What is "Television" in System Information report for an external monitor (that is not actually a TV)? The System Information report for Graphics/Displays on my MacBook Pro Retina (Late 2013) shows the following info for the internal screen and for an external Acer monitor.

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M:

  Chipset Model:    NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M
  Type: GPU
  Bus:  PCIe
  PCIe Lane Width:  x8
  VRAM (Total): 2048 MB
  Vendor:   NVIDIA (0x10de)
  Device ID:    0x0fe9
  Revision ID:  0x00a2
  ROM Revision: 3776
  gMux Version: 4.0.8 [3.2.8]
  Displays:
Color LCD:
  Display Type: Retina LCD
  Resolution:   2880 x 1800 Retina
  Retina:   Yes
  Pixel Depth:  32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Main Display: Yes
  Mirror:   Off
  Online:   Yes
  Built-In: Yes
Acer H236HL:
  Resolution:   1920 x 1080 @ 60Hz (1080p)
  Pixel Depth:  32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
  Display Serial Number:    LX1AA0034210
  Mirror:   Off
  Online:   Yes
  Rotation: Supported
  Television:   Yes

What is the meaning of that last item, Television: Yes? This hardware is not actually a TV, just a display with HDMI, DVI, and VGA inputs.

I understand that modern TVs are indeed just monitors with an OTA tuner and speakers implanted. But I wonder, given the lack of a tuner, what the meaning of that item in the report specifically means.

1.What does Television:Yes mean?
It means your macbook is sending the color to your display not in RGB but in YCbCr space instead of RGB,which could lead to poor picture quality.

2.Solution:
Override an EDID (Extended_Display_Identification_Data) setting to force the RGB colour space

Threads  about forcing RGB mode instead of YCbCr

You can force RGB mode by following Turtorial on how to force RGB mode

This is long standing bug that Apple refuses to fix and that is not simple to work around.


OS X updater claims installation is successful, but new OS is not installed I've got a Mac running 10.10.5 Yosemite, trying to upgrade to 10.11 El Capitan. When I run the installer, it claims installation requires 7 Mb of disk space, it installs some files, and ends with "Installation successful".

But the OS is not updated: after a reboot 'About this Mac' still shows it running Yosemite.

The same thing happens on this Mac when running the 10.12 Sierra installer. The goal is to get to Mojave, but that installer won't run at all so I'm trying incremental updates.

In both cases I made sure to download the full (~6 Gb) installer beforehand (from the app store), and I'm running the installer from the mounted disk image.

What could cause this error, and how do I get rid of it?

This is the information I missed. I had downloaded a .dmg file, this installs the 'Install El Capitan' app (containing the full 5 GB installer) in the Applications folder. I was expecting it to install the OS instead.

The linked instructions show how to create a bootable installer on an external drive from the .dmg.

connect an external drive
Use the 'createinstallmedia' command in Terminal

sudo /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ OS\ X\ El\ Capitan.app

You can then boot the machine from the external drive and use it to update the OS on your normal boot volume.

The drawback of this approach is that it erases the external drive.


change filesize of iPhoto image before adding it to a mail How can I change the filesize (resolution and compression) of an image from iPhoto before adding it as an embedded image in apple mail without actually changing the image in iPhoto?

If you click the email button in either Aperture or iPhoto, or for any photo you drag into Mail, you'll find a drop-down at the bottom of the window once you select an image that allows you to change the size of the image, and it tells you the size of the resulting file.

Small, Medium, Large, and Original are the options.

As I said, this works for any image in Mail. It won't affect the originals in any way. It's the easiest way I've found to change the images, and it tells you the results on the fly, so you can adjust each image as required.


Can't get into my phone after erasing it through iCloud I forgot my restrictions passcode so I looked at some websites and forums who told me to erase my iPhone from iCloud and to backup my iPhone.

I did this but unfortunately, now my iPhone is in lost mode and has been erased from iCloud and I can't get into my phone. How can I get back into my phone or reset it?

You can disable Lost Mode on your device by going to icloud.com/#find, selecting the device and clicking Stop Lost Mode.


Is the Macbook Pro limited to about 800Mbps of 802.11ac Wifi? I have a 2014 Macbook Pro and have a 2020 Macbook Pro from work.  If I Option Click  on the Wifi icon on the taskbar, they both showed 802.11ac and Tx of 780Mbps or so most of the time. One time it showed 1170Mbps but it only appeared for a second.

And if I copy a file over to another computer on the wired LAN, it is about 70MB/s so it seems 780Mbps is about right.

Is it true that the Macbook Pro's 802.11ac Wifi is limited to about 800Mbps?

I guess 800Mbps is already quite close to the limit of Gigabit, so if at home we only have Gigabit Ethernet and switch, then 800Mbps is close to the highest speed already. It only would be if at home there is a 10Gbps Ethernet and switch that we only need to be concerned about higher speed.

No, there isn't such a general 800 Mbps limitation.

The theoretical limits of the WiFi in those two MacBook Pros are 1300 Mbps. For example the 2014 MacBook Pro uses a BCM4360 WiFi chip from Broadcom that allows for speeds up to 1.3 Gb/s.

In practice, the actual speed is limited by factors such as distance from the access point, obstacles between laptop and access point, reflections of the signal, other interfering signals, the WiFi hardware and software support of your access point, traffic from other devices on your WiFi, etc.


Got a new iPhone - where am I supposed to receive the verification code? I just got a new iPhone to replace my broken one. I can't really do much without signing into iCloud, which requires me to use a verification code. This can either be sent to some other trusted apple device of mine (no such device exists), or as a text to my phone (that won't work because I'm trying to set up my phone). So how can I sign in to iCloud?

Don't log in during set-up, but login afterwards using Settings. At that time you'll be able to request an authentication code via SMS.


Run a program/script when the screen is locked or unlocked Is there a way to run a specified script or program when the screen is locked or unlocked? Ideally a bash function or an AppleScript.

Is there an event that I could subscribe to that would allow me to do that? Or an existing app that supports this?

After some searching, I found SleepWatcher, a free tool that allows to run a script when the screen goes to sleep or wakes up.

After installing it, you can link a shell script that is run on one of the available events (which include dim screen, wake up screen, computer sleep, wake up computer and some more). From the shell script, I can run a command, or call an AppleScript that I want to run on these events.

Since my screen goes to sleep when I lock my computer, this is exactly what I was looking for.

You can see it in action here: https://github.com/nwinkler/sleepwatcher-lync-status


Mono output from an external DAC Due to a health issue I have very reduced hearing in my left ear. Because of this I often listen to music in mono instead of stereo. The macOS audio controls (under the accessibility settings) allow me to select that the stereo output be converted into mono, however this doesn’t seem to work with the the DAC I am using the Schiit Fulla 2, which stubbornly continues to output in stereo. It works fine for the built in audio output.

Is there a way to get a mono signal to my external DAC instead of stereo? I mostly need this for iTunes but would prefer it be system wide

Thanks in advance

EDIT: I know This can be done with apps like Audio Hijack, but I was hoping to do this at the system level and not have to have an app running when I want to switch output to mono.

Also I tried my DAC in iOS and it work with the accessibility settings to switch the output to Mono so it looks like a limitation of macOS at this point.

I'm going to end up sounding like a one-man advertising campaign for this app [I have no affiliation, it's just darned useful]

Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack can do this type of routing easily. It unfortunately cannot route 'everything' to any given output in a single move, but you can make it route multiple apps & System audio through the same signal path.

You build by dragging & dropping elements from the right side-bar into the main window. Connections are built as you drag. Then you dial in your specifics by clicking at the bottom of each element & choosing its app, effect or device.
Effects are - some built-in or any AU effect plugins on your Mac.

It is ostensibly an audio recorder, but if you don't put a recorder element in the path, then it will just pass-through instead.

I built this in less than a minute to route system & 2 yet to be decided apps through a channel 'effect' set to mono, then out through my audio USB.

Caveats:
It must be set running to function, so it's not a complete 'set & forget' at system level.
It's expensive for a one-trick pony.
It will auto-launch all apps used in a 'Session' so you might not want to put them all in one setup but make different combinations, as needed.

See Split Input Channels Using SoundFlower and AULab and Nice Audio Mixer/Repeater for some other routing examples I've built.


How can I upgrade my jailbroken iPad? I got an iPad 2. With 4.3.3 version, that I somehow managed to jailbreak last year. Im a jail breaking noob, and was wondering, how do I update my current jail broken version, to a later jail broken version, so I can download apps from the app store that require OS 6 or greater

How do I upgrade to the latest jailbroken version of iOS?

The straightforward way is to wait until the current version of iOS is jailbroken, and then upgrade and rejailbreak - there are applications you can use (a handy range is described at http://www.cultofmac.com/169467/how-to-backup-your-jailbreak-apps-and-tweaks-from-cydia-ultimate-roundup/) to back up the 'jailbroken bits' of the device, but I personally prefer just upgrading and then putting back on those cydia apps that I really want on my own - they way I also have had the chance for a bit of a clear out.


How to specify a startup folder in the open command to launch MacVim? If I want to open a file in MacVim from the terminal. I use the following the command open -a MacVim --args filepath.

It disregards my working dir so I need to always specify the full path when opening a file. When I do open -a MacVim --args piano.py it assumes the file is in $HOME no matter what is my $PWD.

It is just an example. It applies to any application. Macos seems to not have the "Startup Folder" or "Start in" feature for executables in Windows.

I took a look in the mvim implementation.

 # Note: this isn't perfect, because any error output goes to the
 # terminal instead of the console log.
 # But if you use open instead, you will need to fully qualify the
 # path names for any filenames you specify, which is hard.
 exec "$binary" -g $opts ${1:+"$@"}

Can I get MacVim to accept a startup path?

Since you're using MacVim, and it doesn't seem to be a problem with the open command:

MacVim comes with its own script called mvim.

You can use it just like gvim to open files in the MacVim GUI, or pass -v to it to open in regular text mode with the ability to use :gui later.

Also, you can just use open -a MacVim <file>, no need to use --args. It'll figure it out just as if you double-clicked on the file in the Finder.


