Where can I find a list of available OS X "Extensions"? OS X Yosemite introduced Extensions, which are listed in the Extensions panel in System Preferences. Currently, the list of "Actions" extensions on my OS X system contains only one item, "Markup".

How can I find more applications and utilities that can be installed as extensions? Is there a categorical list of extensions somewhere?

I tried searching the Mac App Store as well as Googling in general, but "extensions" is such a general term that it produces far too many unrelated results and makes it difficult to find true system extensions. Ideally, I'd like to find a list specifically about proper extensions (if such a list exists), or a better way to search for them (if there is one).

You can search the Mac App Store for apps supporting a specific extension type. For example, searching for appex:com.apple.share-services will show apps that support the share extension. Not all macOS apps are distributed through the Mac App Store, so this isn't an exhaustive list.

Common Mac Extension Types are listed below:

Action: com.apple.ui-services
Audio Unit: com.apple.AudioUnit-UI
Content Blocker: com.apple.Safari.content-blocker
Document Provider: com.apple.fileprovider-ui
Finder Sync: com.apple.FinderSync
Photo Editing: com.apple.photo-editing
Share: com.apple.share-services
Today: com.apple.widget-extension


Migrating an old physical Windows PC to a virtual machine on the Mac I have a soon-to-be-retired Sony Windows XP PC and I want to transfer it to my Mac and run it as a virtual machine on my Mac.

I have used Parallels and VMware before on a Mac but I have always created a new image and installed a fresh copy of Windows on to it and run it successfully.

I have never done a physical to virtual conversion before, especially with such a kooky PC as the Sony which has special keyboard buttons, a built in TV tuner etc and probably has many Sony specific drivers installed.

I would like to know:

Which virtualization software is most likely to be successful?
What is the procedure to transfer the image, presumably over the network?
Whether transferring such an old but patched up to date Windows installation is worth it?

Perhaps it may be less hassle to build a clean, new XP image rather than import the Sony?

Have you tried using VMWare vCenter Converter? It's a free utility.

Check your Windows XP license string. If it's a OEM license string, don't attempt the following conversion.

From memory, these are the steps in using Converter:

Power on the Sony and connect to your network. Install Converter package on another Windows PC with the disk
capacity to hold your Sony disk image, launch Converter, allow it to install the Converter agent/service
software on the Sony. Begin conversion, you're storing the converted Sony disk image on the Converter
workstation.

From your Mac, map a drive to your Converter workstation, import the stored Sony disk image to either the Parallels or VMWare Mac client software.

When you start the disk image the first time on your Mac, you'll be required to supply the license string.

These aren't finely detailed steps, but you get the idea.


Automatically typing a password into terminal I want to be able to change the password of a disk image, but fully automated. Is there a way to enter a string as a password instead of plain text? Or can I have a .txt file with nothing but the password, and somehow import that into the password field? Thanks very much.

You did not mention what tool you are using to effect the change of passphrase, but from a shell command line, hdiutil probably makes the most sense.

Its chpass subcommand will let you change the passphrase of an encrypted disk image. It can be told to read the old and new passphrases from stdin. However, it requires that the passphrases be presented in a “NUL terminated” format, which is difficult to accomplish when typing them directly. You can use the printf command to create the required format though:

printf '%s\0' '01d Pa55w0rD' 'n3w p4ssWoRd' |
  hdiutil chpass /path/to/encrypted.dmg -oldstdinpass -newstdinpass

The passphrases should be given in the same order as the -oldstdinpass and -newstdinpass parameters (in the example above, the -oldstdinpass parameter and the old passphrase itself come first in their respective contexts).

Note: If you are in a multi-user environment there is a chance that another user could spot your passphrases by watching the list of processes and their associated command lines (e.g. the printf command and its argument (thus your passphrases) might show up in the output of ps -ef). This is less likely if you are using a shell where printf is a built into the shell itself (e.g. ksh, bash, zsh do not require using a separate process for the external printf command).


Checking number of reallocated sectors of HDD through Disk Utility, Mac OS X My MacBook was purchased in 2008. Yesterday I checked the number of reallocated sectors of the hard drive using Disk Utility. It showed there were no reallocated sectors. That seems strange since I haven't replaced my hard drive since 2008. Can I rely on Disk Utility for this information or I need to download additional software?

Reallocated sectors frequently (but not always) appear when a hard drive stars to fail. Just a few back-of-the-envelope calculations here:

If you bought your computer in the beginning of 2008 and used it 24 hours a day, you'd have used about 32,000 hours of hard drive time. I don't know what model of hard drive your computer has, but the mean time between failures for not-pariticularly-impressive hard drives from that era is about 300,000 hours. So in the heaviest-use scenario, you've used your hard drive for about 10% of its expected life.

I don't think there's anything strange about a lack of failed sectors at this point.


How to reinstall system apps How can I reinstall some system apps?

There could be different reasons for that:

I've removed some of my system apps and now I regret (actually not).
Before I brought my computer to service center to replace corrupted memory it caused erratical disc writes which not only damaged some documents that I worked on but also corrupted some system apps (the part about documents is true).

I've found how to reinstall some of them.

Mount or your installation media.
You may have hidden BaseSystem.dmg in your installation media (for me it's in root).
Copy that BaseSystem.dmg somewhere and mount it to. It may contain Safari and Utilities:

Now you can just drag them in /Applications if you need them


Reading PDFs on iPad without iTunes syncing I am trying to read for an exam and I want to download exercises to my iPad. I have downloaded the exercises from here. I have no Mac laptop or desktop computer. I am tired of clicking every pdf one-by-one.

Trial 1: I bought the GoodReader app for iPad, but its developer said that I need a Mac computer (or something with iTunes) to download the folder like above. I have no Mac computer.

Trial 2: I am now trying things with iBooks software on my iPad:

How can I easily get them to iBooks without Mac?
How can I edit iBooks (iPad) directory on Ubuntu?
Is this easier with Amazon Kindle rather than with iPad?

I am not much interested in how you really get the PDFs from such directory structure to the iPad or other device, I am just trying to get more paperless because my printer is broken and not comfortable to read just with laptop.

Perhaps related:

How can I study efficiently and paperlessly?

Put your PDFs in a folder structure on your computer, in DropBox, or on a computer somewhere online that you have FTP or SCP access to.

Then, in GoodReader, sync that folder. You can do it locally over WiFi and SCP or WebDav, remotely over SCP, or through DropBox.

Once the PDFs are in GoodReader, you can read them offline, mark them up, etc. If you set up bi-directional syncing, then when you are back online you can sync your notes back to your laptop.


How to Pair an iPhone 4 to an iPhone 3GS using Bluetooth I have an iPhone 3GS that has a data plan and tethering enabled. It is running iOS 5.1.1

Being an iPhone 3GS it only does tethering over bluetooth and USB, not WiFi.

I also have iPhone 4, a 1st-gen iPad, and a year-old MacBook Pro.

I have been able to connect to the internet from the iPad to the iPhone 3GS over bluetooth (started System Preferences --> General --> Bluetooth on both devices, Paired the iPad with the iPhone etc.).

I have also been able to connect to the internet from the MacBook Pro to the iPhone 3GS over bluetooth (started System Preferences --> General --> Bluetooth on the iPhone, Set up a Bluetooth Device on the Mac, Paired the Mac with the iPhone etc.)

However, I cannot connect my iPhone 4 to the iPhone 3GS via bluetooth.

When I start up bluetooth preferences on both devices, they do not see each other. Since I cannot see the device, I cannot pair.

The iPhone 4 is also running iOS 5.1.1, same as the iPad.

Any reason why I cannot see or connect from the iPhone 4?

You can’t tether an iPhone to another iPhone. For that, you would need to jailbreak.


Change the icon of an applescript-called notification With OSX Mavericks we now can make notifications with applescript pretty easily. However, there doesn’t seem to be a way to change the icon that appears to a custom one. Is there a way to accomplish this?

As of the Apple Documentation display notification does not have a parameter to change te icon.

Display notification will use the icon of your script. One of your option is to change the icon of your bundle (cf screen).


Xcode: Archiving a project to generate .ipa but export is not an option in Organizer I am a member of the Apple Developer program for my team and I have all the provisioning profiles in place and codesigning, but when I run Product -> Archive and get the Organizer pop-up, Export is not an available button for me.

I only have Distribute App and Validate App available as buttons. I am unclear what to do from here since all the documentation I have seen online says there was supposed to be an Export button available.

I am using Xcode 10.1 on High Sierra.

So unless I am mistaken, with Xcode 10.1 on High Sierra at least, you will not find an Export button after running Product -> Archive in the process of generating an .ipa.

When you get the pop-up Organizer, instead, you want to click on the Validate button and just follow the prompts, once successful, then you can click on the Distribute button which will direct you to a pop up prompt asking you for method of distribution.


Macbook Pro Retina 15'' - High CPU temperature I've seen a few similar questions on here but none seem to have a good answer, nor seeing the temperature levels I'm seeing.

Notebook is only a month old and just installed iStat Menus and noticed that the "CPU Die - Digital" sensor temperature is consistently over 80℃.

Currently it is 96℃ with the CPU at 85% idle, all load averages of 2.3.

The lowest I've managed to get it is 49℃ by killing almost everything running. The highest is 103℃, by booting multiple virtual machines. From what I've read, this is 2℃ off the shutdown temperature for the CPUs… and the fans were only running at 3800/4000.

So, is this normal? Have I got a dud MacBook or is iStat Menus to blame?
Can't seem to find out how to read the sensors via command line.

Lets me try to help you to understand what is going on here:

Any third party software uses the already available information from your Mac as designed by Apple that uses thermal diodes attached to different points in the system. Apple has done a lots of work to correctly manage the thermal load already.

The coding and the mathematics to covert the given information correctly in to the Temperature readings outputs by third party software could be tricky, so use it with grain of slat, since it varies a lot from Hardware (diode) + EFI + CPU types from system to system. In English, the third party software's are not always calibrated for your specific system.

Note from Intel:

  Intel® Processors have built-in thermal protection. If the processor
  gets too hot, the built-in protection shuts down the computer. If your
  computer is not over-clocked and is running under the design
  specifications, the built-protection can help prevent damage to your
  system.

