Why does iOS insist on using my Facebook email address? I fill out webforms on my iphone fairly often. I use autocomplete to speed this process along, and it works pretty well for the most part. However, for some reason, it always insists on using an @facebook.com email address in the email field.

I do not use Facebook for email. I never have, never will, and never want to. I do use Facebook for lots of other things, and thus, would prefer not to turn off iOS's Facebook integration, which seems to be the only workaround that googling has offered me.

How can I force auto-complete to use my preferred email address, rather than the one associated with my Facebook account?

Go to account settings in Facebook (web) -> general -> email

Untick "use your Facebook email"

You may need to then re sync your Facebook contacts.

Hey presto... It's sorted!!


iCloud Keychain search on iOS Am I just not seeing a way to search my iCloud keychain when I go to (iOS)
Settings>Safari>Passwords & AutoFill>Saved Passwords
?

The list is very long and they don't even give me a way to navigate quickly down the alphabet. I'm hoping that if search isn't currently available, they are going to add it soon.

In fact you are right, you can't search in that list on iOS.

Though you can give Apple some feedback and suggest them this particular feature.


Using MacBook Pro as keyboard/mouse for Windows computer Is it possible to use a MacBook as a keyboard/mouse on a Windows computer, so everything I did on the MacBook would be reflected on the Windows computer? Would this be possible perhaps in some form of a Target Display Mode?

There's no native way to do this. However, you may be able to achieve what you want through the use of software. Below are some options I can think of that you could test:

Synergy
Remote Desktop Connection
Team Viewer
ShareMouse

How well any of these work for you (or meet your needs) will depend on your particular requirements.


Cannot log into MAC OS X after rename the disk I tried to rename the hard drive of my Macbook from "Macintosh HD" to something else without the freaking space. However, after renaming it, many of my applications showed errors immediately and I stupidly restarted my computer. Right now, I cannot log in to my user account because of an error. Everything is blocked...

If someone can tell me how to change the harddrive name back without logging into my previous account, I will appreciate it a lot. It will save my life!

Thanks

You can't log into your account because the OS can't find your user directory.
You have to boot the computer keeping pressed command + R to enter the restoration/repair mode. Then go to the "Utilities" in the upper menu and enter "Terminal".

Type:
/usr/sbin/diskutil rename "oldname" "newname" where oldname is the name you assigned to the disk and newname should be "Macintosh HD".

If everything is OK you will receive a message informing that the disk was renamed and you can restart your computer and log into your account.


Is there any way to get OS X to keep the iOS Simulator icon in the dock across Xcode upgrades? I use the iOS Simulator often to check webpages so I run it and pick "Keep in Dock". That's works except every time Xcode upgrades it's no longer in the dock and I have to go digging for it again.

Is there any way to keep it in the dock permanently across Xcode upgrades?

SimPholders2 looks like what you want, can't prove it until next Xcode update, though.


How to thin your local Time Machine Snapshots on macOS High Sierra I have noticed that my extra space just suddenly disappears since upgrading to macOS High Sierra. For example, I have 170 GBs free in the morning and then by the afternoon I'm down to 56 GBs.

Then sometimes that shoots back up to 170 GBs. It's a little odd and rebooting sometimes works but sometimes doesn't.

I started looking into "local snapshots" that are created by Time Machine automatically. I assume these are locally stored snapshots that are created for efficiency of Time Machine. Maybe when it's not connected to the Time Machine disk so that it can still have a versioned backup. Not sure.

You can view your local snapshots like so:

$ tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-14-173102
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-14-212356
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-052254
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-084940
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-094508
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-121635

When I run tmutil in my Terminal I see a command called thinlocalsnapshots. What does that do and how do I use it?

Spoiler: I went from ~50 GBs free to ~277 GBs free, about 227 GBs difference, over the course of this answer.
There's not a tonne of information from the basic tmutil function but you can call man tmutil to get more details, specifically on thinlocalsnapshots:
thinlocalsnapshots mount_point [purge_amount] [urgency]
             Thin local Time Machine snapshots for the specified volume.

             When purge_amount and urgency are specified, tmutil will attempt (with urgency level 1-4) to reclaim purge_amount in bytes by thinning snapshots.

             If urgency is not specified, the default urgency will be used.

A noticeable omission is what the default urgency actually is and whether 1 is high urgency or 4 is high urgency.
To show you what's happening in real-world usage, here is my starting list of local snapshots:
$ tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-14-173102
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-14-212356
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-052254
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-084940
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-094508
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-121635

When running without the purge_amount and urgency options, it's likely that no local snapshots will be purged:
$ tmutil thinlocalsnapshots /
Thinned local snapshots:

With purge_amount set to 1000000000 (1 Gigabyte):
$ tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1000000000
Thinned local snapshots:
2017-12-14-173102

And if I run that again:
$ tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1000000000
Thinned local snapshots:
2017-12-14-212356

Here's what's happened to my local snapshots list:
$ tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-052254
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-084940
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-094508
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-121635

Let's try running that same command one more time:
$ tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1000000000
Thinned local snapshots:
2017-12-15-052254
2017-12-15-084940

$ tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-094508
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-121635

And again:
$ tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1000000000
Thinned local snapshots:
2017-12-15-094508

$ tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-121635

And once more to try and remove that final local snapshot:
$ tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1000000000
Thinned local snapshots:

$ tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-121635

You can see it didn't do anything this time.
Let's try increasing the bytes to 10 GBs:
$ tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 10000000000
Thinned local snapshots:

Still nothing. Let's try 100 GBs:
$ tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 100000000000
Thinned local snapshots:

Again, nothing.
So, when it gets to the last local snapshot, it must have to do with the urgency option rather than the purge_amount.
Let's go back to just 1 GB for the purge_amount but try with urgency set to 1 (another omission in the manual is whether 1 is high or 4 or high, but @Clete2 thinks 4 is high):
$ tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 1000000000 1
Thinned local snapshots:
2017-12-15-121635

$ tmutil listlocalsnapshots /
com.apple.TimeMachine.2017-12-15-121635 (dataless)

Success!
You can see that it thinned the last remaining local snapshot and now when you listlocalsnapshots you'll see only the latest one but it is tagged as (dataless).
I'm willing to bet that urgency being set to 1 means "very urgent" and urgency set to 4 means "meh, whenever".
Over the course of these trials my hard drive has gone from ~50 GBs free to ~277 GBs free. A freeing up of about 227 GBs!
I would assume that these local snapshots would get thinned automatically, especially when additional space is required so you shouldn't have to worry about this too much.
But, I ran into this because

I was wondering how I was losing all my free disk space so suddenly, and;

I was trying to make a Boot Camp partition to run Windows and I didn't have enough space, even tho most of that space was just being taken up by local snapshots.

Going forward, I'm wondering if I should have a cron job run a thinning command every week or so, just to keep things clean. I'll see what happens after a few more days and add anything back here that I find.
Here is the Apple site for more information about how Time Machine's Local Snapshots are used:
https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT204015


Is it possible RAM not compatible with Macbook Pro? As this is my first time dealing with HW of my Macbook Pro Early 2011 and need lot of money for service, I am quite nervous with this.

I want to upgrade my Macbook Pro RAM to 8GB. What I can find from Apple website is the current spec:

4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM; supports up to 8GB

I want to buy this RAM which is written for Mac Apple:

Corsair SO-DIMM DDR3 8GB PC10666 - CMSA8GX3M2A1333C9

Should I go straight away since the spec is equal? I just want to evade the possibility breaking my Macbook Pro.

The RAM you listed there will work perfectly fine.
Whenever buying RAM just make sure you have the correct type (DDR3 in your case) and the correct speed (1333 MHz or PC10666 in your case).

It won't 'break' your MacBook but instead it just won't boot if you have the incorrect type or speed of RAM in your MacBook. RAM has no saved state when turning your computer off so logically it couldn't harm your MacBook if you switch it out for incorrect RAM and then put the correct one back in.

So summarized: The RAM you listed will work but in the future always check for speed & type (I like to use MacTracker for this).


Use HomePod as a microphone for a audio recording? I know that you can send a call to a HomePod to use the microphone on the HomePod to talk to the person you're calling to, and use its speaker to listen to the person calling. Since it is possible to call others with the microphone on the HomePod (through the iPhone of course), is there a way to do audio recording with the HomePod's microphone (with some app like Voice Memo)?

Unfortunately no. There exist no official way of recording audio from the HomePod into for example Voice Memo or other "generic" apps.

You could use a call recording service or voice mail system to record audio from the HomePod by dialing into that system. It would be impractical and the quality wouldn't be great, so it is probably not a realistic option for you.


What applications do a good job of using the iPad's retina display for stock data? I have a few leads, but wanted to know what people feel is an excellent stock price data-visualization and data-exploration app on a retina iPad display.

Excellent would include:

very clear data with multitouch features for zooming, selecting price points or data ranges.
more native iOS features than simply a web view app (unless that web view stands on equal ground with a native stock app)
is equal to or better than the iPhone stock app in terms of features, polish, ease of use and data viewing function.
some basic import / export capabilities for portfolio management (extra credit - not mandatory)
simple averages and overlays to see trends and not just the open/close/range volume data (extra credit)
no ads or the option to pay money to avoid advertisements on the screen

Excellent doesn't necessarily mean:

Real-time data feed (although a solution that required a lot of steps to refresh the data on a daily basis would be far less useful than an app that could tap into a feed of data that was market delayed.)
derivative and super complicated analysis lines that are more appropriate for professional trading software (and I would expect to cost hundreds of dollars)
portfolio management
actual trading - I'm looking for historical data - not a platform for executing trades. Don't rule out a trading app if it otherwise meets the requirements and is open to anyone with a reasonably low bar to entry (like opening an account with $50 or such)

It doesn't matter if you need to buy the app or if it has an optional or mandatory data service that feeds the data (but please call that out if makes or breaks the app).

I know that AllMyShares is highly regarded (one of the developers attends my CocoaHeads group in Melbourne) and I've confirmed they are planning a retina display update. If you like it, it might be worth adopting this one.

Here's the website for an overview, lots of videos, screenshots etc.


