Make table which exceeds document body but moves with text in Pages I would like to make a wide table in Pages which exceeds the document body and cuts into the margins of the document. It seems as though in order to do this, I need to change the Object Placement setting (in Format > Arrange > Object Placement) from "Move with Text" to "Stay on Page." However, this causes the table to literally stay at a particular position on the page, irrespective of the text around it. I would like the table to move with the text but still be wider than the document body.

Is it possible to create a table which moves with the text but whose width exceeds the width of the document body (i.e. the document width minus the margins)?

The margins set in the document inspector cannot be exceeded by objects placed to move with text. Instead, set the margins to the maximum width of all objects throughout the document, then alter the indents as appropriate.


Where to configure Time Machine quota when backing up to Mac Server We use a Mac Server in another subnet as a Time Machine target for some of our MacBooks (macOs 10.13). Despite the manual configuration caused by the server being on a different subnet, this setup works quite ok.

I recently configured a new MacBook to backup onto the Mac Server. Now, after some weeks and still without one finished backup, the client starts to complain that the backup volume is running out of space. I checked the Mac Server, but it has 1.6TB left.

I remember that I once configured a quota of 500GB per backup back on the Mac OS X 10.10 server. But with macOS 10.13 and Server 5.6.1, Time Machine is no longer part of the services provided by the Mac Server. If I got it correctly, Time Machine now backs up to a simple SMB share. However, my client still shows:

  333 GB of 500 GB available

The question is: Where is this 500 GB coming from? Is this a local setting? Or is the Mac Server still more than just a plain file share when it comes to Time Machine?

And the question behind the question: Is this quota a possible cause for the problem? Or are there other reasons for Time Machine to complain about a full disk, even when it isn't full?

There was a Time Machine quota setting in macOS Server. Maybe the quota is still set even after the UI has been removed?

Maybe this URL helps:

http://movq.us/2017/04/09/time-machine-quotas/

If I understand this correctly, the quota is set in a hidden plist file in the root of the Time Machine share.

The Time Machine quota setting in "normal" macOS is in the Sharing preferences.
Right-clicking a shared folder has an "Advanced Options…" dialog.

There is also a local Time Machine quota setting but I don't know if this is "forwarded" to network shares, probably not.

https://www.defaults-write.com/setup-a-size-limit-for-time-machine-backup-volumes/

You can check the local quota (if set) via

defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize


gpg-agent + launchd maxing out cpu overnight.. plus other stability oddness lately.. any ideas why? I woke up this morning to my MBP whizzing along (i.e. the fan that is).  Looking at Activity Monitor, I saw gpg-agent taking up 97% of cpu, and launchd taking 60%, plus maybe one or two that were also high (one of them was font related -- fontd? I forget).

I am using Mozy, and it was doing a backup over night, but it has been for the last few weeks.

After killing all my apps, these runaway processes remained, so I restarted, and the issue resolved itself.

After restarting, and googling a bit, I checked console, and see hundreds of messages for just gpg-agent, and this is just over the course of a few seconds.  I'm guessing this may have been going on for longer since these were the first entries in the log and started at 6am.

9/23/11 6:07:24.504 AM org.gpgtools.macgpg2.gpg-agent: gpg-agent[110]: accept failed: Too many open files

Mozy was my top suspect, but I don't even know if Mozy uses any of those cpu-spending apps I mentioned.  Other apps that were running: TimeMachine, Dropbox, Skype, Adium, Chrome, Eclipse, Evernote.  Perhaps something with Lion?  or KeyVault2 (my disk does have encryption on)?

Other computer weirdness that may or may not be related:

I've had my computer restart on me twice this month overnight (i.e. I go to use the computer in the morning, and it's at the login screen).  Sleep should be activating (it is at default MBP settings w/ computer sleep at 12 minutes or so).  This may be coinciding with Mozy install, but can't say for sure (Mozy was installed last week, and my first overnight crash might have been before, but I don't recall for sure).

Another issue I've had a few times since installing Lion is I'll go to use the computer after it being in my bag for a few hours, and all the applications are there, but won't respond to my keyboard nor closing.  I can interact with the windows (i.e. Cmd-Tab, dragging), but not much else.  Sometimes/always the Restart option in the Apple menu doesn't respond, but pushing the power button once does bring up the menu to sleep/restart/shutdown, and I can restart from here. (This issue I reported to Apple as potential Lion bug)

I just remembered, I installed the recommended updates yesterday afternoon (bios update for Lion and Thunderbolt, some security update, and other update for Thunderbolt).  It had me restart, then after it seemed to install, brought me to a screen which said, "Hold down the power button until your computer turns off, then turn back on".  I assume this was part of the bios update.  I think when the computer came back on, it did some installing. Then when OS boots up, OS tells me "it had to restart for unknown reason" and had me send a report to Apple.  I sent that along, and continued working on the computer since then (no other restarts).  This doesn't seem like it would be related, but figured mention it just in case.

About my system

MBP early 2011 15" base model, Lion built from scratch, KeyVault2 hard drive encryption turned on; SSD and Crucial memory were upgraded after purchase; TRIM turned on via some 3rd party instructions a month or two ago (I can find the how-to article if it seems relevant).

My problems covered a few areas, but all stability seems to have been addressed.

Regarding the gpg-agent issue, I haven't seen that come up again, and this maybe attributed to one of two things: 1) uninstalling Mozy; 2) keeping up with the OS X system updates.  I don't know which of these for sure, or if the issue is actually fixed, but several months later, I haven't seen this issue reoccur (Mozy was probably uninstalled a week or two after originally posting this).

Regarding the sleeping/freezing oddness, this may have been addressed by OS X system updates as well, or could have been related to this sleep issue I had with locking screen vs. going to sleep, detailed here: How do I stop my MacBook Pro from randomly freezing when trying to go to sleep?

As of this follow-up, I'm running 10.7.4.  Hopefully this helps someone else pinpoint a similar issue.


Restoring iPhone's state from a dd hard drive image This article, Recover Lost Data From Your iPhone, in its "Method 1" suggests a promising method to backup iPhone's entire state, that is iOS settings, apps, email settings, media files, that is everything to the least detail, using Unix/Linux dd utility that makes an image of the iPhone's hard drive. This allows treating iPhone backups akin to snapshots of a virtual machine or global restore points, which is very useful. However, despite of the article's title, it doesn't explain how to actually restore an iPhone's state from a file produced by dd utility.

Any ideas how to restore from dd hard drive images? Or maybe suggestions about better methods to save/restore iPhone's entire state?

You'll need to JailBreak the device before restoring. Then you'll need to go through the same process you took to create the image, except the values of the if and of arguments will need to be swapped.

Additional Reading


Manually delete unused languages from macOS Yes, I know there are apps like Monolingual, Mackeeper, iCleanLanguage etc. that can do that for me but I would feel more comfortable doing it myself if it is not too much of a hassle. How can I do that?

Also if there are other files I can manually delete to free up space - please let me know.

The language files for each application are stored in

APPL.app/Contents/Resources/LANG.lproj

Removing them for non-standard applications is easy (especially from Terminal), for standard applications you need to disable SIP first.

The space gained by removing them may be small though, they use about 1.3 GB in my Applications folder with about 350 applications installed. Also you need to redo this with every upgrade. You probably gain more by removing a few unused non-standard applications.


3G Access Only for iPad? I am considering recommending an iPad for an older relative that currently has no computer and no Internet access. I get reasonable 3G reception from this person's home. Internet access options start at roughly $60/month. So, I am considering recommending a 3G iPad and using only the 3G service for Internet access.

Obviously this would be slower than a high speed Wi-Fi connection, but it would also be much cheaper and I think it might be adequate. I am wondering if anyone has experience with using 3G as the primary internet connection source.

I use my iPad all day at work for email, web browsing, etc. on 3G and it works fine without Wi-Fi for everyday use.

From a speed perspective, don't sweat it.  For a user who obviously doesn't sound accustomed to blazing broadband, I think 3G will be just fine. Internet is fast enough, Netflix works, and YouTube and the like are fast enough (although YouTube seems to limit the quality of the streams, but it's good enough).

EDIT: The original version of this answer highlighted why an iPad would not function properly without a computer, which is not true since the release of iOS 5.


Messages on Mac won't log in I'm using macOS High Sierra, and my Messages app keeps telling me that my talk.google.com password is wrong, even though I have been using the correct password. I've signed out in preferences, signed back in (and it accepted the password) but it won't let me connect. Anyone else experience this and figure out how to fix?

Google Talk and Messages are no longer compatible. You can't log into a Google Talk account with Messages in High Sierra.


Dropdown menu navigation by the keyboard After getting to the menu bar (which in OS/X is already a hassle) we can use the first letter to access the submenu - ‘w’ for ‘Window’ in the screenshot below:

Subsequently the ‘b’ was typed to access the ‘Background’ sub-submenu The question here is: how to expand it - without resorting to the arrow keys that are a big jump for the fingers and get them out of home row position?

What I tried: tab space enter. None of those work. Only right arrow: but once again that is inefficient - almost as costly as using the mouse.  Is there any way to do this quickly i.e. with hands remaining on or near home row?

Space or Enter both open a highlighted submenu where the current option does not have an action by itself. Right Arrow works when the current option does have an action, but you wish to open the submenu (I'm not aware of a single instance of such a case where it's not a bug).

This works regardless of whether you use ⌃F2 or clicking to open a menu. I am using macOS Sierra, but am not aware of this functionality missing from prior versions of macOS.

JetBrains apps such as PyCharm have an unfortunate bug where their submenus aren't just submenus since you can select the top level menu item too (try clicking on the highlighted item in your screenshot). Space prefers to select where possible, which won't expand the submenu. This is a specific bug with such apps.


Yosemite operating system - mail I want to show previews of my mail. There was a tip to drag on the thick vertical line but i don't see where that is located. I have already unclicked the classic layout view in preferences and can see my mail topics but there is no viewing preview to the right, where i would like it to be.