Mis-Matched messages from the Message app between two phones? We have two iPhones running iOS7, and they share an iCloud account, but have separate AppStore accounts.  Both phones are getting messages from the other phone.  Why would this be?  Is it something I can change, or would it be something more along the lines of the something that the phone company can fix?

Under Settings > Messages > Send & Receive

Do you have different accounts or are some of them shared ?


Which devices can run iOS 8? Has Apple released a list of which devices are capable of running iOS 8?

It's at the bottom of the public iOS 8 page where it states the 10 models of hardware to be supported:

iPhone 4s, iPhone 5, iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s
iPad 2, iPad with Retina display, iPad Air
iPad Mini and iPad Mini with Retina display
iPod Touch (5th Generation)


Black console screen shows up during boot (verbose mode not turned on) Over the past few months when my Mac boots up, the grey screen with the apple disappears and is replaced with a unix style console screen, which scrolls like a linux PC booting up.

I have tried reinstalling the OS (10.13.6) (and restoring my account from a Time Machine backup using the Migration Assistant) and booting in Safe Mode.

Recovery Mode (Apple-R) - does not appear.
Fresh install prior to Time Machine restore - did not appear.
Normal boot after Time Machine restore - appears.
Safe Mode boot (Shift key) after Time Machine restore - still appears.

Verbose mode is not turned on: sudo nvram -p does not show a boot-args parameter.

Hardware test (booting with D key) shows no issues.

My guess is there is perhaps some kernel driver or add-on that is doing this that was carried over from my time machine restore.  What is interesting is this continues even during a Safe Mode boot.

(apologies for the reflections on my screen when I took the image).

I'd like to know if it is possible to fix this without repeating a reformat and reinstall but with more selective Time Machine restores (using trial and error).  Thanks in advance!

I know this may sound silly because it seems like you have a grasp with unix and Macs so you've already done this. try a pram reset and smc reset. I'm thinking something in nvram is doing this right? Could be way off and I know PRAM is so overused for the wrong reasons.


Will the iPhone Lost Mode override disabled location tracking? We have an iPhone that has location services disabled since we've usually been able to find the device simply with the Find My Phone "Play Sound" function.

Unfortunately, we think the device might be hiding in one of our bags and thus we can't locate the phone by listening for the sound.

I've never used Lost Mode, but I have read ambiguous information that leads me to wonder: if I turn on Lost Mode for a phone, will it temporarily enable location tracking for the device so I can figure out where it is?

You should turn on lost mode.

The next time it checks in over the network it will adjust location prefs and report in.

If it never checks in, your last settings will prevail.


How to sort videos into folders? How can I sort videos into folders/categories using iTunes ?

I've tried adding info to the sorting field tab when I click on 'Get Info' after right clicking on the video itself. But the videos always appear in a list on my iPhone. I just want to nest some videos into folders. How can I do this ?

You can sort your movies into Genres, that is the only way I have found to sort of make a subfolder.


Prevent automatically appending file extension when renaming file I originally have a file called config.yml. When I go into Finder and change its name to config.yml.old, it appears to have changed the extension. However, opening the file in TextWrangler reveals that Mac has just appended a "hidden" .yml at the end, causing the filename to be config.yml.old.yml.

Right now, the only way I can append an extension is by going to Terminal and running mv path/to/config.yml path/to/config.yml.old. Is there actually a way to use the GUI to do this?

Go to Finder
open Finder Preferences
Uncheck "Show warning before changing an extension"

Optionally, check "Show all filename extensions" to verify that Mac did not automatically append extensions when you add your own.


Texting without an assigned phone number I have an iPhone 5C that is no longer connected to a service plan. I have given it to my son to use as an iPod-type device. I have an Android phone. Can he text me on my Android from the non-connected iPhone?

He should be able to text you and anyone else. He needs to be on wifi (only) and use a 3rd-party texting app (for messages to Android) or Messages to another Apple device.

He will not be able to send any messages when not on wifi because he won't have any cell signal.


Export MOV to MP4 with Quicktime on Yosemite I have a screen capture of my computer screen using QuickTime's Screen Recording feature, but that saves it to an MOV format. I'd like to export it to MP4. Is that possible without installing anything else?

I'm using Yosemite, and I'm pretty sure I could do that with Mavericks.

If you have ffmpeg installed, it is quite easy to do it

ffmpeg -i input.mov output.mp4

If you don't, install it as follows:

Press Command + Space, type "Terminal" and press enter/return key.
Run this command in the Terminal app:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

and press enter/return key.

If the screen prompts you to enter a password, enter your Mac's user password to continue. When you type the password, it won't be displayed on the screen, but the system would accept it. So just type your password and press ENTER/RETURN key. Then wait for the command to finish.
After that, run:

brew install ffmpeg

Done! You can now run ffmpeg -i input.mov output.mp4.

(For more information, you can refer to this site, or you can go directly to the official FFmpeg website: ffmpeg.org.)


Application Update Bug So this happened a while ago, and I thought it would resolve itself eventually, but it hasn't, so I'll just ask here. I was updating my apps and clicked the "Update All" button in the App Store. However, the applications didn't update; the loading bar showed up on the applications but no update progress is being shown. Additionally, below the loading bar is the name of the application which is unusual, as when an application updates, "Waiting...", "Loading...", or "Installing..." are shown. Here's an image:

You can see an example of the problem in the upper right corner with the "Dictionary.com" and "Movie" apps. This is happening to many apps, though, not just these two.
So far, I've only tried restarting the phone. I'm pretty sure that restoring will fix the problem, but I'm saving that as a last resort.
So basically my question is, is it possible to fix this without restoring and if so, how?
I would say "thanks in advance", but I've just learned its considered rude (see here: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/98149/why-is-it-considered-rude-to-say-thanks-in-advance), so I guess I'll just say "Thanks for taking a look at my question".

Device information:

iPhone 4S
32GB
5.1.1

This happened to me on my iPhone. I let it slide for a couple of weeks but then I decided to troubleshoot it. Signing out and back in to my store account, and then getting updates again fixed it. Here's how I did that:

In the App Store app on the Featured tab, scroll down to the bottom
and tap the 'Apple ID: _______' button
In the pop-up menu tap the Sign Out button
Tap the Sign In button, choose Use existing Apple ID, and sign in with your credentials
Tap the "Updates" tab to find those updates again
Update all of them again


Upgrade to Yosemite Cutting Off Photoshop CS6 Dialog With Two Displays This isn't my screenshot, but this is what is happening in Photoshop CS6 after updating to Yosemite, the top of the open dialog gets chopped off. We've tested and this only happens when the second monitor is plugged in. We've adjusted the resolution of the second display and switched it back again which works to resolve it, but once you close Photoshop it returns to the broken dialog behaviour.

This Apple discussion is the best discussion I've found but doesn't have any suggestions outside of the resolution one we found.

Same problem here. Unplug and plugin again helps (display port). After that the photoshop dialogs are complete visible (main system dialog: save, open...) - but the order of photoshops internal windows (layers...) are broken.


User Conflict- Mavericks My home folder is called admin. However, I am signed in as John and there is no admin user. John is an administrative user.
Shouldn't the home folder show the signed-in user name?

This may or may not be something I caused

had another MacBook Pro crash, and this issue has arisen on replacement MacBook Pro and download from JustCloud
which, among other things, has UPDATED every file to the download date!- among other download issues.

I was having duplicate Desktop issues, including a user home folder Harry (also not showing in the Users preference pane.

Re-installed Mavericks, and this seemed to fix the home directory issue and that user issue. No more Harry and no more duplicate desktops.

But, now "admin" appears seemingly out of nowhere.

The easiest way would be to create new user with admin privileges and delete all others.

That should get rid off the unwanted.

You can try rebuilding your user account as described here.


Confusion about creating a bootable flashdrive I followed the directions to creat a bootable flashdrive for Mac High Sierra. My flashdrive now has the name "Install macOS High Sierra" and it contains the app "Install macOS High Sierra.app". Now comes my confusion. What do I do now. The directions end here. Should I run the app and install it on the same disk? Or should I do nothing. My intent was to make a flashdrive that I could use to boot a Mac computer. If my disk drive crashes i still want to be able to start and run my computer. My flashdrive is 64 GB partitioned into 2 32 GB partitions. I intended to copy a few apps onto the other 32 GB partition. What should I do now?

You may want to delete your answer to your own question.

In fact:

Insert bootable flash drive
Open said drive and launch the Install Mac OS High Sierra app
Follow the prompts

You could also reboot the system with the flash drive inserted and holding the Option key. When the drive selector comes up choose your flash drive and installation will commence.

If you run the OS install app from the Applications folder it will install it onto your boot drive. You could do that to install the OS on a thumb drive (just select that drive during OS install) as that makes a good emergency boot drive but it won't make an installer drive.


Mail.app keeps changing my SMTP settings? I've setup my email account with Mail.app. However, I cannot send mail.

The reason for this is that whenever I try to send mail, Mail.app always selects a legacy SMTP server, which I used to have configured, instead of whichever one it selects.

It gets to the point where if the dialogue for selecting an SMTP server comes up, and I select a different one, it'll still use the legacy one. When I click "Edit SMTP server list" I can change the list, however, the very next time I open that list, all my changes are discarded, and the legacy server is back.

How do I nuke Mail.app?

You could check if macos is trying to manage your connection settings automatically. That is controlled from inside the preferences for the Mail.app, under Accounts, and under Server Connections, at the bottom of the page. If the checkbox "Automatically manage connection settings" is checked, then macos will try to manage these settings for you. There's more information about what it does and how to disable it here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204208

If that does not help, you could also remove that account completely. However this is a more drastic operation. In System Preferences (not in the Mail.app), there is a preference pane for Internet Accounts. Try removing your email account and then readding it. There's a tutorial here that explains how: http://osxdaily.com/2016/04/04/delete-email-account-from-mac/


Apache not working with user Sites folder on macOS 10.13 High Sierra I have followed this guide to set-up Apache on High Sierra: https://coolestguidesontheplanet.com/get-apache-mysql-php-and-phpmyadmin-working-on-macos-sierra/

I used it to set it up on Sierra.