Does a `.hidden` configuration file for Finder exist? Is there a way to hide files and folders from Finder like I do with Nautilus using .hidden config file?

On Nautilus I can create a file named .hidden and put inside it a list of files I want to hide.

# Example of .hidden file
file1.txt
directory
something else hidden

Can I do something similar with OS X Finder without having to prepend a . (dot) before the file name?

Use the "hidden" file flag for this:

chflags hidden file1.txt directory "something else hidden"

See the chflags man page for more info. To see which files are hidden (and other file flags), use ls -lO:

$ ls -lO
total 0
drwxr-xr-x@ 2 gordon  staff  hidden 68 Feb 27 00:52 directory
-rw-r--r--@ 1 gordon  staff  hidden  0 Feb 27 00:52 file1.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 gordon  staff  uchg    0 Feb 27 00:54 lockedfile.txt
-rw-r--r--@ 1 gordon  staff  hidden  0 Feb 27 00:52 something else hidden
-rw-r--r--  1 gordon  staff  -       0 Feb 27 00:53 visiblefile.txt

BTW the "@" is there to indicate files that have extended attributes -- the unix-style "hidden" flag also shows up as an old-MacOS-style Finder flag, which is now represented as a bit in the "com.apple.FinderInfo" extended attribute. You can see extended attributes as well with ls -lO@, and their contents with xattr -l filename:

$ ls -lO@ file1.txt
-rw-r--r--@ 1 gordon  staff  hidden  0 Feb 27 00:52 file1.txt
        com.apple.FinderInfo    32
$ xattr -l file1.txt
com.apple.FinderInfo:
00000000  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 40 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |........@.......|
00000010  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |................|
00000020

The "32" means there are 32 bytes of data in the "com.apple.FinderInfo" attribute, and in the full dump the hexadecimal "40" corresponds to the "Invisible" flag in the old-style FinderInfo (/FileInfo) data structure.


Trying to force update_dyld_shared_cache but having some errors I am trying to force the update of my dyld shared cache using the command

sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -root / -force

But after a while I see a bunch of errors like this, related to spindump:

  update_dyld_shared_cache[719] : Unable to unlink //var/db/spindump/OLDDSC-E2D77243-3FD9-32E5-AE64-3506904D5579: 1 Operation not permitted

How do I fix this?

I am on El Capitan.

What fixed it for me was

update_dyld_shared_cache -debug

This is what you should see

update_dyld_shared_cache: adding root: /System/Library/...
...
...
update_dyld_shared_cache: /var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_i386 is up-to-date
update_dyld_shared_cache: /var/db/dyld/dyld_shared_cache_x86_64 is up-to-date

to be sure it works I run

update_dyld_shared_cache

a second time


What are some unusual uses of the MacBook trackpad? You know, the MacBook has such a beautiful trackpad. Are there applications that use its power for music-making, drawing, or anything else unusual?

In the "unusual" camp there's a program called Inklet that purports to turn your trackpad into a Wacom-like tablet. They also sell a special stylus and sketching software.

For music there's Trackpad Magic, which allows you to create music using trackpad for input, and djay, a DJ'ing app that lets you "scratch" records with your trackpad.


How long does it take for a review to appear in the App Store? On Friday, I went into the App Store on my iPhone and submitted a review for a game.  I just checked all the reviews for that game, and my review hasn't appeared yet.  About how long does it take for a review to appear in the App Store?

Usually it shouldn't appear immediately since more often than not, your reviews need to be approved before they are published by Apple for all to see.


Newbie One Hard Disk Two OS X How To? I am a long time Windows User, but newbie on OS X

This is a wonderful OS I use.

I have a macbook pro with 500GB HDD inside.

I want to one HDD install both OS X 10.8.5 and OS X 10.10.2, plus one more partition for save data, so when as need, I format any two OS X partition will not data lose... (So Total 3 partition base on my case there).

But I search APPLE official KB, not find any document as example like my case, just only see how to install the OS X on ext HDD only (Not the way I want to be).

So .... anyone can tell me how to do above? OR can it?

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

I final do this with disk utility, then partition with 4. Each with different name etc such as OS X 10.10, OS X 10.9, OS X 10.8 etc.

Then make the USB stick install OS X one by one and when installing choose install to which partition.


How to run VLC on El Capitan? El Capitan claims "VLC.app will damage your computer." When trying to run VLC, El Capitan reports this message:

“VLC.app” will damage your computer. You should move it to the Trash.

I tried downloading a fresh copy of VLC, but this didn't fix the issue.

How can I run VLC on El Capitan?

P.s. I tried the "control-open" but unlike Mavericks, that didn't allow the application to start.

I've had the same issue with El Capitan. Strangely, i could open the VLC.app from within the mounted dmg (OS X just said its unsigned) but not after I copied it to /Applications.

So I tried to copy it with the terminal like

cp -R /Volumes/vlc-2.2.1/VLC.app /Applications/

and voila, after that I could also open it from within the Applications folder.
Please note the "-R"-option.

I think this is safer than allowing malicious files to be executed by disabling Gatekeeper.


importing a book from to iPhotos back into iPhotos I created a book in iphotos. Then i exported it as a pdf file to desktop. I deleted it from iPhotos. I now want to add more pages to the book. Can I take it back to iPhotos and complete the book and how?

No, you can't reimport the PDF. You should still have the photos in your library and you can use the PDF to guide you in recreating the book.


Change Language in recovery mode Yesterday I traded my old iPhone 5s for a MacBook Air 11“ Mid 2011, running MacOS High Sierra 10.13.6.

This is my first Mac.

Only problem is, the MacBook was purchased in Turkey so its system language is turkish. However I‘m located in Germany and dont speak a word in turkish.

The desktop is in german, so no problem there but i tried to reinstall MacOS (is that Even necessary, it was hardly used and I dont see any files from the previous owner?)

When I try to reinstall MacOS the machine restarts and it opens a window completely in turkish where I can select a Backup from Time Machine (Time Machine is the only English word in the window). I dont know what the rest of the buttons do.

Question: How do I change the language of the OS (not the Desktop-Part of the OS but the part that runs when repairing/reinstalling?

You can try sudo "/System/Library/CoreServices/Language Chooser.app/Contents/MacOS/Language Chooser"
then choose the system language you want.

Update: I tested it myself.
The above command is only valid for "macOS", it will change the login screen and shutdown message etc.
And the language of "recovery mode" is not associated with "macOS".

If you want to change the language of "recovery mode".
Just follow the picture,first click File(Dosya) then choose 'Change Language'.


Move all "All on My iPhone" contacts to "All Gmail" group I have been syncing my iPhone and Gmail contacts for years and consistently run into this problem. Some of my contacts were created in the group "All on My iPhone", always without my knowledge, instead of the Gmail group. Contacts in this group will not sync to Gmail. I have learned how to set my default account to Gmail so hopefully I will stop creating iPhone only contacts, but this doesn't fix the problem with the 100+ contacts I already have in this group on two different phones. Is there a way for me to force ALL contacts from the iPhone only group into the Gmail group? Is there a way for me to export just the iPhone group so I can then import them to Gmail using the web interface?

An even better solution would be a way to permanently disable the iPhone only group. I have absolutely no need to have different contact lists. I would love for all my contacts to sync seamlessly across all devices without any "controls" to complicate the process.

Thanks for any advice!

There is no easy way to move contacts between accounts. No company wants to make it too easy. The only option on iPhone would be to merge the On My iPhone contacts with an iCloud account (turning Contacts on and off if necessary under Settings > iCloud).

From there you can log into iCloud.com > open the contacts web app > click the gear at the bottom left and select all > Click the gear at the bottom left and export vCard

Then you can import that vCard into gmail.com

Finally turn off the Contacts for iCloud and it will offer to delete.

Under Settings > Mail, Contacts and Calendars if there iOS a default account listed under contacts make sure it says gmail.

Alternately - type lots.


Finder window reappears if still open I am sure this question was asked somewhere but just could not figure out precisely how to describe the behaviour so as to find the answer. I have multiple windows open on the screen. The one in the foreground is a Finder window, then some other stuff and then another Finder window in the background. If I close the Finder window in the foreground then the one in the background appears. How can I prevent this behavior?

I know of no way to do this if the Finder is the frontmost app at the start of your sequence. It's fairly standard practice that if you close the frontmost window in any app, the next behind it will come to focus.

However, if Finder is not the frontmost app, then  Cmd ⌘ -clicking the red dot will close the window without bringing the Finder to the front.

There are a few  Cmd ⌘  + action functions that will operate on a window without bringing it to the front - you can drag window edges to resize, minimise, close, etc.

You can kind of 'fake' what you want if you click on the Desktop first, then when you close your first window, the Desktop itself will be 'frontmost'... yet of course will not actually move.


Upgrade OS X Lion (10.7.4) to OS X Mountain Lion I have OS X Lion 10.7.4 and want to upgrade OS X Mountain Lion.

What do I have to do for the upgrade?
Do I have to backup my system? If yes, which program can I use for the backup?
If I have any problems with the install, can I restore it from the backup?

Actually this is pretty simple.

Though you can install Mountain Lion right over (upgrade) Lion without doing any backups at all a more prudent method would be to backup first.

To back up your computer you will need an external hard drive (USB, Firewire, or Thunderbolt. USB would likely be cheaper but a bit slower) that is a little bigger than the HD that you are upgrading.

If you plug the USB drive into your Mac, Time Machine will automatically ask you if you want to use it as a backup drive (not sure about the actual wording...) You can allow Time Machine to proceed and back up your whole computer. Once it is done, un plug it and proceed with the upgrade.

Alternatively you could use a commercial backup program to do the same thing. I have used both Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper to make backups of my drives. Bot work really well and are not expensive. The advantage with these is that they make a BOOTABLE backup image of your hard drive, where Time Machine will need you to install the O/S to then do a restore of your data.

Once you have made your backup (and tested it by checking a number of files or booting from the backup and verifying it all works) just go to the App Store (in your Apple Menu) and purchase Mountain Lion. It's a BIG download (4+ GB) and will take a while, when done it will automatically prompt you to start the installation. Just follow the prompts. Your Mac will reboot and proceed with the upgrade. It is likely that you will not need your backup as these upgrades usually go quite well.