Please try this.  Click on Mail > Preferences > Viewing  There will be a dropdown for list preview.  Select a choice other than None.  That will give summary information about the email message you have selected. Make sure you select an email. The actual email message should appear to the right of the summary.  If it does not, you'll probably need to move your cursor as far to the right of the screen as you can go.  Push down your mouse or track pad and move the cursor to the left.  You should see the email that is selected.


iMessage falsely reports "could not send" For some reason, since Monday iMessage on the iPhone 4S always tells me it couldn't deliver my message but the messages go through. Anybody have the same problem? Any idea how to fix it? I'm not the only one, a couple friends have it too, but Google didn't help.

Apple has a status page to show availability of all the different services: Apple System Status. Worth checking in these moments, it doesn't always look like


Unclear iCloud Photo Library Feature If I fill up the space on my iPhone with photos, but those photos are synced with iCloud Photo Library, how do I remove those photos from my iPhone without deleting them from iCloud Photo Library. Hence, when I try to delete a photo it says:

  This photo will be deleted from iCloud Photo Library on all your
  devices.

Seems like I'm stuck?

Since your goal is to free up space, you can configure your iPhone to only store thumbnails of the photos you have in iCloud Photo Library rather than the full-resolution images.

This is configured in Settings > iCloud > Photos > Optimize iPhone Storage (as opposed to Download and Keep Originals)

See this iMore article for more information on optimising storage.

It is not currently possible to completely remove photos or videos from one device when using iCloud Photo Library. This is clarified in the iCloud Photo Library beta FAQ:

  Deleting a photo or video from your Photos app will also remove the
  item from iCloud Photo Library and from your iCloud storage
  allocation.

The solution would be to disable iCloud Photo Library, allowing you to delete certain photos from certain devices, but then new photos would not be synchronised automatically.


Splitting a mac desktop into smaller portions Background

I'm using a device called a DualHead2Go that lets me plug two external screens into an early gen Macbook Pro. This device basically presents the two screens to the mac as if they were one gigantic 3840x1080 screen.

The macbook's internal screen is on the right

The Problem

For the most part this setup works really well - the problem I have is that, as far as the Mac is concerned, the middle of this desktop is right in the break between displays. Which leads to situations like this:

Since this is my primary display, notifications and modal dialogs often come up right in the monitor split - not only is this ugly, it's a PITA to deal with.

Solutions

In order of preference:

Some application that would make the Mac work as if the "one display" were actually two. If this were a Linux box, I could do some trickery inside Xorg to present the one display as two.
Some application that would allow me to tile windows, taking the display into account

I've tried applications like Divvy before, the problem there is that they don't cleanly divide the desktop, leading to windows overhanging the split

A tiling window manager, or some other application that allows me to divide my desktop space into set pieces, including where dialogs and notifications pop up.

Are any of these viable?

Questions this is NOT a duplicate of:

Is there a way to Split one 42 Inch TV into Multiple Displays or Virtual Displays? (More than four years old, and the one answer to the question doesn't actually answer the question)

How applications behave with Matrox Dualhead2go? (More than two years old - the application situation might have changed)

Have you looked at PowerDesk for Mac? the description says it can do what you want. There's a DualHead2Go & TripleHead2Go User Guide for Mac. PowerDesk for Mac can be downloaded for 10.6 thru 10.10. See Download info.

Okay, instead of preferences in order, from your comment they're all requirements.

Try a combo of PowerDesk for Mac, Cinch and SizeUp.


Why is AppleScript not ejecting my volume? I have a hard drive in my mac with multiple partitions, and I want to eject some of them with AppleScript. Simple:

tell application "Finder"
    eject disk "Photos"
end tell

Except it does not work. I can eject the drive from Disk Utility no problem; here it is right after ejecting:

So the question is, how do I debug this situation — what could be going wrong?

I had the same issue. The Finder command eject seems to be unable to eject volumes although according to what I found on the internet it worked in times from 10.4 to 10.6.

The following script works. I have saved is as an Application in the Script Editor and have added it as a start object. Works well in my case.

tell application "Finder"
    set d to disk "Photos"

    if (exists d) then
        say "Disk exists"
    else
        say "Disk does not exist"
    end if
    if (d is local volume) then
        say "Disk is a local volume"
    else
        say "Disk is not a local volume"
    end if

    if (d is ejectable) then
        say "Disk is ejectable"
    else
        say "Disk is not ejectable"
    end if

    -- This fails because the disk is not ejectable
    eject d
end tell

-- Solution: Use Disk Utility directly
tell application "Terminal"
    do shell script "d=\"/Volumes/Photos\"; if [ -d \"$d\" ]; then diskutil eject $d; fi"
end tell


Personal Hotspot for iPad 2 3G I'm thinking about getting an iPad 2 3g & I was wondering if one can set up a personal hotspot from the iPad to share the 3G internet with wifi enabled devices (i.e laptop etc.)

Is it possible in any way to tether an iPhone or other devices to the iPad, rather than using an iPhone to tether against which is the normal method?

No unfortunately, with the current 4.3 version of iOS on the iPad, there is not Personal Hotspot feature on the ipad.   This may be different on the upcoming iOS 5.


use different terminal setting after ssh into another machine I would like to use different terminal setting after doing a ssh into another machine.  This would mean I could have my terminals to different machine using different colours.  Is this possible?  Thanks.

Yes! It absolutely is possible.

The colors and other aspects of your prompt are controlled by configuration files.

If you're using the default bash, shell then one place where you can configure your prompt is in a file in your home directory called .bash_profile.

Since the .bash_profile file has a "." at the beginning of its name, it may not be visible in Mac Finder windows, but you can see it listed in your terminal among others in your home directory by entering ls -al.

You'll have a .bash_profile file on your own Mac, and you'll also have another one on each remote computer you log into. (Or if the file doesn't exist you're free to create it.)

Put a different prompt config string in each of those files to get different colors on each machine.

What is a prompt config string, and how do you write a custom one?

This guide has full information on all the options you can enter to configure your bash shell prompt, including its colors.


Empty folders with mangled names being put in my user directory I have hundreds of empty folders with mangled names being put in my user folder. I have tried not showing hidden folders but I still have the problem. I can delete them and they come back on reboot. Running Sierra, and I just re-installed it this morning and still have the problem.

That is one of the strangest things I have ever seen and my introduction to Macintosh was with System 4 on a 512K Mac.

There could be a number of things causing that. A runaway/damaged process running in the background seems the most likely, but I suppose there could also be some disk corruption.

I would boot the system into recovery mode and run a repair on the startup volume using disk utility. If it finds no issue then it is more likely that it is a runaway/damaged process of some sort.

Booting into safe Mode (Hold Shift while starting up the Mac) will disable 3rd party applications that run at startup and if the problem goes away in safe mode it is something that was installed on the Mac that is now damaged. uninstalling the application, turning off any login items (system preferences > Users & Groups > [your user] > login items) and looking for other things that run at startup are a place to start.

If it is still happening it is likely an issue with macOS. In that case you could try downloading and installing the latest combo update, the latest for Sierra is here.

Failing that I would reinstall macOS right over top of what you already have. While that shouldn't delete any data I would make sure you have a good backup first.


Does Whatsapp Save Incoming Media feature create duplicates? I would like to know if the Save Incoming Media feature in Whatsapp create duplicates i.e. saved in both Whatsapp application data and also Camera roll?

Yes, it does duplicate media in the sense you describe. With that switch activated, all incoming images will have 2 copies: one on the app and one on the Camera Roll.


MacBook Pro upgrade to SSD migrating OSX and Bootcamp partitions I wasn't able to find the info I needed here or on Apple's own forums or via Google, so here goes.

I have a MacBook Pro 15" early 2011 model with a 500 GB internal hard disk drive (non-SSD). Currently running OSX 10.8.5 on a 300 GB partition, and Windows 7 via Bootcamp on a 200 GB partition. OSX is under backup via TimeMachine, Windows is backed up manually on an external hard drive as a simple copy.

I would like to replace the internal hard disk drive with an Intel DC S3500 480GB SSD.
Changing the drive itself should be easy via a guide I've found. But...
instead of the 300GB/200GB partitions I currently have, I'm aiming for 400GB/80GB partitions on the SSD. The Windows 7 Bootcamp partition I currently have uses only 70GB, so I'd like it to occupy the 80GB partition on the SSD.
Once I'm on the SSD, I will upgrade OSX to Yosemite.

Question:
I would like to migrate both my current installation of OSX and the installation of Windows to their respective new (differently sized) partitions on the SSD, without having to re-install the OS'es.
What steps do I need to take to make this work? (Any pitfalls?)

Update:
Command output requested by David Anderson:

sudo fdisk /dev/disk0
Disk: /dev/disk0    geometry: 60801/255/63 [976773168 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: EE 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [         1 -     409639] <Unknown ID>
 2: AF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    409640 -  584931504] HFS+
 3: AB 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 585341144 -    1269544] Darwin Boot
*4: 07 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [ 586610688 -  390162432] HPFS/QNX/AUX

diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            299.5 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                199.8 GB   disk0s4

diskutil cs list
No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

Update 3:

There were a two reasons I wanted the output from diskutil and fdisk. First I wanted to check if rEFIt was installed on its own partition. It is not. This leaves either the EFI partition or the OS X partition. The normal (automatic) installation would be OS X, which is backed up with Time Machine. To be safe, you could backup the EFI partition. This is not a problem since it is only 210 MB in size. I usually just make an exact image copy of the entire partition. The command is shown below. The image file efi.img will be stored in the root directory of the OS X partition.

sudo dd if=/dev/disk0s1 of=/efi.img bs=10000

I do not know if Time machine will backup the "Recovery HD" partition. It is only 650 MB in size. Again, you can just image it to the root of OS X using the command below. My outline did not include migrating this partition to the new disk. Therefore, you probably will never use this file.

sudo dd if=/dev/disk0s3 of=/RecoveryHD.img bs=10000

The second reason, for running the diskutil and fdisk commands, was to determine if you are using a GPT or hybrid GPT/MBR partitioning scheme. You are using hybrid GPT/MBR. I assume then that Windows is using the legacy BIOS method of booting and not using the EFI to boot.

