Macbook Air Magsafe 1 charging port burning out repeatedly I have been consistently having problems with my Macbook Air Purchased in Dec 2012 (Model A1369)

Following is the sequence of problems I have faced :

Magsafe 1 charger pins burned out (2 years ago), thrown away charger
charging port pins burned out and replaced I/O board from ifixit.com (1 year ago)
Purchased 2 Magsafe 1 chargers (1 year ago)
Now both the new chargers
pins have burned out.

I am faced with a decision to either buy another charger (for about 90$) or buy a new non apple laptop altogether (I have seen the magsafe connector heating issue on many people's laptops). Because this is really affecting my ability to use my laptop while being on the move. Everything else in my Macbook Air is working great and I am very happy with everything else. It is just this charging problem that is frustrating me. I have to wiggle the port and try different combinations to get the green light to come. Even if the green light comes on, charging may or may not start until the orange light comes on.

Question : If I keep the burned out charging port as it is, and just replace the charger, will it also burn out the new charger ? Or do I have to again replace both the charger and the I/O board ? Is there something fundamentally wrong with the Magsafe 1 charger that it burns out the contacts ? Because a friend of mine has a newer Macbook pro and the same problem happened with him and the contacts are burned out but the laptop still charges (though the magsafe port gets really HOT)

So I am currently left with 3 burned chargers and 2 burned out I/O boards. Do I take the decision to replace the I/O board again and also buy new chargers. How do I avoid the connectors getting burned out again ?

My theory is that is due to very high humidity.

It is 84% in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India right now!

Humidity can form conductive film between the pins that lead to continuous eddy currents.

So how does that apply to your situation?

Magsafe is a magnet (strong magnet). There is always a lot of microscopic particle attracted and magnetized. Normally that would not do anything, but with high humidity it dissolves the micro particles in the water droplets and allows them to flow between Positive and Negative pools of the plug, thus leading to burn marks.

Make sure your Magsafe plug is dry, and only charge it in low humidity environment.  Use Compressed Air can and frequently blow dry the magsafe.

Also put can put your Mac in a fridge YES fridge (not freezer) and charge it there.


App to annotate images I know Preview can annotate images, but does anyone know which app is used to create the style of arrows in the following image?

(This appears in https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/220496/251846, but the author has become inactive, it seems.)

Looks like Skitch which can be downloaded from the Evernote website as well as from the App Store. AFAIR it works without an Evernote account.


Why do iMessage and FaceTime continue to charge money even after activation? It's been 2 or 3 months that I used to get alert from my carrier that a amount has been deducted and I couldn't find what those charges were for. It's today so happened that the alert of deduction and Apple ID verification came simultaneously and that directed me towards imessage and FaceTime. With a few google searches I found this Apple Support link very helpful, in that forum it written clearly

Depending on your carrier, it can be normal for the activation of iMessage and FaceTime to involve incurring a cost for sending an international SMS message.

And when I searched for the cost of international SMS in my country and carrier, it was same as the deduction amount that I got alerted for. Here is a screen shot of a SMS that I get

And soon after this I get a deducted alert from my carrier. To ensure that my FaceTime and iMessage are toggled on and activated let me attach images of them:

So, now it's clear that my Iphone 7 is sending international SMSs for the activation of imessage and FaceTime (which I say is already activated). Now, I have two questions:

Why it is sending those international SMS even after activation is done?
How to stop it? It has already cost a good deal of deduction.

The most logical answer to this is that it is not sending international SMS messages after activation is done, so it must be something else your carrier is charging you for.
I would contact your carrier to get an explanation of the costs.
As far as I understand, many carriers have business relationsships with Apple and ensure that you are not charged for FaceTime/iMessage activation. You can check a list of carriers here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204039
UPDATE
You have updated the question with the requested information.
The phone number you quote is indeed an Apple registration number in the UK. Your own phone number seem to be in India. The carriers I know in Europe usually do not charge their customers for Apple registrations, but your Indian carrier apparently does.
The text message you have is not the FaceTime registration message - it doesn't look like that. It does however look like a standard receipt that indicates that a has been delivered succesfully.
I would try disabling and enabling FaceTime/Messages (i.e. specifically your phone number from FaceTime/Messages) to try to trigger a re-registration.
If that doesn't work, contact Apple to work out why it keeps trying to register.


What is the normal temperature for a Retina 15" unibody mid-2015 MBP? The CPU and GPU temperatures while browsing the web.

Normal temperatures are around 30-50 C (86-122 F). Mine is around 30.6 C on low load and around 60-65C under very heavy load. It depends where you keep you mac, for example if you put it on bed sheets it can get very hot because the air flow is blocked :)


Securely delete guest accounts in OSX I need a way to securely wipe guest accounts accounts off of my machine. On OSX, guests are automatically deleted on logout, with this deletion being done using the "RM" command. I need a way to alter this to either the secure form of "RM" (RM -p I believe?) or to use "SRM" instead.

Alternatively, workarounds would be highly helpful. Currently, I believe it may be possible to replace "RM" with "SRM" on a system level, albeit I am unsure if it is plausible or possible. Other workarounds I have considered is manually deleting the files (it should be possible to run a script on logout that does this?) or, on startup, find a way to potentially write over the HDD sectors with 0's and 1's.

In summation....

Is it possible (and if so, how) to delete guest account data securely?

Note I am tagging this under OSX, UNIX, and LINUX because I feel that an answer would be valid for all platforms of this type. This was also Xposted on Stack Overflow

It's kinda possible. You can use a logout hook to run a script when a user logs out. This will also be run when the guest user is logged out, too. All you would need to do is create a script that SRMs the guest home folder when the Mac is logged out of or shut down.

This command will initiate a login hook (presuming that /usr/local/bin/logoutscript exists and is chmodded correctly so that the script is executable)

sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LogoutHook /usr/local/bin/logoutscript

You can easily write a shell script that would SRM the Guest account home folder.


How to label text files as such in zip archive I am told, about a zip archive I created under Mavericks from the Finder File menu, with a directory containing both pdf and text files: "No file is labelled as text by zipinfo". People ask me to use a zipper able to do that. I went through the entire option list as described on the apple developer site and do not seem to find the correct invocation, if any.

I have zipinfo installed from fink, and indeed when I run it in verbose mode on the archive it says for each file "apparent file type: binary".

Is there anyway using the /usr/bin/zip shipped with Mac OS X to create archives with some text files identified as such, from the point of view of zipinfo?

UPDATE: well, perhaps I should have tried first, but in a test I just made, if I actually run the zip command in Terminal, then the produced archive does correctly label text files as such, as reported by zipinfo. If however I select the files in a Finder window and select the command in the Finder File menu to create an archive, then the said text files are labelled as binary file, as reported by zipinfo. It thus appears my only sin was to have used the GUI rather than the command line.


Change keyboard whenever iTerm is selected Using either Applescript or Automator is it possible to switch the software keyboard(Input Source) to a certain keyboard(input source) whenever iTerm becomes foreground?

Scenario is as follows

I click on iTerm window
iTerm window goes foreground
A script changes the keyboard(input source) to one that I specify

You could for example save this plist as ~/Library/LaunchAgents/itermchangeinput.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>itermchangeinput</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>osascript</string>
    <string>-e</string>
    <string>set prev to missing value
repeat
    set cur to name of application (path to frontmost application as text)
    if cur is "iTerm" and prev is not "iTerm" then do shell script "changeInput U.S."
    delay 1
    set prev to cur
end repeat</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>KeepAlive</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

Then run launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/itermchangeinput.plist.

You could also use a shell script like this:

while sleep 1;do cur=$(lsappinfo find ASN=$(lsappinfo front)|cut -d\" -f2);[[ $cur = iTerm && $prev != iTerm ]]&&changeInput U.S.;prev=$cur;done

It might be less efficient though because it executes two new processes every second.

The original blog post about changeInput was deleted by the author, but I uploaded the binary to http://19a5b0.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/changeInput.tgz.

If you always switch to iTerm with a keyboard shortcut (like F7), you could use a private.xml like this with KeyRemap4MacBook:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <vkopenurldef>
    <name>KeyCode::VK_OPEN_URL_ITERM</name>
    <url>file:///Applications/iTerm.app</url>
  </vkopenurldef>
  <inputsourcedef>
    <name>US</name>
    <inputsourceid_prefix>com.apple.keylayout.US</inputsourceid_prefix>
  </inputsourcedef>
  <item>
    <name>test</name>
    <identifier>test</identifier>
    <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::F7, ModifierFlag::NONE, VK_OPEN_URL_ITERM, VK_CHANGE_INPUTMODE_US</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

You can see the IDs of input sources with EventViewer (/Applications/KeyRemap4MacBook.app/Contents/Applications/EventViewer.app/).


Automatically Edit Plist files with Automator So I'd like to edit a plist file property using automator.
I need to change the value of a key so that it's set to 1 minute before the automator app was launched. I'm quite new to all this and I need help...

For a said SULastCheckTime, I would need the value to be set to Jun 1, 2017, 8:52:56 PM if the automator app was launched at 8:53 on June 1st 2017...

Thanks

You need to add a shell script action to your automator script, and do the actual setting in the shell script. I don't believe its possible to obtain the start time of the automator script, so you'll have to settle with a time stamp relative to the time when the shell script is executed. If you really need the start time, you'll have to add an action to record it yourself as the first step in the automator script.

In the shell, time computation is done with date.

date -v 1M

gives you the time one minute ago. If you really need it formatted in the specific way that you give above, you need to format it yourself, like so

date -v -1M '+%b %d, %Y, %H:%M:%S %p'

Here, %b, %d etc are place holders for the various timestamp components; see the man page for strftime.

Next, you need to know how to change a plist file. You can use plutil for that, like so

plutil -replace SULastCheckTime -string newvalue foo.plist

Putting it all together, the shell script could read

time=`date -v -1M '+%b %d, %Y, %H:%M:%S %p'`
plutil -replace SULastCheckTime -string "$time" foo.plist

Here, the backticks take the output of date and put it in a variable time; plutil then puts it in a file.

If you are going to use shell scripts anyway, you may consider dropping automator altogether in favor of shell scripts.


