Can't update Xcode even with 19gb free space I have an available update for Xcode that is in the 7gb range, and when I try to update I get an alert saying there isn't enough disk space - I checked my space and I have 19gb available (of 120gb).

Is this correct, or some kind of error? It seems like I have more than enough space.

Update: I deleted some earlier device support files and I now have 24gb free space and I still don't have enough space for the update. I feel like something's amiss here, as the update is only 7gb - I'm not sure if I should keep deleting things to free up space - will it even make a difference?

Update 2: I restarted my computer with 24gb free space and when I clicked Update, the update seemed to go forth and download - however when the download completed, the button switched back to "Update". When I clicked on it again, I got the "not enough space" alert again - even though now I have 26.5gb free space. I restarted again and keep getting the same message. Truly don't know what's going on here! Here's a screenshot, as requested, of my storage window:

Update 3:

Screenshot after running df -h in terminal as per request:

You might be close, but I downloaded from the developer website and I had  freed ~22 GB.

Try freeing up some more, like cache or movies you have watched, or software you don't use.

How can I figure out what's slowly eating my HD space?
Reduce size of the Xcode application
Gigabytes of disk space shown as hidden space in DaisyDisk


How can I get Time Machine to back up the contents of a FileVault while logged in? Disclaimer: this question and answer are targeted to the Snow Leopard implementation of FileVault where the user home folder is only encrypted in a bundle. Lion's implementation of FileVault doesn't limit Time Machine thusly.
I'm currently using Time Machine to back up my MacBook. However, I had to disable FileVault in order to be able to back up when I'm logged in (which is all the time). Recently, this decision has been nagging at me, and I've been looking for ways to re-enable FileVault or some other similar encryption while still retaining my ability to routinely back up via Time Machine or other similar backup scheme.
I found a note on Wikipedia that it's possible to back up with FileVault if the destination is Mac OS X Server:

With Mac OS X Server as a Time Machine destination:

backups of FileVault home directories occur whilst users are logged in.

Unfortunately, this tidbit is not externally sourced and I've been unable to find any other place where this is mentioned. Is this true? Does anyone have experience with it?
If not, what other solutions are there, either for 'tricking' Time Machine to back up the contents of a FileVault, other Time Machine-compatible encryption systems, or FileVault-compatible backup systems? If it matters, I don't need to have the backup itself encrypted, just the MacBook.

It is possible to backup your FileVaulted home directory with Time Machine while logged in. The files will be stored unencrypted in the Time Machine volume, just like other files. I've written a blog post explaining the whole process here.


Leave iPhone unlocked for a few seconds after closing With Face Id, the moment the screen blanks out or the moment I press the side button the screen is locked. This ends up being extremely annoying. I unlock the phone, set it on the table, hands are mostly full, screen fades out, I spring to touch the screen but am 0.00001 seconds late. Phone is now locked and I have to put the stuff I'm holding down and physically pick up the phone so that it can see my face just to continue what I was doing.

Similar annoyances happen when wearing a face mask either beacuse it's cold or to avoid spreading/catching a cold (I live in Japan where face masks are common). Mask needs to be off to unlock with Face Id, if the phone locks there's no buffer off a few moments before I have to either take off the mask or else type in the code. Have this happen a few times in a row and I'm ready to smash the phone into a million pieces.

Is there a way to set a 1-5 second delay until the phone actually locks after the screen fads out or even accidentally tapping the side button? Touch Id had (has?) an option to keep the phone unlocked for a brief amount of time which was so much more user friendly in this area. Does the same option exist for Face Id?

In the Face ID & Passcode settings, you could set it to lock after 1, 5, 15 minutes or 1, 4 hours after the screen goes black.

Additionally, you should be able to create an alternative appearance for Face ID to include your Face when you have your mask on? I've set 2 appearances, one with glasses and one without. You may have to reset the Face ID to set up additional appearances though.

Hope this helps.

Edit

Here's the screenshots in the Face ID & Passcode settings where you can set the time it locks after the screen goes black.


Unexpected files showing up with tar on OS X 10.6.4 When packing and unpacking a tar file on OS X today, I find myself looking at things like:

tar tzf ../tanuki-3.5.6.tar.gz
./._.
./
./._bin

I don't think I've ever seem these extra files starting with a '.' before. If I x the file, ls -a does not show them. What are they?

They're resource forks. The Mac's filesystem supports multiple forks, and some Mac files have two, a data fork and a resource fork. Most file systems don't support multiple forks, so tools will split the resource fork into a separate file prefixed with ._.


upgrade to macOS high sierra, bootcamp win10 disk exists but can not prompt when turn on the power I just upgrade my mac mini to macOS high sierra.
Before, when I turn on the power, there is the option for me to choose boot from Windows 10 or macOS.
but right now, it boots and enters macOS directly.
I checked and found that BOOTCAMP disk still exist,
all content of the bootcamp hard disk appeared and nothing removed.

Is there any way to activate/import the existed bootcamp disk and add the option for Windows 10/macOS when turn on the power?

If you just want the option when needed, hold the alt/opt key doing boot, it’ll let you choose which OS you want to boot...


Why is my Macbook Pro getting so slow? On my MacBook Pro (Year 2009) it takes a long time until I'm logged in or until when a program is started. From day to dayit's getting slower.
Programs like Safari or Word or MonoDevelop take up to 2 min until it's started.

Would it be Win95/98/XP, I would reformat and reinstall everything.
But what are the possibilites with a Mac and OS X?
Is there a performance monitor?

Thanks for any hints.

My Mac has:
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8GHz, 4GB RAM

There could be several things here that are creating the lag time, but there is never a need to reinstall everything.

Plan A: I actually do these things on the first Monday of every month

Purge Caches: Macintosh HD/Library/Caches/ and Macintosh HD/Users/UserName/Library/Caches/. You lose some of your application preferences, but things are all but guarenteed to be snappy.

Repair Permissions with the Disk Utility: You can either view permissions or fix permissions. Just go straight for fixing permissions and get a cup of tea and read a magazine while you wait.

Reboot on a regular basis: I don't care what anybody says about uptime; the occasional reboot does wonders. My Macs are real workhorses, and I reboot Monday mornings when I get in. I rarely, if ever these days, have problems.

Plan B: The Not So Obvious

Let Spotlight index when it finds new stuff: Spotlight makes for good searches, but it's indexing processes are a real hassle. If things slow down, I first look for the little dot in the magnifying glass in the menu bar icon. If that's going, I go get a cup of coffee or find something else to do.

Look for background services you may have forgotten: Also, look for any background processes that may be dragging things down. Look at your login items in the System Preferences, because maybe you have some kind of a server daemon that loads in the background you forgot about. Or maybe you have your iTunes library shared and enough people are on listening to content to slow things down (this was also a problem at my company).

Check free hard drive space: I have also noticed in the past that things can slow down if I don't have enough hard drive space. Things really get wonky on my Macs when I have less than 10% free space, so I start cleaning things off when I am at the 20% free space threshold.

Plan C: System Level

Look for multiple, related processes: Check Activity Monitor for anything that might be hogging CPU time. Don't just look for a single process that has a high number, but also look multiple processes that might be related. I recently had a problem with McAfee AntiVirus (my company's IT department foisted it onto us) trying to almost continuously scan my iDisk. No process got above 2%, but there were over a half dozen of them. Once I disconnected my iDisk, McAfee was no longer a problem.

Let overnight processes run: Most days I leave my Macs on all day and all night because there a number of system processes that run at around 2:00a, Sunday mornings being especially important (that's when the weekly and monthly processes run). Do a quick reboot and all should be well.

Plan Z

Apple Certified Technicians are your friends: Third-party system maintenance software is not. I've been working with Macs for years and the one immutable fact that I have learned is that applications designed to help maintain the system are more trouble than they are worth. When all else fails, take it in because there may be a hardware problem at this point.


Issue encrypting my Seagate drive with Disk Utility on macOS Sierra 10.12.6 I'm unable to encrypt an external hard drive because the encryption option seems to be missing. Various answers pointed to doing something with the 'Partition' button, but that button is greyed out. To solve the greyed-out issue, evidently, I first need to click on the 'view' button, but I have no view button!

(Specifically, I don't see a view button on my screen and the partition tab is greyed out.)

You will not be able to do this if the disk is formatted as FAT, FAT32, or EXFAT. In order to encrypt the disk, it has to be HFS or APFS.

You will need to format the disk to HFS or APFS and then you can encrypt. When formatting, there should be an option to format as APFS Encrypted or macOS Extended Encrypted. You can select either one of those or you can encrypt after formatting.

Good luck!


MBA camera or iPhone camera for analysing tennis shots in slow motion? I want to practise tennis shots and see how I am doing. I want to use the MBA camera in my laptop or iPhone for this. How can I do it? Some apps for this purpose?

Please keep the focus on Apple products, photography-oriented answers here.

The MBA build in cameras wont do high rate frames per second needed for your purpose.

They are a web camera type and the CCD/CMOS chip is not of a kind that can do that, regardless of the software.

iSight is a webcam, with video capture at 30 frames per second in 24-bit color.

On the iPhone there is a chance since it has an improved camera:

The iPhone 5s has a 120-frames-per-second slow-motion video mode and precision autofocus matrix metering.

Sport events would use 300 FPS on a professional level with high resolution.


Unusual problem regarding old water damage, new battery not charging macbook air mid 2011 I have quite strange problem. I had some water damage on my computer few month ago. After it dried completely computer worked only when I unplugged the battery but if I unplugged the charger my computer was resetting itself (date and time were resetting, it took much longer to load)meaning that it had to be always charged in order to work. So I decided to buy new battery. After I inserted it the magsafe charger didnt work but the battery did (it was on the 50%). I tried also with two other chargers with no success. So computer was working just until my battery didn't drained completely. I did SMC reset wich didn't help. After I unplugged the battery computer worked again. What do you think is causing the problem? Can I do something to repair it? Is it wise to buy another new battery? Could it be a problem with a magsafe board or with a logic board? Can I replace these parts by myself and what are the costs?