High Temperature readings:

If you use a third party software to measure the temperature or the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) readings, contact the software vendor to ensure the software is validated to work with your processor.

If you still want to know more or you see weird Temperature reading, please go to Intel web site and look for your specific CPU specifications. It can not be hotter outside then inside since the CPU is the source of heat, otherwise your computer will just shut down initiated by Intel's CPU internal protection.

However, if that happens (the shutdown by the CPU), then you need to repair your cooling system (fans + heatsinks ect.)

So I just looked up at Intel for my Intel Core i5 (1.8 Ghz)
and it shows Maximum temp to be 105 Degree Celsius and it has the build in thermal protection.


Stuck Notes with a Midi Controller and GarageBand 10.0.1 In GarageBand 10.0.1 (2013), I frequently will get "stuck notes" (i.e., a certain key will continue playing as if held down when it is not) when playing my Akai MPK 25 connected via USB. I have noticed that GarageBand receives the "note off" signal, because when recording and a stuck note happens, the sound is not recorded onto the score or registered on the track. Furthermore, the "stuck note" stops if I press the "play" transport control, even if there is nothing in the song.

Thus, it appears to be a Core Audio issue of some kind. I've tried some tests with the "Midi Studio" window of the "Audio MIDI Setup" application. If GarageBand is open in the background, notes will stick if I persist testing long enough, but the note off chime always plays at the right time when keys are physically released.

Incidentally, this bug stopped happening in Garage Band 10.0.2; I can no longer reproduce it.


What are these two "Dialup Device"s that suddenly appeared on my Macbook Pro? Today I have realized that there are two weird additions to the list of Network Devices on my Macbook Pro (High Sierra). It kind of freaks me out especially because of the weird non-latin characters associated with one of the devices.
Is it something potentially dangerous? Could it be an attempt for hacking?

Most probably they appeared if you have ever connected to some other devices (other mobile phones, for instance) which shared their internet connection with you OR for charging.

Another possible reason is that someone near you has a device with the ability to create a personal Wi-Fi hotspot. Your computer is able to detect this so will add it to your list of available providers.

You can safely delete them. No, this is not dangerous and doesn't look like an attempt for hacking.

Also, check this for security: Prevent my Mac from connecting to an unsecure Wi-Fi network?


Download iOS updates using a File and not from iTunes or have to connect to Internet According to this article, one can upgrade iOS using the following methods

via Wireless
via iTunes

So, is it possible for user to download the iOS as a file (and not via iTunes) and later copy to the iPhone and update it from the phone without having the phone to connect to the internet?

Yes, it's possible. Here's a good list of download links for all iOS versions for the iPhone:
http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=750

Note that you must download the version that fits your iPhone (3Gs, 4, 4s, ...).

You can find more of these lists by searching the web for something like "ios IPSW download links".
After downloading a so called IPSW file you can simply install it by following these steps:

Connect your iOS device to your Mac or PC
Select the device in iTunes
On a Mac, hold down the “Option” key and then click on
“Update”
On a Windows PC, hold down “SHIFT” key and then click on
“Update”
Select the IPSW file you just downloaded and click “Choose”

The update should then continue as usual.


Reassociating QuickLook file associations Today I noticed the QuickLook feature stopped displaying .jpg, .png, and .pdf file previews.  Desktop icons for these types don't show thumbnails.  Pressing SPACE with the file selected in Finder just shows the iconic type of file it is.

And I've tried the CNET recommended fixes:

qlmanage -r
qlmanage -r cache
checking in /Macintosh HD/System/Library/QuickLook/, /Macintosh HD/Library/QuickLook/, and ~/Library/QuickLook/
removing the files called com.apple.quicklook.ui.helper.plist, com.apple.quicklookconfig.plist, and com.apple.QuickLookDaemon.plist

Other QuickLook file types work well.

At first, it looked like the control was taken over by Lytro:

2016-02-29 17:53:52.461 qlmanage[2351:64583] [qlinfinite] Instantiated plugin in host with identifier (null)
2016-02-29 17:53:52.461 qlmanage[2351:64583] [qlinfinite] Found 61 system generators
2016-02-29 17:53:52.462 qlmanage[2351:64583] [qlinfinite] Registered generator CFBundle/CFPlugIn 0x7f96e9818e00 </Applications/Lytro.app/Contents/Library/QuickLook/LytroLFR.qlgenerator> (bundle, loaded) for type public.jpeg

Reinstalling the new Lytro desktop, things changed.

More disturbing was this... Dropbox seems to be taking control:

$ qlmanage -m plugins | grep -i public.image
  public.image -> /Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator (2)

Creating a new account on my Mac shows things working fine. So it has to be something about my configuration ...except that I have no ~/Library/QuickLook directory, and I also do not have any ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.[Qq]uicklook* entries either.

At this point, multiple reboots, even with Safe Mode do not resolve the issue.

Is there a way to reset the QuickLook associations back to default?

Also, could someone post their qlmanage -m plugins output from a working system?

More weird, previewing via the command line using qlmanage -p anyimagefile.jpg from the Terminal works just fine!

That said, it does emit this cryptic error:

2016-02-29 19:10:41.835 qlmanage[3873:130464] *** CFMessagePort: bootstrap_register(): failed 1100 (0x44c) 'Permission denied', port = 0x8f03, name = 'com.apple.coredrag'
See /usr/include/servers/bootstrap_defs.h for the error codes.
2016-02-29 19:10:42.028 qlmanage[3873:130464] *** CFMessagePort: bootstrap_register(): failed 1100 (0x44c) 'Permission denied', port = 0xbb37, name = 'com.apple.tsm.portname'
See /usr/include/servers/bootstrap_defs.h for the error codes.
2016-02-29 19:10:42.029 qlmanage[3873:130464] *** CFMessagePort: bootstrap_register(): failed 1100 (0x44c) 'Permission denied', port = 0xbc1b, name = 'com.apple.CFPasteboardClient'
See /usr/include/servers/bootstrap_defs.h for the error codes.
2016-02-29 19:10:42.029 qlmanage[3873:130464] void __CFPasteboardSetup() : Failed to allocate communication port for com.apple.CFPasteboardClient; this is likely due to sandbox restrictions

I found a similar question that had a number of debugging techniques in it.

Performing my same command line preview with a high debug setting qlmanage -d 4 -p anyimagefile.jpg | grep public.image resulted in seeing extensions registered.

[DEBUG] Registering <QLGenerator Image.qlgenerator> for public.image
[DEBUG] Registering <QLGenerator /Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator> for public.image

So, I blatantly renamed the DropboxQL.qlgenerator, which curiously had a very recent modification time on it, and suddenly the preview-using-space problem went away.

Finder still does not display icon previews for these types.

(reboot.)

Now it does.

It appears this is a Dropbox issue.  While I had raised a question on Twitter, thanks to @szabolcs for creating a forum post, where others have chimed into.

Remove the /Applications/Dropbox.app/Contents/Library/QuickLook/DropboxQL.qlgenerator file.

@user1155120 was spot on; the beta version should be unchecked on the dropbox.com site, to prevent getting unstable updates. Download a new copy (v3.14.7 as of the time of this writing in 2016-03-02) and reinstall.


Is it legal to install a personal copy of Final Cut Pro X on my work computer? I work at a private school, but also do freelance video work on the side. I own a copy of Final Cut Pro X through the App Store, and was curious if it were legitimate for me to install this on the computer that I control at the school.

In Apple's Terms and Conditions, there is a specific line that states the following:

  The Final Cut Pro X license agreement states that you are granted a limited non-exclusive license to install and use the Apple Software only on Apple-branded computers that you own or control in accordance with the Mac App Store Product Usage Rules located at http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/ww/ ("Mac Usage Rules"). Except as permitted under the Mac Usage Rules, you may not distribute or make the Apple Software available over a network where it could be used by multiple devices at the same time.

The software would only be used by myself and would exist only on the computer that is primarily controlled by me.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

You need a lawyer to decode the legality of a license coupled with the local and state and national laws where you live.

As far as decoding the licensing terms - focus on who purchased the app in Apple's eyes. If you as a consumer (non-commercial use) bought the app, then I would say you are totally in the clear installing it on computers you control especially if others are not using the computers you control and that software at the same moment as you are and if you don't lease out that app or sell/rent it. If you have 15 macs at home and one at work, there is nothing I see in the EULA that says you can't install Final Cut Pro on all of them for your sole use.


Does moving my home folder to an non-boot drive decrease performance? I'm going to get an SSD, making that my boot drive and moving the existing hard drive to the optical drive bay. I will keep my data on the original hard drive.

MacPerformanceGuide.com says "If the Boot drive is a fast SSD, moving the home directory can be self-defeating for performance."

Let me be clear. I'm talking about the home directory specifically. MacPerformanceGuide talks about the goodness of moving the Documents, iTunes library, etc. folders, but not so the home folder.

Why is that?

We are not talking about wearing out the SSD with excessive write cycles; we're talking performance.

OS X stores a considerable amount of data, from program caches to a multitude of preferences and other vital tmp files, in your home folder (Library to be precise). Shifting these off the SSD is detrimental. The system would still pull files from your speedy SSD but any cache files from your apps (both third party and default) would be pulled from traditional and cumbersome HDD.

Offloading large, static files, like music, movies, books, and other documents that benefit little from the speed of an SSD are recommended. But moving small core files that benefit greatly from solid state disks isn't. It's crucial to keep as many integral system components on your SSD as possible. A 2 GB movie or 1,000 songs won't benefit because movies don't need to be played faster and neither do songs. They may load a little quicker, and in the future, when SSDs will have TB of space, this won't be a problem anymore, but for now, it's all about triage.

I suppose you could try to micromanage this aspect but to be 100% safe, I would just move the big ticket items. An 120 GB SSD with 5 GB on it won't be faster than one with 20 GB on it.


Is there any danger to relaunching Finder while external drives are connected? I tried to do a very large copy (2TB) by copy/paste to two external drives. It hung up on the "Preparing to copy" dialog. After about 20 hours of waiting, I cancelled and that also seems to hang.

Can I unmount these drives, and/or can I relaunch Finder without worry to the data on the drives?

