What is the best option to protect our Laptop? Because any MacBook Pro in a table can be easily pick up by thieves, and we do have always our current work there (though all backed up, by Dropbox or external HD), my question is

  Should we protect the access to our hard drive?

You would probably, if you travel a lot say yes, but

  What software should we use to protect our work with a password?

... and, for example, after 3 wrong attempts, maybe erase all folders that we specified without an option to get it back?

Kinda like what iPhone give us in a business environment that we can, remotely, erase all personal data.

Install Prey.

  "Prey is a lightweight application
  that will help you track and find your
  laptop if it ever gets stolen. It
  works in all operating systems and not
  only is it Open Source but also
  completely free."


Strange iCloud Login issue Okay, so I'm pretty sure i have this right because i have tried a bunch of fixes over the past few days to get to this conclusion.

I think my IP address is for some reason being denied access to Apple servers.

I am able to sign into iCloud via my cellular connection.

But the moment I try to access or login to any of iCloud login (on mac/phone/windows pc) via my wifi (static IP) apple cannot sign me in and returns the error "unable to connect to server" or similar ones.

Does anyone know how to resolve this?

NB: I have done everything from router reset to fresh install of OS. in fact, when I was doing the install, I had to switch between mobile hotspot and wifi to ensure Apple verified my credentials and let me begin the install in the first place. Because over wifi, I couldn't even get El Capitan to download.

I think you may need to investigate your firewall settings on your router, or ask your ISP if they know of any particular ports that may be blocked & how to change that.

The list of ports & services required for all software Apple access is fairly substantial, but is all detailed at Apple's Knowledge Base: TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products


Using NTFS-3G to write to an external hard drive results in error code 100102 I have an external Seagate hard drive that is recognised and works on Windows computers but not on my MacBook Air which I am currently using. I am able to mount the hard drive in read-only mode but I want to write files to it from my computer. Using the Paragon Driver software offered by Seagate does not work for me, as I am only able to mount my hard drive in read-only mode.
I have installed NTFS-3G using Homebrew, following the instructions on this tutorial site. After installing NTFS-3G, I was able to copy a folder to my hard drive. However, the size of the folder is 4 GB, so it took some time to be copied. However, when the folder copy progress bar reached the end, I received the following error message:

And the folder was not copied. I have tried copying it another time to my hard drive to see if it would work but have still received the same error. I am not sure why this error message is occurring and how I can resolve it. Any insights are appreciated.

Maybe commercial products like iBoysoft NTFS for Mac, Paragon NTFS for Mac, and Tuxera NTFS for Mac is more compatible with recent tech.


Cannot open more documents if all the others are closed My girlfriend experiences the following strange behavior on her MacBook Pro running on Yosemite. It does not happen all the time but when it does, things are always the same:

She closes all the opened documents from apps like ms-word, Adobe Acrobat Reader or Adobe Indesign and then tries to open a new one from the finder window. It looks like the document will be opened, but it doesn't.
The app is still running but the file is not opened.
Opening it from the File menu still works, though.

When this happens she also cannot close the app neither from the File menu nor the Dock. She needs to go to Activity Monitor and force quit the app.

Any thoughts?

I think this is an option from the dock. Go to System Preferences -> Dock and uncheck the Option Minimize windows into application icon.

If you not see the Window you have in every Application the Window menu. Choose from there the Option Bring all to Front.


Can't download facebook in my new iPhone 3GS I bought a new IPhone 3GS and can't download Messenger, Facebook, hike etc.
Why?

How to download?

You can download the last compatible version of an app if you already have the app in your purchase history. You can add the app to your purchase history using iTunes on your computer, since iTunes is version-agnostic.

Once you've downloaded the app on iTunes, it will be in your purchase history and attempting to download it again on your device should prompt you to accept an older version of the app.


Read a Linux Disk in MacOS? I have a two-disk NAS in RAID 1 that's not cooperating. I tried taking one of the disks out and plugging it into my iMac via a USB enclosure to copy the files off of it, but MacOS can't read the disk. I assume it's probably Ext3 or Ext4, some kind of Linux format. How can I get the files off of the disk?

Linux is very flexible when it comes to filesystem formats and disk setups.

The most common problem you will encounter is the most popular filesystem for Linux: ext4, which is of course not supported by Apple under macOS.

To gain access to these filesystems, you need either
OSXFuse and a slow implementation of read-only access (eg ext4fuse, eg via macports or homebrew) or the commercial Paragon ExtFS.

A great many more exotic filesystem setups cannnot be dealt with from within macOS.

A more convoluted but more flexible solution method might involve either booting your Mac into Linux and copy the files or using a Virtual Machine that runs Linux to extcrat the files.

Virtual Box usually can handle USB (provided the settings are right) and most Linux installations from within there as well (again: settings). The Linux installation needs support for the actual filesystem (mainstream distributions usually do.) As the RAID was 1 aka mirroring, one of the disks should then be readable.


Syncing and deleting categories in Outlook? I created a bunch of Outlook categories via AppleScript using the following command:

make new category with properties {name:"Snooze2", color:"blue"}

These new categories work as expected, but don't show in the 'Categories' window (Preferences → Personal Settings → Categories) and also will not be available on other machines using the same account.

Do you know how to create categories that will behave like the ones created using the Categories window?

Also related, does anybody know how to delete a category via AppleScript? Since they don't show in the Categories window, I can only delete them via AppleScript.

You can delete the category by finding its ID and using the command:

delete category id <#>

So something like this works fine:

tell application "Microsoft Outlook"
    set badCategory to "foo"
    set allCategories to every category
    repeat with varCategory in allCategories
        if name of varCategory is badCategory then
            delete category id of varCategory
            log "name = " & name of aTag as string
            log "id = " & id of aTag as string
            log "deleting it!"
            exit repeat
        end if
    end repeat
end tell


What is the type of VPN created in Sharing? I need to select either one of the following VPNs in Samsung Galaxy Tab 8.9:

PPTP VPN
L2TP VPN
L2TP/IPSec PSK VPN
L2TP/IPSec CRT VPN

So which one should I select to access my iMac where I shared my screen for my tablet?

I am 99.9% sure that the choice is Door #3 (Door #4 is the other).


Related CLI and GUI applications with same name? I'm preparing to release an open source Swift package with two companion MacOS applications: CLI and GUI.  I'm expecting the GUI application to be available via the MacOS App Store.  I'd also like to get the CLI application notarized.

I'd like the naming to be like this for the applications:

CLI: applicationname
GUI: ApplicationName.app

Is having the same name, other than capitalization and the .app file extension, going to cause trouble with how users access the tools?  Will there be some sort of path resolution conflict given the case-insensitive magic Apple does with the filesystem?

Clarification:

ApplicationName.app has executable ApplicationName inside its package-contents -> Contents -> MacOS directory. But that’s all related to the GUI version. I will also release a separate CLI version, not included in the app bundle, called applicationname.

Not sure how to understand how there could be a conflict in such cases:

foo.app is a directory (usually within /Applications) which contains all the files relevant for the application to run (including any resources, translated texts etc)
foo is a binary installed within foo.app which can be called from a shell by specificing the path, symlinking it from /usr/local/bin, or using any other way available in shells

So this are differently named things of different types, there shouldn’t be a conflict as far as macOS is concerned. We can‘t know what the App Store Review will make of it.


iCloud Drive is not loading on iOS 13 My Drive app is unable to load a files from the icloud drive. I tried sign out and in, also turning off and on iCloud Drive but still loading.

Any ideas?

A restart of the iOS device solved the problem for me.


Macbook Pro 16" USB-C to DisplayPort not working I'm trying to connect a MacBook Pro 16" to my external display through DisplayPort with these devices :

Cable Matters Adaptater USB C to DisplayPort
DisplayPort Cable
External display : iiyama prolite b2783QSU

But it's not working.
When I plug it in, the external display goes out of sleeping mode, but the MBP does not detect it and after a couple of seconds, the display displays a "no input detected" message and goes back to sleep.
I've tried :

Reseting the SMC and NVRAM and tried all 4 usb slots.
Switching off and unplugged the display, plugged it back in etc.
Restarting in clamshell
Force detect the display (the display goes out of sleeping mode, but then wont be detected)

I've tested the cable, adapter and screen with another computer and everything works fine.
Is there something I'm missing here ?
Is it possible that my external display isn't compatible ?
== Edit ==
It looks like incompatibility between MacOS and this iiyama model (or I guess this DisplayPort version).
It also seems to be a software problem, since it works under Windows/Bootcamp (!)
I've raised the issue to the Apple support, but of course no answer, and I think no hope of this getting solved.
Basically, I need to buy a new screen... sad.

You just need a simple Type C DisplayPort cable.
The confusion comes from how “USB-C” was implemented.  USB-C is just the physical port type.  The ports on your MacBook Pro are actually Thunderbolt 3 ports and they use a Type C connector.  Thunderbolt has several signals:  PCIe, USB 3.x, DisplayPort and Power.
So, that port is natively outputting DisplayPort and the adapter you purchased is an actual video adapter that connects to USB and outputs DisplayPort.  It’s not working because your Mac doesn’t have the drivers for that particular adapter.


Two Apple IDs - one for business and one for personal Is it possible to have two apple IDs on one device?  I own a business and have contracted iOS developers to create an app.  I set up an Apple ID to use for the company and started using it to create a developer account for them to use to put the app in the App Store.  That way the control of the app is with the company, not with the contracted developer.  When I went to turn on two-step authentication I wasn’t able to because my devices are set to my personal Apple ID.  I would really prefer to not give the programmers access to my personal account.  So, is there anyway to make this happen using the same device with the two Apple ids?

Yes - you can split accounts on one device and this is just about the only case where I would say you would want to make a second AppleID.

Just be really careful when you sign in - in general don't accept or enter the AppleID in any set up screen as that places the first AppleID in all the slots. Decline the easy set up and choose app by app which you want to use for App Store, for iCloud, for messaging, email, etc...
You will run into device limitations for Two factor and Two Step auth - watch out, Apple had both and they are easy to confuse and don't do the same thing or meet the same requirements.


Keyboard shortcut to kill an unresponsive App on Mac OS X Today I faced really tight situation on my Mac with Skype (yes, again!) - it went unresponsive, and was not reacting on standard shortcuts, and I wasn't managed to close the app by standard means.