But when I go to http://localhost/~scott/ I get "Forbidden. You don't have permission to access /~scott/ on this server."

A suggestion on this similar question: localhost / userdir on macOS High Sierra is to load vhosts. Which I've tried, but still get "Forbidden".

Has anything changed between Sierra and High Sierra which would be preventing Apache from working with user Sites folders?

This worked for me when I ran into the same problem.

Please check "/private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf" file.

change

#Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf

to

Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf

and restart apache.

From: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39631351/apache-localhost-403-forbidden-with-macos-sierra


Mail keeps deleting all my signatures I'm in the process of reinstalling everything after a clean install (Mavericks) on an iMac. Mail seems to be working okay but none of my signatures are showing up in preferences. I have copied back the folder ~/Library/Mail from backup, which in turn contains V2/MailData/Signatures. In addition to a couple of sig-related preference files, that folder holds a whole load of cryptically-named files, each of which is stored twice -- once with a .mailsignature suffix and once with a .webarchive suffix.

When I launch Mail it seems to delete the .mailsignature files from the folder leaving only the .webarchive files, and as a result I am left with no signatures. Every time I copy the contents of the Signatures folder back from the backup the same thing happens; Mail deletes the .mailsignature files. I can also see that the AllSignatures.plist file gets re-written to empty (the one I'm copying in from backup is not empty). I don't know whether that is a product of the files being deleted, or vice versa.

Extra info:

I have iCloud enabled for Mail and my other Macbook Air (also with iCloud enabled for Mail) is showing my signature collection just fine (though I'm a bit worried that iCloud is going to tell the laptop to delete its signatures as well). Certainly iCloud is not pulling signatures over from the laptop, which makes me wonder what else is not being kept in sync. [I just created a Smart Mailbox in Mail on the laptop to see if it appeared on the iMac. It did not. So presumably iCloud is not correctly syncing on Mail, although Safari bookmarks are updating between the two macs]. That doesn't necessarily explain why the Signatures keep being deleted though.

Can anyone help?

I have a problem with my signatures too, and perhaps, this may help.

My problem was, that on my Mac, my Apple ID (my mail address) was used not only for login but also as mail address and alias for the iCloud mail account. And I can't change it.

After deactivating the iCloud mail account, I was able to use the signatures of my normal mail account again.


Sidecar not working with Ipad Pro 2018, Macbook Pro 2016 It only works if I use wired connection, however over the WiFi it does not.

My Macbook Pro 2016 does not recognize my Ipad which is 5 centimeters away.
Both devices are on the same Wifi network, and both have Bluetooth enabled. Both devices are logged into iCloud with the same AppleID. Both devices have two-factor authentication enabled.

  Why could it be that I cannot connect wirelessly?

To use Sidecar wirelessly, place your iPad to the left or right of your Mac. Then click on the AirPlay icon in your menu bar.

If you have an AirPlay icon, you'll see Connect to in its dropdown menu, with the name of your iPad next to it. Click on that, and you're done.

Depending on how your Mac is set up and whether you've ever used AirPlay before, you may not see the icon, though.

If you don't, go to any open Finder window. Press and hold on the green traffic light icon. You'll see a new dropdown menu that includes options to rearrange the window on the screen —or to Move to your iPad. Do that, and Sidecar is working.

Also, having done this, you'll now have the AirPlay icon in your Mac menu bar and from now on can use it to connect and disconnect to this iPad.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210380

https://www.apple.com/macos/catalina/docs/Sidecar_Tech_Brief_Oct_2019.pdf


autossh not behaving as expected I am trying to use autossh, like so:

autossh -f -i id_rsa -D 8080 user@myserver.com

However, on both an PPC Tiger eMac and a Mountain Lion MacBook Pro, I just get presented with the argument and environment variable list.

Both machines have autossh 1.4c installed. I am focused on getting it working on the Tiger machine; I only tried it on my Mountain Lion MBP to see if the issue was Tiger-specific.

I ran into this before and the issue for me was autossh expects a specified monitoring port (even though this is optional according to the usage stdout).

autossh -M 12345 -f -i id_rsa -D 8080 user@myserver.com

This similar command works for me against autossh 1.4c installed via homebrew on mountain lion.


Screen brightness keeps going to max My system

I'm running a 13" retina MacBook Pro and using El Capitan 10.11.6.

Model Name: MacBook Pro
  Model Identifier: MacBookPro11,1
  Processor Name:   Intel Core i7
  Processor Speed:  2.8 GHz
  Number of Processors: 1
  Total Number of Cores:    2
  L2 Cache (per Core):  256 KB
  L3 Cache: 4 MB
  Memory:   16 GB
  Boot ROM Version: MBP111.0142.B00
  SMC Version (system): 2.16f68

Issue

Often while working in a low ambient light environment, I'll turn down the screen brightness to make the display more comfortable to work with. Several times, immediately after turning down the brightness, the system will raise it up to max again.

I turn it down.

The system turns it up.

This goes on for several minutes and continually interrupts/blinds me.

My Display settings allow automatic brightness adjustment. But this is in a room often with no lighting other than the laptop so it should be adjusting down if anything.

Even after turning this setting off and closing System Preferences, the brightness still is changing automatically. I have also tried resetting the System Management Controller (SMC).

How do I a) prevent this from happening and b) actually turn off automatic brightness adjustment?

I think this is a common bug.
You should consider contacting Apple Support or taking it to an Apple store.


Can I hide a drive from the filesharing network, even from admin acct? OSX 10.10

I have an external USB drive mounted on my computer. Can that drive be hidden from the network? If I want to make it invisible to another user on a different mac on the network (even with admin credentials to my computer) that can still otherwise connect to me and mount my internal drive, etc.

Just so it wouldn't show up in a finder window after the remote admin connects to my computer?

Hmmm... interesting question. I haven't tried this personally but it looks like you can edit /etc/fstab and add the UUID of the disk with the 'noauto' flag:

http://www.radiotope.com/content/os-x-hiding-and-mounting-partition

I was going to propose changing permissions to prevent the other user from having access to the files. But, as tubedogg mentioned, if the user is an admin they can undo anything you've done.

Perhaps it's best to eject it when you're done if you're concerned about other admins having access to the data?


Access app data of a 3rd party iOS app I want to access data stored in a 3rd party iOS app called FriendLoan. This app crashes every time I try to open it. Also, it's not available on the App Store. I just need to recover the data somehow. I know that the data is stored in the app.

Local persistence of data in an iOS app can be done in a variety of ways (Core Data, SQLite database, NSUserDefaults, Plist file, Documents directory etc.). Whether it's possible to recover it would entirely depend on how FriendLoan app implements it.

If the app stores the data in the form of on-disk file(s), you can attempt to recover it. Connect your iPhone to your computer, launch iTunes, select your iPhone and click on File Sharing under Settings in the left sidebar.

Apps which are programmed with support for File Sharing are listed. Click to select the app to see the files available for sharing within the app bundle. You can drag and drop the available files to Finder to save a copy on your computer. This is one potential way to attempt recovery of data. Whether the data is actually what you are looking for totally depends on the how the app developer has written the implementation for handling it.

Alternatively, you can search the Web to look for desktop apps which lets you access filesystem of connected iOS device. It's another way to attempt recovery of data if the aforementioned approach doesn't yield the desired.

As a last resort, it doesn't hurt to contact the developer of the app and see if they can provide any help with resolving.


Creating physical escape key on new MacBook Pro with TouchBar by altering .keylayout for § key The UK keyboard layouts for the TouchBar MacBook Pro's have a pretty useless §/± key at the top left that would be a perfect to use as a physical escape key (see this image).

macOS has a keyboard mapping system (/Library/Keyboard Layouts/ - eg. see http://www.gingerbeardman.com/UK.keylayout/ and https://developer.apple.com/library/content/technotes/tn2056/_index.html ) that allows keys to be changed around.

It seems possible to me that putting a line into the relevant keyboard layout similar to:

<key code="<code for that key>" output="&#x1B;" />

should allow me to make that key an escape key. (If I can find/create the layout for all the other keys too!)

Googling I've not found anyone mentioning they've done this, which seems odd to me. Is there some reason this wouldn't work? Can the TouchBar keyboard be remapped with a .keylayout file without losing any functionality?

I've been holding off buying a new macbook pro because of fear of losing the physical escape key! I know you can remap ctrl/cmd/etc to be Escape using System Preferences, but that seems like a poor solution in comparison.

Install Karabiner-Elements
Run it form the Launchpad (obviously)
In "Simple Modifications" tab create a mapping "non-us-backlash" to "escape"
Enjoy!

BTW key code for "§" is 0A (as reported by Karabiner Event Viewer)


Disable Repeated System Alerts in iOS 7 On iOS 7, there is a feature under Cellular in Settings called: Use Cellular Data For:. This lists all of the apps I have on my iPhone 4 with individual On/Off Switches to disable or enable cellular data. So, I disable it on several of my apps, one of which being Music. When I open my Music app, it tells me…

  Cellular Data is Turned Off for "Music"
  You can turn on cellular data for this app in Settings.

This alert does not occur once, but every time I clear the Music app from my multitasking and re-open it. Is there a way to dismiss this alert once and forever?

The alert looks something like this, but for Music:

This can't be done at the moment. There's no option to disable the alert, other than enabling cellular data.

If you're jailbroken, you can install NoAnnoyance:

   NoAnnoyance

  Tame iOS annoying alerts!

  A CydiaSubstrate tweak to disable annoying iOS 7 messages.

  Supported alerts:

  Cellular data is not enabled
  Disable airplane mode to access data
  Turn Off Airplane Mode or Use Wi-Fi to Access Data
  Location accuracy improved by enabling Wi-Fi
  Unsupported charging accessory
  Accessory unreliable
  Low battery
  Cellular data is turned off for "AppName" disabled
  Low disk space
  The mail server is not responding
  More...

If you wish for a non-jailbreak solution, you can provide feedback to Apple regarding this at the following page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Possible solution provided by Parasprite — I can't get it to work:

  After some trial and error, it seems as if it becomes permanent after a few tries.