You can relaunch Finder without any worry, yes. Relaunching Finder won't unmount/remount the drives or anything like that. The copy operation you had started would be cancelled though.

Whether or not you can directly unmount the drives depends on whether any programs have files open on the drives. You would need to close those files (or the programs) before you can unmount the drives properly.


How do I know which App is sending Vibrate-only Notification? I have an iPhone 5s, iOS 7.1.1, with around 200 Apps installed.

Recently my phone receives some notifications which does not appear in Notification Center, Lock Screen, or Badge Icons. It only vibrates (no sound too).

How do I know which App is triggering this notification?

Go into settings>notification center. Look for any apps that only have sounds, then disable it.


OK to use higher RAM than Apple “allows” it? I am looking to upgrade RAM on a MacBook mid-2010, Model A1342. According to apple, I can only upgrade up to 4GB of RAM (currently only has 2GB). I don't want to blow up the computer if I add 8GB of RAM.
Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

There are three limitations on the amount of RAM that you can put into most Macs:

1. The number of slots in the machine.

2. The size of memory available on one RAM module.

3. Limits to the memory addressing of the memory controller or OS.

Your Mac has 2 slots, so it can only add 2 of whatever size memory cards are available. Very often, when Apple releases a Mac model, only certain sizes are available, with larger memory modules being manufactured at a later time. Apple usually doesn't make a statement on compatibility of newer modules at a later date.

Some Macs are limited to only address a certain amount of memory, either by hardware limitations, or by the OS. Adding more may not give any benefit (with only the machine's maximum being addressed), and in some cases adding more can cause poor performance. (For instance, the 2009 MacBook could address up to 6Gb of RAM.)

Your Mac can cope with up to 16 GB of RAM, if running Lion or higher.
EveryMac spec


MacBook Pro won't boot of freshly installed copy of macOS Yesterday the SSD in my 13" mid-2012 MacBook Pro died. I replaced the old one with a new one.

First I tried to reinstall macOS with my Time Machine backup, but it failed. Then I tried to install a fresh copy from Internet Recovery Mode, that failed too. My last resort was to make a bootable USB on another Mac and install it that way. At first it seemed to work, but when it boots the drive does not show up as bootable.

I tried running Apple Hardware Check, but could not access it. It just showed a folder with a question mark.

Is there anything left to do?

Alright, I found out what the problem was. I was talking to a local IT-guy, he said, that SSDs from than manufactor, ADATA, wouldn't work with macOS.
So the only solution was to buy another one.


Create a command to focus a specific window from anywhere in OS While developing for the web I tend to jump back and forth between my text editor and the browser a lot. I'd like to set a keyboard shortcut at the OS level that allows me to jump to a specific, definable window every time. Even better would be the ability to issue a tell that application to execute something, but I'll save that for later.

Are there technologies available that will let me do this? There must be something between C and AppleScript that let's me create this kind of an interaction. Does anybody know where to begin?

Thanks.

You might do something like this with AppleScript:

tell application "Terminal"
    activate
    windows where name contains "bash"
    if result is not {} then set index of item 1 of result to 1
end tell

Or using System Events:

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Terminal"
    set frontmost to true
    windows where title contains "bash"
    if result is not {} then perform action "AXRaise" of item 1 of result
end tell


How do I open a file with an extension of .accdb? I got a file contain extension of .accdb
I don't know how to open or which software to use to read this file

.accdb are most likely Access 2007/2010 database files. You can try to open them with Openoffice or Neoffice (free open source office suites).


Child process exited with status 254 error when extracting a tar.xz file I'm trying to extract a tar.xz file with tar in Mac OS X Lion. I'm using bsdtar 2.8.3 - libarchive 2.8.3. I'm able to use tar to extract anything else I've tried (.zip, .tar, .tar.gz, etc.), but when I try to extract the file (this file to be precise) using tar -Jxf cclive-0.7.11.tar.xz, I get this error:

tar: Error opening archive: Child process exited with status 254Child process exited with status 254

Same error here (tried GNU tar and the one included in OS X).

You are missing the xz compression program which tar tries to use.

Either install a precompiled xz from Sourceforge or, if you are like me, download the source from http://tukaani.org/xz/ and compile it yourself:

$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

(Unless told otherwise, ./configure installs xz in /usr/local/bin. You possibly want to add it to $PATH.)

Then:

$ xz --decompress cclive-0.7.11.tar.xz
$ l cclive-0.7.11.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 jaume 1832960 2012-12-12 15:18 cclive-0.7.11.tar

Now untar as usual:

$ tar xf cclive-0.7.11.tar


Why doesn't defaults read` work for obtaining ShadowHashData key in user.plist? I've read how to obtain the user's password hash on OSX using sudo defaults read /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/user.plist ShadowHashData.

However, after giving Terminal "Full Disk Access" on macOS Mojave, I get the following error:

The domain/default pair of (/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/user.plist, ShadowHashData) does not exist.

However, the ShadowHashData key can be read by plutil and dscl, so why don't defaults work?

Edit:

dscl (works for obtaining user's hash):

nlykkei-mbp:~ nlykkei$ sudo dscl . -read /Users/nlykkei dsAttrTypeNative:ShadowHashData
dsAttrTypeNative:ShadowHashData:
 62706c69 73743030 d2010203 ...

defaults (doesn't work for obtaining user's hash):

sudo defaults read /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/nlykkei ShadowHashData
2019-08-07 09:16:32.697 defaults[1123:33825]
The domain/default pair of (/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/nlykkei, ShadowHashData) does not exist

whoami (user's identity):

nlykkei-mbp:~ nlykkei$ whoami
nlykkei
nlykkei-mbp:~ nlykkei$ id
uid=501(nlykkei) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),502(access_bpf),12(everyone),61(localaccounts),79(_appserverusr),80(admin),81(_appserveradm),98(_lpadmin),33(_appstore),100(_lpoperator),204(_developer),250(_analyticsusers),395(com.apple.access_ftp),398(com.apple.access_screensharing),399(com.apple.access_ssh),701(com.apple.sharepoint.group.1)

uname (OS version):

nlykkei-mbp:~ nlykkei$ uname -a
Darwin nlykkei-mbp 18.6.0 Darwin Kernel Version 18.6.0: Thu Apr 25 23:16:27 PDT 2019; root:xnu-4903.261.4~2/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

defaults (works without domain argument):

nlykkei-mbp:~ nlykkei$ sudo defaults read | head -n 10
{
    "Apple Global Domain" =     {
        AKLastIDMSEnvironment = 0;
        AppleKeyboardUIMode = 3;
        "com.apple.sound.beep.flash" = 0;
    };
    bluetoothaudiod =     {
    };
    "com.apple.AppleMultitouchMouse" =     {
        MouseButtonDivision = 55;
 ...

The ‘read’ verb for defaults takes a domain, not a filename, therefore the .plist suffix should be omitted.

sudo defaults read /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/user ShadowHashData


How to schedule Mac software updates at a particular time in Yosemite? I saw this helpful answer, but cannot find the Software Update.app file when I search for it on my Mac (Yosemite) to insert it into the iCal event.

So how can I schedule software updates on Yosemite?

How are you searching for it?  If in Spotlight, don't. The Software Update.app bundle is exactly where the reference states that is it!  Its fully qualified pathname is /System/Library/CoreServices/Software Update.app and you can see it in Finder by starting in the root of the Macintosh HD or if in iCal when selecting the file to open, make sure you start navigating to it from the root of the Macintosh HD (or whatever the name of your HD is).


Transfering files from PC to ipad 3 with out using itunes Just got an Ipad3 and want to transfer files from PC/Win7 to Ipad 3 with out using Itunes.

In addition to iGameRam's answer, you can transfer files by either a dropbox or iCloud or other cloud solutions.  Depends on the file types and applications that you wish to use them with.


How does the Facebook Camera App know who I am the first time I go into it? If you have the Facebook App on your iOS device, and you download the Facebook Camera App, the first time you go into Facebook Camera, you get:

Continue as David W.

(or whatever you're name is)

In iOS, all apps are suppose to store documents under App specific folders. There is a keychain for storing passwords and other credentials, but again, this is application specific. I even found documentation explaining that although Safari can download certificates, they must be imported into particular apps. The idea is to sandbox each app, so a security issue in one app doesn't affect the security of the entire device.

So, how does the Facebook Camera app know who I am if it can't get data from the Facebook App itself, and can't use Facebook App's data from the keychain?

This was covered by MG Siegler over at Paris Lemon last week, the explanation of how it does it is here.

Basically, iOS provides it's own Keychain functionality and if you know the Keychain key, then you can save and read data between apps that you write.  In this case, the Facebook Camera app is reading data saved by the Facebook app.


Deleting VPN Configuration Files From Network System Preferences Unfortunately I used a bad VPN service called VPN OneClick Pro. When you uninstall the app it does not remove the VPN configuration files it creates in Network in System Preferences.

So in other words, when you open System Preferences and then click on Network, to your left you always see your Wi-Fi, Ethernet, Firewire, etc. VPN OneClick Pro places about 28 VPN Configuration files. The minus button "-" has been greyed out so removing them is impossible.

How do I remove the remnants ?

To remove the VPN Profile from your Mac:

System Preference > Profile > Vpn One Click > Remove.


To install Blockdev in OSX? I did not find the command in Brew of Yosemite 10.10.3.
I am reading the command developed from here:

pv -s $(blockdev –getsize64 /Users/masi/Dropbox/1/r3.raw)

I think blockdev is Linux specific command at the moment and not existing directly in OSX.

How can you install Blockdev in OSX?

If you want to get the size of a mounted block device (which is what blockdev -getsize64 does), you can use the following:

diskutil information <device> | grep "Total Size" | sed -e 's/[^(]*(([^Bytes)]*\).*/\1/'

If you want to do the same for a file, you can use the following (amongst many others):

stat -f '%z' <filename>


Not able to extract any .gz or .tar file (Mac OS X 10.5.8) I have Mac OS X 10.5.8. I am not able to extract .tar or .tgz files with any of the extractor utilities (Mac OS Default Archiver or WinZip or 7zip or any other, I have tried almost all possible).

Each of them give same error:

  "Unable to unarchive. (Error 32 - Broken pipe.)"

