Cannot disable "Dark menu bar" on Mac OS X While going through my settings I wanted to try out the "dark menu bar" in the General System Preferences. Now I cannot turn it off. Each time I uncheck the checkbox, it seems to have no effect, it's stuck in dark mode. I've tried booting into Safe Boot as well to see if i could change it there, to no avail.

This seems to also only be for my user, as switching to guest mode works properly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6Ga6bXEFEo

Screencast of the issue:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNEHhoFzniI

Machine:
OS X El Capitan 10.11.16
MBP Retina 15, Mid-2015

Edit: replaced screencasts with jing to youtube so that non-flash users can view the issues

I just tested the following under OS X 10.11.5 and it worked.

Go to System Preferences > General and check the [√] Use dark menu bar and Dock check box, then close System Preferences.
Copy and paste the following command line into Terminal, then press enter.

defaults delete .GlobalPreferences AppleInterfaceStyle; killall -HUP Dock

After executing the above command line, the Dock momentarily disappeared and a couple seconds later the menu bar was the default color once again.


How to use a downloaded font in preview I've just downloaded a new font from the web, and installed it into the Font Book application, where I can find it under all fonts.

Specifially, "Diary Of A Wimpy Kid Font" is the one I'm referring to. I want to use it when editing a PDF with the preview application, but it doesn't show up there. Have I just missed a step? How do I use a font from font book in preview?

There may be a bug in some versions of Preview so that some third-party fonts do not appear in the Annotations font selection control.

Preview missing lots of fonts that are shown in font book

Also, note that amateur fonts which may not have been created to professional standards have traditionally been responsible for a variety of problems.

The books of "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" use Coop Forged as their typeface.
https://houseind.com/hi/typography_of_coop


"Import All New Photos" in Photos.app imports duplicates When I click "Import All New Photos" from my iPhone 7 in Photos.app, it imports all the pictures but doesn't seem to recognize it's done so. After clicking back to the iPhone tab, the photos that were imported are still marked as "New Photos", rather than "Already imported".

The pictures that aren't recognized as "already imported" seem to be "live" and they show up like this when import them.

Example Live Photo

Could "live" have something to do with them not being recognized as already existing in my library.

I have "Copy items to the Photos library" turned on in my Photos.app settings
I'm running iOS 11.1.2 and photos 2.0 on my MacBook Pro Retina w/ MacOS Sierra 10.12.6

Repairing my Photos.app Library fixed the issue! Photos/videos that I've imported now show up as "Already Imported" instead of as "New Photos".

The Solution

  Hold ⌥-⌘ (Option-Command) while launching Photos.app

You will be prompted to repair your library. Proceed to do so.

Note: It is highly recommended to back up your library first in case the repair process corrupts it.

Source (Apple Forums Q&A)


Location-aware hostname resolution Here is my situation: I am running Tunnelblick on my MacBook (running Mavericks) to connect to my own VPN, which comprises several machines, both at home and at remote locations. I can of course use the VPN-internal addresses to enable communication between my MacBook and other machines but I would like to prefer local addresses for a machine, if possible.

Example:

I have a server that is running an AppleTalk daemon for Time Machine. This server is part of the VPN and as thus it’s reachable under a 10.x.x.x IP address. However, when I’m at home I would like to use the local 192.168.x.x IP address so that traffic doesn’t have to go over the internet (and my rather smallish outbound bandwidth). Currently I edit /etc/hosts every time I arrive at the office or at home to facilitate the switch.

Is there any way to have this switch happen automatically?

Maybe ControlPlane can help you.

ControlPlane allows you to build configuration profiles, contexts in
ControlPlane lingo, for your Mac based on where you are or what you
are doing.
ControlPlane determines where you are or what you are
doing based on a number of available evidence sources and then
automatically reconfigures your Mac based on your preferences.
Evidence sources can include your current location, visible WiFi
networks, attached USB devices, running applications and more.  You
can even write your own evidence sources using shell scripts!


Open .theme file in Mac OS X Snow Leopard I've done a brilliant stupidity...

I have a Jailbroken iPhone and have iFile on that. I wanted to edit a Winterboard theme that I had downloaded, so I fired up iFile's inbuilt Web Server and downloaded the .theme file to my Mac.

I tried opening that but upon right-clicking, I did not get the usual "Show Package Contents" option. After fooling around a bit, I simply clicked on Open with and selected "TextEdit". TextEdit was able to open the file and what showed up was an html file called ".theme" and had real html code with details about the Modification Date and it's location within my iPhone, all in doc format.

Now here's the problem -
1.  I'm not able to open the theme file to edit. (I've done some editing earlier and know for sure that the Show Package Contents option should have shown up)
2. The .theme file has by default gotten associated with TextEdit and am not able to change it back or remove that association... Help me do that for sure!!! Note- There's no Finder.app that I can associate with that file... Is there a way to do that?

Check with Terminal to see if what the permissions are set to.
Do Command + I to get info on the file, then check the file extension. Also check to see if the default "Open With:" drop down box is set to TextEdit.


iPad app to gesture control PC I am looking for an iPad app that allows me to map gestures to keyboard buttons and then pass these along to my PC. The idea being that I want to control Windows Media Center with gestures. So a swipe up would be the up arrow, something else the enter key, etc.

I am not interested in a full RDP client, I just want to send keypresses to my PC.

My google-fu and appstore-fu are failing me.

Not sure whether they will do exactly what you want, but HippoRemote or Mobile Mouse should be worth a look, and both have (at least some) support for multi-touch trackpad and gestures. Both have Windows servers and should work on the iPad too.

HippoRemote actually has a dedicated profile for controlling Windows Media Centre, so unless you specifically want to use gestures, this might be the way to go.


OneNote: Attach a file With the mac version of OneNote, the files that I attach to a page are always read-only.
In the windows version of the software, the files can be modified from within OneNote.

Is this a bug of the mac version, or is this something to do to be able to modify?

The files you attach are just copies of the originals.  In order to edit the attached files, you must go to the original and edit it there.  Once you update the Note, the changes will be reflected.  According to Microsoft:

  OneNote 2016 for Mac can keep all of your information about any
  subject or project together in one place — including copies of related
  files and documents that you can attach to your notes.

  Do the following:

  On any page, click where you want to attach a file or document.
  On the Insert tab, click File Attachment.
  In the Choose files to insert dialog box that opens, select one or
  more files, and then click Insert.
  Inserted files show up as icons on your page. Double-click any icon to
  open its file.

  IMPORTANT: Inserted file attachments are just copies of the original
  files. OneNote doesn’t automatically update the copies if the original
  files change at their source.


Is there a way to get the date of the first boot of an old mac? Is it possible to read the date when a mac first booted via terminal or system information GUI?
Maybe there's a file set at this moment.

The closest answer to my problem could be:

ls -lt /private/var/db/ | tail -3

which shows for example:

drwx------ 8 root wheel 272 Apr 18 2009 krb5kdc
drwx------ 3 root wheel 102 Apr 18 2009 dhcpclient
-r-------- 1 root wheel 48 Jan 14 2009 SystemKey

Ignoring the date of the "SystemKey"-file.


How to upgrade to Yosemite without AppStore I just can't add my credit card into Apple Id, I've tried hard, really.

I've manage to find a way how to install xcode, new iTunes and so on, but still not last OS upgrade. I've found information about downloading ISO and performing a clean install, but I don't want to loose my settings and everything.

Is is possible?

I have AppleID account without Credit Card.

It works just fine in getting latest updates like Yosemite.


Why can't I uninstall a Unity game from my iPhone? Several months ago, I created a simple game using Unity 4.5 on an iMac running OS X Mavericks, and decided to try testing it on my iPhone 5s running iOS 7. I tested the game using the Unity Remote 4 app, and then closed out.

No longer interested in testing the game, I deleted Unity Remote a few days later. However, the game seems to have left some kind of "ghost app" behind on my phone — a blank app icon with my game's name that appears on my home screen. Upon tapping the icon, I am briefly presented with a black screen, and then returned to the home screen.

The app does not appear in Settings > General > Usage > Manage Storage.

I have tried:

Deleting the app from the home screen. This does not work, as the icon re-appears after rebooting.
Using Xcode's Device view to delete the app. I was unable to do so due to "an internal API error."
Restoring from backups, rebooting, and hard resetting ("force restarting"), but all to no avail.

I would like to avoid a full reset of my phone as I have a large amount of data that isn't, and cannot be, backed up to iCloud or other cloud services.

My phone is currently running iOS 8.4.

Use iTunes to sync all apps you want except that one.


Is it possible to know if Mac system activity was done in this mac or in another mac? Could I use the system logs to know if log-ins, log-outs, etc were done in this Mac?…how can I know the user didn’t put the storage into another similar Mac and operated the machine from that mac?

Any books/articles/courses explaining this stuff? (without having to do a degree in digital forensics)

You can use the command line tool last to list sessions of specified users.

I cannot find an online manual that Apple hosts so I found the closest thing I could.

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=last&sektion=1

For example in the terminal.app you could type

last "name of user"

That command get a list of logins (among other data for the said user - see above link for specifics)  However should be able to get a sense of when the user was on the computer or not. Therefore determining if the user was on a computer at a given time. This won't tell you what files the user transferred or accessed. But, you might be able to narrow that down if you know what machine a give person was on at a given time.


Exporting iPod Touch library I have an iPod Touch 4th generation running on iOS 4. For various reasons, I don't have a copy of all my songs on my computer running Windows 7 with iTunes 11. Is there a way to export my whole library, which contains both songs purchased on iTunes and songs ripped from CDs, to iTunes or elsewhere on my computer?

The only means I have ever found of doing this is third-party software. I have used Senuti for this, and can confirm that it works.

The current version of Senuti: http://www.fadingred.com/senuti/. The free trial version allows you to restore up to 1000 songs. There is also a fully-free version from 2008 [MD5 (Senuti.0.52.dmg) = e84ebf4614ded95c53dc750492297c87] at http://wstein.org/senuti/, but though the source code is available (there and at SourceForge), it has not been maintained, and I have not confirmed that it still works.
(You can get an older version from the developer, too.)

There is also TouchCopy: http://www.wideanglesoftware.com/touchcopy. It appears to be very complete but is expensive, and the trial version is more limiting than is that of Senuti.


Since upgrading to iOS 9.1 my iPad mini does not work I upgraded my iPad mini this morning to iOS 9.1. I have the first gen iPad mini.
Since iOS 9 I have been experiencing app crashes and my iPad getting stuck a lot, but since upgrading to iOS 9.1 my problems have upgraded to my iPad just going black while I'm doing something on it. When I press the home screen button it comes back on for a second before going back again. As if it's constantly locking itself. Tried turning off and on again, didn't work.

