will be executed if the phone goes online again)


Save Mac Terminal session to text file Is there a way of saving the terminal history of a script to file? I know I can do this by Shell > Export Text As... but is there a command (Bash) to do this?

This can be done with the standard unix command script(1) though requires running a subshell under the current shell. That is, start a terminal, and run script, issue whatever commands need to be logged, then exit from that shell:

$ script
Script started, output file is typescript
$ uptime
11:30  up 22 days, 16:15, 1 user, load averages: 1.43 1.37 1.38
$ exit

Script done, output file is typescript
$

Then in the output typescript file there should be a record of the shell session run under script(1).

But wait, there's more! With expect one can also save a session and possibly replay it. This requires installing expect from a ports system (Fink, Homebrew, or here MacPorts) which should install autoexpect:

$ port installed | grep expect
  expect @5.45.3_0 (active)
$ which autoexpect
/opt/local/bin/autoexpect
$ autoexpect $SHELL
autoexpect started, file is script.exp
$ uptime
 6:47  up 23 days, 11:32, 1 user, load averages: 1.37 1.39 1.33
$ exit
autoexpect done, file is script.exp
$

Doing something useful with script.exp in turn probably requires knowledge of expect and TCL, so this is a more advanced option. (expect in particular has a log_file option that can be toggled to save everything, but then you'd be writing everything in TCL and not bash...)

Otherwise the terminal itself must save the session; iTerm.app probably has more options for this (Session -> Log -> Start) than Terminal.app.


Backup iPhone to external drive on Mac What is the best technique for changing the backup location of one's iPhone to an external drive. It would seem that with small SSD's (256GB) and very large iOS devices (128GB) that Apple would easily enable this.

I found the below answer, but asking a non-techie friend to create a sym link is really not ideal.

http://ismashphone.com/2012/05/how-to-change-the-location-of-your-iphone-backup.html

  If you have any number of iOS devices, you likely back your stuff up
  onto your computer. Perhaps iCloud, but after a certain point, you may
  have so much stuff to back up that it’s best to just put it all on
  your computer than it is to pay for the additional iCloud storage.
  That’s especially the case if you have multiple iOS devices. You can
  save a lot of space on your drive if you have lots of iOS apps, etc.
  For instance, we were able to free up 100GB, no joke.

  OS X

  1) Make sure that iTunes is closed.

  2) You will now move your folder called ~/Library/Application
  Support/MobileSync/Backup/ to the drive you want to back up to. For
  instance, an external drive or secondary drive within your computer.
  Whichever works for you.

  3) Launch Terminal Applications/Utilities/Terminal and type in the
  following command line:

ln -s /Volumes/DriveName/Backup/ ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup

  In the above example, ‘DriveName’ would be the name of the new backup
  location.

Ok I FINALLY got this to work!! The alias solution mentioned above actually really helped. I tweaked the process slightly and looked at other references to get this to work.  I'm using a WD My Cloud NAS drive to store iOS backups. Heres' what I did, step by step:

Create a new folder on the WD external drive and name it 'Backup'
Opened the Terminal app and typed in the following line:

ln -s /Volumes//Documents/Backup ~/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup

*Be sure to use the name of your external hard drive where I've used the WD My Cloud drive.

What this ended up doing was to create a brand new Alias folder of the 'Backup' folder that I created on the WD MY cloud drive (alias folders have the arrow on them meaning they point elsewhere. In my case to the WD drive). It created this new Alias folder within the original 'Backup' folder on my computer. This is the new folder that I want iTunes to back up my iOS devices to, as it sends all the data to my external hard drive without taking up space on my computer. A few more steps to get this finalized

Now since the Alias folder resides within the original 'Backup' folder on my computer, we need to remove it from there and bring it up one level to be at the same level as the original backup folder. Before moving it, we need to rename the original 'Backup' folder to something like 'Backup_Old'.
So this is what things look like now: Library > Application Support > MobileSync > Backup_Old > Backup (this is the Alias folder with the arrow).  Now all we have to do is move the 'Backup' folder up to the same level and we're good to go!

