Keynote 6.6: How can I make an object wider by animation, but not higher I want to animate a block to be wider, but not higher.

from this:

____________________
|    Some Text      |
---------------------

to this:

______________________________________
|             Some Text               |
--------------------------------------

The scale animation seems to work only with locked ratio and can't figure out how to do it.

One way to accomplish this is with the Magic Move animation.  However this will require an additional slide.  Duplicating the slides including their content will not give the appearance of a slide change, only items that are moved or changed will appear to animate, not the slide itself.  See animation below.

Create your object on one slide.
Duplicate the slide.
Resize the object in the second slide to the desired width.
Set animation on the first slide to Magic Move
Change the animation duration and/or acceleration to the desired result.

Slide one:

Slide two:

Resulting animation:


OS X 10.7 add multiple windows workgroups I have multiple Windows Workgroups on my network, Does 10.7 have the ability to add more than one Workgroup at a time?

I open up System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced -> WINS (Tab) -> Workgroup

I select/toggle between the Workgroups I need but wanted to add multiple workgroups.

Any thoughts?

Even on Windows you can only set the computer to one workgroup, so setting multiple on Mac isn't going to be possible.


How to pin a video to watch independently from Safari tabs There's a feature on Touch Bar in MacBook Pro which allows you to pin the video in Safari and watch it even after changing to another tab.
Here is the button in the Touch Bar:

What's the shortcut for this? How can I do the same in my MacBook Air with no Touch Bar?

This is called Picture in Picture mode. Using it, you can watch video in a floating frame which remains on top of all windows and is available on all the Spaces.

Picture in Picture mode is a macOS feature available on all Macs running macOS Sierra and later. It doesn't require dedicated hardware such as a Touch Bar to function. Touch Bar merely gives a handy shortcut to enter Picture in Picture mode.

Watch video using Picture in Picture on your Mac

  If you don't see a Picture-in-Picture button, hold down the Control key and double-click inside the video to open a shortcut menu. Then choose Enter Picture-in-Picture, if available.

This shortcut relies on using both keyboard and mouse.


How to show dot underscore ._ files? I want the OSX to show all kind of hidden files including ._ files too. I do not know exactly what I did, but I am successful in seeing .DS_STORE files, but not ._ files. Any idea how to achieve that?

Open up terminal, and write:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

This makes you see dot files and hidden files in a grayish tint. You open . files with right click open. I do not know why you cannot just double click them though. If it is a problem, ask a separate question on that.

Just a little bonus:
You can hide files by issuing:

chflags hidden /path/to/file

and unhide by issuing:

chflags nohidden /path/to/file


IPhone X randomly crashing while in use This started yesterday morning, and crashes about every 20 min or so of use, it was fine all night. And when it crashes, I get this red spike in battery performance.

What’s going on and how do I fix it, phone is out if AppleCare and I don't know if it'll make it two more weeks for the new phone.

First off, I would try force quitting all of your open apps and seeing if that solves the issue. It looks like 'HQ' in your list above is using quite a bit of battery.

If that fails, I would try a force restart of your iPhone. Note this is different than a standard power on/off.

Also, please confirm there is sufficient hard drive space on your iPhone. If you're low on space, really bizarre issues like random crashes can happen. I would suggest having a minimum of 10-15 GB.

If neither of the above suggestions apply, to rule out any hardware issue, I would still suggest taking your phone to the Genius Bar at Apple. You can make a reservation even if you're out of warranty.

They will run a battery of tests on your phone (for free) to let you know what may be wrong with it, and if it is hardware related, will give you pricing on a repair. Apple unfortunately does not expose these hardware tests to the general public.

They also have some limited leeway to go above and beyond for Apple customers depending on the issue you're having with your product, so keep that in mind.


Strange unidentified sound playing at random intervals I luckily managed to record the odd sound especially considering it plays at random.

Two weeks back it played about 4 times, one minute apart. Then there was nothing for a long time and now it has returned again. Two times so far today at roughly a half hour apart.

I have the following third party tools running in my top right toolbar:

BetterTouchTool
Screenflow
Skype
Dropbox
VMware
BootChamp

I have the following programs running in my dock:

Chrome
Minecraft
iTunes
Skype
ScreenFlow
Finder (of course)

Is there any app that would help me track where the sound is coming from?

It's creeping me out? Is it possible it is a virus? If so, what is a good, free antivirus software for Mac?

I would guess that it is coming from Minecraft.  Try playing all the sounds in the ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/resources/ folder and see if one is what you are hearing.

Be aware that the Library folder in your home folder is hidden by default.  To easily get there, choose the Go>Go to folder menu option (or press shift-command-G) and paste in the ~/Library/Application Support/minecraft/resources/ path.


lsof does not show all files opened in Preview app I have about 43 files opened in the preview, however, when I run lsof -c Preview, I only get a fraction of those (i.e. 8 files) which are currently opened.

This is the same output I get when using the Activity Monitor, but I would like to save the complete list of opened files so that I could reopen this list of files later on.

I have found some tips on how to retrieve the list of current files opened in this link.

Does anyone have a hint of what may be happening? Another solution that would be useful is to retrieve the list of files which were opened in the last Preview section.

EDIT:

As commented by D. A. Vincent, it is possible that the files are closed after loaded to memory. If it is possible to make a watcher of the files opened by preview, and log them to a file, this would be an appropriate solution as well. Especially if this watcher thread could be launched when user login or OS starts.

Here's an applescript solution. This should give you a complete list of open files (including the full path) in the preview app.

Also, if any AppleScript gurus come across this answer, I'd be grateful for any constructive criticism you have to offer. :)

set text item delimiters to "\n"
set myList to {}
tell application "Preview"
    set theDocs to get documents
    repeat with eachDoc in theDocs
        set thePath to path of eachDoc
        copy thePath to end of myList
    end repeat
end tell
set the_list to myList as text
tell application "Finder"
    set myFile to "/Users/YourName/YourFolder/FileName.txt"
    do shell script "date >> " & myFile
    do shell script "echo " & quoted form of the_list & " >> " & myFile
end tell

This will print the current date followed by a list of every document open in Preview. If you'd rather omit the date just remove the line:

do shell script "date >> " & myFile

Be sure to fill in the correct information on the line:

set myFile to "/Users/YourName/YourFolder/FileName.txt"

If you want to add a date stamp to your filenames, just put the following lines under the tell application "Finder" block

set time_stamp to (do shell script "date \"+%m-%d-%y\"")
set myFile to "/Users/YourName/YourFolder/PreviewProfile_" & time_stamp & ".txt"

The terminal date command has many different formats available. To read about the different options available, open your terminal and type man strftime.

After playing around a little more I realize this script can simplified even further. This is a more streamlined version that avoids some unnecessary steps from the original. But the result is the same either way.

set text item delimiters to "\n"
tell application "Preview"
    set theDocs to get path of every document as text
    tell application "Finder"
        set time_stamp to (do shell script "date \"+%m-%d-%y\"")
        set myFile to "/Users/YourName/YourFolder/PreviewProfile_" & time_stamp & ".txt"
        do shell script "echo " & quoted form of theDocs & " >> " & myFile
    end tell
end tell

For ease of use, you can save this script as an Automator service to use while working in any application. To do that just open Automator - then from the File menu select New or ⌘N from the keyboard. Then select Service from the choices shown. When the document opens, select Utilities in the far left column. Then Select Run AppleScript in the column to the right of that. Paste this script into the box that appears. In the drop down choices near the top of the page, select Service receives no input and in any application. Then just pick and name, save the file and you should have a service available to use anytime in the services menu.