What steps should I do to determine if the hardware just broke or if I can fix it with software?

One of the things that they always tell you to try is to do either do a full backup to iTunes or iCloud and doing a full iPad reset & restore. (Settings -> General -> Reset -> Reset All etc)

But obviously be careful about what apps you have and whether there is data that won't get backed up. There is no 'revert'.

Eliminating the possibility of a software problem is easier for you than determining a hardware problem. If you still have the problem after a full restore...

Do you have warranty?


How do I enable X-forwarding on OSX Lion? ssh works fine when when I log-in from OSX Lion to Lion or Lion to Ubuntu.

ssh -X (X-forwarding) works fine when I log-in from Lion to Ubuntu.

However, I can't seem to get ssh -X to work from Lion to Lion.

How do I enable X forwarding on OSX Lion so I can run x applications from a remote machine?

X11 forwarding is disabled per default for OS X SSH servers. Do the following on the remote machine:

sudo vi /etc/sshd_config

Search for the following line and remove the # sign at the beginning, change the no to yes, so that you end up with this:

X11Forwarding yes

Then write the file and quit vim by hitting ESC and typing :wq and hitting return.

Now restart the sshd process by typing:

killall -SIGHUP sshd

This will kill your ssh session, but after that you should be able to use ssh -X as usual. You may get warnings because of missing X authority files.


How to enable read receipts for messages in iMessage on Mountain Lion? I can't find any way to enable read receipts for messages on Mountain Lion.

Read receipts are the iOS term for acknowledgements that show wether or not a message has been read yet or not.

Does Messages for Mountain Lion support read receipts at all?

From the Messages app section of the Apple Mountain Lion "what's new" page:

  Turn on read receipts, and they’ll see when you’ve read a message.

According to this OS X Daily post, you can send read receipts in the Message app by following these steps:

  Open Preferences in iMessage, and select the “Accounts” tab
  Select
  the Message account from the left
  Check the box next to “Send Read
      Receipts” to enable
  Close out of iMessage Preferences

Screenshot from this post:

I can confirm the presence of the checkbox on my own Mac.


Unable to restore the lot space to Container disk0s2 Here you can see 251.0 GB is disk0 and 169.0 GB is disk0s3. I had erased and deleted disk0s2. Now I want to use all the capacity left in disk0 to disk0s2.

Kindly help.

You can get the offset and size of the remaining partitions on disk0 by entering the commands given below.

  Note: The identifiers may change if you restart the Mac.

diskutil info disk0s1 | grep -e Offset -e "Disk Size"
diskutil info disk0s3 | grep -e Offset -e "Disk Size"

When Free Space Occurs After the APFS Partition

If there is sufficient free space after disk0s3, then you can reclaim this space, back to the container partition, by entering the command given below.

sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s3 0

When Free Space Occurs Before the APFS Partition

The macOS operating system offers no commands that can reclaim, back to disk0s3, any free space that resides before the container partition. There are third party (both free and pay) tools that can move partitions, although some can not handle the APFS format. Also, these types of tools take a long time to execute. You should backup your important data before attempting a move.

  It is my opinion that once you have backed up your data, you would be better off wiping the drive and reloading.


Opening Control Center on iPad I can’t get the Control Center to appear on my iPad. I keep swiping but it doesn’t appear.

It appears that the rotation lock is enabled on my iPad and I need to unlock it. Is there any other way to get to the rotation switch? I am using an iPad Air 2.

Where are you swiping?

Control Centre used to be a swipe up from the bottom, like on an iPhone, now it's a swipe down from top right, near the battery icon.


My old iTunes library isn't appearing in iTunes on my new PC I recently set up my new PC (Windows 8) and installed iTunes. I then moved the iTunes folder from my old PC to my new PC. I set the iTunes library path in Preferences to that folder. But when I launch iTunes, none of the music shows up.

I also tried copying across the entire /music/iTunes directory, but it didn't work.

The iTunes library on PC is stored in one of the following locations, depending on the version of Windows in use.

Windows XP: C:\Documents and Settings\username\My Documents\My Music\iTunes\
Windows Vista: C:\Users\username\Music\iTunes\
Windows 7/8: C:\Users\username\My Music\iTunes\

What version of Windows was in use on your old PC? It's also possible that an older version of iTunes was in use on the old PC and iTunes is somehow not recognizing it on the new PC.


Alternatives App Stores (iOS) : Security risks Alternatives App Stores (iOS) : Security risks

Hi, I recently downloaded an iOS app from an unofficial store (GBA4iOS, from Builds.io website).

Before installing any application, you have to install the developper profile on your device.

Is there any security risks by using those apps?
I mean, can they bypass Apple restrictions? Access to Photos, Camera, GPS... without user authorization.

Trust

If you do not trust the provider or developer of the apps being installed, you should not install their software.

Avoiding the App Store, Why?

If the app or the developer has not been accepted into the official Apple App Store, then you need to consider why.

Is the developer or app unable to function within Apple's guidelines – if so, what functionality went beyond the guidelines and why might Apple restrict it?
Has Apple rejected the app as a risk to users? If so, what is the app doing that Apple dislikes?
Is the app also available on the official App Store? Why is a copy available outside the store? Are you depriving the developer of income or customers? Might the non-App Store edition be tampered with?
Does the developer have a political reason not to distribute their app via Apple; do you understand and agree with this position?

Technical Distractions

There are technical arguments to avoid installing custom or developer profiles, but those arguments shift over time. The questions above are more important to focus on.

How comfortable do you feel about trusting your device with the non-Apple provider and associated developers?


How can I rip a DVD so that it has multiple audio tracks and subtitles available when synced with my iPad? I'm in the process of ripping my DVD collection to disk for backup, syncing with my iPad, and protecting from my toddlers.

I'd like to have the commentary (if available) and subtitles with the video file, but I do not want the subtitles burned in.

I can't figure out how to make any of the programs I usually do this with work with the iPad. RipIt provides that beautiful .dvdmedia file from which I can simply watch the DVD in DVD Player.app but it's compress feature doesn't bring over anything but the default audio track and it doesn't deal with subtitles. HandBrake provides the option of Burning in the subtitles, which is not what I want, but when I don't burn in the subtitles, the iPad seems to be unable to deal with them, even though I believe QuickTime X does know what to do. Of course, VLC or any other reasonably powerful video player can display them just fine.

Short of encoding them twice, is there a way to get what I want?

You could check out subler, it's a great .mp4 swiss army knife, and supports soft subtitles. I've used it with success with my Apple TV 2, and it work without issue, although I haven't tried on my iPad yet.


Forgot Mac password, don't have apple keyboard I have forgotten my Apple Mac password. I have searched for multiple key codes to change the password but i haven't figured out how they work on a non-apple keyboard. I use a logitech (K120) keyboard.

See this link from Microsoft on how to use a Windows keyboard on a Mac. It is very useful for this exact issue and helps me a lot at times. To boot into recovery with a Windows keyboard you will need to hold down Ctrl and R at the start chime.


Can I delete a file from being shown in the 'recents' area of the Files iOS app? I am trying to remove some files out of the 'recents' view of the files iOS app without actually deleting the file.

My 'recents' list is currently too long, for this view to be of any help for me at this point. Ideally, I can curate individual items that aren't relevant and keep the rest of the list, but if needed - can I just purge all recents and start cleanly?

No - you can't edit or suppress one item - just open new files and the one that's current will be less recent.
Yes - You can wipe all the items and start fresh.

Open the Files app. Go to Browse tab. You'll get a list of the Locations you've authorized Files to access: iCloud, Google, etc. Your Recents tab displays recently viewed files from any authorized drive - not just iCloud.

Tap the three dots "..." in the upper right hand corner of the screen and select "Edit" from the popup menu that will appear.  To clear the Recents view for any drive turn access off by tapping the Green Button. This clears the Recents view. You can then turn access back on by tapping the button again.  A little kluggy but it works.


App sharing in iOS 5 I have shared my App Store account with my family member not to purchase the same app twice. It has been simple so far. Just enter the same Apple ID in two devices.

Now we have iOS 5 and iCloud. Is it possible to use two different Apple ID in App Store and iCloud in the same device?

If it is not possible, how could we share App purchases with personally using own iCloud functionality?

See Apple's excellent FAQ on multiple App Store and iCloud Accounts: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4895

Particularly these sections:

Using the same Apple ID for Store purchases and iCloud (recommended)
Using an individual Apple ID for iCloud and a (different) shared Apple ID for Store
Purchases


Gitlab-runner service not started after reboot Gitlab-runner service not started after reboot. But if I login to my account, service started automatically. How start service automatically without login to my laptop?

uname -a
Darwin MacBook-Pro-Admin.local 19.4.0 Darwin Kernel Version 19.4.0: Wed Mar  4 22:28:40 PST 2020; root:xnu-6153.101.6~15/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

gitlab-runner -v
Version:      12.9.0
Git revision: 4c96e5ad
Git branch:   12-9-stable
GO version:   go1.13.8
Built:        2020-03-20T13:02:38+0000
OS/Arch:      darwin/amd64

I’ve had great luck using brew services to start it at boot as opposed to needing to log in.

https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/install/osx.html

As described, you cannot get any UI integration when it runs as a pre-log in service. For us that’s not a dealbreaker as we run those in a locked space / headless and set automatic log in but for basic use, try https://brew.sh first.


What is the Reconversion Key in 10.7.5? On Japanese keyboards, there is a Reconversion key beside the space bar, which when highlighting some Kanji in Japanese will allow you to convert it to different Kanji (shows a dropdown of options). Apparently this was at one point ctrl+1, or ctrl+2, but neither work for me now. Ideas?

  There are some differences between MacOS 10.1 and MacOS 10.2 for "Reconversion"
  in Japanese IME pencel menu and short-cut keys, e.g. the correct short-cut for
  JA "Reconversion" on MacOS 10.2 should be "Control + 2", but not "Control + 1"
  on MacOS 10.1. "Control + 1" on MacOS 10.2 is assigned to a different function
  other than "Reconversion".

It's the same as Reverse Conversion (⌃⇧R).

You can use KeyRemap4MacBook to get a separate 変換 key.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
<item>
<name>henkan</name>
<identifier>private.henkan</identifier>
<inputmode_only>JAPANESE</inputmode_only>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::COMMAND_R, KeyCode::R, ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L | ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L</autogen>
</item>
</root>


Google Mail for iOS: How to disable image resizing? I occasionally mail screenshots to colleagues and clients from the official  Google Mail app on my iPhone.