Thank you for your help,

Greets

I'm summarizing your points, for my own reference and in case I misunderstood a point. Please point out any errors in my interpretation.

Water damage, computer only works when unplugged battery
But unplug charger, computer resets date and time, longer load
Thus, always needed 100% charge
Bought a new battery
But with this, the charger no longer works, battery does
Tried two other chargers, no joy
And with the battery, could use computer until battery drained completely

Okay, with that summarized, I would suggest that there were two-or-more connectors (i.e., problems) that developed oxide as a result of the water damage.

One problem was related to the original battery, which you disconnected.

Second problem was revealed when installing a new battery, which revealed there was still an issue that was not specifically the battery. And you've confirmed that this issue isn't caused by the charger.

For your reference, here's a Teardown of Apple's Magsafe connector, in case of use to you.

I can see that you like to work with electronics, so I won't discourage you from doing repairs because you know the risks. However, if you ultimately send the unit in for repairs, then know that the technician will recognize the unit as a problem because "someone" had a go at repairs (i.e., potential problems introduced).

Good luck.


Turning of indexing on Time Machine Volumes Spotlight is using a lot of CPU on my computer and I am tracking down why it is a problem.
I suspect it had something to do with time machine has I have a soft correlation to leaving my time machine drive plugged with spot light continually using CPU.
So I ran this command and it reports that spotlight is indexing my TM volume:
% mdutil -s "/Volumes/MBP15 Time Machine"
/System/Volumes/Data/Volumes/MBP15 Time Machine:
    Indexing enabled.

How do I turn off indexing of my time machine volume without having to run the command everytime I plug in my TM disk?
I tried adding it to the privacy tab and got this error:

I also tried to add the TM back up drive directly and got this:

You can't. Spotlight is an integral part of Time Machine.
https://eclecticlight.co/2016/06/20/you-cannot-turn-off-spotlight-indexing-on-your-time-machine-backup/
As quoted there, Apple support pages used to say:
If you add a Time Machine backup disk to the privacy list, you will continue to see messages that Spotlight is indexing your backup disk. This indexing is necessary for Time Machine to function properly and can’t be disabled. Spotlight does exclude from searches any items you store on your backup disk that are not part of a Time Machine backup.
(Though they have rewritten them all for Catalina.)
So the real issue is not how to stop Spotlight from indexing, but work out why it's using so much CPU, and how to mitigate that. Sometimes, Spotlight needs to ramp up for a bit, but if it's happening more regularly, or constantly, then that might be a symptom of a problem with the backup's integrity.
Or it could just be that you're backing up thousands of small files every hour which require lots of processing, or a symptom of the drive being too full, or possibly too slow. Or something else. ;-)


How do I set up Apple Mail to show me e-mail priority? When somebody sends me an e-mail that is marked as "High priority" it does not show up any differently than other e-mails.  I am expecting to see a red flag or other indicator to show that the e-mail has been marked by the sender (which could, for instance, be my boss) as more important or urgent and in need of immediate attention.  Other e-mail clients I have used in the past did this automatically.

I have poked around a bit in the preferences and in the menus but I haven't found anything to enable such a feature.  How do I enable Apple's default mail app to show me the information in the overview of my messages? (My mail window comes up with mailboxes/folders on the left, followed by a list of e-mail summaries (sender, date, subject, and the first few words of the e-mail) to the right of that, and on the right is the actual contents of whatever message is selected.  I don't see any indication of priority anywhere.

Technical note: the sender is setting the following headers to indicate priority:

X-Priority: 1 (Highest)
X-MSMail-Priority: High
Importance: High

My recommendation is to use Apple Mail's rules to customize how you want these displayed—you can make them stand out even more than a simple !! in the message list by setting up a Rule in Preferences:

In this case, specify that you want to apply the rule to messages with high priority. Then choose the formatting that you want. I chose to list messages with a red background. When new messages arrive with a high priority, they got a red background in the message list.


Is there any way to re-enable the “old style” iTunes metadata editing window in version 12.1.0.50? Short Question: Versions of iTunes 12 previously allowed users to use the “old style” iTunes metadata editing window layout when clicking alt/option and selecting “Get Info…”. That has seemingly disappeared with a recent update to iTunes 12; specifically version 12.1.0.50. Is there any way to re-enable the “old style” metadata editing window in this new version of iTunes 12.1.0.50.

Long Question: So, when iTunes 12 was released the interface was changed a bit; which is expected. But unlike older releases, it included a change to the metadata editing window which made it more compact and altered the user experience.

Some of us still like the “old style” editing window layout and the user experience connected to it. Heck the “old style” window has been like that for years. But prior to iTunes 12.1.0.50—and still using iTunes 12—one could access the “old style” metadata editing window by doing a “Get Info…” on media while holding down the alt/option. This blog post explains the simple trick nicely and below is a screenshot of the “old style” metadata editing window for reference.

Now with iTunes 12.1.0.50 it seems that this somewhat hidden—yet easy to access—functionality is gone. Unless I am missing something? Does anyone know how to reenable the “old style” metadata editing window in iTunes 12.1.0.50? Or is it simply gone and ripped from the core code forever?


What software is this in my menubar? Right beside the Alfred icon, there's a small up and down arrow indicating bandwidth upload and download speeds.

I remember downloading and installing something for this, and now I can't remember the name of it. I'm trying to enter the settings for it and also add in the RAM tickers.

Any ideas on what software causes the up/down icons next to the black hat icon?

That program is MenuMeters, available at http://www.ragingmenace.com/


Why does OS X want me to "upgrade" from El Capitan to Yosemite Beta 4? This is just silly:

If I try accepting (no, I wouldn't go through with it), it just says that the update is unavailable.  So why does it ask me to downgrade, and how do I get rid of this?

The App Store can get confused for several reasons. I find it silly as well when it's confused but untangling things is a bit prickly and removes the humor in most cases :-(

The first and most likely is that somewhere on your filesystem an older version of the Yosemite installer exists and the store is seeing an "update" to offer. It's not really designed for the case where a downloaded app then installs the OS and clearly doesn't contemplate that the installer you "update" will in fact not run since downgrades do not happen by design on OS X.

Here are some of the various situations where clearing caches might help as well if you can't find the app itself and compress/delete/move it to a folder where Spotlight does not index it:

How can I hide / remove updates from the Mac App Store?
Remove application from App Store's Update section
How to remove deleted app from OS X update list?

My personal favorite is to edit the App itself to remove the _MASreceipt files that indicate an app came from the Mac App Store itself:

How can I opt out of updates for one app when using the App Store?
Mac App Store - how to check which account was used to buy app


Why do some Unicode text messages crash the iPhone OS? Recently a new "glitch" has surfaced over the Internet over the last few weeks where if an iPhone user is sent:

  effective.
      Power
           لُلُصّبُلُلصّبُررً ॣ ॣh ॣ ॣ
 冗

via iMessage it crashes the phone OS temporarily and force restarts the receiving phone.

Why does this work?

If you need a fix for this, use Siri or a Mac using iMessage to send yourself a new message. See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204897

It's a three step procedure to recover and a future software update will patch this bug.

Ask Siri to "read unread messages."
Use Siri to reply to the malicious message. After you reply, you'll be able to open Messages again.
If the issue continues, tap and hold the malicious message, tap More, and delete the message from the thread.

As to why it happens, it's a specific bug in the way Notification Center renders the Unicode content of this message. The code performs an "unsafe" operation (something akin to 5 divided by 0 and then doesn't check for an unexpected results) that causes an unhandled error.

Then since Notification Center can not render the block of text and ultimately crashes the Springboard which didn't have code to handle this failure gracefully.
When no specific error handler is present, most operations have a fail safe "reboot yourself" to try and remedy the error.

Unicode is a way of encoding characters used to handle languages that have a greater character count than English. Programmers can have problems with it because they learned to program using ASCII text and they neglect to write their software with full Unicode support.

One good article on this explains "if you're still programming that way, you're not much better than a medical doctor who doesn't believe in germs".

This other article explains this specific situation well.

Apple could either do tighter code reviews, have specific unit tests or let end users fuzz test their code like in this and similar cases.


How can I play music while chatting in Google Hangouts? I want to play music while chatting in Google Hangouts and let both parties hear it, as well as our talking.

I'm using Apple earbuds with a built-in (external) mic on a MacBook Pro from about 2009.  Conversation works fine, and when I play iTunes or something in QuickTime, I hear it through the earbuds, but the person I'm talking to can't.

Enter Audio MIDI Setup, an Apple utility in OS 10.6.8 (in my case).  It lets me create an Aggregate Device, which can be used for input or output or both, but I can't find the magic combination to achieve the goal stated above.  Can Audio MIDI Setup do this?

What you need is an audio loopback.  Basically, what it does is it takes the output from one device and "loops it back" to the input of another device.

You're in luck.  There's an App that does that and coincidentally, it's called "Loopback."

Macworld has a good article on it and apparently, it's rated quite high.


What does 'Terminal' derive from? In Cambridge Dictionary, terminal has two meaning separately reference to computer and electrics.

  1) Computer, a piece of equipment consisting of a keyboard and screen, used for communicating with the part of a computer system that deals with information
  2) Electricity, the point at which a connection can be made in an electric circuit

Which does 'Terminal' on MacOS derive from?

The first definition, as it relates to computers. See Computer terminal on Wikipedia.

  A computer terminal is an electronic or electromechanical hardware device that is used for entering data into, and displaying or printing data from, a computer or a computing system. The teletype was an example of an early day hardcopy terminal, and predated the use of a computer screen by decades.

As @8None1 elaborates in the comments below, the MacOS "Terminal" is more accurately a "terminal emulator" as described in the same Wikipedia article, since a terminal is a piece of hardware while the "Terminal" app is software that emulates that hardware.


How can I map the "Eject" key on a Microsoft keyboard or create a new shortcut for locking my screen? I like using Control + Shift + Eject to lock my screen quickly. The Eject key does not exist on my Microsoft keyboard, and there does not seem to be easy way to do map another key to that key through System Preferences.

How can I map a key on my Microsoft keyboard to the Eject key?
Otherwise, how do I create a new shortcut for locking my screen?