I tried to use the keyboard combo:  ⌘ Command + ⌥ Option + Esc simultaneously, but it haven't open the "Force Quit" dialog this time.

I tried to call Activity monitor - but it was not possible either, as the App prevented me switching to something else or to open other applications... no standard means worked, even "Spotlight search" was unresponsive by keyboard shortcut. But I knew it still reacted on the keyboard, as caps-lock was working, plus I managed to power off external display, and the to power it on again via keyboard shortcut.

I'm wondering if is there any fallback for these situations, when an Application is totally unresponsive and prevents me from running other apps? It's the first time the app hanged the whole Mac that heavily, that I was unable to kill it or to open any other application to manage the processes.

Is it normal behavior at all, I was counting on it not possible to hang the whole system on a Mac, and one App can't make it totally unresponsive (OS X El Captain, 10.11.4)?

Update: found such the keyboard shortcut I never used: ⌘ Command + ⌥ Option + ⇧ Shift + Esc held for 3 seconds - forces quit of front-most application... not sure if it would work.

There is a way to access your computer, but only using another computer or device on the same network. That device has to support ssh. OSX has it preinstalled, but if you have an iPhone or iPad you will need to install an app such as Prompt.

You need to allow Remote Login on your mac, from System Preferences. Click the Sharing icon, then check the tickbox for Remote Login.

On the right, there is a list called "Allow Access for". Choose "Only These Users". Then click the + icon and add your user in the list.

(As there was a comment that this is a security risk, you may want to prevent external ssh access in your router, this is beyond the scope of this answer.)

Then if your mac freezes you can remotely connect to it via ssh from the other devices.

From there you could run top to see a list of the processes. You can use the killall command to stop the frozen process by name.

For example

killall Skype

This attempts to Quit Skype.

If that doesn't work, you may have to be less “polite” and add a -9 signal:

killall -9 Skype

If it is severely frozen, the computer may not even respond to the ssh request. In that case I would look at reinstalling your OS or have the hardware checked, which is beyond the scope of this answer.


Is there a way to tell iOS mail app to put emails from specific senders in a special folder automatically? Is there any way to tell iOS mail app to put emails from specific senders in a special folder automatically?

If you’re using an iCloud mail account then you can go to http://icloud.com/#mail

In the top right of the screen there’s a preferences icon — looks like a cog. If you click on that the preferences pop-over opens, click on Rules and from there you can configure some basic rules to put messages into specified folders.


How to backup iPhone contacts (no iCloud, iTunes or Outlook)? I have an iPhone from another age (pre 2008) which is ready to be commissioned as defunct and replaced with a new 4S. My question, is how to back up the contacts form the old iPhone and transfer them to the new one.

The question of backing up iPhone contacts could seem simple at first sight, but in my case it comes with a headache.

I do not use Outlook. I cannot use the iCloud on my old iPhone. I do not use iTunes sync and manage my iPhone manually, so would strongly prefer not to use iTunes at all.

I was thinking placing the contacts on my SIM card, but iPhone only supports getting contacts from SIM and not saving them to SIM.

I was also thinking bluetooth, but learned that bluetooth is only used for iPhone accessories and cannnot be used for iPhone data transfer whatsoever.

You can extract your iPhone contacts and back them up to your computer via CopyTrans Contacts.

Then use the same program to transfer the contacts from your computer to your new iPhone.


Is there a way to force a remote refresh via the iOS Remote Web Inspector? I'm using iOS 6's new remote web inspector feature, which is pretty nice.

Is there a way of forcing a page refresh on the remote iOS device from the desktop - it's just a bit easier then reaching over and refreshing the page on the device itself.

OK, figured it out, it's a bit kludgy, but works.

In the javascript console (the single line at the bottom of the web inspector) - type this:

document.location.reload();

This forces a page reload on the remote device.


What does AirPlay need from wifi and router? I have been using AirPlay to an Airport Express connected to my HiFi very successfully for years. My router and main wifi access point were Apple AirPort Extreme - so it was all Apple to Apple and it worked.

Now I have just installed a new Virgin Broadband Super Hub 2ac (it's a customised Netgear cable modem router with built-in wifi) and for reasons of local layout I have set it up as router and as a wifi access point. It works very well. I have put the old AirPort Extreme into bridge mode so it just serves as a switch, and have reset the Airport Express to join the new wireless network.

Everything works well except AirPlay. Even AirPlay sometimes works - but mostly it fails. The Airport Express AirPlay service is always visible from my iPhone, but trying to play music through it just usually fails.
The Virgin media forums have several stories of "AirPlay doesn't work with my Virgin Super hub" - and the consensus response seems to be "don't use the Super hub as a router". This seems to me to be defeatist.

There must be some requirement of AirPlay that the router or wifi service isn't satisfying. What is it? What does AirPlay need? Some particular protocol? Some special wifi setting?

AirPlay uses the following ports:

TCP 80 - http
TCP 443 - https
TCP/UDP 554 - rstp
TCP 3689 - daap
UDB 5353 - mDNS

Data from https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202944 - TCP and UDP ports used by Apple software products and TCP and UDP ports and protocols used by Apple TV

Here's how to test ports and also an AirPort centric setup guide


Bootcamp operating system missing error after resizing partition I resized my partition to increase my Boot Camp drive few months ago with Disk Utility on Mac. After that I decided to have more space on Boot Camp partition. I resized it again by setting a new size for Macintosh HD but when I reboot my Mac and hold alt key there was no Windows boot drive visible. I googled and followed this discussion: Repairing Boot Camp after creating new partition based on this answer. After rebooting my Mac I saw the Windows boot option but after selecting it I get System Operating Missing.

Here is current situation of my partions and disk:

gpt show: disk0: mediasize=500107862016; sectorsize=512; blocks=976773168
gpt show: disk0: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: disk0: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: disk0: Sec GPT at sector 976773167
    start       size  index  contents
        0          1         MBR
        1          1         Pri GPT header
        2         32         Pri GPT table
       34          6
       40     409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
   409640  850647624      2  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
851057264    1269536      3  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
852326800   84899440
937226240   39546880      4  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
976773120         15
976773135         32         Sec GPT table
976773167          1         Sec GPT header

Firstly - Sorry for bringing up an old question - I just spent a year trying to find the answers and only found questions so I figured I'd answer a past one with my solution

Resize Bootcamp partition:

Boot to MacOS and use disk utils to shrink OS X partition leaving unallocated space on hdd

<-- I believe you are at this point based on the empty space starting at 852326800 -->

Boot to GParted and use the copy/resize function to expand the windows partition to the left (this covers your extended space)
Boot back to OS X and use FDisk to mark the Bootcamp partition as bootable (Was partition 4 in my case and looks to be in your case)
Bless a Windows bootable USB before restart (with startup repair avaliable on it)

sudo bless -mount "/Volumes/**mountedusb**/" -legacy -setBoot -nextonly

Boot to windows usb and run startup repair
Restart and you should be good.


Creating AppleScript for keystrokes I've been trying to do my own AppleScript to make my Mac press C 13 times, press the left arrow key, press C 13 times, press the right arrow key and start from the beginning repeatedly at 1.7 seconds intervals.

Currently I have only managed to do a working script that makes it press C multiple times. Could someone please help me with this? This is what I have at the moment

set i to 0
repeat while i < 1.0E+300
    set i to i + 1
    delay 1.7
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "c"
end repeat

To start off, the number 1.0E+300 is a really REALLY big number.  That's  more than the number of atoms in the entire universe by several orders.

Your script isn't far off.  To press "c" thirteen times, you can either do this:

repeat 13 times
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "c"
    -- delay 0.1
end repeat

(you potentially need a small delay there to register individual keystrokes, but you can try it without and see which works);

or you can do this:

tell application "System Events" to keystroke "ccccccccccccc"

which is the equivalent of the repeat loop without the delay.

The left and right arrow keys are key code 123 and key code 124, respectively.  So, adding those in between the keystrokes:

tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "ccccccccccccc"
    delay 0.1
    key code 123 -- left arrow
    delay 0.1
    keystroke "ccccccccccccc"
    delay 0.1
    key code 124 -- right arrow
end tell

OR:

tell application "System Events"
    repeat 13 times
        keystroke "c"
        delay 0.1
    end repeat

    key code 123 -- left arrow
    delay 0.1

    repeat 13 times
        keystroke "c"
        delay 0.1
    end repeat

    key code 124 -- right arrow
end tell

Finally, doing this ad infinitum on a loop at 1.7 second intervals, will produce something resembling this:

tell application "System Events" to repeat
    repeat 13 times
        keystroke "c"
        delay 0.1
    end repeat

    key code 123 -- left arrow
    delay 0.1

    repeat 13 times
        keystroke "c"
        delay 0.1
    end repeat

    key code 124 -- right arrow

    delay 1.7
end repeat

Note that the outside-most repeat loop has no while, until, or times to limit its continuation.  It will loop forever, until you stop the script manually.

I also didn't factor the 0.1-second delays into the overall 1.7-second delay.  The smaller delays will exceed 1.7 seconds in total, but I'll let you adjust the timings to your needs.


Server.app and importing a Let's Encrypt Certificate I have generated a Let's Encrypt certificate for the subdomain I use for the profile manager website.
I have exported the certificate and imported it into the Server app.
I got the following message when I try to select this certificate.
Additional access is required to use the selected certificate

I press on Continue. And get this message:
Services could not be configured to use this certificate

Does anyone have an idea how to solve it?

Private keys in the keychain have an Access Control List (ACL) attached to them. You can edit this list using the Keychain Access application.

Open Keychain Access and select the System Keychain
Select Keys from the Category picker in the sidebar
Find and select the Let's Encrypt private key
Hit cmd-i (or double click) to open the viewer
Select the Access Control tab
You may have to authenticate
Click the "Allow all applications to access this item" radio button
Click the "Save Changes" button.

Then restart Server.app and try setting up the Services again.


Open recently closed page on iOS I know on iPad you can press and hold the new tab button to re-open recently closed tabs, but is there any similar functionality on an iPod/iPhone?

Hate to provide what is effectively a 1 word answer, but no.

Because iPhone Safari does not use tabs, the shortcut/gesture is missing.  Going into the 'other pages' screen and tapping and holding all over yeilds nothing.  Simply not available using Safari.