According to your original post, you intend to upgrade to Yosemite after migrating to the new drive. It just so happens, I am trying to help someone (riznad) who has already done this. See here. Upgrading to Yosemite disabled rEFId and created a new "Recovery HD" partition. So you may need to reinstall rEFId. I would not recommend upgrading to rEFInd.

I am not sure why you felt the need to use the rEFId boot manager. I use the System Preferences in OS X to boot to windows. Apple provides Boot Camp to boot from Windows back to OS X. On startup, you can hold the alt key to choose an operating system. I rarely need to do that. In riznad's case, rEFId makes sense, that computer has a third partition running the Fedora operating system.

If you wish to have a partition writeable by both OS X and Windows, now would be a good time to create it. This can be done by creating the partitions in the following order using the Disk Utility. First create the MS-DOS(FAT) partition for windows 7. This partition will be changed to NTFS by Winclone. Format the next partition as MS-DOS(FAT) or ExFat. Finally, put the OS X partition last.

Update 2:

Just FYI, the output of chkdsk can be viewed in the Event Viewer. An example is shown below. You can "Open Image in a New Window" to enlarge.

An example output is shown below.

Checking file system on C:
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is Orca.

One of your disks needs to be checked for consistency. You
may cancel the disk check, but it is strongly recommended
that you continue.
Windows will now check the disk.

CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)...
  123136 file records processed.
File verification completed.
  171 large file records processed.
  0 bad file records processed.
  2 EA records processed.
  50 reparse records processed.
CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)...
  168030 index entries processed.
Index verification completed.
  0 unindexed files scanned.
  0 unindexed files recovered.
CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)...
  123136 file SDs/SIDs processed.
Cleaning up 12 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 12 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
Cleaning up 12 unused security descriptors.
Security descriptor verification completed.
  22448 data files processed.
CHKDSK is verifying Usn Journal...
  36677272 USN bytes processed.
Usn Journal verification completed.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.

 107460604 KB total disk space.
  30413860 KB in 94522 files.
     64108 KB in 22449 indexes.
         0 KB in bad sectors.
    228944 KB in use by the system.
     65536 KB occupied by the log file.
  76658804 KB available on disk.

      4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
  26865151 total allocation units on disk.
  19164701 allocation units available on disk.

Internal Info:
00 e1 01 00 e3 c8 01 00 a5 53 03 00 00 00 00 00  .........S......
bf 03 00 00 32 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ....2...........
11 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  ................

Windows has finished checking your disk.
Please wait while your computer restarts.

What you are looking for is the messages Windows has checked the file system and found no problems. and 0 KB in bad sectors.

Update 1:

It is my understanding rEFIt installs in the OS X partition. According to the rEFIt documentation, it is also possible for rEFIt to be installed on a separate partition or on the hidden EFI partition. No mention of being installed on the Windows partition.

Assuming rEFIt was installed using the automatic installation, then it should be saved by Winclone followed by Time Machine. But to be honest, I have never used rEFIt.

To be safe, it would be useful for you to post the output from the following commands. They can be entered from a Terminal application window. The first one will ask for your login password. This is normal.

sudo  fdisk  /dev/disk0
diskutil  list
diskutil  cs  list

Other than Winclone creating a backup of Windows on you OS X partition, the procedure does not change the files on your original disk. If you wish, you can also backup Windows to a external disk that is HFS formatted (Mac OS Extended Journaled). This way Windows does not have to pass through Time Machine.

I don't know where you are living. Where I live, I would go to Microcenter and buy an enclosure for the new disk. I would then plug the enclosed drive into a USB port on the Mac. Transfer everything over. I would also boot OS X on the the enclosed drive and test things out. From my understanding, you can not boot windows. You might be able to from Parallels. I have never used Parallels. I would then remove the drive and return the enclosure for a full refund. (Actually, have done this a few times with 3.5" drives.) The drive could then be installed in the MacBook Pro.

If you proceed, it would be a good idea to run CHKDSK on the windows partition before backing up with Winclone. CHKDSK (Check Disk) has be around since the original IBM PC-DOS 1.0. The best way to do this is to open a Command Prompt window as an Administrator under Windows 7 and enter the command:

fsutil  dirty  set  c:

After entering the command, reboot (restart) Windows. It usually is not necessary to see the results, but if you wish, I will post how to do so using the event viewer. (You can also watch the screen during boot up)

I can outline the basic steps using the Winclone product.

Purchase, download and install Winclone to your OS X partition.
Use Winclone to backup Windows to your OS X partition.
Make sure OS X is backed up to Time Machine.
Install the new disk
Do a internet recovery boot. This involves hold the cmd-alt-R keys
down at startup and booting over the internet.
Partition the new disk using the Disk Utility. Format the OS X
partition as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" and the  Windows
partition as "MS-DOS (FAT)".
Restore OS X using time Machine.
Reboot the computer to the new OS X partition.
Run Winclone to restore Windows 7 back to the new 80 GB partition.
Drag the Winclone Windows 7 backup to the trash to recover the
 space on the OS X partition (Optional).
You are done.

If you wish to proceed, let me know. Also, if klanomath happens to post, I would recommend any of his solutions. He has more experience with Time Machine than I have.


iCloud Why Are Some Album Tracks Uploaded Instead of Matched I know that iTunes Match is still in its infancy, but I'm having a weird occurrence. Most of my tracks are ripped from my CD collection.

Albums that were all ripped in one batch, some of the tracks show up as matched, while others had to be "uploaded." See the example below:

Any ideas?

If you notice in your screenshot, the files that were uploaded were ripped at 128kbps. This causes enough audio artifacts in the file to throw the acoustic fingerprinting that was used when iTunes Match first launched. It has since been improved and issues like this with lower bit rate files are now much less common.


Bad battery life on iPhone 3GS used as iPod Touch My spouse got an iPhone 4 recently and we want to use the old iPhone 3GS as an iPod for the daughter.  They switched him over at the AT&T store so I don't know if the old phone has a SIM card in it or not right this minute (not at home).

The WIFI works fine.  On the top left of the screen where it would show bars and "AT&T", it displays NO SERVICE.

The issue is this:  the battery drains over night when it is asleep.  I have charged it the last few days and the next time the kid wants it, the battery is dead.  The iphone was only 1 year old so the battery shouldn't be fading.

Is the phone searching for service and draining the battery even when asleep?

I have disabled the location services and made sure push notifications are set to manual or disabled.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

Remove the SIM. That should solve your problem. It will complain about no SIM whenever it is restarted but apart from that will work fine. I presume you want the WiFi to remain functional.


How do you stop iPhoto/Aperture launching when you sync an iPad? How do you stop iPhoto/Aperture launching when you sync an iPad?

Open Image Capture, connect the iPad, select it when it appears in the list on the left.  On the lower left will be a selector for what app to open when it connects, you can pick None.


Making items added to paths via paths.d show up everywhere under Mavericks I'd like to set the path under OS X Mavericks so that the setting shows up everywhere (e.g., in .apps and in Darwin shells). There's plenty of discussion out there about how to set environment variables generally under OS X. With environments.plist no longer supported by Mavericks, it seems that editing /etc/launchd.conf is the best option for doing so. Unfortunately, launchd.conf apparently does no parameter expansion, so I can't do this:

setenv PATH /Users/kuzzooroo/anaconda/bin:$PATH

and I don't want to hardcode my entire path--it seems unmaintainable.

There's another question in AskDifferent specifically about setting the system-wide PATH environment variable in Mavericks. The accepted solution is to use /etc/paths.d/, but someone has posted the following comment (which has garnered several upvotes) as a caveat:

  Paths in paths.d are added to the path by path_helper, which is run from /etc/profile and /etc/csh.login, but not when for example bash is invoked as a non-interactive or non-login shell or when you run programs in text editors.

Is there a way I can make these environments pull in paths.d (for example, by putting a command to process paths.d into some bash configuration file that is run even for non-interactive shells)?

Option 1: just use /etc/launchd.conf

Add a line like

setenv PATH /Users/username/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

to /etc/launchd.conf and restart to apply the changes.

The default path is /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin.

/etc/launchd.conf applies to all processes, which includes graphical applications, non-login shells, and programs started by launchd jobs.

Edit /etc/launchd.conf manually if you see that some program or installer has added new paths to /etc/paths or /etc/paths.d/*.

Option 2: use a launchd job to set the path during startup

Save this plist as /Library/LaunchDaemons/setpath.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>setpath</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>bash</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>launchctl setenv PATH "$((launchctl getenv PATH|tr : \\n
    cat /etc/paths /etc/paths.d/*)|awk '!a[$0]++'|paste -sd: -)"</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

The program should be run the next time you restart. It changes the PATH of the root launchd process, which is inherited by the user launchd process.

In my opinion it's easier to just edit /etc/launchd.conf though.

Option 3: make bash run path_helper even for non-login shells

path_helper is run from /etc/profile, /etc/zshenv, and /etc/csh.login. zsh reads /etc/zshenv even for non-login shells but bash does not read /etc/profile for non-login shells.

This makes bash run path_helper for interactive non-login shells and for non-interactive non-login shells:

echo 'eval $(/usr/libexec/path_helper -s)'>>~/.bashrc
setenv BASH_ENV /etc/profile|sudo tee -a /etc/launchd.conf

It does not make bash run path_helper for non-interactive non-login shells invoked as sh. It also does not affect graphical applications or processes that are not started from shells.


Apple Mac OS X Lion: the cost and release date At which date will MAC OS X Lion be released?

And if I have Mac OS X Snow Leopard, can I upgrade to Lion for free?

There's no way to know that right now. Apple does not disclose such information.

Wait for Apple's June event where they might specify the launch date.

One thing is for sure, you'll have to pay for it, there won't be a free migration path from Snow Leopard, unless you bought a Mac computer the week before Lion's release.


Does the MacBook Pro need both Ambient Light Sensors to function correctly? Does the Late 2013 15-inch MacBook Pro (Retina display) need both sensors to the left & right of the FaceTime camera in order to function correctly?