How do I change the selection in BBEdit's Currently Open Document pane with the keyboard? When I open more than one document in BBEdit, a Currently Open Documents pane is shown. I can change the selection in the pane (and change the document shown in the editor pane) with the mouse pointer. Can I change the selection in the pane with a keyboard shortcut?

Check in the menubar -> View -> Previous Document/Next Document. The shortcut for Previous Document seems to be altcmd[ and for Next Document altcmd] on an US-keyboard.

On my (german) keyboard I use altcmd5 and altcmd6 though.


How do I build a PC Into a Mac PPC G5 case? How can I convert my (unfortunately) obsolete Mac G5 PPC case into a PC? It only supports Leopard OS-wise and I'd like to keep the beautiful Mac Case and reuse it with PC components inside.

Can that be done? Can the hardware inside be replaced with a PC motherboard etc?

Yes it is possible, and instructions are probably outside the scope of this forum due to the extreme variations and nature of the hardware available.

But heres a video of one guy's journey to turning a G5 case into a hackintosh so you can see what is involved before you make the decision.

And another more detailed tale here again not for the faint of heart.


Iphone 5s screen recording via reflector and airplay I'm trying to record my iPhone screen via reflector and airplay but I couldn't find the airplay symbol in my control center if I swipe from bottom to top. There is only airdrop no airplay.

OS: iOS 8.2

Device: iPhone 5s

Recorder Device: Mac Book Pro

Recorder OS: 10.10.2

You can record your iPhone screen in OS X if you connect your iPhone with your Mac via cable. You can then select your iPhone as an input device in QuickTime (or any other recording software).
Note: This will only work if your iOS device has at least iOS 8 and your Mac has at least OS X 10.10


How to sync iPhone contacts to Gmail and update them on in-use Android phone I've recently moved from Android (Nexus 5x) to iPhone. Added Gmail account and synced all contacts from Android to iPhone.

I'm using both the iPhone and Nexus.

Now I've added a few more contacts on iPhone, but it doesn't show when the contacts are synced to Gmail.
I want these to reflect on my Nexus device as well, since the same Gmail account is logged into it.

What I'm exactly looking for is a link between iPhone and Nexus.
Is there a way I can sync the updated contacts from my iPhone to Gmail account, so that Gmail has all updated info. Then I want these updated contacts to show up in my Android device as well.

To sync contacts with your Android phone, you need to make sure that you're adding the contacts to your Gmail account on your iPhone rather than to your iCloud account.

Turn on Contacts syncing with your Gmail account by going to Settings -> Mail, Contacts and Calendars -> your Gmail account -> turn on Contacts.
Turn off Contacts syncing with any other account there.
Turn off iCloud contacts syncing by going to Settings -> iCloud -> turn off Contacts.

Now, when you add contacts on your iPhone, they should automatically sync with your Nexus 5X over Google's servers.

Note: If you lose any contacts you added previously on your iPhone, have no fear, they're still accessible at icloud.com and you can export them as a vCard and open up that file on your iPhone to sync them with your phones as well.


How can I map shift+hyphen (the underscore character) to an unused function key? I wish to produce the underscore ("_") character without any significant slowness from an unused function key.  I'm intrigued by this answer provided by username Danny last year.  If a modification of the code they wrote is possible for my needs, I'd be grateful for anything you can offer (I don't know code myself).  I am not interested in fee-based software i.e. Keyboard Maestro if there's a way to do this natively or through shareware.  Thanks in advance!
Edit: I should add, I'm using an external 104-key keyboard, and F16 is the key I'd like to configure to trigger the underscore.  Thanks!

Well, I have just used the text in keyboard preferences to put the "_" when I type "usc" but you can choose different characters, chose that as I don't need to use function, control, alt or command...


Folders are disappearing from Safari's Bookmarks Bar I have used the Bookmarks Bar for years for my main site to keep bookmarks that I use.  The sidebar is far less frequently accessed. Over the past week, entire folders are disappearing from bookmarks bar, taking countless sites that I use. I updated Safari recently to 5.1.2, and security update. I am running OS X 10.6.8. I booted from an external drive with SuperDuper, backed up a few days ago, but it was missing the folders.  These bookmark folders have been stable for years (as a system).

Do you have iCloud turn-on for your bookmarks? I did and found horrendous anomalies with my bookmark folders between my iMac, MacBook Pro, iPhone, and iPad. I could not get the issue solved and so far no solutions for it. My only recurse was to turn off iCloud/Bookmarks and restore my original bookmarks from backup and sync with iTunes. That solved my problem.


Accessibility Menu items no longer selectable under OS X Yosemite? If I'm not mistaken, in earlier editions of OS X, the menu items pictured below could be selected to turn them on or off.

Apparently, that's changed in Yosemite. Is there a way to turn on each accessibility feature from the contextual menu rather than selecting "Accessibility Preferences" to turn them on and off in System Preferences?

The menubar item in Yosemite no longer allows you to make direct changes to the settings, it is merely an advisory list of what is on and off.

You can make changes to the settings in the list below, previously accessible from the menubar, by pressing Option-Command-F5 and ticking the appropriate boxes (see screenshot). The remaining settings, and others, can be set in System Preferences.

Invert screen colors
Mouse keys
Sticky keys
Slow keys
VoiceOver


Looking for tool/software to create HDR photos on OSX does anyone know a good tool to create HDR photos on OSX?

Freeware or paid?

From Windows I know:

Photomatix Pro
Picturenaut
FDRTools

any hint?

Photomatix Pro is available for Mac.
Overall, it's the best HDR tool I've used. The UI is somewhat complex, but not obtuse. The results are consistently impressive.

Another app that I've seen used (but not used personally) is Nik Software's HDR Efex Pro.
This is a powerful app that seems to produce some very nice images.

Both of these are paid apps with free trials.


How do I restore iPhone 6s stuck on connect to iTunes screen/Apple logo I'm not really sure how, but after I woke up today, my phone was just displaying the loading spinner and doesn't start up anymore.
It's weird because my phone turned off last night and suspecting that it was probably out of charge, I thought charging it overnight would fix the problem.

So, my iPhone is currently stuck on the iTunes/Apple Logo loop. When I put it into DFU/Recovery Mode and connect it to iTunes, it isn't able to restore it. It keeps throwing "Network Connection Problems" -- it downloads iOS 10 for a bit and suddenly stops downloading, throwing the error. I've also tried downloading a custom .ipsw from https://ipsw.me/ but it seems that the file is corrupted whenever iTunes tries to unpack it.

Any thoughts on how I could go about fixing this?

Note - I don't have a jailbroken iPhone.

The network error means iTunes can't get the files it needs from Apple so there's nothing to do on the phone at this point.

The fastest way to sort any iOS device that says “connect to iTunes” and your preferred iTunes isn’t working is to take your iOS device to iTunes on a computer that you know works. Apple stores maintain multiple installations of iTunes ready to restore devices. No data sync happens when you are at the “restore screen” but you can check for local backups in iTunes when you’re done if you like.

As to fixing your specific error, can you take your PC/Mac to a different network or take the phone to a different computer? Sometimes that's far easier than diagnosing one iTunes that isn't working for a rare event like a DFU restore.

If you want to troubleshoot your iTunes, I would start with:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204770

It's quite detailed, so you will want to make note of the exact error message and be sure to follow steps like updating the computer and iTunes as well as making sure anti virus and other security software and network blocks aren't the cause of network errors.


LaunchAgent loads app but clicking app icon doesn't I have an issue where I installed an app, the installer completed with no apparent errors, the app launched immediately after installing, but afterward if I click the app icon in /Applications the icon bounces once in the dock then disappears.

I looked at the postinstall script on the package and saw that one of the last things it does is run the command launchctl start ES.Examplify, which is a PLIST that was copied to /Library/LaunchAgents.  If I run that command in terminal (with sudo at the front) it launches the application.

Any ideas on what I might need to do to get the application to launch normally?  It would seem that everything was installed correctly since launching the PLIST works, but double-clicking the app icon doesn't. This app has been extremely problematic for me, I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling multiple times.

The content of the PLIST is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
   <key>Umask</key>
   <integer>0</integer>
   <key>Label</key>
   <string>ES.Examplify</string>
   <key>ProgramArguments</key>
   <array>
  <string>/Applications/Examplify.app/Contents/MacOS/Examplify</string>
      <string>-launchd</string>
   </array>
   <key>QueueDirectories</key>
   <array>
      <string>/Library/Application Support/Examplify/.q</string>
   </array>
</dict>
</plist>

I've tried both clicking on the icon for /Applications/Examplify.app and clicking the icon for /Applications/Examplify.app/Contents/MacOS/Examplify and neither will launch the app.


Notify the system that preferences were changed I disabled SIP (How do I disable System Integrity Protection (SIP) AKA "rootless" on OS X 10.11, El Capitan?) and started editing the file /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist

I successfully edited the entries HTTPProxy, HTTPPort, HTTPEnable and save the file. Then I checked my IP address on the web, and it doesn't change. The file is set correctly, but the system doesn't know it changed and therefore it uses the old settings. When changing settings manually, hitting Apply in the Network Tab notifies the system that preferences.plist has changed and that it must use the new settings. Same goes for turning wifi off and on. I changed the file, checked the IP (it is the same) turn wifi off/on, checked the IP and now it has changed.

How can I trigger that event of notifying the system of changes programmatically on a Mac?

Your question needs some editing and clarification.

What I think you're asking is, how to force OS X to re-load data after editing a plist file.  There are two methods of doing this.

OS X uses a caching daemon for preferences, cfprefsd.  You can simply save your plist file, then do  sudo killall cfprefds.  It will restart automatically, and should load your changes.

The recommended way of forcing changes is with the defaults command, which informs the daemon of the changes. For example

# Reveal IP address, hostname, OS version, etc. when clicking the clock
# in the login window
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo HostName


Resynch latest workouts I just plugged in my iPod Nano to upload my last few workouts to Nike. When iTunes started it said there was a new version that I agreed to upgrade to, and part of the upgrade required quitting iTunes. Now my last 4 workouts are not uploaded to Nike+. Is it possible to get those workouts uploaded, or are they lost forever?