You may have more luck with a 3rd party browser if it's an important bit of functionality to have.


Where are my "exchange" reminders in mac OS? I created reminders and lists in exchange section. I remember making some changes in internet accounts in system preference the other day. My notes disappeared after that. Can I recover them?

When the account is removed on iOS or macOS - the data is not deleted and only the local cache of it goes away. This is true for any sort of exchange or iCloud or google data lives in the cloud. Thus, the best way to find missing items would be to open the web client and look at the data store directly.

Once you verify that the data exists in the cloud - go ahead and add back that account on your Mac and enable the data classes you want (tasks map to reminders).


How to change the ad-hoc WiFi name in OSX? When I turn on Internet Sharing on my mac, the broadcasted network name is the original Computer Name of the iMac.

The computer name has since been changed, however the WiFi name continues to be broadcast as the original which I really need to change. I've looked everywhere in System Preferences for the original computer name but can't find any remnant of it.

Can anyone please tell me how to change the ad-hoc WiFi name?

In Lion and Snow Leopard, you can create a network from the AirPort menu and choose whatever SSID you please.

The same dialog should be available from the network preference pane in System Preferences if you prefer that avenue.


Change location for which gofortran I downloaded gofortran, it is in the library /usr/local/bin/. I would like to use gofortran with R but whenever I run anything I get the following error: make: /usr/local/gfortran: Permission denied.

Since it appears that /usr/local is locked up I moved a copy of gofortran to  the desktop and added export PATH=/Users/rehlab/Desktop/gfortran:$PATH to the first line of my PATH.

Unfortunately which gfortran and type gfortran both still return /usr/local/bin/gfortran.

Setting up /usr/local is something there are nice tools to help with when it gets changed.

I would install homebrew since it has a brew doctor command that will tell you how to fix all permissions in the /usr/local/

Your error is spotted in the first line. If you install gofortran in /usr/local/bin then the make command is wrong trying to execute /usr/local/gofortran - permission denied is the same as "there is no program to run there.

Once you reinstall things - what does "run anything" look like specifically? You might need to ask a follow-on question detailing what you're trying to do in stead of how you tried to fix the error.


How do I save flash videos from Safari? A long time ago, I found this post online with some tips for finding files in the browser cache.  Specifically, Flash videos.  However, I'm currently running OS X 10.7.2 and Safari 5.1.2 and this method doesn't appear to be accurate anymore.

I also tried the RealPlayer Downloader method mentioned in the comments on that link, but it's not detecting the videos in the browser.

Can anybody think of an updated version of this?  Where might I find Safari's cache items to copy them?

This is how you do it: Capturing streaming video in OSX Lion.
It's basically the same method as in the post you referred to, with the difference being that you access the file through the activity window in Safari instead of navigating to the temp file in Finder.


How do I get my monitor to run at the correct resolution reliably? I just started a new remote job. They shipped me a 2018 15" Macbook Pro, a 32" Asus PB328Q monitor (QHD, aka 2560x1440), and a Satechi USB-C adapter, with an HDMI cable for connecting the monitor. All of the above were used previously by a former employee. I am running macOS Mojave 10.14.6; upgrading to Catalina is not an option at the moment for IT policy reasons.

About 90% of the time (including right now), when I connect the monitor, the system runs it at 1080p resolution. As expected when running at non-native resolution, everything is blurry onscreen and I don't get the real estate I want.

If I unplug and replug the adapter from the laptop, or the HDMI cable from the adapter, there's a small chance it will come back at the right resolution. I have only had this work when plugging into the left-side ports on the laptop.

The Displays prefpane's extra window for the monitor shows that it is being recognized correctly as a PB328. Option-clicking on Scaled to reveal more resolutions does not help. (By default, only four resolutions are shown; option-clicking reveals several more, but none larger than 1080p.)

If I unplug and replug repeatedly, eventually the native resolution shows up. At the same time, the Refresh Rate dropdown is disabled and the Underscan option disappears. Perhaps these are useful indicators?

I found this related question, which has no accepted answer. ColorSync Utility reports "No problems found." The monitor does not support HDMI 2.0, so that can't be the problem. I am on the latest version of Mojave and this monitor is not new, so I don't think graphics drivers could be it.

Could this be related to switching between integrated and discrete graphics? If yes, how can I confirm and/or control that?

I have the same monitor and running MacOS Catalina 10.15.4. I believe a DVI cable (DVI-to-TB3: https://www.apple.com/shop/product/HLR62ZM/A/moshi-usb-c-to-displayport-cable) would get you higher res options + 75Hz refresh rate. Failing that, try using SwitchResX (https://www.madrau.com/) to expose some other display options.


Big Sur update causes beachball icon frequently and Finder to be unresponsive I'm on a MacBook Pro , bought June 2020.
I updated to Big Sur from Catalina 10.15.7 this morning, and the upgrade went OK.
However, since then, it's become slow and unresponsive, beachballing a lot, Finder had problems launching and constantly Application Not Responding.
Finder won't launch very often, if at all.
It's the latest version of Big Sur, 11.3.1, which I've got.
Other problems are that I cannot click on the black Apple Icon to shutdown or restart (sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't), and apps crash a lot - BBEdit, occasionally Firefox etc. have Application Not Responding.
I tried creating a second user account with admin privileges, same issue there; repaired user permissions for my main admin account.
I did an EtreCheck and had to remove remnants of DiskDrill which I'd tried when I had Catalina.
What solutions would you recommend, I've tried Google-ing but aren't sure what would fix this?

You can begin by doing : Reset SMC, Reset NVRAM and booting in Safe mode to clear System caches.
Then you reboot the system.


How do I turn off the "Reader" button in Mobile Safari? I never use the "Reader" feature in iOS 5's Mobile Safari, and the button for it sits there in the address bar just being a nuisance when I want to see or edit the URL in the address box. How do I turn it off?

I am fairly certain there is no way to disable this feature, short of jailbreaking your device. Even then, I am not aware of any tools to do so. Sorry this isn't the news you were hoping for!


How can I turn off a Mac's display without sleeping the Mac itself? Possible Duplicate:
  Is it possible to put the display to sleep without putting the whole computer to sleep?

I have an iMac, and sometimes I want to play some music over night, without the bright display. The display will be turned off automatically several minutes later, but I would like a button that turns the display off instantly and keeps the music playing.

How can I do this?

Ctrl+Shift+Eject will turn off the displays but leave the computer active.

Control ⌃+Shift ⇧+Power ⌽ for some Macbook


VM volume showing up in /Volumes I notice that if i run a first-aid scan in the Disk Utility app on what's known as "Container disk1", it shows a mounted volume called "VM". To my understanding, VM stands for "VirtualMemory" and its a volume that is mounted but hidden in the Finder; it shows up in the Disk Utility app as an amount of storage of 'Container disk1' and doesnt show itself mounted(https://i.imgur.com/O7A8wEB.png). But ive seem to notice every time after a first-aid scan is finished preforming on 'Container disk1' it shows VM mounted in the Finder; restarting my MacBook makes VM hidden again. Here are the steps i used to produce this:

1) restart MacBook into normal boot mode(even if already on)

2) after restart open the Disk Utility app and select 'Show All Devices' in View

3) select 'Container disk1' and run a first-aid scan on the container disk

4) open "/Volumes" path in the Finder after first-aid is finished

Im unsure if this is expected behavior of the first-aid scan on the 'Container disk1' and im unable to test it out on another MacBook as i only have the one. Is this expected/normal behavior? Can anyone else test this out for me to see if VM also shows itself mounted after running first-aid on 'Container disk1'?

this is normal behavior of the new APFS format as scanning the container disk will show the VM volume in the finder as it's scanned


Why does iTunes 12.1 keep deleting podcasts I've downloaded but not listened to? I have had this happen many times in the past few months. I spend quite a bit of time downloading all the episodes of a podcast so I can listen to them in my own time. Then when I refresh my podcast list to download my daily podcasts all of a sudden it will refresh and all my downloaded podcasts will disappear! It's very frustrating. Is there a way to get back the episodes I've "lost" and how can I stop it from happening again?

Go to myPodcasts in iTunes

Choose a podcast series (i.e. in the left hand column)

Choose Settings (in lower right hand corner)

Check the On This computer settings. Limit Episodes needs to be set to off


Mac Server app: Network users have proper permissions but Network Groups are unable to make changes to files I have a network group (all company users) that has full read/write access to all files on the Share but for some reason users continue to only have read permission. If I add the network users individually they are able to read/write again. Any ideas?

From https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3288643

  "So here is what I did wrong. I changed the default group that was already set for the share point. It is however IMPORTANT to ADD a new group or user if you want to keep the inheritance. As far as I know the default permissions are only responsible for posix and not for ACL. Be sure to add this new group on top of the others and then propagate the permissions."

There are two things in play here, POSIX style permissions (*nix based) and NFSv4 ACLs (Access Control Lists) used on your server.

You set them to AFP after ongoing issues using SMB.  Things seem to get hairy when using AFP and Apple changed up SMB a lot after breaking ties with SAMBA and implementing their own, albeit lesser version of SMB (you Mac geeks out there, correct me if I'm wrong - I want to know...)

From an article on TechRepublic I found this great explanation:

  Most UNIX systems use the standard POSIX (Portable Operating System Interface) permissions when managing access to files. Standard POSIX permissions are independent of which file system they are used on (provided the system supports them), and anyone familiar with Linux or UNIX will be familiar with them as they are the standard way to set very basic access control on files and directories.

  Essentially, you can define the owner of a file or directory, the group that owns it, and "other" (everyone who is not the owning user or a member of the owning group). You can further define whether or not each of these has read, write, or execute permission to the file or directory. With a file, these permissions mean that the user can read the file, write to it, change or delete it, or execute it as a program. For directories, these permissions mean that the user can read the contents of a directory (but not necessarily the contents of the files in the directory), can write to the directory (create and delete files), or execute (allows the user to traverse that directory tree in order to access files or subdirectories, although it does not on its own allow permission to see the contents of the directory).

  Most operating systems also support some form of Access Control Lists (or ACLs). Often times this is also dependent upon which filesystem is in use, or which implementation can be used on which file system (the two primary ACL types are POSIX.1e ACLs and NFSv4 ACLs). Mac OS X is no different and, as of OS X 10.4, it has supported NFSv4 ACLs when used with the HFS+ file system. Using these ACLs on OS X are quite simple; you may even be using them without knowing it.

