MacBook lid opened while away (possible bug?) I was recently trying out the command:
log show —style syslog | fgrep ”Wake”

I noticed that there were two EC.Lidopen events at a time when I had left the MacBook in my locked apartment. The two logs had simultaneous time stamps at 15.30:05, which strikes me as bug-like since a normal wake-up would just render one EC.Lidopen event... not two of them in the same second?

Powernap is disabled for battery mode, and the computer wasn't plugged in.
The computer was put in sleep-mode after I last used it, and had WiFi but not Bluetooth enabled. I have double-checked that other events are correct time-wise so that it’s not a time-setting issue. Is there a possibility that it might be due to a bug?

Here is the output:

2019-03-20 08:13:49.131203+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleTopCaseHIDEventDriver) [HID] [ATC] AppleDeviceManagementHIDEventService::processWakeReason Wake reason: Host (0x01)

2019-03-20 08:13:49.854413+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleTopCaseHIDEventDriver) [HID] [ATC] AppleDeviceManagementHIDEventService::processWakeReason Wake reason: Host (0x01)

2019-03-20 08:13:54.971671+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleACPIPlatform) AppleACPIPlatformPower Wake reason: ?

2019-03-20 08:13:54.971673+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleACPIPlatform) AppleACPIPlatformPower Wake reason: ?

2019-03-20 13:30:04.130464+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleTopCaseHIDEventDriver) [HID] [ATC] AppleDeviceManagementHIDEventService::processWakeReason Wake reason: Host (0x01)

2019-03-20 13:30:04.845262+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleTopCaseHIDEventDriver) [HID] [ATC] AppleDeviceManagementHIDEventService::processWakeReason Wake reason: Host (0x01)

2019-03-20 13:30:07.350598+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleACPIPlatform) AppleACPIPlatformPower Wake reason: RTC (Alarm)

2019-03-20 13:30:07.350601+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleACPIPlatform) AppleACPIPlatformPower Wake reason: RTC (Alarm)

2019-03-20 15:30:00.162154+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleTopCaseHIDEventDriver) [HID] [ATC] AppleDeviceManagementHIDEventService::processWakeReason Wake reason: Host (0x01)

2019-03-20 15:30:05.378599+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleACPIPlatform) AppleACPIPlatformPower Wake reason: EC.LidOpen (User)

2019-03-20 15:30:05.378601+0100  localhost kernel[0]: (AppleACPIPlatform) AppleACPIPlatformPower Wake reason: EC.LidOpen (User)

Thanks for your help,

Using pmset -g log, I have found that EC.Lidopen occurred in conjunction with scheduled wake ups. And true, waking the computer by opening the lid does not render an 'EC.Lidopen' wake-up reason but rather a 'Host (0x01)'.

An EC.Lidopen event in my case is generated when the Mac goes to sleep either after closing the lid manually or after it wakes from Deep Idle due to maintenance and goes to sleep again. I think a lot of people who use the wake up reason to find if someones using their computer can be confused by this function...


Can I configure my apple remote with custom keys/functions? I would like to press the < or > button on my apple remote, and "virtually" make the mac think I pressed the left arrow ← or the right arrow → key.

Is there a free application for that?

I've found:

http://www.iospirit.com/products/remotebuddy/

http://mira.en.softonic.com/mac

Great, I've found iRedLite! I can create my own mappings (they are called layers in iRedLite) with this. :)

And here some other great tips... (old post, but a good reference!)


Menu display issues after upgrading to Sierra I just recently upgraded my Mac and it's having some issues.  It freezes for a few seconds, and when it resumes operation, things just go crazy.  Among other problems, some text is missing, some text is not showing up in the contextual menu.

I thought it might be a font problem or something, so I went to Font Book, tried to validate all the fonts there, and all seems fine.

I hope the screenshots I attached might help.  Thank you.

I'd suggest a clean install... But when you choose to do it, don't forget the backups first!

You could potentially troubleshoot it and find some corrupt file, but I'd cut the hassling and try a clean one (as it is easy to do and very likely to work).


How do I rate songs on the 5th gen iPod nano? How do I rate songs on the 5th generation iPod nano?  Is it possible?  Do they get copied back to iTunes?

The 5th Gen nano still had a click wheel, so you should just have to click the center button twice, and then turn the click wheel left or right to adjust ratings. And yes, these should sync back to iTunes.


Do programs keep running on macos when user switches account? I am wondering if programs keep running when users switch account, alas account is locked and another user account logs in.
For instance, user Mike runs Photos (that will start curating pictures), then locks account and user Sue logs in to other account; will Photos instance keep running in Mike account in the background?

Yes, the applications will continue to run in the background. This happens with Fast User Switching and when Locking then logging in.

Monitoring

You can see the other users' applications are running through the Activity Monitor application:

Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor.app

To see other users' applications, select the menu item:

Activity Monitor.app > View (menu) > Other User Processes


Speak Text not available in some apps? Add it back? In many (if not, most) Mac apps that display or edit text, you can select text and have it spoken out loud, via a right-click or the Edit menu:

Some apps that you would expect to have this ability, don't… which is a pretty big accessibility issue for lots of folks (myself included). Is there any way to forcibly get this functionality into uncooperative apps?
Note: I am aware of the Accessibility setting that assigns a keyboard shortcut to speak text… but it doesn't always behave as you'd expect and sometimes reads text from the page that is not highlighted.

The easy answer is no.
The more complex answer, is that it usually depends on the accessibility of the app. If an app doesn’t use the proper accessibility labels and APIs, it won’t work properly with other assistive technologies like voiceover and speak screen. A classic example of this not working is in an image


User named [Update Needed] after installing yosemite with encrypted drive I clean installed Yosemite on my macbook air. Everything went ok with the install, and when I restart, there is a second user named [Update Needed] . The password for this user is the same password I set for the hard drive encryption. I have tried restarting and this user is still there.

I have logged in with this user and installed all the updates, still no luck.

Log in into the Mac as administrator.
Backup the Mac with Time Machine (optional but recommended)
Launch System Preferences selecting System Preferences from the Apple menu.
Click the Security & Privacy preference pane.
Click the FileVault tab.
Unlock the pane clicking on the padlock (administrator password required)
Disable FileVault and wait (…about 3hrs with a 250GB no SSD HD)
Restart the Mac (optional but recommended)
Go back the FileVault tab.
Enable FileVault and wait (…about 7hrs for me!!!)
Restart the Mac.
The unknown user account will disappear.
This should also now allow you to set automatic login.

Sources: FileVault and update needed at the login screen: How to solve
Fresh install of Yosemite adds [Update Needed] user
Login screen shows "update needed" but no updates are available


Dock on MBP Retina is using 80% CPU The Dock on my MBP Retina is constantly using 70 - 80% of CPU.

This happens on the two account on the machine, both of which were migrated from my previous Lion MBP.

I don't have Parallels installed, which can cause this issue
apparently.
I've deleted the Dock's plist and restarted it
I've rebooted several times

Any ideas on what may be causing this?

Here's a trace on the Dock.  I'm not a Mac dev so I find reading that hard.

I had this same problem on my new MBP Retina.  I do have Parallels installed, but the similar issue caused by Parallels has been fixed in a Parallels update (which I've installed).  Moreover, none of the workarounds (e.g. deleting the Windows Applications folder from the Dock) suggested on the Parallels forum fixed the problem for me.  I also tried to delete the Dock's plist, restart the process, and restart the computer several times.  None of these fixed the problem.  The Dock process would go back to using 100% CPU.

Here's what I did to troubleshoot and fix it:

Run this from the command line.  This command will list the files the Dock process is accessing or tying to access.

sudo opensnoop -n Dock

I found that Dock was repeatedly trying to access /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg, which is a symbolic link to /Library/Desktop Pictures/Galaxy.jpg.  The only problem was that /Library/Desktop Pictures/Galaxy.jpg didn't exist.  I'm not sure if the OS came without it at that location or if I deleted it or moved it mistakenly.  Regardless, to fix this I repointed the symbolic link to another desktop picture using the following two commands:

sudo rm /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg
sudo ln -s /Library/Desktop\ Pictures/Lion.jpg /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg

It seems that the problem was that Dock was repeatedly trying and failing to access the missing Galaxy.jpg file to set my desktop background via the DefaultDesktop.jpg symbolic link.  Once that symbolic link pointed to a real JPG file, Dock's high CPU utilization stopped. On earlier MBPs, DefaultDesktop.jpg was a real JPG file (of a galaxy).

Also this fixed another problem I was having where if I locked my screen and then typed my password to unlock it, my computer would hang while trying to log me in.  My hunch is that the Dock was trying to access the same missing file and was hanging on the login screen.


How to switch to a tab in mobile Safari without it reloading? Many times when I'm on Safari on my iPhone and I choose to switch to a new tab, instead of just displaying its contents, it reloads the entire tab. Is there any way to switch to the tab and prevent it from reloading the tab?

I tried turning off all network connections, but it still attempts to load the tab, fails, and shows a blank page.

The bottleneck is the available free memory (RAM) on the iPhone.

If Safari starts running out of memory it will flush the contents of older tabs meaning they have to reload when you switch back to them.

If you have too many tabs open, or you simply have multiple tabs that each have a large web page in them, Safari will reload when you switch back to another tab. There’s no fixed limit; it depends on the combined size of the HTML + all assets each web page you have open and on the total number of tabs you have open.

As the available RAM in new iPhone models increases, this will become less and less of a problem.


iPhone shuts off when battery is at about 20% I have an iPhone 4S running iOS 8.0.2. For the past few days, my phone has been shutting off when the battery reaches around 20%. It will not turn back on until I plug it into a power source. When I plug it in, it automatically powers itself on, and the battery shows about 20%.

This is my battery info:

CycleCount: 298
DesignCapacity: 1430
FullChargeCapacity: 1000
Status: Success
BatteryCurrentCapacity: 72
BatteryIsCharging: true
ExternalChargeCapable: false
ExternalConnected: true
FullyCharged: false
GasGaugeCapability: true

Questions: does anyone knows why this is happening, and how can I make the battery function until 2-4% like it used to before?

I attempted someone else's suggestion to let the battery naturally die off (let something running without actively using it), then charge it back until 100% without unplugging. The first time it did not work, but after I did that for the second time, my phone is back to normal. So... I just needed to be patient I guess.


iPhone as AirTunes receiver Is there an app that will receive AirTunes? I want to use iOS4's new AirPlay capability to send audio from one iOS device to another. I realize I can use Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil and Speakers to stream from my Mac to said iPhone, but I want to send from my iPhone to another iPhone.