Update

Here is a way to read and open the list of files we just created. This will allow you to pick and choose which files you want to open without having to open every file in the list if you don't want to.

tell application "Finder"
    set file_list to {}
    set my_files to paragraphs of (read "/Users/YourName/path/to/YourFile")
    repeat with nextLine in my_files
        if length of nextLine is greater than 0 then
            copy nextLine to the end of file_list
        end if
    end repeat
    choose from list file_list with multiple selections allowed
    set chosen_Files to the result
    repeat with next_file in chosen_Files
        do shell script "open " & next_file
    end repeat
end tell

Hope it helps. Let me know if you have any problems.


Naming Folders using Clipboard Is there a script that allows one to insert text from the clipboard into the name field of a new folder? I would like to name a new folder or change the name of a folder using the last text clip.

Do you really need a script for this?

Press ⌘⇧N to create a new folder.

The folder name is already highlighted.
Press ⌘V to paste the current clipboard.
Press ↩.

…or for current folders…

Press ↩ to rename the folder.

The folder name is already highlighted.
Press ⌘V to paste the current clipboard.
Press ↩.


Dead battery on two year old purchase - pulled new out of the box MacBook Pro touch bar 13'' I bought a MacBook Pro 13'' with touch bar 2 years ago and only now (for several circumstances) I had the chance to unbox it and connect it (it remained in an unopened box for two years).

I plugged the computer and started to use it normally but noticed that the battery stays at 0% and the battery status reads: "Condition: Replace Now". I just did a reset of the SMC and that did not fix it?

Are there alternatives to servicing / replacing the battery?

Lithium ion batteries should be kept at 50% charge for long term storage and it's possibly your battery had permanent damage if the voltage went too low - or into deep discharge state. Ideally, you would charge the battery up to 50% once every 6 months to avoid this (which isn't helpful news now that it's been 2 years for yours).

The good news is Apple warrants batteries for 1 year from purchase and 3 years with AppleCare and occasionally will cover a battery even out of warranty.

I would seek service, but you might have to pay for the repair if it's outside the time window for Apple to cover the cost. They can check on AppleCare or any other special circumstances and offer you more detailed advice on the cost for your repair if that's needed.

You've done all the things I would check:

one reset of SMC
charge for a day, try to run off charge and then charge for a second day
check the System Profiler / System Information to see the cycle count / full charge capacity and condition details

The next step is official service for a diagnosis and repair quote.

Here are the relevant parts of Apple's battery page on maximizing perfoance:

  Do not fully charge or fully discharge your device’s battery — charge it to around 50%. If you store a device when its battery is
  fully discharged, the battery could fall into a deep discharge state,
  which renders it incapable of holding a charge. Conversely, if you
  store it fully charged for an extended period of time, the battery may
  lose some capacity, leading to shorter battery life.
  If you plan to store your device for longer than six months, charge it to 50% every six months.


Log into Mac Mini with unpaired Bluetooth keyboard and mouse Can I pair a new Bluetooth keyboard or mouse when I try to log into Catalina, when no other input device is available?
Here is my situation:
I have a MacMini with Catalina installed. It works perfectly with the Bluetooth mouse and keyboard that I have in apartment A.
Now, I moved to apartment B. I took the Mac but not the mouse and keyboard.
Instead, I have two BT keyboards (Logitech MX keys and Magic Keyboard gen1, without Lightning port) and two BT mice (Logitech MX Master and Apple TrackPad).
None of these four devices have ever been paired with the Mac. Therefore, they are not recognized at log in.
I have neither a USB keyboard nor a USB mouse. Being quarantined in a country where online shopping is slow and unreliable, I cannot get any new device quickly.
Any suggestion on how to log in would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks is advance.

A mac with no USB keyboard or mouse and no Bluetooth keyboard or mouse pairings will automatically go into pairing mode to search for a Bluetooth keyboard & mouse.
I have not tested this with Bluetooth devices defined, but not available -- but from what I'm able to read, it should go into pairing mode if there are no input devices available.  If a display is attached, you would see the pairing window open -- so you'll know if this is working.
If it does not, your only option may be to use a USB keyboard & mouse (do you have any friends who have a keyboard & mouse that you can borrow for a few minutes?)
Normally when I do this on a mac, nothing is previously paired.  This is how Apple handles non-laptop devices where the owner only uses Bluetooth input devices.


I think my MacBook Pro battery was replaced by Apple's service team. How do I check that? I handed my MacBook Pro (15" Touch bar) to the service centre in order to have the keyboard replaced. Now, when I check the battery cycle count, it shows "1". Before it was at "82".

Also, I'm getting a battery life of only 4.5 - 5 hours now.

Is there a way to find if my battery was replaced or not?

I gave my MacBook Pro (15" Touchbar one) to the service centre for
  replacing the keyboard...

This is the key element to your answering your question.

When you need to have your keyboard replaced, they don't replace the keyboard; it's too time consuming and labor intensive (and somewhat dangerous due to the battery).  They replace the entire top case assembly.

The top case is an assembly of the following (major) components/sub assemblies:

Aluminum case housing
Keyboard
Track pad
Battery pack

The battery pack is glued in place and Apple advises service centers to not attempt removal; so they don't.  They just replace the entire thing.

If you took your MacBook to an authorized service center, everything will be genuine Apple parts.

Regarding the lower run times...

You may have received something called NOS (New Old Stock) meaning the top case may be new, but it's been sitting on a shelf for a couple of years.  The battery, though unused, is still degrading even though it's sitting on a shelf somewhere.  Return it to your service center and make them aware of the issue.


Git is very slow on OS X Whenever I use anything Git related on my MacBook (brand-new Macbook Pro with El Capitan), it takes almost a full minute for each command. I did a simple

GIT_TRACE=1 git stash

and got back this:

17:04:27.460826 git.c:557               trace: exec: 'git-stash'
17:04:27.463136 run-command.c:347       trace: run_command: 'git-stash'
17:04:32.503827 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'rev-parse' '--git-dir'
17:04:34.521223 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'rev-parse' '--show-toplevel'
17:04:35.527473 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'config' '--get-colorbool' 'color.interactive'
17:04:36.534443 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'config' '--get-color' 'color.interactive.help' 'red bold'
17:04:37.538357 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'config' '--get-color' '' 'reset'
17:04:38.544472 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'update-index' '-q' '--refresh'
17:04:39.567521 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'diff-index' '--quiet' '--cached' 'HEAD' '--ignore-submodules' '--'
17:04:40.578480 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'diff-files' '--quiet' '--ignore-submodules'
17:04:41.595078 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'update-index' '-q' '--refresh'
17:04:42.612776 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'diff-index' '--quiet' '--cached' 'HEAD' '--ignore-submodules' '--'
17:04:43.621067 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'diff-files' '--quiet' '--ignore-submodules'
17:04:44.636720 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'rev-parse' '--verify' 'HEAD'
17:04:45.642275 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'rev-list' '--oneline' '-n' '1' 'HEAD' '--'
17:04:46.648038 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'symbolic-ref' '-q' 'HEAD'
17:04:47.653633 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'write-tree'
17:04:48.664282 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'commit-tree' '<hex_number>' '-p' '<hex_number>'
17:04:49.672125 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'read-tree' '--index-output=/Users/<USER>/.git/index.stash.62412' '-m' '<hex_number>'
17:04:50.707740 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'diff' '--name-only' '-z' 'HEAD' '--'
17:04:51.737890 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'update-index' '-z' '--add' '--remove' '--stdin'
17:04:52.752634 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'write-tree'
17:04:53.772245 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'commit-tree' '<hex_number>' '-p' '<hex_number>' '-p' '<hex_number>'
17:04:54.778991 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'update-ref' '-m' 'WIP on <branch>: <hex_number> <branch> Kept working for a bit' 'refs/stash' '<hex_number>'
Saved working directory and index state WIP on <branch>: <hex_number> <branch> Kept working for a bit
17:04:55.787801 git.c:348               trace: built-in: git 'reset' '--hard'
HEAD is now at <hex_number> <branch> Kept working for a bit

I'm primarily using Atlassian's SourceTree, but the problem also persists on the git command-line (also, so is the log I showed). Our source for hosting the code is multiple paid, private repos on GitHub.