I don't know how to map a key to the Eject key, but you can easily create a new shortcut with Automator and Services:

Open Automator in the Applications folder.
Choose Service:

Select Utilities and drag Run AppleScript to the right pane:

Configure, on the top right corner, that the service should receive no input in any application. Then paste this AppleScript script:

on run {input, parameters}
    do shell script "open /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Versions/A/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app"
end run

Save the service. Use a descriptive name, as it is the name that will appear in the Services menu. You can see in the screenshot above that I named the service Lock Screen.
Open System Preferences, select Keyboard and then the Shortcuts tab. Under General locate Lock Screen and assign a key shortcut to it. As you can see, I chose ControlCommandL:

The Lock Screen service is now accessible from any application as an entry in the Services menu:

Choose the service shortcut carefully to avoid conflicts with other applications' shortcuts.


Play Windows games on OS X I have a mid-2012 MacBook Pro (non-Retina). I was a Windows user from 2001 until May 11th, and I used to play a lot of casual games for Windows, e.g. Big Fish's Mystery case files series (Ravenhearst 1, 2, and 3, 13th skull, Dire Grove).

What do you recommend? Boot Camp or Wine?

Thank you in advance!

EDIT
What about WineBottler? http://winebottler.kronenberg.org/

I'd recommend WineBottler; I have about 30 apps and games that work great with Wine. A few pointers though:

Check the Wine Application Database for various apps. This shows what version of Wine, what winetricks you need and what workarounds may be required.

Disclaimer: I'm a super maintainer
Check the official system requirements for the program/game. For older games, this will state which version of .NET or other framework is required—make sure you select the same version in WineBottler to be installed in the new prefix.
For programs that don't work, you can create a blank prefix with various frameworks installed and try combinations of winetricks without needing a new prefix each time.


Can't log in to iTunes Connect : blank square? I haven't been able to connect to iTunes Connect for a few weeks... I have used Chrome on Linux and on a Mac. On Linux I see a white square on the login page after I log in, and on my mac the wheel keeps spinning for ever. Any idea?

Trying on Safari and a slightly bigger screen :
my password expired and the blank screen was on Safari a screen asking to update the password.


Can I set Lion scrollbars to always be off? (Except when a mouse is plugged in) I like the fact that scrollbars disappear in Lion, but only if I don't have an external mouse plugged in to my MacBook Pro.  Is there a way to have this behavior always be on?

I know I can set the vanishing scrollbars to be "always off", but I'm basically looking for a way to do the opposite.

Asked in other way: I know we can set the scrollbars to be Always On in the System Preferences, but looking for a way to do it Automatically NOT based on input device. I don't want to see a scroll bar unless/until a mouse is present on the system.

The option you mention in System Preferences does exactly what you say (or its behavior was changed since your question).

The first option, "Automatically based on input device" does what you want (I think, but I may have misunderstood your question). When you have a mouse plugged in, it shows the scrollbars. When you unplug your mouse, it will revert to the default of only showing scrollbars when you are scrolling.

I hope this answered your question. Please let me know if it doesn't, as I probably misunderstood what you are asking.


How to copy link in Google Docs app? I've got the Google Docs app installed on my iPad.  There is a link in this doc and I need to copy the URL to the URL field in a calendar event.  However, I can't figure out how to do this.
I have tried long tapping on the link.  This gives me the choices "Open Link", "Edit Link", "Remove Link", "Cut", "Copy", "Paste", and "Add Comment".  The "Copy" choice copies the text, not the URL of the link.  The "Open Link" option opens the link the Google Sheets app, which does not seem to provide a way to find the URL of the page that is open.  The "Edit Link" brings up a dialog containing a text field with the "Link" but I can't figure out how to copy it.   I can tap to move the cursor, but I can't bring up any sort of menu to copy or even select part of the URL either by tapping or long pressing.
How can I copy this link so I can paste it into the Calendar URL field?

When I open google docs on my ipad i get a listing off files. If I select a file, a sequence of three dots appears in the upper right corner. When I click on the three dots a menu opens with a list of options. One option near the bottom is "Share and export". Select this option. A new menu appears. The second option down is to copy link. Click this and link is copied to clipboard.
The steps are

open google docs
select file
Click on 3 dots in upper right corner
Click on "Share and Export"
Click on "Copy Link"


How to use a UNIX console app I downloaded a port knocking script from
http://www.zeroflux.org/projects/knock

It downloaded a file knock, which is a Unix Executable File. When I double click on it, it runs the Terminal, where it writes

Last login: Thu Nov  1 12:19:53 on ttys003
Admins-MacBook-Air-3:~ me$ /Users/me/Desktop/knock ; exit;
usage: knock [options] <host> <port[:proto]> [port[:proto]] ...
options:
  -u, --udp            make all ports hits use UDP (default is TCP)
  -v, --verbose        be verbose
  -V, --version        display version
  -h, --help           this help

example:  knock myserver.example.com 123:tcp 456:udp 789:tcp

logout

[Process completed]

But I would like to run it in Terminal using knock [options]. How do I do that?

First of all, I assume we're referring to the executable downloaded at http://www.zeroflux.org/proj/knock/files/knock-macos.tar.gz.

Most command-line executables like knock aren't designed to be double-clicked on in the Finder. Doing so simply executes the executable with no options, so this isn't what you want.

Instead, open a new Terminal window (using Spotlight or in the Finder from /Applications/Utilities/) and type in something like the following and press return:

/Users/me/Desktop/knock --version

Doing that should print out:

knock 0.5
Copyright (C) 2004-2005 Judd Vinet <jvinet@zeroflux.org>

Basically, when you type that stuff into the Terminal prompt, the Terminal executes /Users/me/Desktop/knock and passes it the --version option.

If you were to type in only the following and press return, you'd get the same "unwanted" output as before:

/Users/me/Desktop/knock


Stop the Outlook 2016 Reminders window from being "always on top" It looks like Outlook 2016's calendar Reminders window is set to "always on top" and there's nothing I can do about it. But that seems crazy. Googling isn't finding other people complaining of the same thing, and I can't find a setting for it, so I wonder if it's specific to my machine. Can anyone confirm?

Is there a way to force it to stop being always on top? Maybe an app that can change window behaviors? Or an AppleScript option?

If you switch to the Outlook app then Hide (⌘H) Outlook, the Reminders window will be hidden along with the rest of the app.

If you switch back to Outlook again the Reminders will return to being always on top, so it will occlude other apps again if you switch back away from Outlook other than by Hiding it.

(I figured this out from one of the far more numerous complaints about Reminders NOT interrupting work, where KiltedTim recommended not hiding Outlook)


Disable HTTP traffic on my entire computer Is it possible to prevent all HTTP (or any other unencrypted protocol) on my mac while connected to an insecure network (any network without a password)?

In Chrome, I'm able to use the extension HTTPS Anywhere and click "Block all HTTP requests", however other programs that might be running in the background could potentially be sending HTTP requests without my knowledge.

There is an application called SSL Enforcer (currently in beta) and works system-wide. It has 2 main modes of operation:

"Strict Mode" which forces https connections.
"Best Effort Mode" which will redirect to https when available.

I've tried it before, and found that when I set it to Strict Mode it broke some websites with mixed content. Here are the applications "Key Features" via its webpage:

  Works for all apps including browsers, plug-ins and any other Internet clients.

  No data leaks. Blocks unsecure connections on the system level starting from the very first request.

  Switches to secure connections (HTTPS) automatically if available.
  Flexible rules based on application name, target host and port.

  Does not use a tunnel or proxy server. Your traffic goes directly to the target with maximum speed.


Is there a way to limit external hard-drive random spin-up? I have 2 external USB drives connected to my iMac running 10.7.3.  One is designated completely for Time Machine use and the other I use for data. (Nothing but a bunch of JPGs on that one.) The first spins up once an hour for Time Machine backups, great.  But both of them spin up at random times while I'm doing, well, ordinary stuff, nothing disk-related.  Maybe just switching to another app in the dock, or surfing to a new web page.

Spin-ups for no clear reason are a bit annoying, but I can accept them as long as I can continue working. But in some cases, the spinning pizza cursor appears, and I'm locked out from doing anything while the cycle completes.  That does not make sense to me.  It's a multi (4) processor, fully multi-tasking system. All I/O should be asynchronous.  Finder/GUI operations should not be affected.

Any ideas why these random spin-ups occur?  How to search or instrument MacOS to find out why?  How to limit or stop them?

Disconnecting or un-mounting the external disks will work, but is not an acceptable fix.

This problem has been happening since January 2010, according to users on this Apple Discussion forum. While no fix has been identified, two potential culprits were identified:

Spotlight - one user (loayza) noted:

  I also have the issue (SL 10.6.8). I have an external drive to handle
  TimeMachine and every time I select "Open with" from the contextual
  menu it wakes it up. It's quite annoying! It seems disabling Spotlight
  solves the problem...

iStatPro - one user (jrawl004) noted:

  I found the culprit.  iStatPro.....I have a habit of tracking my
  system status while editing video and this program does a great job at
  keeping things up and reportig.  So everytime I made the slightest
  touch to my iMac or MacMini, it would awake everything so it can
  report.  I disabled the widget and low and behold, things became
  extremely quiet quickly.  That problem is solved for now....for me at
  least.

No solution was identified when checking Apple Support's KB.


Upgrade iPhone to current iOS minor release versus going to the new major release version? When updating my iPhone from settings the only option is iOS 13.X, however I am currently on 12.4.1 and want to simply go to the still current patch version 12.4.3 which came out just a few days ago.

Is there a way to make the phone go to the minor build update instead of forcing to 13.X? I want to avoid iOS 13 until a couple of fixes come out that address the major issues plaguing that update, but don't want to have current security holes in my current version.

There was a similar question here: Upgrade iPad to newer (but not latest) iOS but it had to do with a middle jump to an already revoked older version i.e going from 6 to 7, when 8 was the current version, so my question is different in that both versions are currently signed by apple.

Good question. My guess is that you can do it if:

you use iTunes
Apple is signing an '.ipsw' file for your iPhone model.