What I'm trying to do is avoid buying an Airport Express device by just hooking up an old iPhone and running an app...

If you are willing to jailbreak your iPhone there is an app on Cydia that will turn your iPhone/iPod/iPad into an AirPlay speaker. It has its issues, but it works fairly well.

If you have want to mess with it there is an article here:

http://www.macstories.net/tutorials/how-to-turn-your-iphone-and-ipad-into-airplay-speakers/


Finder slow/freeze under Mavericks <rant>I wish I never upgraded to OS X 10.9, it is so buggy!! But the alternative to stick with the unpatched earlier version of OS X was not a solution!
Anyway, so I am on this crappy Mavericks and since I have either full OS freeze or some other weirdness, slowness.</rant>

Today's one is "simple": the finder freezes while browsing the local SDD too often!

I open finder, go under Documents (on my local SSD) it contains only 31 items, 5 PDF wiht size 10-50MB, 1 PDF fo 300MB, the rest are small TXT, ODS, XLS, HTML of < 1MB and 5 subfolders. While scrolling through the view, it freezes, sometimes the display in the finder windows is all white, sometimes the beach ball is turning, sometimes you wait just a couple of seconds, some other times it is closer to 20 sec.

Documents is one example, but it is not limited to that folder sadly. Even the home folder which contains 15 subfolder and 3 files (for a total of 500kB!!) has such lock-up.

There is close to no activity on the machine, but when browsing the finder and when it locks, 1 to 2 processes are often quite active: Finder itself (always) and QuickLookSatellite (sometimes). Memory or disk IO/transfer do not show any spikes and are rather low in usage anyway. So there is no apparent reason for this behaviour than Mavericks quality...

Note: I have tried this tips regarding Finder slowness, but in my case it did not help.

Edit 01: I have removed all tags, but this did not help. However, I have found out that I have the problem in some of the Finder's view, so in the "icon" view it freezes for no reason but not in the "list" view for example.

This answer may come a bit late for you, but I was able to solve this problem by removing the Finder plist and restarting Finder. You can do this in Terminal by entering the following command:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist && killall -HUP Finder

Give that a shot and see how it works.


Restart screen features a progress bar: what is it? Sometimes (and in particular the last two times I restarted), a strange bar looking like a load bar or a copy bar appears on the restart screen, as in the image below.

I am running Mac OS X 10.9.5. What is it? Is it just the installation progress of updates (that install without me saying anything but that is another story) or is it something else?
Note
It has oftimes happened to me that I saw this:

Is it correct to call that "freezing"? If not, what is the correct name? And is it any different from hibernation aka deep sleep?

This is the Mac restoring from safe sleep (aka hibernation). The contents of RAM was previously copied to disk and is now being restored. For HDDs, this process can take a while.

  When your Mac wakes from sleep, you might see a progress bar on its display. This is normal behavior that means your Mac is waking from Safe Sleep.

If you see a progress bar when your Mac wakes from sleep - Apple Support


What are the physical anti-theft protection for MacBook Pro (2015 Retina) Since the slot for Kensington cables has been removed from the MacBook Pro Retina: what are the possibility to physically protect a MacBook Pro (2015 and 15 inch model) against thieves?

The goal is to prevent the computer to be stolen in a library, coffee, conference room, hotel lobby when I am next to the computer, but not currently working on it (e.g. discussion with somebody else, looking for something in my bag...) and not to leave it alone in the open.

You get a case with a lock.

The Ledge Case MacBook Pro Touch Bar Lock is a nice one that a relative showed me the other day, because he, like you tend to have their MacBook Pro out in the open in coffee shops and will leave it unattended.

Disclaimer:  I have never used nor owned one of these because I simply won't leave any computer/device unattended.  I had my personal laptop stolen from work (at the University Library) when I put down my laptop bag to punch in (still used cards back then).  In the time it took for me to walk the 20 feet (3m) from my desk to the time clock, it was gone.  Since then, my device is either on me, or physically locked away.


Is there any way to remove the stock ticker from Notification Center in iOS5? I like Notification Center in iOS5, but I find the stock ticker at the bottom a bit distracting. Is there any way to turn it off?

Go to Settings > Notifications > Stock Widget and turn it Off.

Notifications for all apps that can display them are managed in Settings. Two built-in apps, Stocks and Weather, get exceptional treatment and show in Notification Center as widgets. In the Notifications Settings, they are listed as Stock Widget and the Weather Widget.

To prevent an app from displaying in Notification Center, click the app in the list and make sure the option “Notification Center” is set to off.


How to stop iTunes to auto download "Available apps" on start? I have downloaded few apps on my iDevice and stopped the download realizing that was not the intended app.Whenever I start my iTunes, it tries to download them.

How can I stop the apps from getting downloaded ?

Go to iTunes Menu Item => Preferences => iTunes Store => Disable Apps under Automatic Downloads


Notification Center errors filling up /var/log/system.log Once per second I'm getting the following errors in my system.log:

Aug 28 01:15:00 Air com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[122] (com.apple.notificationcenterui.agent[52635]): Exited with code: 1
Aug 28 01:15:00 Air com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[122] (com.apple.notificationcenterui.agent): Throttling respawn: Will start in 1 seconds
Aug 28 01:15:01 Air.local NotificationCenter[52636]: Unable to load nib file: MainMenu, exiting

Is this likely affecting system performance, and what can I do about it?

Note that the "Air" in the log is my very creative name for the MacBook Air computer I use. Also, Notification Center is delivering notifications as expected through all this; I don't know why it's attempting to respawn because as far as I can tell, the process isn't dead.

The output of ps -x |grep otific
is

 341 ??         0:22.61 /System/Library/CoreServices/Notification Center.app/Contents/MacOS/NotificationCenter -psn_0_430185

Notifications appear as expected.

The file /System/Library/CoreServices/Notification Center.app/Contents/Resources/en.lproj/MainMenu.nib has the following ls -l entry:

-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   1787 Jul 25  2012 MainMenu.nib

This might be nothing but twice you referred to the file as

"/System/Library/CoreServices/Notification Center.app"

(note the space)

but I find the app at

"/System/Library/CoreServices/NotificationCenter.app"

on my Mountain Lion systems.

Does the path in /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist have the space?

If your system does have a space in that path, it could be causing problems.

I would log out and then either login via ssh or >console at the login window, remove the space:

sudo mv -vn "/System/Library/CoreServices/Notification Center.app" "/System/Library/CoreServices/NotificationCenter.app"

and then reboot

sudo shutdown -r now


Why am I being asked for a password anytime I create a folder? I am using Mac OSX Lion Server that I just got on a new Mac Mini. This is my first apple desktop experience.

However, I notice that when I want to create or rename a folder, I keep getting prompted for my admin password.

Is there a way I can disable this?

You are prompted for an administrator password when you attempt to create or modify a file or folder for which your user account does not have permission to modify. If this is happening within your home directory, it likely means that permissions are mis-set. You could fix this by running the program Disk Utility, selecting your startup drive, and clicking on the button reading Repair Disk Permissions.

If this is happening in a system folder, this is by design, to make it more difficult to break something. While it can be overridden (the simplest way would be at the terminal to type chmod a+w -R /, but this is highly unadvised) through changing permissions, I would suggest that this is a Bad Idea.


What's the best way to use IRC on the mac? Question in the title basically. Not sure what else I can say!

The most popular IRC client on the Mac platform is undoubtedly Colloquy (free).  It has a sleek interface and is extremely configurable.

You can find others here: http://osx.iusethis.com/tag/irc


Is iOS 4.2 faster than 4.1 (iPod Touch)? I've read that iOS 4.2 is faster on the iPhone 3G -- they're making a big deal out of this.

Is this performance improvement limited to the 3G?  I have an iPod Touch 4gen and I'm wondering if I'll see any difference.

There's no features of iOS 4.2 that interest me, so I wouldn't bother with the upgrade, but if it also gave me improved performance, I might.

Thanks!

Having used 4.2 GM on my iPhone 4 for a couple of weeks now I personally find it much much better at managing and minimising memory usage (regular checks using iStat). This should translate to better performance on older devices with limited RAM as less RAM to flash swapping will be required.


Re-Enable Apple Java 6 SE from Command Line? So, I broke Java Preferences.app.  I'm on Mountain Lion. I had Java 6 SE (the Apple-distributed JDK/JRE) and Oracle's Java 7u10 preview. Trying to get a stub app to launch with Java 7, I unchecked the Java 6 SE checkboxes in Java Preferences.app. Now not only will my stub app not launch, but Java Preferences.app won't launch (it says there's no valid JRE 1.4+ available).  I understand this is probably because Apple's Java launcher stub is not compatible with 7u10 -- not sure how to manually re-enable SE 6, though.

Two things are needed worst case (and assuming you are still on 10.6 Snow Leopard):

Re-download the SE 6 and install it
Manually enable browser plug in if you care to have that functionality:

 ln -sf /System/Library/Java/Support/Deploy.bundle/Contents/Resources/JavaPlugin2_NPAPI.plugin "/Library/Internet Plug-Ins/JavaAppletPlugin.plugin"
 ln -sf /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Commands/javaws /usr/bin/javaws

There is great coverage of the how and why I came up with these steps from Rich Trouton's blog:

Re-enable the Apple Java 6 plug-in for use with web browsers
Java for OS X 2012-006 and Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 11

Apple also has similar steps in their KB article about the move from SE 6 to 7 here:

Java for OS X 2012-006: How to re-enable the Apple-provided Java SE 6 applet plug-in and Web Start functionality


Using MAMP 3.4, how do I upgrade to Apache 2.4 and OpenSSL 1.0.2 to meet the ATS iOS 9 requirements? I've just installed MAMP 3.4 on Yosemite but the Apache version inside is still 2.2. Is there a way to upgrade to Apache 2.4? Moreover I have installed through brew openssl 1.0.2 but MAMP Apache still starts with version OpenSSL/0.9.8zg. Why? I need this updates in order to meet new ATS iOS 9 requirements.