  Turn cellular data off for the offending app ([Music]).
  Open [Music], dismiss warning.
  Close app using the app switcher (double-click home button and swipe off of screen).
  Re-open [Music], dismiss popup.
  Goto step 3, repeat until it stops showing.

  If it's behaviour is anything like The Game Center popup, it should be permanent after 3 dismissals.


It says I've got about 3 GB and it won't let me download something for 2.2 GB. Why is it saying this and how do I successfully download it? It says I've got about 3 GB on my mac but when I try to get iMovie from the App Store (something that takes 2.2 GB) it says I do not have enough room on my Mac.
I am using an Apple Macintosh Macbook Air
Version: 10.15.7
It's also a macOS Catalina

The default configuration would download to the same APFS container that macOS is install to. It would not be wise to fill the container to a point where there would so little free space.
You can change the Safari preferences to ask where to download. You will need to select a location that has enough free space. Or, create more free space for the volume where Safari is currently downloading.
See the Apple website How to free up storage space on your Mac.


Increment of Intel graphic memory MB on MacBook PRO I had 4GB of RAM in my MacBook PRO late 2011 and the graphic memory shown from about menu was 384MB of Intel graphic, now I've upgraded to 16GB and the graphic memory shown is 512MB.

Is it possible to upgrade the Intel graphic memory in some way to 1GB? Why does the PC show more memory now?

Intel HD graphics are integrated graphics, meaning (among other things) they share the same memory as the CPU–they don't have dedicated VRAM. You can read more about it on the Apple side here. Under OS X, there is no (reasonable) way to adjust this besides adding more RAM.


Running OS X and Windows simultaneously Using Bootcamp is it possible to run OS X and Windows simultaneously such that I can command-tab between the two?  I've run Windows using Bootcamp a few years ago but at that time a restart was required when switching between OS X and Windows.

Bootcamp is designed to allow you to change your operating system while the computer boots.

Nothing allows you to swap purely back and forth between operating systems that way. What you can do is use software that runs Windows in OS X with hardware virtualization, a huge step up from the software virtual machines of old.

There are three good options: Parallels, VMWare Fusion, and VirtualBox, the last of which has the advantage of being free.

If you want more technical details, particularly the ones that drove an edit to improve this answer, read the comments below.


Unable to login to account I am unable to login to my main account. This is pretty bad because that's the only account on my computer that I know the password to. I'm posting this as root. The user doesn't show up on the login screen or in the switch-user menu. You may think this is a duplicate, but I'm not supposed to delete/make a user. So this doesn't apply. This Mac also has a firmware password that I don't know, so I can't use Recovery Mode. Any help would be immensely appreciated.

I'm using macOS Sierra 10.12.1.

EDIT: I should note I can su to my account.

For now, you've a couple of options to fix this, but pray you'r Mac's connected to the internet.

If you've enabled 'Reset passcode with Apple ID' in System Preferences, great!    But... why this thing probably wouldn't work is---

You're Mac's disconnected from the internet (in some cases it might work)
You haven't set up iCloud on your Mac
Dang you forgot the iCloud passcode as well.

Take it to an Apple authorised service centre. You might be able to recover it if you still have the bill and warranty details of your Mac.
I've never heard of firmware passcode. Clearly, you have access to the internet so you could probably look up possible passcode (like I don't know, 000 or passcode123 or something, keep trying as long as it doesn't lock you out).
Otherwise, uhhh, there's absolutely nothing you can do. Apple devices are known for their superior encryption technology and safety. Illegal breaking in to your computer is hard, but maybe (maybe) possible.

Hope this helps!


How to set a consistent location for drives mounted on boot? Each time I reboot my computer, when I run diskutil list the order of the mounted drives changes: /dev/disk0 becomes /dev/disk1 and vice versa. This creates problems for applications and scripts that depend on finding specific information in a consistent location. So far, the only (unreliable) solution is to reboot the computer hoping the paths correct themselves.
I have also seen this question but none of the answers seemed to be a reliable long-term fix: Can I set a mount order via stab
Is there a way to set how the drives mount on boot so they are always at the same mounting location/path?
Update:
I have found a similar question for Ubuntu here where the solution is to update the reference to drives to use their UUID. However, I have not found a similar UUID-based reference available in Mac: VirtualBox raw drive using UUID instead of device name

Is there a way to set how the drives mount on boot so they are always at the same mounting location/path?

You don't need to specify the order in which they boot; you use the UUID.   To get the UUID of a drive in macOS use the command:
% diskutil info diskXsY | grep -i UUID

where X is the disk number (i.e. /dev/disk5) and Y is the slice or partition number (i.e. disk5s1)
For example, I inserted a random USB flash disk that identified as /dev/disk7.  Issuing the command as detailed above
% diskutil info disk7s1 | grep -i UUID
Volume UUID:               0E239BC6-F960-3107-89CF-1C97F78BB46B
Disk / Partition UUID:     DF8CB142-B426-4F62-841C-5D26904CF54C

The Disk UUID is the second entry.
So, to identify this disk anytime it's been attached to the Mac, you can use the UUID.  For example:
% diskutil list DF8CB142-B426-4F62-841C-5D26904CF54C
/dev/disk8 (external, physical):
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *16.0 GB    disk8
1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk8s1
2:          Apple_CoreStorage MyTest                  15.7 GB    disk8s2
3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk8s3

If you notice, it now has an identifier of disk8.  I had inserted another USB flash forcing the drive identifier to change proving that this is a valid method.
If you must use the drive identifier, create a function that determines the identifier via the UUID. For example, the following command will get your the disk identifier of the attached drive with the UUID:
% diskutil list DF8CB142-B426-4F62-841C-5D26904CF54C | awk '/dev/ { print $1 } '

/dev/disk8

You could create a Bash/Zsh function to return this info for you on demand.
Regarding non-removable media...

Each time I reboot my computer, when I run diskutil list the order of the mounted drives changes: /dev/disk0 becomes /dev/disk1 and vice versa

I can't see this happening.  Non-removable media does not change.  Your boot device is specified in NVRAM meaning /disk0 will be what you boot from and since it's defined in the preboot environment disk0 and disk1 will not swap places.  The only time this can happen is during Recovery (you're booting from a different volume) but then, when booting from Recovery, you're not loading anything there, especially your VB app.
Now, if you're referring to removable devices, yes, it is possible for the identifier to change (I did it in my example).  This is why you use the disk UUID to ensure you're always access the same drive regardless of when it gets attached.


Will external monitor damage my MacBook? I have a MacBook Pro 2016 with touch bar (15”) and I consider making it my primary computer, as my iMac turned to be very old now.
If I will I need to get an external monitor and for that I’d like to buy the lg ultrafire 5k.
My only concern is I’m very worried making the MacBook a primary computer will shorten its lifespan, make it heat a lot and noisy and generally destroy it.
I’m a software developer and I work with my iMac 10+ hours a day with heavy use thus my worries.
If it will ruin the nacbook I’ll rather just get another iMac so it’s not a budget issue (I just rather wait for the new Mac Pro instead of buying the iMac pro now but if it’s in the cost of completely destroying my MacBook I’ll buy the iMac pro now).

Does anyone have experience with such issues or knows if I should be worried or not?

Short answer

What you’d like to do is totally safe. In fact, your MBP can handle more external displays than what you’re wanting to use.

Long answer

While I understand it, you shouldn’t let the experience of what happened to you in 2010 dictate what you do now.  For example, a number of MBP models have had faulty GPUs and you may have been using one of those.

Regardless, to make a decision about your current setup, you need to use the specs of your current MBP to determine if it’s up to the task you need it for.

Your MBP actually has two GPUs, an integrated one (Intel HD 530) and a dedicated one (AMD Radeon Pro 455).

The important thing here is that the AMD Radeon Pro 455 has 2 GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory and is capable of supporting up to two 5K displays or four 4K displays. So, wanting to use it with one is not going to cause you any problems.

So, assuming the MBP itself is fine to run the software and/or hardware you need, then using it with an external display is not going to cause a problem.


Is there a shortcut for → (U+2192, Rightwards Arrow) in iOS? When answering questions on Stack Exchange, I like to use → (U+2192, Rightwards Arrow) to refer to a series of menu options. It's a simple, universally supported character which displays identically on nearly any device. (Example: Settings → Preferences → Recent Files)

On a desktop, I can type these quickly using the alt-code shortcut Alt+26. However, I haven't been able to find a similar shortcut on iOS. Usually I resort to copy-pasting the symbol from online.

Is there a faster way to insert a rightwards arrow → on iOS?

Note: The desired character → (U+2192, Rightwards Arrow) is not the same as ➡ (U+27A1, Black Rightwards Arrow). The latter renders as  on iOS, and as  on Windows

You can define a text replacement under Settings → General → Keyboard → Text Replacement.

Keep in mind that text replacements work very reliably in iOS, but once they get synced to macOS via iCloud Drive, issues may arise depending on the characters you use in your “shortcuts.”

Refer to Text replacement problem in Calendar for more details.


Issues with the softwareupdated daemon after upgrading to Yosemite? Ever since the upgrade to Yosemite, the softwareupdated process always consumes around 100% CPU.

I noticed this the other day when I closed my laptop at the end of the day and the area above the left side of the keyboard was very warm. Looking at Activity Monitor, the softwareupdated process was running at full blast. That also explains the horrible battery life that I have had since upgrading.

I waited to upgrade to Yosemite until after the first xx.xx.1 point release and ever since then the softwareupdated runs constantly, no matter how many times that I kill it.

Is there a solution for this?

MacBook Pro, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1)

Disconnect from the network and reboot the Mac.

Then see if the process can clean itself up. Assuming it is under control, open system preferences and turn off all automatic checks under the app store pane.

At that point you can reconnect to the internet and see if things are solid before opening the App Store app again.


Trio Singing Remotely on the iPhone or Web Is there a way that 3 people, all with only an iPhone each at different locations, can sing a trio and have each person receive the other 2 persons' sound inputs simultaneously while they are themselves singing?

One way is to host a meeting with a service that will record the meeting. At work we use Microsoft teams and that will certainly work, but we pay for this. I believe Zoom will record meetings as well. Latency for close timing will certainly be a challenge - even in professionally managed WiFi and business class Internet, there is often delay that makes it hard to call and response let alone synchronize a trio.