  ACLs are made up of ACEs (Access Control Entries) and each ACL can contain more than one ACE. ACLs provide a lot more flexibility and fine-grained control over permissions of files and directories than standard POSIX permissions. For instance, some of the capabilities that ACLs provide for files include read, write, execute, and append permissions (append only allows you to add to an existing file, not change existing contents or remove it). Some capabilities for directories include listing entries, searching entries, adding a file, adding a sub-directory, or deleting contents. Another nice feature of ACLs is called "inheritance," where you can set an inheritance permission so that a directory's file contents can inherit one set of ACLs, while directories inherit another set.

  As you can see, ACLs are very powerful. For instance, if you had a directory that contained developer manuals, you might make the directory writable to developers and read-only to sales people. You might also want to give interns access to some of the files, but you don't want to make them a part of the developer or sales group because those two groups have access to too many other files. In this scenario, you might make the directory owned by one particular user, or the root (administrator) user, and group-owned by the "developers" group, with the files and directories writable by both the owner and group. You would then use ACLs to apply read-only permissions to certain files for the "sales" group, and could also use ACLs to apply read-only access to the explicit users that are interns (as opposed to creating a new group for interns). With standard POSIX permissions, this would not be easily possible.

  If you have used the Finder Get Info command on a file or directory, most likely you have noticed the Sharing & Permissions pane at the bottom. By default, it shows the standard POSIX permissions entries:

  These permissions, on the command line, would equate to an ownership of "vdanen:staff" and mode 0750 (or 0640 if this were a file). This can be seen on the command line as:

  drwxr-xr-x  2 vdanen  staff     68 Mar 11 22:30 New

  To add ACLs to this directory, you can either use the chown and chmod commands, or the Finder. Using chown/chmod gives a lot more flexibility as the Finder limits you quite a bit and makes certain assumptions for you. For instance, to give access to this directory to members of the admin group as Read Only, you would click the + button in the Sharing & Permissions pane, select the user or group, and then set the appropriate privilege:

  Now the members of the admin group have read-only access to this folder. Not very difficult to set in the Finder, is it? We can also observe the ACLs on the command line, using the -le switch to the ls command:

  % /bin/ls -le
  total 288
  drwxr-xr-x+ 2 vdanen  staff     68 Mar 11 22:30 New
   0: group:admin allow list,search,readattr,readextattr,readsecurity

  The Finder gave more permissions than just the "list" or "search" permissions; it also allows the admin group to read extended attributes and ACLs.

  To accomplish the same on the command line, you would use:

  % mkdir New2
  % /bin/chmod +a "admin allow read,readattr,readextattr,readsecurity" New2
  % /bin/ls -le
  total 288
  drwxr-xr-x+ 2 vdanen  staff     68 Mar 11 23:06 New2
   0: group:admin allow list,readattr,readextattr,readsecurity
  % /bin/chmod +a "admin allow search" New2
  % /bin/ls -le
  total 288
  drwxr-xr-x+ 2 vdanen  staff     68 Mar 11 23:06 New2
   0: group:admin allow list,search,readattr,readextattr,readsecurity

  As you can see, the initial chmod command missed an ACL; it's easy enough to add a new entry later. And if you need to remove one, that is easy too:

  % /bin/chmod -a "admin allow search" New2

  The admin group now no longer has search permissions on this directory. You’ll note that in each case, I am specifying an explicit path to the ls and chmod commands. This is because I have Fink installed, and the GNU tools that are installed through Fink do not understand OS X ACLs, and these commands will not work with them (the default PATH on the system puts /sw/bin before /bin/, so when I type "ls", it is "/sw/bin/ls" that is being executed, rather than "/bin/ls").

  Mac OS X Server (and, presumably, Lion as well) has a more sophisticated GUI front-end to manipulating ACLs than the Finder, but for most basic tasks, the Finder will suffice. It does not handle inheritance, however, which is a shame. It does allow you to apply the permissions set on a directory to files and directories within it by using the "Apply to enclosed items..." menu entry from the gear pull-down menu, which arguably accomplishes something similar; however, if you change the directory permissions you need to re-apply them, and also if you added new folders or files, etc.

  The chmod manpage (”man chmod”) gives a very good explanation of ACLs and how to apply them. ACEs in an ACL do observe order, so you can use chown to specify where a specific ACE needs to be positioned within the ACL, and of course you can get a lot more specific than you could with the Finder.

  ACLs on OS X work very similarly to ACLs on other POSIX systems, including Linux. The permissions may differ somewhat, as does the mechanism for implementing and managing them, but the benefits are identical. This ACL support in OS X is also compatible with certain versions of Windows and Windows Server.

And if that isn't enough, here is some really good in-depth information on sharing, including sharing and viewing the shares from Terminal.


How do I remap WASD to arrow keys? OK so, I saw this answer on another thread about how to remap keys:

  Apple's Technical Note TN2450 describes how to remap keys. Running the
  following command will remap Right Alt to be Right Control.

hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":
    [{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x7000000e6,
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x7000000e4}]
}'

So I wrote this:

hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":
    [{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000052,
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000001A}
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000051,
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000016}
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000050,
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000004}
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000004F,
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000007}]
}'

But when I run it I get this error:

2020-02-17 11:47:40.303 hidutil[2619:57497] NSJSONSerialization Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=3840

"Badly formed array around character 127."

UserInfo={NSDebugDescription=Badly formed array around character 127.}

ERROR!!!! Unable to create property object for
'{"UserKeyMapping":
    [{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000052,
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x70000001A}
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000051,
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000016}
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000050,
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000004}
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x70000004F,
      "HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0x700000007}]
}'

What's the problem?

(I'm a total noob just trying to remap a key for a game (EU:4), I'm not an expert programmer or anything, so please be gentle and explain things in layman's terms for my noob ass to understand! xD)

Thanks, R69NiX

As you are not a programmer and want a very simple way, then I recommend using Karabiner to remap keys.

  A powerful and stable keyboard customizer for OS X.

This page will give you step by step guidelines. You can achieve your setup as per my following screenshot:


Forcefully un-suspend a Parallels VM without starting Parallels I recently updated to Mac OS X 10.12.5, which is a beta version as of right now, and Parallels Desktop has subsequently refused to start. It sits for a little bit with a spinner and then quietly dies. The log entries shown in Console.app for "parallels" are not helpful, so I decided to try using VMware Fusion instead. Unfortunately, the virtual machine that I want to import to VMware is suspended and VMware refuses to accept suspended VMs. So, I tried deleting the .mem file for the VM, but VMware still refused to open it. I deleted the suspended.png image for the VM and VMware got a little farther with it, allowing me to select my target location for the import, but it still just ended up saying "This virtual machine can not be imported in Hybrid Shutdown state." I'm at a loss for how to import my VM to VMware since I can't shut it down via Parallels, since it won't open. Anyone know how to forcefully un-suspend a Parallels VM without starting Parallels?

Check that you have option ShutdownReason"0" in config.pvs.
I think you have "2". It works for me.


How do I force iTunes Match to re-evaluate certain tracks I have a little over 9000 songs. Between yesterday and this morning, iTunes Match is finally done evaluating and uploading songs, and it seems to have made a few mistakes.

If I show the iCloud Status column in my song list, in a number of albums I'll see "Matched" for most of the tracks, but "Uploaded" for one or more track. If I look up that song/album/artist on the iTunes Store, Apple has those songs. I've even looked at the track info to see if they might have been encoded differently, but on the few I've spot checked they have the same encoding as the other songs in the album that were matched.

I've been able to force iTunes Match to re-evaluate songs that showed "Error" before (no errors now), but I can't seem to figure out how to force it to re-evaluate these songs that were non-matches even though they're in the store. How do we do this? Do I turn off iTunes Match and start over again? I've been reluctant to do so considering how long it took yesterday.

You may not be able to get complete matches, but here's what I have been doing in the cases where one or two tracks don't match.

Select the item(s) to attempt to re-match.
Right-click on them, and select "Create AAC Version"
When this is complete, hit alt-backspace, and choose to remove both the original and the iCloud version. Also choose to delete the items from disk.
Go to the "Store" -> "Update iTunes Match" menu item.

Note that this will keep the play counts, etc on your tracks. It may not succeed on every track, and sometimes repeating the process picks up another track.

Occasionally, I'll get a "Removed" icon there after doing this: just right-click and choose "Add to iCloud" on these.


Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD dual monitor setup I have the Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD (Model no. F4U085) and I have a question to ask. The dock is attached to a Macbook Pro and everything works fine (audio, ethernet, USB devices etc). However, I cannot connect dual displays to it. My dual monitor setup is as follows: I want to attach one monitor via the HDMI port on the dock and the other via the thunderbolt port on the dock, using a MiniDP to HDMI adapter + HDMI to DVI cable to the external monitor. When I tried the setup, one of the monitors (the one connected to the HDMI port) has no output to it. If i connect it to the HDMI port on the macbook, it shows the output.

According to the official product guide, it says:

Yes.  For dual display, at least one (1) display has to be Thunderbolt or Thunderbolt 2 technology.  For displays that are not Thunderbolt technology ready, Thunderbolt port is backwards compatible with Mini DisplayPort and dock supports either HDMI or Mini DisplayPort but not both.

How can I connect dual displays to the dock ? I find this somewhat unexplained. Do I need to use an actual thunderbolt cable for one of the monitors , not an adapter?  If I buy a thunderbolt cable and a thunderbolt enabled monitor, will I be able to use the HDMI port on the dock for the second monitor ? Or the only possible dual-display scenario is with thunderbolt daisy-chaining? Has anyone had any experience with this issue?

The reason why the dual setup isn't working is that you are using MiniDP & HDMI when dual monitors via MiniDP and HDMI are not supported, as noted in the product guide. You will have to use a Thunderbolt-ready monitor with a Thunderbolt cable to allow both monitors to be driven from the dock.

The reason for this is that your dock is being driven by one Thunderbolt port, which does not allow for daisy-chaining displays (as far as the port on your computer is concerned) unless it is Thunderbolt 2 or the newest revision of DisplayPort. If you were to plug your monitor either into the spare Thunderbolt port on your computer (HDMI on the dock) or use the HDMI port on the computer (MiniDP on the dock) both monitors should work as a workaround.