There is no problem with archived files, I can extract each of them when I use same extractors on Windows.

Would someone please help me with this?

Does it work from a terminal for tgz files? Open a terminal and cd to the folder that has the files and try something like this:

tar xvzf file.tar.gz

Or for plain tar files:

tar xvf file.tar


How can I stop loading external images in Mail.app? I get a ton of spam every day and it makes me crazy that to mark it a spam or delete it I have to select the email, which opens it and loads all its images.

We all know spam emails contain distant images that are used for tracking, and opening the email is bad as it marks my email address "active" to spammers.

Many email clients have an option to prevent loading external images by default, is there a way to do that with Mail.app?

Mail.app > Preferences > Viewing > uncheck "Load remote content in messages"

You will then have this banner at the top of each message that contains remote content (just in case you do want to see the images):

Aside: I still see the occasional image in a message when looking through my spam folder. As best I can tell when I "view raw source" the spammers are including the image in the message text itself (there is a large block of text that looks like gibberish to me), but I'm not an expert on what is going on there. It might just be a bug in this feature.


Can I make an iTunes playlist comprised solely of songs that lack iTunes genius information? I'm looking to make some lemonade with the "lemon songs" that iTunes genius doesn't know how to catalog. One such example currently is an obscure song called "Polythene Pam" by some beatles boy band with bad haircuts walking on abbey road.

I'm aware that for some people, this song has enough matches for genius to make a playlist - I want to exploit my specific library to make a list of all the songs that currently won't make a playlist. Basically is there a way to get at genius results and create a playlist based on that status in a systematic way.

I'd love to make a smart playlist to exploit this and collect tracks for listening based on the idea that "if genius can't match this song to others in my library, it's worth a listen". This song is either too new (or obscure) and genius won't match it on anyone's library no matter how complete, or that song is so different than the others in my library that it stands out as a singleton.

Basically I'm asking if the Smart Playlist criteria are extensible as I want a Has Genius flag similar to the Has Artwork flag to make a playlist where this is false.

I'd also consider a script or third party software that could periodically make a traditional playlist if I can't automate it with a smart playlist. I am not looking for alternatives to iTunes or genius. Thanks for any ideas you might have!

I'll answer that it's not currently possible in hopes that someone can answer this and prove I'm wrong on this.


Average photo size with iPhone SE How much MBs take an average iPhone SE Photo? I want to compare it with iPhone 5 file size.

The max storage for iPhone 5 was 64 GB, for iPhone SE its 128 GB. If the average file size are double as large as for iPhone 5 than it mean near the same amount of photos can be stored.

In a highly unscientific test, I just took 24 varied photos (textures, objects, macro, landscape, etc.) with my iPhone SE, with Live Photos off, and found the average size to be about 2 MB.

NOTE: my iPhone SE is running iOS 10, so is not using HEIC (High-Efficiency Image Codec) encoding, which can save approximately 50% of the file size without sacrificing quality. If you install iOS 11, you may find the images are significantly smaller.


Closing other tabs in terminal on Mac? I am using iTerm2, but I wouldn't mind switching back to the original terminal for just this feature.

I open hundreds of SSH tabs every day and often end up working after a while only working on 1 terminal and other SSH tabs don't really matter anymore. In the browser at least you have "closer other tabs", "close left tabs", "close right tabs".

Is there any way to have a "close other tabs" in a Mac OS X terminal?

As a work around, you can drag the tab you want to keep to a different window, then close the first window with the extraneous tabs and they are all gone with one click.


Downgrade from Yosemite OS to Mavericks OS: -2003F message error Please I wanna ask you if you can help me to resolve this issue.

I have make a handling to downgrade from Yosemite OS to Mavericks OS.
After this, my Mac cannot start up, it displays a folder with question mark
I've tried to boot with (cmd + R) but I got this strange error "-2003F"

Try to boot in Safe Mode (Cmd+x) to see if it boots. If not, try to boot in single user mode (Cmd+s) and have a look at the output on the screen. It may be able to give you more information to help you solve this issue or post screenshots here.


External SSD not being recognized by newer (retina) MacBooks So I'm in a rather strange situation. I have an SSD, and I am using a SATA to USB 3 adapter (basically an enclosure, as it is called) to connect it to my laptop. This worked fine with a mid-2012 MacBook Pro.

I tried to use this SSD with with a retina late 2012 MacBook Pro, only to find that it wasn't recognized at all by the MacBook. It didn't show up in the Finder, in Disk Utility, or even in the "System Information" USB section. It seemed as though it wasn't even connected. The USB ports on the MacBook are functional.

I tried formatting it with macOS Journaled, exFAT, and even NTFS, but to no avail. I decided to see if this would happen with other MacBooks. I connected it to another retina MacBook Pro, and it wasn't recognized. I connected it to a MacBook Air, and it was. When I formatted it to exFAT I connected it to a Windows computer, and it was recognized (and that's how I tried formatting it as an NTFS drive).

As some additional information, when I connect the SSD to the MacBook Pro, the enclosure light lights up, meaning that power definitely goes to it. However, it doesn't blink at all (which would suggest some operations were going on).

So from this, although I haven't tested an exhaustive list of computers, it seems as though the SSD won't work with newer, retina MacBooks. Is there any explanation for this? Is there any way in which I could make it work again? Is there a problem with my SSD, the adaptor, the USB 3.0 Micro-B 10 Pin to USB 3.0 Type A wire that I am using? Or is there a problem with newer MacBooks in general which don't allow such SSDs to be connected to the laptop with this adapter (which seems like the most likely of these)? Are there any drivers I need to install for it to work? (This doesn't sound likely, though).

Has anyone here had any luck with connecting an external SSD to their (retina) MacBook Pro?

Running diskutil list after connecting the external SSD, as was suggested by Allan in the comments, gives this output:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            120.5 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            Macintosh HD           +120.1 GB   disk1
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2
                                 XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX
                                 Unencrypted

This is the same output that I get when I don't have the SSD connected.

It seems like, since the SSD is not recognized at all, and:

The USB ports fully function
The SSD fully functions (with older Macs and Windows computers),

the only conclusion to come to is that the adapter uses drivers which are not present in newer MacBooks. Even if the old and new MacBooks are on the latest version of macOS (Sierra as of writing this), there is some connection between the adapter and the hardware you are trying it on.

Solution: use a different adapter (this solved my problem!)

Many thanks to Allan for his help resolving this issue. This answer has been posted with a different account by has been written by the same person who posted the above post (I lost access to that account somehow.) Likewise I can't choose this as the answer to the question, but if Allan sees this and writes his own answer, I will delete this one and vote him up. (I can't ping him as I have <50 rep)


How painful is it to use multiple Apple IDs with the MAS? I have two different Apple IDs, associated with Apple Stores in different countries. On my iPhone, some apps were purchased with one ID, some with the other. This used to be really painful in iOS 5, but it's not so bad in iOS 6: the system detects all apps that need updates, no matter what account I am currently using for the App Store, and it asks for login information for the other account when it needs to update an app purchased with it.

On my Mac, all apps were purchased with a single account (including Mountain Lion). However, the other account is associated with the US store, which tends to have better prices, so I'd like to buy some apps there. But how bad is the experience going to be? Is the Mac App Store going to detect updates for apps in both accounts, and install the updates with minimal fuss? Or am I going to miss out on half the updates, potentially including OS updates?

I would like to understand the exact experience I'm facing before I go this way, because I don't want to have the same mess I had with iOS 5 on my Mac.

Not really, I personally used multiple account. You see update notifications for both accounts; however, to perform the updates for apps purchased with another account you have to manually log out and log into the other account.


I just bought the wrong album on iTunes. How do I give it back? I just bought the wrong album on iTunes. How do I give it back?

http://www.apple.com/support/itunes/

Contact customer support via e-mail and hopefully you can get a refund.


How can I filter http requests by type in Safari 6 Developer Tools? In older versions of Safari and Chrome you can filter http requests to only show xhr requests for example. This seems to have been removed in the Safari 6 developer tools.

Am I missing something, an undocumented hot key?

In the Instruments panel (the icon of the stopwatch), click Network Requests on the left. You should then see the timeline on the left, and a list of requests underneath. Click the Type column heading to sort the requests by type and then all the XHR requests will be grouped together.

Alternatively, in Safari's Develop menu, you can select "Use WebKit Web Inspector" to switch back to the old inspector.


Cisco AnyConnect fails on El Capitan - Unable to locate host scan library I am facing below error on my MacBook which runs on El Capitan, when I try to connect to VPN it says Posture Assessment failed: unable to locate hostscan library.

Mac OS 10.11 requires Cisco AnyConnect 3.1.100 or later.


PPPoE Auto-connect when unplugged I have a PPPoE internet connexion that I use on my Macbook Pro.

There is a checkbox in the settings that allows to automatically reconnect when needed - which is good. However the system is not smart enough to stop trying when I unplug the Ethernet cable.

When I unplug the Ethernet to go away, it keeps telling me every 5 minutes that it failed to connect. Until I uncheck the autoconnect feature. Then of course when I get back home I have to re-check it - which defeats the purpose of "automatically" connecting.

1) Easy solution: use Sidekick to automatically change your network location (and a whole lot of other settings) depending on which network you are on.

  Aside: Sidekick is the new version of an app which was previously known as NetworkLocation.app but it has been completely re-written. I was a beta-tester for the app, but I'm also a paying customer of it, and have no other connection to the app.

The app costs $29, but there's a demo that you can use to see how it works before you buy. Highly recommended.

2) If you want a free solution, you could write a shell script that runs via launchd. First you'd need a plist file, something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>AbandonProcessGroup</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>localhost.networkmonitor</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/path/to/your/shell/script.sh</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>120</integer>
    <key>WatchPaths</key>
    <array>
        <string>/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/</string>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Change /path/to/your/shell/script.sh to whatever path you end up making to your shell script (and make sure that the script is executable):

chmod 755 /path/to/your/shell/script.sh

The hard part is the script itself. There are two ways to do this:

"The SSID Way"

Basically you have to find some programmatic way to tell when you are home (i.e. when you want to use PPPoE) and when you don't.  The easiest way to do that is by figuring out which Wi-Fi network you are on.