I ended up contacting Nike and they were able to add the basic details to their site. It didn't have all the details, but the overall time and distance were added. I would guess that there isn't a way to resend a workout if it doesn't upload right.


I can't install bootcamp It says I have to have at least 42 GB or more but as you can see I have 55 GB available. Tried looking online for solutions but all they say is time machine but I have never used this and the "Backup Automatically" is not selected.

The free space required by the Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows is larger than what is actually required. One question where this is documented is Mojave bootcamp assistant limits partition size. The answer to this question was to use the Disk Utility to create a partition for Windows, then install Windows the same way as any ordinary PC owner. The Boot Camp Assistant was only used to download the Windows Support Software.

In your case, I would first make sure all space being consumed by Time Machine is recovered. This can be done by executing the command given below in a Terminal Application Window. Basically, the command tries to reclaim any space taken by Time Machine by asking for a lot of space back. Once you have finished executing this command, go back and try using the Boot Camp Assistant to install Windows.

tmutil thinlocalsnapshots / 9999999999999

Other space issues related to installing Windows are documented in the accepted answer to the question: Installing Windows on MBP 2015 (Mojave) Using Boot Camp, Error: Not enough space!.


How to prevent "smart searching" in Safari? Suppose I am trying to search for information about this file:

/etc/inetd.conf

If I paste the following into Safari's search bar:

"/etc/inetd.conf"

Safari tries to be clever and converts it into :

http://www.".com/etc/inetd.conf%22

And then tells me it can't be found.  If I do the same with Chrome, it simply searches for what I want without trying to be clever.

How can I prevent Safari from trying to do "smart searching" and instead simply search for what I want?

Proper way out:

open the search engine page (e.g.:google.com) and paste the string into the search field.

Easiest way out:

paste the above into the URL bar (which is increasingly abused as a search field as well.)

To indicate that you are cleverer than Safari, jump to the first position and insert a space character. (e.g. Ctrl+a, followed by Space)

That indicates to the browser that you are searching for a string and not trying to insert a botched URL. The leading space will be ignored by your search engine. This works in almost all cases when you want to make sure that Safari parses the contents of the URL bar not as an address but as a search string.

Now some strings seem to be more equal than others. Input "/etc/inetd.conf" and indeed Safari also ignores the first space for that. Then there are other examples like:
 /private/etc searches directly, /private searches directly, /private/ opens a Finder window… Some paths seem to be hardcoded.

In the example above / etc/inetd.conf should take you to a desired result.


Can I use a Verizon iPad 3rd Generation WiFi Only? I am considering purchasing a used iPad 3rd generation 8.9 size.  This iPad is advertised as a used 64gb Verizon iPad.  I only want to use the iPad on wifi and do not want to connect to Verizon or AT&T.  Can I do this or do I have to go through Verizon to get it to work. I have never had an iPad and I am 67 years of age so I am not familiar with what I need to look for or be careful about in buying a used iPad.

Yes, you will be able to use the iPad without a Verizon SIM card through your WiFi network. However, it appears that there is a problem where the iPad keeps notifying you that there is no SIM card.

I would advise getting one without cellular data as you don't plan on using it anyway. Those iPads are probably cheaper and will not have the previously described problem.


DNS on VPN does not work I have an Azure Point-to-Site VPN over IKEv2 configured and it works well.
The problem is with DNS.

DNS adresses are filled in Advanced tab of the VPN connection but it does not resolve anything.
The DNS server is not listed with command scutil --dns
The VPN connection is not present at output of command scutil --nc list nor with scutil --nwi
I cannot see the VPN connection entry even on the "Set service order" option in Network settings, viz screenshot below (...how humiliating!)

What is going on? What should I do to make it work?

OS X version 10.14.4 (18E226)

ad 2) scutil --dns

DNS configuration

resolver #1
  nameserver[0] : 192.168.1.1
  if_index : 5 (en0)
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00020002 (Reachable,Directly Reachable Address)

resolver #2
  domain   : local
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 300000

(and many other "local mdns")

ad 3)
scutil --nc list

Available network connection services in the current set (*=enabled):
(nothing)

scutil --nwi

Network information

IPv4 network interface information
     en0 : flags      : 0x5 (IPv4,DNS)
           address    : 192.168.1.102
           reach      : 0x00000002 (Reachable)

   REACH : flags 0x00000002 (Reachable)

IPv6 network interface information
   No IPv6 states found

   REACH : flags 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)

Network interfaces: en0 ipsec0

4) Humiliating inconsistence

Looks like the Vnet Gateway needs to "push" the DNS server as well. See the following link for more details of how i got it to work with macOS 10.15.4 and Azure Point-to-site

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/51615301/approach-for-private-dns-when-using-point-to-site-with-azure-vpn-gateway/60870856#60870856


Does iCloud use client-side encryption? I would like to know if iCloud uses client-side encryption i.e. all data is encrypted on client side and even Apple can't decrypt the data and read it.

Is this true for iCloud?

No.
Apple securely transmits and stores the data to the cloud by using secure tokens for authentication - as officially stated in the iCloud security and privacy overview1 and the iCloud design guide2.
Apple also states they they will "never provide encryption keys to any third parties", which of course is not entirely true due to the Patriot Act3.
ArsTechnica states that Apple holds a master encryption key4 and is able to unencrypt any personal data - i.e. also for government requests. "This includes contacts, notes, unencrypted e-mails, application preferences, Safari bookmarks, calendars, and reminders." The data is only encrypted during transit and again when stored on Apple's servers. This is a necessity if Apple wants to provide browser access to iCloud data.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation  notes5 that Apple is not inclined to be transparent about government requests.
As far as I understand the concept of client-side encryption, it suggests that all encryption must happen by the client as keys are not stored on the server (zero-knowledge policy).
Because Apple encrypts the data itself on the server for browser access it must store a key. Hence this is no client-side encryption.
1 - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4865
2 - https://developer.apple.com/library/.../iCloudDesignGuide
3 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_act
4 - http://arstechnica.com/...apple-holds-the-master-key.../
5 - https://www.eff.org/pages/who-has-your-back/


Why are some of music files not being added to my iCloud Music Library? I have an issue occurring with my iTunes library an iTunes Match that I'm having trouble diagnosing. I have several albums with tracks that refuse to upload to my iCloud Music Library. You can see some of the tracks in this screen shot, they have the dashed outline cloud next to them:

There are no relevant errors I could find in Console that would shed some light on why these tracks are not updating in my library. And, as you can see, other tracks from the same album updated just fine. I left iTunes running on my machine for several days and no progress was made on any tracks with this problem.

If I try and edit the information of one of the tracks I get the following pop-up:

And the tracks are not visible in the Music app on my iPhone -- they're listed in the album's tracks, but they are dimmed and unplayable.

I am not over my iTunes Match library quota -- I have only ~14,000 songs in my library and the limit is current 25,000.

How can I diagnose the problem that's preventing these tracks from syncing to my iCloud Music Library?

How can I get these tracks sync'ed so I can stream them from my other devices attached to my iTunes account?

There's an option in the menus to force an update of the iCloud Music Library: File > Library > Update iCloud Music Library.

This caused a spinner to appear in the upper right-hand corner of iTunes and, once it disappeared, all my formerly-unavailable tracks were now available in my iCloud Music Library for streaming from my other devices.

There was no need to log out and back in to my iTunes account.


Reset dock icons while log off I have an iMac for public use, I want to ensure the dock icon won't be changed by others (i.e. keep factory setting).

Currently I know the following two commands can do this:

defaults delete com.apple.dock
killall Dock

However, when I insert this two lines of code into an Logoff script, it won't work.

#!/bin/bash

#Reset the dock
defaults delete com.apple.dock
killall Dock

exit 0

The script is OK and other commands in that script are functioning too.

Any idea to solve this problem?

Since you're logging out you can just delete the com.apple.dock.plist file in the script using the rm command and no need to use the killall and defaults commands.  I just tested this with a logout script and it reset the Dock to the default Dock when logging back in.

I used: rm "/Users/$USER/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist"


How can I set the double-click speed in Lion with a multi-touch trackpad? In Snow Leopard and earlier (or perhaps the difference was with the hardware; I don't know which as I updated my computer and OS simultaneously), there was a preference under Trackpad to change the speed needed to perform a double-click. How can I speed it up now that it isn't there?

In Lion, the trackpad double-click speed slider and a few other trackpad options have been moved to: System Preferences > Universal Access > Mouse & Trackpad > Trackpad Options.


How to access the full capacity of hard drives larger than 2TB with OS X Yosemite? Last week, I bought a 4TB hard drive to connect to my MacBook Pro. My quest to have access to all the 4TB on my Mac was more difficult than expected.

After a lot of experimenting, I managed to create an exFat partition of 4TB.
(For people who want to replicate my approach: I connected the HD using sata-cables to another computer, and booted the computer from a Windows 8.1 dvd. Next, I created the exFat partition using the partition manager on the dvd. When I started Windows 8, the disk manager showed me that I only had created a partition of 1.8TB. I removed this partition, and created a new one of 4TB. Next, I had access to the full 4TB of my new drive.)

Since OS X also supports exFat, I figured I should be able to see the partition I created on Windows. This turned out to be wrong. When I connected the HD to my Mac using a docking station, the HD was visible in Disk Utility, but there were no partitions associated with it.

diskutil list shows the HDD as follows:

/dev/disk2
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.8 TB     disk2
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk2s1

Now comes the strange part. When I run a Windows 7 virtual machine and connect the HD to this virtual machine, I have full access to the full 4TB.

The only conclusion I can draw at this moment is that OS X Yosemite does not support hard drives larger than 2TB.

I would like to know if other Mac users have had more success than me in connecting a hard drive larger than 2TB to their Mac.

The only conclusion I can draw at this moment is that OS X Yosemite does not support hard drives larger than 2TB.

Very wrong. Yosemite supports drives up to 8EB (exabytes. Or 8 million terabytes. You could download the internet with some room left over).

What it has problems with is proprietary file formats from other companies, esp. if the patent holder doesn't want to share.