Test it out by backing up your device through iTunes and you'll notice that the Alias folder on your computer takes up like 4kb while, the contents inside actually take up a whole lot more. Also to verify, check the folder on your external hard drive and it should be fairly large.

I used this site to help with the terminal syntax part: http://support.digidna.net/hc/en-us/articles/203504123-Storing-your-iPhone-Backups-on-an-Alternate-Location


Mail.app will only sort by Unread I have a weird problem with Mail.app (7.3) on mavericks (10.9.4) where every folder is now set to 'sort by unread'

I can change the sort order while I'm in the folder, but if I leave, and return to that folder.. it switches back to 'sort by unread' again.

I can't find any way to change this permanently, and I certainly didn't configure it this way.  Does anyone have any clue why it's doing this?

Info:
There are two accounts configured,  one Exchange (work) and one IMAP (not work)

Usually that is done in

Mail-View-Sort by: select your choice (see if sort by unread is checked)

If your selection does not stick (remain) the try repairing the permissions using the Disk utility.


What are my hardware upgrade options for a late 2009 iMac? It is now July 2019 and I have this Late-2009 iMac.

macOS High Sierra Version 10.13.6 iMac (27-inch, Late 2009) Processor: 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Memory: 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3 Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 4670 256

I can't use it anymore because it is super-super-slow. But I am considering upgrading it.

Will adding memory and replacing the HDD with an SSD turn this into an acceptably running machine? Or is the processor simply not up to it? 'It' being mostly email and browsing (and, eg, YouTube).

So what exactly are my upgrading option on this iMac?

Whether it's 'worth it' will be up to you.

You can get 16GB RAM in there & you can swap the HD to an SSD.

The SSD will feel like day after night compared to an HD - especially as you're on an OS that is designed for SSD & almost forgets spinning rust ever played a part.

You will be bound to 10.13 so you might not need more RAM  unless you’re sure you will run apps where the current amount is not enough.

Since SSD is a big speedup, more RAM will let it 'breathe' a lot better doing multiple tasks... like having more browser windows open. And you’ll likely want to use it more once it’s speedy.

It won't turn it into any kind of powerhouse compared to a 2015 MacBook even or any new portables, but inexpensive upgrades will make it all feel more relaxed.

Expect 4 to 8x speedup in system start time with an SSD that’s moderately priced.


What is a free alternative to something like Daisy Disk, for finding out what is hogging your MacBook hard drive? I suddenly lost a bunch of hard drive space...Has anyone had good success with a FREE Daisy Disk alternative that graphically shows the disk usage that you can recommend? Thx.

For years I have used OmniDiskSweeper.

It is free, and shows your files in a column view, sorted by size. It’s very easy to use and fast (well, as fast as your HD or SSD allows :-)


Macbook shut itself down during sleep and won't boot unless leave it for a few days model: macbook 13'3 with retina display (2013 late autumn)

OS: 10.10.5

symptons:

The macbook shut itself down while I put it to sleep with amost 60% battary left;
Won't turn on by pressing power button or any other fancy key combos or massaging the whole keyboard or knocking the conors;
Genius told me the first time I sent the dead macbook to an authorized reparing store that he just recharged the motherboard and the macbook came back. Sadly good times would not last long, same problem emerged then Genius told me he had to change the whole motherboard with a fancy cost I had to say no.
Miracal happened when I tried to trun it on after I put the dead macbook aside for a few days, it started to boot and performed perfectly like nothing weird had happened.
Now I live in regrets for I have to wait a couple of days before I can use the macbook if I forget to mannualy shut macbook down last time.

Please help me out!

So lets see if I have this right... if you shut it down it turns back on no problem.  If it goes to sleep it takes 5 days to turn back on.

Just a suggestion... what if you turn off sleep in System Preferences -> Energy Saver?  I'm interested if it does the same thing if it stays on but just goes dead.

I would also try a fresh OS install either from a thumb drive or internet recovery in case something in the OS is causing the issue.  It's easy and you can reproduce the issue quickly so its something to cross off the list pretty fast.

I assume you tried the obvious SMC, PRAM resets, etc... SMC controls a lot of the hardware so that's the one I would think is most likely.