  NOTE: I am going to assume that you have setup a new network location called "PPPOE" that you want to use when you are home, as opposed to the generic "Automatic" which will be used elsewhere.

The first part of the script could look like this:

#!/bin/sh

    # Apple provides a utility called 'airport' but it's buried outside of the normal $PATH
    # so you'll have to call it directly (or link it to somewhere in your $PATH using 'ln -s')
    # this is the correct path for Snow Leopard and Lion. I think it had a different path
    # in earlier versions of OS X but I'm not sure
AIRPORT='/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport'

    # get the SSID of the network you are connected to
SSID=`${AIRPORT} -I | awk -F": " '/ SSID:/{print $NF}'`

Then you need to take different actions depending on the SSID, which would look something like this (change 'mySSID' to whatever your home SSID is)

if [ "$SSID" = "mySSID" ]
then
    # Select your 'PPPOE' network location (or whatever you called it)
    scselect PPPOE

else
    # If we are not on that Wi-Fi network, select the default 'Automatic' network location
    scselect Automatic
fi

If you do NOT have a home Wi-Fi network, then you would have to look for the absence of an SSID, which might look like this

if [ "$SSID" = "" ]
then
    # no Wi-Fi network found, let's assume that we are at home
    scselect PPPOE

else
    # if there is a Wi-Fi network, let's use the 'Automatic' network location
    scselect Automatic
fi

exit 0
# (End of script)

Potential pitfalls: when the computer first 'wakes up' it will take a few seconds to connect to a Wi-Fi network, so you may need to add some 'sleep' commands in there to avoid switching locations before all the network information has updated.

"The Ethernet vs Wi-Fi Way"

For the purposes of this discussion, "Ethernet" means "the computer is plugged into a network by a physical cable."

If you only use Ethernet at home, another option is to disable your Ethernet port when not in use (which I assume means that PPPOE will not try to connect, but that may be an incorrect assumption).

I already wrote a script that does that, which you can find here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/18414/ase/29227/wired-no-wifi.sh which you could use with launchd.

Note that script assumes that your Ethernet port is en0 and your Wi-Fi port is en1.

launchd note

I assume that you know that your plist for launchd should be stored in ~/Library/LaunchAgents and that after you add a new one you either have to logout/login or use launchctl load like this:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/YourLaunchdFileHere.plist

Seriously though, try Sidekick

All of a sudden $30 looks pretty cheap, doesn't it ;-?

Yeah you can geek out and do this on the command line, but Sidekick can do all this and more, and much more easily. Unless you're extremely poor, cheap, and/or nerdy, I highly recommend that over launchd -- but I still love being able to get "under the hood" and tinker with this sort of thing.


Change the default action to open executable files in the editor instead of Terminal When double clicking an executable file (without a file extension) in Finder, it opens in Terminal by default. I can change that to any other application for this single file, but I cannot change the default for all files.

Is there any way to do that?
I never want to open executable files in Terminal, and I'm missing that functionality since NeXTStep, which had a hidden default for that.

Run plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.launchservices.plist and add an entry like this under LSHandlers:
<dict>
    <key>LSHandlerContentType</key>
    <string>public.unix-executable</string>
    <key>LSHandlerRoleAll</key>
    <string>com.macromates.textmate</string>
</dict>

You can also change the default application for normal files with no extension:
<dict>
    <key>LSHandlerContentType</key>
    <string>public.plain-text</string>
    <key>LSHandlerRoleAll</key>
    <string>com.macromates.textmate</string>
</dict>

You can apply the changes by restarting. Just logging out and back in doesn't seem to work. You could also rebuild the Launch Services database, but it has the side-effect that the warnings about opening applications for the first time are shown again.
Another option is to add something like this to a duti configuration file:
com.macromates.textmate public.unix-executable all
com.macromates.textmate public.plain-text all

To make this question more searchable, here is the error message Finder shows when you try to change the default application for executable scripts:

The operation can’t be completed.
An unexpected error occurred (error code -50).


View individual artists in compilation albums? I can't seem to set up my music collection so that when opening a compilation album on my iPad it shows a list of songs on the compilation album along with the artist of each song.

In iTunes on my computer it displays as expected - the song name appears with the artist below it in the compilations album:

When synced to my iPad and clicking on the same compilation album it displays without the artist name:

Note also that the album artist name below the album thumbnail is one of the track artists.

The settings for this album in iTunes on my Mac are:

Each song has their artist name and song name completed.
Album artist is left blank
Compilation is ticked.

Why are the results correct in iTunes on the computer, but not on the iPad?

I've written “Various Artists” in the Album Artist field, and ticked the Compilations box. It works fine for me in iTunes, on my iPad, iPhone, iPod nano and my ATV. So my suggestion is to try write something in the Album Artist field.


How to open new Finder window in current space quickly? When I create a new Desktop (space) in Mission Control, how can I quickly open a new Finder window in that space?

Right now I have to right-click on the Finder icon and hit New Finder Window, because if I left-click on the icon it brings me to the already open windows in another space.
I do want to keep this behaviour for when a Finder window already exists in the current space. I can then switch back and forth by clicking on the icon.

However, in a space where no Finder window is present, ideally I would click on the Finder icon and a new window would appear. Shift clicking is also fine.
Can I achieve this behaviour somehow?

Just click on the blank desktop space to activate the Finder  and then CMD+n

-EDIT.

Or

Save this Applescript code as an Applescript Application.
Drag it to you dock next to your finder iCon and click it when you want a new finder window.

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    make new Finder window
end tell


How to launch a terminal which executes vim from a script? Basically, what I want to achieve is something similar to gnome-terminal -e vim in Linux.

It will launch a vim window and when I quit vim with :q, the window will be closed.

How can I do this with Terminal?

First create a wrapper script for vim:

#! /bin/ksh
#
# vimwrapper
#
#
/usr/bin/vim

Make the script executable- chmod 755 vimwrapper and call the script like this

open -a Terminal.app vimwrapper


Adding a Time Machine destination fails with OSStatus error 17 I'm trying to add a specific, external server as a Time Machine destination. It's not discoverable via Bonjour (always at least, I want to use time machine backup over the internet) so to get it to show up in the Time Machine preferences I have to connect to it. I can then add it from Preferences. The weird thing is if I try and add the other destination which is visible via bonjour it works just fine, despite being able to mount the share normally in Finder.

Digging through the console I found this telling error:

NetAuthSysAgent already_mounted: share <TIMEMACHINE> already mounted

TIMEMACHINE is my share name in this case. As the error suggests, Time Machine is trying to mount the share again which it can't do because it's mounted already. But wait! If I disconnect from the share will leave my list!

Here's where some weird UI trickery comes in:

Connect to the share using Finder
Open Time Machine preferences, click 'Select Disk', and then double click the disk at your desired address (in my case I wanted my FQDN). You should now be at the authentication prompt.
With the authentication prompt still open, go back to Finder and eject the share
Sign in to the waiting prompt

and the disk should be added! I've never had this issue before but it's come up on High Sierra which as it turns out has some really bad AFP/SMB bugs.


Why do colors appear washed out on macOS Chrome and Safari versus Firefox? I'm using a new MacBook Pro 15" with macOS 10.13.4 configured with the default Color LCD color profile. I'm doing some graphic design work and noticed that all colors in Chrome and Safari appear "washed out" when compared to Firefox. The latter has more saturated/vibrant colors. And this happens to native HTML/CSS elements (i.e. not images only).

Here's a screenshot of the SmashingMagazine homepage with the comparison (Chrome on the left, Firefox on the right). Notice how the colors are more vibrant in Firefox (right):

If I change my display's color profile to sRGB IEC61966-2.1, then both Chrome and Firefox look the same.

Why is this? Any help is greatly appreciated.

To Get Firefox looking like Chrome and Safari
By default, Firefox only applies color correction to images that have embedded color profiles. You can enable full color management to apply color correction to everything, including colors defined in CSS. Then it should look more like Chrome and Safari.
In about:config (type that in to the address bar), set gfx.color_management.mode to 1.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Firefox/Releases/3.5/ICC_color_correction_in_Firefox
Color Correction, Over Simplified
Monitors have different response curves. For example, the difference between #FF0000 and #FA0000 may be noticeable on some monitors, and not on others.
Color profiles contain the skews to compensate for this by altering the actual output, in an attempt to preserve contrast and overall accuracy of the intended appearance. They can be applied to monitors, printers, and other devices.
Many image formats support embedded color profiles; think of it boiling down to descriptors on how it’s supposed to look. If the system knows the inaccuracies of your monitor, it can combine that profile with the image’s profile to skew the output for the best possible reproduction.
When it comes to things without profiles, such as color values in CSS, some assumptions about intent must be made.
Let’s say your monitor does indeed produce a discernible difference between the two similar colors mentioned before. You use those colors in your CSS. The assumption is that your intent was to show the subtle difference. Some monitors out there may end up displaying the same color on the screen, despite the two colors being sent to them. Color correction alters the colors sent to the screen so a subtle difference actually is reproduced. If you wanted them to appear the same, you’d have just used #FF0000 and never bothered with #FA0000, right?
Digital Color Meter is aware of color profiles in use. This is why it gives different values over the same image across two different displays, and different values depending on what color space you’ve selected.


Macbook Pro won't boot into OSX (circle with line through it), but Windows works fine When I try to boot into OSX, after 30 seconds or so the Apple symbol is replaced by a circle with a line through it.  If I try single user mode, it stops at a certain point before booting entirely and says "waiting for root device."

However, I was able to successfully boot into OSX after trying five or so times.  Then, after running for a few minutes it froze up.  I've been able to repeat this a couple times, but 90% of the time it just shows the circle.

I do not believe this is a hardware problem because Windows works fine (I am typing this from Windows), but it doesn't scream "software problem" because it's intermittent.

Any advice?

PS: I replaced the stock hard drive last year with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820171569

I found a blog post http://www.klein2.de/does-apple-drop-the-intel-x25-m-ssd-support-with-10-8-3/ that seems to describe my problem, but I doubt that it is for the same reason.  The screenshot with the black background is exactly what I see when I try to boot into single user mode.

I brought it to the Apple store where they replaced the hard disk cable for free (possible thanks to Applecare). OSX works again.  This solution defies logic to me; I didn't think it could possibly be a hardware problem because Windows worked fine.