If you want to access the full drive on your Mac, repartition it in Disk Utility and format as HFS+. If you want to share the data on this very large volume across platforms, the easiest way is a NAS enclosure (Network Attached Storage - basically an external drive with an ethernet port). The disk format only matters to the device it's directly connected to.


Stop Chrome from being a resource hog on Mac How can on stop Chrome from being a resource hog on Mac. If it often opens up many Chrome helper task and I understand it should make my browser faster, but it's make my computer slower.

Every page, every tab, needs its own helper task.

The only way to prevent it using resources is to limit the number of pages you have open at any given time.


Internet speeds don't add I am downloading two files from Internet. Their combined speed would be around 80Kbps, but the activity monitor shows a huge data transfer, more than 200Kbps. I already turned off auto-update. Below is the screenshot of downloading in the browser and the activity monitor:

Please guide me; what can be wrong here? Maybe my knowledge is not accurate about this.

I am using macOS Sierra 10.12.4.

There is nothing wrong here.

Cyberduck & LibreOffice downloads are displaying their average speed since the beginning of the real download operation.

Activity Monitor is displaying an instantaneous speed which will take into account these 2 downloads, but also all the background network traffic your Mac is always doing (ex.: netbios, Bonjour, ntp). This instantaneous speed is highly variable and depend mostly of this background network traffic.


1st Gen MacBook Air Charger: Will it work with Late 2010 MBA? The original MacBook Air's charger looks a little different than the L-connector MagSafe 1 that the later gen Macbook Air's have.  Here's the first gen:

It looks like the actual plug interface is the same, just the external housing is different.  The wattage is also 45w.

Are they interchangeable?

My MBA: Late 2010 13 inch.

Yes, this will still work. The situation you want to avoid is using the incorrect wattage.


Will I be able to test port forwarding to an iPhone behind a firewall I am having decades of problems doing facetime calls to a pal on another country
Today I configured her router to port forwarding the ports used by Facetime:

I have tried to these ports using a port forward online testing tool, like this one but all tests say the ports are closed.
It appears that the tool will not be able to reach an iPhone behind a firewall.
Is this assumption true?
If so, is there a way to test that?
The person on the other side is using a tool like "what is my ip" to see their IP and I am using that, plus a port on that list to test.

Will I be able to test port forwarding to an iPhone behind a firewall

There's no reason why you shouldn't.  Technically, an iPhone is just another node on the network.

It appears that the tool will not be able to reach an iPhone behind a firewall. Is this assumption true?

It depends on how you configure the firewall.  The screen shot you posted "says" you've forward a number of ports, some of those related to Facetime.  For the record, you need to forward ports 53, 80, 443, 4080, 5223, and 16393-16472  (UDP).
The question is, where did you forward the ports to?  If nothing responds, whatever tool you use will assume the ports are not open.  Think of it as calling a phone number.  Whether or not the number is blocked, if the person at the other end doesn't pick up, do you know if they are home?
There's nothing in that screen shot that tells us how the port forwarding is configured.  It's just a list of ports at this point.

The person on the other side is using a tool like "what is my ip" to see their IP and I am using that, plus a port on that list to test.

Congratulations.  You just added your IP to a database of IPs that have some sort of web service running on it - in other words, an attack point.   If you're going to do a port scan, use a tool that runs locally on your machine and not on some unknown server.  I have seen many instances where unsuspecting system admins would utilize these sites to test their firewall only to be on the receiving end of endless connection attempts from around the world including Russia and China.
Could they have found eventually? Yes. But running a port scan, especially when it responds on well known ports like 80, 8080, 443, 22, etc, you're confirming there's a server there.
Bottom Line
This is actually a networking question and specifically how to configure a firewall and to test those ports.  The end device being an iPhone is really not germane here as this issue would exist with an Android or a PC. Your router manufacturer should have HOWTO guides on firewalls and port forwarding.  From there, take a look at https://networkengineering.stackexchange.com/ here on Stack Exchange for more in depth information regarding firewalls and port forwarding.


Searching in iTunes 11 no longer filters column browser options? In iTunes 10.x, if you searched for items (top right) it would filter the column browser to only show values that matched your search query. Now when I search, it filters the list of items, but not the column browsers. Is this an option somewhere?

To get the desired effect you can click on the "magnifying glass" icon and deselect "Search Entire Library". This prevents the Miniplayer version of the search and filters both your Column Browser and the list of songs (or artists/albums/genre).


How to disable the calendar alarm for another device? I have an iPhone with iOS 6 which has an Apple ID bound and from this iPhone I usually set alarms for the calendar.

My brother has another iPhone with iOS 6 too, and we are sharing the same Apple ID. The problem is that he gets notified for my alarms. How do I disable calendar alarms just for his iPhone and keep getting notified on mine?

The only way would be to disable Reminders on your brother's phone completely. Unlike iMessage, Reminders can't be set per device, but is bound to the Apple ID.

We may see Apple bring the functionality to Reminders in the future.


How to turn-off the heuristic guessing of (kanji + okurigana) while doing Japanese input? The Japanese input method has changed on my Mac. The traditional way on OSX and Windows is:

type hiragana for the word;
press space bar;
use arrow keys to select (kanji + okurigana);
press enter.

Somehow, (95% sure this because of El Capitan) my input method has become:

start typing hiragana;
while still typing hiragana, it continues to take heuristic guesses at the (kanji + okurigana) that I might want. This approach makes most sense on mobile phones, but I don't want to do this on my MacBook!
pressing esc reverts the guessed (kanji + okurigana) back to only hiragana (what I want), but then type another hiragana, and it starts to guess again... this is driving me crazy.

What language settings do I need to adjust so that I can input Japanese as I always have?

That is indeed a new feature for El Capitan:

Mac becomes even more fluent.
Japanese
Live conversion for keyboard input.
OS X El Capitan dramatically improves the ease and speed of entering Japanese text. With an enhanced vocabulary and improved language engine, it automatically transforms Hiragana into written Japanese as you type — eliminating the need to press the space bar for individual word conversions.

You can disable Live Conversion under System Preferences > Keyboard > Input Sources > Japanese, or the shortcut in the Input Menu Item by clicking Open Japanese Preferences:


Two iTunes accounts on one iPad I have two iTunes accounts. One for company usage second - for personal needs. Both of these accounts are with separate credit card numbers (company cc an personal one). I would like to have applications that was bought on these accounts to be on one device (iPad/iPhone). Is it possible to manage in this way?

Yes, You will be prompted to input the correct username and password for each new entry, Should be no problem at all :)

Just remember to log out with your personal/company account when buying new software and login with the correct account for the CC


How do I make a bootable USB out of .bin file I was following the instructions in https://createyourownos.blogspot.com/ to make my own tiny OS. I managed to do the compile and the assemble step, but how can I make a bootable USB out of .bin file?

It is not in general possible to create a bootable USB from any ".bin" file.
As per your comments you are not willing to detail how you arrived at the ".bin" file, how it was created, what it contains, or anything like that - we can then conclude that it is not possible for you to create a bootable USB from this ".bin" file.
UPDATE: You have since updated your comments with the source of your ".bin" file being from a specific blog-tutorial on making a simple operating system. In this case your operating system is 32-bit, where Macs today commonly boot 64-bit software. Your operating system also relies on the BIOS to actually do something, but this is not the way modern computers work.
I would suggest to you to keep using qemu or similar to boot your operating system in. Alternatively, buy an old, simple PC that you can tinker with. This will give you fewest headaches.
Alternatively, you need to ensure that the Mac enables the legacy BIOS CSM (compatibility support module) while booting. This can be done by ensure your disk has one of the old MBR partition tables (i.e. not GPT) and that your partition is set as bootable. You operating system then needs to moved into that partition accordingly.
Depending on how old your Mac is, you probably want to go along the road of loading rEFIt in first, and install the old legaby-BIOS version of GRUB 2 as a boot chain to ultimately boot your OS.
If you have the newest M1 Mac, you operating system cannot work at all due to it being 32-bit Intel only. If you have a newer Mac with T2, you'll need to relax secure boot restrictions in order to get going.


iCloud took my mac as a hostage-how to get back all my files? Turns out, everything i put inside any folder in my mac, is being uploaded to the cloud, showing me the cloud icon, and files are not available when i need them.(which by itself is a strange UX)

To stop this, i went into iCloud Drive ->options->, and uncheck the Documents and Desktop Folders.

Then i get a mesage saying that all my files in Desktop/Documents folder will disappear from my mac, and will be available in iCloud if i uncheck this box.

I want back my files on my mac. I don't want to go and look for them in iCloud now, but keep my folders structure as it is, with my files not in icloud, but right where i put them in first place. (download all of them)

How to cancel this hostage UX, and get my files where they belong, without removing them from my mac first(as the massage says) ?

.. and files are not available when i need them ..

System Preferences → iCloud → iCloud Drive options → Uncheck Optimise Storage. All files will be found locally, always, as well as on iCloud.

Can I safely uncheck the Optimise Mac Storage check box on the Apple ID - iCloud page?

For the second part,

What may seem counterintuitive is that your files are still stored in the iCloud ( which is perhaps why you thought you lost them).
To retrieve your files, you should open Finder and navigate to iCloud Drive, and then to the Documents folder within iCloud Drive. You should then manually transfer or copy the files from that directory to the local Documents directory on your computer. You should then do that same with your Desktop folder.

How to separate iCloud Drive from Desktop & Documents


2018 Macbook Air hot/slow when using UHD monitor So I upgraded from a 1080p 27 inch monitor to the following

Samsung 32" UHD 4K Monitor
Model: LU32J590UQNXZA

I've tried connecting over HDMI using a USB C dock, and over Displayport with a Displayport to USB C cable.

In both cases if I'm doing anything graphic intensive, or even in a video call, my laptop gets hot quickly and starts stuttering to the point of the mouse and keyboard hesitating.

All I've read says the new macbook air should be able to handle a 4K monitor.  I mostly needed more screen real estate, not so much high resolution.

Am I expecting too much of integrated graphics?  I'm not expecting to game on this laptop, but video calls become non-functional, and when I'm using Affinity Photo it also starts screeching to a halt even when working on small images.

I have the same problem with my 2018 15" Macbook Pro. The only thing that helps is  to set the scaling for the display not to the max screen real estate.