Is there anything that I can try to speed up git operations? It doesn't seem to matter which operation it is, they are all slow.

I was told to ask this question here as opposed to Stack Overflow.

Run git gc once a while to speed up things (if you haven't set it to be automatically on)


EFI Boot Frozen When Trying to Install Windows 8.1 I am trying to install Windows 8.1 in Bootcamp on my Mac Pro Early 2009 Edition which should be possible according to this page:

https://support.apple.com/en-ap/HT201457

I went through all of the steps and got the software onto my USB drive, etc.  When I reboot the mac and hold the option key I see 3 options.  Main, Restore and EFI Boot, however, when I click the EFI boot, the mouse freezes and nothing happens.

Any ideas on what I should do?

Thanks!

Craig

If you want to EFI boot the installer you need to flash your firmware from MacPro4,1 to MacPro5,1.

Create an installer like mentioned here without any bootmgr files to force an EFI boot.

Remove all disks from Mac Pro to avoid further trouble with Mac EFI looking for MBR or protected MBR.

EFI boot your installer.

Be sure to clean the unneeded Bootcamp partition and create GPT install target.

See also here.


How do I hide the Notification Center menubar icon? How do I hide the Notification Center menubar icon? Is it possible to do what was done here, for the Spotlight icon?

How do I hide the Spotlight icon on Yosemite, but keep the Spotlight functionality?

You can do this with Bartender. This still allows the Notification Center to be opened with a keyboard shortcut or trackpad gesture—just the menu bar item is hidden.


Where are my fonts after macOS 10.13.4 update? Just upgraded High Sierra to macOS 10.13.4.

A bunch of fonts are missing after upgrading to macOS 10.13.4.

What happened to these fonts?

Seems like a bunch of fonts were removed from the base operating system.

Open FontBook
Find the font you want to get
Click "Download"
Voilà!


Purchasing OS X Mavericks for a fresh install I have a Mac Mini here that I just reset (wiped everything). When I try to reinstall OS X Mavericks through the "Install OS X" interface, I am seeing this error message:

  This Apple ID has not purchased "OS X Mavericks".

  You must sign in with an Apple ID that was used to purchase "OS X
  Mavericks".

How do I purchase "OS X Mavericks"? Weirdly I was not able to find anything online. I do not have access to a different Apple device or physical media.

To install OS X Mavericks, the Apple ID that you enter must have Mavericks in the purchase history. If Mavericks is missing, the installer will not let you proceed.

If you had another machine, you could download Mavericks using your Apple ID so that it's registered with your Apple ID. If you even have access to a friend's Mac, you could use that to register the installer.

If that's not an option, you could go to the Apple Store, as was discussed over on ASC:

  I solved the problem by going to the apple store and they reset things for me by installing Snow Leopard on it again. It wasn't until my second visit though so yes they might take a while.


What does an iOS profile have access to? I went to the website referred here and by mistake I installed the profile they offered to me.

In one of the comments, someone mentioned:

  Do NOT use this site as it makes you install a Profile service which
  can make your data accessible to the owner of the site

I don't know what an iOS profile can potentially steal from me. I did a factory reset. However, so far, what did they have access to?

My passcode?
My keyboard?
My applications (I did not enter their password after installing the profile)?

In general, what maximum activities and information do they have access to?

The profile can only see your Unique Device Identifier. Nothing else.


How to ignore warning for program that connects to VPN I have to click accept/allow on this dialog everytime I launch a process that goes out to the web via the VPN..is there some env var I can set which can ignore the warning?

The dialog box tells you how to solve the problem.

  This setting can be changed in the firewall pane of the Security & Privacy Settings

There are excellent guides provided by Apple that can walk you through the process

Change Firewall preferences on Mac
Use a firewall to prevent unwanted connections on Mac

But basically, what you're going to do is add your application, cm_api to your firewall and allow it incoming and outgoing connections.  Remember, you must be an admin to make this change.


How to import Live Photos, in full resolution jpg form, from an iPhone 6s to a Windows computer? I've researched this, but can't find the exact answer I'm looking for. My wife has an iPhone 6s and has taken many pictures that are apparently "Live Photos". I tried importing her pictures in to Windows for her to use, but some have the .mov extension, while others are in the traditional .jpg form. She really wants the pictures as full resolution pictures, but I am having trouble getting them for her. Is there a way to batch export all of the pictures she wants into full resolution photos? She has hundreds of them, so doing one at a time would take forever. I tried importing them with a Google program called "Picasa" but most of them are .mov files.

Any help would be appreciated. She is worried she'll have to live with the short movie files.

There should be a matching JPEG for every MOV file, which contains the full resolution photo.


Enable trackpad via keyboard I prefer to disable the trackpad on my macbook when an external mouse is attached via bluetooth, so that I don't accidentally hit it and to discourage me from using it, which I find un-ergonomic.

However, sometimes I'll move the macbook to the sofa or another room and forget the bluetooth mouse. In those cases I'm stuck with no mouse controller at all. So I would like to be able to re-enable the trackpad. However, I find that hard to do, using just the keyboard.

This is how far I've gotten:

It's that second checkbox I need to toggle, but I can't find a way to manipulate it without a mouse. Can it be done?

I actually did manage it using "Mouse Keys", but... mouse keys are quite annoying, since they disable the regular action of nine buttons on the keyboard. I also tried "Head Pointer", which is even more annoying in my opinion.

So I'm hoping there is some way to use the keyboard to do it, I might have overlooked.

You can enable full keyboard access to easily navigate the on-screen controls using the Tab and arrow key.

Go to System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts and check the checkbox shown towards the bottom that reads, Use keyboard navigation to move focus between controls.

Now with the above set up, you can simply open System Preferences using Spotlight (which itself can be launched using the keyboard shortcut Command + Space), then use the keyboard shortcut Command + F to move focus to the System Preferences search field. Now type Mouse and trackpad and select the result that reads Mouse and trackpad easier to use.

This would take you to the desired preference pane. Now you can easily use the Tab key to navigate to the required checkbox and toggle the setting.

P.S.: With full keyboard access, on-screen controls can be navigated using the Tab and/or arrow keys. A control can be activated or toggled using the Space or the Enter key, and dialogue boxes dismissed using the the Esc key.


Chrome won't open iTunes desktop links I used to be able to click through to the iTunes App Store on my Mac by clicking a link in Chrome, but now it just hangs on a "Connecting to the iTunes Store..." page. What to do?

As of Chrome 58 on macOS, this setting is in a file called Preferences in the relevant profile folder for your Chrome application files. In other words, something along the lines of:

~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Preferences
~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Profile1/Preferences
~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Profile2/Preferences

depending on whether or not you have multiple user profiles and which one you are using.