For Mac OS X Yosemite

Update openssl by brew to version >= 1.0.2d
TLS 1.2 works only with apache 2.4 and actually MAMP is still given with apache 2.2. SOLUTION: download and install the latest version of AMPPS which runs a version of apache 2.4.x
create a self signed certificate with sha256 (as requested by iOS 9) with

openssl req -x509 -nodes -sha256 -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout server.key -out server.crt

       and save server.key and server.crt into /Applications/AMPPS/apache/conf

Be sure that ssl modules are loaded inside httpd.conf file of AMPPS
Edit file /Applications/AMPPS/apache/conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf adding:

<VirtualHost localhost:443>
   DocumentRoot "/Applications/AMPPS/www"
   ServerName localhost
   SSLEngine on
   SSLProtocol all -SSLv2 -SSLv3
   SSLHonorCipherOrder on
   SSLCertificateFile "/Applications/AMPPS/apache/conf/server.crt"
   SSLCertificateKeyFile "/Applications/AMPPS/apache/conf/server.key"
</VirtualHost>

inside

<IfModule ssl_module> ... </IfModule>

iOS 9 simulator will annoy you each time you use NSURLSession raising an error 9813 saying that the certificate is not valid (because is self signed). So in each class where you are going to use NSURLSession do, for example, the following:

class LoginService: NSObject, NSURLSessionDelegate {

func URLSession(session: NSURLSession,
    task: NSURLSessionTask,
    didReceiveChallenge challenge: NSURLAuthenticationChallenge,
    completionHandler: (NSURLSessionAuthChallengeDisposition, NSURLCredential?)
    -> Void) {

    completionHandler(NSURLSessionAuthChallengeDisposition.UseCredential, NSURLCredential(forTrust: challenge.protectionSpace.serverTrust!))
}

...

func requestLoginWithURL (requestURL: NSURL, completionHandler: (success: Bool?) -> Void) {
    let configuration =
    NSURLSessionConfiguration.defaultSessionConfiguration()

    let urlRequest: NSURLRequest = NSURLRequest(URL: requestURL)

    let session = NSURLSession(configuration: configuration, delegate: self, delegateQueue:NSOperationQueue.mainQueue())

    /*
    dataTaskWithRequest: creates an HTTP request for the specified URL request object, and calls a handler upon completion.
    */
    let task = session.dataTaskWithRequest(urlRequest, completionHandler: { (data: NSData?, response: NSURLResponse?, error: NSError?) -> Void in

...
}

where the function URLSession is a delegate which will prevent the app from crashing because of the self signed certificate and it will accept anyway.


Avoid default fullscreen (no header, no dock) Since time ago and after upgrading I realize that macOS began abusing of fullscreen feature, and personally I hate this behaviour.

Maximize icon goes to fullscreen (hides window header and dock)

Maximize icon, keeping pressed offer tile to left and tile to right, but not and option to fit to screen

Exit fullscreen (from Menu;View) moves to a small windows and does't fit the window to the screen

From system preferences I can't see any option about the fullscreen behaviour.
At the moment of writing I am on macOS Catalina.

I don't think there is any way to change the default behaviour, but you can return to the older Maximise functionality by  Opt ⌥   clicking the green dot.
This will not always fill the entire screen, but has the old switchable behaviour that you might be used to, first click enlarges, second click returns to last state.
This older functionality is still also available in the Dock prefs - Double-click a window's title bar to… zoom
This is the same as  Opt ⌥  green dot.
If you do want to completely fill the screen without being actually 'fullscreen' then  Opt ⌥  double-clicking any corner of the window, when you see the diagonal arrows appear on hover,  will expand to completely fill the screen - but it will not return on a second click & will also sometimes 'forget' the last size if you  Opt ⌥   click the green dot afterwards.


Fixing MBP battery which has been sitting I have a new battery that has only 3 or 4 cycles on it, that I got as a replacement a year ago. The battery and the machine it's in, a late 2008 MBP, has been sitting for the last year unused. I tried to boot it up today and it appears the battery is toast. OS X reports it as "Replace Now". I tried to charge it for a few hours but the machine shut off as soon as I unplugged it. Is there a way I resurrect this battery?

According to http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html:

  If you don’t plan on using your notebook for more than six months, Apple recommends that you store the battery with a 50% charge. If you store a battery when it’s fully discharged, it could fall into a deep discharge state, which renders it incapable of holding any charge. Conversely, if you store it fully charged for an extended period of time, the battery may experience some loss of battery capacity, meaning it will have a shorter life.

So you are most probably out of luck.


How to keep a VPN connection alive on an iPhone? I connect to a bunch of WiFi hot spots with my iPhone, and love that I have a VPN option.

One thing I don't love is that it disconnects from the VPN if the screen ever goes blank.

How can I keep the VPN connected so I don't have random emails or other data in the open for man-in-the-middle attacks?

According to this thread this is standard for most users. But there is Jailbreak solution with external app called Insomnia

Insomnia is an iPhone native application that, when enabled, will prevent the iPhone from sleeping, thus overriding its default behavior. This allows background applications to continue to run and WiFi to work long after the screen has been switched off.
(The iPhone's default behavior is to sleep 30 seconds after the screen has gone off, when not docked and charging that is).

Downside of this is your cpu etc is still running so battery will go down quickly.
There is also a tweak for Cisco VPN with SBSetting with Jailbreak that might work for non-Cisco software (as in the built-in VPN) but as I haven't tested it it's hard to say :-) It may be that the blog mentions the built-in VPN but I can't verify it myself. It's not clear whether it mentions Cisco app or the built-in VPN (and just names it Cisco VPN).


How to reinstall Safari on a Mac? I am using a MacBook Air 10.14.6, and I am not able to open Safari anymore.
How can I reinstall this app?
A problem report opens with some lengthy debug information in it. Here is maybe the important part:
Process:               Safari [2245]
Path:                  /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari
Identifier:            Safari
Version:               13.1.2 (14609.3.5.1.5)
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           Safari [2245]
User ID:               66702218

Date/Time:             2020-10-07 17:25:11.648 +0200
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.14.6 (18G2022)
Report Version:        12
Bridge OS Version:     4.2 (17P2551)
Anonymous UUID:        F0A08E7C-38FB-79BF-A87B-5A4AE24494E5

Time Awake Since Boot: 280 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread:        0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal:    Illegal instruction: 4
Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0x4
Terminating Process:   exc handler [2245]

Application Specific Information:
dyld: launch, running initializers
/usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib
Sandbox registration failed: The code signature is not valid: The operation couldn’t be completed. (OSStatus error -67030.)

Application Specific Signatures:
Registration error: The code signature is not valid: The operation couldn’t b

Thread 0 Crashed:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   libsystem_secinit.dylib         0x00007fff70e40ac1 _libsecinit_setup_secinitd_client + 1824
1   libsystem_secinit.dylib         0x00007fff70e40340 _libsecinit_initialize_once + 13
2   libdispatch.dylib               0x00007fff70bf263d _dispatch_client_callout + 8
3   libdispatch.dylib               0x00007fff70bf3d4b _dispatch_once_callout + 20
4   libsystem_secinit.dylib         0x00007fff70e40331 _libsecinit_initializer + 79
5   libSystem.B.dylib               0x00007fff6dc249d4 libSystem_initializer + 136
...
...

One thing that you could do is reinstall macos without removing personal files, or other applications. To do this, restart and hold ⌘ + R while booting. You should go into recovery mode then click reinstall macos, and follow the on-screen instructions. Should take 10 to 30 minutes.


Mavericks PHP versions issue I just ran the command below to update PHP on my system (twice, forgot I ran it before).

curl -s http://php-osx.liip.ch/install.sh | bash -s 5.5

Output

Detected OS X Mavericks 10.9 All ok.
Get packager.tgz
Unpack packager.tgz
Please type in your password, as we want to install this into /usr/local
Password:
Start packager (may take some time)
downloading http://php-osx.liip.ch/install/5.5-10.8-frontenddev-latest.dat
downloading http://php-osx.liip.ch/install/5.5-10.8/frontenddev/5.5-10.8-frontenddev-5.5.27-20150710-221744.tar.bz2

Installing package 5.5-10.8-frontenddev into root /
Package 5.5-10.8-frontenddev is already installed at version 5.5.27-20150710-221744. You wanted to install version 5.5.27-20150710-221744.

However when I run php --version I get

PHP 5.4.17 (cli) (built: Aug 25 2013 02:03:38)
Copyright (c) 1997-2013 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2013 Zend Technologies

which php tells me `/usr/bin/php`

How can I get my system to use 5.5 ?

try

/usr/local/php5/bin/php --version

If you want that php to become the default when you type php at the command line, run this:

echo "alias php='/usr/local/php5/bin/php'">>~/.bash_profile

then close your terminal and open a new one or run

. ~/.bash_profile


How can I prevent users on Mac from connecting to any WiFi networks and only connect to white-listed networks? I want to make it so that the user cannot connect to any other network other than the specified network. I know I can do this with GUI by removing preferred networks, but this way, I will have to do it for every single one of them. It will be even harder when more networks keep showing up in the networks list.
Is there a method that lets the Mac block every single network and only lets the user connect to specified networks? See the answer in the link below where the guy is doing this through a script for a single network at a time by periodically running the script. Is it possible to do this for all networks?
How to completely block specific Wi-Fi SSID on macOS?

I prefer to do this with MDM supervision as that’s the easiest way.

https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment-education/choose-a-mobile-device-management-solution-asm1c1be3511/web
https://www.fleetsmith.com/
https://app.jamfnow.com/devices

I would start with the free JAMF Now trial since I’ve used it but I hear great things about FleetSmith.
Here is the specific portion of MDM that lets you disable WiFi and push only the approved networks to each managed device.

https://support.apple.com/guide/server/work-with-configuration-profiles-apddda213639/mac


How do I boot into the EFI firmware shell? I'd like to experiment with the EFI shell on a MacBook Pro 2010 model.  I am unable to find the keyboard sequence to hold on boot.  Does someone know what the sequence is, do I need to boot from my Snow Leopard CD instead to access this or has the EFI shell been left out (I read that Intel makes it an optional component) ?

Thanks,

Scott

Yup, apparently it is missing and you have to install EDK to get it.


Stopping false positive malware warnings in Catalina? Today, I received a pop-up warning saying "hpRaster.bundle will damage your computer. You should move it to the Trash".
"hpRaster.bundle" is installed by Mac OS X as part of its drivers for my HP Laserjet P1102w printer.
I ran a malware search on CleanMyMac X, and it only flagged up an issue with Safari. (Dealt with.)
Is there anything I can do to prevent these false positive warnings happening save waiting for Apple to push updates?