It's not getting warm or anything, but the interface is kind of laggy.


Why does my iPhone 4S's screen have a yellow tint? I didnt realise the yellow tint on the phone until my friend compared his screen side-by-side. There is a yellow tint on my phone's screen. I read around the net and some people state its the glue and will get better within a few days. Other sources say that its a polarization problem and will not be fixed on its own.

Can anyone shine some light on this issue ? Will it be fixed on its own over time ?

EDIT :

I compared it with 3 other phones, mine was the only one with a yellow-ish tint.

It depends on the cause of the yellowing.

I personally have seen the following situations:

Psycological yellow where any time you have a black border and a white area, the brain will color the white yellow. If you hide the black with a piece of white paper, the yellowness magically disappears.
Permanent manufacturing problem where the LCD is pinched internally, damaged, or otherwise really emitting a permanent yellow cast as measured by a calibrated colorimeter such as the Spyder.
Temporary yellowness (very rare - I've just seen this a few times). I don't know why or when it went away, but several people sure agreed that one phone was off until it was restored. I don't know if it was some odd warmup temporary hardware issue, but after it was restored, it looked and tested fine with the Spyder.

Do keep in mind, not all displays are made in the same batch, same factory and that combined with the backlight settings can make a pretty large difference between models. If it's convenient to have it checked out, or you can take a picture of the colors and it's totally obvious yours has some severe color tint, then take it in and ask for a repair. If not, you'll likely need hours of time and expensive tools to even tell your phone is unique to another after using it to play games for a day or two. It will just be right and your brain will compensate for whatever calibration your phone has. A restore of the device is also a good thing to try so you don't needlessly waste time going in for service since that is the most obvious cause of the LCD passing all inspections along manufacture but you having colors that seem off to your eye at the point of receiving a new phone out of the box.


How do I stop safari from displaying power use warning? I have simple dashboard visualization in d3 shown in Safari running on a MacMini on a big screen in fullscreen. https://tovare.com/dashboard/

After a while a grey line is shown in the top of the screen with a message that the page uses a lot of power.and if I close it could make the Mac faster.
When I close the alert, it shows up again.

Does anyone know where I can find the configuration option to remove it?

(Safari version 11.1 on both systems)

As far as I'm aware there is no way to stop this.

In earlier versions of Safari, disabling plugins would also disable how it managed its power usage, but:

It's unclear whether disabling plugins in newer versions still has this affect
I'm not sure doing this would necessarily stop the warnings themselves
It also means disabling any other plugins you may want to use

Regardless, if you'd like to give this a go:

Launch Safari
Press command, (or just go to Safari > Preferences...)
Select the Advanced tab
Untick the Internet plug-ins checkbox
Exit preferences


How do I remove the strip above my menu bar? Recently a strip has appeared above the menu bar on my mac and I have no idea how to get rid of it. Any ideas? The above photograph of the problem is screen shotted.

That looks the the desktop wallpaper. Try changing wallpaper (or display type; it might be due to the aspect ratio).


Openssl on mac -In is not working I am follow a tutorial guide from this link http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/30/encrypt-and-decrypt-files-with-openssl/

to try to produce -sha256 hash from an input file but when i type
openssl dgst -sha256 -in filename.txt

the command will return unknown option '-in'.

Can anyone please point out what have i gone wrong ?

OS Version: 10.11 OpenSSL Version: 1.0.2.d

I don't get any errors when I make a temporary file:

openssl version > /$TMPDIR/foo
openssl dgst -sha256 /$TMPDIR/foo

My version is OpenSSL 0.9.8zg 14 July 2015 and the sha256 of the resulting foo file is

SHA256(/tmp/foo)= 34ff579703733495dc5b883f288b71653653c8b449da860a1b6fb382fde1a5f1

Maybe you just need to remove the -in to calculate your digest?


Android tethering: Mac doesn't detect new network interface I am trying to share my 3G internet connection from my Nexus 4 running Android 5.1.1 with my Macbook Pro running macOS Sierra 10.12. Using an USB cable (aka USB Tethering). After connecting the phone and turning on the USB tethering option, When I go to "Open Network Preferences" from the network icon in the status bar, I don't see my phone listed as expected to proceed with the configuration.

Although, I do see my phone in About this mac -> Overview -> System Report -> Hardware -> USB. The Android File Transfer app opens when I connect it to the computer, and it closes when I turn on tethering.

I tried installing HoRNDIS, and even restarting afterwards, but didn't solve. Tried to play around the USB Debugging option as well without success.

My broadband allows tethering since I can do it over Wifi and Bluetooth really straightforward.

Is there a specific set of Sierra native steps to set up a generic USB network interface that supports android 5.1.1?

You can use this link to some software that works on Sierra I found on a YouTube video. It is only a trial, easily reinstalled though.

http://download.clockworkmod.com/tether/tether-mac.zip


Skipping .DS_Store files when copying between two external drives There are quite a few questions on .DS_Store files already, but none seem to answer my problem.

I have an external hard drive with a dozen of ~ 50 GB backup folders. When I try to copy these folders to a new external hard drive by drag-and-drop, it fails because

  .DS_Store already exists and could not copied.
  [Stop]

To circumvent this issue, how can I skip copying .DS_Store files when copying between two hard drives?

A Terminal command solution certainly exists, but I am not well-versed enough in cp to find it myself. All help appreciated!

P.S. Both disks are Mac OS X Extended (Journaled).

Try rsync -rv --exclude=.DS_Store <source> <destination> from terminal.

for example

rsync -rv --exclude=.DS_Store ~/Documents /Volumes/Backup/Documents

will do:

(-r) recursive (copy everything below ~/Documents)
(-v) verbose (tell you what it's doing)
(--exclude) excluding any file named .DS_Store
from ~/Documents
to  /Volumes/Backup/Documents

rsync is like a suped up cp command with way more options, most specifically --exclude


What is the network interface 'llw0'? An interface called llw0 shows up in ifconfig and has the same IPv6 address (different scopeid) and hardware address as awdl0:
awdl0: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1484
   options=400<CHANNEL_IO>
   ether 42:f8:7a:c4:5a:b6
   inet6 fe80::e8de:dfa2:fe4f:f1e%awdl0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xd
   nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
   media: autoselect
   status: active
llw0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
   options=400<CHANNEL_IO>
   ether 42:f8:7a:c4:5a:b6
   inet6 fe80::e8de:dfa2:fe4f:f1e%llw0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xe
   nd6 options=201<PERFORMNUD,DAD>
   media: autoselect
   status: active

awdl0 is Apple Wireless Direct Link, but what is llw0?

llw is a WLAN low-latency interface, and llw0 is simply the first of those.
The llw interface is a network interface that comes from a nexus defined in the Skywalk system. You can look it up like this:
skywalkctl list-providers | grep llw

You'll see that it is handled by a BCM "driver" (i.e. an IC in your computer manufactured by Broadcom).
The interface is supposed to be there - it is not a bug.
Similar to how awdl (that you mention) is a special kind of WiFi connection that is peer-to-peer and low-latency (used for AirDrop for example) - llw is also a special kind of WiFi connection that is low-latency (no power saves allowed), but with an access point.


How to automatically paste today's date with keyboard shortcut? I am on El Capitan OS X.

I want to be able to hit some keyboard shortcut and then have today's date be automatically outputted.

Example:

When I press Option + D, "2016_06_13" is pasted into the text field.

The date would be automatically calculated based on my time zone.

Ideally, I'd like to be able to do this universally. So in Finder, Safari, TextEdit, etc. — not just exclusive to one program.

Having this shortcut would streamline my workflow.

Is this possible?

You could do it with Automator like this:

Create new: Services
Services receives no input in any application
Use the search to find and add action: Run Applescript

Copy and paste the following to the field on the right:

tell application "System Events"
    set _Date to (current date)
    keystroke ¬
        (year of _Date as text) & "_" & ¬
        text -2 thru -1 of ("00" & ((month of _Date) as integer)) & "_" & ¬
        (day of _Date as text)
end tell

Note that the day will not have a leading zero like the month does. If you want that, you could replace the line with: (day of _Date as text) with: text -2 thru -1 of ("00" & ((day of _Date) as integer))

Save with: Cmd + S. Give it a name you can remember in the next step.

If you simply use the Save command ( Cmd + S ) instead of Save as... the Service file is automatically put in the right place.

The Last step would be to define a shortcut for the service you just made.

Go to mac System preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services and then find the service you saved before. You should find it at the bottom area of the list. Double click the none text on the right side of the service name and give it a shortcut.


Strange Clipboard behaviour on OS X El Capitan I've been experiencing a very weird clipboard behaviour on my mac.

This is my OS

I'm a developer and every now and then I need to copy paste code, text or even files around.

What I've been experiencing lately is that the clipboard is not being shared among applications.

For example I can't copy a url from Chrome and paste it into Safari. It doesn't give me any error, it just wont paste anything.

For example I just selected this page URL, but on the clipboard I see the URL dropbox added to my clipboard.

Another strange issue is that I use Sublime Text on a day to day basis, and sometimes if I need to copy and paste code somewhere else, it either wont paste anything at all or adds sometimes 10 new lines between each line of what I copied and sometimes 1000s of new lines in between. Which is very annoying.

I've tried restarting the clipboard from the terminal and from Activity Monitor and still the same issue.

Sometimes when I quit and reopen sublime, the issue in sublime itself gets fixed but for a short period of time. It then comes back.

I also use Alfred 2 for workflows and shortcuts which has a clipboard history, but when it starts happening it wont copy into it's clipboard either.

Sometimes copying and pasting works just with the mouse and sometimes not even with it.

I've also tried repairing permissions, run Onyx and repair everything.

UPDATE
I recently tried rebooting in Recovery mode to repair permissions as well as clearing the NVRAM but I'm still experiencing the same thing.

So far the only solution I have found is a reboot, which makes it work for a while.

Any clues?

HO! Just moments ago,   four different copies appeared in various software on my macbook

AAA: Clipboard
BBB: SecureCRT   iTerm   Evernote
CCC: Chrome
DDD: Sublime

I have two solutions.