Once I had a MacBook that had a bad thermal sensor.  It would turn itself off and take a few hours to turn back on but that was pretty obvious that it was hot and overheating so I would assume that is not the case here.  If it is getting hot then keep that in mind.  Also the MacStore replaced the motherboard and that did not fix the issue so they replaced the whole laptop.  I am not sure what the actual fix would have been.

CleanMyMac has thermal warnings that can tell you if its overheating.  This may also tell you if you have a bad thermal sensor.  If you just turned it on and it's reading 100c then there is something wrong.

Let us know if it may be overheating or if just plain going dead works and it's only sleep mode that does this.

Edit:  This stood out in an article about overheating...

Fake MacBook Charger
A normal charger for a MacBook Pro includes three main parts: AC power cord, MagSafe Power Adapter, and MagSafe connector. It’s always good practice to use the original ones that came with your Mac. If you bought one online, it could be fake and might not work well with your MacBook Pro, thereby causing overheating problem and other issues.
How to Fix It: Shop from the Apple Online Store or Local Retailers.
It’s often not so easy to spot a fake MacBook charger, but this YouTube video shares a few awesome tips. Check it out. Also, try to avoid shopping from online marketplaces, other than the official store, for Apple components. Don’t be lured in by lower prices. I can’t stress this enough.


How to configure 3G/4G dongle in macos 64bit version? I have faced this problem of not able to connect to 3G/4G dongles, currently the Huawei E3372 one. Was using Mobile Partner app & since the 64bit upgrade it has failed.

I found a quick work around using the default "Network" option.
I am using Airtel 4G & Huawei E3372 dongle.
Below are the steps followed:
 1. Open System Preferences > Network

Configure adapter HuaweiMobile-
Configuration: Default
Telephone Number: *99#

In the Advanced pane:

Vendor: Generic Model: GPRS (GSM/3G)
APN: Default (check for APN through your provided for other services)
CID: 1

Select "Show Modem in status bar" for easy toggle.


Set Static IP Reservations on AirPort Extreme I am new to this, but I set up a little server for something up on a laptop connected to the Ethernet of the airport express. I had the server down for a few months and when I plugged it back in, I noticed that the local IP address had changed, and I had to change the IP on the port forwarding settings. Is there a way I can "force" this to be static so I don't have to change it every time the Local IP decides to change?

Thanks for any help

According to the fourth hit on Google here, all you need to do is open get the MAC address of your server, then open AirPort Utility and select your AirPort base station and choose edit (or just click on it if you're not using version 6.0+) and choose the Network tab. Seeing as how you have different local addresses, I'm assuming you have DHCP enabled (it's always a good idea) you just need to set up an IP reservation for the MAC address of your server.


Copy and paste issue from Excel to Keynote table I'm having a big issue when copying from multiple Excel cells/rows and then pasting into a Keynote/Numbers table. When I select multiple cells in Excel with named content such as 'David goes to the gym' and then paste into a Keynote/Numbers cell it stretches the content across 5 separate cells as opposed to keeping it in one cell.

I have absolutely no idea why this is happening.. I've reinstalled office365 but this hasn't changed anything.

Anyone any ideas on this ?

Your delimiter in numbers is set to a 'space', so it reads spaces in the sentence as being cell delimiter. Hence, each word goes into a separate cell. You need to change the delimiter to a comma or a tab. Then only values separated this chacter will fill new cells. To change delimiter (taken from question):

In Numbers you can use any separator when importing csv tables.
On the format sidebar, in the table tab, look for adjust Import settings. Inside it you have delimited options where you can even use custom delimiters


How to upgrade to latest OS on Macbook Air? I have an Early 2014 13" MacBook Air running OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks.
In my attempt to upgrade Google Chrome to the latest version, I discovered my Chrome version only went up to 65. (The latest Google Chrome is already at version 80). The reason Chrome won't give me the latest update is because my OS is not supported anymore. So obviously I now want to install the latest OS X.

Unfortunately, when I go to:  Apple > Software Update the App Store opens to the Updates tab and is empty, saying "No Updates Available".

Even if I do a search in the app store, I can't find any of the new OS X versions.

How do I find and update to the latest OS X?

The new macOS is not displaying because you are not signed into the App Store with your AppleID.