There are some caveats. If you have modified your O/S or used applications that make changes to the O/S you might want to remove them before upgrading. You may also want to check that the versions of any applications you installed are compatible with Mountain Lion. That info will be on the manufacturers website. Basically you need to be aware that it is possible that something that worked fine under Lion will NOT work under Mountain Lion. Only you can make that determination.

Some people take the pre-install procedure a bit farther than just a backup. It is not uncommon to boot your Mac from the original install media and run disk utility and run a "repair disk" and "repair permissions" on it before installing. You could also use a maintenance tool like Onyx to do some basic repairs and maintenance on your system before upgrading as well. Some people won't upgrade before doing either or both of this things, some people just download and install the new O/S with no special prep or backup.

Really it's your choice.


Is there a way for OSX to auto-copy a file somewhere whenever it's updated? I can't figure out how to get Automator to automatically recognize when a specific file/folder has been changed or updated then automatically copy it somewhere else.

Suggestions?

You would use something called Folder Action.

Right click on the Folder you want to monitor and select Folder action set up.

In the new window choose folder action workflow, and attach it.

Now select it and choose edit workflow, which will open Automator.

Here you do as shown below, while you can choose when it happens and where to save a copy.


re-mount ejected SD card without reinserting I use a microSD card in my macbook air for additional storage, using a flush adapter (homemade, similar to the nifty minidrive).

To save battery when I'm not using it, I disabled auto-mount using /etc/fstab.
But sometimes, I accidentally eject it instead of unmounting (because that's what the finder gui does).

After it's ejected, the only way I know to remount is to take the card adapter out and put it back in. Since it's flush, I need a paperclip to take it out.

So I need a way to re-enable the card reader without having to re-insert.

In Windows, this is possible using the devcon command-line tool from microsoft, or going to device manager, disabling and enabling the card reader.

There has to be a way to do this, so please don't answer just saying it's not possible.

Thanks

On Mountain Lion with built-in SD readers:

sudo kextunload -b com.apple.driver.AppleSDXC
sudo kextload -b com.apple.driver.AppleSDXC


Replace updated iBooks (eBook) How can I replace a updated eBook (not via iBookstore) in Apples iBooks-App (on OS X or iOS) without loosing all the associated notes, bookmarks etc.?

For example: Some of O'REILLYs eBooks update quite frequently. I can download the new ePub-Version from their store (NOT Apples iBookstore) and add it to the iBooks-Library. But than I have to delete the old version manually — and loose all the notes, bookmarks etc.. How can I replace the old version with the new one without loosing all my notes etc?

I learned how to export the notes from the iBooks, I'm using to present my seminars at College.
I sherched a way to import them to another eBook and i didn't find, i hope Evernote be a good option to you.

Step 1 – Inside iBooks, you can click on a book.

Step 2 – Click on the book you want to get the highlights from.

Step 3: Click the menu button next to Library at the top

Step 4: Click on “Notes”

Step 5: Click on the arrow at the top right corner and click “Edit notes.”

Step 6: Click Select all (top left corner)

Step 7: Click Share (next to Select all/ Select None) and then Choose Mail

Step 8: Choose Mail and send the email to Evernote or to yourself.

Step 9: Go into Evernote and Sync and your card will appear (usually it goes to the Inbox unless you’ve set it up differently)

Font: Coolcatteacher


How to Page Up/Down on Anker Bluetooth Keyboard? I've got the Anker Bluetooth keyboard and I'm using it with my Macbook Pro. I used to press Fn+<Arrow Up> to do a page up, but that doesn't seem to happen with this keyboard. Does anyone know how to do a page up with this keyboard?

Karabiner and BetterTouchTool can remap keys to do this, but since the Fn key doesn't seem to be standard you may have to remap it to another key. BetterTouchTool is much more simple by the way.


OSX Installation to MBA (Macbook Air Model A1370) SSD upgrade Is it possible to install an unformatted M.2 SSD and install OSX?

Update: I have an M.2 adapter.

I do not have an M.2 enclosure, that would be necessary to ghost the current drive over to the larger drive.  If possible, what are the steps?

Unfortunately, it is not possible to install an M.2 SSD into a MacBook Air (or Pro), because Apple SSDs aren't M.2, and (please correct me if I'm wrong) there are no Apple SSD to M.2 adapters, partially because (this is what I've been told) an M.2 SSD has to be directly mounted to the motherboard. Also, it's quite possible that M.2 SSDs are different dimensions than an Apple SSD, and might not fit in the (computer's) case.

You can however buy an Apple SSD from OWC, which should work perfectly with your MacBook Air.


There was an error connecting to iCloud When I go to the iCloud screen on my iPhone I get a "Verification Failed. There was an error connecting to iCloud."

What can I do to resolve this?

This means you don't have an active internet connection to access iCloud. From the picture, I can see you're not connected to WiFi but using a cellular network. To access iCloud and it's relative Settings you need to make sure:

Mobile Data is on
You have enabled Mobile Data for Settings

To enable Mobile Data:

Go to Settings
Mobile Data
Toggle the switch at the top

To turn on Mobile Data for Settings:

Go to Settings
Mobile Data
Go to Settings and toggle the switch so it is green


apple tv ssh script automation I have a Apple TV 2nd generation that is jailbroken and I run xbmc on it. At times it gets hung or freezes up. At that point, I open up the terminal on my macbook and run this script.
ssh root@apple-tv.local
it asks me the password. I type in alpine
then I run "killall AppleTV"

Is there any way to make this a one click operation, like a desktop icon that achieves the same result? Maybe an Apple Script or a Automator workflow?
Any ideas please?

you could ssh root@apple-tv.local killall AppleTV, also you might want to change your passwd from the default. As for a icon, you could but the above into a file and name it with a .sh extention, which could then be 'clicked on'.
If you don't want to be prompted for a ssh passwd, set up some ssh keys.
Setting up ssh keys
If you already have a key on your computer, skip to step 2

ssh-keygen -t rsa and follow the the prompts. If you use a passphrase, you'll want to set up ssh-agent.

Copy contents of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the tv.

chmod go-rwx ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

This is just a quick example, check out this wiki for more.


How to make iMac lock itself if left for 2 minutes? So users need to insert password to login to my iMac

If you follow the below 2 steps, you can set your machine to require a password after 2 minutes of inactivity.

Within the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preference, set the screen saver to come on after 2 minutes of inactivity.
Within the Security & Privacy System Preference, set the option to require a password immediately after sleep or screen saver begins.


Merging images on mac Say you have a picture of a dog and a cat. You want to merge parts of the dog's face onto the cat's face creating a cat-dog fusion. What MacBook Pro programs can i get for free in order to do this?

I would suggest using GIMP. It's a free program that can offer many of the tools that Photoshop does.


iPad and iPhone Default to Driving Instructions in Google Maps Would Like Default to Map For a Google Maps, a URL like this:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=from:90210,CA,US(You)+to:New+York,NY,US(Destination)

will show the driving instructions instead of the maps. You tap the map icon to get the map. Would like it to default to the map right away. Is this possible?

On the Google Maps app, it loads as driving instructions selector, is there a way to have the map displayed too?

The URL you listed explicitely passes information to Google Maps to put it into "driving instructions" mode. So unless you use a different URL (or just plain http.//maps.google.com/) there is no way to avoid that.


Voice Modulator Software I am looking for a voice modulator software that runs on OS X and converts a voice into scrambled and distorted sounding audio (like the ones in the movies).

You could just use GarageBand:

Choose for example the voice template
Change "Monitor: Off" to On
Add some effects (like Vocal Transformer or Bitcrusher) in the Edit tab


How do I handle (e.g. correctly escape) parens in a 'defaults write ...' key value? TL;DR

In defaults write <domain> <key> <value>, how do I provide a <value> that contains parens; i.e. "round" brackets, "(" and ")" ?

Full Bhoona

I'm using defaults to redirect screen captures to a specific directory. That I can do fine, and have many times in the past, but I'm running into a problem when the target directory has parentheses in its pathname. So I'm doing something like:

$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture location <dirname-with-parens-in-it>

and I'm getting an error of the form:

<ba bla bla> Could not parse: <dirname-with-parens-in-it>.  Try single-quoting it.

But I get that despite trying all of the following (and a bunch more besides). In this, assume the name of the (pre-existing) directory in question is, literally, dirname(with)parens. My attempts and responses:

$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture location dirname\(with\)parens
<bla bla bla> Could not parse: dirname(with)parens.  Try single-quoting it.

$ defaults write com.apple.screencapture location 'dirname\(with\)parens'
<bla bla bla> Could not parse: dirname(with)parens.  Try single-quoting it.

And I repeated both, three times each, replacing the single \ with \\, \\\, and \\\\. Same error.

Notice however that the error does seem to suggest that the shell globbing itself is working fine, because 'defaults' is seeing the unescaped "(" and ")" correctly. And if directory name/path contains not parens but rather whitespace, then a simple \-escape works fine (as does quoting). Finally, I observe that for shell commands, like "mkdir", either of \-escaping parens, or quoting them, also work:

$ mkdir dirname\(with\)parens
$ ls -ld dirname*
drwxr-xr-x  2 jonyive demigods  68 Oct  3 10:56 dirname(with)parens

So a likely suspect is defaults itself. man defaults doesn't offer much, saying only that says only that, "value must be a property list, and must be enclosed in single quotes". And even that's a lie. In practice it only must be in single quotes if it contains anything funky, and even there, if the funkiness is whitespace, \-escaping will do. And of course, if the funkiness is parens, then not even single quoting appears to work.

So, any ideas? Thanks!

P.S. I'm aware of and have used workarounds. For example, I can create a non-troublesome symlink to the parens-infested actual directory, and just give defaults the symlink as the <value>. But I'd really like to get to the bottom of this.

To escape parens successfully in the defaults command you have to use quotes and inside the quotes single quotes:

Example:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location "'/Users/user/Desktop/(Screenshots)'"


Photos on my iPhone 5 (101) but only the latest (23) show up in iCloud My iPhone 5 has 101 photos (& 7 videos) but on my PC > iCloud Photos > My Photo Stream only shows the last 23 of those photos.