Where are Google Chrome cookies stored on a Mac? Where are Google Chrome cookies located on a mac?

I went
~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Cookies, but I don't think that this file is the one. I cleared cookies, went to this file, copied content, brows a little, paste the content i copied back into the file and saved. I was still logged in gmail.

Session cookies are only stored in memory, but the rest are in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Cookies, it's an sqlite3 database.


External display not recognized after waking from sleep until restarted I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015, macOS High Sierra 10.13.6) which fails to detect an external display after is has woken up from sleep. (Update: Now running macOS Mojave 10.14.5 on a 13-inch 2018 model, and this is still a very annoying issue).

Here's my situation: I have an external monitor hooked up to to the MacBook's display port, I walk away from my computer for a few minutes and it goes to sleep. I come back, and no matter what I try, the only way for the MacBook to detect the external display again is to restart the computer!

I'm using a Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable. I use the MacBook at home as well as at work; I've tried different ports on my computer, different cables, and different monitors; the issue is with the MacBook itself.

It used to be that when this happens, I manually put the MacBook to sleep and wake it up again, and voila, it would detect the external display again. But now the only way to consistently fix the issue is to restart the MacBook.

I've also tried opening the display settings, holding down the alt key, and clicking "Detect Displays". This does nothing.

Any ideas on how to remedy this problem?

I still have the same issue on a macbook pro 15' 2018.
Unplugging and plugging again the screens helps without having to restart the whole thing... except that all open windows jump to the main screen.
.
///// EDIT solved the issue through an external thunderbolt dock
I am using the Thunderbolt 3 Dock of Glyph now. My external screen is connected to its Display Port port. After waking up the screens behave normally. When I take a break, I power off the external screen and power it on before waking up the computer. In the tips I got from Glyph, they do ask you to turn off Energy Saving options when connected to the dock, but it all seem to work fine,


Trouble moving tons of files from OS X server attached RAID to NAS I am trying to move many thousands of files to a Synology NAS.

Thanks to excellent posts here and superuser, I have been using rsync a lot. But in this case, I'm getting a very high failure rate due to years of permissions problems across the board.

Any ideas on how I can get all these files copied, either by straightening out the permissions issues, or bypassing them? Once on the NAS, the permissions won't matter.

Assuming these are read permission issues you should be able to overcome them by running

sudo rsync …

If you don't need the various read permissions on the original files, you can also use

sudo chown -R $USER source/dir

first to change file ownership to yourself.


Can I prevent websites from disabling zoom? I've noticed that more and more websites are disabling the ability to zoom on an ipad using Safari (or other mobile browsers, it seems).

Is there a setting to turn this ability off, or some other way to prevent this?

I created a bookmark in Mobile Safari with this url

javascript:document.querySelector('meta%5Bname=viewport%5D').setAttribute('content','width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=10.0,user-scalable=1');

The easiest way to setup this bookmark is by:

Add a bookmark to any page
Edit the bookmark and set the url to the url I have above

Now anytime you are on page that you can't zoom then click the bookmark icon and select the bookmark you setup.  Then you can pinch and zoom.


Where are back up restore app data guidelines? I am amazed how apple smoothly handles backup & restore application data. Does apple have any guidelines for backup / restore principles? How does applications handle version compatibility of restored data in between different versions of the same app.

iOS Data Storage Guidelines

See Apple's iOS Data Storage Guidelines as a starting point. This documentation is written for developers of iOS applications:

  Overview

  iCloud includes Backup, which automatically backs up a user’s iOS device daily over Wi-Fi. Everything in your app’s home directory is backed up, with the exception of the application bundle itself, the caches directory, and temp directory. Purchased music, apps, books, the Camera Roll, device settings, home screen and app organization, messages, and ringtones are backed up as well. Because backups are done wirelessly and stored in iCloud for each user, it’s best to minimize the amount of data that’s stored for your app. Large files will lengthen the time it takes to perform a backup and consume more of a user’s available iCloud storage.

See also the Core Data in iCloud documentation.


Reading HFS standard and MFS on Catalina During the lockdown I decided to use some of my time to backup all the all Mac disks and floppies I have at home so I can store them in a somewhat more readable format that SyQuest cartridges and MFS formatted SD 400k floppies and finally free up lots of space in some libraries.

Doing so I eventually discovered that macOS Catalina can neither mount HFS "non plus" (Apple removed HFS standard support in 10.15, apparently just for the sake of it... Hating this approach to "old", even more when they're keeping support for FAT12 DOS floppies and removing support for their own floppies...) nor MFS (it's actually not supported since Mac OS 8, but from Mac OS X 10.4 Apple offered sources to build a MFS read only support using the great system expandability features that OS X inherited from NeXT).

So, after the still ongoing struggle to get data off damaged floppies (I started weeks ago and still probably have a couple of weeks to go) I'm wondering how to easily access that data from disk images. I know I can use emulators such as minivmac, Sheepshaver and Mojave on VirtualBox to access that data, but that would mean a lot more work to get readable data. I'd love to simply be able to mount old disks and access data through finder.

Chapter 1: HFS Standard

HFS standard options are still in /System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs plists, so I'm wondering if Apple disabled old HFS support through some external option. Does anyone know if there's any option to enable it back? (Maybe something like boot-args="no32exec=0" to run 32-bit code). Does anyone know what would happen if I took hfs.fs from Mojave and used it in Catalina? Would it possibly work?
thejoelpatrol/fusehfs GitHub repo -> managed to build it botching the code but when I mount Standard HFS images I get errors such as Device not configured
0x09/hfsfuse GitHub repo -> it builds and installs correctly, but when I try to mount old HFS images I get Plain HFS volumes not currently supported. Couldn't open volume: Undefined error: 0
hfsutils (https://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/hfs/) -> these are the only working ones but they're a mess to work with. FuseHFS is apparently working with it, but surprisingly it doesn't seem to work
elliotnunn/machfs GitHub repo -> I was suggested this library, it seems a great idea, but using DumpHFS seems like using hfsutils

Chapter 2: MFS

MFSLives https://web.archive.org/web/20080517055506/https://developer.apple.com/samplecode/MFSLives/index.html -> this was the sample code that apple distributed from Tiger onwards. I read it was supported even on 10.8. Unfortunately it's built for 32 bit so Catalina can't use it (why do they keep removing features?) and I can't get it to build in Xcode.
d235j/fusemfs GitHub repo -> I can't find a way to build it either, even after updating the project, updating the code from linked repositories to the last version. Even if libfuse_ino64.2.dylib is in /usr/local/lib and that path is added to Xcode options I just keep getting ld: library not found for -lfuse_ino64.2

Unfortunately I'm too much of a noob to be able to edit those projects, but I think it would be great if Apple offered to its user the chance to read their old Mac data like we're able to do with old DOS disks.

Possible solution?

Apparently FuseMFS is using zydeco/libmfs GitHub repo (which is used in zydeco/minivmac4ios GitHub repo together with libhfs) to create a FUSE wrap to access those file systems, would it be easier to update FuseMFS making it buildable on Catalina and add there libhfs?

I'm just wondering it, but not being a developer I really don't know if it's feasible.

Thanks in advance :)

Still not using the Finder, but this java-based tool was able to mount an old HFS disk image and retrieve files in my Catalina (10.15.7) environment.
https://www.catacombae.org/hfsexplorer/


Remove the default desktop space on a second monitor? I only want a desktop space on my primary monitor (Macbook Pro), with only full screen apps used on my second monitor.

Is there any way to disable the desktop space completely on a second monitor?

Apple does not seem to have provided a way to remove the 'normal' Desktop display in Mission Control and only allow Full Screen apps. However, you can broadly achieve most of what you want:

Tick "Displays have Separate Spaces" in System Preferences > Mission Control, then you can have Full Screen apps in a second display.

Then configure applications to only appear in Display 2 (right-click on the app's Dock icon; Options > "Assign to Desktop on Display 2").

While the apps are in Full Screen mode, you won't see the Desktop.


iPhone won't play sound in *some* apps My friend is having a problem with an iPhone 4 (not yet updated to iOS 5).

Most apps and the ring tone will make noise via headphones but not via speaker. iTunes and at least one other app will play sounds via the speaker, however.

What could cause some apps to become muted on the speaker but not others? No settings were deliberately changed, but there are young children who use the device and could have set something. Is there a simple way to reset the phone and preserve apps and data but make the speaker work again in all apps?

The reason why some apps played sound and other didn't is because individual iOS applications can decide whether their audio should play regardless of the mute switch state.

Apple recommend that if audio is critical to the usage of the app, for example a "teach me German" speech app then should probably ignore the state of the mute switch. However if the audio is superfluous to the main function of the application then it usually should not play when the mute setting is on.

Additionally an application can decide to blend its sound with existing iPod music playback, or to pause iPod playback when the application launches and manage sound exclusively by itself.

The mute switch does not affect sound through headphones.


Missing icons on macOS Sierra I'm on macOS Sierra and I have been losing icons randomly, as you can see below, the Adobe Illustrator folder does not look like it should.

This also occurs in the Dock:

FaceTime (left of iTunes) has no icon, this also occurs with numerous other applications such as Inkscape, Gimp, and a few others.

Please help!

I had to run the below commands to make my icons come back. It took a while to find, but it finally sorted everything.

sudo find /private/var/folders/ -name com.apple.iconservices -exec rm -rf {} \;
sudo rm -rf /Library/Caches/com.apple.iconservices.store
killall Dock


Why is my Photos application showing over 47GB of space used when my photos library is empty? Trying to clear up space on my 2017 MacBook Pro running High Sierra.

I have deleted all the photos and deleted them permanently from the trash folder as well using the "Go" and "~/Trash" command. This definitely cleared up space, but in System Information, it still shows 47.58 GB in "Photos."

It shows just the nominal size (2.1MB) in Documents/Pictures for the photos library though.

How can I reclaim the space?