As I mentioned in a clarifying comment, try to test your latency with FaceTime audio group chat over audio. Adding video is fun but can add more latency and time delay. If your networks are fast, record the screen on one device and you’ve got your love setup and a recording.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207935


Is it safe to give my MacBook to a service center with my data on it? I have to give my Macbook Pro to a service center for a few days to replace the display. Is it safe from the data perspective? Can they access it? (user login is password protected, but I think the data is not encrypted) Can they just take hard drive and copy everything? What should I do to avoid it?

Often a service center need access to the Mac to verify if the problems are solved. You can do a few things.

The most important thing first. Make a backup from all your data before you give your Mac to the service center.
Turn on FileVault. It encrypts the harddisk.
Make a second user and provide these details to the service center so they can test.


How to hide photos in Finder I am using the most current version of my Mac (OS X El Capitan). While I am not at all tech savvy, I have been saving some photos I would rather not everyone allowed to see in folders under my Finder. I have not locked the folder yet, but I notice all my photos that I am hiding under photos show up under "All My Files", I am wondering if there is a way to have these photos NOT show up under All My Files and only be saved in those folders.

Thank You

The simplest solution is not to allow other people to access your user account. If other people, (work colleagues, family members, friends, etc,) need to use your computer, create separate user accounts for them, or utilize the Guest account. If you have enabled System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Options > Automatic login to login to your user account on startup, disable it now and use your Username or User icon and your password to login. Giving access to your user account to anybody who uses your computer is not a "best practice" and leaves your computer open to malicious or unintentional damage, as well as diminishing your privacy.


How can I tell Firewall to allow incoming connections for Python running a specific script? (In this case: SickBeard) I'm running SickBeard on my Lion installation, but I can't figure out how which Python version or script I should add to the Firewall rules allow connections from outside. In Console I get this message:

Deny Python connecting from <<external-ip:port>> to port <<my-port>> proto=6

So for now I've had to disable my entire firewall to allow for external control, but I'd much rather just allow Python to be connected to. I'm running Python 2.7.3 and I have already allowed the following applications to the firewall — to no avail:

/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin/python2.7
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Resources/Python.app
/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/Python
/usr/bin/python

Any suggestions?

While checking the programs above I realized I hadn't added the Current alias, which was  likely used:

/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/Current/Python

Adding Python from the Current alias folder fixed my problem. Hadn't seen this question or answer anywhere else online so I'm keeping it up.


Safari: get URLs of images displayed in Web Inspector How do I get the list of the resources loaded in Safari's Web Inspector? (Web Inspector > Resources > Images)

My goal is to download all images shown in the inspector.

These are the manual steps:

open web inspector (CMD + Shift + I; Develop > Show Web Inspector)
click the "Resources" tab
Navigate to your desired resource (fonts, images, scripts, stylesheets)
CMD + double-click the desired resource. This loads your desired image/script/css in a new Safari tab.
close web inspector
copy resource's URL (CMD + L, CMD + C) and close the tab (CMD + T).
repeat for the remaining resources.

I think this should work with JavaScript / AppleScript.

Thanks.

It's a relatively simple task actually.  Using Automator app, Just create a new workflow and add these to following actions...

Get current webpage from Safari
Get Image URLs from webpage


Change the icon of a single, specific file I want to change the icon of a single, specific file, eg. not all the docs file, only one .doc file (and this change should even persist). Is this possible? How?

Open the image that you would like to be the icon in Preview.
Press ⌘A to select the entire image and press ⌘C to copy it.
Get Info (⌘I) on the folder.
Click the existing icon in the top-left and press ⌘V to paste the icon from Preview.

To revert back to the default icon, Get Info on the folder, click your icon and press ⌫.


Markdown editor with edit and view mode I'm looking for a OS X markdown (or similar) editor that has an edit and a view mode. I want to view the rendered document by default and have an edit mode to change the content. Just in the way most wikis work.

Day One uses edit/view modes but it doesn't let me edit arbitrary text files.

On iOS I found Trunk Notes.

I am not looking for an editor with a preview. I want to see either Markdown or rendering.

I recommend Ulysses if you’re looking for editing and preview in one app.

However, I usually write with iA Writer and use Marked to preview them in Markdown. Use whichever you prefer.


How can I get notified when a new jailbreak or unlock is released? I got borred about all the spam created by less or more famous iOS hackers. They simply create too much hype for nothing: tweets, rss feeds, facebook pages, all of the full of nonsense messages.

I do not want to spend my time reading fake news about new hacks and I'm looking for a way of subscribing only to real "news".

For a while I considered the Jailbreak Matrix to be a page I could monitor but it looks that it not updated in time and the page became too crowded by ads.

What information source do you recommend?

iClarified reports on all the iOS jailbreaking/unlocking news that's relevant (along with a lot that's not entirely relevant) really quickly: http://www.iclarified.com/


SD card is read-only, all Disk Utility options grayed out I'm using Lion (10.7.3) on a mid-2010 MacBook Pro. I just got a 32GB SD card and formatted it with my camera. I'd like to transfer some files onto it from my computer, but the card seems to be read-only when I access it in Finder. And in Disk Utility, all options are grayed out so I can't reformat the card.

I found this KB article which seems to describe the problem, but the solution doesn't work:

$ diskutil partitiondisk disk1 JHFS+ newdisk 100%
Started partitioning on disk1
Unmounting disk
Error: -69877: Couldn't open device

What's going on and how can I get around it?

Edit: yes, I already checked the physical lock switch on the card!

I was just going to suggest the lock switch too... but if that's not it, can you click the Partition tab and tell us how the card is currently formatted?  If I remember right, OS X can read but not write an NTFS-formatted device, but it seems unlikely that your camera would have formatted the card that way.


Formatting from Word docs in TextEdit When I open Word docs in TextEdit some formatting is lost, especially numbered lists, the numbers are simply not displayed. Is there some hidden preference?

This is really annoying, because I have to open the files in Google Docs to check if there are numbers, and I really really don't want anything Microsoft on my Mac -.- Actually not even any other text editor if I can help it. Tried to google, but couldn't find anything.

No, there isn't a hidden preference. It's a function of the not quite standard way MS defines a standard - it's almost impossible outside MS to get all the small details of formatting right. They also have the tendency to change the file format slightly on every version.

Have you tried opening them in Pages? It usually does a better job than TextEdit. Do you get the same problem if you open them in Quick Look?


How can I use hyper-V in windows 7 on a Macbook pro using Bootcamp? How can I use hyper-V in windows 7 on a Macbook pro using Bootcamp ?

When I try to connect to server localhost there is an Error LIKE THIS :

"Hyper-V has not been installed on computer localhost"

I have searched internet but couldn't find anything useful to solve my problem

I m on macbook pro with retina

any idea ?

thanks

Hyper-V isn't available for Windows 7. You have to install at least Windows 8 Pro/Enterprise or Windows Server 2008/2012. (Source)

You might install Hyper-V Manager (probably you did already) though. This application allows to manage Hyper-V hypervisors installed on other computers meeting the above mentioned Operating System requirements.


How to create keyboard shortcut for WiFi toggle? I want to create keyboard shortcut for Turning ON WiFi when it is turned OFF, and vice versa.

Step 1: Find out device ID of Wi-Fi

$networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder | grep Wi-Fi
(2) Wi-Fi
(Hardware Port: Wi-Fi, Device: en0)

In this case it is en0

Step 2: Create a "Quick Action" using Automator.app. Set "no input" in "workflow receives" in "any application". Drag and drop "Run Shell Script" and add the following shell script to the text field.

if ( networksetup -getairportpower en0 | grep -q Off ); then
 echo "network is off. turning ON";
 networksetup -setairportpower en0 on
else echo "network is ON. turning OFF";
 networksetup -setairportpower en0 off
fi

Save the file in automator as, say, wifi-toggle

Step 3: Set keyboard shortcut by going to Keyboard -> Shortcuts -> Services

Scroll down. Look under "General". You should see an entry for "wifi-toggle"


symbolic link vs. alias Disclaimer: I work with programmers, but am not one myself and have no real / formal knowledge of how an OS works; please be patient if the following makes plain my ignorance :)

I am trying to organize a large group of folders that contain many different subfolders and documents (full context is provided below, in case it is helpful / relevant).

I'm trying to avoid duplication of folders/documents but it would be most convenient for many folders/documents to be "filed" in multiple places. As such, I was thinking of using either symbolic links or aliases, but was wondering which would be most appropriate / robust to ongoing development and changes?

I'm not very clear on the difference between the two (from what I have read, a Mac alias is a kind of symbolic link, but with different behaviour). However, while working on other projects where, e.g. an app calls on a script which may be intermittently updated by my programmer, I know we had to make use of a symbolic link to avoid issues when the file was updated (& an alias would not work, in that case).

All these files are currently stored on DropBox, in case that adds additional complications.

Any suggestions would be very much welcome, including pointers on structuring / organizing files optimally. I find that I am constantly pulled between having well-organized folders and quick access to those folders / documents, and imagine there must be a solution that allows for both!

Context: the following may or may not be relevant to the proposed solution and is only included for completeness.

I am teacher, and create a new folder for each class (8-12 classes/semester); within which I create updated versions of my notes (which are done in LaTeX, so are grouped in separate folders, for each lecture); new resources to incorporate in the future; questions from students and other related info.

During any given semester, my work lives almost exclusively in the course-folder for that semester, so I try to ensure that all, and only, relevant files are in that folder for the duration of the semester.

Any unused resources or projects that have to be carried forward are generally moved to a class-resources folder that is carried forward from semester-to-semester. It would be convenient, however, to make this process less demanding to maintain (e.g. having the resources folder as a symbolic link of the folder in each semester, so that material to be carried forward is automatically filed there and can be found within any semesters folder).

Aliases store two pieces of information about the destination file - both the location and a file identifier. Symbolic links only store the other location. For that reason, if you move a file, Aliases are superior since they can often still point at the correct file when a change happens.

Dropbox or moving the files to another filesystem is where things get really messy - what works on one filesystem will often break in another.