Photos in My Photo Stream are saved on the iCloud server for 30 days only.  If many of the photos are over 30 days old then they will no longer be available through PhotoStream:

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201317


Is there a shortcut to move to the item being highlighted by the search help? When I do Help | Search | whatever I see the blue left-arrow pointing to a menu item. I know that if I press Enter, it will execute it, but is there a shortcut that shifts the focus to the item that is pointed by the arrow, so that I could, for example, move to the menu item just above it?

The way I do it now, is I search, I memorize the submenu hierarchy, and I move there manually with the mouse, but I'm pretty sure I saw a shortcut to do this somewhere.

If you slowly move the mouse horizontally to the menu item that is highlighted, the menu will stay open.

You are, most likely, having trouble with highlighting another choice on your way to the menu item of interest.  Don't let your mouse leave the highlighted row while traversing to the open menu and you should not have any problems.

This works this way on OS X 10.8.5.


Where is the file .vimrc in macOS? (Downloaded Macvim through Homebrew) I have Yosemite 10.10.3 and I recently downloaded macvim using homebrew. I find a vimrc file under the directory:

  /usr/share/vim

However, after putting some modification like setting the background theme to dark, nothing changed when I opened macvim. Am I doing something wrong? Is it the wrong vimrc file? Does it mean the vimrc file is in a different directory if it was downloaded from homebrew?

If you use vim before the installation, the file .vimrc should be on your $HOME directory (/Users/your-username/.vimrc). Macvim will use that file if exists.


How to connect to the internet from Terminal when using a proxy with authentication I have to use proxy servers to connect to the internet. I have set all proxies in my system proxy settings. Now I can connect to Internet using my browser and applications.

But I cannot connect to internet from my terminal.

I tried

export http_proxy="http://username:password@proxyserver:port/"

But still terminal applications cannot connect to the internet.

Terminal does not use proxy settings configured in the network preferences pane because it doesn't do any connection. Terminal just let you fire commands which will use the network in different ways.

When setting your http_proxy and https_proxy environment variables should not include the http: or https: prefixes.

Therefore the environment variable in your case should read:

http_proxy=username:password@proxyserver:port

Note: many old programs have issues with connecting through proxy servers which require authentication before connecting.

Additional Tip:

Due to our infrastructure we found it much easier to have users run SquidMan locally and have it configured to connect to our main proxy. This allows the local machine to act as a proxy directly, and eliminates a lot of authentication issues etc when using proxy servers on Mac machines, especially in a mixed and AD environments.

In the case of using this method our http_proxy and https_proxy would be:

http_proxy=localhost:3128


iOS: Tapping Update in App Store just launches the app I am trying to update my apps but cannot.

When I tap the update button in the App Store it simply launches the app, not triggering the update download.

I have a 5c running iOS 7.0

Would anyone know how to fix this?

Tap on the app icon to launch the full product page, and click the "+Update" button there, rather than the "Update" button on the list of updates.

The former works for me, the latter behaved for me as you described.


Does the iPad setup wizard require a home button in iOS 10? I'm about to factory reset an iPad with a broken home button. I've been using AssistiveTouch in place of the button.  In iOS 10, unlocking requires the home button, so I have to use AssistiveTouch every time I turn the iPad on. My question is—if I factory reset it, is there a part of the iOS 10 setup screen that requires the home button to proceed? If I reset, AssistiveTouch will not be enabled and I won't be able to enable it until the iPad is finished being set up. This could make the device unusable.

The first thing you have to do is unlock the device, which requires you to press the home button.

A thread on Apple Support Communities has a possible workaround, but I can't verify it:

  Once you download iOS10 and get to "Hello" screen, connect your iPhone to iTunes. Under iPhone>Summary page, there is an icon that says "configure accesibility".  Click on it and a window pops up, and enable "Speak auto-text" under "seeing" and "mono-audit" under hearing.  I THINK it should work with just choosing one or the other or any other options for those with seeing/hearing problems.  Click on done, and you see your vertual home button is back on "Hello" screen.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7667716


Chrome's URL field prohibits some URLs from being drag-drop'ed into Finder for auto .webloc file generation. Why is this? Here is a six-second video to demonstrate the scenario I can't seem to figure out. Why won't the second URL become a .webloc like the first one?  ..and is there a useful workaround if not a solution to this problem?

Chrome and OSX (Catalina) are both current.  Thanks in advance!

So after some trial and error, I could find out a working method, but not the problem.

Click the address bar once. Even if the site is https, it won't show on the protocol on the first click and the rest of the URL will get selected.
Drag and drop the selected part of the URL.
If you click again and the site shows https:// etc., drag and drop of that URL wouldn't work.


Share iPhone internet to MacBook by lightning (without HotSpot) I am curious can I share my 3G connection from iPhone to MacBook by lightning cable, not using HotSpot (it not always working properly). Thanks!

If you want to avoid using a wireless connection to share your 3G connection, you can still use Personal Hotspot, but with a Lightning cable, according to Apple's support documentation.

Set up Personal Hotspot

Go to Settings > Cellular.
Tap Personal Hotspot, then tap the slider to turn it on.

Connect to Personal Hotspot with USB
Make sure that you have the latest version of iTunes on your Mac or PC. Then connect your iPhone or iPad to your computer with the USB cable that came with your device. If you see an alert that says tap "Trust This Computer?" tap Trust.


Does FaceTime support 1-to-many connections (conference call) or only 1:1 video calls? I want to do a video conference call. My understanding is that FaceTime is a 1:1 video chat, but wanted to confirm that.

FaceTime is currently a one to one connection on both Mac OS X and iOS.


Dual-Monitor Output from a new Macbook Pro I need to output to two screens from a Macbook Pro 17" I'm looking at buying. My current laptop has a VGA port and an HDMI port, and so it's pretty easy to run a dual-display setup with it. How would I connect my displays to my Macbook?

Both displays are 1080p HDMI computer monitors.

If I have to use Thunderbolt, will it work with Linux? I'm planning on dual-booting.

You've pretty much got two options for two external monitors on a MacBook Pro:

A) Two Apple Thunderbolt Displays

This is the least flexible, but highest performing solution. Obvious drawbacks are the cost, and not being able to use your existing displays. This only works on Thunderbolt equipped Macs with a discrete graphics card (i.e. not the 13" MacBook Pro or any MacBook Air, nor the base Mini).

B) DisplayLink adapter

You can use one display directly connected to the Thunderbolt/Mini Displayport with an mDP-HDMI adapter, and run the second one with a DisplayLink adapter. DisplayLink is essentially basic graphics card connected to your computer via USB. Because of the limitations of USB, it's not a high performance solution - don't expect to do any gaming on it. This does allow you to use your existing monitors, and at relatively modest expense. You may also want to check the current status of Lion support, as I remember seeing some posts about bugs relating to DisplayLink adapters - they may have been fixed by now however.


Does Mail on OS X mark mail as read on the server or just locally? Back when I used the Mail app on Leopard and Snow Leopard, it never seemed to tell the Gmail server that to mark as read the messages that I read. This had the annoying effect of requiring me to go to my web browser and mark everything as read there.

Needless to say, I didn't use it much since I would have to go to my web browser to mark it as read anyway.

Does the Mail app in El Captain have this problem? (I switched back to Windows a while back)

EDIT: I want to clarify that I want Mail to automatically mark messages as read as I read them, without having to do anything else. You know, how it normally works with every other email app.

Mail in OS X El Capitan doesn't have this problem.

Mark as Read & Mark as Unread affect all of the devices linked to your IMAP account.


Can an alias be added to the dock via the command line? I found this article but it handles the GUI solution.

I would like to automate the setup of a new machine, and do that I've created Dropbox shares of a number of my common configurations. (I could use a github repo, too)  Other sites have discussed automating pref configs.

I'd like a bash / terminal command to create an alias in the dock.  I presume that the dock is a folder of aliases located somewhere in ~/Library but I can't find it.

Is there any AppleScript solution?

edit: it seems that there is a file, ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist that contains the references.

A Japanese engineer discusses an way to do this C. 2009 (which no longer works).
Another script was designed to add folders to the 'others' area of the Dock – which is alos dated.  The latter, however, along with the new format for the Dock plist, and some dict manipulation tips, gives more clues to creating a modern script.

Definitely scriptable with terminal commands.

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

Shows you the actual configuration for the dock.

Within the above file you need to modify the "persistent-others" array if you want to create a "file" alias.

This is done the following way:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "add:persistent-others:0 dict" ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

If you want an application alias you will need to modify the "persistent-apps" array.

Once you make the changes and you are testing you need to do:

killall dock

to refresh the dock.


Can i extract from my iPhone browser the history older than 8 days ago? It looks like that the data older than 7 days are automatically wiped from the iphone.

What's the database that stores that data, in case one exist, so that by jailbreaking my iphone i can have direct access to it and hopefully, extract the data i need?

If i did this yesterday, i would not have had this problem... :(

You're looking for var/mobile/Library/Safari/History.plist. Try looking in that file, but I'm pretty sure Safari itself will only store the most recent seven days of data in that file, though. You'd have to make a tweak that modified Safari to extended that time frame.


Is there a keyboard shortcut to enable/disable hidden files in Finder? Is there an easy way to show and then hide and then show and then hide (as in toggle) “hidden” files in macOS High Sierra?

I’ve found I can use the following terminal commands to show them:

 defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE

killall Finder

and then use these terminal commands to hide them:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE

killall Finder

but this is clumsy!

I then came across Onyx which allows me to do this at will, but unless I want to keep it open, it’s not a good option because it takes forever to launch!

I did check the list of keyboard shortcuts at this Apple website in the hope it may be that simple, but no go.

What is the absolute easiest way to enable/disable this option? If there's no keyboard shortcut, what's the next best option?

Actually, there is a keyboard shortcut you can use in macOS High Sierra. More specifically, you can use command + shift + ..

In case that last key isn’t clear, it’s a period (aka full stop).


Escape Button doesnt work since Update to Sierra since my update to sierra my escape button doesnt work anymore. I have tried a NVRAM reset and yes, it worked but after 2 Days it doesnt work anymore. I am just struggling to get this work, i already looked in the settings and used the keyboard on screen and guess what?