Unfortunately, this appears to be an issue with HP printer drivers and/or Catalina 10.15.7 - I'm one of many people with the same issue. Lots of us are reporting the same symptoms on the HP Support forums, but at the time of writing there's no fix. Based on experiences so far, HP are ignoring the issue, hanging up on phone calls, or claiming that you'll need to buy a new printer.
All indications at the moment are that there's some kind of issue with the driver signing. Using AirPrint may be a workaround.
I'll update this answer if anything substantial changes.
UPDATE: The issue has now been resolved. We can assume that Apple and/or HP has reinstated the code signing certificate, or added the signature to a whitelist, or some other behind-the-scenes magic. No user intervention was required for me - no reinstallation of drivers or anything else, the printer that was failing to start a few days ago now works without any problems.


What exactly does "Disconnect from iPhone" do? Today I saw an option to Disconnect from iPhone (hotspot) in my list of available Wi-Fi access points, under the status bar icon on my Mac.

I don't remember ever seeing it there before.

What exactly does this command do?
Can't I just turn off Wi-Fi on my Mac, or select a different Wi-Fi access point to disconnect? What problem does this new feature solve?

What exactly does this command do?

This command disconnects your MacBook's Wi-Fi connection from your iPhone's hotspot. Clicking on disconnect will not turn off the Wi-Fi on your MacBook.

  Can't I just turn off Wi-Fi on my Mac, or select a different Wi-Fi access point to disconnect? What problem does this new feature solve?

If you turn off the Wi-Fi on your MacBook, it will certainly be disconnected from the iPhone's hotspot (or any hotspot/access point for that matter). If you select a different Wi-Fi hotspot/access point, MacBook would still first disconnect from the iPhone's hotspot.

With the recent versions of iOS and macOS, Apple has streamlined the process of accessing Internet on your Mac, via the mobile data of your iPhone. If your iPhone (logged in with the same Apple ID as your Mac) has an active data plan, your Mac automatically shows the option to connect to mobile hotspot, even without you turning it on on your iPhone.

Your Mac also offers to connect to the mobile hotspot on your iPhone if you are not connected to any Wi-Fi access point, and do not have Internet connectivity.

Disconnecting from the iPhone's hotspot will stop the Mac from consuming data via your mobile data plan, and can save you from consuming data unnecessarily and unknowingly (which is generally paid for as consumed) by some apps/processes running on your Mac.


iCloud Drive or music creation (or both?) So I'm trying to clean my Macbook Pro in order to have more storage, but this whole iCloud Drive thing is very confusing. Out of my total 121GB, 47GB are iCloud Drive and 22GB are music creation.

My question is whether my music creation files, many of which are stored in iCloud, are taking up space twice? My music creation storage consists of 19GB of Logic Pro projects (7GB on disk) and 16GB of Audacity projects (at least I believe the Audacity projects register as music creation). Beyond the music creation files I don't really have many files on here, so I'm having a hard time understanding where 47GB of iCloud Drive files are coming from. Is some of that space being taken up by duplicates of my music creation files?

If you go to Sytem Preferences/iCloud you'll see an option button as shown below.

Click on the options button and you'll get a new pane. At the bottom of this pane is a checkbox to optimize Mac storage. See the figure below.

This option can effect the free space on your hard drive. read the description next to the checkbox to determine which setting you want.


System on external drive using on iMac and MacBook Pro A few days ago I moved system to an external drive and I use it with my iMac. Everything runs nice and smooth. Today my new MacBook Pro arrived, but when I switch the Macs and start my system from my external disk everytime I start I get asked for my Apple ID and password (because of the App Scenario and maybe others.)

Why can't Apple store the information that I am using two Macs with this App instead of have to type in my password every time.

Has anybody an idea?

Login screen like that:

It's because authorizations are OS or profile based, but machine bound. Every time you start the OS on a Mac that is different from the last time it started up, all authorizations become invalid and have to be reissued and are stored on your disk again for the machine that you currently use.

Look in to Mobile Homes to see if that would work.

By the way, what you are doing is probably totally unsupported, so bugs are to be expected, even if it works.


Reduce image file size to certain size I have some tiff files of (scanned docs) which are too large than required.

I tried to export with Preview while applying filter "Reduce File Size". The new file came out to be quite small 36KB while the tiff was 14.4MB. Guess what, the text now is too hazy to read.

Question is there a way to "set" the limit of the output file? Say 1MB. I could have been happy with that much reduction and still could read the text.

Although Preview is my favorite app on Mac and I don't mind using other apps which can help me achieve same result.

In Preview's Tools menu you will find Adjust size.... Will do everything you need. Even though you can not set the desired size (weight) directly, after you change dimensions it is automatically calculated so you can accept it or further adjust dimensions.


Moving Microsoft Office from one Mac to another I recently bought a new MacBook to replace my iMac where used Microsoft Office for Mac. I set up my MacBook and transferred everything over, but couldn't run Office without the activation key.

I deleted and installed a trial of office 365, and used until the trial expired. Now I think I have the activation key (from looking it up—it's the same as the product ID?) I tried moving over from a backup, but I'm getting the Office 365 activation, and does't accept the code I have.

I have tried migration assistant and replacing the library files but nothing. I keep getting this screen now matter what I try:

Can I move the original Microsoft Office suite over from the iMac to my new MacBook any other way to stop getting this massage? I think I got as a download years ago, so no disc.

I am also using Microsoft Office 2008 on a new 5K iMac which is running Yosemite and I used Dropbox to get it onto the Mac –no key and no migration assistant.
It runs perfectly.
Microsoft tried to tell me that Yosemite was not compatible with office 2008 but that is not the case in my experience.


Keywurl for Safari 5.1 / Lion Has anyone made Keywurl work with Safari 5.1 after their Lion upgrade?

I tried updating the MaxBundleVersion without luck:

http://hacketal.com/making-keywurl-work-with-safari-5

I'm not interested in using Glims, SafariStand, etc, I just want Keywurl to work.

There is now a Safari extension for Safari 5.1 called Safari Keyword Search by Arne Martin Auerlie. It uses new API calls in 5.1 to reproduce all the functionality of Keywurl without the need for a SIMBL hack!

It is still an early version, so the interface is still a little rough, but it works wonderfully.

Get it here:

https://github.com/arnemart/SafariKeywordSearch

Read Arne's blog here:

http://am.aurlien.net/

Also if you don't mind hacks, Safari Omnibar does something similar, attempting to replicate the behaviour of Chrome's Omnibar.

https://github.com/rs/SafariOmnibar

It is a bit hacky, so I would recommend Arne's extension in preference to it, but it is worth watching how both projects develop.


iOS - Archive Upload Failed due to error -22421 I am unable to submit an iOS app to the App Store. It throws me

  Archive Upload Failed due to error -22421

I am stuck with this issue since a week now.

Any help is appreciated.

I've already faced this issue, and i searched lot for this issue but all answers not work

so I used Application Loader:

First, export the application Archive from Xcode's Organizer window.

Then, upload ipa file to application loader

Xcode > Open Developer Tool > Application Loader


Does Sys Prefs > Software Upgrade > "Automatically keep my Mac up to date" automatically install Catalina on a Mac running Mojave? Given a Mac running macOS Mojave, does turning on the checkbox "Automatically keep my Mac up to date" in System Preferences > Software Update mean that Catalina will automatically be installed?

I want only minor updates and security patches to be installed automatically, not the major OS upgrades. I do not yet want to step up to Catalina.

I found this useless Apple support page about the Advanced panel that simply repeats the text of the checkboxes’ labels as a pseudo-explanation. (Tip: Click the Helpful? > No button at bottom of that page as feedback to Apple.)

No it does not.

I have Mojave and it installed several updates yesterday automatically but a major system upgrade has to be authorized manually. So it is telling me it is there and available but not installing until I give permission.

Edit: I have the updates checked in the advanced panel and it did not install Catalina. See:

I suggest it is a question of understanding: "install system updates" is relevant to the current system not changing to a new system


how to set up multiple caller ID for imessaging how do I add another caller ID (ie existing email address) to the list of addresses I can send imessages from? It shows multiple email addresses to receive imessages, but only one to send from.

Settings > Messages > Send & Receive

Add Another Email won't let you add any address associated with another Apple ID


Samba share on Mountain Lion freezes I'm using a Mac Mini (Mid 2010) with Mountain Lion on (OS X 10.8 12A269 – not OS X Server) as a file server at my home network. The Mac is equipped with an external 2TB USB disk (Western Digital).

The root of the external disk, from here on called extrn, is shared using "File Sharing".

When reading/writing large files from a Windows 7 workstation the entire samba connection seems to freeze for about a minute. It seems like the connection just resets.  Sometimes it takes less than a minute.

So my Question is, how do I troubleshoot this problem? What information is needed to solve this? Does anyone have any idea why this is happening?

In the Sharing menu in OS X, the folder is shared as "Read & Write" for my user, my user group and "Everyone". Under Options I've selected Share files and folders using SMB (Windows). And my user is also selected beneath that check box.

Looking at system.log there is a few related lines:

Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]: label: default
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]:     dbname: od:/Local/Default
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]:     mkey_file: /var/db/krb5kdc/m-key
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]:     acl_file: /var/db/krb5kdc/kadmind.acl
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]: digest-request: uid=0
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]: digest-request: init request
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]: digest-request: init return domain: MACMINI-012345 server: N-NS-MAC-MINI
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]: digest-request: uid=0
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]: digest-request: init request
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]: digest-request: init return domain: MACMINI-012345 server: N-NS-MAC-MINI
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]: digest-request: uid=0
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]: digest-request: od failed with 2 proto=ntlmv1-with-v2-session
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]: digest-request: user=WIN7\username
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local digest-service[11674]: digest-request kdc: ok user=MACMINI-012345\username proto=ntlvm1 flags: NEG_KEYEX, ENC_128, NEG_VERSION, NEG_TARGET_INFO, NEG_NTLM2, NEG_ALWAYS_SIGN, NEG_NTLM, NEG_SIGN, NEG_TARGET, NEG_UNICODE
Aug 7 23:01:28 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local smbd[11591]: MACMINI-012345\username connected to path /Volumes/extrn

Then after about 2 minutes, the same chunck of logs appear again.

Sometimes there is an additional row afterwards:

Aug 7 23:05:10 N-Ns-Mac-mini.local smbd[11591]: MACMINI-012345\username connected to path /var/rpc/ncacn_np

username is the same:

MACMINI-012345\username at the server
WIN7\username at the client.

The strange thing is that sometimes (about 1 out of 30 times) everything works like a charm. Sometimes the problem is even worse.  I can't say that I see any pattern in it.

Any ideas?