Apparently, it automatically scales them down:

The image originally was a 1.9 MB screenshot from the new iPad.

I checked the app and the settings but was unable to find a way to disable this behavior.

At the moment you cannot configure this. As an alternative you can use the native email app which will ask you if you want to resize large images and let you choose their new size.


Is there something like a "hidden mode"? When somebody else uses my laptop, he can of course see all the windows I have currently open. I'm looking for a mode, which allows me to completely hide some windows but without closing them.

This could be useful if you have your private email and Facebook always opened in a browser window, but you don't want that coworkers could accidentally or intentionally open them when they do something at your laptop.

I'm not thinking about situations when somebody really wants to spy. I think about situations when - for example - a coworker explains you something at your laptop and you don't want him to accidentally see your private mails when he - for example - switches into the browser.

You could use something like GhostTile for this. It is paid app though. It allows you hide applications from Dock, Cmd+Tab, Force Quit Applications, etc. You can configure system-wide shortcut key to make the hidden apps visible.


MacPro, APFS, Bootcamp Startup Disk Has anyone used brigadier to get a more recent Mac's bootcamp installer and extract whatever bits allow APFS volumes to show up in the startup disk selector in the bootcamp control panel under windows? If so what specifically did you have to do?

Details:

Have a late 2012 MacPro. It dual boots Mac OS X Mojave and Windows 10. In order to run Mojave the video card had to be upgraded. The Sapphire RX580 pulse is acknowledged by Apple as a working "metal" card and seemed to be popular so I went with it. The problem is it doesn't support boot screens. Not a huge issue until you want reboot from Windows back into Mac OS X on Mojave. Since Mojave automatically converts the install target to APFS there is no way to do it now short of zapping the PRAM or booting recovery and changing the startup disk that way. The lack of boot screens means no startup menu support when holding the option key.

I've done a lot of digging and I understand that newer Macs using bootcamp alongside APFS correctly show the OS X disk as a startup disk in the bootcamp control panel under windows. That is how I ended up with the question above- wondering if anyone has taken the time to figure out what drivers or what specific components in the bootcamp ESD for those macs changed and allowed APFS to work correctly with regards  to the "Restart in OS X" bootcamp option under windows.

Trying to get a "more recent Mac's bootcamp installer" is the wrong approach to take in a effort to solve your problem. Especially, since there are other ways to solve your problem which involve using the rEFInd Boot Manager. This free software is capable of instructing the firmware to boot Mojave.

One solution involves creating a small 300 MB "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)" volume where rEFInd is installed. Here, rEFInd is configured to appear as a legacy OS X operating system. The Boot Camp software installed in your Windows operation system will detected this volume as OS X. When booting from this volume, rEFInd will automatically instruct the firmware to reboot to Mojave. This is setup to happen silently.

  Note: The rEFInd Startup Manager executes silently and therefore does not require user input.

An example of how to setup rEFInd as described is given as the accepted answer to the question: macOS partition disappered after installing windows 10 using bootcamp.


No Bootable Device error when trying to install Win7 on a MBP (mid 2007 SR) / Lion After formatting the HDD to a single HFS+ Journaled partition and installing a clean 10.7 System on the machine, I ran the Boot Camp Assistant, created the CD with drivers and partitioned the disk. I then put the Windows7 DVD+R in the machine which I had created on another Windows machine by using the Microsoft USB/DVD/Download Tool to burn our site license image to a disc.

After partitioning, the machine restarts, but just shows the text "No bootable device -- Insert boot disk". Then, nothing more happens. When I shut the machine down and reboot it while holding option down, I see that the DVD appears twice in the list of bootable devices - once as "Windows" and once as "EFI Boot". Both do lead to the same error if selected for booting.
The installation disk itself works perfectly in "normal PC". I nevertheless burned another one, it doesn't work either. I then used the Microsoft Tool to create a bootable USB stick. But this neither shows up in the Startup Disk preference nor when holding option during startup.

I had an older Windows XP disc lying around which I then tried on this machine. It installed without flaw. However, the Lion Boot Camp drivers do not support XP anymore and anyway I need to install Win 7 on the machine.

This all leaves me to these conclusions: Boot Camp Assistant worked and has created a usable partition (see XP install). The installation discs for Win 7 are also correctly set up (they boot on a PC) and work. Booting Windows 7 from a USB device apparently is unsupported on my machine.

Which leaves me clueless. All parts on their own seem to work. Any idea why they don't work together?

In the end, I couldn't make the machine boot from the DVD. However, I found a workaround that I want to share for anyone with a similar problem: I used VMware Fusion to boot the Boot Camp partition from OS X. I then set up the VM to boot from the iso I made the DVD from (might have worked with the DVD as well, didn't try). After running through the part of the installation where the base system was written to disk and the system wanted to restart, I turned off the VM, booted from the Boot Camp partition and (with Win7 DVD in drive) then ran through the rest of the installation procedure without problem.


Is Apple Wifi called AirMac or AirPort in other countries? I am tasked with writing a setup guide for my university's network.

Directing my users to the Wifi pulldown menu on a Mac, do I ask them to click the "AirPort" button or the "AirMac" button?

Please note that in Japan, it is called AirMac, but in the States, it is called AirPort.

Which naming is more common in the world?

Apple's Internationalization Resources

Apple provide a wonderful set of glossaries and tools to help with internationalization. These include translation strings for popular languages.

From Apple's internationlization page, look for AppleGlot and Localization Glossaries. After logging in using your Apple ID, filter the downloadable files by name; try both Gloss and Glot. The following result will appear for Gloss:

  Glossaries - OS X

  The newest translations of strings from OS X 10.9.2 are available here. These files can be used by AppleGlot as translators to help streamline the localization process. These files can all be viewed with TextEdit in Mac OS X.

The glossary files are designed for use with AppleGlot but are viewable using a text editor. The lg files are XML formatted.

Within these glossary files you will find pairs of phrases in English and the counter part language. Inside NetworkProf.lg the following two sets appear:

  <TranslationSet>
    <base loc="en">wireless, 802.11, wifi, wi-fi, AirPort</base>
    <tran loc="ja">wireless ワイヤレス ワイアレス 無線, 802.11, wifi ワイファイ, wi-fi ワイ・ファイ, AirPort エアポート エアーポート AirMac エアマック エアーマック</tran>
  </TranslationSet>

…and…

<TextItem>
  <Description> airport status summary strings </Description>
  <Position>AIRPORT_NOT_CONNECTED_TO_NETWORK</Position>
  <TranslationSet>
    <base loc="en">%@ is turned on but is not connected to a network.</base>
    <tran loc="ja">%@ は入になっていますが、ネットワークには接続されていません。</tran>
  </TranslationSet>
</TextItem>

I expect these will be a treasure trove of help for your translation.


restore replacement iphone 5 from damaged iphone 5 I received a replacement iphone 5 which I'm trying to restore within itunes. I'd like to restore it from my damaged, identical iphone 5; however, I don't remember the password which iTunes requires for further steps. I've tried all my usual passwords and nothing works. I'm running out of tries before it locks me out.

Apple has created help for such situation.

If you forgot the Apple ID use the https://iforgot.apple.com/appleid

If you forgot the password or the Apple ID use the
Answer your security questions

Use these steps if you know the answers to your security questions:

Select “Answer security questions,” then click Next.
Select your birth date, then click Next.
Answer your security questions.
Set a new password and select Reset Password.

Manage your Apple ID primary, rescue, alternate, and notification email addresses

Add, change, or delete the several types of email addresses you can use with your Apple ID account. Primary email address

Every Apple ID account has one primary email address, and that address is your Apple ID. When you create an Apple ID, you enter the primary address to use as your Apple ID.

Your primary address is also the contact email address for your account. Check it regularly, because it receives email that you need to manage your account. For example, before you can use a new or changed Apple ID, you need to verify it as directed in a verification email that Apple sends to that address. Didn't receive the email?


Where is my ./configure file in OSX 10.8.4 (Mountain Lion)? I'm setting up Cap'n Pro on my Mac and the install instructions ask me to type the following in terminal:

./configure CXX=$HOME/clang-3.2/bin/clang++

I look in my user folder i.e. ~/./configure but it doesn't exist. Am I doing this right? Where is my ./configure folder? Do I need to create one?

Also, yes I have invisible folders visible.

The configure script (not directory) is part of the source code archive you should have downloaded (capnproto-c++-X.Y.Z.tar.gz).

When you unpack that archive, change to the toplevel directory (capnproto-X-Y-Z) and run the configure command.

$ cd [to where you downloaded the archive]
$ tar xzf capnproto-c++-X.Y.Z.tar.gz
$ cd capnproto-c++-X.Y.Z
$ ./configure CXX=$HOME/clang-3.2/bin/clang++

Then run the subsequent commands (make and sudo make install) from that same directory.

This is rather generic - most autotool-based builds work exactly like that.


View usage of Photos app I'm wondering how you can view the size of each photo or video in the Photos app on an iPhone 4S. I have a lot of photos/videos and want to see how much space they are using. I go to Settings > General > Usage but don't see the Photos app listed under Storage. Thoughts?

One way I know of, which would be tedious to use for all of your photos unfortunately, is to email a photo from the camera roll. When you hit Send on the email, you're offered choices of sending a compressed photo (Small, Medium, or Large), or the original size. Each of the choices lists what the resulting image file size would be, and this includes the original size.


problem emtying iphoto trash after photo installed I have upgraded to photo, but kept my old iPhoto images. There are plenty of them and now space is an issue so I want to delete some. I have successfully moved them to the external hard drive and have deleted them but now cannot find the trash to empty. The trash for the computer is empty but those images did not show up in that trash so I am assuming that iPhoto still has its own trash somewhere...I just don't know where.

When you migrate iPhoto to Photos, Apple does some magic and uses hard links to allow the new Photos app to have its own library, while not taking up twice the amount of space. If you move your new Photos Library over to a new HD, the old iPhoto library is useless.


iPhone: App for Web Address recognition When I'm browsing a website on my laptop, I'd like to capture my laptop's screen with the iPhone's camera and be redirected automatically to the corresponding page.

Can you recommend an app that automatically can recognize a URL in a picture?

Handoff is a good solution for this. It has a bookmarklet that you use in Safari to send the current web site to the iPhone app.


How to set up my iMessage account on my MacBook Pro? I've been trying to set up my iMessage account so that I can receive my texts and messages to my computer. I've set up my iCloud, and my AIM, and my FaceTime, but I can't figure out how to set up my iMessage, any help?