Inside that file, search for itmss and change the entry to false so that Chrome opens iTunes links, in other words:

"itmss":false,

The equivalent entry for the Mac AppStore is macappstores, i.e.:

"macappstores":false,

Before making this change, be sure to:

quit Chrome
make a copy of the original file in case things get messed up


Can I use SketchUp with a Macbook's trackpad? Sketchup is designed for use with a third mouse button (particularly the pan and orbit functions).  Can I emulate the third button for SketchUp using a MacBook's trackpad or user gestures?

Yes!

Orbit - Cmd+Ctrl and click/drag
Pan - Cmd+Ctrl+Shift and click/drag
Zoom - Two-finger scroll up/down (no click necessary)


Guide to the output of the builtin airport command line utility I am trying to understand the output of the airport command line utility on OSX:

/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I
     agrCtlRSSI: -45
     agrExtRSSI: 0
    agrCtlNoise: -95
    agrExtNoise: 0
          state: running
        op mode: station
     lastTxRate: 585
        maxRate: 867
lastAssocStatus: 0
    802.11 auth: open
      link auth: wpa2-psk
          BSSID: xx:xx
           SSID: xx
            MCS: 7
        channel: 44,80

While I'd to love how to understand all of the output above, most specifically, I am trying to figure out if there is any way to programmatically get the "Link Speed" as shown in the Network Utility program:

There’s not much documentation available, but these are the basics:

agrCtlRSSI - Signal strength. The higher, the better.
agrCtlNoise - Noise level.  The lower the better.
state - operating state (running or not)
op mode - station or repeater
lastTxRate - last rate of transmission speed
maxRate 867 - maximum transmission rate
802.11 auth - authentication type (open, shared, EAP, etc.)
link auth: - encryption (WEP, WPA, WPA2, etc)
BSSID - Basic Service Set Identifier (usually the MAC address of the WAP)
SSID - Service Set Identifier (name of your WiFi network)

  I am trying to figure out if there is any way to programmatically get the "Link Speed"

The item that you’d be looking for is “lastTxRate”.  So, to get that, you can issue the command

$ airport -I | grep lastTxRate


Can't print in fast / draft when connected to printer over wifi, but can when connected via usb Summary: The fast/draft printing option is not available when connected over WiFi, but works with USB. (Editor Note: seems to effect many printers from both Canon an other manufacturers)

Specifically:
I recently bought a Canon ix6850 printer to replace my Canon ix6500 (really the 6850 is just an updated version with built-in wifi). Now I've got this new 6850, if I connect to it over wifi I get the following the print setting. Note: draft is not an option.

But if I move my laptop next to the printer and connect via the usb cable I get the following. Any idea how I can enable draft when connecting over wifi?

Update and step-by-step directions:
On the latest versions of OSX (e.g. tested with High Sierra, 10.13.2) there is a seemingly handy option to add "nearby printer" which lists printers the OS can auto-locate. The problem is that this option defaults to using airprint and never gives the option to change the print driver with the "use" drop down.
To fix this (see also this Epson-focussed exchange on Apple Communities), reinstall the printer using the printer-specific driver:

Open Printers & Scanners in System Preferences.
Select the Printer with the troublesome airprint driver
Press the minus sign, "-," at the bottom to remove the current printer
Press the plus sign, "+," to add a new printer
Don't select from the nearby list, but rather select "Other"
The printer should still appear on the list in the resulting dialog. Select it, but before pressing add, access the "Use" drop down to select the corresponding printer driver. If your printer type is not listed below AirPrint, see if it is listed under "Select Software..." If it is still not there, you might need to download an updated driver from your printer manufacturers website.
Once you have the corresponding driver selected in "Use" press the "Add" button.

This should now use the manufacturer customized printer dialog including the option to select "Fast" for "Print Quality" under the "Quality and Media" option set.


XtraFinder makes Finder windows not all restore I love XtraFinder, but it seems to prevent all windows from restoring when Finder restarts (e.g., after typing killall Finder in the terminal).

I'm on Yosemite (10.10.5), and Finder restores all windows and tabs when I reboot or relaunch it without XtraFinder. However, when it boots with XtraFinder, no windows open at all (although Finder has started), and when I click on the Finder icon, it opens one window from the previous session (always the same), but not the other ones.

This happens whether or not the save open tabs when quitting Finder option in XtraFinder is enabled.

How to have the original session restore behavior with XtraFinder enabled?

Seems, from the duration it is left unanswered, this is yet to be worked on. For the time being, as a work around, save the window with all its tabs. And reopen the same window after restart.


Apple Mail hides mail received on multiple addresses Recently I've noticed that if I'm sent an e-mail on multiple addresses for which I have accounts set up in Apple Mail (macOS or iOS), the Apple Mail client will only display only one of these mails, and provide no access (other than explicitly selecting to view one account) to the others. Moreover I can't choose which account's mail is displayed (and it can be different on macOS and iOS).

Is this the intended behavior? Is there a way to restore the normal e-mail client behavior of simply seeing all the mail I've been sent?

Many common Apple mail issues can be fixed by rebuilding the Envelope Index.

MAKE SURE YOU HAVE CREATED A BACKUP, FIRST. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Quit mail.app
Hold down the Option key, then in the Finder choose Go > Library.
In Macintosh HD/Users/yourname/Library/Mail/V2/MailData, move all files starting with “Envelope Index,” such as Envelope Index or Envelope Index-shm to your Desktop.
Launch Mail and it will build new Envelope Index files -- this step could take a long time.


`route get` for ipv6 How do I find the route for a specific IPv6 address?

For IPv4 I can do:

$ route -n get 1.1.1.1
   route to: 1.1.1.1
destination: 1.1.1.1
  interface: utun1
      flags: <UP,HOST,DONE,WASCLONED,IFSCOPE,IFREF>
 recvpipe  sendpipe  ssthresh  rtt,msec    rttvar  hopcount      mtu     expire
       0         0         0         0         0         0      1420         0

But for IPv6:

$ route -n get 2606:4700:4700::1111
route: bad address: 2606:4700:4700::1111

So, the answer is

route -n get -inet6 2606:4700:4700::1111

I find this syntax extremely cryptic and, the worst part, it is impossible to figure out from the help output and even understanding this after reading the man page is tricky.


What Password is needed to run Xcode? I just downloaded the Xcode application again after a few months, but it asks me for a password that I do not have. No "password forgotten", I do not know how to proceed to open the application?

Open system preferences and see if you can unlock a pane selecting the lock.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203127

That password is the one for admin access and it’s the same password needed for Xcode to install additional components and get admin control to debug and package files.


When changing email address associated with Apple ID, does this create new imessage account? So I have a few people I'd prefer not to get messages from in future, basically I'd like a 'fresh start' with my imessage account.  If I change my Apple ID to a new email address, will those people still be able to imessage me, or will (as i am hoping) they be unable to contact me as the email address associated with imessage that they've been using would now be out of date?

When you change your Apple ID - the actual text you enter before you enter your password - then it is similar to changing your telephone number. So, yes you have a new account at that point with respect to people messaging you.

Yes, the bill still comes to you and it rings the phone you used to have, but people need to discover or be told your new "digits" before they can "call" you.