UPDATE:

File system is 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)'. I've also tried to share a folder on the internal drive (320GB included with Mac Mini Mid 2010). The same problem appears there too.

When the system "freeze" I refer to the Windows 7 client. What ever client trying to write the file (e.g. an unzip) gets an error message telling me that the "Path can no longer be found". Or if I'm trying to copy a file the copy progress is aborted due to write error. If I then try to access the drive (or any other samba share at my Mac) nothing happens for a while before everything suddenly works again.

Considerations
For the partition, in its entirety, at the server you grant read and write privileges to everyone:

may be comparable to guest access, which does not require authentication.

Consider the following possibilities:

some communication, or attempted communication, by Windows 7 may be anonymous, without authentication (whether/how such communications would be logged by the server in a non-Server build of the OS, I don't know)
writes, or attempted writes, by Windows 7 are inappropriate for something at/around the root of the partition.

Suggestions
Increase the verbosity of logging for SMB
This may be easier to achieve with a Server build of the OS.
Diagnosis at the server when the client perceives a problem
Enable the stackshot daemon then use the key chord for sysdiagnose
Preparation: enable the daemon
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.stackshot.plist

When the problem occurs: use the key chord for sysdiagnose.
For at least ten seconds after the chord, touch nothing.
After Finder brings to front the result of sysdiagnose: decompress the archive, consider the files that comprise the diagnosis.
References
stackshot(1) OS X Manual Page
sysdiagnose(1) OS X Manual Page


How do I only optimise storage for videos over 1 year old? This can be using Jailbreak modifications or using a feature available in iOS.
I have a 64GB iPhone 6S that has over 40GB of photos and videos on it - most of that being videos. However, I am quickly running out of usable storage. I want to be able to still access new photos and videos but I want videos older than a year to be 'optimised'.
Is there any way to do this either using Jailbreak tweaks or iOS features? If not how could I build a tweak to do this?

There's no built-in iOS feature that allows you to do exactly this. Nor do I know of any jailbreak tweak that enables this feature.
Building such a tweak would require software development experience along with specific knowledge about the iCloud Photos metadata storage.


Stop syncing photos from iphone, is it still saved on icloud.com? I am using icloud photo library to sync my iphone photos to my macbook. Does it mean that all photos are stored and saved on icloud.

In other words If I stop syncing photos from iphone, will all photos on icloud.com be deleted ?

When you sync your photos to iCloud , it will be automatically get stored in the iCloud drive. Once you stop syncing your phone with iCloud drive , the photos which you already synced will be there , those will not be deleted with user permission.


Samsung SSD with Catalina or Mojave I have High Sierra installed from a USB bootable drive on a Samsung SSD
(Samsung MZ-76E500B/EU 500 GB 860 EVO Sata III 64L V NAND Solid State Drive) but I need XCode and that needs to be on Mojave 10.14.4+ and because i have a third party SSD the app store blocks me from upgrading.

So I put a Catalina beta on a USB drive but when I load up the iMac holding option and select the drive I just get a cancel symbol.

Not sure what to do to get a more modern OS on this SSD? Anyone had any luck with Mojave or will that be the same?

Thanks in advance

It would appear the issue is with compatibility, it is a Mid-2011 27 iMac so no longer supports Mojave or Catalina

https://eshop.macsales.com/guides/Mac_OS_X_Compatibility

Damn.


ios 9.3.5 Cydia Error I just recently jailbroke my iPod 5th generation using an untethered jailbreak called Phoenix, but when I open Cydia I get the error: sub process /usr/libexec/cydia error 2. So I can't install or update ANYTHING. Here is some solutions I attempted and got no luck (in case you try to give the same one): https://www.reddit.com/r/jailbreak/comments/5r0k9f/help_subprocess_usrlibexeccydiacydo_error_code_2/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRqhVcW67co
There's one more solution I tried, but I can't post more than 2 links with a reputation of below 10, lol.
All I want to do is to be able to fix the error so I can update cydia and be able to install tweaks, because at the moment, I cannot. Thanks.

At this step tinkering your jailbreak won't bring much success, I guess consequences of this error will bother you afterwards in any way. I suggest reinstalling firmware and trying to jailbreaking again as sometimes errors just occur. Though you may reboot your computer, use another cable. Rarely, these things help and it's the easiest you could do.


How to install modules from CPAN without sudo? Is there a way to install modules from CPAN without resorting to sudo?

(And without perlbrew, please.)

You can configure cpan to install modules outside of the system default path. Point it to some place under your home directory and you shouldn't need to call it with sudo to install modules.

The o command in the cpan interactive shell lets you change options for cpan and the makepl_arg option changes the options that are passed to the perl Makefile.pl call that CPAN makes to build the Makefile for the module.

If you wanted to change the install path to ~/lib/perl5 you'd do:

mkdir -p ~/lib/perl5
perl -MCPAN -e shell

And from the CPAN shell:

cpan> o conf makepl_arg 'PREFIX=~/lib/perl5'
cpan> install MyModule

To use modules installed in this location you'll need to add this path to your PERL5LIB environment variable. For bash do:

export PER5LIB=~/lib/perl5

Or whatever environment variable setting syntax is required by your shell of choice.

There's a nice discussion of customizing CPAN for a single user here.


Multi-output MIDI device disables volume control When creating either an Aggregate Device or a Multi-Output Device in Audio MIDI Setup and setting it as the default audio output device, the volume control is greyed out and locked at maximum intensity. Why is that and how can it be bypassed?

Whilst I'm not certain why the single volume control in the Sound preference pane is greyed out (or whether that behaviour can be changed), the only way I found to allow me to change the volume at all was to manually adjust the "Master" volume slider for each device in the aggregate or multi-output device.


Can Xcode installed from a dmg file to updated automatically I wanted to install the latest Xcode 6.1 from here https://developer.apple.com/downloads/index.action#, because a lot of things cannot compile with Xcode 6.0.1 on Yosemite. However, I want to know whether this will force me to manually update Xcode in the future. Can the Xcode installed from other sources benefit from auto update in the App Store? Or is there builtin updater in Xcode?

if you instal Xcode from the dmg file it will not update automatically. you have to download the updates and install manualy.
or download the new version from app store once


Connecting two devices to one phone So I have been trying to connect my microphone to my iPhone 5s while connecting another device(a speaker) simultaneously. Is this possible in anyway? Also can I speak on the mic and hear from the speaker when I'm on a phone call. I know we have car headsets and car hands free speakers with built-in mic these days but I was just wondering if it's possible to use two different devices sinultaneously for a phone call.

Yes you can do this by buying a bluetooth speaker and a pluggable microphone. I would recommend using the Ultra Slim Bluetooth Speaker as the bluetooth speaker (it is available for $50, pretty affordable) and the Zoom iQ7 as your microphone ($99.99). In Zoom iQ7, there is a headphone plug so you might not even need the speaker if you have the Zoom iQ7.


How can I obtain and install duplicate license keys when copying to a new Mac? I have a desktop Mac and am getting a laptop, and I intend to use the migration assistant to copy software from the existing Mac to the new one.

I would like to obtain duplicate license keys for the software on it: Serene Screen 3, Microsoft Office, VMware Fusion, Windows XP (guest OS), Windows 7 (guest OS), and possibly others.

I don't know that the procedure for purchasing and installing duplicate license keys will be the same but how, for the software listed, can I purchase and install a duplicate key?

If you're using Migration Assistant, the software will stay licensed, and if you intend to wipe and repurpose the old computer it's likely you're in the clear as far as licensing goes.

The Windows guest OSes won't notice any change: VMware's virtual hardware won't change, so they'll be totally oblivious to the migration.

I know from past experience that Microsoft Office works fine after Migration Assistant runs. I'm not sure about Serene Screen or VMware, but I've never had any trouble with any licensed software after Migration Assistant, including notoriously picky stuff like Photoshop or LabVIEW.

Now, on the other hand, if you simply want to clone the software and use it on both machines, you could probably get away with using the same keys, but you should check the license to see if that's allowed. If it's not, it should be as easy as buying a new license key and just replacing the old one on one machine.


How to use Launchctl for schedule application I try to work with Launchctl and have a question:

How can I set up an application to run in a few minutes using Launchctl? (for example, open the program MyApp.app with arguments "hello" "world" Every 10 minutes)

I know that it can easily be done by creating Launch Agent, I looking for a way to do it using Launchctl directly to programmatically.

launchctl is for loading, manipulating and unloading LaunchAgents and LaunchDaemons, it doesn't directly support delayed execution. What you can do instead is

Run sleep $((10 * 60)); launchctl submit -l my_choosen_name mkdir /tmp/mydir
Run launchctl submit -l my_name -- bash -c 'sleep 6$((10 * 60)) && mkdir /tmp/mydir'
Have your LaunchDaemon plist call a script (instead of the application directly) and include the sleep in the script before it starts the application

To have it run every 10 minutes use

while sleep $((10 * 60)); do
    launchctl submit -l my_choosen_name -- myapp hello world
done


iMac Summer 2001 G3 CRT Issue I have an iMac G3 from the Summer of 2001, and it appears to have an issue with its CRT.

After a few minutes of being on, the entire CRT appears to take a yellowish tint which is extremely visible, especially on blue and white colours.

I decided to go into display settings and colour calibration and turn down each RGB channel individually, and I found turning the blue channel down fully reproduces this yellow tint, and I therefore assume the blue gun is not firing fully or at all in some cases. Is there any way this can be fixed and any reason this may occur? I really do not want to replace this machine as it was a Christmas gift as my family knows I collect these older machines.

I doubt it's the gun that's the issue, but without getting actual hands-on, it's impossible to tell for sure.

It could be something as simple as color being out of sync and a simple degauss should correct.  Pass a magnet across the front of the screen; that should clear things up.  You don't need anything powerful.  I've used re-purposed speaker magnets back in the day.  I have also seen people use tool magnetizers with the added benefit that if it doesn't work, you still have a functional tool for future magnetizing needs (from $2 to $10 USD).

If the degauss fails, it may be a component or a faulty solder joint that controls the color hue/saturation.  At this point, it would be best to take it to a pro who specializes in this type of diagnostic/repair.    It's not a difficult repair and shouldn't be costly at all.  It's just that you will be working with extremely high voltages and can be quite dangerous for the novice.


External Hard Disk Problem - doesn't mount / can't first aid / can't erase using disk utility I run MacOS Sierra 10.12.4 and struggling with my external 3.5 Data HDD not mounting after a short circuit in the Hard disk casing. I have purchased a new casing and have seen that the volume / partition still exists, but it is not mounting to the Mac. I had used Disk Drill data recovery and I can see that the partition exists and the data can be recovered.