Since you are in the category of "OS X 10.10 Yosemite or earlier" (10.9 is before 10.10), you might have some trouble signing in because your OS does not support two-factor authentication.

Use two step verification:

When you open the App Store and try to sign in, you may see some text in red saying "Please type your password followed by the security code".

Check your phone. Your phone may ask if you allow the login from a certain device; click "allow". It will then show you a pin number.

So if your password is "hushpuppies" and the pin on your phone is "123456", type "hushpuppies123456" in the password field.

After you have signed in, you still might not see anything in the "updates" tab. Try looking at the "featured" tab to see if the OS is there. Once you find it, (in my case, there was a banner in the featured tab for "Catalina") click the "get" button and the download will start.

Run the downloaded installer and follow instructions.


Remove Bookmark and Reading List Sidebar Tapping the book icon to the left of the address bar does not remove the Bookmarks/Reading List Sidebar. How does one remove the sidebar?

Move cursor to the top of you screen to reveal menu. Select View and Hide Reading List Sidebar and/or Hide Bookmarks Sidebar.


Want to keep Notes only on my iPhone 6 I want to keep my Notes only on my iPhone 6 and not have them appear in my mail account but I have been unable to disable notes without deleting them from my iPhone. I tried to find the On My iPhone option in Notes settings to set the default account but it is not there, nor is it available in Mail, Contacts, and Calendar settings. Please advise.

If the notes are associated with your email account you'll have to copy them somewhere (you can email them, send them as text, iMessage,  copy and paste them but only one by one), delete them —which will happen automatically when you disable them on Settings > Mail, contacts, calendars— and then add them back to reside exclusively on your iPhone.
Consider making regular backups of your device, because if anything happens to it, that will be your only way of recovering them.


Transfer music to iPod touch with iTunes without disrupting existing music I have a specific album on my Apple Mac in iTunes that needs to be copied to my iPod Touch. I have music on my iPod touch that was from another device (old PC), so I cannot sync the entire music library on iTunes (Apple Mac), as it does not have some of the music I have stored on my iPod, and will erase it.

If I manually select the album I need to transfer from iTunes to iPod, will that then erase everything on my iPod and replace it with the one synced album? Or will it just add the one album I need to my iPod, and leave all the other music on the iPod intact?

You can't add new music to your iPod if you haven't synced your iPod with your iTunes before and yes, all your music would be deleted from your iPod and be replaced with the iTunes-library.
But what you can do is, you can use a software to copy all your music etc. to your Mac and than you can sync it with this Apple Mac. I used iMazing(formerly DiskAid) many times and it works great. Yes, it costs something, but it is worth the price and an awesome tool.
So:

Download iMazing or any other tool that allows you to transfer your iPod content to the mac without iTunes.
Sync your iPod with the iTunes which has this specific album you want.
Now all your music will be replaced with the iTunes library. But because you've copied your songs from the iPod to your mac/iTunes library before(Step 1) it will sync all your music back to your iPod.

That's it.


How to play all songs by genre in iOS 8.4 Music? I cannot seem to find a way to play music by genre after the iOS upgrade (**cough) to 8.4.

I've tried to workaround this with playlists (which I would have to do every change in my music library). But ok. I held my anger and accepted this. Tried to create playlist. Add songs > Genre, and saw no Add all button. Really?? Do I have to do a thousand taps to create my playlists?

Subquestion:
Is there an alternative app capable of playing songs by genre?

Found the answer! This feature is invisible and you have to know it's there.

  To shuffle songs within a genre in your library, do the following:

  Tap the "My Music" tab.
  Tap the selection in the divider at the top between "Recently Added" and the music list.  A drop down will appear where you can
  select a means to sort.  Select "Genre".  You can use this same method
  to shuffle within other sorting schemes (artists, albums, etc.)
  Scroll to your desired Genre.  Tap the IMAGE (or gray square) to the left of the Genre name, not the name itself.  A song within that
  genre should start to play.
  When you tap the currently playing song name at the bottom, the currently playing song will expand up.  Make sure the Shuffle icon is
  lit at the bottom.
  THAT'S IT!  Enjoy!    If you have the "repeat" icon de-selected, playback will stop once all the songs in the selected genre have been
  played.