Now - there are two qualifications:

If your Apple ID is @mac.com or @me.com (or otherwise Apple provided), you can't change your Apple ID.
If you use an iPhone and have a phone number associated with that Apple ID, you may have to turn off receiving messages from that phone number temporarily or permanently if people are sending you iMessages to that phone number and it then gets directed to your new Apple ID. The good news is the new ID doesn't leak to the senders when they send you a message. The bad news, you could leak the new Apple ID if you reply and your "caller ID" for iMessage is your Apple ID instead of your phone number.


Hide facebook notifications inside app? May be I mismatched a forum, but I hope, you can help me.
I don't like social networks and facebook especially. But I need to use it. I've installed official application and I'm received annoying notifications like these, from picture

Can I unsubscribe from these or change a setting or do I need to find some way to delete these one by one?

Thanks!

These notifications are controlled by Facebook. Regrettably they can not all be turned off

  What is People You May Know?

  People You May Know are people on Facebook that you might know. We show you people based on mutual friends, work and education information, networks you’re part of, contacts you’ve imported and many other factors.

I recommend giving Facebook feedback about this behaviour and why you wish to turn it off.


Verify DNSSEC being used by Safari when visiting a web site Is there some way to verify that DNSSEC was used by Safari when visiting a web site?

I'm most interested in Safari for Mac OS X. But if there is a way in iOS, that would be important as well.

DNSSEC is an extension of the DNS infrastructure. Usually a browser is not involved in domain name resolution. So there is no way for Safari to detect DNSSEC directly.

There is an Safari DNSSEC extension though which allows you to check the existence and validity of DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC) records and Transport Layer Security Association (TLSA) records related to domain names. You can download it for several browsers here: DNSSEC/TLSA Validator

Direct link of the Safari extension:

dnssec-tlsa-plugin-2.2.0

(this is a shell script which has to be executed in Terminal.app)


Open HTML file with Google Chrome using command-line In default installation of macOS, Python and Bash are installed in /usr/bin and /bin directories respectively.

$ which python
/usr/bin/python

$ which bash
/bin/bash

So it's appropriate files can be opened using the command-line as:

python foo.py

Along similar lines, I want the ability to open an HTML file with Google Chrome using the command-line as:

$ chrome foo.html

But I get the following output:

bash: chrome: command not found

An alternate way to achieve the desired workflow is make Google Chrome as the default browser and execute the following command:

open foo.html

How do I achieve the former workflow?

There is no need to create or copy any file into /usr/bin directory. A simple solution would be create an alias as shown below:

alias chrome="open -a \"Google Chrome\".

Now you open the HTML file as you described by executing:

chrome foo.html

You may wish to export the alias to make the behaviour permanent placing the alias in .bash_profile in your home directory.


Will Apple still accept new iOS 8.4 apps? I have an app that's close to release. And of course, we didn't get in before iOS 9 came out.

Does apple still accept new applications that work in both iOS 8.4 and iOS 9.x or are we limited to only bug fixes, etc. for existing apps in iOS 8.4 (as we were with 7.x a few months ago), and only releasing new apps for iOS 9.x?

Is there a definitive web page for this information?

Yes. Apple checks your new app submission with the validator as described in https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/IDEs/Conceptual/AppDistributionGuide/UploadingYourApptoiTunesConnect/UploadingYourApptoiTunesConnect.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40012582-CH36-SW2

The iOS 9 features were allowed on Sep 11 2015 per https://developer.apple.com/news/ and you are allowed to use iOS 9 only SDK but you're not forced to use them exclusively. Any non-deprecated API are safe to use.


view all windows in Mavericks keyboard shortcut In Mavericks (and any other version of OSX) when pressing CMD + TAB you see the typical list of open apps to switch to.

I just discovered that when this list is open (before releasing CMD) if you press 1 you see all the windows of currently the selected app.

What is this feature called?
Is it possible to use it outside of the CMD + TAB list?

I am pretty sure this feature is called "Application Windows". If you go to System Settings -> Mission Control, in the bottom section is a list of four items you can attach to keyboard shortcuts. This feature is called "Application windows" in that list.

Additionally, you can enable a Hot Corner for it: Click the Hot Corners button in the bottom left of the Mission Control settings; you should be able to specify a special action for moving your mouse into each corner of your screen. This feature is called "Application Windows" in the list of options.


Disk Utility vs Carbon Copy Cloner - How to clone your drive with Apple's built-in app What is the point of using commercial apps like Carbon Copy Cloner when disk utility can also clone your drives? This article here http://www.macworld.com/article/2461362/drive-cloning-utilities-the-best-mac-apps-for-making-a-bootable-backup.html

says that Disk Utility is "less convenient". I don't understand what the author means, how could I create a clone with Disk Utility?

Thanks so much!

DiskUtility is pretty bare-bones when it comes to duplication. You can use it to create a clone, but you have to kick it off manually, and that's about the limit of its features.

Both CCC and SuperDuper have a pretty similar feature set, which includes a lot of features required for convenient backups, like:

Scheduling
Filtering files
Support for bootable volumes
Scripting before and after the run (do something more custom)
Mount/unmount the drives so they don't normally appear on your desktop
Smart copying - only copies changes, not the whole drive. This makes it much quicker.
Block-copy of the drive - available in certain cases. Identical copy, not file based.

Under the covers both are very much like (or perhaps implement) rsync. This is a free command-line tool included with OS X which you can use to duplicate drives. But, requires you to use the command line and learn the options. Not all that obvious or intuitive, but works very well.

Anyway, to answer the question:

Be aware - this will wipe the target drive

Find the target drive you want in Disk Utility
Click onto the Restore tab
Drag the source drive over to where it says Source (drive you're backing up)
Drag the Target drive to Destination (drive you're writing the backup TO).

THIS DRIVE GETS WIPED

Click Restore

As you can see, for each back-up, you have to do it all manually. With CCC, and other tools, you can schedule it to happen when you're away, as often as you want. eg. every night at 2am. You can also have multiple backups of different data to different place. eg. Whole drive weekly, and your important docs nightly.


Is there a comprehensive recurring Notifications / Tasks app for iPhone? I want to have configurable recurring tasks and notifications for those tasks.

Eg, I need to trim the hedge once a week, but it doesn't matter whenabouts in the week that I do it. So I want a task that recurs once a week, but I also want to set the notifications to remind me twice every day until I mark it as done, the task then being dormant until the following Monday when the reminders will continue twice every day until I have clipped the hedge that week.

I notice that NotifyMe for iPhone does more or less this: does it, specifically, allow me to customize when I am reminded?

Remember the milk is a popular one. They can do weekly reminders (set for last day of week) and after a week (due 7 days after you complete it).


Not getting developer option on iPad air In settings I am not getting developer option.
Tried with Xcode 6.1.1 (no clue).
can any one help to enable developer option on iPad air.

The developer item in settings (called "ontwikkelaar" in the screenshot) will become available when you have installed an app you created with xcode. Creating a simple empty app with xcode, connecting your ipad and then tun it on the device should be enough to display the developer item in your settings.


Mail.app in Mavericks moves Gmail mails to Trash instead of Archiving them In OS X before Mavericks, Mail.app with a Gmail account would remove messages only from the inbox when deleting them,  but leave them in the All Mail folder; essentially archiving them. In Mavericks it now moves them to the Trash entirely. What gives?

Mavericks Mail.app is now actually aware of the All Mail folder and has "archiving" as a separate concept, just like iOS does. The old delete-from-inbox-to-archive was arguably a hack in Gmail's IMAP implementation which now no longer works. Now "Delete" actually means delete and "Archive" means archive.

The new command is in the menu under Message > Archive, its keyboard shortcut is ⌃⌘A. You can add the Archive button to the toolbar via View > Customise Toolbar... if it's not there.