There's not enough information here for a definitive answer (no fault on you, if you had that "definitive information" you wouldn't be asking the question :). That said, I'll guess that there is an "orphaned" photo library somewhere on your HD that's fallen into a crack. I say this because of something that happened to me after Apple "upgraded" iPhoto to Photos not too long ago. In my case this happened after I "migrated" user accounts from an older Mac to a newer one. You may recall that iPhoto allowed you to create as many libraries as you wanted, and over time, I lost track of some of them. This is just a guess, but hope it helps.
It seems that Apple may have been a bit ambiguous as to how to handle removal of data stores containing pictures. There doesn't seem to be a single method that works across all of the different apps, devices and storage scenarios. If you've not migrated a user account (or "upgraded" from iPhoto to Photos to your 2017 Mac, or the "orphaned iPhoto library" theory doesn't hold up, perhaps one of the following will give you some leads to discover which method will work for you.
This thread might be worth a read
And from Apple's support forum: this might be worth reviewing:

Deleted photos and videos are placed in the Recently Deleted album on your device, where they remain for 30 days. After that, items are permanently removed from all your devices set up for iCloud Photo Library.
You can remove items from your devices before the 30-day time period is up. On your iOS device, in the Recently Deleted album, tap Select, tap to select one or more items, tap Delete, then tap Delete [items]. To remove photos on your Mac, see Access your photos and videos everywhere with iCloud Photo Library in Photos Help for Mac.

And from yet another post on the subject:

Launch the Photos app on your Mac.
Click the Recently Deleted folder in your sidebar.
Click on the pictures or videos you want to permanently delete.
Click on the Delete button at the top right. A prompt will appear on screen: just hit delete, and you're good to go!


Homebrew installed: geoiplookup shows no output - howto install GeoIP-data? > geoipupdate; geoiplookup 8.8.4.4
> echo $?
0

It does not print any output. According this posting there should be GeoIP-data. Howto use that on macOS?

> brew search geoip
geoip                                                                                geoipupdate
homebrew/nginx/geoip2-nginx-module    homebrew/php/php53-geoip              homebrew/php/php54-geoip              homebrew/php/php55-geoip              homebrew/php/php56-geoip              homebrew/php/php70-geoip              homebrew/php/php71-geoip

No such package. Howto use geoiplookup on macOS / Homebrew?

> brew info geoip
geoip: stable 1.6.9 (bottled), HEAD
This library is for the GeoIP Legacy format (dat)
https://github.com/maxmind/geoip-api-c
/usr/local/Cellar/geoip/1.6.9 (17 files, 548.9K) *
  Poured from bottle on 2017-01-21 at 19:22:56
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/geoip.rb
==> Dependencies
Optional: geoipupdate ✔
==> Options
--universal
        Build a universal binary
--with-geoipupdate
        Build with geoipupdate support
--HEAD
        Install HEAD version
> brew info geoipupdate
geoipupdate: stable 2.3.1 (bottled), HEAD
Automatic updates of GeoIP2 and GeoIP Legacy databases
https://github.com/maxmind/geoipupdate
/usr/local/Cellar/geoipupdate/2.3.1 (13 files, 83.7K) *
  Poured from bottle on 2017-01-21 at 19:25:04
From: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/master/Formula/geoipupdate.rb
==> Options
--universal
        Build a universal binary
--HEAD
        Install HEAD version

I wish to use local Geo data, not query an external web hosted API.

After installing geoipupdate and geoip with geoipupdate support navigate to the file /usr/local/Cellar/geoipupdate/2.3.1/etc/GeoIP.conf and open it.

Replace:

# Please see http://dev.maxmind.com/geoip/geoipupdate/ for instructions
# on setting up geoipupdate, including information on how to download a
# pre-filled GeoIP.conf file.

# Enter your user ID and license key below. These are available from
# https://www.maxmind.com/en/my_license_key. If you are only using free
# GeoLite databases, you make leave the 0 values.
UserId 0
LicenseKey 000000000000

# Enter the product IDs of the databases you would like to update.
# Multiple product IDs are separated by spaces.
ProductIds GeoLite2-Country GeoLite2-City
...

with:

# The following UserId and LicenseKey are required placeholders:
UserId 999999
LicenseKey 000000000000

# Include one or more of the following ProductIds:
# * GeoLite2-City - GeoLite 2 City
# * GeoLite2-Country - GeoLite2 Country
# * GeoLite-Legacy-IPv6-City - GeoLite Legacy IPv6 City
# * GeoLite-Legacy-IPv6-Country - GeoLite Legacy IPv6 Country
# * 506 - GeoLite Legacy Country
# * 517 - GeoLite Legacy ASN
# * 533 - GeoLite Legacy City
ProductIds GeoLite2-City GeoLite2-Country GeoLite-Legacy-IPv6-City GeoLite-Legacy-IPv6-Country 506 517 533
...

and update the database with geoipupdate.

Entering geoiplookup 8.8.4.4 now will yield:

GeoIP Country Edition: US, United States
GeoIP City Edition, Rev 1: US, N/A, N/A, N/A, N/A, 37.750999, -97.821999, 0, 0

Update:

According to adejones' comment the GeoIP.conf file moved to /usr/local/etc/GeoIP.conf in newer versions of "brew-installed" geoipupdate.


How to increase the Apple Dictation timeout? When using dictation on OS X 10.8, if I speak for too long (approx 20 seconds+), the dictation times out and switches off. Worse, it loses (i.e. doesn't "type") all the things I've said so far. This is obviously irritating - I have to judge when to stop speaking, hit "Fn", let dictation type the text, and start again.

Is there a way to increase or turn off this timeout?

The official answer (which clearly isn't the one you want based on how the question is phrased) is no for OS X 10.8 and earlier. For the initial implementation, dictation on OS X was limited to 30 seconds of audio per transcription event.

Mac Basics: Dictation - HT5449

Hopefully this helps others that are looking for an official answer or explanation. On OS X 10.9 (Mavericks), offline dictation and longer dictation are allowed and you can enable it by answering yes when asked if you want enhanced dictation. You can also control it by going to the Dictation tab of the Speech & Dictation system preference pane:


OS X Syriac script/font not rendered OS X El Capitan 10.11.6.

Viewing webpages with syriac characters, e. g. Syriac Wikipedia, I get only empty boxes (the default character). I tried all three popular browsers (Chrome, FireFox, Safari), terminal, Libre Office, TextWrangler.

This webpage syriaca.org has a teststring, which renders correctly, but specifies the font in CSS.

If I write a small HTML file with CSS specifying an installed Syriac font, it displays correctly:

<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<style>
.syr {
    font-family: "SertoUrhoy", "Serto Urhoy", Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
    /* font-size: large; */
    font-size: 1.25em;
    line-height: 1em;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<p class="syr" dir="rtl">
ܫܠܡܐ
</p>
</body>

Also on syriaca.org a problem on Mac is mentioned:

  Even with Meltho or other fonts installed there is also a known conflict with Apple's default rendering of the ܘ (waw) character when a conflicting Arabic font is installed.

What can I do to solve this Problem? CSS is only a solution for HTML written by myself.

Not a perfect solution but now I found a way to have the characters rendered in all programs.

From the comments to the original question I assume that an installed font is poisoned by wrong glyphs or defect in some other way. For a quick diagnosis I installed Ultra Character Map. It didn't help much to locate the defect font, but used the built in Google Noto Font to render characters.

Before diving deep into writing Perl scripts for font analysis, I installed all Google Noto Fonts into user fonts and everything works now, also Dhivehi.


Catalina ask password to delete user but password is always wrong I start to think this might be a bug in Catalina.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:

I formatted my Mac-mini to factory reset (don't remember if was High Sierra or Mojave)
I created a user at first startup.
I upgraded to Catalina
After Catalina installation I create a few users admin and non
With a new admin user I can delete other admin or standard users without problem but I cannot delete the user created previously to Catalina. The message says:

  to delete the user you need to enter their password

I did it several time, is the password I still use it to login with that user and it won't delete the account.

(See the problem when I try to delete the 4th user: no options is prompted)

So there must have been some sort of change between OS version and users created after Catalina cannot manage users created before Catalina.

I also tried to change the password for the user, the problem persists.

I also tried to remove the user through Terminal, no joy:

sudo dscl . -delete /Users/"yourusername"

returns:

<main> delete status: eDSPermissionError

<dscl_cmd> DS Error: -14120 (eDSPermissionError)

I found the solution!

This was a user I created after the factory reset and therefore was created on High Sierra.

macOS High Sierra has a bug around the user 501 which is the very first user you create after login:

https://medium.com/@ambroselittle/cant-delete-original-admin-user-on-macos-high-sierra-1d79fb438246

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8087348

So what we are going to do now is substitute the user you want to keep with the user 501 that you want to delete.
Is a bit hacky but it worked on my Catalina:

System Preferences > Login Options > Join… > Open Directory Utility…
Click to unlock it. (You may need to Enable Root User in Edit menu.)
Go to Directory Editor. Search to find the user you can’t delete — the original user that was logged in when upgrading to High Sierra.
Find the GeneratedUID field on the right and copy it somewhere safe.
Change one digit in it and Save.
Find your new/main user account > GeneratedUID, paste in the one copied above. Save.
Run diskutil apfs updatePreboot / in Terminal.
Reboot.
Login as your main user. You should be able to delete the original user now.

Strange that the upgrade to Catalina is not backward compatible and doesn't fix the issue related to previous users.


How to delete imported photos and videos from my iPhone 5c I synced photos and videos from my PC to my iPhone 5c using iTunes. I need space on the phone so I tried deleting them. I can select them just fine but the trashcan icon is dull. Normally it is lit up and I can delete photos or videos, but now i can't. I've tried going on iTunes, clicking the phone, selecting the photo icon, unchecking the sync box, and it says that they are deleted but they are still on the phone taking up 6.7 GB of data. I still can't delete them. I can select but I can't delete, even on the PC. What do i do?

I'm not a PC guy but usually your photos live in iTunes Media Library.
Whatever method you can use to find it, you delete your photos from there.
Usually just use your search function on your PC to find the iTunes folder, open it until you find the iTunes Media Folder and delete whatever files you don't need to have synced.

After you delete your photos (Or just move them to another location if you're afraid you may loose them), you must sync your phone to iTunes again and this will refresh your iPhone's list of songs and photos, revealing more space.
After this is done, find the option on iTunes to not sync your iPhone when connected and either manage your files manually or resync when your storage problem is fixed (a new phone with larger storage, for example).
Your original photos are still in your PC, unless you deleted the originals.