As to your overall file organization and filtering / search problem, that's going to be much trickier thing to answer - you'll need something like 20 questions and back and forth discovery with one or more people. There will be no correct answer either since what would work for 4 years of curriculum might fold like a house of cards if you have 25 years of files. Similarly - designing something for 3 TB of digital media would be overkill for someone that worked in thin file formats like markdown text and simple file references to still images and short clips of animation.

Think about a couple things when you look at why your current workflow is failing you:

Can you use spotlight search effectively. For advanced skills, think spending 3 or 4 hours in 30 minute classes over a couple weeks with people that know search, smart folders, tagging, advanced search to find files by date range, EXIF data in images, by size or format. Maybe you have a fine folder structure and could beef up search so you don't need to move files - just put them where they live and find then quickly / used filtered views to locate things you'll need ad hoc during class or lesson prep.
Do you have a good backup strategy. If you do - just delete things you don't need so you don't need to be a search wizard. When you need something - restore it and go (or put it in the cloud so you can restore or browse the archives for an occasional "miss" on what you need in your working set of files. Box.com / Dropbox / iCloud / Google drive complicate this immensely as sync isn't really backup and backup certainly isn't sync. The more you optimize for [search/sync/backup/organization], the more the other aspects suffer in my experience.
Are you working around key applications that miss features. Many applications can handle files stored in other places and plain text is so small you could carry around plain text of the entire Project Gutenberg library of 56,000 ebooks in 900 MB. It downloads in about 45 seconds for me so your situation might need a different way to index and organize based on what your requirements for files and apps are truly. (TeX is notoriously messy in spewing files all over the place - and I did my thesis in LaTeX - I would be hard pressed to use that now for a body of work that needed to be synced / grow / link over years. Perhaps Apple Notes and other apps fill in for things that can't live in plan text / markdown / pdf.)

Please don't take any of these comments as criticism of your effort and plans. I would expect you've thought deeply about how you work and would have changed if it made sense, but it's going to be hard to have an answer here that's broadly applicable to everyone that reads your post other than outlining some of the relevant items to consider and weigh how those items affect anyones current or ideal or optimized workflow.


secure empty trash is the only option I've been running Snow Leopard 10.6.8 for months. For some reason today I lost the ability to "regular" empty the trash. When I right-click the trash from the dock and select "Empty Trash" I'm presented with the "are you sure you want to secure empty the trash?" dialog. When I open the trash in Finder the button in the upper right corner says "secure empty trash". How can I regain the ability to regular empty the trash?

A quick google found this article. You can enable secure empty trash as the default from the Finder preferences:

  For nearly every version of Mac OS X, there is also an option to
  always securely empty the Trash, enabled within the Advanced Finder
  preferences. If you regularly work with private data this is a good
  feature to turn on.


Broken Windows startup after repartitioning drive I run Windows 10 on my boot camp partition. Yesterday I created a new partition on my disk to store my shared documents between two operating systems by resizing the OS X partition.

Today I noticed that Windows doesn't load.

I have the installation media but didn't want to mess with partitions as I know nothing about how boot camp works.

Is there a way I can repair my Windows installation or do I have to reinstall?

One should never try to change drive partitions under Windows (Boot Camp): this makes Windows unbootable. I do afraid that now you have to re-create boot camp partition and reinstall Windows.

Anyway there're (proved by people) ways (see links 1, 2, 3) to achieve what you want.

PS. I personally prefer and recommend external Thunderbolt drive for the 3rd partition shared between mac/windows


Good way to keep iPad clean? I don't have a case or screen protector just yet for my iPad. What is a cost effective way to keep the screen clean and remove fingerprints?

Use the Fingerspoo iPad wallpaper and you won't notice fingerprints anymore.


Path export is not working I'm trying to create a phonegap app but when i run cordova platform add android, I get the error:

Error: An error occured during creation of android sub-project.

/Users/chrisruno/.cordova/lib/android/cordova/3.3.0/bin/node_modules/q/q.js:126
                    throw e;
                          ^
Error: Please install Android target 19 (the Android newest SDK). Make sure you have the latest Android tools installed as well. Run "android" from your command-line to install/update any missing SDKs or tools.
    at /Users/chrisruno/.cordova/lib/android/cordova/3.3.0/bin/lib/check_reqs.js:80:29
    at _fulfilled (/Users/chrisruno/.cordova/lib/android/cordova/3.3.0/bin/node_modules/q/q.js:798:54)
    at self.promiseDispatch.done (/Users/chrisruno/.cordova/lib/android/cordova/3.3.0/bin/node_modules/q/q.js:827:30)
    at Promise.promise.promiseDispatch (/Users/chrisruno/.cordova/lib/android/cordova/3.3.0/bin/node_modules/q/q.js:760:13)
    at /Users/chrisruno/.cordova/lib/android/cordova/3.3.0/bin/node_modules/q/q.js:574:44
    at flush (/Users/chrisruno/.cordova/lib/android/cordova/3.3.0/bin/node_modules/q/q.js:108:17)
    at process._tickCallback (node.js:415:13)

    at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/cordova/src/platform.js:282:30
    at ChildProcess.exithandler (child_process.js:641:7)
    at ChildProcess.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:98:17)
    at maybeClose (child_process.js:743:16)
    at Process.ChildProcess._handle.onexit (child_process.js:810:5)

I had run brew install android-sdk before hand.  I also ran android and it said I was already on 19.  I'm installing 20 and 4.3, 4.2, 4.1.2, and 4.0 now to see if that will meet some kind of dependency.

This is what my ~/.profile looks like:

export PATH="/usr/local/Cellar/android-sdk/22.6.2/tools:$PATH"

I also tried it with just this:

PATH=$PATH:/Applications/Eclipse/Android\ SDK/platform-tools:/Applications/Eclipse/Android\ SDK/tools
export PATH

I had to install those updates, install eclipse, and follow the steps here, http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/installing-adt.html, for installing the ADT plugins.


iMac display RGB values Why does the iMac display show non-zero values for blue and green pixels for a .png image whose blue and green color planes are zero?  I used the digital color meter to show the non-zero values for the blue and green pixels and I confirmed that the .png file has zero values in the blue and green color planes by using python scripts to inspect the array values.

You might check the iMac's monitor calibration settings.

  System Preferences > Displays > Color > Calibrate...

or choose one of the other Display profiles. Which Digital Colour Meter are you using?  It probably must be also calibrated in sync with the above setting...


Hard drive for Fusion drive: 7200 vs 5400 I have a Mac Mini 2012 with 128 GB SSD on board. I want to buy an additional 1TB hard drive and transform the storage to Fusion Drive.

My Mac use case is running Virtual Machines and Docker containers.

What type of hard drive should I choose: 5400rpm or 7200rpm?
Will 5400rpm affect the performance in case of Fusion Drive?
Will Power Nap trigger the HD spin-up?

Fusion Drives store everything on disk, but keep a cache of most used data on flash.

If you are planning on using a lot of different data (like starting, stopping, creating and removing those docker containers and VMs) then the disk part will be used a lot.

I don't know how much the price difference is where you are, but in regards to RAM and disk, I always go for the fastest. I also use lots of VMs and containers and with those big, continually replaced and changing files, I take all the speed I can get.


Why does iTunes Match hang on Step 3 on files it has already processed? I recently loaded a few hundred files into iTunes, and it's going through the paces of matching and/or uploading those files. But I've run into a problem, the process becomes stuck on Step 3 and never advances after hours of execution.

After opening Activity Monitor, iTunes is taking anywhere from 300% - 400% CPU time, and an absurd amount of memory / active threads. Note that iTunes functions perfectly fine during this time, except for the iTunes Match process.

When I ran into this problem previously, certain songs were having trouble uploading. I had resolved the problem by creating an AAC version via the right-click options and deleting the original version. In these cases, I think the files were ALWAYS mp3.

However, the problem has resurfaced, but with a much more obnoxious issue. When iTunes Match appears stalled and exhibiting the same high-CPU issue, I open Activity Monitor, select iTunes and click 'Inspect'. Over on the Open Files and Ports tab, I see a number of sockets, network connections, and 3 open files. These files are not only m4a / AAC files, but have already been matched / uploaded.

These files will continue to show up each time I Force Quit and re-open iTunes, restarting the iTunes Match process. It isn't until I use the aforementioned workaround on the affected files that a new batch of files is shown, or I actually make some progress on the iTunes Match view. (At least until it hangs on another song...)

Why is iTunes opening, and more importantly hanging, on files it's already processed?

Have you tried deleting the iTunes preferences files? You can find them on ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iTunes.plist and com.apple.iTunes.plist.lockfile
Erasing them will force iTunes to "start fresh" and hopefully fix the problems you have. It won't delete your data (songs, playlists, etc), so it's quite safe to try it.


When I switch to one of my workspaces with Chrome, it jumps to the other Chrome workspace I make heavy use of workspaces, and tend to have a lot of workspaces, most of which only have one window. I pretty much always have two different workspaces that have a window of Google Chrome open.

Ever since I updated from Yosemite to High Sierra, I've had this weird issue where, when I switch to one of the Chrome workspaces, it'll instantly jump to the other Chrome workspace (even though there's like 4 other workspaces between them).

I can't seem to figure out the precise set of conditions that causes this; it's random as far as I can tell (although, infuriatingly, once it does happen, it'll probably happen again immediately after when I try to correct). It can happen whether I'm switching workspaces via keyboard shortcut or trackpad gesture, but I don't think I've ever seen it happen if I open Mission Control to switch workspaces. I've only seen it happen with Chrome, but then, Chrome is the only application that I ever have open in multiple workspaces.

I've tried toggling the "When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application." option in System Preferences->Mission Control, but it happens whether this is turned on or off.

Does anyone know what might be causing this and how I might fix it?

The only work-around I've found for this is to move the window that keeps stealing focus to another workspace. If I move it back to the previous workspace it will exhibit the same behaviour, so I need to delete that workspace and create it again, and then move the window back to it.

Upgrading to 10.13.2 didn't fix it for me.

Update: Upgraded to 10.13.3 and the issue is still there.