Apparently you will also have to show the All Mail folder to IMAP clients, which is something you have to configure in your settings on the Gmail website. I have not confirmed this though, I always had it on anyway.


How can I modify a package from the Mac App Store? I used to hack at apps on my Mac all the time (change the icons/sounds etc... in the resources folder of the package). I have tried with apps downloaded from the App Store, but it no longer seems to be possible. In fact, even creating one empty file will stop the app from launching. I assume that Apple are doing some kind of one way hash of the application folder, and checking if it has changed.

Is it possible to either bypass the code-signing check or be more sophisticated about modifying apps that are signed and downloaded from the Apple Mac App Store?

It depends upon the app. For example, I've been able to replace the icon of djay (bought it in the MAS) with the one from Cyberduck, and djay launches just fine (except it's got a rubber duck as its icon now :-))

If the developer does an integrity check at start time, you're out of luck.


OS X 10.9.2 sending attachments I am on a MacBook Pro using OS X 10.9.2, using Mail 7.2
If I try to send an attachment in mail, my finder does not allow me to access files.  I thought maybe it was just taking longer after the update to "adjust" however I left the finder open for 10 minutes and it still nothing.  I can see the folders, but not the contents of the folders.  I can access my files when I go directly through the finder, but not when accessing the finder through the mail.app

HELP!

You can start Disk Utility Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility and click Verify Disk and Repair Disk Permissions.

  However, it seems like a small bug. Just shut down your Mac and
  restart it, the problem should be gone.


How to update Python on a Mac with Unix commands After giving up on doing a disk partition and getting Linux, I decided to try and install Python 3.3.2 on a 32 bit Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with OS X 10.6.8 Snow Leopard. I did pretty much everything the official website says, but it isn't working at all.

First of all, I downloaded the installer for Mac OS X 6 and later, which should supposedly put a folder called MacPython 3.3 with IDLE, PythonLauncher and a Build Applet tool in my Applications folder. What I have instead is a folder called Python 3.3 which does contain (aside from the documentation and a command to update shell profile) IDLE and PythonLauncher, but no Build Applet tool; I typed 'python' into my Terminal window to see if 3.3.2 was installed, but it said Python 2.6.1 even after restarting my computer. The ReadMe in the disk image that contains the installer says running the installer should also 'put the underlying machinery into the folder /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework'. I did every search imaginable and apparently there is no such folder anywhere in my hard drive.

Basically, I want to install 3.3.2 and run things in programme mode rather than shell mode, which I find to be a huge pain in the bottom. Any help is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: found the Frameworks folder. Python.framework contains 4 folders named 2.3, 2.5, 2.6 and Current, which has several other folders inside – all for Python 2.6. The official page says I shouldn't delete any of them because they already come with Mac. How do I put 3.3 here?

So your Mac is still looking for an old version of Python. You need to inform it that there is in fact a new version and where it can find it. To do this, you need to update the PATH to Python.

This can be done in your .bash_profile file.

# Setting PATH for Python 3.3.2.
# The original version is saved in .profile.pysave.
PATH="/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.3.2/bin:${PATH}"
export PATH

After you update the .bash_profile file Terminal should run the new version of Python, when you ask for it.


How do I remove duplicate "Open With" context menu items in Finder.app? For whatever reason, the "Open With" context menu in Finder is always listing every app four times (exactly).

I've read about (and tried) rebuilding the Launch Services database to restore the context menu to its initial state, but nothing seems to work. I've also used Onyx.app to clear user and system caches, but I'm still left with four repetitions of each app under the "Open With" service. I have restarted the system a few times just to be sure it was not some temporary corruption of the list.

I'm running OS X 10.6.6 on a 2011 17" MacBook Pro with a fresh install of OS X (i.e. I didn't use Migration Assistant.app or a Time Machine backup). I did, however, sync all my preferences and other files using MobileMe like I always do, so I imagine it's feasible that a preference file somewhere is causing problems? I didn't notice whether this was happening before or after my MobileMe sync.

How can I fix this so one app shows?

Since this problem happens at System Level, I'm not sure if these steps will do any difference.

I assume that, like you've said, you've rebuilt your LaunchDatabase. Just in case:

You can try the Command Line version of the above (In a terminal):

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

Additionally, Default Apps is a nice and free System Preference pane to control default apps (based upon extension, type, etc.) You can pretty much see and associate everything from there. It should at least give you a hint whether the problem is in the association or the finder is doing something funky.

When did this start happening? Did you install something? I see you have Xcode 4, did you get it from the App Store or you have a Developer Profile and got it via direct download? Was this happening before? Does this happen with every type of file or only some specific ones?


How can I get the LED on an iPhone 6 to blink constantly? Sometimes I get caught walking my dog back home in the dark. When that happens, I'd liked to be able to hold my iPhone 6 up and let the LED blink so that I'll be more visible to traffic on our seldom-traveled road. I searched for apps to do this simple thing, but I came up empty. Surely there's a way to get the phone's LED to constantly blink, right?

I'm not sure what search criteria you're using, but there are countless flashlight/torch apps that offer this function. Usually they refer to an option in their settings for a Strobe effect - this flashes the LED.
I've just done a search on the iOS App Store using the term "flash light" and the first three hits offered flashlight apps with a strobe option:

Flashlight by Intellectual Flame Co., Ltd.
Flashlight by MobileTrends Inc.
iTorch Flashlight by Pixelinlove Ltd

NOTE: I have not personally used any of these apps, nor am I affiliated in any way with the developers.


How to show app ad's only to new users? I have an app in the appstore that used to be paid and with no ads.

I want to upload an update, make the app 'free', add ad's, that could be removed by purchasing "No ads 'in-app purchase'".

Problem:

I don't want users that have paid for the app before to update the app and see ads.

I want to grant "No ads 'in-app purchase'" for users who is updating the app.

Basically, if a person is updating, then no ads is 'purchased' by default.
If a person in downloading the app for the first time, he gets ads.

Is this possible? Any workarounds?

Thank you

You could update the paid app to set a preference that the user has the paid version. Then update the app with the free version.


Application for manage and sync PDF collection Unfortunately is not possible synch the PDFs files  using iBook, so i'm looking for an alternative.
I have a huge collection of PDF file and i work with different computers.

I'm looking for an application that can takes care of all my PDFs and generate an archive that can be put on Dropbox / iCloud Drive.

Sometink like Calibre but possibly with a better UX. It shouldn't be necessarely free.

Thanks.

Try one of these for PDF management:

http://reinventedsoftware.com/together/
This works with iCloud to access your library on multiple devices

http://www.ironicsoftware.com/yep/

You can also attach PDF's to notes in evernote.com


Unintentionally remapped keys on a MacBook Air (2012) One day my MacBook Air mysteriously remapped the 'U', 'I' and 'O' keys to all be the alt/option key. I've no idea what triggered this, I took it to the apple shop and it seems to stay that way when they did the hardware test. Does anyone know why this could be, and hopefully recommend a way of fixing it?

Try resetting the NVRAM and the SMC on your Mac then test those keys and see if they are still remapped.

NVRAM aka PRAM
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

  How to reset NVRAM

  Shut down your Mac, then turn it on and immediately press and hold
  these four keys together: Option, Command, P, and R. You can release
  the keys after about 20 seconds, during which your Mac might appear to
  restart.

  On Mac computers that play a startup sound, you can release the keys
  after the second startup sound. On iMac Pro, you can release the keys
  after the Apple logo appears and disappears for the second time.