Removing all characters except digits from clipboard I'm trying to refine a script I use within an Automator program and I would appreciate your help on this.

The program is designed to mark a telephone number into clipboard make a tel:link and send it to an telephone application, which works fine.
I only have a problem if the marked phonenumber looks something like this: +49(1)123/12345 because then I have to remove all the special characters and leave only the digits and the + in front of the number.

The problem is I'm not that good at scripting, so how to do it?

The shell snippet

pbpaste | tr -cd "[:digit:]+" | pbcopy

will take the content of the clipboard, remove all non-digits and put the result back into the clipboard.


Terminal: grep command usage with '[' character as target, not function Im using the grep command In a simple script, the problem however Is that the string which the grep command Is searching for includes a square bracket character: [.

After some research, i have found that the square bracket [ character is in fact used as a function for optimising the grep commands output through a process called "pipelining" (Although don't quote me on It as Im not sure).

My Question:

How do I search for a string with a '[' character in it without invoking a pipelining function within grep?

Elaboration:

The script Is searching a system log for the string su[. This Is my current malfunctioning command: tail -1 system.log | grep " su[", however It will not work due to the square bracket at the end, returning the error: grep: brackets ([ ]) not balanced.

Thanks In Advance.

Brackets should be escaped with \, because it's a special character. Your command will look like:

tail -1 system.log | grep " su\["

Special characters

From this site You can learn about special characters in bash.

  What makes a character special? If it has a meaning beyond its literal meaning, a meta-meaning, then we refer to it as a special character. Along with commands and keywords, special characters are building blocks of Bash scripts.

\ is a special character and it could be used as:

  [ ]
  test.

  Test expression between [ ].  Note that [ is part of the shell builtin test (and a synonym for it), not a link to the external command /usr/bin/test.

  [[ ]]
  test.

  Test expression between [[ ]]. More flexible than the single-bracket [ ] test, this is a shell keyword.

  [ ]
  array element.

  In the context of an array, brackets set off the numbering of each element of that array.
  Array[1]=slot_1

  echo ${Array[1]}

  [ ]
  range of characters.

  As part of a regular expression, brackets delineate a range of characters to match.

  $[ ... ]
  integer expansion.

  Evaluate integer expression between $[ ].


Reinstall Mac OSX on Ubuntu Macbook Last year I installed Ubuntu on my 2006 MacBook (Intel), and erased the hard drive with MacOSX 10.5 in the process. Linux was fun, but now I want another Mac to play around with.

I've put 10.8's install files on a flash drive and rebooted (holding option), but this brings up the Linux drive selector, and I do not see my flash drive as an option.

How can I go about installing 10.9 on my MacBook?

Update: I've now got 10.8 on my flash drive. When I load Startup Manager, I see 3 options:

Windows, which actually takes me to Ubuntu.
EFI Boot which produces a "no" symbol and then the computer shuts down.
rEFIt

I've got rEFIt running through my optical drive. When I select this, I get three primary choices:

Boot Mac OSX from Mac OSX Install ESD: "no" symbol
Boot boot.efi from Mac OS X Install ESD: "no" symbol
Boot Linux from HD: Linux boots as normal.

You can't install Mavericks on a 2006 MacBook.

  To install Mavericks, you need one of these Macs:

  iMac (Mid-2007 or later)
  MacBook (13-inch Aluminum, Late 2008), (13-inch, Early 2009 or later)
  MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid-2009 or later),
  MacBook Pro (15-inch or 17-inch, Mid/Late 2007 or later)
  MacBook Air (Late 2008 or later)
  Mac mini (Early 2009 or later)
  Mac Pro (Early 2008 or later)
  Xserve (Early 2009)

Source: http://support.apple.com/kb/ht5842


Moving cursor with trackpad is not working. How to fix it? Today morning after starting my computer, I noticed very weird behavior with my trackpad cursor is on the top corner and I can't move it at all however click is working, bottom click is working. Here are some things I have already tried:

Reset the settings related to the trackpad.
Reset SMC.
Reset NVRAM/PRAM.
In the end, I reinstalled the OS as well.
Ran hardware diagnostic(with long press on D while starting up) and it showed no problems at all.

One issue I found after reinstalling the MacOS was that in the ~/Library/Preferences any plist file related to Trackpad was missing. I was expecting com.apple.AppleMultitouchTrackpad.plist, which is not there.
This computer is 2017 version of Macbook Air.
Any help on this would be very much appreciated. Thank you very much for your time!

After all the things you already did, I would think a hardware defect is most likely. Plist files won't exist until you change some settings.


How can I set up seamless navigation of vim and iterm2 splits? I am trying to map my C-h, C-j, C-k, C-l keys to be able to navigate vim (running in iterm2) splits but if there is no vim split to move to it should figure out that I want to jump to a different iterm2 window.

Pretty much this http://robots.thoughtbot.com/seamlessly-navigate-vim-and-tmux-splits but without having to run tmux (or at least without needing tmux to do the multiplexing)

Apparently, there is this. I have not tried it, and it looks like it may not work in the latest iterm2.


apfs snapshot changing after creation? I probably just don't understand how APFS snapshots work, but this seems odd to me:

~ $ mkdir /private/tmp/snap
~ $ pwd
/Users/dmd
~ $ ls foo
ls: foo: No such file or directory
~ $ tmutil localsnapshot /
Created local snapshot with date: 2020-02-28-191657
~ $ tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
Snapshots for volume group containing disk /:
com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-02-28-191657.local
~ $ mount_apfs -s com.apple.TimeMachine.2020-02-28-191657.local / /private/tmp/snap
mount_apfs: snapshot implicitly mounted readonly
~ $ ls /private/tmp/snap/Users/dmd/foo
ls: /private/tmp/snap/Users/dmd/foo: No such file or directory
~ $ touch /Users/dmd/foo
~ $ ls /private/tmp/snap/Users/dmd/foo
/private/tmp/snap/Users/dmd/foo
~ $ ##### WHAT? WHY IS FOO IN THE SNAPSHOT?  WHY DID THE SNAPSHOT CHANGE?
~ $ rm /Users/dmd/foo
~ $ ls /private/tmp/snap/Users/dmd/foo
ls: /private/tmp/snap/Users/dmd/foo: No such file or directory

Note that the file /Users/dmd/foo is being created on the 'real' disk, but when it is created and deleted those changes are also showing up in the mounted snapshot.

Why?

I think your conclusion is wrong - even if it looks that way superficially, the snapshot is actually not changed.

The thing that tricks you here is your one of the folders in your path is actually a link. If you're running on pre-Catalina macOS version, you probably have /Users as a symbolic link. If you're running on Catalina, /Users is a firmlink.

This means that when you run ls /private/tmp/snap/Users/dmd/foo to check for the file, you're actually not looking at a file inside the snapshot, but rather the system will traverse the link inside the snapshot and onto your ordinary volume for the actual file.

If you're on Catalina and want to redo your commands without the link interferring with you, you will need to instead use the following command to check for existence of the file inside the snapshot:

ls /private/tmp/snap/System/Volumes/Data/Users/dmd/foo


Why does Snow Leopard free so much hard disk space? I had about 8.9GB hard disk space before installing Snow Leopard (had Leopard before).  After installation, the hard disk space increased to 20GB.

What caused this huge jump?  I know some webpages says it is because the way Apple calculates disk space, using 1,000,000,000 instead of 2^9 for a GB, but the difference should be only 7.4%

2^9 = 1,073,741,824

So, why did 8.9GB of free space become 20GB?   8.9 x 1.074 = 9.56GB, so why is there an extra 10.5GB? Even if some printer drivers were deleted, they should only take up tens of MB, not 10GB.

John Siracusa’s review of Mac OS X 10.6 lists several space freeing features (on page 3). The biggest contributors are “install on demand components”, dropping support for PowerPC processors, and “HFS+ compression”.

The Rosetta PowerPC binary translator software and the bulk of the printer drivers and are not installed by default.

They can be installed from DVD or downloaded when they are needed.
The system-installed programs have dropped support for PowerPC processors.

At least one architecture was eliminated from every program on the system (32-bit PPC). Some of them dropped two architectures (32- and 64-bit PPC). This means that most Snow Leopard executables only store code for half the number of ISAs as the equivalent Leopard binaries. The different ISAs take different amounts of binary code to represent the same high-level program, so this does not always mean a 50% space savings for each binary. Nevertheless, “50% byte savings for each executable” is a fairly accurate estimate.
Many of the Snow Leopard files are also transparently compressed.

Limited access to HFS+ compression is provided in through the
ditto(1) and
afscexpand(1) commands. Some third part tools provide ways to identify or find such compressed files, but this is generally not a “user level” feature.

The review also mentions the change to powers-of-ten for reporting large byte sizes (1 GB = 1,000,000,000 (10^9) bytes instead of 1,073,741,824 (2^30) bytes) in the “A gigabyte by any other name” sidebar.


Why is my Advanced Add Printer mode disabled? I am using a Unibody MacBook Pro on Lion. I am trying to add a networked printer at work so I can print to it, but OS X is not cooperating with me.

Typically for adding networked printers on a Windows network, most instructions online suggest you open the Print & Fax preference pane, hit the + button to Add Printer, then use the Advanced tab to select the type of networked printer, and type in a specific URL to reach it.

I would like to follow these steps, but I am unable. As you can see in the screenshot below, everything under the Advanced tab in the Add Printer window is disabled.

I don't understand how or why this is. My user definitely has full administrator privileges, and this tab of all the others in the dialog should be open-ended and allow you to type and search for printers to add regardless of environment, or perhaps what OS X may have already detected as plugged-in or over Bonjour.

I have searched the web for any indication of why this area of my Add Printer dialog is unusable, but have not been able to find any clues. Any tips to get this thing unstuck are appreciated.

P.S. My connection to the Windows network at work seems to be fine. I am able to mount and use several of the shared network drives over SMB.

Hey I ran into the same problem. If you turn off System Preferences -> Sharing -> Printer Sharing the advanced tab becomes enabled again.


What types of WiFi does the iPod touch 4th generation use? I am buying a router.  But it says 2.4 GHz is that not that great.  So I want to know if it supports.  Just curious what types of WiFi it supports: A, B, G, and/or N.