This support page from Apple should help you out greatly:

http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201349

This page should help you set it up on OS X (it's using OS X Mavericks to explain the instructions, but it's the same steps if you have OS X Yosemite), and will give you troubleshooting tips for if your phone number is missing on OS X.

Hope this helps.


How to create a bootable usb for OS X on Windows? i had erase all data from my macbook and know i need to create a usb bootable to reinstall the yosemite or another version.

I can't access to app store to download the OS. How i can download it and create a usb bootable on Windows?

Did you tried Google ?

https://www.google.fr/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=How+to+create+a+bootable+usb+for+OS+X+on+Windows+%3F+-+Ask+Different&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=ovcpVvzQFYex8weYkpKQDQ

Use TransMac, which has a 15-day trial period and works flawlessly.

In the left pane, right click the USB Drive and select Restore with Disk Image
Point to your .dmg file and click Open.

It will take a few minutes depending on size of .dmg and speed of USB drive, but once done you can pop it into your mac, hold down the option key when turning on the mac and choose the USB drive.

https://superuser.com/questions/383235/create-a-bootable-usb-drive-from-a-dmg-file-on-windows


iTunes: how can display multiple versions of a movie in SD and 1080p/720p HD as one movie? I want to store the same movie in multiple quality levels. I have 3 files (360p, 720p and 1080p).

Obviously having the same movie multiple times in iTunes it not acceptable. I can't fill my library with duplicates.

How should I proceed to make iTunes display the 3 files as one movie? Currently I have 3 movies in iTunes.

I saw a way (adding (HD) to the name of the file) but it doesn't seems to be enough. Adding the HD tag as in this answer doesn't help either.

Download Subler (http://code.google.com/p/subler/). It open your HD version of the movie in Subler and make sure you check off and mark it as an HD version. This then adds the meta-data so it know's it an HD movie.

Also, make sure it's marked as a Movie. Normally it'll appear as Normal.

Finally, you need to add a meta-tag on the first tab. ContentID needs to be populated, and it has to be unique to your library, and the same for both files. Basically, pick a random number and shove it in.

You can then re-add the movies and it'll bundle them together. At this point you can remove them from iTunes (select and delete). I would choose the Keep Files option, and just drag them back to iTunes to get it re-add them.

Personally, I use iVi (available from the Mac App Store) and if you select the options for both SD and HD output it will do all the work for you.


Mac OS X - How to Symlink /home to /Users For those of us who dabble in penguins and apples, it seems very worth while to be able to use /home paths either out of habbit or for those odd cases where the value may have been sync'd somewhere along the line in some file you use on both machines.

sudo ln -s /Users /home will work with additional configuration, but I don't think that is a good idea as you should access home via ~ in shell or $HOME. Also /home might be a Linux standard and often used in Unix but not always so better to rely on information that is guaranteed to work not something that works only most of the time if everyone has kept to a convention.

To make sudo ln -s /Users /home work, follow these steps (from the comments):

EDITOR=nano sudo -e /etc/auto_master
# add a "#" at the start of the line beginning with /home
# save changes
sudo automount -cv
sudo ln -s /Users /home


How to bring up the virtual keyboard on iOS when a Bluetooth keyboard is connected? I often pick up my iPad and move away from its Bluetooth keyboard without turning the keyboard off. Whenever I need to type some text, I'm reminded that I can't see the virtual iOS keyboard until I either:

walk to the Bluetooth keyboard and turn it off,
turn off Bluetooth on my iPad, which disconnects the keyboard but also other devices like Bluetooth speakers or Apple Pencil.

Is there another, more convenient option?

(Sent from my Bluetooth-disabled iPad since I was too lazy to walk to my Bluetooth keyboard)

Long press the arrow in the keyboard menu bar (or whatever this thing is called) to bring up the keyboard:


Siri seems to usually have network issues. Fix? iPhone 4S: at first, Siri was magical. In the last 3-4 days she usually reports an inability to work due to network issues. I've tried myriad fixes but to no avail. Anyone have ideas?

Siri is still in beta (as of today, 11 December 2011). If you have no trouble accessing other network services on your iPhone 4S, assume that the fault is on Apple's end.


Problems installing Java 7 update 17 When trying to use my online bank, I was directed to the Java update site (again). I downloaded and installed Java 7 update 17, and the installer reported that everything was a-ok. Clearly, that was something of lie.
Now, when I try to check my Java version on http://java.com/en/download/testjava.jsp, it says that "An old version of Java has been detected on your system". I have tried installing the update again, but the results remain the same. I have also tried rebooting.
On the command line, java -version reports

java version "1.6.0_43"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_43-b01-447-11M4203)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.14-b01-447, mixed mode)

I remember that there used to be some kind of settings where I could choose between installed Java versions, but now I cannot find it. Under "System preferences" there is no mention of Java, and when I search for Java in Spotlight, the only application that comes up is Java VisualVM, whatever that is.
Any ideas as to what might be wrong?
I am running OS 10.8.3 on an Intel Core i3 iMac with 4 GB RAM.

The problem is that you have two Java Runtime Environments (JREs) installed on your system, Apple's 1.6.x and Oracle's 1.7.x. As evidenced by running java -version JRE 1.6 is the default JRE on your system.  You likely want to change the default JRE to Oracle's 1.7 JRE.

You are correct in that there used to be a System Preference for setting the default JRE. Apple removed that as part of the Java Mac OS X 2012-006 update. The new way for selecting the default JRE is to use the /usr/libexec/java_home command. Read the java_home man page as well as the Determining the Default Version of the JDK section of this Oracle page for more info on how to specify the default JRE.


OS X El Captain - Terminal shortcut is not working I defined a shortcut for opening a Terminal, but it isn't working.

Any ideas?

This is because the shortcut you created is specific to the Application.
When you create the shortcut, you need to enter the "exact name of the menu command" within the Application specified in the dropdown above.

Typing "Terminal" won't work.

3 Options to quickly Launch Terminal
Add to your Dock
Open Your Applications Folder and simply drag the Terminal icon to your dock.  Click on it whenever you want.

Use Spotlight
One of my favorite ways to launch programs is to simply type it in Spotlight.  Press Command Space to invoke Spotlight and just start typing

Use Karabiner
If you have to have a keyboard shortcut to run Terminal, consider using  Karabiner.  It's free software that allows you create custom shortcuts for virtually any task.  Best of all, it's free.


Boot from USB on MacBook 1.1 (early 2007) I’m trying to install Windows 8 from USB on my MacBook 1.1 (early 2007).

I have tried booting using rEFIt (on 10.6):

Partition my USB key as MBR: the Windows 8 logo fish stays stuck forever.
Partition my USB key as GPT: same problem.

I didn’t try to boot Linux EFI from USB but I think it would be the same fail.

I’m really wondering if the problem comes from the MacBook firmware or the way I try to load the Windows installer.

How would you proceed on the Apple generation of MacBook?

I was able to install Windows 8.1 by

Created a BOOTCAMP partition using the 10.6 Boot Camp tool (latest version available for 32-bit Macs)
Creating a Windows 7 USB stick on a PC using http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/windows-usb-dvd-download-tool
Install rEFInd http://www.rodsbooks.com/refind/
Start Windows Windows 7 installation
During disk/partiton select, choose to format the BOOTCAMP partition as NTFS (still, it refused to install)
Restart Windows installer, second time it would recognise partition as valid
Install Windows 7
Update to Windows 8

However, the Apple drivers for MacBook1,1 is pretty outdated unfortunately. Also, I would say that Windows 7 is a more appropriate OS for MacBook1,1.


Put a preinstalled macOS SSD to another MacBook, will this occur any problem? I hope you're doing well.

I have 2 MacBook Pros, different models, same size 15", 2010 and 2012. The 2012 one is suddenly dead and I have removed its SSD and put it into the 2010 one (HDD on 2010 is also removed). After then, I turned on the 2010 MBP, it works like a charm. There are still some minor weird activities: asks me to login again to iCloud, Firefox new addons popup, Photoshop warning about VRAM... but most of the system is working smoothly.

So my concern is, will the SSD change occur any problem later? Can I do a Time Machine backup without any damage in the future? Thank you for any help.

No, you should never experience problems with this. There will never be any damage from this kind of transfer or by doing a time machine backup after the transfer.

That said, depending on which apps you use, some apps and app licenses may have been tied to hardware information such as the old computer's serial number. I'd recommend using migration assistant from a time machine backup of the 2012 computer to make sure you don't have a problem with these licenses.


Tunneling ssh via ssh with foxyproxy I'm tunneling over ssh with this command (under El Captain)

ssh -D port_number -N -C myusername@server.url

and enable foxyproxy on the browser. Everything seems to work just fine on the browser. However, on the terminal I keep getting messages of the form

  channel X: open failed: administratively prohibited: open failed

for various channel numbers. I set Tunnel yes in /etc/ssh_config but that did not do anything. I repeat, things work despite the error messages.

Again. many things mixed up together. What are you trying to achieve? There are few things wrong, in your post:

Tunnel option in ssh_config does not do anything related to the SOCKS5 Proxy, which is the command you are describing. It is related to VPN and "ethernet" (layer 2) tunnelling, which is initiated by -w option
Port forwarding and SOCKS5 proxy (-D) is allowed by option AllowTcpForwarding in sshd_config on the server!
If you would really want to user layer 2, forwarding, you need root login on the remote server.


App-based folder organisation in iCloud I am trying to migrate my local files from my mac filesystem onto iCloud folders such that I can view and edit files using Pages and Numbers seamlessly from either my the local apps or the web interface. However something that's always confused me about iCloud is the location of these files. Does iCloud force me to put spreadsheets that I want to be able to edit from Numbers in the actual Numbers folder?

So for instance if I have client work that could be both documents and spreadsheets, in my local filesystem I would have something like

Client A

SS1.xls
SS2.xls
Letter1.doc
Letter2.doc

Client B

SS3.xls
SS4.xls
Letter3.doc
Letter4.doc

Instead iCloud would now force me to adopt the following structure:

Numbers

Client A

SS1.xls
SS2.xls

Client B

SS3.xls
SS4.xls

Pages

Client A

Letter1.doc
Letter2.doc

Client B

Letter3.doc
Letter4.doc

Am I missing something, or is this just what iCloud forces you to do?

You aren't forced to use app-specific folders, it's just the initial setup. Why not just store things outside the app folders by dragging your existing file structure into the drive folder itself?