Are these both ambient light sensors? I usually don't use FaceTime nor do I allow the system to automatically adjust the levels of brightness.

If the two uses mentioned above are the only two purposes for these sensors, I wouldn't really need them, or at least not both of them right?

The problem is the screen protector I have, which was supposedly designed for the exact specs of this laptop; yet, it clearly covers the rightmost sensor. The slightest up, down, left, or right will leave one side short and the other side overlapping the bevel.

If both of them happen to be ambient light sensors, my question is, in order for the macbook and other apps to function properly are both sensors necessary? Please keep in mind the fact I don't use FaceTime and do not allow the system to auto adjust brightness as well.

Else, what are their purposes?

On my 2015 Macbook Pro, what looks like two ambient light sensors is actually a light sensor on the left of the webcam, and a green LED on the right of the webcam that lights up when Facetime is open to let you know the camera is in use.

The sensor on the left can be tested by waving a flashlight in front of it and observing the keyboard dimming. The light on the right can be verified by opening Facetime.


Manage multiple devices automatically? I am a music fanatic, with well over a terabyte of music stored in iTunes.  I also have an iPhone, an iPod, and an iPad, each with a different storage size.

While I can only put about 10 gigs of "favorites" on my iPhone, my iPad and iPod are able to hold much more than that, and I would like the ability to "set and forget" what I sync to each (say, 30 gigs of "party music" on my iPod, and 30 gigs of "relaxation music" on my iPad) so that I don't have to manually sync each one each time I connect it to the computer.  In addition, I would like to be able to put videos on the iPad without having to worry about them taking up space when my iPhone automatically syncs, etc.

Is there a way to accomplish this?

iTunes syncs each device individually, and allows you to have different settings for each device. If it were me, I would create a “Relaxation music" playlist and set it to sync to your iPad, "Party Music" playlist on your iPod, and such. Then plug your iOS device into iTunes (or use Wifi), and make sure “sync only checked songs and videos” and “Manually manage music and videos" are NOT checked under Summary > Options. Then select the Music tab, and check “Selected playlists, artists, albums and genres” deselect everything except the playlists/songs/albums you want on that iOS device.

One thing to note: you can create other playlists that divide "Relaxation music" more and then set those to sync to that device as well.

Repeat the above process for every device - setting only the desired playlist to sync to that device. In the future, you can easily change what you sync to each device by just changing the music in their perspective playlists.


Can't get the app icons to stop displaying "waiting" I tried to update multiple apps at once. On the available updates screen, I pressed all. Now the icons are black and if I press them nothing happens. They have been downloading for hours, so I tried to cancel the download by going to Settings, however, that wasn't successful. How can I fix this?

I've had this happen before too. Usually restarting the iPhone/iPad fixes the issue. There's a great set of instructions on how to fix this located here..

http://www.iphonefaq.org/archives/971489

  Reboot your iPhone normally. See this link for instructions on how to restart your iPhone.
  If the apps are still stuck on the home screen, try logging out of the App Store temporarily. Navigate to Settings -> Store -> Apple ID
  -> Sign Out. Now open the App Store and Navigate to the Featured section. Scroll to the bottom of the page and touch the Sign In -> Use
  Existing Apple ID. Log in and the stuck apps should reset.
  Still have strange icons on the screen or frozen downloading apps? Connect your iPhone to the computer and open iTunes. Navigate to the
  app store. Install the apps you are having a problem with on the
  computer then sync your iPhone.


Is it possible to use the Xserve VPN service without using the DHCP service? I'm working on a friend's network and he's currently got a cisco router handling DHCP. Does the Xserve VPN service require that the Xserve also be handling DHCP?

Xserve 10.6.8

No, Snow Leopard server VPN does not require that the XServe handles DHCP, though you'll likely want to have several IPs on the LAN that will be reserved for the connected device...


Is the Lightning connector 8-pins or 8+1 ground pins? Apple said the new Lightning connector is 8 signals design but is there an additional ground aside from the 8 pins? Because this would mean it could support USB 3.0 in the future (USB 3.0 uses is 9 pins). (It could not support Powered USB 3.0 that is 11 pins).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_3.0

If you count the shield on USB 3.0, the "9 pin" version actually requires 10 pins, as the shield, while typically grounded, is not actually used as the signal-ground (and it cannot be used as such).

As such, if the lightning connector indeed has only 8 pins, there is no way it can support USB 3.0 while properly complying with the USB spec.

I would guess that if it supports USB 3.0, it would be with non-standard USB extension, much as many of apple's other USB addons (like their high-current charging facilities).

I'd like to further note that, from an electrical engineering standpoint, using the casing (which is called the shield) for anything but, well, shielding is considered very bad practice.

The entire point of shielding is to basically absorb any interference before it can each the inner conductors. If you are relying on the shield for carrying a meaningful signal (and ground is indeed a meaningful signal), it is no longer effective as a shield.

If it does support USB 3.0, I would hope they open the connector mechanical design up for wider adoption, as the current USB 3.0 micro connector is horribly designed mechanically.


iMovie update stuck with phantom app when I updated iMovie back on July 7, I had an error where it kept continuously saying that I had an update, but what it kept doing was installing the same update over and over. At one point I had two iMovie updates going through with one installing and one downloading. Finally it quit, but I was now stuck with this phantom app that does not allow for me to get rid of. Holding option allows for the x to come up to delete, and you can make sure that you want to delete it, but after following the prompt it just sits there allowing for you to go through it again.

I am wondering if anyone knows how to get rid of this because it is quite annoying to just see it hanging there.

More info: Was on Mavericks when it happened, have moved to the 10.10 beta

So thank you to @GeorgeGarside for helping me understand where the problem would lie I was able to find an informative article on correcting the problem

Go to the Finder.
Hold down the Option key and click on the the Go menu.
Select Library.
Look for the Application Support folder. Open it.
Look for the Dock folder. Open it.
Locate files ending in ".db". Drag them into the Trash.
Go to the  menu and select Restart (or log out if preferred).
Click on the Restart button (or log out).

Source: http://www.imore.com/how-reset-launchpad-mavericks


Why can't I delete movies from my iPhone 4, either from the phone or through iTunes? I was on vacation and took some videos, and now the iPhone 4 memory is near full.  So I tried to delete other experimental movies I made using Handbrake, so that I can take more video or photos, but if I plug the iPhone 4 into my Notebook computer, I can seem to delete it on iTunes?

Maybe because the computer I sync with the iPhone 4 is at home (a desktop), but not with me on vacation.

I can't delete it on iTunes, can't delete it on iPhone itself.  I am stuck during the vacation, or is there a way to handle it?

While not a SuperUser-compatible answer, since the computer interface is missing, I just did the following:

Open the iPod app
Go to Videos
Swipe over a video from right to left
Press Delete
Confirm
Done!

No computer needed. Also works for music


What does this mean and how can I get it off my computer? What does this mean and how can I get it off my computer?

This is called Target Disk mode, it activates when you start your Mac while pressing and holding the T key. Try to shut down your Mac with the power button and turn it on, it should boot properly.

See this Apple Support Document for the screens you could potentially see on start up.


FaceTime continually drops and loses net connection Comcast high-speed internet; up-to-date Apple devices. I'm never able to complete a conversation: FaceTime freezes, modem loses Internet connection.

Every.Single.Time.

Try setting a specific channel on your router and pointing your AirPort connection to the same channel (rather than leaving it on automatic, which looks around and sometimes drops connections whilst doing so).


Using Terminal, how can I find which directory is my USB drive mounted in? I am using Terminal and have looked through directories.

I just can't find where my USB drive its directory is.

Which directory is my USB drive mounted in?

All drives (internal, external and networked) get mounted in /Volumes. You should see a folder there with the name of your USB drive as it appears on your desktop or in the Finder.


How to use youtube-dl --cookies How do I use the --cookies option to youtube-dl to download a Youtube video?  Can anyone provide a worked example of how to obtain the relevant cookies for Youtube and put it in the appropriate format for youtube-dl?

Context: I want to download a private Youtube video.  For various reasons, the method of logging into my Google account is complicated and involves two-factor authentication and not supported by youtube-dl's existing command-line options.  Therefore, it seems the best way is to log in manually in my browser, obtain the authentication cookies somehow, and use the --cookies option -- but I can't find a worked example of how to do this.

Once you get the cookies, you only need to run
youtube-dl --cookies /pathtocookiefile

If you use Chrome and accept third-party plugins to read your cookies.
Just try this cookie.txt,open the youtube then click cookie.txt plugin.
One more click ,you can download the cookie file for one tab or all.

If you want do it manual in Chrome. F12 >  Application > Storage > Cookies.
You need convert cookie list to Netscape format cookies file

#domain          HTTP/Secure    Expires      Name Value
.youtube.com     TRUE/FALSE    1548523767    GPS    1


External HD partition table destroyed I was trying to create bootable USB media in Boot Camp Assistant. Had a small USB plugged in and my HDD. Upon formatting I think my partition table screwed up. I had 2 partitions. 1.2TB NTFS and 0.8TB exFAT. Immediately I ran diskutil and gpt which show:

$ gpt show
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         MBR
           1          62
          63  2344529857      1  MBR Part 7
  2344529920  1562497024      2  MBR Part 7
  3907026944        2220

diskutil (I already tried to fix using gpt add - causing both partitions to read NTFS):

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk1 (external, physical):
   #:                   TYPE NAME               SIZE      IDENTIFIER
   0: FDisk_partition_scheme                   *2.0 TB    disk1
   1:           Windows_NTFS                    1.2 TB    disk1s1
   1:           Windows_NTFS                    800.0 GB  disk1s2

I tried to recover it using gpt add and made the GUID NTFS for both. They wouldnt mount.

I then tried pdisk and completely ruined my partition table.

Is there a way i can get my partitions back? After pdisk my gpt show now reads:

$ gpt show
       start         size  index  contents
           0   3907029164

and diskutil reads:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk2 (external, physical):
   #:                   TYPE NAME               SIZE      IDENTIFIER
   0:                                          *2.0 TB    disk2

Am I screwed? I havent written to the HD. I know my files and partitions are still there. I just need help fixing this.