Source (apple forum): https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7106074?tstart=0


How to Spotlight index a folder under /private/var I got a directory /private/var/directory that I'd like to index using Spotlight. It looks like everything under /private/var/ is excluded from indexing. I tried to import it using:

mdimport /private/var/directory

But it didn't work. I also thought it might be excluded by some kind of sandboxed environment, but I couldn't figure out if that is the case.

As a last resort I could move the directory somewhere else but I'd rather not do that as it would be a lot of work in this particular case.

How can I force Spotlight to index this directory?

As you know it is a Hidden Folder and therefore it is not indexed by Spotlight.

You could change the Flag for the folder from hidden to no hidden using the terminal command:

sudo chflags nohidden /private/var/directory

To test, using Finder navigate to the /private/var/directory with Go To.

Now right click and use Get Info. does it still show it as Hidden?

To make Spotlight re-index that folder:

From the Apple () menu, choose System Preferences.
Click Spotlight.
Click the Privacy tab.
Drag a folder or an entire volume (your hard drive) to the list.
If prompted for confirmation, click OK.
Remove the item or volume you just added to the list by clicking it and then clicking the minus ("-") button.
Close Spotlight preferences.

Spotlight will re-index the contents of the folder or volume.


How to upload video from iPhone to Dropbox? I went through the steps mentioned in previous queries (which noted setting it up through Camera Upload file). Bought the upgrade on Dropbox to 1TB ($99 per year). iPhone had photos and videos "on" for uploading. You can't do video only. If you turn off photo upload it automatically shuts off video uploads. After uploading all photos it never got to uploading video to Dropbox. Help.

This worked for me just now (after downloading Dropbox):

Open Photos
Selected a video
Clicked the Share icon (square with arrow going up, left side)
Clicked on "More..." (scroll to the right, if necessary)
Turned on Dropbox and clicked Done (top right)
Selected Dropbox, filled in the info, and pressed "Post"

That should do it.


Install OS X 10.7 to 10-10 on MacBook Air MD232 I have MacBook Air MD232. As we need to test our software on all OS X from 10.7 to 10.10, we need to install them all. Is it possible to install them on my MBA? When I buy, this MBA has been installed with Yosemite. I tried to install any other OSs by using "restore" feature from Disk Utility. However, restoring process were successful and pressing alt/option during restart, I get only gray screen with a stop sign and nothing happen afterwards. Would you please tell me how?

Hardware Requirements

Every Mac has a minimum supported operating system. Older versions of OS X will not run on a Mac with a higher minimum.

For example, the MacBook Air (Early 2014) requires OS X 10.9.2 or later.

EveryMac has a comprehensive list of Mac models and their minimum supported OS X.

Virtual Machines

To work around this, consider using a virtual machine for your testing; VMware Fusion, Parallels, and VirtualBox are all reasonable choices.


My texts are not showing up delivered. Does this mean I could have been blocked? My texts are not showing up delivered.  Does this mean I could have been blocked?  Or did they put it on Do Not Disturb?  Messages were delivered yesterday morning, but everything after that is not showing delivered.

No,

When a a user blocks a number on an iPhone and someone else with an iPhone sends a message, it appears delivered.  There is no way for someone to know they were indeed blocked.

Maybe the phone is off.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/how-to/mobile-phone/have-i-been-blocked-in-ios-7-who-blocked-me-ios-8-iphone-ios-9-3476005/


iChat 7.0, how can I see previous conversation In iChat version on Snow leopard I could view all the previous chat messages of a user. But since the current version (iChat 7.0.1 Mountain Lion) I cannot see that chat History. All my previous messages are saved into ~/Documents/iChat by previous version. So how can I view the chat history like in previous versions?

For chat transcripts created by Messages, once you've selected the conversation in the Messages window (with File > Recent Items if necessary), you just scroll back and Messages will load older transcripts incrementally.  However, this is pretty poorly implemented, as there's no way to scroll all the way back at once; you have to scroll to the top or press Home repeatedly.

The newer transcripts are stored in ~/Library/Messages/Archive, not ~/Documents/iChat.  Quick Look is also supported for chat transcripts.