If I was trying to do this, I would look at https://ipsw.me/product/iPhone.

They seem to have a good / easy system for figuring out what is available for which iPhone.

Update:

If you have a 6s, it does not look like that model is supported. At least that is what I gather from looking at https://ipsw.me/12.4.3.

Update 2:

https://iosindex.com/iphone also reminded me that there are at least two versions of the iPhone 6s, the "GSM" version and the "everyone else" version. Their pages for each are linked below:

iPhone 6s (GSM)
iPhone 6s (Global)


messages are being sent which I am not aware from my I phone leading to deduction of balance I am not sending smses but am being charged for the sms being sent to some ISD number from my I Phone 4s. The number and message text supposedly sent does not appear in the sent items. How to stop messages being automatically sent to this number from my phone?
Service provider IDEA in UP.
Can anyone help solve this issue please?

It's best to contact your carrier for information about charges. They will know the specifics of your contract and options as well as help you by asking some questions like

What version of iOS are you running?
Are you using iMessage?

Your first step might be disabling SMS on the iPhone and then contacting the carrier to get further instructions. It really depends upon what number is sending the SMS and if you opted in to any subscriptions or got crammed or signed in to SMS on a web service of some sort.


Booting into safe mode without keys I have a jailbroken iPhone 6s running iOS 12.2. It was working well until I used Chimera to jailbreak and it went into a reboot and then got stuck in the Apple logo. (I used Chimera multiple times to jailbreak after a reboot and it had worked pretty well)

I have been trying to boot into safe mode with the volume up key but doesn't seem to work. I don't want to use iTunes to restore because it will upgrade to 12.4 and I won't be able to jailbreak it again.

Is there any other way to boot into safe mode other than the keys? Or is there a way to reset the iPhone with 12.2 itself?

After restarting into non-jailbroken mode, there is an option in the Chimera app to jailbreak with tweaks disabled. (this is Chimera's equivalent of safe mode)


How can I save Keynote presentations as an auto-playing slideshow? In MS PowerPoint users can save their presentations as a PowerPoint Show instead of a PowerPoint Presentation.

Besides changing the file extension from .pptx to .ppsx, this option means that upon opening the file it will automatically open in Slideshow mode rather than the typical PowerPoint editing mode. It also means the Slideshow can start playing automatically, so that it moves from slide to slide without user input (if it's been designed to do that).

Is there a similar feature in the Keynote app for macOS? If so, how do I use it?

The way this is done with Keynote is somewhat different to the PowerPoint approach.

Instead of having to save the presentation as a different file, you only need to change your presentation's settings within the Inspector.

Assuming you're talking about the latest version of Keynote on macOS, follow these steps:

Open your presentation in Keynote
Click on the Document icon at top right of the toolbar
Under Slideshow Settings, tick the Automatically play upon open checkbox
In the Presentation Type drop-down menu,  select Self-Playing
Now save your presentation

Now when you open it up it'll automatically play in presentation mode.

NOTE: Obviously you can play with these settings if you'd like to achieve a different outcome.


FileVault 2 caches main password even after power off? I had set up FileVault 2 encryption while using long&strong user password, and later changed user password to a shorter one. At first time it seemed like everything is working as I expect: OS X asks for long password at power on (because this password was used to encrypt everything), and later I can unlock my gear with shorter password.

But today I noticed that I can use short password even after the system was powered down. This seems very suspicious! Why did it happen and how can I make sure that when powered off, the system is protected by the long password?

I'm using OS X Mavericks 10.9.4.

FileVault should use whatever is the current password for your account. When you change your user accounts password, FileVault will be updated with the new password.

We can get what you want — a long FileVault password and a short user account password — by creating two user accounts.

When you first enable FileVault, only the user account that you use to start FileVault will be setup to unlock FileVault. You can use the FileVault System Preferences to add other accounts to unlock FileVault by selecting the user an entering their password.

After FileVault has been enabled, any new users created will automatically allowed to unlocking FileVault.

To achieve your goal of having a very strong FileVault password and an easier to use User password we need to create a User with a strong password specifically to unlock FileVault, and remove all other users from FileVault.

Lets say you have enabled FileVault. Your current account is frank, and you have made frank's user password easy to type.

Now create a new user account betty with a strong password. betty will be automatically added to unlock FileVault, and the only purpose of this account will be for unlocking FileVault, we will not need to actually use the account for anything else.

From the command line, we can list the users who are setup to unlock FileVault:

$ sudo fdesetup list
betty,########-####-####-####-############
frank,########-####-####-####-############

Here the #'s are the UUID

The FileVault System preferences allow you to add accounts to unlock, but you need to use the command line to remove users from this list. Let's remove frank :

$ sudo fdesetup remove -user frank

And verify that worked:

$ sudo fdesetup list
betty,########-####-####-####-############

Now only betty can unlock FileVault. (Well of course, there is also the Recovery Key.)

If you ever add another new user account, you will need to remember to remove them from FileVault.

Also, if you want to make sure that betty is used only for unlocking disk (prevent login), you can disable its ability to login by changing its login shell to /usr/bin/false as described in this answer.

Edit to add:

Check out Using fdesetup with Mountain Lion’s FileVault 2 which provides much detail about the fdesetup command.


What to do after you lost restriction code on the iPad? I guess the title says it all. I've the restriction code long time ago, and when I wanted to do actuall in-app purchase it turned out I cannot recall the password. Worse, now after 10 tries I have to wait 60 minutes before each consecutive tries.

The threads on forums are somehow misleading. Some of them claim the only way is to do fresh install and recover all the stuph manually. Some other people post some not entirely clear solutions involving restore from backup. Closest I got was the iPhoneBackupExtractor tool, which is suppose to read the plain text key code from the iPad backup. It worked to the point of getting hands on com.apple.springboard.plist. Unfortunately the password is not in this file.

Please keep in mind, this is about the "restriction code", not the main lock code. iPad if fully functional and the one feature blocked is in-app purchase.

What amaksoud said is true. I have the original iPad on 4.3.1 and after trying other advice decided to "read" the com.apple.springboard.plist.

Here's how to do it and no need to jailbreak.

Download iFunBox; it's free and works for OS X and Windows. Choose Raw File System and navigate to var/mobile/Library/Preferences. Select the file named com.apple.springboard.plist and choose copy to Mac (in my case). Copy the file to your preferred location.

Then in Finder you select the com.apple.springboard.plist (that you just copied to your Mac) and look for <key>SBParentalControlsPIN</key>. The 4 numbers located between the tag <string> </string> are your Restriction passcode.

For example <string>1234</string> means your passcode is 1234.

Hope this helps.


What causes 5 pink bars on 27" iMac (2011)? I've got a 27 inch iMac made in 2011 that displays 5 pink vertical bars on the screen. It won't boot properly. I ran the Apple Hardware Test and it came up clean.

Machine Specs:

Apple Subfamily:    Mid-2011
Apple Model No: A1312 (EMC 2429)
Model ID:   iMac12,2

I have had this problem.  It coincided with the iMac running very hot. It crashed and the pink stripes appeared. Every time I tried to start it, it stopped loading and rebooted. I thought it might be the video chip (I'm no Mac expert).  I gave up and left it for months then tried again, rebooting holding down the shift key and various other combinations of keys that I'd read about. This went on for hours but somehow the pink bars disappeared eventually, returned then went again. Eventually and to me, miraculously, the Mac started! I read somewhere that out of date software can make the Mac run too hot so I checked via the disk utility and found disused printer and scanner drivers using a lot of power so uninstalled them. Eventually after another crash or two and the stripes reappearing, I found that turning on holding down the shift key until the screen cleared, shutting down and starting again the OS loaded. It started running cooler and after shutting down correctly and restarting a few times all seems well (so far!). It has been like monkeys typing Shakespeare but I'm glad I didn't take the advice of a computer repairer I'd phoned who told me I should scrap the iMac (a near top of range 2011 model costing me £1600), take out the hard drive and put it in another Mac!  I hope this garbled account might give a little hope!


Catalina Finder: Show all windows as default behavior Being a Mac user since 1988, I am used to seeing several Finder windows open and dragging files between them. With the update to Catalina, switching to the Finder will only shown one window, regardless of the number of previously opened windows. Every time I now have to use the menu command to show all windows. That is slowing me down and a poor UI choice.

Now I wonder why there is no setting to show all windows per default. Note this question is not for a keyboard shortcut to show all windows (like in this answer) but for setting the Finder default to the correct behavior. Show all windows, right after command-tabbing to the Finder.

This is not the behaviour that I see (in 10.15.3), so I suspect the cause is likely to be some user settings, either for the Finder, or Mission Control.

The easiest way to check that a problem is cause by user settings is to create another user account, login there, and test the problem. If the problem does not occur in the fresh user account, then you know it's something in the original account's Library.

You could try deleting files from /Library/Preferences that seem relevant, like com.apple.finder.plist and com.apple.spaces.plist, com.apple.systempreferences.plist, and then restarting.

Note that you will obviously lose other parameters when doing this. If removing these files doesn't fix anything, you may wish to restore the old files.


Jailbreak iPad 3 ("the new iPad") iOS 9.1 Is it possible to jailbreak iOS 9.1 on an iPad 3, WiFi model? If not, I also have the possibility to update to iOS 9.3.5.

A beta of the Home Depot iOS 9.1-9.3.4 32-bit Mixtape Player supports your device on iOS 9.1.

There is no jailbreak for iOS 9.3.5, so take precautions with your jailbreak, especially since Prometheus does not support 32-bit devices.


Weird line wrapping in terminal with a colored prompt I have reason to think I've got improper escaping in my bash prompt (I get weird random line wrapping in Terminal).

Can anyone point it out? It looks OK to me...

export PS1="\033[0;35m\u\033[00m on \033[0;36m\h\033[00m in \033[0;33m\w\033[00m \$ "

Encase your colors in brackets [] so they count as non-printable characters.

export PS1="\[\033[0;35m\]\u\[\033[00m\] on \[\033[0;36m\]\h\[\033[00m\] in \[\033[0;33m\]\w\[\033[00m\] \$ "

Unfortunately, this results in well-known line wrapping issues that is plagued by bash.