In keyboard preferences, enable the "Show input in menu bar" option under the Input Sources tab.

Then in the menu bar Show the Keyboard Viewer.

You can press the escape key with the mouse and then connect an external keyboard and see when the key is being pressed.

If the external works and the internal fails - you need hardware repair. If neither escape physical key presses - then your software or keyboard mapping are messed up.

You could either figure out why or make a backup and erase install. Hard to guess which of those would take you less time, but those are the quick options for you if it's software and not hardware.


How do I download an iOS App (IPA) file to my Mac after iTunes 12.7 update? Now that Apple has removed the ability to access the iOS App Store in iTunes 12.7 on Mac/Windows (See MacRumors article), I can't find any way to download an IPA file from the App Store. As a note, I'm not worried about installing the IPA files (see "How do I backup and restore my IPA app backups in iTunes 12.7?"), I just need the IPA files as a developer looking for some basic information on the apps. I'd like to solve this without resorting to jailbreaking as my devices are already updated to iOS 10.3.3.

Here are things that I've tried that didn't work:

Extract from backup: The apps seem no longer to be backed up.
Save to Mac from iPhone management software: I believe this has been blocked by Apple works as far back as iOS 8.3.
Figuring out how the file is downloaded via proxy connection: At least for me, this looks too complicated to do because you have to authenticate with your Apple ID and I'm sure that by now, Apple even requires the phone to be authenticated in some way. Not sure if it would even be possible in the same way that you see all those Android APK download services out there.

At least for now, it looks to me like maybe the only way is to hold onto an older version of iTunes for as long as that works.

This isn’t exactly what you want, but just to add this option too...

If you use the "Apple Configurator 2" app, you can still download and update apps from multiple Apple IDs - as you also could with iTunes.

Connect the device with USB
Sign in under Account:

Choose Update in the menu:

A more detailed description can be found here: http://krypted.com/apple-configurator/upgrade-devices-and-apps-using-apple-configurator-2/

The Apps are downloaded to:

~/Library/Group\ Containers/K36BKF7T3D.group.com.apple.configurator/Library/Caches/Assets/TemporaryItems/MobileApps/


What is this usernoted process in my Macintosh? I've got a warning saying that I'm running out of my memory and had to "kill some process" today. I've been using this Mac for over 3 years and this is the first time I was warned this way.

I've noticed that there is a process named usernoted in my Activity Monitor. It seems it's eating a lot of my memory. What is this?

BTW, why is Finder and Dock eating so much memory?

That's actually not a lot of memory for usernoted, Finder, or Dock. "usernoted" is a known process and is installed with OS X. Do you mind telling how much memory you have, as well as what OS version?
Also note that you clicked on the Compressed Memory column, rather than regular memory, which is a more accurate way of showing memory usage. Don't forget to show all processes (not just your processes).


How do I create a Mac bootable USB drive using Windows? My MBA 2012 with OS X 10.9.4 Mavericks won't boot anymore - it simply freezes after the initial jingle. I already tried resetting NVRAM and SMC, but to no avail. I don't have any time machine backups.

However, I still have a disc image of Mavericks sitting on an external hard drive, a USB stick and access to a notebook with Windows 7.

I haven't yet found any tutorial on how to create a bootable USB drive on Windows in order to reinstall OS X on my beloved Macbook Air.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

According to the first answer here, https://superuser.com/questions/383235/create-a-bootable-usb-drive-from-a-dmg-file-on-windows, there's a tool with a free trial called TransMac that can do it. Just make sure the USB drive is formatted with GPT and not MBR.

What might be easier, however, is that that model has support for Internet Recovery. If you boot holding Command-R and you have a WiFi connection, it can actually boot into recovery mode without a recovery partition on a drive (or even without a working drive).

Having said that, your description of a crash right after the boot chime could signify a more serious hardware problem and you may not be able to boot anything. If you boot holding the option key down, the startup disk selection screen should appear. If it crashes anyways, you may be looking at a hardware problem.


Non-Apple Devices Won't Connect to Airport Extreme I've got an Airport Extreme (AE) router that I currently have configured as a Wireless Access Point on my network (a different router is handling Internet/DHCP). Up until yesterday, everything was working fine with the AE, all the wireless devices in my house connected just fine (I've got a MacBook, 3 iPhones, PS4, PS3, Wii U, two Windows Laptops, two Raspberry Pis, and two wireless printers).

Since about 5pm EST yesterday, I am no longer able to connect any non-apple devices via Wifi to the AE. I can get the devices to connect fine via an Ethernet Cable.

I've not changed anything at all on the router, nor the network in general to cause this to occur.

I've tried the following things to troubleshoot:

Turning off WPA2
Changing the 5GHz name of the network
Setting the IPv6 Mode from Router to Link-local
Factory Resetting the AE

None of them have resulted in success getting the non-apple devices connected. Is there anything else that I can try, or should I be contacting Apple Support at this point?

Figured out the problem. I had a HDD connected to the AE that had a bad cable. Once I replaced the USB cable for the HDD, ever other client was able to connect again. Quite an odd symptom of the problem!!!


Can I select the architecture of a program from the command line? Many of the unix executable binary programs are delivered with more than one architecture:

mac:~ mike$ file `which bc`
/usr/bin/bc: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures
/usr/bin/bc (for architecture x86_64):  Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
/usr/bin/bc (for architecture i386):    Mach-O executable i386

Is there a way I can select or force a specific architecture to run (mainly for testing to explore the effects that some larger programs or longer running processes have when executing the same workload over different codebases / memory capabilities?)

You can use the arch program to select which architecture of a universal binary to run.

If you wanted to use the 32-bit version of the executable:

arch -arch i386 /usr/bin/bc

And if you wanted the 64-bit version of the executable:

arch -arch x86_64 /usr/bin/bc

Note this doesn't work with applications (folders that end in .app and have manifests and what not so OS X recognizes them as applications), just universal binaries. If you had a app with multiple architectures you'd want to use Launch Services to launch it with a specific architecture.


Adjust delay in Watch display when turning wrist The Apple Watch spends most of its time sleeping with the display turned off. When you twist your wrist, it wakes and displays on screen.

Unfortunately, the Watch does not always appear for me.

Is there a way to make the Watch more sensitive to that wrist-twist motion? Or some setting to shorten the delay to wake-and-display?

I have a Series 1 Apple Watch running watchOS 4.3.

No. The only control you have is how long the screen stays lit once you activate. If you don’t like an exaggerated (or worse, making two wrist) movement(s), you would need totap a button or screen to wake the watch more promptly.


What is the 'deleted' daemon in macOS? Since installing macOS 10.12 I noticed a flood of messages from deleted in the logs. I haven't been able to find any information about this daemon. Could anyone enlighten me what this does?

I came here due to an issue on my MacBook Pro (2018 15") running on macOS Catalina 10.15.7.
In fact, the deleted process was showing up in my process list and consuming around 50% CPU - more or less. After following some hints which I found here and there (deinstalling iStats, resetting SMC and so on) I realized that this process kept on being open as long as my About this Mac window was open. The deleted process disappears shortly after closing the About this Mac window.


How to calculate the amount of space that iCloud Photo Library would take up? I recently got the OS X 10.10.3 update, which got me Photos for OS X and the opportunity to use iCloud Photo Library. However, I'm a little worried about maxing out my iCloud storage if I upload every photo on every device I own, since I currently only have the free 5GB and I'm already cutting it kind of close.

I was wondering, is there a way to figure out how much iCloud storage my combined photo libraries (MBP, iPhone, and iPad) would eat up before turning on iCloud Photo Library and learning the hard way?

Yes. You can start Photos app and turn off iCloud backed storage.

You can see that the Photos Library is not my System Photo Library

Then you can import all the photos you want locally and observe how much space it takes. I'm using DaisyDisk, but Finder can show you folder size as well. I have a small system library that I'm using to test out the cloud side of things (15k photos) while I do the heavy lifting on non-system Photo libraries.

Once I'm happy with how albums and such work, I'll probably unify everything so that it fits within 200 GB of space that I'm budgeting for within iCloud.


Why does JDownloader use 9666/tcp on localhost? I found 9666/tcp to listen on 127.0.0.1 on OS X. I use version 15.3.0

> nmap -sT 127.0.0.1
Starting Nmap 7.01 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2016-03-12 16:57 CET
Stats: 0:00:04 elapsed; 0 hosts completed (1 up), 1 undergoing Connect Scan
Connect Scan Timing: About 56.90% done; ETC: 16:57 (0:00:03 remaining)
Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)
Host is up (0.29s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT     STATE SERVICE
9666/tcp open  unknown

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 8.31 seconds

> lsof -i :9666
    COMMAND     PID USER   FD   TYPE             DEVICE SIZE/OFF NODE NAME
    JavaAppli 73246 leo  149u  IPv4 0x49ece38ad86e34a7      0t0  TCP localhost:9666 (LISTEN)
> ps -ef | grep -w 73246
  503 73246     1   0  5:07PM ??        16:23.64 /Users/leo/Applications/JDownloader 2/JDownloader2.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub -afterupdate

What's that? Any more details? With Google I found no info about this port and Jdownloader.

Basically it's a port JDownloader is listening to to make browser integration easier (aka you can add an extension to your favorite browser which then passes URLs to JDownloader for downloading).

Some details about this Flashgot interface can be found here.


Finding Apps that do not appear in Macbook dock I recently got a macbook pro. Shouldn't programs like iMovie and GarageBand appear in the dock? When I search for them, I cannot find them. When I go to the App Store to download them, it tell me that they are already downloaded. Where can I open these applications?

Another option is to click the magnifying glass in the upper right corner (Spotlight), and type the name of the application you're looking for.  Once the application is running, you can add it to the dock permanently by pressing control and clicking the trackpad over the application's icon, then selecting the Options and finally, the Keep in Dock option.


How to replace wifi password? I have saved the wifi password for our network on an iPhone 5c.  In the meantime the wifi username and password has changed.