How can I stop Safari from playing videos on a site automatically? Safari has started to play advertisement videos it finds somewhere on a site (I often cannot find them myself) very loudly. That is annoying. How can I tell Safari not to play anything with video or audio without me first clicking on it?

Update: I downloaded and installed both recommended extensions. The Web browser is still playing advertisements (at least their audio).

The Safari extension ClickToPlugin is similar to other plugin-blocking extensions, but it has many features and customizable settings which most blockers don't, including the ability to block plugins other than Flash. Scroll down the linked page to see some of the other features.

Here is a screenshot of an example YouTube video, showing the video preview along with the type of plugin blocked:

Here is a sample of some of the settings in ClickToPlugin:


Preventing iPhone 3GS from auto-updating to iOS 6 I don't want to update my iPhone 3GS from iOS 5 to iOS 6. I think this happens automatically via WiFi update. How do I stop it from downloading and installing itself?

Fortunately for you, iOS will not update without your consent. You have to physically go in and choose to Download, and Install the Update (two steps) in order for it to update to the next version of iOS.

iOS 5 or higher have a feature called OTA (Over the Air) updates, which bring the convenience of not having to plug your iPhone into iTunes to update it - which you are aware of. It displays a badge on the Settings app on iPhone homescreen, but this will still not update without your consent (unlike some Windows OS updates).

Unfortunately, the Settings.app is not in the list of notifications that you have control.  So you will have to get used to seeing the "1" on the Settings.app.

You will also have to be careful to decline (skip) updating your device anytime you plug it in via USB to iTunes. One thing to note, is that you don't have to worry about Wifi syncing with your device. It will not update your device using iTunes Wifi sync.


Launchctl says plist is invalid, plutil says it's OK I'm trying to have launchd run a shell script when I join a new WiFi network. I've created this plist file (closely based on this SuperUser answer) at /Users/myname/Library/LaunchAgents/my.networkChangeListener.plist:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" \
 "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>my.networkChangeListener</string>
  <key>LowPriorityIO</key>
  <true/>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
<string>/Users/myname/bin/networkChangeListener/onNetworkChange.sh</string>
  </array>
  <key>WatchPaths</key>
  <array>
    <string>/etc/resolv.conf</string>
    <string>/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist</string>
    <string>/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.airport.preferences.plist</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

My user is the owner of the plist, and the group is "staff".
When I try to load the file by running launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.networkChangeListener.plist, I get an error saying "Invalid property list".
However, when I run plutil ~/Library/LaunchAgents/my.networkChangeListener.plist, it returns "OK"
What is the problem with my plist file? Is is something specific to launchd? I'm completely at a dead end for how to debug this.

The first few lines should be

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>

Your file (as well as the one in the linked answer) is missing the <plist version="1.0"> part.


Why can't I delete the second partition So I was playing around with Disk Utility today. I created a second partition. Format is Free Space.

How do I undo this? As in, I want to have just one primary partition "Macintosh HD"

I've tried:

1) In Disk Utility, I select the partition tab. The "-" character is greyed out. As in, it cant be clicked on.

2) Rebooted in Recovery mode (CMD+SHIFT+R) and did above. Same result. The partition cannot be removed. The "-" button is greyed out. It simply cannot be clicked.

This is what diskutil list returns:

diskutil list
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *251.0 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage                         125.4 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           *125.1 GB   disk1 <---- I believe, this is the second partition I accidentally created, which I want to remove
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 8F5A679C-06AB-44CC-BD46-33E327446D80
                                 Unencrypted

The reason is that disk0 contains your actual drive. If you look there, you see that only 125.4 GB of space is allocated to the "Core Storage". Disk 1 is the logical volume (Macintosh HD) which resides in disk0s2 (also named Macintosh HD) so deleting disk1 won't be what you want to accomplish and the tool is preventing you from deleting that "logical device".

You can fix this with the cs subcommand of diskutil in terminal to remove the core storage and put things back on disk0s2 in a none-CoreStorage format.

For safety's sake, make a good backup before continuing and then revert the core storage volume:

diskutil cs revert 8F5A679C-06AB-44CC-BD46-33E327446D80

Now let the machine revert to none-CoreStorage layout. Once that's done, you can use the Disk Utility and or diskutil to resize disk0s2 to take up all the space. Then you would re-enable file vault if you want core storage going forward. This may take more time than wiping the drive and reinstalling the OS and restoring your backup - but you will learn more by using diskutil and not need to test your backup now if you've never restored it.

I personally don't see any benefit to using Core Storage unless it's for encryption, but you're free to do so. Also, there is an undocumented diskutil cs resizeStack operation that I'd be hesitant to rely upon, but if you don't care to lose the data, might be a one trick pony to get your resize done.

I'd just revert the core storage to normal storage and then grow your normal partition using Disk Utility from reading the various comments and your initial post closely.


Prevent iPad screen for turning off when not in horizontal orientation Is there a way to prevent iPad from going into Sleep mode when not in horizontal mode?

You can prevent iPad from automatically going into sleep mode, by setting Auto Lock to Never. But this setting cannot be made dependant on the current orientation of the device.

To set Auto Lock to Never, go to Settings App → Display & Brightness → Auto Lock and set it to Never. iPad can be send into Sleep mode anytime by manually pressing the physical Power button.


Retina Macbook Pro: fonts look terrible I was checking out a MacBookPro with Retina display a few days ago in the mall, and I noticed something:

Photos look awesome
Apple apps had super sharp text
All other apps that I tried had awful looking text (Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat)

I tried running at different resolutions, but it didn't help. I did note that PDF files created in MS Word (which looked awful in MS Word) looked beautiful in Preview, so I don't think its a problem of source files.

I'm a developer, so I'll likely be using tools like Ruby Mine, Coda, Textmate, Visual Studio in Parallels, etc. I assume vim in the terminal is going to look fine, but I didn't check.

What can help with this? How can I prevent text from looking awful? It's my livelihood, so it has to work.

Note: fellow programmers.stackexchange.com user has added this comment below:

  text in the Eclipse IDE and Xcode look fine. MS Word not so much.

This came from a discussion about programming on "high resolution screens" that may be of good reference to anyone reading this. https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/154710/do-higher-resolution-laptop-displays-matter-for-programmers

Apple announced in the 2012 WWDC Keynote that applications needed to be updated to take advantage of the Retina display. Apps calling Apple text display APIs may benefit from Apple's improvements thereto without needing to be updated. Apps that use routines that had not been updated would use pixel doubling, which would make their text display using half the resolution of apps properly designed for the new machine.

Apple, naturally, has updated many of their apps, but the versions of third-party apps on the machine you tried had likely not been updated.

There is little you as an end user can do to make the programs render text better, but if you are using products from reputable vendors who update their products frequently, such updates should be released soon to take advantage of Apple's new HiDPI settings.


How can I do text-to-columns in Numbers? I've got a column where each cell in the column contains two different pieces of data separated by a known delimiter ", ". How can I split each cell in this column around the delimiter?

Given:

COLUMN1
-------
ABC, 123
FOO, 666
ROFL, 411

I want

COLUMN1    COLUMN2
-------    -------
ABC        123
FOO        666
ROFL       411

You can also replace the delimiters with tabs:

Copy the cells and paste them to a new TextEdit document.
Replace ", " with tab. You can insert a tab by pressing option-tab.
Copy and paste the text back to Numbers.


Time Machine Backups Gets Stuck With 100% CPU via tmutil Okay, so I recently decided to try switching my Time Machine backups over to tmutil so that I could gain more control over exactly when they ran, but also so I could run some extra stuff before and after.

Anyway, I decided to start with a simple test with a launch agent set to run the following command once an hour:

tmutil --block

I'm using the --block option to make sure job remains visibly active till the backup is done, and because I'll need it if I want to run commands afterwards. The problem I'm having however is that when the backup gets into the Finishing stage at the end, it's frequently getting stuck with backupd ramping up to 100% CPU utilisation.

Stopping the backup and running with "Backup Now" from Time Machine's menu will work normally, and returning to regular Time Machine automatic backups works just fine without ever doing this.

It's only when using tmutil --block that this seems to happen, any ideas as to why?

I had a feeling I might have posted this too soon; just had Time Machine's normal backup do the same thing.

However, the culprit I discovered was that somehow I had a .inprogress backup that was older than the most recent backup (in fact there'd been five or six successful backups since). No idea how it got there, but sudo tmutil delete <path to .inprogress file> solved the problem.

I'm not sure if I'll mark this as the correct answer or not, as I still have no idea how I ended up with a leftover .inprogress file, or why it only started causing problems when it did, or why it didn't always affect automatic backups…


How can I tell if I'm viewing a secure page in Safari (6.0.2)? Safari hides the http: or https:, so how can I tell if I'm viewing a page over SSL? Some pages show issuer information in the URL bar, but not all of them. So the ones that show issuer info are secure, but I'd rather not have to reload the other pages in Chrome just to determine whether I have a secure connection to it.

On HTTPS pages Safari shows a small padlock.

 (screen made with Safari 6.0.2)

You can see this a little easier in these larger snaps - one of a site where the SSL certificate was not trusted implicitly (signed or otherwise trusted by your Mac) and another where the certificate was valid and signed up the chain by the Mac and shown in green.


How do I eliminate duplicate files and folders in iCloud? I uploaded files and folders to iCloud from several external drives that have some of the same files and folders. There are very are many duplicates in iCloud now. I need to conserve space in iCloud and make the iCloud files and folders quicker to scroll through, so I would like to know how to remove the duplicates once they are in iCloud.

If you have a Macintosh, you could download a duplicate file finder such as Gemini, Photos duplicate cleaner, dr. cleaner, all available on the app store. Enable the icloud folder on your mac in Finder via Preferences (file > preferences, or cmd-,) while focusing finder to enable the iCloud folder to show on your list of shortcuts.

You need to be logged into iCloud on your Mac to enable this, as well as have it checked to on in the icloud preference plane.

If your only device is an iPhone, perhaps there are the same type of apps in the app store. You can enable the iCloud shortcut to view your files just like on the Mac as well. But other than these options, you may need to do it manually.