There is good news everyone, the light at the end of the tunnel is tput.

echo $(tput setaf 6) This is cyan

Set all your variables first, then use it within the script.

mg=$(tput setaf 5);cy=$(tput setaf 6);yl=$(tput setaf 3);rs=$(tput sgr0); echo $mg $USER $cy $HOSTNAME $yl $PWD $rs

You can find an example script in my github dotfiles repo


How to activate mod_rewrite on MacOSX Lion I tried to activate the mod_rewrite module in the httpd.conf, but I do not succeed to make it work.
I'm running Lion, and my goal is to do URL rewriting in ~USER/Sites/mysite

Can someone help me please?

You need to add a conf file to the following dir

/etc/apache2/users/yourname.conf

<Directory "/Users/yourname/Sites/">
     Options Indexes MultiViews
     AllowOverride All
     Order allow,deny
     Allow from All
</Directory>


MacBook Pro showing prohibitory sign on start up MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Yosemite. On the start up my MacBook Pro is showing a circle with a line inside which is prohibitory sign. It goes no further. Tried but the Disk Utility.
Stuck with my OS X Utilities for couple of days. I tried the Disk Utility.  Finding the way out.

I tried to do an Internet Recovery.
Then I came to a window for install OS X. My current version is OS X Yosemite. I click to continue. It varieties computers eligibility, then I click agree to go forward. Next, it says select the disc where you want to install OS X. It won't let me install.
What's that mean?
Where is the problem? What to do?

You may need to erase the entire drive. Once you've booted to recovery, use disk utility to repartition your internal drive.

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH20571
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH20567

Bear in mind that repartitioning the drive will erase everything.  If you don't have a back up of your data and every app (iLife/iWork are not part of the OS) that you want to install, repairing the disc might be a better choice.


How to stop FaceTime and iMessage alert I have a data only sim which has poor signal at home. Every time my phone loses signal and gets signal again it displays this message.

Möglicherweise fallen vom Netzbetreiber SMS-Gebühren beim Aktivieren
von FaceTime und iMessage an.

which translates to
Your operator may incur SMS charges when you enable FaceTime and iMessage.

If I leave my phone for a long time it connects to the network maybe 30 times then I have 30 alerts to dismiss before I can use my phone.
I really don’t want to change my number as I’m only using a data only sim while in another country.

Whenever you lose your cell connection, and reconnect again, Facetime / iMessage may need to verify if your cellular network has changed and thus the SMS request pop-ups. (Nobody at Apple must have thought of your scenario of frequent disconnection as that is rare).
See this answer for a short term solution - and contact Apple support and report your issue so that they can hopefully fix it.


How to switch window with swiss german keyboard? I got used to switching between open windows in an application on my other mac (US keyboard: command + tilde.

This doesn't really work on swiss german keyboards, since the tilde is generated with: alt + n. Pressing command + alt + n behaves the same as command + n, that is, the applications tend to open new windows instead of cycling existing ones.

Any tips?

Never mind, I just figured it out by myself:

It turns out, on swiss german keyboards, the shortcut for cycling through windows is not command + tilde but instead command + backtick. The backtick is on the same key as caret, which is the first key to the left of the backspace key. Therefore, I need to press:

command + shift + ^


Safari fonts not displaying properly Safari 12.0
macOS Mojave version 10.14
MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports)

AS of today (2/11/2018) characters in Safari are being shown as boxed question marks.

The same websites are displayed perfectly in Firefox.

Emojis are not displayed in Messages main window but in the sidebar they are!

I have tried restore default fonts etc but no difference.

Any help appreciated.

My experience is to check the font in ‘font book’ one by one on preview display mode ⌘+1.
Just use up arrow and down arrow to quick check fonts.
If you find some font like the picture below ,delete it then reinstall may help.


Need help with iPod Classic hard drive diagnosis I've started diagnosis mode on my iPod Classic and went to SMART DATA. This basically means th  iPod runs in disk mode as an external hard drive and is connected to a windows pc. I’m unable to research these data points and don’t know what they mean:

Retracts:   58
Reallocs: 16376
Pending Sectors: 0
PowerOn Hours: 643
Start/Stops: 8781
Temp Current: 34C
Temp: Min 14C
Temp: Max 56C

When I load more than 2GB of songs onto it, it loads up the software and then it sipmly says "no songs" on the screen, even when itunes shows that some memory is occupied

Can any of this explain what’s wrong with my iPod?

To help explain what the numbers mean here is an extract from the Wikipedia S.M.A.R.T. article:

Reallocated Sectors Count (Reallocs):

  Count of reallocated sectors. When the hard drive finds a read/write/verification error, it marks that sector as "reallocated" and transfers data to a special reserved area (spare area). This process is also known as remapping, and reallocated sectors are called "remaps". The raw value normally represents a count of the bad sectors that have been found and remapped. Thus, the higher the attribute value, the more sectors the drive has had to reallocate. This allows a drive with bad sectors to continue operation; however, a drive which has had any reallocations at all is significantly more likely to fail in the near future. While primarily used as a metric of the life expectancy of the drive, this number also affects performance. As the count of reallocated sectors increases, the read/write speed tends to become worse because the drive head is forced to seek to the reserved area whenever a remap is accessed. If sequential access speed is critical, the remapped sectors can be manually marked as bad blocks in the file system in order to prevent their use.

Pending Sector Count:

  Count of "unstable" sectors (waiting to be remapped, because of unrecoverable read errors). If an unstable sector is subsequently read successfully, the sector is remapped and this value is decreased. Read errors on a sector will not remap the sector immediately (since the correct value cannot be read and so the value to remap is not known, and also it might become readable later); instead, the drive firmware remembers that the sector needs to be remapped, and will remap it the next time it's written. However some drives will not immediately remap such sectors when written; instead the drive will first attempt to write to the problem sector and if the write operation is successful then the sector will be marked good (in this case, the "Reallocation Event Count" (0xC4) will not be increased). This is a serious shortcoming, for if such a drive contains marginal sectors that consistently fail only after some time has passed following a successful write operation, then the drive will never remap these problem sectors.

Large numbers of Reallocs or Pending Sectors would suggest your drive is failing and that you may need to repair or replace your iPod.

Your Pending Sector Count is ok but your Reallocated Sectors Count is extremely high. Usually a sector holds 512 bytes. The 16376 reallocs mean that already 8 MB have been reallocated.

My 4 year old iPod Classic still has only 0 reallocs and 0 pending sectors.

Though i haven't been able to find any information about the number of sparse sectors on HDDs, I doubt that your iPod Classic has any more left. Probably you have some more (irreplaceable) bad blocks which renders your iPod unusable.


What's the better way to expand my small SSD? I have a retina MBP (MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014)) with an SSD of 256GB.
Using it for a month or 2 now, I'm noticing that I'd like some more space (for using a Virtual Machine).
There isn't yet a way to upgrade the interal drive, and I've been wondering what the more efficient upgrade is:

Transcend Jetdrive Lite
(Claims Read speed of 95MB/s, Write 60MB/s)
USB3 memory stick (Bigger in physical size, smaller in disk space)
External USB3 SSD / HDD (Which is what I'd least like in physical size)

The ideal "upgrade" would be small size, so I can leave it in and forget about it, but fast enough to use for my Virtual Machines (and big enough).

Being a Windows developer I need to run full blown VMs. Currently I have 2 VMs on my SSD, both of which use the storage quite a lot (a server and a compile machine). I'd now like to use another VM, mostly to use as a thin-client to connect to customers' servers. This means that the third VM (the one on the extra storage) doesn't need to be as fast as an SSD, nor does it need to be as big. I think it currently sits at around 30-40GB.

Currently I do not know what kind of read / write speeds are enough for my thin-client VM, because it's more of a 'i'll know it when i see it' problem.

Does anyone have benchmarks or advice on how to proceed?

A traditional USB flash stick will not cut it for your purposes. This is not a question of R/W speed. Regardless of the R/W speeds (I own an excellent 128GB PNY Turbo stick), the on-board controller (the microchip that serves as the brains behind the drive’s operation) is built for low-cycle I/O operations. If you plan to run virtualization software from an external drive, with portability/size being the caveat, your best bet is purchasing an mSATA-based SSD with an exclosure.

Here’s a good image to put the size into perspective:

Bottom line: you won’t be able to reliably run a VM from a USB based flash drive. You need a dedicated external drive with a controller engineered to handle the operations you plan to execute.


How Can I Delete ALL emails from my iPhone Sent Folder? How Can I Delete ALL emails from my iPhone Sent Folder - without doing one by one? I have somehow built up a couple thousand emails in my Sent Folder and need to know how to delete them all at once rather than one by one.

To the one reply so far:

I have the iPhone in my hand. When I click on the Mail icon, "My Email" opens up (it's the email set up thru iCloud with an xxxx@me.com address) When I go to "Mailboxes", the folders are - from top to bottom - Inbox, Draft, Sent, Junk, Trash, and Archive. So I don't know what you are talking about as MY iPhone clearly does have a "Sent Folder". I do NOT have Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook or any others set up on my iPhone - just the one set up thru iCloud.

Try this:

  Go to your Sent folder

  Tap on the Edit Button on the top right

  Select the first email in your list

  Hold down the "Move" button

  While you are still holding the Move button, deselect the first email

  Put away all your fingers from the screen and wait a few seconds

  Now Mail asks you where to move All of your emails

  Select the Trash-Folder

  Inside the Trash Folder, you can delete all items at once

More details:

https://www.imobie.com/support/delete-all-emails-iphone-ipad.htm


Can I transfer everything I have stored on my phone to iCloud storage? I need to free up space to update my iPhone 4 (8 GB) to iOS 7. I have purchased 25 GB of storage for iCloud.

Is it possible to move everything that is in the phone to the iCloud storage, so I can have room to update? I have been deleting pictures. Instead, can I move them to my iCloud storage?