According to the specifications, the fourth generation iPod touch supports 802.11b/g/n on the 2.4GHz band.

The first through third generations support 802.11b/g, while the fifth generation supports 802.11a/b/g/n on both the 2.4 and 5GHz bands.


Is battery life supposed to go not even a year? I have a MacBook pro that I got about 10 months ago. It seems like I am already starting to experience battery life issues. I have a charge cycle history of less than once a day since I bought it. I first thought it was too much stuff running in the background, so I put a fresh copy of Ubuntu on it to test that out. It still seems to have a bad life. At full charge, 50% brightness, the battery says 3 hours remaining, but then after a few minutes, it goes to 2 and I get an average of about 2.5 hours. I have appleCare. Is there a problem, or is time just going faster for me and the battery is normally like this? I think the battery said it usually has a good 5 years, and it hasn't been 1 for me. The battery indicator on status bar also never says 100%, and is usually stuck at 95-99 when the green light indicates full. Is this normal? Or do I have a bad battery? Is there a way to test my battery properly?

Here is what the power stats say

There is detailed information available about your battery.
Click on Apple (top left)

About This Mac
More Info
System Report
Power

In the Health information it shows how many cycles you had so far.
I have 142 cycles since Oct. 2012.
The battery should last about 1000 cycles.
If you have a problem please see Apple service.

Above you see some comparison data (from my MBA)
Running @ 100% brightness, Mail, Firefox, Chrome, WIFI and more, consuming about 1200 mA.
Unfortunately Apple does not show the remaining life as time, so you have to use a formula to calculate that, but it varies based on usage (mA).


Bootcamp - No ISO Option There is no option in the Bootcamp wizard to choose the Windows ISO.. Any ideas?

I followed this tutor here and got success: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hE8If6gabUI.

The "Create a Windows 7 install disk" option is hidden because your system's capabilities are limited. For instance, older Macs can not boot from external USB disks, therefore creating an installer onto a USB disk would make no sense.

Still, if you want to create an installer on an external disk regardless, all you have to do is edit Boot Camp Assistant's "Info.plist" file:

  Open Package content of Boot Camp Assistant app, backup Info.plist file somewhere, then open the old one with XCode.
  Edit file:

  Edit section's title: PreUSBBootSupportedModels to USBSupportedModels (if it's already USBBootSupportedModels -> skip
  this step)
  Add your System's model identifier(Find it by System Information app) into USBSupportedModels section.
  Add your Boot ROM version (Find by System Information app) to DARequiredROMVersions section
  Save.

  Restart BootCamp

A comment of @dusanvf:

  If your Bootcamp crashes after this, write this into terminal:

sudo codesign -fs - /Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app/


Catalina: Can't sign out of iCloud and Update Apple ID settings error, WindowServer high cpu. Now fixed I had this issue for a while where system prefs -> icloud complained about "Update Apple ID Settings".

Clicking continue it'd eventually ask for my icloud password and then it would an error

clicking sign out, i'd be asked if i wanted to save a copy of some iCloud data, then nothing would happen just takes me back to the screen with signout on it and the update apple id settings.
i tried many many things myself and with apple to resolve this including:
do at least 1 full backup first

moving keychains folder and restart

create new admin account and sign in to my apple id, all features
worked fine in new account restart into recovery, repair
permissions, reinstall os

previously to calling apple i had repaired permissions, backed up,
booted into internet recovery, reformatted the ssd, reinstalled
Catalina, created new admin account, used migrate assistant to
restore from backup, used recovery to repair permissions yet the
appled id issue persisted.

changed my apple id password

used ipad to sign out of appleid on all other devices.

In my research i had come across a blog that referenced removing the accounts in ~/Library/Accounts and deleting the mobileme plist. i couldn't find the blog again but found this stackexchange which references the same.
iCloud sign out not possible on High Sierra
i made some changes as:

i made a note of all accounts in system preferences -> internet
accounts then ensured all icloud settings where on.
i created an archive of ~/Library/Accounts
put all the items in Accounts into a new folder in accounts, that
enough to stop the OS using those folders and enables a quick
restore
i archived ~/Library/Preferences/MobileMeAccounts.plist then deleted
it, i also put all plists older than 2015 (had ~ 400 of them) in a
new folder (select all the files you want then right click and
choose new folder with selection).

rebooted the Mac, opened system prefs -> icloud and signed in, waited to be notified that email accounts had been added then opened Internet options and enabled them all, adding any additional iCloud accounts not present.
All appears ok with the other benefit being windowserve cpu utilisation is now in single digits from a minimum of 50+%
Hoping this will help someone


How do I completely disable AirDrop on iOS? When attempt to share something the iOS sharing feature, AirDrop disrupts the experience and in many cases makes it unusable. I never ever use AirDrop, and certainly don't want to be offered the opportunity to share with people I don't know who happen to be nearby.

How do I completely disable AirDrop in iOS?

While you can turn off incoming AirDrop, you can't disable sharing items over AirDrop to others on device. Most of the time, AirDrop recipients will be limited to the single AirDrop button (which can't be un-favourited from the ‘Apps’ share list), but if someone in your contacts is nearby with AirDrop turned on, they will likely show in the contacts section of the share sheet. This can't be configured on your device.
Configuration profiles can configure AirDrop access only on supervised devices.
If your device is supervised with Apple Configurator, you can install disable-airdrop.mobileconfig.
…
            <key>PayloadType</key>
            <string>com.apple.applicationaccess</string>
            <key>allowAirDrop</key>
            <false/>
…


Panic Medic Boot Appearing on Mac Since yesterday, my Macbook Pro early 2013 running macOS High Sierra 10.13.1 beta has been randomly shutting down. After shutting down, it would take several tries for it to boot up and login, but then it displays this error message every time I login (see picture attached). I already tried resetting both PRAM and SMC, but the problem still occurs. Booting into safe mode wouldn't work when I pressed shift after the boot chime sound came (safe mode worked before this problem). Is there a way to fix this?

If a safe mode boot fails, you've got a damaged system.

Boot to recovery, internet recovery or external bootable media and reinstall the OS on top of all your existing apps and data. This preserves all data that's there.

If you suspect storage drive problems, you might check your last backup against another Mac to be sure it's up to date and restorable and possibly seek data recovery if you can't afford to lose the data before reinstalling the macOS.

I wouldn't do data recovery unless you have no backups and $300 or so for a professional service would be money well spent to safeguard your data. Most people recover from this with no data loss in about an hour or two after the reinstall starts,  but I don't want you to not have the chance to back up before using the drive more if you suspect problems with the hardware and not just a third party extension causing lots of crashes.


What features in iOS 9 make a difference? Share your experiences on exploring iOS 9 with us..

Whether you found hidden or little-known feature of iOS 9 or can explain how a big feature makes a difference, we're looking for objective reports of how the new OS affects your workflow.

Also provide details on how to achieve that feature, and if possible, include a relevant image too (hold Home and Lock for a screenshot on your iOS device).

Please post one tip per answer. Please also check to see if your answer has already been posted - duplicate answers will be deleted in favour of the original answer on any given topic. To search answers for this question use inquestion:207004 (or inquestion:this, directly from the question page) in addition to your search terms in the search box in the upper right hand corner of this page.

Search in Settings

This one is a total painkiller! It was always a mess trying to find that specific setting and now all you need to do is type in.


How do I find what packages I've installed via terminal? I've been learning the shell for a few weeks and have installed several packages. I know/remember what some of them are, like oh-my-zsh and emacs 24 (which was a nightmare to upgrade to), but not sure sure about what else. I've used different methods like curl, wget and Macports.

My question is, if and when I want to do a clean installation of MacOS, how do I backup or script a fresh installation of these packages? In other words, when I do a new install of MacOS I won't be restoring from Time Machine using Migration Assistant: rather I'll install the system and manually restore files. How do I know the installation paths and dependancies of what I've installed in my previous installation using the command line? Is there a txt file somewhere that the system maintains to keep track of what has been installed?

(MacOS 10.8.2)

Since OS X has no package manager, anything you install would have been manual, through MacPorts or through Installer.

If you want a list of the binaries your terminal has access to, you can run the following commands to check the most common spots, and output the result as a text file:

touch ~/Binaries.txt
ls /usr/bin > ~/Binaries.txt
ls /usr/sbin >> ~/Binaries.txt
ls /usr/local/bin >> ~/Binaries.txt
ls /usr/local/sbin >> ~/Binaries.txt
ls /opt/local/bin >> ~/Binaries.txt
ls /opt/local/sbin >> ~/Binaries.txt

Alternatively, if you just want to get the packages installed by MacPorts, run the following (this is probably the one you want):

touch ~/MacPorts.txt
port installed > ~/MacPorts.txt

And for Homebrew:

touch ~/HomeBrew.txt
brew list > ~/HomeBrew.txt

And finally, for all packages installed by Installer

touch ~/InstalledPackages.txt
pkgutil --packages > ~/InstalledPackages.txt

To restore, for example, your MacPorts ports from the list generated above, use the following:

 port install $(cat ~/MacPorts.txt)


Trying to delete a program that's not open, but says it is? I've recently become nigh on obsessive with cleaning out extra space on my hard drive, and I'm trying to delete a program called "Rowmote Helper." Whenever I try to delete it, it says it can't be deleted because it is open. But when I open the "force quit applications" window, it's not running. What can I do to quit the program if it's running, or force delete it anyway? How do you force-delete an application that says that its running, but when you try to force quit it, it doesn't show up?

Go to Applications > Utilities and open up Activity Monitor. Scroll down until you find your application. Highlight it and click the "Quit Process" button in the upper left. Now it is no longer running and can be deleted from your computer.


Apple ball speakers connect to MacBookPro? Is there a way to connect my apple ball speakers to my MacBookPro? The speakers have a 2.5mm jack but the MacBook Pro has a USB port.
Thanks!

You need a USB DAC (Digital Audio Converter).

I personally use a Behringer UCA202 to connect my iMac to my Bose Wave Radio (line input).

What's really nice about it is that it's powered off the USB port meaning it doesn't need an external power adapter.  It also has both left and right inputs and outputs as well as a 3.5mm headphone connection.    For best quality, you will want to use the RCA output.  You will just need an RCA to 3.5mm adapter (second picture) to connect to your speakers.