Chatology is a third-party app that may be of help; it will read transcripts in both locations, is faster and less buggy than Messages (e.g., lets you see images in old chats where Messages won't).


Where to get the full offline-capable installer for macOS Mojave (.1 update)? When I originally downloaded the Install macOS Mojave.app for the original release 14.0.22, I got a 6.03 gig file.

Today I replaced that file by downloading the installer fresh from the App Store for 14.1.0. The app is only 22 megs! So obviously this is just a shell that I imagine downloads the needed content over the internet at runtime.

But I need an offline installer, for clean-installs on various Macs and for creating virtual machines.

➥ How to obtain fully-loaded offline installer app for Mojave 14.1.x?

What about just using the original installer, then updating immediately the newly installed OS to .1? That .1 update was a whopper, over 3 gigs! I really want to avoid repeating that updater download. I really need a fully-loaded offline installer.

The 22 MB "stub" installer is downloaded when your Mac is having trouble getting the correct data from Apple's software update catalogs. This is quote common during the first 24 hours or so, as it takes a little while for the updates to propagate across the CDNs. The solution in this case is to delete the stub, wait a couple of hours, and then try again.

There is also a useful script by Greg Neagle that lets you inspect which installers are available in your update catalogs, and can download them for you: installinstallmacos.py

PS: If you have a Mac managed by an organization, you may also get the stub installer if your administrator hasn't approved the new update, e.g. with Reposado.


Executing bash file with Error bin/bash: bad interpreter: No such file or directory I am very new to bash and try writing the first script named hello_world in the path of /Users/me/Study/Linux with the content written by vim:

#! bin/bash
echo Hello World

However, the error occurs when executed:

-bash: /Users/me/Study/Linux/hello_world: bin/bash: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

I have read many questions on the issue but still feel totally lost. :( I'll be very thankful for your help.

The first line of your bash script must look like this.

#!/bin/bash

This is called a "shebang line" because the first two characters #! are a shebang. The shebang line tells the computer which executable program should be used to interpret the rest of the script. In this case you're writing a bash script, but you could just as easily be writing a script for python or awk, and you need to tell the system which interpreter to use based on what language the script is written in.

The reason that your shebang line #! bin/bash doesn't work is because you haven't provided a valid path (typically, an absolute path) to the interpreter. If you omit the initial slash / then the shell looks for bin in the current working directory but doesn't find it.

Since you're just getting started learning bash, I suggest reading a book. This will save you from having to ask too many questions. Learning the bash Shell, 3rd Edition by Cameron Newham is quite good.


Delete emails from server Mac Mail I have setup and email account on Mac mail. The account accesses email through IMAP. One of the settings for the account is not to keep any messages on the server under the advanced tab in Mac Mail.

However no emails are being deleted on the server once they are received on Mac mail client.

Any clue on where I can check the problem?

The only folders you can keep locally for IMAP are:

Drafts
Sent
Trash
Spam

If you want to empty other IMAP mailboxes, you will want to set up local folders on the Mac - use the built in help and search for "Create Mailbox" to get the steps to make a local folder so you can move all the messages there and then send a delete command to the IMAP server to actually remove them if they don't auto purge.


Signal Problems between 2015 Macbook Pro and Dell 4K P2415Q Monitor I just bought a P2415Q Monitor and connected it to my 2015 Macbook Pro with the DisplayPort to thunderbolt cable that was included with the monitor. It seemed ok at first, but after the first time the computer went into sleep mode I noticed the monitor wouldn't wake up. The message on the monitor was:

  There is no signal coming from your device. Please activate your
  device to wake it up. If there is no display, press the monitor button
  now to select the correct input source on the On-Screen-Display menu.

There is some information about this message in the monitor's User's Guide, but nothing that helps.

Through a combination of just random experimentation (unplugging/plugging, turning off/on, etc) I was eventually able to get the monitor and laptop connected again, but the problem recurred the next time the computer went into sleep.

I've now also seen a bunch of posts online complaining about similar issues with this monitor or the 27 inch variation. Does anyone have any suggestions about resolving this? I was thinking about getting an HDMI to HDMI cable and seeing if that was an improvement over the DP-mDP connection.