On OS X - iCloud drive works just the same as Dropbox. You get a folder and it syncs. Apple makes special folders for some apps and categories, but you don't have to use them.

On iOS - in the settings app under iCloud - enable the toggle that says "Show on Home Screen" for iCloud Drive and you can browse away just like Dropbox (and other file sync apps allow).

Also - finder tags are now portable across devices, so you could use tags as well to help categorize client files no matter where they are stored on the filesystem.


How do I view my purchased movies and TV shows on my Mac? I have a MBP (2009 unibody) with Mountain Lion.  I have iTunes Match, iCloud, blah blah blah.

Now when I open iTunes, I'm able able stream down my music but I can't stream movies or TV shows like I can on my AppleTV.

When I go to movies or TV all I get is a screen telling me how I can visit the store.

How can I stream my purchased movies and TV shows?

Thanks

You can stream small files like music but you can't 'stream' movies (huge files) from iCloud but any movie you have purchased via iTunes will be available through iCloud and 'pushed' to the device you are on. So for instance; you purchase a movie via your pc or mac through your iTunes account and then you pick up your iPad and go to iTunes Store, go to 'more' then purchased, click on your purchased movie from the list and you'll see your movie with a cloud icon. Click this and the film will be pushed to your device to view. But again it won't be actively streaming, rather it will be downloaded to your device! Hope this helps?


Mojave: disable or control the "[SOME_APP_NAME] wants access to control [ANOTHER_APP_NAME (often Finder)] ..."? A new security feature in Mojave revolves around a system dialogue that prompts you to grant access to apps that want to control other apps, such as Finder (I'm finding frequently happening with some apps like Epichrome):

Is there a known way to disable this or to allow certain destination (controlled apps) to always allow such activity?

I do believe that this behavior has changed markedly from the previous OS releases with regards to just using the "Accessibility" tab to simply allow an application to make system changes.

Here is the new panel:

Add the app to "Full Disk Access"

In Mojave, under Security & Privacy, there is a new tab called "Full Disk Access".

Adding my personal Applescript apps to this list (in addition to the existing Accessibility list) has made the prompts disappear.

Update 9/26: Upon a couple days of further use, this seems to work sometimes, but not consistently.


How to save old Messages on a Mac? i have all my old conversations from Messenger on my Mac (and not on my iphone). As I want to put the upcoming High Sierra on a previously deleted Mac instead of simply updating my Mac I wonder if it is possible to somehow save the old conversations. Any ideas?

iMessage conversations appear to be saved in ~/Library/Messages.

To see your Library folder, you'll need to use Go > Go to Folder... (⇧⌘G) and then type in ~/Library. If your new Mac doesn't have any messages on it, you should be able to just copy the folder over (but make sure Messages is closed while doing it).

Make sure to back up the destination Messages folder before copying if you are worried about losing data (just rename it Messages-Old or something). If everything works okay, you can trash it afterward.


"Sign in to download from the App Store" with a different Apple ID I am trying to update software on a Macbook. Before doing so, apparently I have to "Sign in to download from the App Store." It provides me with a form asking for an Apple ID and password to do so.

However, the Apple ID field already has an Apple ID in it, which is not the one I wish to use, and the field is disabled, so I can't change it.

Why is the field disabled? How do I enable it so I can change the Apple ID to sign in with?

Shane Hsu's answer is correct, but there is also another way to do it if you don't want to delete the app: There is one file for each app that contains the "receipt" for that app's previous download from the Mac App Store. The file is named receipt. Here is how to find it and move it to a different location, so that the Mac App Store will allow you to enter a different Apple ID:

Find the app in your /Applications directory:

Right-click, and choose "Show Package Contents":

In the new window that has opened, double-click the Contents folder to go into that folder.

You will now probably see a folder named _MASReceipt. "MAS" stands for "Mac App Store." It should have a file inside of it named receipt:

Move the _MASReceipt folder to the trash:

Now, close the Mac App Store and then launch it again. Hopefully, at this point, when you try to update the app, its Apple ID field will be empty.

If this doesn't work, you will probably want to put the _MASReceipt folder back, by opening the Trash:


How to insert ALT character with Edit -> Emoji & Symbols I want to insert the Apple's Alt key symbol into a document.

So I fired up the 'Emoji & Symbols' window and use 'alt' as the search term.

The symbols are not 100% as I expected but close enough. I want to
use rightmost character in 'Font Variation'

However after trying a few times, the tool will only insert the leftmost symbol ⎇.

How can get the character that I want?

By far the simplest way I can think of is just search for 'option' not alt.

Then it's the only result.

Alternatively, most of the keyboard 'keys' are in Technical Symbols..


Notes app search is not finding some notes I am using my notes app on OSX 10.11.5 and iOS 8. For the most part, things are working, but I am noticing that many of my older notes are not searchable. When I type something in the search box, these older notes do not appear in search results even if there is a match. However, if I edit a note or create a new one, it is fully searchable.

My guess is that somehow the search indexes for my notes got corrupted. Is there any way to fix this or rebuild the indexes?

Much quicker way of fixing this is just to make a new iCloud notes folder, move all your notes into that and back again. This seems to rebuild the index- you can then get rid of the new folder.
This is useful if like me you don't have a quick option to back up your notes separately.


Trimming characters from filename script help I'm trying to execute a pretty simple renaming script, but am unable to do so with an Automator workflow and my scripting knowledge is totally inadequate (this is ultimately for use with Hazel). The equivalent that I'm trying to execute in Name Mangler is to:

'remove 2 characters starting at index 1 - counting from start'

and

'remove 2 characters starting at index 2 - counting from end'

Any assistance would be appreciated; AppleScript, Java and Shell are all fine as this will be embedded in Hazel.

UPDATE: I misread your question and originally gave an answer that started at "character 1." If I understand correctly you want to trim off the first two characters, and the last two. Therefore, you want to start at "character 3." I have made the correction here.

Do it this way:

set the_short_name to characters 3 thru -2 of the_original_name as string

That's all there is to it.

Since you're working with Hazel you can get the name of the file this way:

set the_original_name to name of theFile

You may want to pull off more than just two characters since the last four characters are probably ".png" so take off 6 characters, and then add ".png" to the short name.

One more thing: Hazel may think that the renamed file is a "new" file, and consequently run the AppleScript on the renamed file over and over until the name is so short it can't get shorter. The way I'd handle that is I'd move the file out of the watched folder first, and rename it after that. In my case I have a folder called "Renamed Screenshots" on my desktop-- your path is going to be different. Use your own username (not "youruser" as I've put in the line below).

move theFile to (POSIX file "/Users/youruser/Desktop/Renamed Screenshots")
        set the name of theFile to the_short_name & ".png"

That should do it.


Writing current date to plist file using the command line I'm trying to use this command to do so:

defaults write test.plist LatestDate date "+%y-%m-%d"

where LatestDate is the key I'm modifying. The problem is, it doesn't recognize date "+%y-%m-%d" as what I'm trying to write to the key, and when I put it in quotes it simply writes that text, not the date to the key.

How should I go about doing this?

In defaults, date is just an option, not the actual date command. You need to actually pass the date.

defaults write test.plist LatestDate "$(date +'%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S +0000')"


Can airpod with wrong spelling on the case be original? Can an original Apple AirPod have wrong spelling on the charging case and airpod labels?

A friend just bought new, never opened airpods on a P2P marketplace. Upon receiving them and checking for whether they were fake everything looked fine except that there is misspelling on the labels on the charging case and airpods.

You can see on the charging case that almost all words are misspelled, notably Apple spelled Apoie, and then the airpod seems to say the same.

I thought this would immediately mean they are fake, however I looked up the serial number on the inside of the charger and tested it on checkcoverage.apple.com and it shows as valid.

I also connected it to an iphone and it connected with no issues just as an original AirPod would.

So I am at a loss. Find it hard to believe that original Apple products could have these errors, but I also expected a fake product to not have a valid serial number and for the iphone to recognize it as a non airpod.

Of course these are fake. Or perhaps, more accurate, counterfeit. I think it’s safe to say, a genuine Apple product will not have a spelling typo.


Skewed Log In Screen When Screen Sharing Trying to use a Mac Pro as a headless media server. Worked just fine when I had a monitor or TV hooked up to it, but now that I've tried to remove a monitor and use it headless, I get a skewed log-in screen and an unusable operating system.

Here's what it looks like when I screen share from my rMBP (though the problem is not unique to my rMBP, I also get the same look from VNC on my iPad, an older iMac, and a non-retina Macbook Pro):

I've tried resetting my com.apple.windowserver.plist, among other ideas. Screensharing returns to normal function if I plug in a monitor for even a short moment. Somehow I am getting a problem with the default resolution when using the Mac Pro without a screen.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

Reconnect the monitor.  On the Mac Pro, set the resolution to a lower setting (as a test to the lowest possible one).  Then try again with the monitor disconnected.

If it works, you can then increase the resolution.

I've had similar problems happen several times over the years.  Sometimes connecting a display adapter to the video card (even though it is not connected to anything) will fool the video hardware into working properly.


How to view text/rtf message part in .eml files which are ignored since Mail 6.0 upgrade? I have a bunch of .eml files that contain the message part encoded as

Content-Type: text/rtf
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: inline

Up to OS X Lion, Mail and Quick View both happily displayed the message.

The new Mail 6.0 included in Mountain Lion seems to ignore this part of the message and shows only a blank sheet (same for Quick View, of course).

Any ideas if that is intended or a bug and how I could resolve this?


Want to increase spead and reponsiveness in older Mac Current Information:
Software:  Mac OSX (10.5.8)
Processor:  2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory:  1 GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

I want to get my computer moving faster, specifically around safari, itunes, iphoto, etc. Would it be easier to just erase my entire Hard Drive (backed up of course) and buy Lion (10.7) or Mountain Lion (10.8) since I would have to upgrade to snow leopard (10.6) before upgrading to Mountain Lion anyway?  Trying to be cost effective and keeping it simple and not compounding the issue of responsiveness and freezes.

Upgrading to Lion or Mountain Lion would not improve your Mac's performance. It may actually decrease performance as the newer versions of Mac OS X seem to require/want more RAM to run smoothly. Apple has increased the minimum amount of RAM in almost all of their line up to deal with this issue.

You currently only have 1GB of RAM... upgrading this would probably be the cheapest and most efficient method of speeding up your Mac. Freezing and unresponsiveness can be caused by lack of RAM.

Check out this Apple support article that will teach you how to use OS X's Activity Monitor to check whether RAM would improve performance.