So what I had tried so far:

Go to Settings -> Wifi
Choose the wifi network's "i" icon
Choose "Forget This Network"
Choose "Forget"
Back to the wifi settings
Select the wifi network's "i" icon again
Select "Join Network"
Safari opens and ask for a user name and password
Enter the user name and password
Choose Done

Next time when I join the network again, on my on-screen keyboard, I go to "Passwords".

The only options I see is the OLD username and password so that the new one that I just had entered is missing.

How can I replace the OLD wifi username and password so that I do not have to enter it manually again?

Go to Settings -> Safari -> General, Authorise yourself and try to update your password there.


Getting an iPhoto book project created on an iPhone to another device like a Mac or iPad I can't find an option for exporting my iPhoto book project off my iPhone. I tried looking for a share option, I've checked iCloud to see if it is saved there, I looked in photo streams. I'm hesitant to spend $30 on a book from my iphone without checking resolution on a larger screen.

I've looked into this as well. As of this time (March 2014) there is no way to export an iphoto book created on an iphone or ipad other than to automatically send it in for printing with the associated cost. Hopefully they will come up with a way to export these as a pdf file the way they have done with the desktop version of iphoto.


External Hard Drive Not Showing Up after dragging it to Terminal? So from the left side of the Finder I accidentally dragged my external hard drive and now it doesn't appear there. I would like to see it there, I know it's reading it because I did an ls /Volumes and it's there. How do I put the drive back in the Sidebar?

Note 1: I tried to command+shift+G and went to /Volumes and tried to drag it in place that won't work, what do I do?

Note 2: It's not "Choose Preferences from the Finder menu, click on Sidebar, and check the box for it". The problem is with one particular external drive, I dragged it out of Finder and can't put it back.

I had the exact same issue. Here's the solution: open a Terminal and do the following:

open /Volumes/[Your external hard drive]

This will open up a Finder window which shows your Volumes, including the external drive. Just select and drag the drive back to the left panel, under Devices.


Bootcamp: no bootable device – insert boot disk and press any key I installed Windows 7 on my 2011 MacBook Pro (MacOS High Sierra) successfully. It was recognized at boot time by the computer and had no problems.

Then I used Disk Utility to create some free space on the hard drive shared by MacOS and Windows. Now I get this message on boot to windows: no bootable device – insert boot disk and press any key

Using Finder, I can see that my Windows 7 files are all intact, but I cannot boot from Bootcamp!

Below is the output from the command diskutil list.

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage HARDISK                 600.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             87.8 GB    disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                120.0 GB   disk0s4

Below is the output from fdisk /dev/disk0 in MacOS Recovery:

-bash-3.2# fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0 geometry: 121601/255/63 [1953525168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
     Starting       Ending
#: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 - 1953525167] <Unknown ID>
2: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

Below is the output of ls -d /Volumes/BOOTCAMP/Boot in MacOS Recovery:

/Volumes/BOOTCAMP/Boot

With the release of High Sierra, Apple has forgotten about the needs of Windows 7 users. The right (or is it wrong) combination of commands causes eraser of the values stored in the Master Boot Record (MBR) table. Windows 7 uses these values to determine the partitioning of the drive. Fortunately, these values are duplicated in the GUID partition table (GPT). Unfortunately, you will have to preform the tedious task of reentering the missing values.

Unless you disable System Integrity Protection (SIP), the solutions given below requires booting to macOS Recovery via the internet, built-in recovery or an USB flash drive macOS installer. Once booted to macOS Recovery, open a Terminal application window.

  Note: The Terminal application can be found under "Utilities" on the menu bar.

Solution without Using Third Party Tools

The answer given below is based on my answer to the question How to convert a drive from the GPT format to the hybrid GPT/MBR format when using High Sierra (macOS 10.13.2). You should read this question and answer before proceeding.
The command given below can be used to partially display the information contained in GUID partition table (GPT) stored on disk0. You will need this information when editing the Master Boot Record (MBR) table.

gpt -r show /dev/disk0

Here are the steps involving in editing the MBR table to create a hybrid partitioning scheme. You will be preforming the same steps as given in this answer, except for the changes given below.

The interactive command to edit the MBR partition table is given below. All changes will be not be entered in CHS mode.

fdisk -e /dev/disk0

Entering this command produced the following output

fdisk: could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory
Enter 'help' for information
fdisk: 1>

  Note: The control+C key can be pressed at anytime to terminate the fdisk command without saving any changes.

The only entry, in the initial MBR table, defines a "Protective Partition". This partition needs to be truncated to the end of the first partition in the GPT with the GUID of C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B. This means the start value should remain 1, but the size value should be reduced to the value start + size - 1. The values use in this equation should be taken from GPT. The computed value usually is 409639.

Below are the correct values to enter into fdisk for the first partition of the MBR table. Replace <start + size - 1 of GPT partition with index=1> with the computed integer value.

edit 1
EE
N
1
<start + size - 1 of GPT partition with index=1>

Next, enter the correct values for second partition of the MBR table. The command is edit and the id is AC. The start and size values are the same as shown in the GPT. Doing so, results in what is shown below.

edit 2
AC
N
<start of GPT partition with index=2>
<size of GPT partition with index=2>

Repeat the previous step to update MBR table partitions 3 and 4. This is shown below. The id for partition 3 is AB and for partition 4 is 07.

edit 3
AB
N
<start of GPT partition with index=3>
<size of GPT partition with index=3>
edit 4
07
N
<start of partition with index=4>
<size of partition with index=4>

The next command flags the fourth MBR partition as bootable. This partition was chosen because this is where the Windows resides.

flag 4

The next command to enter is print. This command displays what the updated MBR table would look like. You can use the output to verify your changes.

  Note: The descriptions such as <Unknown ID>, Xenix BBT and HPFS/QNX/AUX are either wrong and/or outdated. Also, the cyl, hd and sec values are no longer used by macOS or Windows so you can ignore these values.

The final command quit writes the table back to the MBR, then quit fdisk. This is shown below.

fdisk:*1> quit
Writing current MBR to disk.
Device could not be accessed exclusively.
A reboot will be needed for changes to take effect. OK? [n] Y

As the above message suggests, it would be a good idea to restart the Mac.

Solution Using a Third Party Tool

The command gdisk is a third party tool that can be used to avoid having to manually enter the partition values from the GPT. You can download gdisk from this SourceForge website. Once booted to macOS Recovery, you would need to enter the command given below.

/Volumes/HARDISK/usr/local/bin/gdisk  /dev/disk0

  Note: I assume the name of your macOS boot volume is HARDDISK. If not, make the appropriate substitution.

An example of your input to gdisk is given below.

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.3

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): r

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): h

WARNING! Hybrid MBRs are flaky and dangerous! If you decide not to use one,
just hit the Enter key at the below prompt and your MBR partition table will
be untouched.

Type from one to three GPT partition numbers, separated by spaces, to be
added to the hybrid MBR, in sequence: 2 3 4
Place EFI GPT (0xEE) partition first in MBR (good for GRUB)? (Y/N): y

Creating entry for GPT partition #2 (MBR partition #2)
Enter an MBR hex code (default AF): ac
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): n

Creating entry for GPT partition #3 (MBR partition #3)
Enter an MBR hex code (default AB): ab
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): n

Creating entry for GPT partition #4 (MBR partition #4)
Enter an MBR hex code (default 07): 07
Set the bootable flag? (Y/N): y

Recovery/transformation command (? for help): w

Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
PARTITIONS!!

Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): y
OK; writing new GUID partition table (GPT) to /dev/disk0.
Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Warning: The kernel may continue to use old or deleted partitions.
You should reboot or remove the drive.
The operation has completed successfully.

As the above message suggests, it would be a good idea to restart the Mac.

Final Thoughts

If you Mac still fail to boot to Windows, then you will need to rebuild your Windows boot code. For this you will need a flash drive you used to install Windows 7. Let me know if you need instructions.

If you read all the way down to this point, I might as well mention the other problem. Your Recovery HD partition is not suppose to be 87.8 GB in size. This has nothing to do with Windows, but I thought I should point it out.


How do I lock my mac without the screen going dark or going to the screensaver? When I used Alfred's Lock command my mac locks and shows a screen with a password prompt. I want to know if I can do this on machines that don't have Alfred installed. Is there a way to do by perhaps creating an automator service?

You can create an Automator workflow with a Run Shell Script action containing:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu\ Extras/User.menu/Contents/Resources/CGSession -suspend


script works in Script Editor but not as app (MacOS Mojave) The following Script works as expected in Script Editor:
tell application "System Events"
    set nord to menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2 of application process "NordVPN IKE"
    ignoring application responses
        click nord
    end ignoring
end tell
do shell script "killall System\\ Events"
tell application "System Events"
    set nord to menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2 of application process "NordVPN IKE"
    tell menu 1 of nord
        if exists menu item "Disconnect" then
            click menu item "Disconnect"
        else
            click menu item "Connect"
        end if
    end tell
end tell

When I export it to a .app and double click on it to execute, I get the following error:

Can’t get «class menE» 1 of «class mbri» 1 of «class mbar» 2 of «class pcap» "NordVPN IKE" of application "System Events". Invalid index.
System Events got an error: Can’t get menu 1 of menu bar item 1 of menu bar 2 of application process "NordVPN IKE". Invalid index. (-1719)

How can I change the script so it works as a .app?
Thanks

You need to do two things in order to get this to run:

First of all you need to make sure System Events itself has permissions in the Accessibility preference pane.

Secondly, you should add a delay after clicking the menu item to give it time to load.  That ultimately is what is causing the index error, because the menu hasn't propagated yet and it's trying to access items in it.  Change your script to the following:

....
        click nord
    end ignoring
end tell
delay 0.3
do shell script "killall System\\ Events"
....


Can I turn off display on my macbook when I'm using extended display, without closing the lid? I'm using MacBook's keyboard to work on it, but I'm also using the extended display for work. I'd like to turn off the MacBook's screen without closing the lid while using the external display.
My searches so far have revealed that this is not supported (unless I mess with some terminal commands, which I don't want to as I'm a relative newbie with Macs), but I'm wondering if I may have missed some source? Can anyone advise?