Open the Terminal application（found in /Applications/Utilities/），Type the command  killall pboard ， Hit Return(Recommend)；
copy different text and paste it；

But I still don't know why....

macOS 10.13.6 (17G65)


How to fix a situation where a new iPad 2 causes other macs to disconnect from Wi-Fi? I'm not sure what's going on here. I just got this iPad 2, and from the moment I connected it to my wireless network, my other Macs were kicked off, and haven't been able to pull IP addresses from the router.

All my Macs are running Lion. The iPad 2 is running iOS 5.1.1 and has no problems with internet connectivity. I'm using a Motorola Surfboard SBG6580 cable modem with built-in g/n Wi-Fi. That device has been serving me well for over 2yrs, except for the occasional firmware snafu with Comcast. The DHCP service is turned on.

Regression:

I tried creating reservations for each device on my network, thinking that there was maybe some IP conflict, but that's not the case.
I've tried statically assigning IP's to my Macs as well. Even that doesn't work.
The Airport icon has an exclamation point, and the troubleshooter isn't helping either.
I've restarted all of my devices many times.

Any advice how to fix this situation would be appreciated.

After testing one router configuration at a time, I finally fixed it. I had to change the wireless access point frequency from 5Ghz to 2.4Ghz. The option is called "802.11 Band" in the web interface. I hope that nobody else has to go through this.


Transfer songs purchased on iphone 4 to computer How do I transfer songs purchased from my iphone to itunes on my computer?  I only want to transfer purchased music, not apps or other purchases.

Sync it with ITunes (if it isnt already) and sign in to itunes on your mac and it should (may take a minute or two) sync up.


how to prevent music on iPhone from automatically syncing songs to iTunes I've created an iTunes library - around 1000 songs. My wife has an iPhone and has downloaded her own music to it. She recently connected the iPhone to our home computer (where my iTunes library resides) and all of her music was automatically added to the iTunes library. However, our music tastes differ considerably.

At this point, what's the easiest way for me to remove her songs from the library? I can go through and delete each song, but I believe if she ever connects her iPhone again, it will delete the songs off of her phone too (or sync them back to iTunes). Is there some way for her to have her own library that she syncs with and a separate library for my music?

I suspect this is a pretty basic question with an easy answer, but would appreciate some help.

Plug her phone back into iTunes. In iTunes, click on her iphone, and in Options uncheck anything having to do with "Syncing Automatically". If it's not already checked, click "Manually manage music and videos".

If you want her to have a separate iTunes library, she should also have a separate login for the shared computer. This is really the easiest way to deal anything on a shared computer.

Incidentally, there shouldn't really be any reason to physically plug your iPhone into your computer anymore. You can actually set the phone (and iPads, etc) to sync wirelessly.


Photo Library-Photo Stream-Camera Roll , whats the difference between these Can someone please tell me the difference between Camera Roll, Photo Stream and Photo Library.  And why can't I delete anything in Photo Library. If I delete pictures from photo stream , it says it will erase them off my computer as well?
I want to keep all the pics on my computer but delete on my phone to free up space. How do I do that?  And is there a fast way to delete all pics or one by one... I have over 2000 pics! I have a iPhone 4S.

Camera Roll contains photos you have taken on your device, accessible locally.

Photo Stream is a set of photos synced to all your devices, and only takes the last 1000 photos or from the past 30 days, whichever comes first. Photo Stream does not affect your iCloud storage.

(iCloud) Photo Library is where photos can be uploaded to, outside of the photos you take on your iDevice (so DSLR photos can be in Photo Library) and it does affect and consume your iCloud storage.


Can CCC clone a Fusion drive and restore it to a new SSD? I have a 2012 Mac Mini with a 1TB Fusion drive. The noise of the spinning disk has been increasing lately and I want to replace it with a Crucial MX300 1TB SSD.

Carbon Copy Cloner makes a complete image of my machine nightly. Can I use the latest clone and restore it to the SSD? Is it advised or would the removal of the Fusion drive require a clean install of macOS (Sierra)? I was wondering if the boot files would be different from using a Fusion drive, for example, or if anything would need a change in some settings files.

I seem to remember that the version of OS X Yosemite was a little bit different between my Mini and my MacBook Air and that was due to the Fusion drive (couldn't download OS X on the Mini and boot it from a USB drive on the Air).

In answer to your question: YES.

By way of explanation... CCC makes a copy of the file system, which is independent of what physical drives the file system is on. for example you could make a clone of a boot drive on a RAID-5 array and then restore it to a single drive with no problems.

The file system doesn't change just because it is on a different kind of physical media.


Use TextEdit's AutoCorrect everywhere (especially in Google Chrome) I really love typing in TextEdit. It seems to correct all my typos and so saves time in editing.

Is there anyway I can get this functionality to work in all applications, especially on Google Chrome's text fields.

I've searched everywhere, but I can only find articles about Chrome's own built in Auto Correct (which isn't available on the Mac yet).

OS X 10.9

TextEdit's autocorrect is actually OS X's autocorrect, which is used in every system text box in the OS, in every application, including 3rd-party applications.

The problem comes when apps use their own text boxes—they then have to implement NSSpellChecker themselves. Whilst the Google Chrome issue relating to this seems to suggest that nothing has changed, my limited testing seems to suggest that it has been implemented in Canary.


If I sign a JAR with a certificate from Comodo, will I still get warnings? I have written a piece of software in Java that I would like to sell, however it is currently unsigned. When I first wrote the software it didn't matter too much, but I think OS X has upgraded since then and has gotten more strict as have web browsers and I'm now getting lots of warnings to say the file "is not commonly downloaded and may be dangerous" and OS X will not allow the app to run without changing security settings.

From what I can gather the only way to address this is to sign the application, which is fine for Windows however on OS X I'm a bit confused. I've read online that now only certificates issued by Apple are valid, but some companies like DigiCert are still advertising that there code signing certificates work on Mac and pretty much all say that they work with Java. So, if I signed my JAR files with a code signing certificate from Comodo and then used JarBundler to create an app, would it be recognized as 'safe'?

After biting the bullet and purchasing a code signing certificate, I can now answer my own question with all certainty:

Short answer: No, the warnings don't go on OS X - although they do in web browsers.

Long(er) answer: Technically certificates from Comodo or any other certificate authority that is trusted do work on Mac and you can absolutely sign .apps with them, however how useful this is another matter. I suppose that for more advanced users it is still beneficial in that you can verify whether or not an application has been tampered with, but Apple still won't see it as being from a trusted developer - and that's where the confusion starts.

The warnings that I mentioned in my original question originate from Gatekeeper. Now, if I would have known that I wouldn't have needed to start this question but I guess if I didn't know other people won't either. Anyway Gatekeeper is something that Apple have designed to keep Mac's safe and to avoid unwanted, malicious software from entering the system. It does this by restricting what apps can be executed based upon their origin, and by default in OS X Mountain Lion and later Gatekeeper only allows the execution of Apps from the Mac App Store and trusted developers.

To become a trusted developer however, it takes more than just signing code with any old certificate. Trusted developers have Developer ID's, given to them by Apple, and their code signing certificate contains this Developer ID; again the only certificates to be able to hold a Developer ID are those issued by Apple.

So, when people tell you that Apple only trust themselves, that's not true. They trust certificates issued by most certificate authorities just not in the same way as Windows and signing you app does not mean you're a trusted developer. For that, you have to pay Apple $99/year.

In all fairness, you do get a lot for that $99 and it does make some sense for it to be this way. It's frustrating for developers, but  safer for users! Users can bypass Gatekeeper for individual apps, so if you're only planning on releasing one app for OS X or something then perhaps providing instructions on how to this might be a better option for you.

PS: After a lot of emails to the Comodo support team, I finally received this statement from them to confirm all of this:

  While our certificates work perfectly fine with signing .app files, it
  does not give you an Apple Developer ID to designate that you are an
  Identified Developer by Apple, as only Apple provides developer IDs
  for Mac and iOS applications.


Mail.app extremely slow on OS X 10.9 Mavericks Since I updated to Mavericks two days ago on my late 2008 13-inch MacBook (first unibody aluminium), I have huge difficulties using Mail. When Mail is running, everything slows down extremely (I constantly see beach balls and spend most of the time waiting for any of my inputs showing an effect, not just in Mail but with everything). The activity monitor shows that "Mail" and "com.apple.internetaccounts" both have 90%+ under "% CPU", and most of the time Mail is "Not Responding". The Mail application doesn't show any window during maybe the first hour after trying to open it, and once I see the main window, everything is so slow that even opening an e-mail can - if it works at all - take a loooot of time. Two or three times, I even got a complete freeze, the cursor not moving anymore, the fans (which were running constantly before) shut down; the only thing I could do was holding the power button for five seconds.

I have no firewall app running and have looked into my log file which is available here: http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=55665966095442984994

When I force quit Mail and com.apple.internetaccounts, things run smoothly, so the problem seems to be limited to the Mail application. What might I be able to do to avoid having to force quit Mail and have it respond more smoothly and not hang up?

Thanks for uploading the Logfile. There are several entries which could describe the Problems, f.e.:

25/10/13 4:29:58.408 pm WindowServer[125]   disable_update_timeout: UI updates were forcibly disabled by application "Mail" for over 1.00 seconds. Server has re-enabled them.
25/10/13 4:30:12.256 pm WindowServer[125]   disable_update_likely_unbalanced: UI updates still disabled by application "Mail" after 15.00 seconds (server forcibly re-enabled them after 1.00 seconds). Likely an unbalanced disableUpdate call.

and

25/10/13 4:36:30.089 pm WindowServer[125]   common_reenable_update: UI updates were finally reenabled by application "Mail" after 392.86 seconds (server forcibly re-enabled them after 1.00 seconds)
25/10/13 4:37:26.568 pm com.apple.IconServicesAgent[437]    main Failed to composit image for binding VariantBinding [0x159] flags: 0x8 binding: FileInfoBinding [0x359] - extension: jpg, UTI: public.jpeg, fileType: ????.

and

25/10/13 4:45:13.084 pm Mail[408]   xpc __securityd_create_connection_block_invoke got event: Connection interrupted

and

25/10/13 4:45:21.796 pm com.apple.internetaccounts[463] An instance 0x7fcb64cef770 of class IMAPMailbox was deallocated while key value observers were still registered with it. Observation info was leaked, and may even become mistakenly attached to some other object. Set a breakpoint on NSKVODeallocateBreak to stop here in the debugger. Here's the current observation info:
<NSKeyValueObservationInfo 0x7fcb64cf0620> (
<NSKeyValueObservance 0x7fcb64cf0750: Observer: 0x7fcb64f28160, Key path: uidNext, Options: <New: NO, Old: NO, Prior: NO> Context: 0x12131544b, Property: 0x7fcb64cf05f0>
)

Some of the entries describe Timeouts because of syncing errors. How to fix them?