Another thing I notice while experimenting with connections was that when I plugged the DP cable into the monitor's DP-OUT connector it seemed to work just as well as plugging it to the DP-IN slot (i.e. worked initially but failed to wake up from sleep). Is that normal that the OUT would also work as an input?

After changing nothing, the monitor has been working fine for over a week now. All I can think of is maybe the computer was rebooted and that somehow solved the signal issues. I don't think any updates were installed and I'm still using the same DP cable. Resolution is still 3840x2160 at 60hz.


Why do some files on iCloud suddenly force me to download again? I found that sometimes my files which I put on my iCloud are going to disappear from my local hard drive and thus force me to download them again. These files have the "download from the cloud" icon on Finder, and I'm not sure when and why these icons are added to which files.

I don't like to download them again, but this happens quite often. The files are put under ~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/my_directory. How can I avoid them and keep the files available at local?

This is the correct situation if your Mac has Optimize Mac Storage enabled in the iCloud preference pane.

If your storage is under light pressure, I don't find recently used documents being released from local storage much if at all, but if you are running with a very close to full drive, the system may be removing the local copy before you like.

Above is an SSD under light pressure - lots of space for local backups, iCloud data to remain cached and space to add new files. Below is iCloud showing nearly 200 GB of data so if all of that were on my MacBook - my pressure would be constrained / close to full.

There's nothing sudden about this, though in my experience. Most people I assist with this are more bothered by the large amount of data that could be "purged" and isn't but I get your not wanting to re-download and wait for files.


Find account type from command line Is there a command i can run from terminal that will show what type of accounts are used

something that reports the username and type of account like below

/Users/fred - mobile, standard
/Users/wilma - network admin

Try this command. It should display what you want.

/usr/bin/dscl . -read /Users/username |
    egrep 'NFSHomeDirectory|RecordType' | tr '\n' ':' | cut -d':' -f2,5
/Users/username:Users


Is there a way to add shortcuts to open a particular folder in Save Dialogs and Finder Windows? I know that when you're saving or opening a file ⌘ shift D shoots you to the Desktop folder, and pressing ⌘ shift D whilst using finder shoots you to the desktop folder as well.

Is there a way to create a custom shortcut to jump to your own choice of folder? (e.g. ⌘ shift W for your 'Work' folder).

By default, no.  What I've done is drag folders I access frequently to the Places section in the left side bar.  There is software to accomplish this though.  Default Folder X does this, and more.

If you're in a save dialogue you can press / to get a file path dialogue, or press ⌘+Shift+G to get a "Go to folder" dialogue.


How create a graph of profit over time I have created a spreadsheet on numbers to track profit/loss of cryptocurrency investments. I have taken the data for the current value of the cryptocurrency using stock quote so it updates every few minutes. I have a total profit amount at the bottom of the spreadsheet that changes as the figures do. I’d like to create a line graph that shows the profit going up and down over time. I’m not sure how to make the x axis correspond to a date and how to link this with the profit, I don’t really want it to update every few minutes as the figures do but possibly once daily. Can anyone help please?

To create a graph of profit over time, you need data over time. Spreadsheets can only plot graphs of data present in a table, or interpolated between. That means you need a table containing rows for each time point you want plotted, not just the current value.
Numbers can import ‘delimited or fixed-width text files’. If you can find a source for the data you need over time, you can import this into Numbers and plot the data over time.
Create one row for each point in time over a contiguous time period with regular interval and use a line graph, or plot using a scatter graph for non-contiguous/non-regular time (other types cannot be used, see Time as x-axis in chart with Apple Numbers).


Textwrangler Open File in New Tab I just become a Mac user and I've been looking for a decent free code editor, thus I found Textwrangler.

However, I like it a lot, I only have one problem with it. How does one open a new file in a new tab rather than a new window?

I open a directory with it and have the tree, but each time when I click on a file it closes the current file I am viewing and opens the new one.

Is it possible to have things open in a new tab as when you one a link in a new tab in Chrome or more exactly how you open a new file in Notepad++ on Windows.

Command + Option + [

or

Command + Option + ]

to navigate between open documents in the single window.