A hacky and simple way to achieve this: 1. Turn on "Mirror Displays" in display settings and 2. Turn down the brightness on your laptop all the way down to zero.


Do I need a voltage converter for Japan, for MacBooks or USB devices? Japan uses 100V; I will be in parts of the country using both 50Hz and 60Hz. Will I need a voltage converter for a) a MacBook power supply, b) a standard AC-to-USB plug? I live in the U.S.

The MacBook power supply is rated for 50-60hz and 100-240V. The 5W USB also falls within these specs.

You can confirm your own devices by looking at the power brick and reading the input section. (See image below.)

The non-polarized, ungrounded, two prong US plug style works in Japanese outlets, so an Apple 5W USB charger will fit without an adapter. The MacBook charger will work if you use the two prong attachment instead of the grounded, three prong extension.

You do not need a voltage, frequency, or plug-shape adaptor in Japan with a US MacBook power supply and iPhone/iPad USB power supply.

Note that while the standard US two prong plug fits in a Japanese outlet, you still have to make sure that the device can use 100V, 50/60Hz power. Different devices and brands have different requirements. Be careful to confirm the input voltage and frequency of your power supply. Using a power supply on a power system that is out of range can cause damage to your device.


How can app file be treated as a file in Package Explorer for Mac OS X? Can I customize Package Explorer to treat a folder as a file?

Actually, I want to keep a .app file in my project as a file. But when I keep it in Eclipse, it is treated as folder.

Can I change this behavior of Eclipse for Project Explorer? Actually my .app is a file for Mac OS, so it should be treated as file only, which is unfortunately not.

Can I change it programmatically?

This is also posted on Stack Overflow. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11035519/eclipse-how-can-app-file-be-treated-as-a-file-in-package-explorer-for-mac-os

Can anyone add an eclipse tag also here? I can't as I have less than 300 reputation.

You can't talk Eclipse into treating app bundles as files.

Mac apps are actually "bundles", which are special folders, not files. The Finder treats them as files, but anything that uses lower-level file system APIs will see a .app file as the folder it actually is.

If you look at the appify script on Github, you can see that just making a few plain folders in a specific structure will cause the Finder to treat them as a file.


Can I skip the downloading of the Windows support software if I already have it? Yesterday I was facing a problem that Boot Camp Assistant was stuck on copying Windows files but that problem is solved now. After that copying files Boot Camp Assistant is showing that it is "Downloading Windows support software". I have already downloaded this Windows support software on my MacBook, therefore is there any way to skip this process?

Unticking the option is grayed out unfortunately.

If you are creating a Windows install disk then you can't unselect the option to download the Windows support software. Boot Camp Assistant, whilst creating the boot disk, will copy the relevant support software into the install media. This process requires a copy of the Windows support software which it will download from the internet.

There is currently no way to use your own copy of the support software if you create a boot disk. If you already have the boot disk, you can just select the option to install Windows, in which case you can use your own copy of the Windows support software.


How do I use the defaults command with App Groups? In OS X Yosemite it's possible to have preferences that are shared between multiple apps that are in the same App Group. On the development side of things it's as simple as setting up the App Group and then using [[NSUserDefaults alloc] initWithSuiteName:@"TEAMID.com.company.AppGroup"] instead of the usual [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]. These preferences get stored in ~/Library/Group\ Containers/TEAMID.com.company.AppGroup/Library/Preferences/TEAMID.com.company.AppGroup.plist.

What I'm trying to figure out is how to modify those preferences from outside of the app using the defaults command. So far the best I've found is this:

defaults write ~/Library/Group\ Containers/TEAMID.com.company.AppGroup/Library/Preferences/TEAMID.com.company.AppGroup PreferenceName -bool YES

This sort of works in that it modifies the correct .plist file and updates the preferences I tell it to. But it doesn't seem to be compatible with the caching that's used in Yosemite. As soon as the app tries to read the same preference, it reverts back to what was set previously.

Is there any way to make this work reliably?

As far as I've been able to determine there's still no proper way to do this. However, you can make it work by killing cfprefsd after using the above command. So I just use something like this in the Terminal app:

defaults write ~/Library/Group\ Containers/TEAMID.com.company.AppGroup/Library/Preferences/TEAMID.com.company.AppGroup PreferenceName -bool YES; killall cfprefsd

Not great, but better than nothing.

Update for macOS Sierra (10.12): Unfortunately using the file path doesn't seem to work anymore. Strangely it works on files that are elsewhere—like if I copy an App Group plist to the desktop—but I can't get it to work right on an App Group plist in its normal location.

It's worth noting that man defaults has included this note for a while:

  The defaults command will be changed in an upcoming major release to only operate on preferences domains. General plist manipulation utilities will be folded into a different command-line program.

Like I said though, this isn't an issue with arbitrary plists, it seems specific to plists in ~/Library/Group Containers/.


How do I extract the audio signal from displayport? I have a macbook pro with minidisplayport (MDP) out.  It's plugged into an external monitor.  Sometimes via MDP-to-DualDVI, and sometimes directly via MDP.  I'd like to extract the digital audio signal from the MDP connection.  I've seen cables that go from MDP to DVI+Audio.  I want a cable that goes from MDP to MDP+Audio so that I can feed the audio into something other than my Apple Cinema display (which has cruddy speakers).

Since I don´t assume anyone to ever build a mini DisplayPort to miniDisplayPort+Audio Adapter, and the option of going mini-DP<>Dual DVI<>mini-DP seems to be quite expensive and bulky, why don´t you simply use the optical audio from your MacBook Pro´s audio output?


Is an Erased, Stolen iPhone, Safe on iCloud? My wife's iPhone was stolen, and because our iCloud is connected via Family Sharing, I immediately put it on stolen mode and then erase mode to remove all the data once it came online.

I checked several hours later, and it showed that the iPhone had been erased, and currently, the iPhone is still under her iCloud.

My questions are:

Is it secure to keep it linked to her iCloud account? (Is there any risk of the iPhone being linked to her/my account again, and our information being accessed?)
Is it safer to remove it from my iCloud? (Will this allow the thief to reuse the iPhone?)
She has never backed-up her pictures with iCloud. Can she retrieve any of them?

It is secure to keep it linked to her iCloud. It will remain Activation Locked, which makes it unusable. The data is not at risk because you've deleted it from the device, remotely. If this had not been done and Lost Mode was activated, you could have located the device.
Removing it from iCloud will, enable the thief to use it.
If there are no backups, iCloud or local, there is no way to retrieve the pictures.


New Apple Photos app and iCloud: uploading archived libraries As my macbook doesn't have enough storage for my family photos and videos, every 1-2 years I'd start a new iPhoto library, and will place the old one on an external USB disk. I have 4-5 iPhoto libraries on an external disk now, altogether it's around 180gb.

Is there any way to upload everything into the new icloud storage? I want to be able to access photos repo from any idevice I have.

Merge them into one library (iPhoto Library Manager will do this job), then upload them to iCloud by designating the combined library as System Photo Library in Photos' preferences, after opening and converting it with Photos.
Another way to merge two or more libraries is described on the Apple site:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204414

  If you designate a new library as the System Photo Library and then
  turn on iCloud Photo Library, the photos and videos in the new library
  will merge with those already in your iCloud Photo Library. If you
  want to keep the contents of your photo libraries separate, don’t turn
  on iCloud Photo Library for more than one library in Photos.

Depending on upload speed, prepare for a very long wait.

And if you then/afterwards want it on your MacBook make a new empty Photos library on your internal hard drive and select it as "System Photo Library", enable iCloud Photo library and set it to optimized.  It will then download either originals, or optimised versions, depending on space available.


iPad 3, web pages and pixel-specified sizes The iPad 3 is a big step forward in screen resolution from earlier models, which is good.

However, I'm curious about how this interacts with webpages that specify the size of elements in pixels. If it took such instructions literally, presumably you would need a magnifying glass to read the results (or more practically, to use the zoom function on every page).

Does the iPad web browser take this into account and multiply specified sizes by some reasonable conversion factor to end up with element sizes that work well on the high-resolution screen?

According to Quirksmode, a "pixel" is "essentially an abstract construct created specifically for us web developers". In other words, yes - the iPad web browser, and other browsers (and other applications!) in the same situation handle this smoothly. You can read more about this in the QuirksBlog post.


With last update to MacOS 10.15 Pulse Secure VPN stopped working With last update to MacOS 10.15 Pulse Secure VPN stopped working. I suspect this is related to the update because several applications needed rights and permissions granted immediately afterwards. iTerm2 f.x. suddenly wouldn't let me list the content of the Download folder and required full disk access rights in "Privacy & Permissions". But so far I didn't find a corresponding permission for this case and the firewall is actually switched off.

Any ideas?

According to this thread on pulse secure community forum this should be resolved by 9.1R3.

It seems that this update has already started to roll out.

Edit: Just tested 9.1.3 (1313) and it works on MacOS Catalina.


How do I get iPad (iOS 7) to use the email aliases I have set up on gmail I have an iPad with iOS7. This is set up with 2 email accounts (gmail and ISP default).
I want to use the "Contact Us" option on one of my apps, but this offers me the options of using either of the mail logon email addresses.
I NEVER use either of these, and don't disclose these to anyone (so I can easily change when they get too much spam).

My question is how do I get the iPad to use the email aliases I have set up on gmail.

Try this in iOS 7: This works when you have an authenticated alias set up as your default in Gmail.

Settings → Mail, Contacts, Calendars → Add Account → Other

On "Account" Page:

Email: you@personaldomain.com
Password: Your personal domain password
Incoming Server: imap.gmail.com
Username: Your Gmail username
Password: Your Gmail password
Outgoing Server: pop.gmail.com
Username: Your Gmail username
Password: Your Gmail password


How do i add someone else's iPhone contact number to messaging on an iPad? How do i add someone else's iPhone contact number to messaging on an iPad?
I want to send something from iPad messages to messages on their iPhone

According Apple Suport

Send a message

Open the Messages app and tap  Compose button.
Enter a phone number or email address, or tap  Plus button and choose a contact.
Type your message, then tap Send.

Forward a message

Open Messages and follow these steps:
Touch and hold the message bubble you’d like to forward. Then tap More.
Enter a contact.