(p.s. currently using testdisk and scanning as an INTEL drive).

Given that this is about data loss on a windows-formatted disk, you might want to ask in a windows-centric place. It sounds to me like data recovery (deleted file scans) would be your only hope.

I'm not clear, did you have a USB thumb drive and a 2 TB USB HDD plugged in, and picked the wrong one for making the Bootcamp tools?


Reinstalling Everything after HD Replacement I'm about to replace my iMac's HD (250GB to 1TB). I'm planning to create an image of my disk right in m Time Capsule, and after the transition I need to clone the HD back.

Unfortunately Lion has no DVD, and I'm not sure if I should create one. Can I use my Snow Leopard disk to boot, and clone the Image to the new HD? Will the Time Capsule (which is connected via ethernet) be visible, and what about the difference between the image and the new HD in size? So, I'm not sure if it will work.

Another option would be to use the Time Machine backup to restore, but I'm not sure if I would trust it.

You can do this with Time Machine, but there is another method, if you have the equipment. Instead of Time Machine, use a shareware disk cloning utility. I use Carbon Copy Cloner.

If you are paying someone to swap out the hard drive in your iMac, ask them if they can do the following for you.

Don't erase your main hard drive just yet. Take the new hard drive that you are going to install in the iMac and put it in an external enclosure that uses USB or FireWire, and connect it directly to the iMac. Use Disk Utility to make sure it is properly formatted to make it a bootable Mac OS X volume. Install Carbon Copy Cloner on Mac OS X on your main hard drive and us it to completely clone that drive to the external drive. Check the Carbon Copy Cloner settings to make sure that it will create a bootable duplicate drive.

Then you can remove the new drive from its enclosure and install the new drive into the iMac and boot it up.


Where does Mountain Lion's Calendar.app store its preferences? The program Calendar.app clearly has some preferences that are settable.

However, when I type defaults read com.apple.Calendar (and various permutations on capitalization), I get the message Domain com.apple.Calendar does not exist. Additionally, I don't find a file in ~/Library/Preferences with a time stamp to match the changes I made.

Where does the Mountain Lion Calendar program store its preferences?

The bundle identifier is still com.apple.iCal. You can see it from the Info.plist or with something like bid() { osascript -e "id of app \"$*\""; }.

So the property list for the preferences is still in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iCal.plist. It will be probably be moved to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iCal/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iCal.plist if Apple sandboxes Calendar.


Automatically try to join hidden network if no preferred network available My work has a hidden SSID that I need to join every morning. Is there any way to make my Mac search for the hidden network if no preferred network is available?

Failing that, is there a command I can run from the terminal to connect to a specific SSID?

In my Network preferences, the hidden SSID is first on the list of preferred networks, but it still doesn't join when I'm in the office.

EDIT: It appears the answer below works if you've upgraded to Mojave. It did not work when I was on High Sierra.

I have a network with hidden SSID, which I configured using the "Join Other Network".

This was done years ago, and the network is joined when necessary.

You can see (and reorder) "remembered" networks in "Open Network Preferences" Advanced tab


Podcast syncing between iTunes and iPhone doesn't work I'm running iTunes 11.1, iOS 7.1, and Podcasts 2.0.2 for iOS, the latest versions of each. I'm signed into the same iCloud account on both my Mac and iPhone. Podcast syncing is enabled in iTunes, and the "Sync Subscriptions" setting is turned on in the settings for the Podcasts app on my iPhone.

Why, then, does podcast syncing simply not work?

Some examples:

If I've played through a podcast episode on my iPhone, the same episode in iTunes won't be marked as played (and vice versa)
If I'm partway through an episode, the playback position doesn't sync between my iPhone and iTunes
iTunes will download podcast episodes that I've already marked as played on my iPhone (and vice versa), even though I've set both to download only unplayed episodes
If I subscribe to a new podcast on my iPhone, it won't appear in iTunes (and vice versa)
Etc., etc.

I feel like I must be doing something wrong or am missing a setting somewhere, because if not, I can't believe that podcast syncing is this unreliable. It quite literally does not work in any way whatsoever.

I've tried turning syncing on and off, signing in and out of iCloud, etc. Podcast syncing simply has never worked for as long as I've been using the Podcasts app (going back to iOS 6).

Apple's entire podcast ecosystem is known to be buggy and has been for a long time. (See, for example, this bug of utter disconnect between iTunes and iOS prior to the arrival of the Podcasts app. It seems the point of moving podcasts to a dedicated iOS app was simply to banish the irredeemably buggy podcast code from the otherwise well functioning Music app code. I still have the exact same problems with iOS 7.1 and the Podcasts app.) You're not doing anything wrong, the stuff just doesn't work.

You will have better luck with Instacast. There are other third-party podcast players for iOS, but AFAIK Instacast is the only popular one that also plays on Macs and syncs between iOS and Macs. As of this writing (April 2014), Pocket Casts is arguably better than Instacast with respect to syncing among mobile devices, as it even syncs between iOS and Android, but it does not have a Mac application to allow you to play podcasts on your Mac.


What causes LCD yellowing I have an iPhone5 and I have now had the display replaced twice by an Apple Store. But I get a yellow spot in the LCD in the same spot each time. What could cause this?

It is because the temperature, the most of the times the yellow spot appear in the top right corner, where is the connection between the LCD flex and camera flex to the main board, when the camera is activated, there is a high current flowing so it gets warm, so, the longer the camera is activated, the the telephone gets warmer.


How to re-enable missing Disclosure arrows? OS: Sierra (10.12.6)
I view my folders as List in Finder, but in a recent attempt to refresh my app icon file, I somehow messed up my View settings. From what I've gathered online, I had to set "Arrange by" to "None" (Cmd+Option+0) and "Sort By" to "List" (Cmd+2) if I wanted to return to my previous settings.
However, the usual Disclosure arrow found beside one particular folder is now missing and its sub-folders and files are permanently open and displayed instead of collapsed. How do I return the said Disclosure arrow? I'd like to have the ability to control when to expand/collapse it back if possible. This folder was open, by the way, when I was refreshing Finder, if that has any bearing. Thanks in advance

Weird little things like this can almost always be resolved by relaunching Finder. There's a number of different ways to do this, but I usually ctrl⌥-click the Finder icon and select "Relaunch".
When that doesn't work, the next step is to turn the computer off and on again. Basic, I know, but there's a reason they're always mentioned.
Some musings from a former Apple employee on why restarting is effective: https://techreflect.net/2018/04/20/why-does-rebooting-fix-everything/


How to toggle with grayscale in Yosemite? I prefer greyscale over inverting color when working in low light plus in general as its less strain on the eyes. But its too many clicks to toggle the settings.
I am aware that to invert display color the shortcut is Cmd+Alt+Ctrl+8. And open Accessibility options with Cmd+Alt+F5, but there is no grayscale in the options.
Right now, I open Accessibility via spotlight, then choose display & toggle the check box. I am wondering of there is any shortcut key for that? If not, is it possible to make a keyboard shortcut.

I have found an old Apple Discussion about this and the user who answered the question has posted an AppleScript file that will turn on and off grayscale. I have modified the original code so it would work with OS X Yosemite.

Open "Script Editor" and, in a new document, paste the following:

tell application "System Preferences" to activate
delay 1

tell application "System Events"
tell process "System Preferences"
click the menu item "Accessibility" of the menu "View" of menu bar 1
delay 0.5
click the checkbox "Use grayscale" of window "Accessibility"
end tell
end tell
tell application "System Preferences" to quit

Click the hammer to compile it and then save but where it says "File Format" in the save dialog, choose "Application"

Before running this code make sure that "Display" in Accessibility has been selected like the image below. Once that has been done, you can quit System Preferences.

On the first run of the app, it will crash and OS X will ask if you want to allow the app to control the computer using accessibility features. Allow access, quit the app and relaunch it.

Sometimes this will not work and will crash with an error message. If this happens, just relaunch it and it will work fine.

EDIT: This may help with making it a keyboard shortcut: Link


Mail shows 100% usage for Gmail account, doesn't rebuild For some reason Mail shows me 100% account usage on my Gmail account. I've deleted most mails with attachments, erased deleted items and did a rebuild. However, the account information still shows 100%, I don't get new mail and nothing seems to work. When looking at gmail.com, there's 1% used.

I've already removed the account and added it again, restarted the Mac and now I'm running out of ideas.

Anyone knows a solution?

Try this. Quit Mail, then go to your home folder's Library folder (*) and move the folder com.apple.mail from the Containers folder to your desktop. Start Mail up and see what what happens - hopefully it will start behaving again. If it does, trash the folder you moved to the desktop. We've had several instances of odd Mail behaviour and trashing the Mail container has done the trick, restoring normal function.

(*) If you don't know how to access your Library folder, select the Go menu in Finder and hold down option/alt key to reveal the Library option.


Can I create OneNote links that open in the desktop app instead of the web app? This question is at superuser.com but I can't get any of the answers to work on macOS.
Onenote gives you two links and the 2nd one should open in the app.
onenote:https://xxxx-my.sharepoint.com/personal/my_name/Documents/Anotebookname/Notebook.one#ASectionName/etc/etc/&end

I've tested putting the onenote:link into a few apps and it only opens up the web app.  If I put them directly into safari, then that works and opens up the OneNote Desktop app.
My goal is to put links to specific OneNote pages into my the notes area of the Things App.
Does something have to go in the front of it to tell the app(IE, Things) to redirect to the App or Safari?

From looking at this post,  manually adding a / / (forward slash x 2) to the front of the HTTP works.
IE:
onenote://https://xxxx-my.sharepoint.com/personal/my_name/Documents/Anotebookname/Notebook.one#ASectionName/etc/etc/&end


Why is there an emacs keybinding for character transpose? There is a special keybinding for transposing two characters in a text field: ctrl-t. Is this functionality really that useful to deserve a keybinding? I want to know what I am missing by not using it.

Side question: Can I remap ctrl-t to something else using for example terminal?