After determining whether or not you need more RAM (you do!), you can find out what kind by following these steps:

Click the  in the Menu Bar
Click "About This Mac"
Click "More Info..." in the About This Mac dialog box
Click on the "Memory" tab

Listed will be what type of memory you have and how much. In the lower right hand corner is a link to "Memory Upgrade Instructions" — follow these instructions.


Mac OSX Server - Moved 20 iMacs from one group to another with the exact same settings now disconnecting from wifi When the new settings are being applied it disconnects wifi, this means they never actually get the new settings and consistently are disconnecting from wifi everytime the settings are pushed out (which is constantly).

If i manually attempt to install the profile halfway through it will disconnect from wifi and then complain it cant connect to active directory server.

Any ideas as this issue hasn't been reported anywhere on the internet.

Found a workaround, removed the active directory binding settings from profile manager, settings now pushing without disconnecting wifi everytime.


Automate moving and renaming files I have files nested within multiple sub-folders. I want to move these files, one folder up the folder structure and rename the files as per its new parent folder. I will need this to be automated with a script.

Example logic

Find Root folder
Get contents of Subfolder of Subfolder files.
Move files to its Parent folder (aka 'Attachments' folder)
Rename files to with its current Parent folder name.
Delete empty Subfolder
Loop above action of Root folder folders until complete.

Renaming details

Attachments folder could one to many file of .png or .jpg. For example, Attachments folder could have Apple.png and Dog-house.jpg. If these files are moved and renamed, I'm expecting the file name to be something like this MCP##-##### - abc.png and MCP##-##### - abc.jpg.

If there is more then one file with the same file type, then the naming to be something like this MCP##-##### - abc.png and MCP##-##### - abc (1).png

Example folder structure

Desired Result

I'm assuming this may require to Automate with a script but I have no idea how to do it. Can anyone help me?

The following is an example Automator workflow that achieves the stated goal of your question per its defined hierarchal folder structure.

NOTE: While the example bash code used in the Run Shell Script action completed successfully nonetheless, the onus is upon the user to ensure that proper backups exist before using it. I'd even suggest making a small sample copy of the target hierarchal folder structure to test with before running the workflow on the original target.

For the purpose of testing this workflow, the following hierarchal folder structure with its files was created:

$ tree ./Applications
./Applications
├── MCP19-00633 - Sport and Play at Br
│   └── Attachments
│       ├── barfoo.png
│       ├── filename.jpg
│       ├── filename.png
│       └── foobar.jpg
├── MCP19-00753 - Active Nabiac
│   └── Attachments
│       ├── barfoo.png
│       ├── filename.jpg
│       ├── filename.png
│       └── foobar.jpg
└── MCP19-00824 - A Family Friendly Ve
    └── Attachments
        ├── barfoo.jpg
        ├── barfoo.png
        ├── filename.jpg
        ├── filename.png
        ├── foobar.jpg
        ├── namefile.jpg
        └── namefile.png

6 directories, 15 files
$

The results of the Automator workflow run on the target above:

$ tree ./Applications
./Applications
├── MCP19-00633 - Sport and Play at Br
│   ├── MCP19-00633 - Sport and Play at Br (1).jpg
│   ├── MCP19-00633 - Sport and Play at Br (1).png
│   ├── MCP19-00633 - Sport and Play at Br.jpg
│   └── MCP19-00633 - Sport and Play at Br.png
├── MCP19-00753 - Active Nabiac
│   ├── MCP19-00753 - Active Nabiac (1).jpg
│   ├── MCP19-00753 - Active Nabiac (1).png
│   ├── MCP19-00753 - Active Nabiac.jpg
│   └── MCP19-00753 - Active Nabiac.png
└── MCP19-00824 - A Family Friendly Ve
    ├── MCP19-00824 - A Family Friendly Ve (1).jpg
    ├── MCP19-00824 - A Family Friendly Ve (1).png
    ├── MCP19-00824 - A Family Friendly Ve (2).jpg
    ├── MCP19-00824 - A Family Friendly Ve (2).png
    ├── MCP19-00824 - A Family Friendly Ve (3).jpg
    ├── MCP19-00824 - A Family Friendly Ve.jpg
    └── MCP19-00824 - A Family Friendly Ve.png

3 directories, 15 files
$

The image below of the example Automator workflow contains the actions used and their particular settings used from their defaults. Be sure to match the settings shown in the image. In particular, the Get Folder Contents action has the [√] Repeat for each subfolder found checked, and the Run Shell Script action has Pass input: set to as arguments.

Example bash code:

for f in "$@"; do

    [[ -f $f ]] || continue

        ext="${f##*.}"
        move_to_dir="$(dirname "$(dirname "$f")")"
        filename="$(basename "$move_to_dir")"

        cd "$move_to_dir" || exit

        if [[ ! -e ${filename}.${ext} ]]; then
            mv "$f" "${filename}.${ext}"
        else
            n=1
            for i in "${filename}" *".${ext}"; do
                if [[ "${filename} (${n}).${ext}" == "$i" ]]; then
                    n=$(( n + 1 ))
                fi
            done
            mv "$f" "${filename} (${n}).${ext}"
        fi
done

for d in "$@"; do
    [[ -d $d ]] || continue
    [[ $(basename "$d") == Attachments ]] || continue
    rmdir "$d"
done

Note: The example bash code is just that and only contains minimal error handling, and was checked using ShellCheck. However, it may not contain all appropriate needed/wanted error handling. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted.


Open a bookmark in Safari from Terminal I do online tutorials one at a time and in a Safari bookmark called Current I always update the address to my current tutorial. I want some terminal command which I can call to start Safari and open Current. Starting Safari is simply an execution of open -a safari in the terminal.

How can I start Safari AND open the bookmark?

open http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/210601/open-a-bookmark-in-safari-from-terminal

Will open this page (in the default browser).


Permission Denied for a small set of photos when adding to macOS Mojave Photos I've got all of my digital photos (roughly 112K files) on an external hard-drive. With the changes made between Google Photos and Google Drive sync, I'm now moving my photos into iCloud Photos via the macOS Mojave Photos app.

I have a single folder, from 2007, that I've run into that has 855 photos in it. 41 of them cannot be processed. When I try to add the photos to the Photo app it tells me that I do not have permission to view the photos. I do have permission though, I can open them in Finder, make changes to the photos, copy/paste or rename them.

I've looked at the permissions and I have read/write set. What else might be preventing the Photos app from allowing the photos to be added? I can go to the Google Photos site and download the same photos back onto my local machine and they still won't get added to macOS Photos. There's something weird with this specific set of photos and I don't know how to resolve it.

All previous photos for 2007 were taken with the same camera - I verified that with the EXIF data on the photos for the year. I assume that rules any file format concerns out but I'm not confident enough to say that's not the issue though.

Any one have any suggestions?

EDIT

I've also opened the files in Preview and exported them from JPG to HEIC, PNG and JPEG thinking that writing a new file might fix any permission issues. It didn't help. I'm wondering if this is something more than a permission issue but I don't know how to troubleshoot this.

I'm not sure what caused the problem. I went to iCloud.com, opened Photos and was able to upload several of the bad photos without an issue.

I shut down macOS Photos and re-launched it after it had completed syncing the batch of files it was syncing to iCloud. Reopening Photos had the bad photos I tested on iCloud.com sync down without issue. I then imported the rest of the bad photos and they were added successfully.

I assume something was messed up in Photos and a restart was needed.


Is there a limit on logical volume size for FileVault? I'm curious about (and was unable to find documentation for) any size limits for FileVault in OSX (10.9.5 Server). I'm concerned about any sort of corruption/instability that could occur after encrypting a 70-100tb logical disk.

I've run into this as an issue with volumes larger than 70tb with TimeMachine and had to switch to a different product for my backups.

Ignore the "why are you doing this" or "why are you not using linux/bsd". For a wide variety of reasons, I'm stuck with OSX for this project and am unable to split the partition into smaller segments.

Any insight would be much appreciated!

According to Apple the maximum volume size and file size (using Mac OS X v10.5.3 or later) of a volume formatted with the HFS+ file system is close to 8 EB (exactly 2^63 - 2^31 = 9,223,372,034,707,292,160 B). This is also valid for encrypted volumes.

One fact cannot be concealed: the monstrous Logical Volume (the FileVault2 "envelope") is highly vulnerable to drive failure. The failure probability is comparable to a RAID0. Since FileVault doesn't use evenly spread chunks you may recover more data after a drive loss.

Here is a comparison for 10, 11 or 12 disks (8 TB):

Survival probability (for new 8 TB disks and being optimistic):

Nr of disks  1st year 2nd year 3rd year 4th year 5th year
         10       84%      37%      15%       8%       5%
         11       83%      33%      12%       7%       3%
         12       82%      30%      10%       5%       2%

If the disks are smaller than 8 TB (and the number of disks is higher) the survival probability is even worse.


Want to create smart playlist where song titles match names in another playlist, but w/ diff. bitrate My iTunes music library consists of iTunes downloads (256 kbps), and songs copied from my CD's (~400 – 1100 kbps).  I have a dumb playlist containing a subset of these, which I sync to my iPod Nano (it doesn't have room for my entire library(.  Also on the nano are other dumb playlists, each containing specific songs that are subsets of my main dumb playlist, which are tailored to my various workouts.

Recently, however, I've started listening to audiobooks on my Nano, which means I need to free up more room, so I'd like to replace all the CD-quality songs on my nano with 320 kbps versions (and I'd likewise like to still be able to use my various workout playlists).  I thus had iTunes create 320 kbps versions of all my CD-quality songs. What I'd like to do is create smart playlists containing only songs whose bitrate is 320 kbps, and whose title matches a song found in a specified dumb playlist. This doesn't seem to be possible, but if it is I'd love to find out how!

Yes, I could just leave things as they are and, from within the Nano control window available in iTunes, tell iTunes to convert everything on my Nano to 256 kbps.  But, since I have the space for 320 kbps, why not keep the maximum resolution?  Granted, I might have trouble telling the difference....

For a portable device using headphones in a non-analytical environment, I'd just sync them at 128 kbps AAC.
You're really unlikely to notice.

You can do that in iTunes/[device]/summary in the last section, Options. It does that on the fly at sync [so takes a long time, first time] & keeps your iTunes at full rez, using copies to send to the portable device. You can set this separately for each device you sync, the low-bitrate dupes are kept in your iTunes Library once converted, but iTunes always plays the highest rate available.