The problem is:

I am unable to mount the HDD using disk utility as the mount is greyed out. I can see two volumes / partitions but the mount option inside each of them doesn't work.
I am unable to do First Aid on both the disk and the two partitions. The error is enclosed.

I am not even able to erase the partitions or the disk. It gives the error shown on the screen - "Mediakit reports not enough space on device for requested operation."

The following error appears if disk has GUID partition table and doesn't have EFI system partition (or it is less than 200 Mb):

Error: -5344: MediaKit reports not enough space on device for requested operation

Even if you are not planning to use this external HDD for booting, Mac OS's Disk Utility requires this partition to exist.

You can create it with gdisk (GUID fdisk):

(First leave some unpartitioned space in start of the disk by moving partitions or backing up data)

Command (? for help): n
Partition number (1-128, default 1):
First sector (34-1953525133, default = 40) or {+-}size{KMGTP}:
Last sector (40-1172342001, default = 1172342001) or {+-}size{KMGTP}: 512M
Current type is 'Apple HFS/HFS+'
Hex code or GUID (L to show codes, Enter = AF00): EF00
Changed type of partition to 'EFI System'

I created it with size of 512 Mb to be sure (200 is enough) and its hex code is EF00.

I'm not sure if it is required for Disk Utility, but it's better to format it with FAT32:

sudo newfs_msdos -F 32 <your partition device, i.e. /dev/disk1s1>

Additional information:

https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/EFI_System_Partition Gentoo Wiki, includes information how to create it with gdisk
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EFI_System_Partition Arch Linux Wiki


Launchpad keeps rearrarining icons Every time I reboot my Mac running macOS Sierra I lose my Launchpad layout. I’ve tried different apps, tried removing some preferences. All of the apps are reset to their default position.

Anyone have a solution on how to fix this?

Kr,
Vincent

I don't know what you've tried thus far but a solution I've found to work well in the past for Launchpad issues is just to force reset the Launchpad back to its default settings. Most people don't enjoy doing this because it requires you to then set everything back up the way you like it afterwards, but at this point that's what you're having to do after every restart anyways, so what have you got to lose?

To force reset Launchpad back to default settings:

Launch Terminal.app
Carefully type the following: defaults write com.apple.dock ResetLaunchPad -bool true; killall
Wait until you notice the Dock refresh; this means the process is
complete

I would then only move a couple things around in Launchpad for time's sake (in case this didn't work) and then restart your Mac to test!

If that did not work, simply force-resetting may have not be enough. Maybe it wasn't just the defined settings inside of the file that were corrupt, but the entire file itself. If this is the case, we need to delete/remove the file and trigger the OS to create a brand new one. You have two options for this!

Option A)

Navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Dock (yes, Dock!)
Move any files in this folder to your Desktop (except for the one called 'desktoppicture.db' if one is present)
Restart the Mac
Move a few app icons around in Launchpad to suit your liking
Restart the Mac again to test
If the issue is resolved and no new problems occur you can move
the files(s) we relocated to the Desktop to the Trash; if issue still occurs (and especially if any new issues are occurring), move the file(s) on your Desktop back into the ~/Library/Application Support/Dock folder and choose "Replace" if prompted, then restart your Mac.

Option B)

Navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Dock
Move 'desktoppicture.db' to your Desktop (if the file exists)
Launch Terminal
Carefully type the following: rm ~/Library/Application\
Support/Dock/*.db ; killall Dock
Restart your Mac
Move 'desktoppicture.db' from your Desktop back to
~/Library/Application Support/Dock (if it was present in the first place)
Move a few app icons around in Launchpad to suit your liking
Restart the Mac again to test (your background should also be back to normal if it had been changed during this process)


Sync custom icons between Macs I have an iMac I use everyday, and a MacBook Pro I use when I'm not at home.

I use a lot of softwares, and I have customized the icons of them.
Every time I install a new app, or I change the icon of one of the existing ones, I have to do the same with the other computer.
This is pretty annoying, so, I was wondering if there is a software that let me backups my custom icons and apply them to another Mac when I need.

I have found LiteIcon which seems to do a good job in simplifying the icons management, but it lacks an "export" and "import" feature, so it's pretty useless to me.

Is there any alternative to achieve the result?

I am almost positive there is no app that does this. Your best bet will likely be to develop a script that cross checks icon changes at some regular interval when both machines are on the same network with access to whatever drive in which you keep your icon library stored.


With one village on two devices, can I start over with one device? I connected my clash of clans village on both my iPod and iPhone.

Is there anyway I can unlink my iPod and start from the beginning there?

Doesn't Cash of Clans use Game Center for its integration?

So if you sign in on one device with a new Game Center ID, it should start with a new village.


can't see timeline in final cut pro I was clicking lots of buttons in the toolbar to try to hide things I didn't need (browser, inspector, etc.: I wanted the preview window as large as possible to get more detail in a crop) but the timeline disappeared too.

I thought "great that means the preview window can be even bigger".

But now I can't get the timeline back.

In fact, both the browser and the timeline toolbar buttons are greyed-out:

How do I show the timeline again?

Nevermind, luckily I figured it out almost immediately after asking.

I pressed Command-Control-1 (⌘ctrl1) to show the browser, and for some reason that un-greyed the timeline button, so I clicked the timeline button to show it again.

Then I could even hide the browser again but the timeline stayed visible.


Where do certificates come from? On my system when I check Keychain Access I often find new certificates. They get put there behind the scenes. Is that normal? When does this happen? Is there a way I can get alerted when a certificate gets added to the keychain?

Apple may occasionally approve additions to new Root CAs e.g. Verisign, who can then sign certificates for individual sites you visit.

The root certificates for OS X El Capitan are here https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205204

I assume these are done in software updates via the App Store, but I don't know for sure.

Also your company may add additional self signed certificates for internal reasons or installing development software.

But AFAIK keychain won't bloat over time as you visit new sites, so the list should be fairly static.


print at the command line, how can I print landscape Just using lp filename.txt and it's going to my local printer

How can I do something like lp filename.txt -format=landscape or lpl filename.txt

From man lp:

       -o landscape

Looks like it should do what you need :)


How to sort column by date in Numbers? I've my column in format dd/mm/yyyy and I would like to sort them by date. But I can't find any way of sorting the column by date. If I Sort Ascending, it doesn't recognise that the rows have the date formats. Any easy way of doing that?

Your dates might not be recognized as dates by Numbers.

In my case, Numbers does not offer dd/mm/yyyy as one of the standard date format and I have to define a custom format for that pattern. (Not sure, if that applies in your case: The date must be entered according to your locale settings - I can set "dd/mm/yyyy" as the date format, but I have to enter it as "dd.mm.yyyy" on my German system.)

Using the sort & filter window then works well on the formatted dates.


How to boot and install Linux or BSD on a 2007 MacBook White via USB? I have an old MacBook white (Model 2,1 mid-late 2007) which won't upgrade beyond Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). I have previously installed Debian with a dual boot by using rEFIt and booting from a DVD disk, but the DVD drive doesn't seem to reliably read disks anymore

I would like to install Debian or BSD on this MacBook, either as a dual boot, or as the single OS -- alternatively, any current linux distro or even Windows 10 would do.

I have tried a few things, all without success. For the record:

Burn .iso (or .cdr) image to DVD (Mac won't read disk)
Create a live Debian USB (with MBR partition) with rEFIt
Create live Debian USB with Mac Linux USB Loader (will boot on newer Macs, but not on MacBook2,1)

I've seen something about manually putting a GPT table on the USB drive, or creating a separate EFI partition, but since it's more technical and time consuming I didn't get around to it.

Main question: is there a reliable way to boot and install Linux, BSD, Windows (anything not OS X)?

Bonus points for running the OS live from the USB -- since after 10 years HD may fail some time soon.

Thanks for helping with recycling an old friend and protecting the environment.

EDIT: both replies, as well as all HOWTOs I could find operate under the assumption that I should be able to hold 'opt' on boot and choose the USB stick. That's not what happens when I have BSD or Linux there, but I am able to choose a USB stick with Mac OS X and install from it.
So the question becomes, what is the difference that prevents that from being done with Linux/BSD?

I personally installed FreeBSD on a G4 machine via USB, so I don't see why you can't do that with a 2007 MacBook.

But going back to the original question

  is there a reliable way to boot and install Linux, BSD, Windows (anything not OS X)?

Yes.  There is a site called Linux on Laptops (I linked the Apple section) that outlines what laptops are compatible with Linux.    Specifically for Debian, they have a Wiki that describes exactly how to install it on a Mac.

As mentioned before, I am partial to BSD.  FreeBSD has USB images specific to UEFI machines available for download.

There is also excellent HOWTOs available to assist you in this process.

As for your "Bonus Question"...

  Bonus points for running the OS live from the USB -- since after 10
  years HD may fail some time soon.

Why would you do this and not replace the hard drive?

A SATA1 interface is 1.5Gb/s

A USB2.0 port is 480Mb/s

Rough math tells us USB is 1/3 the speed of a drive.  A brand new SanDisk SSD is less than $50 online.  It doesn't make sense to sacrifice that much performance for that small price.


Do monitors and other peripherals - with their own power source - drain power from MacBook when plugged in via USB-C? I have 2 monitors plugged into my MacBook Pro 2016, one via USB-C and another through a 5-port hub with HDMI. When the MacBook is not plugged in to power (through the hub) it seems to drain power very quickly. Would the monitors cause this? Thx.

This is from both experience and speculation.

My MacBook Pro needs to be connected to power while the lid is shut in order to project the screen onto an external monitor. I imagine this is due to power limitations from the battery, as well as the need for greater power draw from the monitors.

If the lid is open, however, you can keep the power unplugged while still using monitors. This would certainly drain the battery faster, as the device now needs to project the display to one or more external monitors.


How to reset your keyboard on OS X 10.10.4 My keyboard number pad has been messed up ever since I installed OS X 10.10.4.

The numbers type as follows:

when I press "1" increase volume key goes up as well.

When I press "2" the ' key comes up as well.

"3" some wired key.

"4" ] comes up.

"5" [ comes up.

And "6" the equals sign comes up.

And vice versa for the concurrent keys. 7 and 8 as well as their shift keys work fine, 9 highlights everything in shift and goes to the beginning.

I've tried a reinstall and a separate Bluetooth apple wireless keyboard I have seems to work fine.