There’s about a gazillion and 3 Emacs keybindings. You’re not missing out on anything if you don’t use it. Why is it there?  It came with the technologies that Apple acquired that made the basis of OS X.

What you should remember is that Emacs was born in a world that didn’t have advanced editors like we have and take for granted now. You’ve already developed your “workflow” on how to deal with typos in this modern environment, but way back when, having text transposing functions was a lot easier than taking the editor out of insert mode, putting it into overwrite mode, retyping the characters, then returning to overwrite (yeah, that many steps).

As for remapping keys, you can, of course, remap keys. There are many tutorials and software recommendations on this site dealing with that very topic.


Server app. How to fix / re-enable broken VPN after update to Mojave? After updating to Mojave, the "Server" app no longer included a GUI for VPN.

I found others having the same problem, and there is an official PDF-file that goes through the migration progress.

How ever, the instructions in the PDF included at least one incorrect command to run in the terminal, and the others where (due to line-breaks) not usable by just copy-paste.

I also had permission problems leading to not being able to edit/save a newly created file.

These instructions are largely the same as the ones in the official PDF-file that goes through the migration progress, but with the (hopefully) helpful addition that the the incorrect command is corrected and the other commands are copy:able as-is.

Turn off the VPN service in the Server app. (If visible. For me it was not.)
Make sure you are in the wheel group. I followed these steps (link )
Open Terminal (where the rest of the instructions will be executed)  and go to the appropriate directory with:

cd /Library/LaunchDaemons
Create an empty file called vpn.ppp.l2tp.plist in current directory with:

sudo touch vpn.ppp.l2tp.plist
Set the right owner for the file with

sudo chown root:wheel ./vpn.ppp.l2tp.plist
Open the file with nano (to avoid problems with saving that can occur if you use TextEdit or similar):

sudo nano vpn.ppp.l2tp.plist
Copy paste the content below into nano:

<?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>Disabled</key>
    <true/>
    <key>EnableTransactions</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>vpn.ppp.l2tp</string>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/usr/sbin/vpnd</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
      <string>vpnd</string>
      <string>-x</string>
      <string>-i</string>
      <string>com.apple.ppp.l2tp</string>
    </array>
    <key>EnableTransactions</key>
    <false/>
    <key>EnablePressuredExit</key>
    <false/>
  </dict>
</plist>

Save with changes by pressing Control + o, confirm file name with Enter and close nano with Control + q.
Load your new file by running:

sudo launchctl load -w ./vpn.ppp.l2tp.plist
Verify with:

launchctl print system/vpn.ppp.l2tp

These steps worked for me. Hopefully they can help for someone else that, like me, struggled to get the VPN feature up and running again after macOS Mojave update.

The official PDF guide (mentioned above) has some additional information about "Ongoing management":

  Settings can be changed after vpnd is configured by editing the
  /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/
  com.apple.RemoteAccessServers.plist file. Refer to the vpnd (5) man page for details on the configuration format. After changes are made, you can have the service reread the configuration file by executing the command
  sudo killall -HUP vpnd.


Does iOS 9 update require iOS 8.4.1 to be installed first? At work I have 3 devices to experiment with today: An iPhone 5, an iPhone 6, and an iPad mini.

The iPhone 5 had iOS 8.4.1 installed on it. Early this afternoon (US Eastern time zone) iOS 9 showed up on the iPhone 5 as an update.

My iPhone 6 and iPad Mini both have iOS 8.4 on them (Not 8.4.1, 8.4). Software update on both devices offers to update to 8.4.1.

After about an hour of waiting, I decided to try installing 8.4.1 on my iPhone 6. Sure enough, once I was through the install process and actively online, I'm offered an update to iOS 9.0. My iPad mini still shows the next update as iOS 8.4.1, not 9.0.

WTF? These are big, time-consuming updates. It seems silly to have to download and run the full install process for an intermediate step update.

Is this how Apple does over the air updates to iOS 9? I thought Apple bundled updates into a "combined update?" but don't see a way to do hat other than downloading the install image and using iTunes to update over USB.

this problem occurs when you already have a downloaded update (for example, you have downloaded 8.4.1 but not installed it yet).
Easiest way to correct is to delete the update (Settings-General-Usage-Manage Storage - look for iOS8.4.1 (or whatever version has been downloaded).

After deleting the old update, a check for software update will show iOS9


Applescript code to find path to Desktop picture in Desktop 2 I need an applescript that will find the path to the desktop picture used in Desktop 2. As this isn't the current desktop the code below doesn't work.

tell application "Finder"
    set DesktopPath to desktop picture as string
end tell

Is there anyway to easily automatically find the path to the picture in desktop 2?

runnning el capitan

This works for me:

tell application "System Events"
set tlst to a reference to every desktop
--set picture of item 1 of tlst to newtop  -- display 1
--set picture of item 2 of tlst to newtop -- display 2
set z to (picture of item 2 of tlst) as text
end tell
return z

The commented out lines are for setting desktop pic on one display or the other. newtop is obviously preset, or the result of

set newtop to choose file


Lion Photobooth Pictures In previous versions of OSX I've been able to take a picture using the Photobooth app and upload it to the internet (by using a website's "choose file" button, navigating to User\Pictures\Photobooth or similar and selecting the picture I want).

Now, since I've upgraded to lion I haven't been able to do this.

Now the Photobooth folder in my Pictures directory is disabled and I cannot get into it.

So how can I use Photos from Photobooth in every day life? (ie: not just in photobooth?)

Thank you.

If you're in the Open File dialog box, there is a heading in the sidebar that says "Media". Under that heading is an entry for Photos. Click that, and then at the top of the dialog, it will show any iPhoto albums you have. But, if you scroll down to the bottom, you can select "Photo Booth", and you should be able to load all your photo booth pictures from there. Unless I'm missing something, that should be all you need.


Space switching keyboard shortcut behaviour on multiple displays Using the Control + Left and Control + Right keyboard shortcuts only works on the monitor where the mouse pointer is located.

If I Command + Tab to an app on a different monitor and try switching spaces, it won't work on the display of the app that I switched to.

Also, try switching spaces on a display then moving the mouse pointer to your other monitor without clicking or selecting anything. Now when you use the keyboard shortcuts to switch, it will switch spaces on the other monitor, even though your focus is not there.

Is there a way to switch spaces only on the monitor that has focus? I'm on the latest Mojave, by the way.

Disclaimer: For me on MAC OS Mojave 10.14.6 on macbook pro 2018, using Control + Left/Right, switching spaces by default works on the monitor that has focus. When I move the mouse pointer from screen1 to screen 2 even without clicking on any app on screen 2, i'm able to switch workspace on the screen where mouse pointer is located using Control + Left/Right keys.
But, if by anyhow it's not working for you. You can set shortcut for screen switch across screens using System Preferences - > Keyboard -> Short Cuts and select checkbox for "Switch to Desktop 1","Switch to Desktop 2", "Switch to Desktop 3". Then using control + 1/2/3 you can switch to one of the desktop. The limitation is you can only create shortcut for 3 default desktops.


How to remove an application that has been deleted but remains in the Status bar? I've recently deleted the Citrix Receiver app from my computer, but I've noticed that despite doing this (As well as deleting the plugin), my status bar has the Citrix roundel icon every time I boot up. I can't find a way to set it to not do that in the limited preferences menu I can open from it, but that is a bit besides the point. I want all traces of the application permanently removed, not just hidden from my view.

How can I remove this application from my status bar (And from my computer), clearly deleting the App itself from my Applications folder wasn't enough. But where is the rest persisting on my computer? I've tried searching through finder but nothing turned up.

From Citrix.com - How to Uninstall Citrix Online Plug-in For Mac

This is the instructions for Online rather than Receiver. The process is identical for each, substituting the Receiver .dmg file
(the Receiver instructions are in a pdf rather than online & can't be copy/pasted)

  Citrix Online Plug-in (client) for Mac installs files into multiple
  folders. Here is an easy way to uninstall:

  Download the installer from Citrix download page.

  Open the file and select Uninstall option.


Finder spotlight tool not "grepping" through all file types? We've got this development stack that's mostly javascript, and if I'm looking for a variable definition or something I can use Finder's spotlight tool to easily find the file that contains the variable I'm looking for.  However if there's something I'm looking for that I know is in a JSON file, Finder won't return anything.  I looked through Finder's preferences as well as Spotlight's but couldn't find anything about extensions.  Does anyone know a fix for this?  Or maybe an alternative to Finder/Spotlight?  Thanks in advance

You can use Bare Bones’s TextWrangler (from the makers of BBEdit). It has a Multi-File Search function that is easy to use and pretty useful.

Nice: TextWrangler is free.


Disable "Updates Ready to Install" Apps from OS X 10.9 (Mavericks) have started to ask me to restart when there are updates ready to install. Is it possible to completely disable this notification?

Screenshot of notification:

To stop the notifications, go to System Preferences > App Store and disable 'check automatically for updates.' This will stop the notifications. This was from http://lifehacker.com/how-to-fix-os-x-mavericks-biggest-annoyances-1450220339


Old iPad not charging after no use for a year I have an old iPad and want to give it to a friend.

I plugged it in with a new lead that charges another 1st gen iPad I have, but it's not coming on.

It's not been used for about a year. It's been plugged in now for 20 minutes.

Any ideas?

If it won't wake after several hours of charging, try another charger and let it sit there for up to 8 hours.

You have likely let the battery self discharge to a permanently harmful level, but in most cases you can get it to trickle charge enough so that it will boot again and be of limited use depending on how long the battery was in a harmfully low voltage situation.

It may never boot again, but that depends more on how healthy the battery was when it entered storage since a year usually won't kill a new battery but will put a huge dent into it's usability.


Am I missing out by not running in 64-bit mode? I'm running an Early '11 MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM.

Currently, OS X Lion runs in 32-bit mode by default, and an important piece of software I use for work requires this mode (Cisco VPN client). Most of the work I do is inside a VMWare Fusion Windows 7 64-bit VM with 4GB RAM. The RAM upgrade is fairly recent, which is why I am bringing this up now. I've also considered pushing the VM to 6GB or 8GB, but I'm hesitant as I thought VMWare might have problems loading up all that memory in a 32-bit space.