No - not directly, iCloud is not general purpose storage like Amazon S3 or Dropbox offers where you can push files to the store and then delete them and transfer back.

Yes - indirectly, you could ensure your iCloud backup holds everything you care about, turn off backups, delete enough things to run the update and then immediately erase all content and settings to restore the entire backup to your device.

There isn't a good way to actually test that your iCloud backup is complete other than restoring it to a new device since you have to erase your primary device to then get to the restore.


Looking for a way to run a command depending on OS version I'm trying to create a bash script that runs a command based on OS version that way I can deploy it to machines running 10.12 and 10.13 the only problem is depending on the version the command needs to be slightly different.  How can I go about this?

You can get the OS version using sw_vers -productVersion.

$ sw_vers -productVersion
10.13.2

You can test on this in a shell script using

if [[ $(sw_vers -productVersion) == 10.13.2 ]]; then …

To test any 10.12 or 10.13 version, you can use parse the output such as with this

if [[ $(sw_vers -productVersion | sed "s/10\.\([0-9][0-9]\).*/\1/") == 13 ]]; then …


Reinstalling OSX is blocked with unreviewed Apple ID I got a couple-of-years-old MacBook Pro with OSX Lion, and I attempted to format it. I erased the installed drive using Disk Utilities and then chose to reinstall OSX.

Unfortunately, in order to reinstall, I had to enter Apple ID. I, of course, have an Apple ID, but when I enter it, I get a prompt dialog asking to review the account. Clicking it, nothing happens. Of course I don't have the original Apple ID of the original owner.

Is there any way to bypass this in order to reinstall? I'm currently completly stuck.

AppleCare often will provide help for locating a manual that will have the installation steps for free, so you could start there.

If you wanted to DIY - here are some items to check:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204319 - lists the versions for OS shipped with various Mac
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201300 - how to identify MacBook pro models

From there, you could see if you need to reorder physical media or if the App Store should let you boot to internet recovery or a recovery HD for reinstallation or if you need to get a bootable installer made on another Mac.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/16560/5472
Reinstalling Lion


How to recover an iPad from power-off during an upgrade? I upgraded my iPad 2 from iOS 6 to iOS 8.

However, I cancelled the upgrade by turning the iPad off because I thought that my files weren't backed up to a PC. I used OtA upgrade.

When I turn the iPad back on, there's an image of USB connector and iTunes icon signifying to connect it to iTunes.

Would all my files (photos, paid apps, memorable videos, etc.) still restore to my iPad if I restore from iTunes?

No - you would need to try to back up over USB to PhoneView or a similar tool.

Once you're sure you can't get any data back, then connecting to iTunes can easily wipe whatever's left and then return a proper working OS onto the hardware.


New hard drive not recognized I swapped the original 80 GB hard drive for a new 640 GB Samsung HM64JI hard drive.
It is not recognized after booting from the 10.5 Installation DVD on Macbook 2.1 with recent EFI updates installed.

Any ideas?

The problem was related to difference in sata ver.
The hdd is sata2 whereas the macbook (mid 2007) supports only sata1 (1.5G).
Normally, these should work since autonegotiation should set it to sata1. Unfortunatelly, it didn't.

I had to use Patch  to flash the hdd's firmware and set it hard to sata1.
After burning cd, rebooting (hold c to boot from cd), you execute run.bat which does the job.

Then I had changed the cd to dvd installation disk with 10.5.
The disk was visible under the diskutil.
I created partition and rebooted again.
Afterwards the hdd was visible when restoring time machine backups.


How to reset screen time app limit in iPhone? I have screen time limit set up for Social apps with a passcode. After allowing an app to be used for the rest of the day, if I change my mind afterwards how can I lock that app again besides waiting until the next day?
I have tried disable screen time and enable it again. Also tried to change the passcode. Nothing works, the app stays unlocked no matter what I tried.

As far as I know, you can't do that because you have approved the application for that day... So you can't switch the app restriction back for this day, you must wait for tomorrow.
But instead of "allow app for the rest of the day" when the time limit has been reached, you can simply cancel the time limit for this app in the settings...
If you still want to have the screen time limit again afterwards, you simply have to reactivate the app limit in the settings and then the app can't be called again, when the preset screen time is reached (even if it is switched off and on again, it remembers the time used).
However, that is not the point of the thing (screen-time-limit-app), but fulfills your purpose!


Is it possible to download full iCloud backup for iOS 13? I remember it used to be possible to download the full iCloud backup. However, after trying a bunch of tools (Dr Fone, syncios, easeUS, iPhone backup extractor) online that claims to download iCloud backup, none of them actually works. Is there any way to do this currently?

Yes what you ask is generally and technically possible and also requires some skill and/or funding to perform.

If you intend to access your account, I’d read over the Apple terms and conditions carefully. The US license has language that prohibits anyone from accessing the service (which has the data) through automated means including scripts.

Then decide if you need a lawyer to make sure you are not in violation of the terms before you access your data with a tool or script like the commercially available tools like Elcomsoft phone breaker suite.

https://www.elcomsoft.com/eppb.html

I would instead use Apple’s iOS and hardware to download your full backup unless you’re sure you need other means and have evaluated the legality and risk to access the data in a way that’s potentially not licensed.

The terms also explain what a “full backup” is and is not - so you might need to use a backup method other than iTunes based on what full means to you.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207428
https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/icloud/en/terms.html

  The following content is not included in your iCloud backup: content purchased from the iTunes Store, App Store, or Apple Books, media synced from your computer, and your photo library if you have enabled iCloud Photo Library


Music File Manager Urgent Question Does anyone know of an iPhone/iPod app, or jailbreak, that is a music downloader manager AND a tag editor that lets you add album art? I've been searching everywhere for an app that downloads music and lets me change/add album artwork (within the download manager app), but I've had absolutely no luck.

It would just make it 100000 times easier for me to import the music files to my computer, without having to edit each file's tags and artwork from my PC. It's time consuming.

Thanks in advance.

I don't think it's possible to edit album art directly on your iPhone, there are no iPhone apps to do that, but there are Windows apps which could help. I've used Tune Sweeper in the past to download album art and correct incorrect track info on my iTunes library. You can then re-sync your iPhone to iTunes which will update the music files on the phone too.


Best way to have script start up for all users in Mountain Lion? We are trying to have a simple drive mapping script start up for ALL users on a Mac Mini. What's the simplest way of going by doing this? I've tried creating a .plist in Lingon and adding it to the Library LauncherDaemons and LauncherAgents folders, but it's not starting up. Any ideas? Is there a way to do this in the Terminal? The script by itself works fine and works if we add it to the Startup Items in System Preferences, but we want this to be automatic and for all users.

Thanks.

Save a property list like this as /Library/LaunchAgents/test.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>test</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>say</string>
            <string>aa</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
    </dict>
</plist>

It should be loaded automatically on the next login.

See man launchd, man launchctl, and man launchd.plist for more information.


Is there a data collection app that exports CSV to Dropbox? I'm having some serious issues finding a data collection program (Spreadsheets?) for use with my Dropbox account. The application should be able to export CSV files, and automatically upload them to a Dropbox account that I specify.

Does this app exist on the iTunes Store?

I was able to complete this exact process using Tap Forms for iOS.

Once installed you can use an existing or newly created custom form to collect your data.  Once complete you can export the file.  The .csv will be available in the Export folder in the Files area.  From there you can select the .csv and Upload to Dropbox.  This will upload the .csv file to the root of your Dropbox.

Additionally you can open the .csv in Tap Forms and then use the share button (top right) to "Open In...", which will allow you to select the Dropbox app (assuming that you have it installed.  Once Dropbox launches, you will be presented with the Dropbox upload process, which allows you to select the upload folder in your Dropbox account.  You can also create a new folder as an upload destination.

Tap Forms also appears to support importing files from Dropbox as well.


What bitness is Mountain Lion kernel, because `uname -p` returns `i386`? I know, the answer should be 64, as Apple dropped support even for their early 64 bit models BUT:

Nathan-der-Graue:~ max$ uname -p
i386

while on the other hand:

Could someone please explain this to me?

Per: http://lists.apple.com/archives/Darwin-dev/2009/Aug/msg00211.html

You want uname -m rather than uname -p to determine the bitness of the kernel.

$ uname -m
x86_64


Can AppleScript display when a script was last run? Is there a way for an AppleScript command to display the last time it was run? I have a few scripts where it would be useful to have a timestamp of the last time it was run for logging purposes. I am very green to scripting, any ideas are welcome.

You can retrieve the time that any file was last accessed using the command-line tool stat with the following arguments:

    stat -f "%Sa" -t '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S' /path/to/file

-f "%Sa": This requests only the file access data, as stat can provide other data as well, such as modification times, creation times, device information, ownership and permission data, etc.  See man stat if you want to know more about the other capabilities of stat.
-t "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S": This tells stat what format to output the date and time in.  You can change this to suit your needs, but for the purposes of this answer, I chose a standardised format that output this for one of my AppleScripts: 2018-03-31 16:55:42.

Bear in mind that the access time for an AppleScript file will be updated, not just if it is run, but also if it gets read or copied or moved.

To use this within an AppleScript, you can wrap it within a do shell script:

    do shell script "stat -f '%Sa' -t '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S' " & ¬
        quoted form of POSIX path of theFileAlias


Prevent application from requesting password on MacOS Is there a way to prevent applications from requesting for password forever? I found lot of references to give applications root permission so they won't prompt for password. But I don't want to give any permission, I just want to deny all requests for password. Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks!

Edit: The application I'm talking about is Slack. It works great, but every time I open it and sometimes even after it's opened, it keeps requesting password to install helper tools. I don't want it to install anything and I just don't want it to keep asking me every time.

In my opinion, any app which is routinely asking to escalate permissions is either badly written or suspect, or is an admin-type tool which should be run intentionally from an already-elevated user condition at all times.

If this is supposedly an app aimed at everyday users, and it's routinely needing escalation, that indicates it's needing to change preferences or permissions in a way which violates the most basic tenets of security and/or sandboxing to a degree which would worry me until I determined exactly what the offending subprocess(es) was or were, why this caused continual escalation, and if that was either acceptable to me or defensible in some manner.