Please help I've scoured the Internet for answers, nothing has worked.

You would have to open up your mac and unplug the keyboard cord power up the mac and then plug it would be a hard reset


Useless Eject key on Apple Wireless Keyboard I have an Apple Wireless Keyboard that has an eject key on the top right. It is useless because my Retina MacBook Pro does not have a CD-ROM.

My MacBook is running OS X Mavericks and I expected eject key to do some power operations, just like the power key on the top-right of MacBook keyboard.

This key is useless now. How can I get it mapped?

The wireless keyboard can be used with systems that do still have an optical drive, and if you had an external USB SuperDrive for your MacBook Pro, it would function for that.

Your power operations have always been on the eject key using modifier keys; only recently was the power key introduced as part of the keyboard itself.

controleject will give you a dialog box where you can choose to go to sleep, restart or shut down.
commandoptioneject will go straight to sleep.
controlcommandeject will restart.
controloptioncommandeject will shut down.
controlshifteject will sleep your display only.


Missing HDD space after diskutil command I wanted to merge 2 partitions disk0s2(unused space) and disk0s4(OS volume)

My disk looked like this:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Untitled                500.6 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_APFS Container disk2         199.3 GB   disk0s4
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                300.0 GB   disk0s5

Somewhere here I found a solution so I ran the command

  sudo diskutil erasevolume "Free Space" %noformat% /dev/disk0s2

But then the next command

  sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s4 0

Gave error:

  Error: -69519: The target disk is too small for this operation, or a gap is required in your partition map which is missing or too small, which is often caused by an attempt to grow a partition beyond the beginning of another partition or beyond the end of partition map usable space

So now it looks like this:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk2         199.3 GB   disk0s4
   3:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                300.0 GB   disk0s5

  gpt show disk0

       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1  GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640   977979728
   978389368   389234312      2  GPT part - 7C3457EF-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  1367623680   585901455      3  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
  1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
  1953525167           1         Sec GPT header

The best would be if I could make the main volume to the full space available, but if it's  too difficult it would be enough to have that 500Gb as a separate volume as it was.

Your free space is before the container, not after it. In order to expand it, you need free physical space after the container. You could try using a live CD (such as GNU Parted) to physically relocate the blocks of the APFS container to start at 409640, but this is perilous and should not be done without a backup.


Macos login from terminal (Terminal/iTerm) takes long time with high CPU When I open the terminal (iTerm/Terminal), login process consumes %100 cpu and waits for 1-2 minutes before the shell appears.
I have been googling for some time, I tried to remove asl files, reset user permissions, used custom login command with hushlogin flags... But no luck.
I have done dtrace on login process and saw that the process does a lot of file scanning.
Some example lines:
  678/0x1bd8:  open("/.vol/16777220/1716443\0", 0x8004, 0x0)         = 5 0
  678/0x1bd8:  getattrlistbulk(0x5, 0x7FFE4B00AE08, 0x7FFE30050000)      = 2 0
  678/0x1bd8:  getattrlistbulk(0x5, 0x7FFE4B00AE08, 0x7FFE30050000)      = 0 0
  678/0x1bd8:  open("/.vol/16777220/1716352\0", 0x8004, 0x0)         = 5 0
  678/0x1bd8:  getattrlistbulk(0x5, 0x7FFE4B00AE08, 0x7FFE30050000)      = 4 0

I have a large (8MB) dtrace logs file that I can share if you need it.
Any idea what would be happening?
(on Big Sur but the issue was there on Catalina as well.)

After more digging, it turned out that the slowness of login was caused by lsof.
login calls lsof at some point which takes very long time to finish.
After some trials and errors, I had to reset max file descriptors limit to default to solve the issue.
I don't know the exact relationship between lsof and max file descriptors limit but it turned out that large max file limits slow down lsof dramatically.


App to plot my hike on google map? I'm looking for an app that will periodically plot my coordinates on a map which I can directly or through an export/import, put onto a google map. Is there something that does this?

Kinetic

For all my tracking needs I've become a fan of Kinetic. Accuracy is good. The customizable screens mean you can tailor the view for the activity. For example: I have a simple screen for when I ride my bike that's easy to access when I'm moving fast, versus a more complicated screen I'll use on hikes.

The routes are exportable via email in formats that Google Earth and Maps will happily read (like KML).


Show ringtones and books in iTunes library In my iTunes (12.3.2) I want to have ringtones and books show up under library.  But only Music & Purchased shows up under library. I went to iTunes preferences/general and did not get the option to have those two ringtones and books show up.

Ringtones are called Tones in my version of iTunes (12.3.2.35), and are already shown on the top left of your screen capture.

If not, you can click the ··· menu and edit it to make them always visible.

Purchased books and audiobooks are shown on the iBooks app on OS X and iOS.


X11 for CrossOver on Mountain Lion In my newly-installed Mountain Lion system: when I try to run CrossOver, which requires X11, I get the following error message:

Apple's Web Page indicates that this is not the expected behavior:

  X11 install on demand

  X11 on Mountain Lion now uses install on demand. When you first launch an app that requires X11 libraries, you are directed to a download location for the most up-to-date version of X11 for Mac.

Does anyone know how to download X11 for Mountain Lion?

If Apple's dialog for X11 does not appear, you can grab the package directly from the XQuartz website.

Version 2.7.1 was the first to support Mountain Lion, but 2.7.2 is the current release as of this writing.


Recompiling bash to avoid shellshock seems to have messed up bash I probably shouldn't have even messed with it, but I followed the instructions to recompile bash here:
How do I recompile Bash to avoid Shellshock (the remote exploit CVE-2014-6271 and CVE-2014-7169)?

Following that recompile, if I run something like wget from terminal, I get the following:
-bash: wget: command not found

And that's not the only one. A lot of the usual bash commands seems to have disappeared for me. How do I do a complete revert of bash back to normal but with the current apple supported bash patch(es)? Is there a better way to fix my problem?

Well, wget isn't installed by default on Mavericks. You could install it through homebrew though.

If you installed wget yourself at one time then you may just need to adjust your $PATH to find it again.

PATH=/path/to/wget:"${PATH}"

Take a look in /bin and /usr/bin to see what tools are installed and try one of them to see if Bash is working correctly.


Lubricant for Sticky Home Button on iPhone 5S? The home button on my 5S is sticky.  It still works, if I apply extra pressure.  Is it safe to add a bit of WD-40 or some other lubricant?  Recommendations for the best lubricant to use?

It would probably be best to take your iPhone in to the Apple Store (I have had luck in the past with them replacing my iPhone when there is a hardware issue, even when I did not have an AppleCare plan for the device); however, if you are willing to risk possible (although probably unlikely) damage to the internals, you could put a small drop of rubbing alcohol on the home button and press it repeatedly until it is no longer sticky.


How to see Archive Box The Archive Box is not displayed in my Sidebar, yet I can archive mail.
How do I get the Archive Folder to display, so i can retrieve my archived emails?

You would need to go to you on-lie gmail account and there turn of the "All Mail"

In gmail (on-line) click on the gear (top right), and select Settings.

In settings select "Labels" find the All Mail and enable "show in IMAP".

Your are done, it should now show as Archive folder in your Mac Mail.


Can I change iCloud ID I originally created an Apple ID for use on the App Store in iTunes.
When Apple introduced iCloud my Apple ID ended up being used.

I would like to separate these. I don't want to lose my app purchases (which I would like to share with family), so creating a new iCloud ID seems the best option.
I can't find any method of changing. Is this possible?

I assume if I create a new iCloud ID it would need to resynch everything.

They don't have to be the same. Sign out of iCloud in Settings and set up the new Apple ID. Then, if that Apple ID's also been applied to the stores, go to one of them, sign out, and sign back in with your store Apple ID.

Source: My own experience - my iPod Touch works fine with my own Apple ID for iCloud and my family's Apple ID for the stores.


Spoof device as locked There is an app called "Pocket Points" where you gain points for having your phone locked in class. I am curious if there exists a tweak that can spoof your device being locked so that it registers as if the screen were locked and blacked out and gives you points, but you can still use the device normally. If this doesn't exist, is it even possible to create?

You can try using Flex to see if there is a simple method that it uses to detect whether the device is locked, at which point you can override the return boolean to always return true. Without being able to run the app, I can't create a patch myself, but search for methods with names such as ‘lock’.


Outlook 2011: Keyboard shortcut to assign categories? In Outlook 2011, is there some way to assign keyboard shortcuts to specific categories, so I can categorize messages without having to use the mouse to select the drop-down from the Categories menu in the Ribbon?

Yes, you can do this.

Open System Preferences.
Select Keyboard.
Select Keyboard Shortcuts.
Select Application Shortcuts in the left navigation pane.
Click the + button to create a new shortcut.
Choose Microsoft Outlook.app in the Application drop-down menu.
Enter the exact name of the menu command you want to add. E.g. for an Outlook category named "Project X" enter that category name, "Project X."
Click in the Keyboard Shortcut field and press a unique keyboard sequence such as Control-Option-T.
Click the Add button.

For some more ideas about how you could add keyboard shortcuts to Outlook:Mac, check out "Unleash new uses for keyboard commands in Outlook for Mac" in the Office:Mac Help Blog.


Any way to trigger Folder Action when adding file to any subfolder? I've created a Folder Action in Automator and applied it to a folder. But it only gets triggered when a file is added to the root of that folder, not to one of its subfolders.

Is there any way to get Folder Actions be trigger when changes occur in subfolders?

(And, no, I do not want to apply the Action to each subfolder; they are always changing, so I need it to be dynamic.)

You should take a look at an amazing app called Hazel, from Noodlesoft which will trigger even AppleScripts to folders.


macOS sierra 10.12 screen captures - how to edit system files? Is there a possibility to edit the following files in macOS 10.12 Sierra:

/System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/Resources/German.lproj/ScreenCapture.strings

and

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

I want to change the following things of the Screenshot-Files:

Filename
Location
Date and time Format in file name (no, that could NOT be done via System Preferences!)

Previous naming scheme: Screenshot 20161004_162222.png

Naming scheme now: Screenshot 2017-08-07 um 17.02.08.png

I want to revert to the previous scheme.