Am I missing out on any performance gains by running in 32-bit mode?

Lion is not meant to be used in 32bit mode. Also addressing more than 4GB ram with 32bit kernel is slower (it uses PAE).

If the only reason of using Lion in 32bit mode is the Cisco VPN client (yuck!) there is a way. Here is an article explaining how to use the native VPN client instead - it's for 10.6, but should work. It's a matter of configuration, not of software. And here is a forum post that pointed to thad solution.

About the Cisco VPN 3000 hardware - yes, it works with iOS and native OSX VPN client in IPSec mode, and it's a matter of software update and configuration. You should be running at least 4.7.2P according to the CISCO field notice. It's stated that it's not supported, but it works. Here is another success story. Make sure that you're using at least OSX 10.7.2.

ps. being tight on money is not always bad, It usually makes people more creative and makes them think and learn new things. Direct your network admin to serverfault, a place I'm sure he will get decent help.


MySQL won't start on Snow Leopard I'm getting this error while trying to start the mysql server

$ sudo mysqld_safe --user=mysql
110425 23:11:33 mysqld_safe Logging to '/usr/local/mysql/data/unknown-e0-f8-47-0c-04-a0.lan.err'.
110425 23:11:33 mysqld_safe Starting mysqld daemon with databases from /usr/local/mysql/data
110425 23:11:35 mysqld_safe mysqld from pid file /usr/local/mysql/data/unknown-e0-f8-47-0c-04-a0.lan.pid ended

any suggestions?

Change skip-locking to skip-external-locking in /etc/my.cnf.  This problem can happen if you had a different MySQL installed previously.  I experienced this problem when I moved to MAMP.


Do Apple Store Gift Cards Ever Expire? I have an Apple Store Gift Card that was found in a drawer from 2009 (8 years ago). The associated papers said it was for $150. The scratch-off material covering the PIN had never been removed.

When I checked the balance, the PIN and card # were recognized, but the site said the balance was $0. I checked the balance here: https://secure1.store.apple.com/shop/giftcard/balance

Do these cards ever expire?  If not, how did it lose its value if the PIN had never before been uncovered?

Note: This is not an iTunes gift card. That's different.

Additional information: This is an OLD card. It doesn't appear to be the type that can be recognized by scanning. It does have a bar code, but the bar code is not in a box like the new cards. It also has a magnetic stripe. I couldn't figure out how to enter it into Apple Wallet or Apple Store apps. The front of the card is blank silver with white apple logo. The gift card number is 16 digits and the PIN is 8 digits.

I've never seen one expire. You can enter it in your wallet app if you have an iPhone and the balance will come down from Apple's servers. I suppose a call to the 800-MY-APPLE sales number could confirm the balance as well.


Can I display GMT on my iPad's world clock? I have an iPad running iOS 8.1. Can I include a world clock pane with GMT? I see London as an option, but it appears that it adjusts for DST.

Select UTC instead of a city. (Strictly GMT no longer exists.)


Wrong Apple ID for iCloud? My initial Apple ID was associated with a now defunct email address. I just updated my AppleID to a real email. I have managed to update it successfully with everything except iCloud on my phone. The App Store, iTunes, everything else on my phone has the correct ID except iCloud. How do I fix this?

Settings -> iCloud (right beneath General). Then scroll down til you see the "Delete Account" button. Should be straight-forward from there.


iOS7 Using own tags for the purchased music I decided to post because I have a problem. Unfortunately iOS7 handles the tags of purchased music differently than iOS6 did.

My problem is, that I often don't like the original tags from the iTunes store because they are so inconsistent . So I change them in iTunes on my Mac. Everything seems to be okay until I don't sync my music with my iOS7 devices, my iPhone and iPad and I don't check them on my device. Somehow iOS7 reverts the tags for some of music back to their original. I check my devices' content in iTunes as well and iTunes shows my tags correctly but there is also a downloadable file in silver which has the original tags.

I've already tried different things to get rid of the original tags, deleted the content on my devices, synced automatically and manually as well, turned off the option to show all my music on my device but I'm still unable to list my tags instead of the original ones. The strange part is, that my tags are visible for some older purchases only.

Can anyone help to solve this problem?

I had this same issue too.  I read on another site to do the following:

Have the song/album/artist labeled how you want it in iTunes.
Sign out of iTunes on your phone/device (settings, iTunes, Apple ID, sign out)
Swipe left on the incorrectly labeled/tagged song within the music app on your phone/device and delete it.
Connect phone/device to iTunes and sync.
After sync is finished you can sign back in to your Apple ID on the phone/device.

I hope this helps cause it works for me. Surely Apple will fix this because it is annoying to have to keep doing this everytime just to have your music labeled how you want it labeled.


Can I install OSX 10.11 El Capitan on a 2016 MacBook Pro touch? I can't imagine this would be an issue, but is there any reason why I can't/shoudln't install OSX 10.11 Yosemite on my MacBook Pro 2016? Sierra has always felt very sluggish to me, and it is the first OSX release where apps consistently crash. El Capitan was much more solid in my opinion and I would like to downgrade. Is there any reason why I shouldn't?

No you can't install El Capitan.

The firmware won't allow any version of macOS earlier than macOS Sierra 10.12.1 (16B2657) to be installed.

Also, for future reference, if this model ever needs a firmware update, it is possible that the earliest version of macOS you will be able to install in future will be a version later than macOS 10.12.1.


Office 365 installation stuck with one minute remaining on running package scripts I wiped and re-installed macOS High Sierra 10.13.2 on an older MacBook Air (11″, 2013).  Then I tried to download Office 365.  It got as far as "one minute remaining" on "Running Package Scripts", then it hung.  I tried force-quitting and re-starting.  It won't let me.  So I am stuck here. What can I do?

The ‘running package scripts’ step does take a while and Installer is not able to accurately suggest how long this step will take. My guess is it wasn't ‘hung’ but you didn't wait long enough at that step — it can take numerous minutes and is working hard.

You can forcibly shut down the machine by holding the power button until the machine turns off. This wouldn't usually be necessary, but it probably is now, depending on the steps you took to attempt to interrupt the installation.

I recommend attempting to install Office once again (as a partial installation isn't ideal) and letting the installer work through the steps it requires without attempting to interrupt it.


Unable to view my apps installed in iPad Air on iTunes I have iPad Air (first generation) with iOS 8.3 installed. I have iTunes 12.1.2.7 installed on my Windows 8 PC.

I have authorized iTunes to access my iPad but I cannot see any apps in my iTunes when I connect my iPad to PC.

I have apps like Amazon and Tumblr but they do not show up in iTunes. Can anyone tell me why is this not working?

You need to scroll down the window a little. Then you can see File sharing. There you can see all the installed apps.


Does Apple still fix screen coating issues on the mid-2014 MBPs? I read on MacRumors that if I take my mid-2014 (purchased in early 2015) 15" MBP to an Apple store, they may fix the well-known anti-reflective screen coating issue.  MacRumors is not an authoritative source, as far as I know, so I'd like to check here as well.  Anyone have info on this?

Apple has a list of current Repair Programs on their website; unfortunately, this one is not listed.

However, a Macworld Article (which references MacRumors) states:

  According to MacRumors, Retina MacBook Pro owners affected by this
  issue will be able to get a free replacement display for up to three
  years from the original date of purchase or until one year from
  October 16, 2015—whichever comes last.

So, if you purchased it new in early 2015, you have until "early" 2018 to get it repaired (it sounds like you missed the window).

I would still take it to an Apple store and plead your case; it never hurts to ask.


How can I set up multihoming? I am running Mac OS X Server 10.6 on my iMac and I am wondering how to multihome a Mac. I know it's possible to accomplish this by using both Wi-fi and Ethernet, but I just want to use Ethernet. Any idea how to set this up? Thanks.

Got it. All you have to do is add multiple Ethernet interfaces in Network Preferences. And then just configure each one to the correct settings and you're set to go. I tested this by hosting two different websites on two different IPs by multihoming my iMac and it worked!

System Prefs -> Network dialog
Press the + button and select the interface you want to add to (you may need to go back  and identify which one if you have multiple Ethernet ports).
Name the service and press "Create"
Configure the new service as you would a static (manual) interface
Click "Apply"


OS X productivity application to block access to different websites? I am looking for an OS X application that would block you from accessing certain websites, like social and entertainment one and even hide applications.

The entire purpose is to create a working environment that allows you to focus on your job.

I have to mention that, the web-browser cannot be banned because it is required to normal use.

Also, the solution I am looking for should provide a way to harden the switching from no-distration mode to unlocked.

This question is about a software solution, so please refrain from recommending books to read regarding productivity.

I realise that using Parental Control and having a managed account would solve some of these but there are some essential problems:

Applications are not hidden, the system just asks for admin password, yuck.
You have to create the list of denied websites yourself, that makes it impossible to manager. Is there a predefined list that we can import?
How to share the documents I'm working on between the two accounts: normal one and restricted one.

I use Antisocial for this:

  Anti-Social is a productivity application for Macs that turns off the social parts of the internet. When Anti-Social is running, you’re locked away from distracting social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter and other sites you specify. With Anti-Social, you’ll be amazed how much you get done when you turn off your friends.

But of course this works only for web sites, not for local applications.


cannot delete application on Lion I cannot delete remove applications on Lion.

When I delete some application in launchpad it disappear and reappear.

Situations are quite the same as in this clip( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbh-jUgCjs0 ) I found.

I could delete applications and I do not know what is wrong.

There are 2 issues:

First, you can't delete applications from Launchpad. You need to delete them from Applications.

Second, you can't delete some system applications (that are essential part of OS X) from Applications by dragging them to Trash. You can only delete applications that you've added. (Actually you can delete system applications, but not by dragging to Trash; it requires some command line interface usage).