So for me, the answer would start with "what, why and how" is causing the escalation, and only after nailing that down really solidly would I consider undertaking setting this app to always run elevated, which honestly is a simple thing to do in Terminal, but... it's very much a non-trivial, only do it when both essential and you are dead sure it's safe and appropriate way to go.


How to add second Apple ID to my account to shop in App Store in a different country I live and work in the UK and in Germany. My first Apple ID is registered and linked to App Sore UK. I can't shop in the German App Store with that, but the App I need is not available in the UK store. I have set up a second Apple ID with a German email address, but how can I add this to my iPad so that I can shop in the German App Store?

Go to Settings-> iTunes & App Store then tap your UK Apple ID and tap "Log Out". Then just sign in with your German Apple ID. After you've downloaded the app, you should be able to switch back to the UK Apple ID in the same way without anything being affected.


Permanently prune backups created by Time Machine I am cleaning up old Time Machine backups, which slows stuff down to a grind.  I want to tell Time Machine to delete all backups older than 3 months.  I'd also like for Time Machine to keep that as a default rather than having to do that by hand myself each time.  How do I do that?

I was able to find this app, but I've never used it, I don't know if it works:
Time Machine Editor

It purports to edit the frequency rules .plist for you.

Otherwise:

These are the rules. If you don't like them, use a different backup solution.


How can I get telnet on my macbook pro with High Sierra Telnet is not available on High Sierra. I don't have the option to copy the telnet source folder from another mac and I'm wondering where/how I can get a legitimate copy of telnet.

Edit
I'm looking for a copy from a source outside of homebrew or macports

I searched through Apple support forums and found an answer that I believe will help others reinstall ftp and telnet on Mac High Sierra.

Navigate to www.gnu.org/software/inetutils/
Click on the HTTP download link for "Inetutils"
Download "inetutils-1.9.4.tar.gz"
tar zxvf inetutils-1.9.4.tar.gz

Direct ftp site -> http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/inetutils/

cd inetutils-1.9.4
./configure
make
sudo make install

telnet x.x.x.x port

I found the answer at this forum
https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/79056


MacOS Mojave - load unsigned kernel extension in macOS mojave one can't simply load unsgined kexts:

$ sudo kextutil -l /Applications/myapp.app/Contents/Resources/Driver.kext
Untrusted kexts are not allowed

What should I do to be allowed (besides a dev cert..)?

Will these do?:

sudo nvram boot-args=kext-dev-mode=1
csrutil enable --without kext

manually allowing via the GUI?

There are two avenues to get the extension whitelisted:

Manage the mac using MDM and follow the steps to have your MDM pre-clear this specific extension.
Open the Security System Preferences and click to white list this extension once you have attempted to load it one time.

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/tn2459/_index.html

The above article has the two buttons you need to click in the GUI to white list each extension on each machine.


How to enable indexing for this internal HDD? I have a Mac running Mojave (10.14.6) with a new 2TB internal HDD with an APFS volume (called "Tár"). No matter what I try, I get "Indexing disabled" whenever I try running sudo mdutil -i on /Volumes/Tár/. All other volumes are indexing fine and the volume itself is working properly.
If I look at the Console after running the mdutil command, I see the following in the output:
mds nosymlink_mkdir() unable to realpath or parent paths do not match p:/Volumes/Tár/.Spotlight-V100: r:/Volumes/Tár:
mds Unable to create/find index location <private> 0

There's no .metadata_never_index file anywhere.
Trying to add the volume to the privacy excluded folders in Spotlight settings and then removing it doesn't help either.

What's wrong with this? How can I get this volume indexed?
edit:
diskutil list output:
$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *960.2 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk0s1
   2:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk0s2
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data Windows rendszer        314.6 GB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data Közös                   645.0 GB   disk0s4
   5:           Windows Recovery                         530.6 MB   disk0s5

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk3         499.9 GB   disk1s2

/dev/disk2 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk4         2.0 TB     disk2s2

/dev/disk3 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +499.9 GB   disk3
                                 Physical Store disk1s2
   1:                APFS Volume macOS                   403.4 GB   disk3s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 45.3 MB    disk3s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                510.4 MB   disk3s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk3s4

/dev/disk4 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +2.0 TB     disk4
                                 Physical Store disk2s2
   1:                APFS Volume Tár                     179.2 GB   disk4s1

mount:
$ mount
/dev/disk3s1 on / (apfs, local, journaled)
devfs on /dev (devfs, local, nobrowse)
/dev/disk3s4 on /private/var/vm (apfs, local, noexec, journaled, noatime, nobrowse)
/dev/disk4s1 on /Volumes/Tár (apfs, local, journaled)
map -hosts on /net (autofs, nosuid, automounted, nobrowse)
map auto_home on /home (autofs, automounted, nobrowse)
/dev/disk0s3 on /Volumes/Windows rendszer (ntfs, local, read-only, noowners)
/dev/disk0s4 on /Volumes/Közös (exfat, asynchronous, local, noowners)

Based on nohillside's idea, I went ahead and renamed the volume. After that, I could immediately enable indexing. ¯_(ツ)_/¯


Getting warning each time i open browser using Epichrome I am using Epichrome to have multiple Chrome browsers at the same time. I have three browsers that I made with Epichrome, but each time I open one of them, it gives this warning:

I am using MacOS Catalina (10.15.2) on my MacBook Pro, and the browser I made using Epichrome is called 'Duolingo'.

Does anyone know a fix for this, if not why it is there?

I've occasionally seen this myself, but I've never had it happen every time I launch an Epichrome app. The first thing I'd try is this:

Quit all your Epichrome apps.
Run the main Google Chrome and go to the About Google Chrome page. If it shows an update pending, tell it to update and relaunch.
Once you have confirmed Chrome is up to date, try relaunching your Epichrome apps. You might get the warning the first time you run them, but subsequent runs should not show the warning.

If those steps don't help, please open an issue on the Github page, and I'll try to figure out what's going on.


Keep changed app icon after app update? I had used CandyBar to change my Mail.app icon. After apply the 10.8.2 Supplemental Update 1, the Mail.app icon has reverted. How can I prevent that from happening in the future?

When you update your OS - (if it contains a Mail.app update) it will replace the previous version of the app with the new one and by doing this it will also replace the icon file.

Anyway something that you can try after you've replaced the icon again:

1.Open Terminal and enter this command - sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.p/Contents/MacOS/Finder

2.Enter your password and press Enter

3.WITHOUT switching to other windows press CMD + TAB and select Finder

4.Press CMD + N this will open a new Finder Window with root privileges (BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL WHAT YOU DO)

5.Press CMD + G and enter /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Resources

6.Find the Mail.icns(it should be the new one you chose) file - Right Click it and select Get Info

7.Check the Locked attribute.

8.Go back to the terminal window and press CONTROL + C this will close the Finder Window.

This should prevent it from being overwritten

Command line alternative:

sudo chflags uchg /pathToFile/filename


How do I disable "Apple News Spotlight" in Mojave? This new "feature" showed up recently and won't stop pinging me with news I don't care about from an app I've never opened and can't uninstall: /Applications/News.app

How do I at least disable the morning notifications it pushes?

Block notifications from the app in "System Preferences" -> "Notifications".  I'm not sure that it stops the app from from fetching news but it should block all notifications from it; including those that switch themselves back on for whatever reason.


Install Keynote on a third generation ipad I have a third generation Ipad with ios 9.5.3.

In the app store I can try to buy Keynote.

Everytime I do that, the app store begin telling me that I need IOS 10.

Before IOS 10, how could people get keynote on a third generation ipad?

And now?

You should see a message to download the latest version compatible with your iOS version. At least that's how Apple handled these things in the past.

This may be a temporary bug.

Some Apple apps got updated a few days ago. Previously these apps worked just fine with iOS 9.2 or higher.


New M1 Macbook Pro, warranty expired I bought a new MacBook Pro with an M1 chip today from a third-party supplier. After all of the setup, I found that its warranty was listed as expired.
This model released earlier this year and is definitely not over 1 year old. I used Geekbench to test it and all marks looks good.
Does anyone has any idea on what I could do?

A call to Apple support or web interaction would let you provide purchase information to correct an accounting error on the registration. This has been true for a decade and isn’t specific to the M1 Mac.
To get to this, open the “About this Mac” item from the Apple menu or use this handy web site - https://support.apple.com/repair-products

Select the service tab and then the check my coverage status. Apple doesn’t need you to provide anything but a receipt that you obtained from your seller in most cases.
Also keep in mind, sales into some countries mean you have to provide proof of purchase or seek support first from the person you bought the product or a company in the region of first sale instead of Apple directly.

https://www.apple.com/legal/
https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/statutoryrights.html

Hopefully you didn’t buy a Mac that didn’t even finish manufacturing by Apple or was stolen directly from Apple. I clearly can’t know what information an Apple agent would find in their research to decline coverage. There are so many edge cases you may not have considered that someone at Apple not only has faced multiple times, but had to write a playbook for how to handle these rare cases so they’re being consistent and not “shooting from the hip” call by call. One might be if you had a Mac they used in store for a display and it was stolen during a robbery. I could understand the call asking for support on those Macs to be a short one and read from a script that is designed to bring the call to a quick conclusion.


Is it possible to access a list of wifi networks my iPhone has used? I understand I may have to jailbreak my phone to access this, but is there a way to view a list of networks my iPhone has remembered and get info on the date they were last accessed?

I know there are some apps that allow you to view all the stored passwords for previously accessed networks but I'm also interested in seeing the date they were last accessed.

Thanks in advance of any help you can give.

1. If you have iCloud Keychain enabled :

  Are my existing saved passwords, Wi-Fi networks, and Internet accounts included in iCloud Keychain?
  Yes. When you turn on iCloud Keychain, any previously-saved website usernames and passwords, Wi-Fi networks, and Internet accounts are automatically included in iCloud Keychain.

From :
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204085

You can access to Keychain by the Keychain Access.app (located in /Applications/Utilities/).