It's effectively seamless

As a more generalised comment, & speaking as a professional sound engineer, I don't think tracks ripped from CD are worth saving at anything higher than 320kbps AAC*. Much as they were vaunted as being the 'perfect solution' for audio... in the 80's... they really don't have all that much data in them to benefit from anything above 320.

*or FLAC, but as iTunes doesn't handle FLAC, that point is moot.


Recreating iTunes library from a .itdb file? My Windows laptop (and HDD) have died, taking with it iTunes and my music. Things could have been a lot worse, but I fortunately have a back up of my mp3s. However, I have lost the iTunes library containing all my play counts, last played, ratings etc.

I am keen to recover this data and have bought software to access my iPod Touch as a hard drive which has enabled me to view the underlying files. However I don't seem to be able to find a version of the iTunes Library.itl (or iTunes Music Library.xml) file which would contain the meta data I need.

The only seemingly useful file I can find is the library.itdb file, which seems about the right file size to contain the data I'm looking for.

My question therefore is can anyone advise if there is a way of recreating the library .itl or .xml file from this .itdb (iTunes database) file?

NB. I have managed to extract the meta data I need, but the program I am using creates its own paths to the mp3 files, which would leave every track broken.

You never said whether your hard drive is dead. If it's not, pull it out and use it as an external drive (with the help of a SATA-Firewire adapter). Use Migration Assistant.app to copy over your music, or just copy your iTunes folder (e.g., "~/Music/iTunes Media/").

Then, the next time open up iTunes, hold down alt as you tell it to open. In the following dialog box, select the new location of your iTunes Media folder.

My apologies if your hard drive is legitimately dead. I don't yet have privileges to comment on a question, which would have been a more appropriate vector for asking you to clarify the state of your hard drive.


Can't update my mail password on Macbook Air I recently changed my Gmail password, and as expected, the mail app can't log in to that account anymore. It says "Login Failed" in the top right.

The problem is, I can't figure out how to update the password so it works again. When I go to "accounts" in "preferences", there's literally no password field. It lists Description, Alias, Email Address, Full Name, Incoming Mail Server, User Name, Outgoing Mail Server, TLS Certificate. That's it.

When I try to "add account" in the file menu, I type in my info and it of course says that account has already been added.

Is there any way to just wipe out the account and start over? Or is there some other way to update the password?

Edit: Added picture.

It looks like you are trying to send out emails from your Gmail account using Apple's iCloud as SMTP server which is not correct. Here's what you can do:

Open Mail > Preferences > your Google account > in the dropdown menu select Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) > Edit SMTP Server List

Ensure that the settings match the following:

Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server - Requires SSL/TLS: smtp.gmail.com
Port: 465 or 587
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires authentication: Yes
Full Name or Display Name: [your name]
Account Name or User Name: your full Gmail address (username@gmail.com).
Password: your Gmail password

More info on Google Support Docs: Change SMTP settings to check Gmail on other clients


Tap on iPhone from Mac I have an iPhone 7 and I have a Google Cardboard that doesn't have a magnetic clicker. I would like to use an app, but it requires me to either tap the screen or use the VR clicker to click. Can I setup some sort of "tapper" on Mac so when I click a key on my Mac it taps the screen of my iPhone? (Software Program)

It's not possible for an application to control an iPhone in this way without jailbreaking due to iOS restrictions.

If the device is jailbroken, you may be able to install a VNC server on the iOS device like Veency and use Screen Sharing on the Mac such that you can click on the Mac and the click will emulate a tap on the iOS device.


Airpods connect but no music I have an issue...My AirPods don’t have any connection Issue when Bluetooth is turned on. But when Bluetooth is turnt off...my iPhone has more difficulty in recognizing the AirPods when I open the case and it seems to sync but actually it doesn’t since Bluetooth is still turnt off,thus the music still plays from the iPhone’s speakers.

However when I reset the AirPods...during the « first » connection my iPhone recognizes the AirPods and they connect automatically ( with Bluetooth turnt off) and the music plays from the AirPods with no problem.

Can Anyone help me please ??

Disconnect from Bluetooth accessories (Apple):

  Open Control Center and tap [the Bluetooth icon]￼. The icon dims and your device disconnects from any accessory it's connected to, except for Apple Watch, Instant Hotspot, Apple Pencil, and Continuity features, like Handoff. If Bluetooth is turned off, you won’t be able to connect your iOS device to your Bluetooth accessories until:

  You turn on Bluetooth in Control Center.
  You connect to a Bluetooth accessory in Settings > Bluetooth.
  It's 5 AM local time.
  You restart your device.

It’s expected behavior that Bluetooth devices won’t connect (when Bluetooth is dimmed in control center) without one of the above exceptions.

It seems like resetting AirPods is a special case that mimics connecting to a Bluetooth accessory directly in settings, and is therefore an exception.


What is ATTOcelebrity.kext? I scanned my Mac for viruses using a nice open source GUI app called "KnockKnock" which was pretty useful to remove some unnecessary binaries from apps which I had deleted a long time ago.

But KnockKnock also reports some kernel extensions. I have a SAT Smart driver installed so I know that kext but the other seem to be doubtful and I have a feeling that they might be some type of malware. However clicking the 'info' button reports that it is developed by ATTO Technologies and sited by Apple CA, However I am still doubtful:

Is it genuine?

ATTOCelerityFC8.kext is a driver for some ATTO fibre channel cards. They fit in some pre-"trash can" Mac Pros only.

ATTO explicitly lists all Mac compatible adapters here: Apple Solutions, but forgot to update the list for High Sierra.

There is no real doubt that the driver is genuine.

The ATTOCelebrity kext is some figment of imagination only ;-)


How can I keep my Mountain Lion MacBook Pro display at maximum brightness? I have periodically noticed that my display has been a bit dim, and have brought it up to maximum brightness... only later to find that my display was about halfway on brightness. I can't rule out a stray keystroke, but it seems to be several notches down a lot more often than I would accidentally hit F1. As far as I can tell this happens when the computer remains on and I remain logged on.

Especially when operating on battery power, does Mountain Lion dim the display automatically? Is there a way to turn off or circumvent this?

When you go from mains power to battery, OS X decreases display brightness. (It should go back to normal brightness when you reconnect to mains power.)

To turn this off, go to System Preferences > Energy Saver, choose the Battery tab, and un-check "Slightly dim the display when using this power source".

The display can also change brightness because it senses a change in ambient brightness. To turn this off, go to System Preferences > Displays, find the window on the display you want to change this setting on, go to the Displays tab, and un-check "Automatically adjust brightness".


Recovering Files from SD Card I accidently moved my iMac with the SD card inserted and the card got bent, it cannot be read anymore. Not sure if it can be recovered. I was wondering if somehow the files are stored on the HD. I did not import the (RAW) files.

Depending on how the SD card was damaged someone with some electronic skills might be able to straighten things out enough to get the files off of it. Possibly a phone repair shop? They might need to extract the memory chip circuitry from the damaged card and put it in another card, or even just re-solder some leads. Impossible to tell without actually examining the card in person

If, however, the actual memory chip in the card was damaged, you are out of luck.


Will updating my iPod delete my files? I am going to update my iPod to the newest software and was wondering if this will delete the files?

Most of my songs are from my old computer which I now longer have, so I no longer have the songs in iTunes. If I try to back up my files will it only do the ones from my current iTunes and delete the rest?

No. Upgrading iOS should leave the files that are on the device in the exact same condition as it was before. That said, however, it is always important to do a backup of all the data on the device before upgrading.

When you plug your device in, open iTunes, and select the backup option, it should backup all the data that is on your device, including any music that is not in your current library. Note that this will not add that music to your library, though, it just saves it in case you happen to need to restore your device at a later date.


Changing the Finder icon for an external disk formatted as ExFat? I used this web page recipe - Create Your Own Custom Icons in OS X 10.7.5 or Later - for creating a .icns icon set containing a set of icons for an external disk that has been formatted with the ExFat file system.

However, whatever I do, when I drag the .icns file on top of the drive, it just shows a .png dummy icon:

If I erase the drive and reformat it as OS X Journaled, then repeat the process, the icon is shown correctly:

Is there a trick where I can reassign the icon also for an ExFat drive? I plan on using this drive both on a Windows machine and on my MacBook so keeping it as OS X Journaled isn't really an option. I know there are custom software for Windows so that I can read and write OS X file system disks but that's not an option either since I plan on connecting this drive to computers where I cannot really expect the owner to install custom software to use the disk.

And the icon is not that important. It would just be a nice touch.

What I've tried:

Basic .png file (that works on OS X Journaled formatted drive)
Full .icns file (that works on OS X Journaled formatted drive)

So can it be done? If so, how?

This is OS X El Capitan 10.11.4 and the drive is a WD My Passport Air 1TB if if matters.

I do a "Get Info" on the drive. This brings up the info window. To add the icon, I drag and drop the .icns file on the image shown in the upper left corner of the window.

  When I refer to a "drive", what I really mean is a partition located on a physical or virtual drive. Since the partition is ExFAT formatted, the partition can also be referred to as a volume.

Maybe your .icns file is no good. Maybe you should try one of mine. You can download the ones I use here. Or, you can try the free online tool I used to create these .icns files. Go to iconvert icons.

When you drop the .icns file, a copy of this file is renamed .VolumeIcon.icns and placed in the root directory of the drive. For example, if I use a Terminal application window, I can show this file.

Steelhead:~ davidanderson$ diskutil list /dev/disk1
/dev/disk1 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *4.0 GB     disk1
   1:             Windows_FAT_32 UNTITLED 1              808.2 MB   disk1s1
   2:                 DOS_FAT_32 UNTITLED 2              808.2 MB   disk1s2
   3:               Windows_NTFS UNTITLED 3              808.2 MB   disk1s3
   4:                 DOS_FAT_32 UNTITLED 4              808.2 MB   disk1s5
   5:                 DOS_FAT_32 UNTITLED 5              808.1 MB   disk1s6
Steelhead:~ davidanderson$ mount | grep disk1
/dev/disk1s1 on /Volumes/UNTITLED 1 (msdos, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)
/dev/disk1s2 on /Volumes/UNTITLED 2 (msdos, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)
/dev/disk1s3 on /Volumes/UNTITLED 3 (exfat, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)
/dev/disk1s5 on /Volumes/UNTITLED 4 (msdos, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)
/dev/disk1s6 on /Volumes/UNTITLED 5 (msdos, local, nodev, nosuid, noowners)
Steelhead:~ davidanderson$ cd "/Volumes/UNTITLED 3"
Steelhead:UNTITLED 3 davidanderson$ ls -l .VolumeIcon.icns
-rwxrwxrwx@ 1 davidanderson  staff  26582 May  5 15:50 .VolumeIcon.icns
Steelhead:UNTITLED 3 davidanderson$

Here is a screen shot from my Desktop.