How do I roll back from Yosemite to Mountain Lion without Internet Recovery after erasing my hard disk? I erased my MacBook Air hard drive - which came with Yosemite OS X - because I wanted to roll back to Mountain Lion (OS X 10.8), since Yosemite was giving me problems with my files from the previous MacBook Pro.

I deleted the drive using Disk Utility. While partitioning, I forgot to make a GUID partition table. I tried installing Mac OS X on an USB-stick. It's not showing my drive, but just my USB Mac OS X installer. When I click on it, it shows the stop sign.

How can install Mac OS X without using the Internet Recovery for Yosemite

If you're trying to boot from a USB OS X installer and it shows up as a bootable device but then proceeds to show the stop sign and halt, this indicates the installer will not run on your Mac as your system is unsupported by the startup files on the installer.

As klanomath points out, if it shipped with Yosemite it's unlikely to support Mountain Lion. Your Mac may support Mavericks (which is more akin to ML than Yosemite) depending on the model family - and obviously also depending on whether you can get hold of the installer for 10.9. If you can get hold of a fresh copy of the 10.9 installer from Apple this will be the last iteration, 10.9.5. Importantly, this last version will boot all Mavericks-capable Macs up to and including all 2014 models. If this includes yours then Mavericks should install as long as it's 10.9.4 or later.

Your existing drive won't show at this stage as it doesn't have an OS X installation to boot from, even if it's correctly partitioned.


Apple Watch - Getting weight lifting to count towards "move ring"? Is there any way to get exercise like weight lifting to count towards the "move ring" of the activity app. I realize it will count a small amount just from moving the wrist around, but some days I would like most of my calorie burn to come from weights and the basic app doesn't seem to cover this.

Make sure you are using the Workouts app on the watch as this will make the heart rate monitor get your heart rate more often. Therefore, it won't miss any spikes from lifting and moving about.
Make sure your watch is securely fitted so the heart rate monitor can get an accurate measurement!
Lastly, it's a bit hard for a device on your watch to know that you are using weight resistance, etc. so don't expect much. Perhaps we'll see some updates from Apple about this, here's hoping!


What is the reason for the large minimum brightness of MacBook Air (or other devices)? When I use my MacBook Air in darkness for various reasons (e.g. causal stargazing or working late in close quarters) the last brightness notch before "black" is way too bright for me.

There are add-on work-arounds (see for example Macbook air screen is too bright even on the lowest setting) so I'm not asking how to get lower brightness.

I'm wondering if there are some hardware issues when operating at very low brightness that should be avoided, or if it's just a question of difficulty to assure the customer display quality at very low brightness, or something else?

Have you tried to split the last notch in 4 part, pressing Alt+Shift+F1 or Alt+Shift+F2 ?

It allow you to have other three level before black screen. It will works also with audio.


How to remove an app on iOS without overhead? Problem
I tried to remove an app from Settings -> iPhone Storage, but after each installation/un-installation cycle about 100-200mb adds up to disk space (example: after 10 cycles about 2GB might be taken on a disk, even that the app is un-installed).
Filesystem info

df output on each step from PoC
du difference
du and df detailed output

PoC
Here is a PoC, it's the same without checkra1n and video recording.
Steps to reproduce

Download an app from App Store
Launch the app
Delete the app from Settings -> iPhone Storage
About 100-200mb is taken on a disk on example of TikTok (TikTok binary is ~130mb)
Jump to step 1.

Non-ideal solution
Reboot helps to wipe these taken data from a disk.
Env

iPhone 6s with/without checkra1n on 14.2 and 14.3
iPhone SE without checkra1n on 14.2

What I checked

Snapshots, and there is only system one
Hanged files using lsof, and there is only Asset.car in splashboard for TikTok, but it isn't 130mb file

Question
Why it this happening and how can I delete an app without overhead of 100-200mb + reboot?

Both macOS and iOS use APFS which make snapshots, so I would expect you have to wait for this like installation logs, snapshots and other artifacts to expire based on storage pressure and time.
diskutil apfs listSnapshots /

Since you have asked a raft of questions in one question, I’ll keep it basic and see if you want to ask specific follow on questions to address each specific item.


How can I control where photos end up when I sync them to my iPhone? I'm trying to have fewer photos on my iPhone (3GS running iOS5), and if possible to have them searchable by naming them.

With this in mind I used Image Capture to download all 500+ pictures onto my MacBook Air (running Lion), then synced my iPhone with iTunes to remove them all.

(To do this, I made a folder called Empty Folder and put it in my Pictures folder, selected it in the iPhone's Photos tab in iTunes - you can't, for some no doubt magical Apple reason, select any folder that isn't a subfolder within another folder - and synced. Only way I could find to do it, other than wearing out my fingertip by deleting all the photos one by one. I couldn't see any way of deleting a whole 'album' of photos on the iPhone itself or in iTunes.)

I then named all the photos I wanted to keep - 111 of them - and dragged them into another subfolder in Pictures, this one called iPhone Photos.

I connected the phone again, and in iTunes and the phone's Photos tab I deselected Empty Folder and selected iPhone Photos.

All hunky dory. All 111 photos are now on the iPhone.

Except that there are now three albums on the phone: the empty Camera Roll, Photo Library with 111 photos, and iPhone Photos, with the same 111 photos, organised differently.

What the...?

Is there any way of getting the photos I want to keep into the Camera Roll and getting rid of the extra albums?

To add pictures to the Camera Roll, you have to snap them with the built-in camera (or with a screenshot) on the iPhone.

The Photo Library contains all the pictures, they may be additionally organised in user-specific folders (like your iPhone Photos folder for instance).


Finding the mountpoint of an device in shell scripts Looking for a correct and simple way to find a mountpoint in a shell script.
This working as expected
tmp=$(mktemp /tmp/my.XXXXXX)
mpoint=$(diskutil info -plist disk1s1 >"$tmp" ; /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Print MountPoint' "$tmp")
rm -f "$tmp"

but it needs a temporary file.
While it isn't a big deal, but still would be nicer to do it without of the tempfile.
Unfortunately, the
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Print MountPoint' <(diskutil info -plist disk1s1)

doesn't works.
It is a bug of the PlistBuddy or I missed something?
Using zsh in fresh Big Sur installation.

Use a here string to pass the output of diskutil to standard in.
/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print :MountPoint" /dev/stdin <<< "$(diskutil info -plist disk1s1)"


How can I mount a Time Machine sparsebundle so I can modify it? TL;DR: I have a Time Machine backup that I want to modify before running Migration Assistant, but when I try to delete a directory from it either with rm or unlink I get "operation not permitted". How can I mount it so I can make a change?

The reason I'm at this point:
Upgrading my iMac from Mountain Lion to Mavericks went so badly that I eventually booted from a USB key, reformatted my hard drive, and re-installed.

I have a Time Machine backup on a 3TB AirPort Time Capsule, but restoration was painfully slow (even over a wired network) so I gave up that as well.

I copied the sparsebundle for the machine I'm trying to restore to an external FW800 disk and plugged it into my iMac. Started Migration Assistant, then ssh'd in and mounted the sparsebundle. At that point I was able to select it in Migration Assistant, select the account I want to restore, and begin the process. This took another ~20 hours before showing me the progress bar for ~30 minutes of copying.

During the 20 hours I was able to run some dtraces over the ssh connection and ascertain that most of the time was spent picking through the files in /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems. I want to run Migration Assistant again to restore my applications - I figure it will be quicker than re-installing / re-licensing everything. In order to hopefully eliminate most of the 20 hour wait, I want to remove the gems directory before running MA.

I (think I) know how hard linked directories work in TM backups. /Library has a different inode in the "Latest" backup, compared to the previous timestamp. /Library/Ruby has the same inode in both. Therefore I'd be content with just unlinking /Library/Ruby in Latest.

bash-3.2# pwd
/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/numberwang/2013-10-23-192429/Macintosh HD/Library
bash-3.2# ~/hardlink -u Ruby
hardlink: Operation not permitted
bash-3.2# mv Ruby old.Ruby
mv: rename Ruby to old.Ruby: Operation not permitted

You can delete all backups of specific folders from the Time Machine interface.

Enter Time Machine (from the Time Machine menubar interface or from the Dock)
Navigate to the /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems folder
While the gems folder is selected, right click and choose Delete All Backups of <items(s)>
Confirm that you wish to delete it and enter the Administrator credentials

If you have changed your machine's name after the reinstall, then Time Machine won't show your older backups. You can either rename your machine to the name it had before or press Option while clicking on the Time Machine menubar item and select Browse Other Backup Disks... to go through your backups.

See Should I delete old backups? If so, How? for more information and other ways to work with the AirPort Time Capsule.


Why are my app reviews deleted so often and quickly since iOS 10.3? Has Apple made it easier for devs to shoot down unwanted app reviews since 10.3? (Maybe 10.3.1, but surely around that time I noticed it.)

I tend to write app reviews that are critical in nature but still constructive and I use a respectful language. I rarely write glooming 5 star reviews however.

What I notice is that eg I write several reviews in the evening and the next morning they are gone. They are not only not showing up in the AppStore but in the list of all of my reviews I can check on my iPhone it appears like I have never written them.

I use a German AppStore account, review mostly apps made by German devs, and because the deletion of my reviews is sometimes happening so quickly I assume that the devs can delete reviews themselves, right? Can't imagine that Apple hires people in CEST to shoot down reviews within a few hours of writing them.

Can anyone please explain what's happening? I could understand how devs view their apps as part of their brand and don't want to get it tarnished by non favourable reviews. So if it's that and Apple is cool with that and supports these kind of devs, more power to them.

I'd just like to know about it so I can eventually think twice about writing an app review when chances are big that it gets deleted as well.

Developers can not directly remove reviews but Apple's App Store staff can.

Developers can ask for inflammatory, misleading, or concerning reviews to be removed from the App Store and Mac App Store.

When a new version of an application is released on an Apple App Store, existing reviews can be archived and removed from immediate sight. This may be the behaviour you are seeing.

Regarding time zones, Apple appear to have review teams covering all time zones. Reviews of newly submitted applications occur on weekends and most holidays. Thus it is reasonable to assume other app store services are available at all times.