2. Otherwise you can use 1Password.

3. Finally, you have this post :

Is there any way to view saved wifi passwords on the iPhone?

  Unfortunately, on the iPhone it is not possible to access this information. The passwords are kept on your phone in a safe place that is not accessible through any regular means on the phone. This is done for your protection, if you were to lose your iPhone and someone picked it up, the passwords that are stored on it would be up for grabs. This would lead to a lot of security problems.


MacBook Pro question on former owner I have a used MacBook.  The former user was still the admin so I Googled and followed instructions to remove his password and get myself in as admin.  I then deleted his user account.

I just looked at my settings on my iPhone and saw under messages "share with FORMER USERS NAME MacBook"

How do I get his name off of everything?  I don't see him at all under user accounts. I don't have any discs, install media, etc.

You need to change the name of the MacBook, not just the user account.

You will find this in System Preferences -> Sharing.  The Computer name can then be changed by selecting edit (you may have to unlock, first).


How to edit WebM video files on Mac? Join.me exports screen recordings in WebM format. I can play WebM files using VLC but I can't edit them. Searching for a solution brings up hundreds of spamware 'video converters'.

Is there a simple way to edit WebM video files on MacOS?

You can actually convert your WebM video directly in VLC:

Open the conversion screen with Shift-Cmd-S
Drag the WebM video into the screen
Select a target format your video editor supports
Click on "Save as file"

Afterwards open the generated file in the video editor of your choice.


I don't want OS X to automatically switch spaces when i launch a new app I recently converted to OS X(10.10.5) from Linux Mint. I used spaces there and that worked perfect. Now on OS X the following happens, which I just cannot get used to:

I have multiple spaces. Let's assume I am working in the second space and have the browser open
I scroll down to the doc bar to open the terminal

Result: The OS automatically switch to the other space and opens the Terminal app there, so I cannot see the browser and the terminal app together in the same space.
On Linux Mint it is simple. Whatever you open appears in the space you are working in at the time.

Same on OS X - unless you have an app specifically assigned to a Space.

Check what you have set for each app by right-clicking it in the dock…

All Desktops - the app will follow you wherever you go
This Desktop - will change to show the Space number once assigned, then will always open in that Space.
None - will open in whatever Space you're in at the time.

After comments:-
If you have Mission Control set to 'Displays have separate Spaces'& 2 monitors, you will need a minimum of 3 Spaces before these options will become available to you.


Lock Screen from Command Line? I have activated the Keychain Menu Bar icon so I can relatively easily click Lock Screen to lock the screen of my MacBook.
Is there a way to do this with a shortcut or via the command line? I know you can lock the keychain via the commmand line, but I cannot seem to find the how to lock the screen as well.

Open Terminal and enter the following in a single line:

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

There isn’t any confirmation, the desktop is immediately locked and the lock screen appears regardless of what is currently going on with the active user account.

The menu item being used is the same Fast User Switching menu that displays a user name in the upper right corner, and the lock screen shown is identical to what is summoned if one were to select “Login Window…” from that same menu.

You can lock a screen using a keyboard shortcut as well, but using the command line offers two obvious advantages; it can be included within scripts or entered from SSH to remotely lock a Mac.

Source : Lock the Mac Desktop from the Command Line


Best way to stream videos and music from my iPhone to my TV? So I got a samsung galaxy s advance and found out that it can stream stored music and videos wirelessly (via WIFI) to my TV. It is very efficient with no buffering time and full HD quality.
I use an AppleTV for my iPhone, however the connection keeps dropping (the icon disappears), the buffering time takes ages to load a video stored in my iPhone, and the whole experience is very dissatisfying.

Is there another way (through an App or Cydia app) that allows streaming similar to the Galaxy S ?? I have a jailbroken iPhone so I can use cydia.

Thanks

Well, this is one of those things where there's 101 ways to do it and it's just trial and error to see which works best for you. You could try wired connections using an HDMI cable  or composite AV from your iphone to your TV, or there's a variety of aftermarket apps that may work better for you. I've detailed some ideas below:

Connect With HDMI

You'll need to purchase an adaptor for this option.

Plug the adapter into your device’s 30-pin iPod connector.
Plug one end of an HDMI cable into the HDMI port of the adapter, and
the other end into an available HDMI port on your TV.
Switch your TV to the appropriate HDMI input. For earlier models
such as the iPhone 4, the original iPad, or the fourth-generation
iPod Touch, the display won’t be mirrored, but it will show photos
and videos in supported apps once you start playing them on the
device.

Connect With Composite AV

If your TV doesn’t support HDMI, or if it doesn’t have an available connection, you can link your device to the set through an analog connection, using an Apple Composite AV cable.

Plug the adapter into your device’s 30-pin iPod connector.
Plug the yellow video cable at the end of the adapter into an
available analog video port on your TV.
Plug the red and white audio cables at the end of the adapter into
the red and white audio ports corresponding to the yellow video
input on your TV.
Tune your TV to the appropriate composite video input. The display
won’t be mirrored, but it will show photos and videos in supported
apps once you start playing them on the device.

Connect Wirelessly via Airplay

Apple developed a wireless technology called AirPlay specifically for streaming content from iOS devices to other devices that support it.

Make sure that your iPhone is on the same wireless network as your
other AirPlay devices.
On your iPhone, double-tap the Home button.
Swipe the list that appears to the right, until you get to the
volume and AirPlay settings.
Tap the AirPlay button to bring up a list of supported AirPlay
devices on your network.
Tap the device to which you would like to stream. A TV icon next to
the device indicates that you can stream images, video, and/or
audio, while a speaker icon indicates that you can stream only
audio.

Connect Wirelessly via DLNA

If you don't want to shell out for an AirPlay-capable device, you may be able to use DLNA instead. These days, many modern TVs support streaming from a local network (wired or wireless) via the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standard. If your TV supports DLNA (or sometimes just "UPnP") streaming, you can use your iPhone as a DLNA server. Just download and install a DLNA-server app--Media:connect, for example--and you're good to go.

Connect Wirelessly with Aftermarket Apps

You could try iMediaShare or AirVideoEnabler as alternatives to the standard airplay functionality.


How do I turn off multitouch zoom in Safari? I'm using my wife's Macbook with the bigger multitouch track pad. Many times while in Safari, it thinks I want to zoom in and the page will zoom in. I want to just get rid of multitouch in Safari, or just disable the zoom feature in Safari.

It's nice to have multitouch in other applications like iPhoto, but it just causes problems in Safari.

In the trackpad preference pane (System Preferences) there is an option to disable Screen Zoom.

There is an alternative. A small plugin, of sorts, that allows you to disable pinch zooming in Safari and Firefox.

http://cubeyellow.blogspot.com/2009/01/mac-book-pro-trackpad-zooming-and.html


Merge two disks to RAID 0 and keep my installation I've got two 128Gb SSDs installed in my MacBook Pro.

Originally I had one for the system (named Calcium), and one for the /Users folder, symlinked into the first (named Users).

As I ran out of space on Users, I shrunk the Calcium partition and created a 50Gb partition named "Swap" on the first SSD, from where I symlinked some folders back into /Users (namely, my iTunes backup and my work folder).

Now I want to get things a little cleaner before preparing my migration to the upcoming Mavericks release. I'd like to setup a RAID 0 with the two drives, keep my ~75Gb Calcium partition (lowering it to 64Gb is OK), and enlarge my Users partition to take the whole remaining space.

I have a spare 500Gb HDD lying around in a FireWire 800 case and a bootable USB stick with the Mountain Lion installer on it, so my plan is:

Using my existing system, copy all data off Swap (about 40Gb) onto a folder of the 500Gb
Boot off the USB installer and start Disk Utility
Create an image of Calcium onto the 500Gb drive using Disk Utility
Create an image of Users onto the 500Gb drive using Disk Utility
Wipe my two drives, create a RAID 0 with them
Re-create a Calcium partition (64Gb is enough) and restore from the image
Re-create a Users partition with the remaining 192Gb
Restore Users from the (smaller, 128Gb) image
Reboot the system from Calcium
Transfer data that previously was on Swap (not needed to boot) directly to the new, larger, Users.

According to that other similar question I believe that should work, and my existing system won't be confused when being restored.

My questions :

do you confirm I won't run into problems with this process? No data loss, no boot problems, no confused OS?
what image format should I use when imaging the partitions at steps 3-4 using Disk Utility? The default read/write format produces a DMG that's fully restorable
can I backup a 75Gb partition on a 64Gb image (for Calcium) if it has less used space than total space on the original partition? yes I can, in fact it's the default behavior of Disk Utility when you backup a partition
similarly, can I restore a 128Gb image on a 192Gb partition (for expanding Users)? yes I can

Just use Time Machine.
Backup the whole laptop, reinstall like you want and then restore or import using the migration assistant in the utility folder on you mac.


In Activity Monitor, how can Swap Used be more than Page Outs? I am trying to understand the relationship between Page Outs and Swap Used as displayed in Activity Monitor.  Currently, Activity Monitor shows:

Page outs:  1.6 MB
Swap used:  8.1 MB

How can there be more swap used than the amount paged out?

My understanding is this:

Program needs access to some data.  Attempts to do so, and fails, due to lack of RAM.
OS takes control.  There is a page-out operation, where physical RAM is copied to swap.
There is a page-in operation, where the required data is copied to RAM.
OS gives control back to program.
Program tries again, finds its data.

OS's are getting smart about how they choose what and when to to page in/out.  So the operation counts may not be the same, and the swap space may perhaps be in use without there being page outs.

Unless of course I'm backwards on what a page-in/page-out operation is.  In which case your question makes perfect sense.


How can I check the hardware of a Mac Pro 1,1 running 10.6.8? Mac Pro 1,1 running OS 10.6.8, I am having finder freezes that forces me to force quit using the power button. I do not have the disks that shipped with this computer which would have included Apple Hardware Test. I have downloaded what is said to be the AHT for this computer but I can't get it to run from a disk that I burned.

Download the AHT for your computer model and use the contents to restore the /System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics folder, then reboot while holding D to start the diagnostic tools.

There's no need to burn something to disc.