I am including the relevant parts of their problem writeup below:

Issue: Mac OS partition boots to a prohibitory symbol.
Windows partition can run fine
Occurred after waking from sleep, computer froze completely
Steps to Reproduce: Observed at bar
MRI passes, third party memory
Booted to 10.8 installer and internal drive did not mount
Booted to storage diagnostics and no hard drive detected
Proposed Resolution: Replace hard drive bracket, has third party drive, run storage diags after bracket and see if drive is recognized


iOS 10.3 and Audi, Bluetooth audio no longer works. Anyone else? Since updating to iOS 10.3 the Bluetooth audio on my iPhone 6s no longer works with my Audi (2014 RS4).  The phone calls still work, but no audio apps work - they appear to play and the meta-data appears on the car screen, but just silence.  Most frustrating.

Does anyone else have this issue?  I would like to check before I send a bug report to Apple, so I can see if I can narrow-down any causal factors.

(it looks as if at least one other person is having this issue) http://www.audizine.com/forum/showthread.php/758173-iOS-10-3-problem-with-media-as-input

My Audi MMI version is HN+_EU_AU3G_P0767

Thanks

Well, Aren't I a fool! It seems that the iOS update for some reason decided to reset the system volume to zero (but only when connected to that Bluetooth device).

The apps that I used to test didn't have the volume slider visible on screen and the car volume controls don't 'pass-through' so it only appeared silent.

Adjusting the iPhone system volume via the physical buttons on the phone brought the audio back....


Customise Restrictions passcode on iphone I know you can customise the iPhone main passcode to strengthen the security but there doesn't seem to be that option when doing the same when setting up restrictions. After I have written it down somewhere I don't want to remember the passcode, and I definitely will if't it only 4 numbers.
Is it possible to write an app for something like that?

Very much doubt Apple would allow any app to access that API.
The restrictions passcode is so hard you need to wipe the phone & start over if you forget it.

If you really don't want to know what the code is, get someone else to set one & not tell you what it is. You then have the opportunity of changing your mind later, assuming they remember it.


Is 110 degrees fahrenheit on average bad on a 2019 MacBook Air? (And other problems) I've been using my MacBook air 2019 for quite some time now (9 months) and I've been getting 110 degrees fahrenheit on average with simple use like google chrome or safari. In fact, the highest I have gotten it to reach was 184 degrees fahrenheit. Is this normal? Does anyone else get this issue? Do you think a hard reset could solve this issue? I would like to mention that I have not downloaded any software that takes up much battery. Also, when I'm only using google chrome, my mac tends to only have 100 or fewer megabits of free ram. Another thing that I would like to mention is that my MacBook's REAL battery capacity has been going down by 2% every month. Does anyone know why I'm having all of these problems? Any response would be helpful! Thank you!

Is this normal? Yes.

Does anyone else get this issue? Yes.

Do you think a hard reset could solve this issue? No.

As for the battery: some 'settling' over the first few months is expected, but I'd try to take it to Apple before it's 12 months old.


merging separate Notes setups in iCloud I have a question about the Notes app and how it interacts with iCloud. I own both an iPhone and a Mac and I am using iCloud on both of them with the same account.

A lot of things like Photos seem fully sync'd between those two locations and iCloud.com, as far as I can tell.

However, on my iPhone in the iCloud settings, I still have Notes switched to off. On my Mac in the iCloud settings, it is switched on. As a result, Notes is exactly the same between my Mac and iCloud.com, but on my iPhone it is different.

On my iPhone I have several folders in Notes: "On my iPhone", as well as several additional folders for several different email accounts (e.g. Gmail and Yahoo). All of the folders have different notes in them.

What will happen if, on my iPhone, I turn Notes on in the iCloud settings? How can I consolidate this? I think what I would ideally like is to just merge everything together so it's one folder, but I don't want to lose any notes in the process. I might settle for just merging the "On my iPhone" folder with what I have in my Mac if that is possible (The Mac/iCloud.com notes are all in one folder).

Thank you in advance.

If you enable Notes under iCloud settings on your iPhone you will then have an iCloud section in the Notes app.  In the Notes app you will still have the section 'On My iPhone' with all your previously save notes in there.  You will not lose them be enabling Notes under iCloud settings.  After you enable the Notes feature under iCloud settings you can transfer the 'On My iPhone' notes by going into the Notes app, selecting that directory.  Then select edit at the top right, you will now have to option 'Move All' at the bottom left.  If you select Move All you can then select the iCloud notes directory to merge them with the rest of your iCloud notes.  They will then sync and show up on your iCloud account as well as any other devices using iCloud notes, including your Mac.


Install Windows on MacBook Pro without Optical or USB Boot I have a Mid-2010 MacBook Pro (MacBookPro6,1) and my optical drive has died. I need to install Windows on it, and was hoping to do so via Boot Camp.

I have a Windows 7x32 .iso and have also created a (nominally, untested) bootable USB stick via the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool. Using the tip on this page I can mount the disk image locally and get Boot Camp to create the Boot Camp partition, but when I reboot I see "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key". Presumably this is because I cannot boot from USB on this older model MacBook Pro.

I've purchased Paragon NTFS in the naïve hope that creating a NTFS partition and copying the ISO or bootable USB to that would work, and tried using rEFIt to boot from such devices. In both cases the end result is a black screen with flashing underline, but no further message.

I also have an external drive (USB and FW800) that I can format and partition in any way that might be helpful.

Is there any way I can get Boot Camp/Windows 7 working on this machine…other than replacing my optical drive with one that works?

You can boot from an external USB drive from this MacBook Pro. Use bootcamp to copy the ISO on a 8Gig (or more) USB Drive. Then boot from it by pressing option at the boot chime.


Change highlight color for deadkey previews (like accents: `´^¨) in terminal app I've been tweaking the theme / color preferences in the Terminal.app a bit, after a while I found that when pressing a diacritical mark/accent/dead key there's a highlighted yellow rectangle showing a preview of the accent you're inputting. Here's an screenshot:

It turns out is not editable from the terminal preferences. In fact it seems like a system wide setting.
But it IS incredibly annoying to guess what it is displaying with a dark background + lighter text color in the terminal app:

Is there anyway to change that yellow color to correctly read those symbols no matter what text/background color is?

Check System Preferences > General > Highlight color to see if this yellow color has been selected. Perhaps another color would work better for your setup.


Is it possible to disable or remove the iTunes Artwork screensaver? The iTunes Artwork screensaver is, IMO, an abomination. I like using a random screensaver but I do not want to see that one, ever.

Apple, in their infinite wisdom, or lack thereof, seems to have decided that screensavers are mission critical and can never be removed, even by root.

Is there a way around this, or has Apple decided for me, again, how I should use my computer?

I really dislike the iTunes artwork screensaver too. Not so much for the artwork layout, but for the audio playback. ...and sure, if I am locking my computer with a screensaver - why would I want to advertise the music I listen to? FWIW, I am using Sierra 10.12.3

You'd think it would be as simple as removing iTunes Artwork.saver from /System/Library/Screen Savers/... but this is easier said than done.

I am not sure why

$  ls -al /System/Library/Screen\ Savers
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel    102 Oct 24 00:17 iTunes Artwork.saver

...cannot be removed from the directory with:

$  sudo mv /System/Library/Screen\ Savers/iTunes\ Artwork.saver/ ~/Desktop/
Password:
mv: rename /System/Library/Screen Savers/iTunes Artwork.saver/ to /Users/mixelpix/Desktop/iTunes Artwork.saver/: Operation not permitted

I don't see anything special in the information window:

...and attempting to change the permission by unlocking the file results in an error message:

...and the same holds true for the parent directory Screen Savers. Since the same holds for the parent directory, true I am reticent to try sudo rm -rf as I would not be able to write a safety copy back to the directory. Call me cautious...

Though I can find no reference to the connection, apparently the screen savers are included in the "System Integrity Protection" which has been a part of macOS since "El Capitan".

  System Integrity Protection includes protection for these parts of the system:

  /System
  /usr
  /bin
  /sbin
  Apps that are pre-installed with OS X

If some brave soul want to try sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Screen\ Savers/iTunes\ Artwork.saver/ please mention your results in the comments.

That said, disabling S.I.P. just to remove the artwork is an option. You could enable S.I.P. after removing the iTunes Artwork.saver file.

From "How to modify System Integrity Protection in El Capitan"

  For the following to work, you must have a proper and up to date Recovery partition on your boot drive. While that should be a given, it’s possible to clone a startup volume without Recovery installed.

  Follow these steps to disable SIP:

  Restart your Mac.
  Before OS X starts up, hold down Command-R and keep it held down
  until you see an Apple icon and a progress bar. Release. This boots
  you into Recovery.
  From the Utilities menu, select Terminal.
  At the prompt type exactly the following and then press Return:
  csrutil disable
  Terminal should display a message that SIP was disabled.
  From the  menu, select Restart.
  You can re-enable SIP by following the above steps, but using
  csrutil enable instead.

You can also use csrutil status to display whether S.I.P. is enabled or disabled. There is no man csrutil.

Between steps 6 and 7 you should be able to remove the iTunes Artwork.saver file. I'd suggest making a copy in case you ever want to put it back. Also, I have no idea if it will get re-written if you add albums to your iTunes library.


Two Login Screens with different accounts on both I have a user that was having an issue with his mac where only 1 administrative account was showing up.  He'd log in, then have to log out and could see the other two accounts (his personal account and another administrative account).

I checked filevault but his personal account was the only one enabled to use filevault, so I removed the 1st administrative account that was the only one showing up on reboot.  After removing the account (and home folder securely) we reboot the mac.

The 1st administrative account is still the only one showing up, but now once we log into this account, instead of showing the desktop, it takes us to another login screen with his personal account and the other administrative account.

What do I need to do to remove the first login screen?

I believe he is using yosemite

The first login prompt is for File Vault and shows the administrators that can unlock the machine, the second prompt is to actually login to the device and thus can be any user including guest.

To remove the double login process you will need a single administrative login account.  This account needs to be new or the password reset using the following method:

  Settings > Security & Password > Change Password ...