Can't mount back up drive on MacBook Pro I have an ADATA Classic CH94 back up drive I've had since 2012, along with my MacBook Pro. However after a minor Apple update I did through the App Store (I'm currently still on macOS High Sierra) I wasn't able to see my back up drive on my desktop when I plug it in.

I went into Disk Utility and saw it there, but the volume partition is greyed out and 'not mounted' appears. But, when I click on Mount, nothing happens.

I had this problem last year. However, Mount wasn't an option and Apple Support told me to erase the disk and I lost everything, although that didn't matter. What I have on it now would be useful to keep though.

Is my data safe on the drive? How can I fix this?

Running First Aid from inside Disk Utility might be the way to go. If it successfully repairs the volume it will mount it straight away. If it can't successfully repair the volume, it will attempt to mount it in a ready only form, and if it can you'll be able to copy things back off it before reformatting.

Depending how important your data on there is, you may want to look into software for data recovery first, or use the dd command to make a bit-for-bit copy of the whole disk so that if you can't get the disk to mount again, you have a copy of it's state, and you can run data recovery software over that to try put your files back together and recover them. dd will make a disk image the size of the whole disk though, so you will need somewhere with at least 500gb of space to store that.
An example of a dd to run in the terminal:

dd if=/dev/rdisk2 of=/Volumes/OtherExternalDrive/diskImage.img conv=noerror

if= is input file, which in this case is disk2 (based on your screenshot above). I use rdisk instead of just disk as it usually runs a bit faster (I looked into why a while back but can't remember now, but did test it out when I had an explanation and found it usually was about 40% faster at the time).
of= is the output file, which I've given the example of being on an external disk. (I'm assuming since this 500gb disk was your time machine backup, that your internal disk is also 500gb or less).
The output disk image will always be a .img file, if you specify for example .dmg, you when up with diskimage.dmg.img. .img is pretty standard so you shouldn't have much trouble with software reading it.
conv=noerror means if it received an I/O Error while reading the disk, it will continue trying to read the rest, instead of quoting halfway through. If you are getting a bunch of these, it may be worth trying a new USB cable, but if you still get them, the Hard Drive is failing.

If this is the second time the drive has become unmountable, then it does sound like something hardware might be going on, so if your USB cable if looking funky, you might need a new one, or the hard drive might be finally giving up.

Unless of course you often disconnect it without hitting eject, that will easily lead to filesystem issues ^_^

good luck!


Why is my 14 yr old listed as adult with my name on our account family sharing I opened up find my iPhone account between myself my daughter 15yrs old and son 14 yrs old. We all previously had our Apple ID numbers. I'm listed as organizer I'm 38 yrs old. My son is listed under adult and with my name MICHELLE BANCROFT not his own. What do I do?

First log in to Apple ID and update his birthday, name etc.

Second, log in to the organizer account and change the role for all accounts that are incorrect. If this is correct and still shows Adult, you can kick him from Family Sharing then invite him again as a non-adult. :) If you save their real birthdays, they will be picked up as minors/teenagers by their age (-18).

Check this post, for interest sake. :P

  Family Sharing and Apple ID for your child

At the bottom of Apple's support articles, there's a contact us link to get personalized support or you can start at http://apple.com/support


Unplugging iPad/iPhone Charger: Which end to unplug first? After charging an iPad or iPhone, which end do you unplug first: the one that's connected in the device or the charger end?

There really isn't any difference, there is no chance of anything bad happening regardless, although if you were particularly worried about this sort of thing, then frankly you would be better to turn the charger unit off at the wall socket first, after which it is utterly irrelevant (assuming you are using a wall charger).  If you are charging from a PC with no option to turn off the USB port as such, then you might have a preference depending on if you leave the cable in or not etc, but it's just that; a preference.


Is there a way to tweet from a keyboard command? I use CMD space a million times a day to find files, launch apps, etc.

Wouldn't it be cool if I could press a keyboard combination and get a box to send a tweet?  I know I can do it through notification center but I'm looking for a method that doesn't require me to leave the keyboard.

The official Twitter app lets you define a shortcut in its settings (Global new tweet):

As far as native Twitter integration goes, I really don't know :)


WiFi Problems on iTouch 2nd Gen Basically, it's still in great condition, and is a 32gb ipod. Everything works, except that the wifi is grayed out and doesn't work, at all, ever. Is there any way to fix this? I read somewhere that it was because it has iOS 5 on it, which doesn't like 2nd gen ipods. Would anyone know if this is possible to fix in any way, such as downgrading the OS or an even newer update?

ALSO: How hard is it to replace the volume buttons? Mine don't work 100% of the time, particularly the up one

This is relatively common for that generation (and 3rd generation). Typically, when the Wi-Fi goes out, the bluetooth will as well since they're on the same chip. Is that grayed out as well? If not, it can still be the Wi-Fi chip.

There's not really an easy fix for it. It's definitely going to be a swap out, especially with your volume button issue. You can take your iPod to the Apple Store and they'll give you a quote on a replacement. It'll probably be around $99.

Something else you could try is restoring your iPod Touch in iTunes. Make sure you set it up as a new device.


iTunes (version 12.3.1.23) doesn't play my TV Shows/Movies! iTunes doesn't play my tv shows or movies anymore. The timeline moves forward but the screen remains black and there is no audio! I already tried to deauthorise and reauthorise my macbook but nothing seems to work...

A lot of people are experiencing the same issue. It seems to have occurred after the most recent security update (for Yosemite 10.10.5 this is security update 2015-005. There is a discussion on apple support but nobody from Apple has bothered to respond yet. Deauthorization, moving files in and out of library, re-downloading videos from the iTunes store, etc. have not helped anyone. System logs indicate there is an error and those people who've posted the log passages on the error show that it seems to be the same among those experiencing the problem. Some people have advised downgrading to an earlier iTunes version. However, I'm figuring since a lot of people are experiencing it, Apple will have to come up with a fix that will cause less problems than a downgrade...


Mac app to show hard drive consumption/usage? Possible Duplicate:
  How can I find more disk space?

Is there a program or app that i can use to tell me where all of my hard disk space has gone? I'd like a graph (pie chart) if possible, but I prefer free/low cost over the aesthetics of such a program.

Disk Inventory X is a great tool for this. While its not a pie chart, it is a visual graph of your usage, as well as relative sizes to other files. Colors are also used to group like files together. I have used this a few times to find what was using up extra disk space.

Its free too.


Is there a sandboxing program like Sandboxie for Mac? With Sandboxie for Windows, you are able to run applications that you don't entirely trust in a sandbox; it tracks all files the program creates and modifies, and although the files technically go to the system, you can roll back the changes by deleting this sandbox. This removes all the files created by the program and restores modified files to their previous state. In a way, it's like a system restore when you restore the system to a previous point; in this case, it would only restore the files that the program in question affected, so is much easier to use. At least, that's how I understand it works.

On macOS, there are three(ish) ways to do this I know of:

Make a Time Machine backup, and then install the program. After using it, restore from the backup and everything will come out intact as it was before.
Use a VM to run it in; however, I'd like to avoid doing this as it complicates matters greatly
Use AppCleaner to remove files the program left behind. However, this doesn't do anything for files the program (perhaps maliciously?) modified, and if you install a program with administrative privileges or a package, it most likely will install files in the system that AppCleaner won't be able to get out. Also, I'm not sure if it is 100% accurate for normal apps, anyway.

So is there any way to do this on a Mac without using a VM?

MacOS has a build in Sandbox feature which may help you but does not exactly have the same functionality as Sandboxy.

This Paolo Fabio Zaino's Blog post from 2015 explains how to run Applications in a Mac OS X sandbox. He summarizes it this way:

  by using sandboxing, you can restrict access an application can have to operating system resources like filesystem or network etc…

Quoting his Blog Post:

  How to sandbox an application?

  First of all, to let Mac OS X to know which resources your application
  requires to being able to run properly we need to create a sandbox
  configuration file. This activity will require some time and testing
  because each application has different requirements

  Here is an example (change MyApp with your application name):

;; This is my first sandbox configuration file!
(version 1)
(deny default)

;; Let's allow file read and write in specific locations and not
;; all over my filesystem!
;; Please note you can add more (regex "^/Users/user_name/xxxxxxxxxxx") lines depending
;; on what your MyApp needs to function properly.
(allow file-write* file-read-data file-read-metadata
  (regex "^/Users/user_name/[Directories it requires to write and read from]")
  (regex "^/Applications/MyApp.app")
  (regex "^(/private)?/tmp/"))

;; You can also add a sperate section for reading and writing files outside your
;; user_name account directory.
(allow file-read-data file-read-metadata
  (regex "^/dev/autofs.*")
  (regex "^/System/Library")
  (regex "^/Applications/MyApp.app")
  (regex "^/usr/lib")
  (regex "^/var")
  (regex "^/Users/user_name"))

;; If your MyApp requires to access sysctl (in read)
(allow mach* sysctl-read)

;; If you want to import extra rules from
;; an existing sandbox configuration file:
(import "/usr/share/sandbox/bsd.sb")

;; If you want to decide in which filesystem paths
;; MyApp is forbidden to write:
(deny file-write-data
   (regex #"^(/private)?/etc/localtime$"
     #"^/usr/share/nls/"
   #"^/usr/share/zoneinfo/"))

;; If your MyApp wants to run extra processes it's be allowed to run only
;; child processes and nothign else
(allow process-exec
  (regex "^/Applications/MyApp.app"))

;; If your MyApp requires network access you can grant it here:
(allow network*)

  Once we have done with our sandbox configuration file for our
  application, we can simply execute it using the following command from
  the command line:

sandbox-exec -f myapp-sandbox-conf /Applications/MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS/MyApp-bin

  Where myapp is the name of the application you want to run in a
  sandbox.

  If my generic sandbox file will be too generic for you and you want
  more practical examples (already implemented) then run your terminal
  application and have a look to all the examples already kindly
  provided by Apple:

ls /usr/share/sandbox

  In this directory you’ll find plenty of files like

sshd.sb

  To look into and have more insight/tutorial to write your own sandbox
  configuration file for your specific application.