I would cleanup the Cache of the Mailaccount either by moving the Cache Folder or be deleting and recreating the IMAP-Account.

If you want to cleanup the Cache you have to:

Quit Mail
got to ~/Library/Mail/V2
Find the Folder for your IMAP-Account in the Folder "V2". It should be named something like "IMAP-you@email.address"
move the Folder for your IMAP-Account somewhere else, f.e. to the Desktop
start Mail again. It should be syncing the Mails from your IMAP-Account to your Computer in a normal fashion.

If that does not help you could try the second approach: deleting the IMAP-Account and recreating it.

Try that and post your results please.


What is sort of standard torrent client for MacOS (2019-2020)? I have been using uTorrent for years, both for Mac and Windows.

But uTorrent stopped working with new MacOS Catalina, it is not compatible with new MacOS.

I started to google and found out that uTorrent was never meant for MacOS.

What is sort of standard torrent client for MacOS? Preferably with similar functionality as uTorrent, I got used to it and wouldn't want to learn new software.

Transmission is the app that I have most often heard people talk about when “torrents on the Mac” comes up.

I don’t know uTorrent, so I can’t speak to whether its functionality is the same as Transmission, but it is very straightforward to use.

Transmission is donation-ware, so you can download and try it out for free.


Why is cron being deprecated? I just found out that cron has been deprecated in Mac OS X. Why is this, and will it eventually be completely removed from future releases?

With the release of Mac OS 10.4, launchd was chosen to supersede cron in Mac OS. Here's a cached version of the launchd page from the Apple Developer Connection in 2005. It explains why cron was deprecated, as well as the benefits of launchd from Apple's perspective.

The summary: launchd was created to not just replace cron but also init, xinetd for better performance, and better control over configuration and the actual tasks themselves.

  The launchd daemon offers a single, standardized, interface to any and all programs started automatically by the system. Furthermore, the configuration files that determine when to run a given program can also specify resource limits and environment variables, which simplifies setup and security for many programs. The same configuration file format is used whether a job is launched once at system startup or user login, on demand over the network, or at intervals.


Force an app to run one of its menu options from a shell script? Is there any way to force the App to run one of its menu options if there is no command line interface available?

Perhaps an Automation sort of thing?

EXAMPLE

I would like to run NewsFire's "File > Export Feeds" command to backup the feed list (OPML file). I tried running NewsFire through Terminal with "--help" but no luck.

Here is the backup script I currently use, in case anybody find it useful. It can be used to save and restore the state of NewsFire accross multiple machines (to restore you just cd ~ , and then unzip backup.zip).

#! /bin/bash
#
# Backup NewsFire preferences, feeds and cache (everything)
#

D_DESTFILE=~/Backups/Config/NewsFire.zip

# Don't update archive, create new one
if [ -e "$D_DESTFILE" ]; then
  rm $D_DESTFILE
fi

cd ~
zip -r $D_DESTFILE Library/Application\ Support/NewsFire Library/Caches/org.xlife.NewsFire Library/Preferences/org.xlife.NewsFire.plist

This is a beginning of an AppleScript to do the exporting:

set filename to "test file"

tell application "NetNewsWire" to activate
tell application "System Events"
    tell process "NetNewsWire"
        click menu item "Export Subscriptions…" of menu "File" of menu bar 1
        set value of first text field of first sheet of first window to filename
        click button "Save" of first sheet of first window
    end tell
end tell

tell application "NetNewsWire" to quit

It will save the exported file with the set filename at the location which was last used to do the exporting. It will not overwrite a currently existing file, so maybe you can save it in a temporary place and move it with a separate script.

Note: My copy of NetNewsWire had the menu command "Export Subscriptions…", not "Export Feeds", but if yours is different, just change the name of the menu item on line 6.

Edit to add: You also need to have "Enable access for assistive devices" in the Universal Access System Preference Panel set to enabled for this to work.


Why is my iCloud storage full, even after deleting videos? I have recently been recording long videos with my iPhone (3 hrs/day). When I've come home, I have transfered the videos to my computer and then deleted them on the iPhone.

Despite this, my iCloud storage has gone from half-full to completely full in a very short time. It doesn't feel right, and while I can't prove it, I think that the long videos haven't been deleted but are still counted.

I have:

Emptied "Recently deleted videos"
Made sure that the long videos aren't present on iCloud on any connected device (including in the "Photos app" on icloud.com)

I do not back up my devices to iCloud – so it can't be that they are lingering there. I also haven't taken any other images except those videos.

With the help of AppleCare support, after a very lengthy exchange spanning 6 months, this issue finally got resolved.

It turns out that photo and video original files were still erroneously being kept in the iCloud storage, even though I had deleted them completely from all GUI interfaces. I discovered this by downloading the entire library to my iMac using the Download and Store Originals settings in Apple Photos, and then in manually inspecting the ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary file, by right-clicking the file in Finder and opening it with Show Package Contents.

I was then able to see old photos and videos that were supposed to be deleted long ago;  which led me to understand that they were also "stuck" in the iCloud storage and therefore held my storage space "hostage" at a higher plateau than necessary. This had forced me to increase my storage plan.

The photos and videos not deleting properly happened pre-iOS 9.11, and it's not certain if the bug causing the actual issue is still alive in later iOS versions. However, if you have under unusual circumstances encountered this bug before the update to 9.11, the originals can still be stuck there, because iOS updates will not get them out of limbo. If looks like you have used up far more disk space/iCloud storage than the amount of photos and videos in your library can account for, I suggest that you inspect the photoslibrary file.

You will then need Apple Support help to reconstruct your iCloud photos library which their engineering support team can do, once you've explained the issue to a AppleCare senior adviser. Just be warned that they are not used to this issue and a lot of explaining may be needed to get them to take the case seriously. In my case, I had to collect a lot of evidence and do some real argumentation to get them to understand that there was a problem in their system.


How to retrieve photos back after iTunes backup upload in iPhone 7 and iOS 13? I have an iPhone 7 and i installed a backup which belongs to a few days ago. But i had several photos important i took yesterday. But i most probably didn't back them up. Is it still possible to bring them back?

Thanks in any advance.

You can check to see if you have any backups of your iPhone on your computer with a tool like iBackup Extractor. You can access and browse the contents of such a backup (free) to see if your photos are there. If you want to extract more than 20 photos, though, you'll need to buy a licence.


Can I be signed into iTunes with a different account than iCloud on same iPhone at same time? Can my iTunes & App Store account  be separate from my iCloud, Messages,and FaceTime accounts?
Can I be signed into iTunes with separate account from iCloud, iMessage, etc, at the same time on the same iPhone?
Can I have a separate account (Apple ID) for iTunes purchases than my iCloud account?

Yes that is what I have.

I have this because my iTunes account predates apple mail and backup which are the predecessors of iCloud. The latter had to be a @me.com address and my iTunes account was not. The usual problem is that Apple has not provided a way to combine these accounts for those who want to.

Your could have a third email with Apple for development membership. And your iTunes login could differ from your Mac apps store login but that gets too confusing.


Can I delete old Messages threads automatically? I would like to remove old Messages threads. Is there any way to do this, manually or automatically, other than deleting them one-by-one?
Is there an API for deleting them?

It's in Messages Prefs, though it doesn't have much in the way of granularity…

Drop menu artificially floated away for clarity.


Buying used iPhone 5s for use abroad I'm looking to buy a used iPhone 5s from eBay. It will be used as an iPod Touch for a while, but I'll be moving out of the US in about a year or so. Sprint phones are by far the cheapest, but as I understand it, you have to be a Sprint customer for 3 months before they'll unlock it for international use (which is a condition I likely won't be fulfilling).

Would I be able to buy a bad ESN phone and use it abroad, then? It sounds like GSM phones are better for abroad use, but they're a bit more and I'm just trying to go down the cheapest route.

Thanks in advance!

If you buy a locked phone, then it will be locked to the carrier it was originally bought for. But I guess you know that already.

I am assuming you are in the US, since you mentioned Sprint.

There are two things you can do:

Buy an iPhone that was already unlocked.
Buy a locked iPhone and use it as a phone in the US, but buy a second phone for use abroad. This can be bought abroad or in the US, but make sure it is not carrier locked. When travelling abroad, you could use the iPhone wherever you have access to WiFi - and you could use the other phone for making phone calls. If this phone is also a cheap smartphone, you could even use it to tether the iPhone to it for WiFi access on the move.

Buying an already-unlocked iPhone is not the cheap option, and I assume this is an issue since you were looking on eBay for a phone. But you could get a low-spec Android phone for very little money if it's a few years old. The key thing is that it would have to be unlocked since you would be using it for phone calls abroad, and possibly data access if you use it as a hotspot.


Simplest way to get youtube videos to be saved locally on an iPad When coming across certain youtube videos (on a Mac) I don't have time to watch at the moment, I wish I could get them saved for later offline viewing on my iPad.

Is there some simple setup I could make that with just 1-3 clicks the video will get saved to the iPad?

You don't specify what web browser you use, but if you use FireFox a simple plugin like Easy You Tube Video Downloader may be just what you are looking for.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/easy-youtube-video-downl-10137/

For Chrome you can use the following:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/save-your-videos/pipiejpiplliidbnncmckaljhhchoihc

Step 1: Find YouTube Video
Step 2 (Click 1): Click "Download" button
Step 3 (Click 2): Drag Downloaded video into iTunes, dropping on iPad icon
Step 4 (Click 3): Click "Sync" can be via USB or via WiFi
Step 5: Watch videos in the Videos app on iPad


How to Sync Gmail's "Other" Contacts with OS X Yosemite (Mail.app and Contacts) and iOS Mail I'm trying to get Mail.app on OS X Yosemite to autocomplete contacts on my Gmail "Other" group - i.e. the contacts google creates for you once you've sent them an email.