Alternative is to completely remove File Vault and thus one could login to the non-administrative account.  File Vault 2 is an all or nothing affair.


Can I turn an old iMac (early 2008) into an external monitor I have a dead iMac 24" (Early 2008) that has a broken graphics card (and doesn't boot up to any system), I was wondering if I could convert this into an external display for my Windows PC, because it would be a shame to scrap it. If I can't then I guess I'll just take the hard drive out and scrap it.

I believe this should be possible. However, you cannot do this without changing the hardware of the computer. What you can keep though is the display and the housing. You need to take the rest of the computer out and take a look at the back or side of the display. Somewhere around there or on the display's flex cable you should be able to find a code which you can use to buy a compatible inverter board on the internet (just google or search on eBay, it should not be this hard). Now you need to plug your display flex cable into the inverter board. Then you will find a DVI/HDMI/VGA port on the inverter board, depending on which one you bought, which you need to lead to the outside (p.e. with an adapter cable). Now you can plug your computer into the port and use the iMac as a display.
Some German guy did something similar with a modern 5k iMac with the only difference being that he bought the housing and the display specifically for it instead of recycling a Mac. Even though you probably do not speak German, this might give you a better idea of how it is done: https://youtu.be/hzTVe6aVgww
And there is also an English video where someone tried this with a Windows laptop: https://youtu.be/CfirQC99xPc
Good luck! It is always better to try to reuse old and broken electronics instead of throwing them away!


How to find an iMovie project file - Mac- iPad iMovie? I'm trying to get an iMovie onto my iPad in an editable format and I'm told you need to paste the project file into iCloud drive. I can't seem to do this.

Any other ideas on how to get the project into my iPad?

According to iMore : How to move an iMovie project from your iPhone or iPad to your Mac
you cannot transfer a project from Mac to iDevice, only from the iDevice to the Mac.

  Can I move projects back to my iPhone or iPad?

  Not at this time, sadly. You can keep working on the project file you exported—it opens in either iOS or OS X—but once you import it into iMovie on the Mac, you're stuck editing in the Mac environment.


All files in Finder show 'Date Modified' with correct days but always the same hour: 19:08 When I open a Finder window, all the file timestamps show the same hour, 19:08. The dates change, but the hour stays constant. This is also the case for time/dates shown in the Console.

The Clock on the top right shows the correct time.

A datecommand in Terminal shows the correct time.

I have zapped my NVRAM and also replaced the on-board battery.

I am using a MacPro 1,1 with Mac OS X 10.7.5

This behaviour can be seem if the date is customised in the System Preferences / Language and Text pane.

To fix this - go to System Preferences, then Languages and Text.
Click 'Formats' tab, then the 'customise' button next to 'Times'.

You should see all the elements of the proposed time formats as having light blue backgrounds.  If you see any text on a plain background this is literal text rather than a placeholder.

On previous screen, the 'Formats' tab. Change 'Region' dropdown at top of page from 'Custom' to an appropriate region for you to give you a sensible set of defaults.

To fix and keep your customised settings, delete the plain text, and then drag and drop from blue placeholders to set your time formats.  Drag the hour placeholder, type a colon and drag the minute placeholder.


In what Folder are Dock Applications are stored? At the bottom of my screen of my Mac I have a dock with different shortcuts inside.

But.. where are these shortcuts stored? In what folder exactly?

The "links" to the apps are stored in the file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist in the key persistent-apps with ~ being the "shortcut" to /Users/yourusername:

In the example above I expanded the entries for App Store  and Launchpad.  The only exception is the Finder.app. Probably it's a fixed entry "injected" by Dock.app itself.

Normally, each user has its own com.apple.dock.plist file.


How get rid of this message from cydia? I have been having trouble with this message. I cannot get any tweaks or anything from cydia anymore. How do i get rid of this message?

All you need to do is erase on source. That message is telling you you have too many packages from sources. Just delete on source.


Does send last location work with location services off? My question is simple, does send last location work even when location services are off? What are the minimal settings one needs to make it work?

Currently this is what I have:

Location services are always off;
iCloud sync is off except for find my iPhone;
In Settings > iCloud > Find my iPhone:

Find my iPhone is enabled;
Send last location is enabled;

Bluetooth is off;
Cellular network is usually on only when I'm outside; and
Wi-Fi is usually on only when I'm inside.

Related Update: With the above settings, namely with location services off and the cellular network on, I enabled lost mode via iCloud and, because there is an Internet connection:

the iPhone automatically enabled location services showing its location on the iCloud map; and
iCloud sent me an email with the approximate location of the iPhone.

This means one can have location services off, knowing that should the need arise the device can still be found as long as it has access to the Internet.

Location services need to be turned on in order for Send Last Location to work. If it's turned off, like you have it, no location will be tracked.

You can turn on Location Services in Settings > Privacy > Location Services and then turn off Location Services for each individual app if you don't want the apps to have it. Unfortunately, that's the only way to do it.


How can I update my iPhone 3gs to ios6 so my nephew can use it as an iPod? When I connect to iTunes it says I have the current update. However the version is 4.3. My nephew would like to play some games including words with friends with me and this old phone would make him a great iPod.

I had a 3GS on iOS 6 for a whole year, until I went to a 5S & iOS 7 when that was released.

It was a bit slow & clunky compared to a newer device, but it worked just fine for what I needed. My main usage was as an e-reader & iPod, plus some mail & web.

One thing I did find was that after reducing the total memory used on the device [in my case by removing about 3GB of songs from it] to about 10GB total used on a 16GB phone, it appeared to run noticeably faster than when it was near full.

Depending on how you are going to set up your nephew's phone, it's probably best to do this on his computer, setting it up as a new device under his own Apple ID [this will, of course, wipe all data from it. All apps etc would need to be re-purchased under that account] - otherwise he'll need your ID & password & also it's likely you'll be sharing the same diary & contacts etc... not really what you'd want, I presume.
You might want to see if Family Sharing would be a useful option - individual accounts, shared apps & songs, one credit card, parental controls.

Once set up as a new device, it may do the update automatically, as part of the setup process - if not...

You can source the updater file from http://ipswdownloader.com just by dialling in the required iPhone [get the latest available for that device, ie 6.1.6 as Apple will not sign anything older than the latest the device can run].

Launch iTunes, with the device connected
Hold the alt/option key whilst clicking "Check for Update". This will bring up a file-picker where you can navigate to the ipsw file & start the update process.


iCloud Messages macOS Not Available I upgraded to my iPhone and Watch (iOS and watchOS 11.4, respectively).  I've already had iMessages turned on and have been using it for years.

I enabled iCloud Messages on the iPhone but the Messages on my Watch kept showing a green bubble from my blue bubble people.

I went to this Apple page to ensure I was turning iCloud Messages on correctly and I verified my iPhone settings were correct.

The problem is with the Mac.  There's no iCloud Messages checkbox available in Messages -> Preferences -> Accounts.  I verified the macOS update was successful and I didn't get any error messages during the upgrade.

Is it just me (others can see the iCloud Messages checkbox) or has it not rolled-out to everyone yet?  Do I need to be more patient and wait for the feature to become available?

According to this site, Apple didn't push out macOS 10.13.5 yet.  That's why I don't have the option in Messages.

I got a Mac update today and I thought it included iCloud Messages.  It turns out that it was just an iTunes update.

We'll have to wait a little long to get iCloud Messages on our Macs.


Google+ hangout mic volume on iPhone4/the new iPad I'm trying Google+ hangout from my iPhone4 and the new iPad. I found that the mic volume is too small, participants can't hear my voice.

Is there any way to adjust the mic volume?

There's no problem about speaker volume. I can hear others voice.

Unfortunately, there are no options for adjusting Mic volume in iOS, as it's handled automatically by the audio subsystem. I tested this on my iPhone and where was no problem with the volume at all. If you have a case on your iOS device, make sure it's not one of the many designs that inevitably muffle the Mic by being so close to it. Secondly, I would suggest trying a pair of earbuds or Apple EarPods, anything with an inline Mic that works with your iOS device, and try a hangout then. If the others are able to hear you clearly with the earbuds/EarPods w/ inline Mic, but not so clearly when it's just the built-in Mic, I would consider taking it to Apple and at least have them look at it. It's quite possible your device could have a somewhat faulty Mic. I've had a few iPhones with faulty parts that were manufacturing errors, and Apple replaced them free.

Sorry I can't offer more help, but there's no options for adjusting the volume of the Mic in iOS, so I would look at eliminating possible physical matters.

Good luck and happy hangin'!


Why am I getting a "session could not be started with the iPad" error when syncing? This morning while trying to sync my iPad I started getting the following error from iTunes:

iTunes could not backup iPad because a session could not be started with the iPad

I've tried the following:

Deleting the iPhoto cache "com.apple.iPhoto.plist" (might be corrupt)
Running the Repair Disk Permissions from Disk Utility
Delete existing backup (might be corrupt)
Backing it up to a new account (same Mac)
Different sync cable
Different USB port
Rebooting the Mac and the iPad
Turning off Photo sync

So far, no luck. Still getting the error when trying to sync or backup my iPad. The iPhone 4 syncs fine. Running Verify Disk Permissions after the Repair still reported issues, but none of them seemed to be in any directories related to iTunes (all Java related).

FYI, it starts trying to backup, but fails at around 90%. So it would seem it has a "session started", but fails part way through.

UPDATE: I was listening to Pandora while my iPad charged and functioned as my AirDisplay when all of a sudden my iPad started rebooting repeatedly (not syncing or updating, checked iTunes.) It kept rebooting until I removed the sync cable. When it came back then it backed-up and synced fine. I'll leave this question open in case someone has any suggestions. If no one has any suggestions then I will probably delete it.

OK, I cabled my iPhone and synced. After doing that, I unchecked the sync using Wi-Fi. I then applied the change. Then, I checked sync using Wi-Fi and unplugged my phone. I then synced using Wi-Fi. It worked for me. Hope it does for someone else.


How to create Catalina.app for creating bootable disk I want to create bootable usb disk.

According to the apple help page I need to download Catalina.app

But I can't download it from App Store.

Is it impossible to create Catalina bootable disk if I already installed Catalina?