SMC (System Management Controller)
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

  How to reset the SMC on Mac notebooks

  First, determine whether the battery is removable. Most older Mac
  notebooks have removable batteries. Mac notebooks that have
  nonremovable batteries include MacBook Pro (Early 2009 and later), all
  models of MacBook Air, MacBook (Late 2009), and MacBook (Retina,
  12-inch, Early 2015 and later). Learn more about Mac notebook
  batteries.

  If the battery is nonremovable:

  Choose Apple menu > Shut Down.
  After your Mac shuts down, press Shift-Control-Option on the left side of the built-in keyboard, then press the power button at the same
  time. Hold these keys and the power button for 10 seconds. If you have
  a MacBook Pro with Touch ID, the Touch ID button is also the power
  button.
  Release all keys.
  Press the power button again to turn on your Mac.

  If the battery is removable:

  Shut down your Mac.
  Remove the battery. If you need help removing the battery, contact
  an Apple Authorized Service Provider or Apple Retail Store.
  Press and hold the power button for 5 seconds.
  Reinstall the battery.
  Press the power button again to turn on your Mac.


Filesystem check on startup as Mac OS X in part is an *nix operating system. Will the filesystem of my computer be checked periodically? How to check when the next check will be triggered, if it is checked periodically?

My first guess was to start the "Disk Utility.app", but there were no informations regarding a time based check cycle. I can check the filesystem manually using the disk utility. From my linux

Background of my question, yesterday evening the system startup took a very long time until I gave up and went to bed. Today the boot time was as fast as always, but my MacBook is about half a year old. This is like 180 days of unchecked filesystems.. Just a guess.

regards,
Marcus

Marcus,

Yes, certain things (bad reboot, disk marked dirty, not cleanly unmounted on shutdown etc) will tricker a fsck (disk check) on startup.

If you startup in verbose mode you can see this happening.

Shut down your Mac if it is on.
Press the power button to start the computer.
Immediately press and hold the Command (Apple) key and one of the following:

The "s" key for single-user mode.  (Command-S)
The "v" key for verbose mode.  (Command-V)

In addition, much like other unix systems there are scheduled daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. Using a tool like OnyX you can see these and force them to run.


General Music/Headphone Help Well, this got put on hold from regular StackExchange for being a general software questing, but I don't know specifics about this. I'm just going to copy and paste my original description. Also, please don't say it's not a good programming question also I don't know if this community is only programming or not. I would like an answer that doesn't require messing with my phones OS too much, but if not, oh well.

Ok, I'm new to iOS 10, and I was just using 4.4.4 (KitKat). With headphones, on Android, when you would hit the play button, it would play your queue. On iOS, it will shuffle all my music. How can I make it not do this? It only happens when I clear the music app from multitasking, which I accidentally do (ALOT). I have the regular Apple earbuds, and I have the iPhone 7. Can anyone help?

EDIT: Please don't just downvote. Ask me a question if you don't understand. I know the title doesn't ask a question, but I HAVE NO CLUE HOW TO ASK THIS....

The Music app on iOS can be confusing. For some conceptual help see this page at Apple Support. I find it easier to create Playlists (either on my Phone, or better yet, in iTunes on my Mac,) and and use them instead of playing the entire library.

Here's some guidance from Apple:

Play your music

If you want to listen to an artist's entire collection of music that you've saved to your library, find the artist in Library > Artists. Tap Shuffle All  to play all of their music.

Create a playlist

You can create playlists to listen to or share with friends. From the Library tab, tap Playlists, then New Playlist. Fill in details for your playlist, such as the title and description, then add music. If you like, you can also add an image. When you're happy with your playlist, tap Done in the upper-right corner.
If you don't see Playlists under Library, tap Edit in the upper-right corner, then tap Playlists to turn it on. Tap Done to return to Library.

Up Next, Shuffle, and Repeat

Also on the Now Playing screen, you can rewind, pause, or fast forward a song, control the volume, read song lyrics, and more.

Swipe up on Now Playing to show your Up Next queue, which lists all of the songs that you’ve selected for playback.

Drag songs with  to rearrange the order, or swipe left to remove a song that you’d like to skip.

Tap  Shuffle to shuffle the songs in a playlist or album.

Tap  Repeat once to play an entire playlist or album on repeat or twice to repeat one song.

Tap  a third time to clear the repeat.


How to use SSL tunnelling on OS X to give full internet access to some applications while you are on a restricted corporate network? How to use SSL tunnelling on OS X to give full internet access to some applications while you are on a restrictive corporate network?

Details:

you want to be able to access some restricted destinations and/or ports with some applications from your computer but you are on a restricted network (corporate) - Even using a Torrent client.
you have an AWS machine running Ubuntu that you can use as a proxy (and you can SSH to this machine)
You cannot create a full VPN because this means that you will loose access to your intranet and you do not want that.

You can create a local SOCKS proxy by using the dynamic port forwarding function of SSH by running ssh with the -D flag. This will tunnel all traffic of applications that use the local SOCKS proxy through SSH connection.

For example running ssh -D1234 user@host will open a SOCKS proxy on localhost port 1234 that you can direct your applications to.


Unable to determine the Mac OS X version on the targeted disk (-69831) I recently moved my home folder to another internal HDD on my MacbookPro (early 2011 OSX 10.9.4). I'm having an issue where in-app file dialogs cannot display my new home directory or its contents. I thought about trying to repair disk permissions but the option is greyed out in Disk Utility and I get the following error when trying to run it in terminal

sudo diskutil repairpermissions /Volumes/Data
Error starting permissions repair for disk1s2 Data: Unable to determine the Mac OS X version on the targeted disk (-69831)

I also tried rebooting into recovery mode and using the repair option in the resetpassword dialog but the /Volumes/Data disk does not appear, only the main boot volume.

Make sure the Users & Groups > Advanced Options options for your moved user account is correct.

Launch System Preferences.app
Select Users & Groups
Unlock the panel
Control + Click on the moved account and select Advanced Options…*
Update Home directory: to the correct, full, path to your moved home folder.


How do I create and save multiple iPhone backups in iTunes? I had a near death experience this weekend. After purchasing a new 13" MacBook Pro I migrated all my data from my old MacBook Pro over to the new one and in the process with iTunes auto-backup/auto-sync I almost lost all of my iPhone data. By going back to a full back up that I preformed right before the migration I was able to recover the iPhone data but it was too scary for comfort.

By default iTunes keeps only one backup of the iPhone or iPad data. I would feel a lot more comfortable if I knew that I had at least one archive version of my data. Is there a way to create and save multiple backups? If so how is it done?

Thanks.

Well, there is always the option to copy the contents of

~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup

to some other place on a regular basis.


How can I alter the default behavior of iTunes 10.7 to suppress some UI elements like the store? I like iTunes 10.7 and I've been sticking with it ever since it came out and hope to avoid updating it now that I run macos High Sierra.

I'm trying to figure out how to delete/remove/hide the 'iTunes store / iTunes Match ' option in the left panel.

I’m OK disabling SIP (system integrity protection, patching / modifying system frameworks - hex editing files, hacking on a plist file etc.. I've had luck with editing other apps this way such as calculator, but I knew what to look for.)

With iTunes I'm clueless. Has anyone reverse engineered this app or know specifically how to edit this specific version of iTunes on macOS?