I have a Google "Internet Account" setup in OS X, which syncs Google's contacts, but only the ones in my Gmail "Address Book", which does not include the earlier "Other".

If I try to set up a CarDav account in Contacts with my gmail credentials it tells me it's a duplicate, and if I try to add some extra dots to my email, it will create my account, but immediately turn it into a Google account as opposed to a CarDav.

I would ideally like to achieve a similar setup on iOS, having the Gmail "Other" available for autocomplete on iOS Mail

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated

Mail.app and Contacts.app have no access to the "Others" group from gmail...

however, if you compose all your gmail account messages in Mail.app on iOS or OS X instead of the gmail web client, they will autofill any addresses you have previously sent to.


Set up OSX to act as router via Internet Sharing I have the following network setup:

LAN====OSX++++Machine A
        +
        +
        ++++++Machine B

OSX is currently sharing an ethernet connection with A and B via an ad-hoc wireless network.  This works great, except that Machine A and Machine B can't see each other.  They can see the LAN and OSX, and OSX can see both of them.  I'm convinced some combination of ipfw and/or natd configuration options can solve this problem, but my networking knowledge is limited enough that I can't seem to Google effectively for a solution.  What do I want ipfw/natd to do for me?  How do I get them to do it?

(Obviously, I could solve this problem much more easily by the expedient of purchasing a switch, but I feel like I should know how to do this sort of things regardless.)

You need to enable routing.  I'm pretty sure on OS X this is a sysctl(like FreeBSD):

http://securityreliks.securegossip.com/2010/10/enabling-ip-forwarding-on-mac-osx/

doing:

# sysctl -w net.inet.ip.forwarding=1

as root should enable this.


Looking for an iOS app to announce the time Is there an application for iOS devices similar to "Announce the time" feature in Mac OS X? This feature simply announces time every hour/half hour/quarter hour with preselected voice.

My idea is that I would start playing music or podcast or run some game, and this app would announce the time in timely fashion (from the background). I searched the App Store for some obvious keywords, but didn't find anything useful yet.

As Joe indicated, the reason why you have not found an app to do this is because apps simply can't.

Backgrounding apps can do very little, and even things that they can do are limited to generating a notification which you must acknowledge in order for the app to actually carry out it's task. For example; Skype can background and detect a call, but you must still acknowledge the notification to open the app, and have anything meaningful actually occur. Additionally, backgrounded radio stations / audio streams can continue to stream, and even change channels or support some feature that responds to the "skip forward" and "skip backward" media controls, but if the network connection is broken the app is suspended and will not do anything further until you re-open it.

Sadly, this is also not part of the accessibility features built into iOS, perhaps you could file a bug and request the feature be added in a future software version?


Is there any way to get rid of the sound made when a screenshot is created? Obviously other than muting the computer. I just want to create a screenshot without having that "camera sound" come out.

Is there a way to disable this sound?

After launching Grab, open preferences (in the menus, click Grab => Preferences) and uncheck "Enable Sound".

A screenshot of the preferences here:


View recently closed files (e.g., in Preview) on OS X? Mac OS X has built-in features for viewing recently opened applications, or recently opened files in applications.  I open lots of files in Preview and keep some of them open for a long time, usually the ones I am most likely to open again.  So I would prefer to be able to quickly view all of my recently closed (typically unmodified) files.  Is this possible either system wide, or specifically in Preview?

Note: There is related program, AppsBar, which allows one to view recently closed applications, but based on the description does not seem to apply to specific files.  If it makes a difference, I am running Mavericks.

It is unfortunatly impossible.

At the file system level,
there are only 3 dates associated with any file or directory:

access time
creation time
modification time

The access time is modified upon opening a file.
The modification time is modified upon writing the file.

None of these 3 dates is modified upon closing a file.
Hence the file system doesn't provide a timestamp of the event you are interested in closing time.

For example, the access time will show you when Preview opened your file, but if you close it 2 days later, no date is changed.

This is a structural limitation at the file system level.

At the Finder level the limitation is exactly the same.

This might be changed if Apple decided to improve the ergonomy of the Finder so as to be able to open what the human behind the keyboard is working on. And this won't be a programming nightmare. A basic cache of files opened and closed (modified or not), maintened through a count of references to opened files (when ref_count == 0, file is closed) + survey the deep Spotlight harvesting (to avoid to wait it a few hours to free files) would make it.


Only move one page in double-page view | iBooks I like reading books in double-page view in iBooks. But I always can only move two pages in this view, like in RL.
Is there a way to only move one page, for example to compare images on different pages and still keep the double-page view?

It doesn't look like there's a setting where you can make it go by one page, but what you can do is that you can use your Trackpad (the Magic Mouse works too) and move your fingers (to the left or right, depending on where the page are) so that you can see the pages that you want.

This may not be the most glamorous solution, but it gets the job done. Hope this helps.


Preview: offset when moving in page history When I view a PDF file in preview and use the Page History buttons in the toolbar, preview doesn't jump back to exact same position I was previously, but adds a negative offset of about half a page.

I'm using preview on macOS High Sierra. Preview of macOS Sierra shows the same behaviour but Yosemite jumps to the correct positions.

Any suggestions how I could fix this behaviour?

This question may be in connection with Preview: display position of link targets.

I have not seen this behaviour since macOS Mojave. The issue is fixed.


Switch between fullscreen apps, wrap around? I have multiple full screen applications running on my Mac. I use three finger swipe to scroll through them. When they are in order I have to move from app 1 to app n by swiping n times. Is there a way to wrap them around so that when i swipe beyond app n, I can reach app 1?

No but you can use cmd + Tab if you want a wraparound. Another thing you can do is this:

Swipe up with three fingers. You’ll see every window that is opened right now. If it isn’t fullscreen it will be somewhere in the middle of your screen. If it is in Fullscreen it will be on top next to the desktop window. You can order them by holding one and then moving it to the position you want.

For instance you have Safari, Pages and Calender opened and you want Pages to be the first fullscreen after swiping with three fingers from the desktop. You only have to swipe with three fingers up and drag the Safari fullscreen right next to desktop.


MBP with Touchbar install Debian 10 fails Trying to create a dual boot system with Debian 10 on my MBP 2016 but the installation process fails because the keyboard input is not recognized. I can move through the initial menu where I can select what I want to do

Graphical installation
Installation
...

but I can not move through the followup installation where in the first step I shall select a language.

Wrong linux?
Need to use a specific version with specific driver pack?
Ideas?

Debian 10 comes with Kernel version 4.19.  According to State of Linux on the MacBook Pro 2016 & 2017

  Keyboard & Touchpad

  MacBookPro13,1 working MacBookPro13,2 working MacBookPro13,3 working MacBookPro14,1 working MacBookPro14,2 working MacBookPro14,3 working

  Works out of the box with Linux 5.3 and above.

  For earlier Linux versions you can get the driver from https://github.com/roadrunner2/macbook12-spi-driver.

Therefore you need either the patch or a distro with a more recent kernel (for example Arch Linux - the current iso has 5.3.1 kernel - or from next month Ubuntu 19.10).

If you want to use Debian 10 you should be able to install using external keyboard and then install the spi driver as described in the link above.


Using automator or script to turn on wifi in case of ethernet cable failure, and vice versa? For the moment, I have slightly faulty thunderbolt port on my 2013 mac book pro that I use to connect to the internet. My wifi works fine, but I prefer the increase in speed with the direct line. My concern is that if I accidentally bump anything there it may disconnect. While it doesn't take long to go to network pref. and connect to my network, I'm wondering if there would be a way to use automator or some other means to configure so that in case of a failure on either side for any reason I could automatically connect to the other?
Any advice appreciated!

Isin't 'Set Service Order' in System Preferences > Network sufficient (click  circle with three dots inside at the bottom of left pane to see it)?
Setting Thunderbolt Bridge first and active and WiFi second and active should make MacOS switch automatically if first connection becomes unavailable.


iPhone can't verify CalDAV account I am using Google Calendar and I would like to sync it with my iPhone. Usually, the best way to do this is via setting up a CalDAV account which I've been successfully doing for a while.

However, recently, the syncing has ceased to work. So have I subsequently deleted and re-added the account to my iPhone, but I keep on getting an error message, that the CalDAV account cannot be verified.

Does anybody have any suggestions what I can do about this? I'm absolutely certain the all the data I enter is correct.

The answers provided helped me resolve my CardDAV verification issue.  Here are the exact steps I took:

Sign in to your Google Account at:   https://myaccount.google.com/
In the Sign-in & Security section select:  ‘Signing in to Google’
Select ‘App Passwords’
From the dropdowns:  Select the app (contacts) and the device (iphone)
Follow the instructions in the pop-up to enter the verification code as the password for your google account on your phone.

I have IOS 11.4.


How can I charge a mobile phone on my MacBook Air (like I used to be able to)? I used to be able to turn my macbook air on, plug in an android phone, then close the lid and the phone would keep charging. Note, this was not the same as charge-and-sleep, which works all the time (like on ThinkPads). There is a link to someone describing this process here:

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/07/23/why-i-love-yellow-usb-ports-sleep-and-charge/

But, this doesn't work for me anymore. I've managed to replicate this with a friend's android phone on his macbook pro. He's running snow leopard, I'm running lion.

I'm guessing at some point Apple disabled this. Any ideas how to re-enable it?

I'd also be curious to hear about people's success with different platforms (i.e., iPhone, etc.)

I wish I had a how to but I have a 2010 MBA upgraded to Lion.  Connected my work phone, droid incredible, with the machine on and closed the lid and went to sleep and woke and the droid was charged.  So it is possible just don't know where to tell you to go to make it happen.  Also, meant to plug the MBA into power but forgot to connect the magsafe, so maybe try it without connecting the magsafe see if that was the trick.