If you something goes wrong read this:

There must be a cache of volume names to icons buried in OS X. I say this because no matter what combination of reformats, ejects, unmounts and deletes I preform, the same icon reappears. Something like the following is happening:

The  operating system encounters a valid .VolumeIcon.icns file in
the root directory of a partition (volume).
The .VolumeIcon.icns is read in to the cache and associated with
the volume name.
Even if the .VolumeIcon.icns file is changed, the operating system
does not update the cache. (This is one of the bugs!)

If you do the following, you may have a shot at success. I do not guarantee this to be an inclusive list.

Remove the .VolumeIcon.icns (if it exists) from the root folder on
the drive, by following these instructions.  Highlight the drive
(volume) and select "Get Info" from the menu bar. Next, highlight
the icon shown in the upper left of the pop up window. Finally,
from the menu bar, select "Cut". Note: This file is not normally
shown in the Finder, unless you enable the Finder to Show Hidden
Files.
Rename the drive to some name never used before.
Eject the drive and remove from the computer.
If necessary, quit the Disk Utility application.
If necessary, quit the Terminal application.
Close all Finder Windows"
Hold down the option key and right click on the Finder
icon on the Dock. Select "Relaunch".
Connect the drive back into the computer
Drag and drop the .icns files on the icon in the upper left corner
of the "Get Info" window for the drive. It may appear as if
nothing has happened.
(Optional) Verify the .VolumeIcon.icns appears in the root folder
of the partition (volume). This file is not normally shown in the
Finder unless you enable the Finder to Show Hidden Files.
Experienced users can also use the Terminal application to verify
this file exists
Use the Disk Utility application to unmount the partition (volume).
Use the Disk Utility application to mount the partition (volume).


My 1/8" headphone output is not giving me full level in one ear My 1/8" headphone output is not giving me full level in one ear.  After deciding it was not my headphones or the cable (it worked in my iPhone), I instantly went to turning my mac off and resetting the SMC.  Didn't work.  Do I have a hardware problem that will be a costly repair or is there another way?

Short answer:
With your headphones plugged in, go to Preferences > Sound, and check the balance between your L and R channels.

Long answer:
I read that some people did not hear anything through their headphones and had solved the issue by unchecking the "mute" option under the sound section.  Mine was already unchecked.  The balance was fine too, but my headphones were not plugged in.  When I put them in and opened up Preferences > Sound and looked at the balance, it was pushed to the right.  Sliding it center fixed my problem instantly!


Are there any simple, zippered "sleeve" cases for the iPod Touch? I'm looking for a simple, zippered "sleeve" case for an iPod Touch (like a laptop sleeve, only smaller). I'm interesting in something styled like Case Logic's zippered digital camera cases, such as this one or this one. Those would be perfect, except the Case Logic website warns that they are too small to fit an iPod Touch (by about half an inch). I've looked at Incase's offerings, too, but they don't sell anything like these.

I'm primarily interesting in protecting the iPod's screen while carrying it in a pants or jacket pocket. Many of the iPod cases I've found either don't cover the screen, or are, frankly, kind of ugly and gaudy.

You might look at this one.

http://www.sfbags.com/products/iphone-cases/travelcase-iphone.php

I have a sleevecase from that same vendor for my MBP, and it's been great.


How do I stop 'mdwrite wants to use the "metadata" keychain' prompts? Suddenly I'm getting repeated (endless) prompts that

  mdwrite wants to use the "metadata" keychain

and asking me to

  please enter the keychain password.

but my password (I know the password for each of my keychains, my system, and their full history) is rejected.

How do I stop this (latest) irritation — without deleting my keychain data? Why won't my keychain(s) password(s) work?

macOS 10.13.2 (17C88)

I had the same problem.  I opened my login keychain and searched for MetadataKeychain.  I clicked show password and copied and pasted it into the dialog asking for the password.

It worked!


Adding a third monitor to my iMac 2009 I have a iMac 2009 later with High Sierra OS, I am using my mini display port already to 2 other tvs. I need to connect a 3rd tv but to display a different display. Only other ports I have available is a Firewire 800 port and 4 USB ports, I understand that the display driver for the USB ports on this Mac and OS version there was a problem and will never work. What other option do I have to run another 3rd video output to show a different display.

You dont say which 2009 iMac you have, but even the Late 2009 27" seems to support only one external display, up to 2560 x 1600. (From things like Everymac.com and MacTracker)

How have you managed to get two external displays running from 1 miniDisplayPort?

I doubt very much whether these machines have sufficient graphics hardware to drive 3 displays - 256Mb or 512 Mb Radeon 4000 series.

There may be third-party USB solutions, but they are likely to be annoyingly slow. It's USB 2, for starters, which does not have sufficient bandwidth/speed.


How can I fix "MTM fs Mount server failed to start because of error 15"? For the last few weeks, I've been getting lots of recurrent MTM fs Mount server failed to start because of error 15 error messages in system.log. How can I diagnose and fix this?

I don't know if it's causing any issues, but it's worrisome, and it's spamming the log file so I'm having trouble diagnosing other problems. Time Machine has also been wonky lately, failing to complete backups to external drives attached to my Time Capsule because it couldn't find the backup disk. (Backups to locally-attached drives work fine.) Maybe related, since mtmfs is part of the Time Machine system.

Here's what it looks like, from system.log as viewed in Console. There will be a sequence of errors and restart attempts, which then get throttled.

Nov 28 15:08:18 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: cannot bind custom tcp socket
Nov 28 15:08:18 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: MTM fs Mount server failed to start because of error 15
Nov 28 15:08:19 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: MTM fs Mount server retrying ...
Nov 28 15:08:19 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: cannot bind custom tcp socket
Nov 28 15:08:19 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: MTM fs Mount server failed to start because of error 15
Nov 28 15:08:21 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: MTM fs Mount server retrying ...
Nov 28 15:08:21 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: cannot bind custom tcp socket
Nov 28 15:08:21 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: MTM fs Mount server failed to start because of error 15
Nov 28 15:08:22 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: MTM fs Mount server retrying ...
Nov 28 15:08:22 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: cannot bind custom tcp socket
Nov 28 15:08:22 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: MTM fs Mount server failed to start because of error 15
Nov 28 15:08:24 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: MTM fs Mount server retrying ...
Nov 28 15:08:24 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: cannot bind custom tcp socket
Nov 28 15:08:24 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: MTM fs Mount server failed to start because of error 15
Nov 28 15:08:25 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: MTM fs Mount server retrying ...
Nov 28 15:08:25 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: MTM fs Mount server failed to start because of too many retries
Nov 28 15:08:25 eilonwy.local mtmfs[379]: MTM fs Mount server failed, last error 15
Nov 28 15:08:25 eilonwy com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.mtmfs[379]): Exited with code: 99
Nov 28 15:08:25 eilonwy com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.mtmfs): Throttling respawn: Will start in 3 seconds

This repeats constantly, ending up with about 150,000 mtmfs error messages in system.log every day.

This is on OS X 10.8.5 on a Mid 2012 Retina MacBook Pro. eilonwy is the hostname of my machine.

I've looked through what little doco on mtmfs I've found through man and Google, and while it tells how to start and stop it, I've found no info on what error 15 means, what "custom tcp socket" it might be trying to bind to and how to fix, and what the consequences of mtmfs not running are.

I contacted Apple support and they suggested doing a "Repair Permissions" from Disk Utility, which I did and it didn't fix the problem, and then reinstalling OS X, which is a little aggressive (and Windows-y) for my taste.

Can anyone help me fix this, or point at some resources to help diagnose it?

I had the same problem and was due to errors in the localhost's IPv4 address in /etc/hosts. The daemon of mtmfs listening on localhost.

Check that this is the first line in /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1       localhost

Also you can test: (depends on the firewall options)

$ ping localhost

Then turn off local Time Machine snapshots and trigger automatic cleanup of accumulated local snapshot data :

$ sudo tmutil disablelocal

Reboot the mac, and turn on local Time Machine snapshots:

$ sudo tmutil enablelocal

And it works without errors.

[system.log] mtmfs[40]: mount succeeded for /Volumes/MobileBackups


Why don't images in iCloud appear as available in iMovie on IOS? I want to create a full video on IOS device but use a predetermined asset for an intro screen. I have added a JPEG to my iCloud account formatted to video screen size.
I then created a movie project on my phone (6 plus) and clicked "add media " icon, then browse to iCloud and I can see the file, but it isn't selectable. So what am I missing? Is it a file format issue?

I checked on my iMovie and it seams like you can only import video from iCloud Drive and the tab you are in will only accept video files, that's why the image file is greyed out.

To use that image in you iMovie project I recommend that you save the image to your local Camera Roll from iCloud Drive and then import it to iMovie.

You can save the image file to your Camera Roll from iCloud Drive with a application that allow you to manage your iCloud Drive. I use "Documents" by Reedle (it's free on the AppStore).


Big black vertical bar on external screen I'm trying to plug an external screen on my 2010 macbook pro 15", but when I set the maximal resolution, 1920*1080, the image seems a little constrained, and a big black vertical bar appear on the external screen. Here is a picture of it.

When I move my cursor from my macbook to the screen, the cursor goes straight from the edge of the MBP to the visible part of my wallpaper on the external screen.

When I set up a lower resolution, the problem goes away, but the display is then a little blur, because it's not the native resolution of the external screen.

Does anyone have any idea what I can do to have a good display ?

Thanks.

Edit

I tried various frequencies with no success.
I followed this post that seems really close to my problem: Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter and Widescreen (FullHD) Monitor with no success. Deleting this /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist didn't fix the display.
This bug only appear with my MBP. Other colleague with same generation MBP have no problem to use this screen at 1920*1080. But I get this problem only with this screen and no other.
I tried to use another VGA <-> MiniDisplay, same result. Tried to use a DVI <-> MiniDisplay port, same result.

I'm pretty stuck on this one. Do you think I might call Apple?

My monitor shows exactly the same black sidebar on the left. Tried many tips and tricks. And finally unplug the miniDP to VGA connecter on both side and reconnect again solve the problem.

I tried to change the VGA side here and there for hours. :( so stupid me. So I guess some other also had the same experiences but I don't know why the answer is marked down to negative scores...

I didn't mean to solve all the problem for all. But just a mark for myself that shows it solved my problem and hopefully will help some of the others.