My problem is, that I can edit both files, but only on the second I can also save them.
BatChmod nor chmod in terminal can change permissions on first file

ls -la /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/Resources/German.lproj/ScreenCapture.strings
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  1390 Feb  2  2017 /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/Resources/German.lproj/ScreenCapture.strings

sudo chmod 777 /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/Resources/German.lproj/ScreenCapture.strings
Password: ***
chmod: Unable to change file mode on /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIServer.app/Contents/Resources/German.lproj/ScreenCapture.strings: Operation not permitted

There is no need to disable SIP and hack /System files to change the filename and location of screenshots. Use the following Terminal commands to set your preferences:

#SCREEN CAPTURE
# Show/ Don't show date in Screenshot filename
defaults write com.apple.screencapture include-date -bool false

# Save screenshots in PNG format (other options: BMP, GIF, JPG, PDF, TIFF)
defaults write com.apple.screencapture type -string "png"

# Save Screenshots to location:
defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Desktop/Screenshots

# Disable Screen capture's shadow
defaults write com.apple.screencapture disable-shadow -bool true

# Change the filename
defaults write com.apple.screencapture name [yourFilename]

You may need to quit and relaunch the SystemUIServer, (or restart).

If you need a more specific workflow, then you can modify or process the files with a Folder Action script, to run when they are created.


Moving iTunes library from Macs with different OS I recently bought a new MacBook Pro to replace my old MacBook.

The old MacBook has my entire iTunes library on it and is currently running Snow Leopard.

The new MBP is running Mavericks.

How can I move the entire library to the new MacBook?

I tried the instructions on the support site, but they do not make sense to me because the folder names are not called the same thing in both OS's.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Though maybe a bit hard to locate the relevant information in this this support article, once found, it's easy to follow.

I would proceed as follows:

Consolidate your iTunes Library on your old machine.

Make sure the following is checked: iTunes > Preferences > Advanced > Copy files to iTunes Media Folder when adding to Library. Click OK. Note you can also see the path of to your library in this pane.
Next, File > Library > Organize Library... > Consolidate Files. For earlier versions of iTunes, this may be File > Library > Consolidate.

Copy iTunes Library to an external Hard-drive

You can find the location of your iTunes Library from the "Advanced" pane mentioned earlier. By default, the location is ~/Music/iTunes/. Find the path from this pane, select it, and copy it using Command+C
Open Finder. Use the key combination  Shift+Command+G to bring up a "Go to folder" window. Paste the copied path here and click ok.
Drag the folder named "iTunes" to the external HDD. Let it copy. Depending on the size of your Library, this could take a bit. Once it has completed, eject the external Hard drive

Copy iTunes Library to new computer

Connect the external hard drive to your new machine.
Open Finder. Use the key combination  Shift+Command+G again and copy the following path, exactly as shown, into the pop-up window: ~/Music/
You will see an iTunes Folder present. Drag it into your trash.
Next, open the external drive, and drag the iTunes folder from the external drive to the same (now empty) Music folder on the new machine.
Open iTunes. Your original library, including the metadata (playlists, etc), should now be present on the new machine.


Mac calendar app (iCal) displays error message "server responded with an error" After upgrading to Mojave, the mac calendar app displays the following error when starting the app.

"server responded with an error"

Is this a problem with Mojave and the gmail server? The error message does not give any further details on the cause of the error.

When I use the mac email app, everything works as it should with receiving and sending emails through gmail.

The attached screen shot shows the error in detail.

Try following sequence.
In System Preferences, Internet Accounts, deselect all Calendars to stop the sync.
Wait for a while for the process to stop.
Than click on the "Revert to Server"

Re enable Calendars.


Cannot SSH into Cisco switch or pfSense router from Mac Mini (macOS High Sierra 10.13.6) Errors message in Terminal are (switch 1st, router 2nd):

MacMini:/ MacAdmin$ ssh NetAdmin@192.168.3.2  #Switch
Unable to negotiate with 192.168.3.2 port 22: no matching key exchange method found. Their offer: diffie-hellman-group1-sha1
MacMini:/ MacAdmin$ ssh NetAdmin@192.168.3.1  #Router
Unable to negotiate with 192.168.3.1 port 22: no matching key exchange method
found. Their offer: curve25519-sha256@libssh.org,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256

UPDATE 1:
Using Pete's suggestion below, I receive this error about "no matching MAC found"

MacMini:/ MacAdmin$ ssh -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256 192.168.3.1
Unable to negotiate with 192.168.3.1 port 22: no matching MAC found. Their offer: > hmac-sha2-512-etm@openssh.com,hmac-sha2-256-etm@openssh.com,hmac-ripemd160->etm@openssh.com,umac-128-etm@openssh.com,hmac-sha2-512,hmac-sha2-256,hmac->ripemd160,umac-128@openssh.com

Here is the output of my SSH config file (/etc/ssh/ssh_config):
MacMini:/ MacAdmin$ cat /etc/ssh/ssh_config
#   $OpenBSD: ssh_config,v 1.33 2017/05/07 23:12:57 djm Exp $

# This is the ssh client system-wide configuration file.  See
# ssh_config(5) for more information.  This file provides defaults for
# users, and the values can be changed in per-user configuration files
# or on the command line.

# Configuration data is parsed as follows:
#  1. command line options
#  2. user-specific file
#  3. system-wide file
# Any configuration value is only changed the first time it is set.
# Thus, host-specific definitions should be at the beginning of the
# configuration file, and defaults at the end.

# Site-wide defaults for some commonly used options.  For a comprehensive
# list of available options, their meanings and defaults, please see the
# ssh_config(5) man page.

# Host *
#   ForwardAgent no
#   ForwardX11 no
#   PasswordAuthentication yes
#   HostbasedAuthentication no
#   GSSAPIAuthentication no
#   GSSAPIDelegateCredentials no
#   BatchMode no
#   CheckHostIP yes
#   AddressFamily any
#   ConnectTimeout 0
#   StrictHostKeyChecking ask
#   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
#   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_dsa
#   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ecdsa
#   IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
#   Port 22
#   Protocol 2
   Ciphers aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr,aes128-cbc,3des-cbc
   MACs hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,umac-64@openssh.com
#   EscapeChar ~
#   Tunnel no
#   TunnelDevice any:any
#   PermitLocalCommand no
#   VisualHostKey no
#   ProxyCommand ssh -q -W %h:%p gateway.example.com
#   RekeyLimit 1G 1h

Host 192.168.3.1
HostkeyAlgorithms ssh-dss,ssh-rsa
KexAlgorithms +diffie-hellman-group1-sha1
MacMini:/ MacAdmin$

Update 2:
I don't know how to properly edit my SSH config file (/etc/ssh/ssh_config) but I have a decent workaround with this command:
ssh -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256 -oMACs=hmac-sha2-512-etm@openssh.com RouterAdmin@192.168.3.1

Try this:

ssh -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 192.168.3.2
ssh -oKexAlgorithms=+diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256 192.168.3.1

If I'm reading it right, you've set the cipher for 192.168.3.1 (router) to diffie-hellman-group1-sha1, but it only offers diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256 in the DH family.

More info on OpenSSH legacy connections here. Related to that, SHA1 ciphers have been deprecated for good reason - they're considered unsafe or broken, so it would be pertinent to investigate whether your router or switch software can be updated to a modern, more secure version.


Can I copy the PDFs I have on my Mac to the iPad? Can I copy the PDFs I have on my Mac to the iPad ?

I want to download them from example from Google Scholar with the Mac (or iPad) and then read them on the iPad.

There are 3 main routes to get PDF to your iPad:

Drag them into iTunes and have iTunes sync them in the iBooks tab. Other apps will allow management of PDF as files at the bottom of the apps tab in iTunes.
Use another program like PhoneView to drop them directly to the iPad via USB.
Move them within iOS - mobile mail, mobile safari and other apps will detect that iBooks (and other apps) can read PDF's and offer to move them for you. There are truly hundreds of apps that will receive PDF just like iBooks will. Just a few that are mature, widely adopted and well designed are iDisk, Dropbox, AirSharing but I'll keep this focused on your transport question and leave the comparison of which app on iOS is best for it's own thread.

Which one is best depends on your workflow, but knowing all three may help you be more nimble.


Unusual Dock Icon Appearing in OS X 10.10 Yosemite Lately, I've been getting this unusual "clone" of the Chrome icon appearing at the left side of my Dock. It comes out randomly. Initially, I thought it's a new feature that binds the iPad session on Chrome to the one in Mac.

The position is very odd (left side of the Finder). And whenever I click it, it merely opens a random commercial site. That's when I felt suspicious.

Is this a new feature that simply needs to be disabled, or is this a malicious program? Any idea how to remove this?

That is Handoff and a natural feature when OS X and iOS devices are signed into the same iCloud account. This works if you have iOS 8+ or OS X 10.10.x Yosemite. If you have a supported application then you will be able to open it on your Mac right where you left off on your iOS device.

Looks like you was running Chrome on your iPad at the time.

If you wish to disable Handoff on a Mac, open 'System Preferences' and select 'General'. It's the check box labeled "Allow Handoff..." towards the bottom of the window pane.

If Bluetooth is off, Handoff is disabled as well.


How to install Windows 7 on a 2015 MacBook Pro? The SSD on my 2014 MBP cratered the other day. While it's off at the shop, my employer bought me a new one.

The problem: I need to dual-boot into Windows 7. Boot Camp Assistant in OS X El Capitan refuses to use anything older than Windows 8.

Notes:

I'm a developer. Some of the libraries we're using will not work under anything other than Windows 7. I'd love to update them - hell, I'd rather just use OS X all the time - but that isn't going to happen.
I cannot use a VM. Really.
Because 3D acceleration under any available VM - Fusion, Parallels, VirtualBox - sucks.
Yes, I actually need 3D acceleration to do my job.

I went ahead and flashed a USB stick with the Win7 ISO and installed rEFInd. rEFInd will not, so far, acknowledge any USB drive that I have. I've tried two different USB sticks (both USB 3), nothing.

Really, don't suggest a VM. It's not going to work for my application. At all. Seriously.

All things considered, I'd rather just downgrade this thing to Mavericks. Life was easier and it didn't have this ugly flat gray dock, amongst other things.

I would recommend just installing Windows 7 as you would with Windows 8 +.

Substitutes:

Hold down the option key while turning on your computer instead of using refind, this will give you a boot menu.

Uncheck all the options in boot camp, except the option to install drivers to a usb stick.

Go to disk utility, make a new partition, and set it to MSDOS FAT.

Start up your Mac, booting from the usb stick(hold down option key while turning on your computer). When prompted for an install disk, choose the partition you made. Go through the rest of the install process, and then plug in your driver usb. Find the setup.exe, and go through the it's install process.

Then you should be all set.