How do I save the data from apps no longer supported by iOS 11? I have a lot of apps that no longer work in iOS 11, similar to Little Eden's question: How do I bulk delete incompatible apps in iOS 11, but my issue is not so much being able to bulk delete these apps (but that would be nice), it's the fact that many some of them contain data I can no longer access.

How do I retrieve this data? I don't mean encrypted data or anything fancy like that. I mean apps that contained data like word documents, excel spreadhseets, and PDFs.

You should be able to use iTunes to save all the data from these apps after the fact, but it's far better to export and save off data before you upgrade since you can't restore a device back to iOS 10 to run the apps or check on what data you need.

More specifically - once you are on iOS 11:

Connect your iPhone to your Mac or PC via USB cable
After a short while you'll see an icon appear that represents your iPhone - this should appear to the right of the drop-down menu (near top left of the iTunes window)
Click on the icon to view your iPhone's summary screen
In the left-hand pane of your iTunes window you'll see various options for your iPhone (e.g. Summary, Music, Movies, and so on)
Click on the File Sharing option (it should be the last one)
Now you'll see the File Sharing screen appear on the right-hand side of your iTunes window. This screen will list all apps that support file sharing.
Click on the app you want to save data from
On the right you'll now see a list of documents saved within this app on your iPhone

Now you can save the documents you want by selecting them and clicking on the Save to... button at bottom right.

NOTE: If you don't see the Save to... button at bottom right, scroll the window up so you can see it.


Change stored remote host names in terminal application en mass I have been using the simple hostname to ssh into remote hosts, around 100 systems. There has been a change in configuration of the network that will require FQDNs.

Rather than recreating all my remote system names (stored in terminal and shown when pressing shift-command-k )

Can I edit the stored data to add the domain information to the existing entries?

The host names are stored in the Terminal settings .plist  in the users /Library/Preferences folder:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Terminal.plist

Edit the .plist

The easiest way to edit a batch of these is by editing the plist with a tool like VSCode (free) with the Binary Plist Extension or your favorite text editor with plist support.1  You can also convert the plist to XML (and back to binary) using plutil.2 This will allow you to use any text editor like TextEdit that doesn't natively support plist formats.

Important:  I suggest making a backup copy of the plist before you start editing in case you want to revert back to the original.

You can find all of your servers in the array under the PermanentServers key as shown below.  Simply go in and fix the FDQN as needed.  If the domain suffixes are all the same, a simple Find/Replace should speed through the task.

Save the file and reload Terminal.  For this example, I added the FQDN .newFQDN to each entry and restarted Terminal.  Here's the result:

Alternate Method using defaults read/write

You can get the names of the server with the defaults read command:

$ defaults read -app Terminal PermanentServers

(
    "host1.FQDN",
    "host2.FQDN",
    "host3.FQDN",
    "host4.FQDN"
)

You can set your new servers by overwriting that array with a new one as follows:

$ defaults write -app Terminal PermanentServers -array '(host1.newFQDN, host2.newFQDN, host3.newFQDN, host4.newFQDN)'

You can then reissue the defaults read command to check the results.  The upside to this is that you don't need TextWrangler and you can script it.  However, it's difficult to do a large number on the command line so, you'll want to edit it first in a text editor to make sure you have no mistakes.

1 In the first version of this answer, I originally referred to TextWrangler as it was a tool I originally used to view/edit plist files.  However, I've been transitioning to VSCode as it's cross platform - macOS, Windows, and even FreeBSD, I discovered a plist plugin that allowed me to finally get rid of TextWrangler, not that it's "bad" in any way; I'm just trying to streamline my dev tools.

2 To convert a binary plist to XML for editing, issue the command plutil -convert xml1 foobar.plist.  Once you're finished editing, save it then convert it back to binary with the command plutil -convert binary1 foobar.plist


How to delete old SMS messages, but retain backups? I have an extensive history of SMS messages going back to early 2013. However, it's taking up nearly half of my iPhone's storage space and counting. I understand that there's a feature that automatically deletes old messages after a specified period of time, but I'm somewhat put off by the implication that messages deleted in this way won't be recoverable even from iTunes backups. Frankly, I'm sentimental about this (not to mention that I occasionally need to dredge up years-old messages if discussing an old project).

My question is this: is there a way to permanently transfer my huge backlog of text messages onto my Mac, while keeping messages from the last (say) six months on my iPhone for portability's sake? This way, I'd be able to access old messages as needed, while minimizing the amount of iPhone storage space they take up.

I've tried a few third-party utilities (iExplorer, iMazing), but they don't seem to be able to do this kind of thing specifically. I'm working with an iPhone 5S, 14.91 GB, iOS 12.4.5, and an older MacBook Pro running Sierra. Thanks!

Well, if this is not just a spam question for promoting some app then you have not many options without jailbreak I'm afraid.

iOS allows setting the timer to 1 year, so basically making a backup every 6 month and moving it to a safe location on an external drive should allow you to access messages from it with a free version of any backup extractor.

But I would still stick to the following flow (should be the easiest and most realistic):

Move all old texts in PDF or CSV with iMazing, iExplorer, or any other on your choice (personally prefer iMazing ;) );
Sort them by folders (Work, Private, etc.);
Delete texts from your phone, manually or just set expiration to 30 days (1 year if needed);
Repeat this once a year by adding new conversations to a folder named by year.


Can I add an arbitrary RSS feed to Flipboard? Would you please confirm that it is not possible to add an arbitrary RSS feed to Flipboard on my iPad? I find this so hard to believe that I'm in doubt I missed something...

Actually, it can be done very easily: Just put the name of the feed, or its URL, in the search box. Flipboard will find it. And then, you can select it, and add it.


Remove backup on Windows PC iTunes Now that iCloud is available, I don't need to backup my iPad to my Windows PC. Is it possible to remove backups from my PC or do I have to uninstall iTunes?

Yup, it certainly is!

in Windows XP, the location is

C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

in Windows Vista, Windows 7:

C:\Users\user\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup


Reverse Tether - Share OSX Yosemite Wifi Connection Over Bluetooth I see plenty of old questions out on the web, but each has a myriad of people following up with issues. Now with Yosemite, I think things might have changed anyway.

I want share hotel internet, from my 10.10.3 machine's Wifi connection over bluetooth to my phone. i.e. reverse tether. This tutorial explains in step 2 to enable "Share my internet connection with other bluetooth devices", under "Advanced bluetooth settings". Well, in Yosemite this isn't there.

In any case, I can pair my device, enable internet sharing in OSX and connect via PAN. But I can't seem to get internet on my phone. How can this be done in Yosemite?

Note: My phone is a S5 on Lolipop. When pairing I can even select my MBP and choose to "Use for internet access".

Edit: To rule out Lollipop I tried all this with my wife's S4 on Kitkat and it couldn't browse either.

Edit2: I have the same issue as here. Setting the IP of the PAN to DHCP with manual address makes the PAN network show green (it was orange). However, internet on my Android still does not work.

In order to do this in Yosemite, you'll need to go back to the main screen of System Preferences and click on the Sharing preference pane. In the sidebar, there will be an Internet Sharing option. Click on this to view its settings.

Now set the "Share your connection from" drop down to Wi-Fi and then check the Bluetooth PAN checkbox in the menu below. Next just make sure to check the box next Internet Sharing in the sidebar.

Once this is done your Mac should be sharing its Wi-Fi connection to devices in your Bluetooth PAN.


How to use Calculator on MacOS Catalina I can't figure how to use Calculator in Catalina. Screenshot is where I keyed in 4 * 3 and an Enter, I get output of 3 instead of 12 and neither can I read what I keyed in nor scroll arrow-up for any previous result.  I thought I had some sort of mental blockage so I actually read the Calculator User Guide for Mac - still didn't find what I did wrong with the Calculator. I regret upgrading to Catalina, everything is just a disaster. I have to use Terminal for basic calculation, if someone can show me how to use Calculator like we used to on the Dashboard or on normal physical calculator...

RPN Mode

The problem most probably stems from the calculator being in the Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) mode. Things should go back to normal if you simply turn the RPN mode off by pressing ⌘+R.


iMac screen shows nothing after replacing hard drive I replaced the hard drive on my iMac 8,1 (iMac 20-Inch "Core 2 Duo" (Early 2008)) per OWC's instructions with an SSD I had sitting around. I used a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter that would fit the physical needs for the drive upgrade. The drive seems to be seated properly and connected as needed.
After reconnecting wires as instructed, I ran into an issue where the screen is lighting up (the backlight seems to be working fine) and I hear the Apple chime/sound effect, but nothing is displayed. I'm watching the screen and waiting up to 5 minutes, and no icons or UI ever appear.

I tried connecting a separate SATA cable with an external drive, but that made no difference.
I thought that the arrangement of the inverter cables may have mattered, and read people with similar models saying it did matter. However, iFixIt's guide (Step 11, specifically) clarified that the cable arrangement should not matter.

During reassembly, the order of the inverter cables is interchangeable within each socket.

Plus, the clips and "dots" on the inverter plugs line up in a way that there's only one way to orient them properly within the plugs and I tried multiple cable arrangements anyway to see if it changed anything.
I reset the PRAM, but no luck there either. The behavior was the same. A gray screen, the chime, all 4 green debug/diagnostic LEDs on the main logic board were illuminated, but no other visual feedback indicated anything was working.
I connected my macOS 10.11 El Capitan installer USB, which I know works. El Capitan's the most recent version of macOS this hardware will install and the USB device worked fine with the old hard drive. Nothing happens when I boot with the USB device plugged in. I keep manually rebooting, but have no visual feedback for what's happening.
Unfortunately, I have no DisplayPort cable to use with an external display.
What is going on here? Is something broken?

Press the Option (or Alt) ⌥ key on boot. This will allow you to enter the Startup Manager and boot from the USB device.
I do not know why the screen is gray and doesn't simply default to the Startup Manager automatically. That would be a nicer experience since the gray screen that never does anything is obviously a bit confusing.
Whatever the reason for the gray screen, explicitly pressing the Option key before the boot chime works. The display was fine all along. The issue was just that the mac wasn't doing anything by default, and launching the boot manager explicitly then booting from the USB installer works fine as expected.