If one is already running macOS Catalina, just open Terminal and use the following command to download the latest release of macOS:

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer

Or to download a specific version, even older, use e.g.:

softwareupdate --fetch-full-installer --full-installer-version 10.14.6

To create a USB installer, then in Terminal use the createinstallmedia command, e.g.:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume

See How to create a bootable installer for macOS for details.

For softwareupdate internal help output:

% softwareupdate --help
usage: softwareupdate <cmd> [<args> ...]

** Manage Updates:
    -l | --list     List all appropriate update labels (options:  --no-scan, --product-types)
    -d | --download     Download Only
    -e | --cancel-download      Cancel a download
    -i | --install      Install
        <label> ... specific updates
        -a | --all      All appropriate updates
        -R | --restart      Automatically restart (or shut down) if required to complete installation.
        -r | --recommended  Only recommended updates
    --fetch-full-installer      Install the latest macOS Installer
        --full-installer-version    The version of macOS to install. Ex: --full-installer-version 10.15
    --background        Trigger a background scan and update operation
    --ignore <label> ...    Ignore specific updates
    --reset-ignored     Clear all ignored updates

** Other Tools:
    --dump-state        Log the internal state of the SU daemon to /var/log/install.log
    --evaluate-products Evaluate a list of product keys specified by the --products option
    --history       Show the install history.  By default, only displays updates installed by softwareupdate.
    --all           Include all processes in history (including App installs)

** Options:
    --no-scan       Do not scan when listing or installing updates (use available updates previously scanned)
    --product-types <type>      Limit a scan to a particular product type only - ignoring all others
        Ex:  --product-types macOS  || --product-types macOS,Safari
    --products      A comma-separated (no spaces) list of product keys to operate on.
    --force         Force an operation to complete.  Use with --background to trigger a background scan regardless of "Automatically check" pref

    --verbose       Enable verbose output
    --help          Print this help
 %


Why is my selfie flipped? I take a picture, facing front, and I get a reduplication of the reality in front of my with the right and left sides equivalent between earth and digital. However, once I step over to take a selfie picture reality gets reversed on the digital end, right to left and left to right. Why?

While taking the selfie, the displayed image is mirrored so you can line things up easier. This is demonstrated in the first image.

After the photo is taken, the image is unmirrored and displayed naturally. This is demonstrated in the second image.


Bash Script which calls osascript stops working when run by launchd I am trying to troubleshoot a problem with a bash script that gets called  by launchd.  Here's a quick summary

Calling the script manually by itself works fine with no errors.
Within the bash script it calls an AppleScript that posts a notification  That AppleScript works fine.
The .plist gets loaded and kicks off at the correct interval and calls the bash script.  So that works properly
The .plist is called from /Library/LaunchDaemons (so it can run regardless if anyone is logged in or not).  This means everything is run as root.

The problem occurs within the bash script which calls an AppleScript to post a notification - it just never happens.

#!/bin/bash
# ------------------------------------------------------------------

sleep 11
echo "This is a test" > test.txt
/usr/bin/osascript /Users/allan/Documents/Scripts/AppleScript/notify.scpt "This is a test" "-Test Test Test" "nosound"

exit 0

That's it.  A quick summary of what I am doing:

sleep 11 - launchd needs a min. of 10 seconds of program execution time by default.  I just put this in here to accommodate launchd
echo "This is a test" - I just write a simple string to a text file to make sure the bash script is getting called.  This file gets created with the expected string; this works.
/usr/bin/osascript /Users......blah blah blah... this fails.  This is just a simple AppleScript that takes three arguments (body, title, and sound) to provide a notification.

Running by itself or bash script that calls it, it works:

When the bash script is called from launchd it seems to just not work.  Can anyone point me in the right direction?  What am I missing?

(OS X 10.11.6)

This is the .plist I am using (yes I know it's set for a 45 second interval...I'm testing)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.user.podcastCleanup</string>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/Users/allan/Documents/Scripts/Unix/podcastCleanup.sh</string>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>45</integer>
    <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
    <string>/Users/allan/Documents</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Following is the notify.scpt AppleScript that is used to generate the notification.

on run argv

    set Message to item 1 of argv
    set Title to item 2 of argv
    set aud to item 3 of argv
    set STitle to "Terminal"
    set Snd to "Blow.aiff"

    if (aud = "sound") then

        display notification Message with title Title subtitle STitle sound name Snd
    else
        display notification Message with title Title subtitle STitle
    end if

end run

Graphical User Session Required

The error occurs because the commands in your osascript require a graphical user session. AppleScript requires a graphical user session to work.

The launchd job is running as the root user in a non-graphical user session.

Alternative Approach

In these situations, the typical approach is to split daemons in two parts – one computer wide and another within each graphical user session. A pipe or socket is frequently used to communicate.

Even as root user, there are barriers that can not be crossed in macOS.


iMAC Late 2009 - Only boots in Safe Mode iMAC Late 2009 - Gets stuck on Grey Screen with Apple Logo.

Only way to boot it is in Safe Mode

Ran Apple Hardware Test (Extended) - Came out Clean

Did Hard Drive Verify - No Issues

I have Reset PRAM

Out of ideas?

I had to take it to a Mac Repair Shop.  Bad Video Card. $180 to fix


How to force quit an AppleScript script launched from toolbar? I have an AppleScript script (to launch MySQL) that I run from the AppleScript toolbar menu. It does the job (launches MySQL), however the script doesn't seem to be quitting. And the gearwheel in the toolbar keeps rotating.

When clicking the gearwheel I can click the 'x' close button for that script, but it does nothing. There are no frozen processes in Activity Monitor.

How can I "force quit" that script?

P.S. Someone asked what's the script, here it is:

do shell script "sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server start" with administrator privileges

Ok, first off, when you are using AppleScript’s “with administrator privileges” you should not use sudo

Second, you need to send the job into the background if you want the AppleScript to finish.

The easiest way of doing that is to put the command in a shell script, like so:

#!/bin/zsh -f

/usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server start &|

exit 0

(Note the &| at the end of the line. That tells the process to go into the 'background')

Save those 3 lines to a file named something like /usr/local/bin/start-mysql-server.sh and then do

chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/start-mysql-server.sh

to make it executable.

Finally, change your AppleScript to

do shell script "/usr/local/bin/start-mysql-server.sh" with administrator privileges

and it should launch and then the gear should disappear.


iMessage: enable SMS and not MMS I have an iPhone and obviously I always use iMessage with friends that have an iPhone. I want my SMS to be sent also if iMessage is not available, so I switched on "Send as SMS" option.

Today I sent an image to a friend and iMessage was no available. If spending for a SMS in ok, I want to send images only when iMessage is available. Is there any option that can enable SMS and disable MMS when iMessage is over?

The MMS switch only disables MMS, not iMessages with picture attachments. So you can turn the MMS switch off to get the behaviour you desire.


Can you apply jailbreak tweaks to a non-jailbroken device using a file browser such as Phone Disk? Is it possible to use an iOS browser for Mac such as Phone Disk to apply a jailbreak tweak to a non-jailbroken iOS device?

It depends.

There are some hacks, such as a hidden panorama mode, which reportedly work without a jailbreak. The App to use on your Mac or PC to make the necessary changes to tweak your iPhone is called iBackupBot. I'll bet if you dig around those files, you may find more cool things.

Remember, a jailbreak consists of a firmware image which has been modified, presumably at the binary level. (Odds are that jail breakers don't have access to iOS's actual source code. So, they'd use tools like binary/hex editors.) Hacks that require binary changes can't be used without changing the code that the phone executes. Changing the binary code is the essence of a jailbreak.

However, sometimes, as in the case of the hidden panorama mode mentioned above, apps (or even parts of iOS, more below) will read "settings" or "preferences" from external files. In those cases, simply supplying another value by editing property-list files may cause the app to act differently.

Apps that tap into the Settings app to store their settings write those settings to the phone's persistent storage as property-lists, which are simply a special form of XML.

In the panorama mode example, the Camera app looks inside the relevant property-list file to check for a "flag" or a switch which will turn panorama mode on or off. There just isn't any user interface for turning the mode on or off. (For clarity's sake: The XML to turn panorama on is not in the same place that most settings are.)

Using the tool mentioned in the article, I've noticed that technically, which icons are shown on SpringBoard is also editable. There are tens of property-list files which configure the system, you just need to have access to them and know what values might be useful.

iOS uses a lot of "Property Lists" and XML, and knowing what does what can yield interesting results. Just bear in mind that most of the "useful" hacks are either available via Settings, or only via a binary jailbreak.


Photo thumbnails remain in camera roll after moving photos to computer I'm exporting my photos to my computer by connecting my iPhone 5S (iOS 7.1.1) to my Ubuntu 14.04 setup and cutting the photos from the DCIM folder and pasting them on my computer.
The photos go through alright, but the camera roll still shows the thumbnails. When I click on the thumbnail I get a white blank screen.
How come?
How can I move photos out of the phone without keeping its thumbnail in the camera roll?

A hacky and maybe risky workaround which worked for me was suggested here:

Go to PhotoData folder
Delete Photos.sqlite
Restart the iPhone


APFS doesn’t fully support AFP After I upgraded to High Sierra's APFS, afp://ipadress no long show me files on the remote computer’s APFS drive (only spinning drive shows up, and if the remote computer doesn’t have a spinning drive I cannot visit the computer). But afp://computername still works.


Does Spotlight normally index links in ~/Applications? I have installed MacVim through homebrew, and this resulted in an alias in ~/Applications that points to /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/7.3-66/MacVim.app.

Unfortunately MacVim does not show up in Spotlight searches. Is this normal?

It's actually a symlink and not an alias. Spotlight indexes symlinks to files that are treated as system files, but it doesn't show them in the GUI. It does show aliases though, so you could just command-option-drag /usr/local/Cellar/macvim/*/MacVim.app to /Applications from Finder.

Or convert the symlinks to aliases:

brew linkapps; find ~/Applications -type l | while read f; do osascript -e "tell app \"Finder\" to make new alias file at POSIX file \"/Applications\" to POSIX file \"$(/usr/bin/stat -f%Y "$f")\""; rm "$f"; done

Or if you use Alfred, it can be set to include applications in /usr/local/Cellar in the default search results.