In the current version of iTunes (12.8), this is very easy:

Go to iTunes > Preferences
Go to Restrictions
In the "Disable" list, check "iTunes Store"

I would assume the same feature is present in iTunes 10.7, but given that it's six years old and I can't find a screenshot of its preferences window, I can't confirm that for sure.


Can I install an older OS X over a newer OS X without restoring from backup? Previously I was running Yosemite.  I upgraded to El Capitan and started having problems with an app I used regularly. The backup I have is OS X Lion.  If I restore this backup, I'll lose a ton of files. Is it possible to simply install Yosemite over El Capitan without restoring files from backup?

No - the installer will refuse to run unless you follow the erase and install procedure.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904 - go to the Erase your drive and install OS X section at the bottom of the article.

You would have much better luck with:

Back up the Mac - make a bootable clone if you like that flexibility or Time Machine is fine.
Install the older OS on to an external drive. Make a junk/admin user when the setup assistant runs.
Add a new user and point that user's home folder at your "current" /Volume/whatever/Users/shortname folder.
Test things that are likely to break: Mail, Contacts, Photos - things that are stored in a database are likely to not be happy going back to older file structures. Once you have a hit list of the things that do and do not break, you can decide to clean things up or manually migrate things to a second "clean installation"

If you don't like the complexity or are not comfortable with the concepts above, you might want to just start with the old OS and move things over one by one when you need them. Having a bootable backup here is key since you may have to boot to the newer OS and export things with a tool or by hand for data that doesn't migrate easily.

If you're comfortable managing several backups and several OS and several home folders, you may never go back to having your OS run on the same volume as your user home folder. I know people (mostly NEXT era Apple employees and others in the profession) that use this method all the time to make OS changes less intrusive and to separate the backup of user data from the backup of system data and caches.


What is the keyboard combination for the ⌘ symbol? There are many handy shortcuts for exotic characters in Mac such as Option + 7 for ¶ and Option + G for ©. Is there one to yield the command key ('⌘') sign?

As the other answers mention, by default there is no easy way to enter this symbol. You could use a text substitution as well (none of the other answers so far mentioned that), but that’s another imperfect solution.

If you need this (or any other Unicode glyph) frequently and want to be able to type it on your keyboard, your best bet is to create a custom keyboard layout. That way, you can assign a keyboard shortcut of your choosing to the ⌘ symbol.

Using my custom QWERTY layout, for example, I can use ⌥+Shift+C to enter ⌘.


Sierra - App Store Debug Menu How can I enable the Debug Menu in the App Store for Sierra? The defaults command no longer seem to turn it on.

As far as I know, the debug menu is removed from Sierra. Try to clear Mac App Store caches to fix some downloading issues.

Launch Terminal and type the following command:

 open `getconf DARWIN_USER_CACHE_DIR`/com.apple.appstore

Move all the files and folders out of com.apple.appstore. Then relaunch Mac App Store. You can delete all the files and folders if Mac App Store get back to work.


Working with subdirectories to classify apps on iTunes I have many apps on iTunes, some installed permanently onto the iPhone, some others not installed, and same thing for iPad.

I'd like to separate them on the computer (Windows 7) to be able to make targetted backups. So I'd like to put them in some subdirs : "iPhone/Permanent", "iphone/occasional", "iPad/permanent", "universal/occasional", ...

Can this be done without breaking iTunes ?

That depends on what else you use iTunes for.  You can turn off the "automatically sort iTunes content" switch, which will allow you to spread files all over the shop, but be aware that fresh downloads, iphone purchase transfers, updates, and all sorts else may not honour your choice when doing updates and the like, resulting in potentially multiple versions of multiple apps in multiple locations, and also having potentially adverse affects on your other iTunes content such as music etc.

I'm not sure about the Windows 7 aspect of this next bit, but on Mac you could "label" your files into categories, and then make a smart fodler that searches out for apps in location X (default) with Label Y etc - I think Windows must have some similar tagging system, certainly it can handle the saved searches/smart folder equivalent ably enough to approximate the same behaviour.


Bash Script that will start up second Terminal process? I need a script that will be able to fire up a second Terminal instance and pass a command directly to that one whilst it continues it's own executions.

It's to start up Python script that will host a server whilst the main instance of Terminal would continue to run it's series of executions over a period of 30 seconds (for example) then it would be able to kill the PID of the Python script and kill that secondary Terminal process and continue until it's finished.

Does anybody have an idea of how to do this? Coming from Windows, it would be very easy to get a BAT file to execute a second BAT file in it's own environment and then kill it at a later stage.

You can use the do script AppleScript command to run a command in a new Terminal window:

osascript -e 'tell app "Terminal" to do script "uptime"'

It doesn't start a second process or instance for Terminal though. On OS X there is typically only one instance for each application, even though you can use open -n to open another instance.


Can I connect a microphone to a retina 5k iMac? My 5K retina iMac has one audio port.  On my MacBook pro that only had one port, it was possible, in System Preferences, to state whether to use it as an input or an output.

Is it possible to use the one on the 5k iMac as an input?  It is, perhaps, some weird connector that takes a regular headset or multiple signals, two for stereo audio out and one for audio in?

I recognize that there is a built-in microphone, and there are USB or bluetooth devices that can send in audio data, but it'd sure be handy if I can plug in an audio source as I used to (especially as I have a contact mic that goes to an instrument that I'd like to plug in.)

It should be possible to add a microphone, you just need the correct adapter. See this answer I posted to a similar question - I believe the same will apply in this case.


If a computer is under the shared header in Finder, can they access all the files on my computer? This is a pretty basic question, but I noticed I have two other computers under the shared header in finder, can they access all files on my computer?  How do I disable this?

No. Shared folders are controlled by the “Sharing” preference pane in System Preferences.


How to fix gray files in Finder? Is there any way to force Finder to refresh its in-use information for gray (inaccessible) files?

Details:

I move infrequently used files from my Mac (OS X 10.6) to a Windows Server 2008 file server.  I have recently found a large number of files which OS X's Finder shows as gray (like it would if the file was in the process of being copied).  The files in question are all valid and complete: no corruption or missing data; in fact, I can access the files from Terminal or from a Windows computer without problem, but Finder still thinks they should be considered inaccessible.

I can "fix" the problem by copying the original file to a new name, deleting the original file, waiting a minutes or so, and then renaming the new file to the original name (if I don't wait long enough, the new file will become gray when it is renamed to the original name).

Basically, it seems as if the Finder has failed to clear some "in-use" or "incomplete" flag [conjecture].

So, back to the original question: how can this be fixed?  Ideally, I would like to be able to scan the network drives and find and fix all the gray files via Terminal or Recursive operation, so I can fix them all without wasting a lot of time.

This solved it for me!  http://macadmins.psu.edu/news/2011/06/grayed_out_finder_folder

  So, what happened? It appears that the folder's creation date was set
  to a random date in 1943.  While we are unsure of how it happened, we
  did figure out how to fix it.

  We used a few binaries that came with the Developer Tools, GetFileInfo
  and SetFile. GetFileInfo showed us the creation date of the folder. We
  overlooked it at first, but with closer examination it caught our eye.

  $ GetFileInfo Test/ directory: "/Users/user/Desktop/Test" attributes:
  avbstclinmedz created: 06/13/1943 06:13:00 modified: 06/13/2011
  15:07:33

  We then could change the creation date using the SetFile tool.

  $ SetFile -d 06/13/2011 Test/

  After seting the date back to a reasonable time, we can see that it
  has truly changed.

  $ GetFileInfo Test/ directory: "/Users/userid/Desktop/Test"
  attributes: avbstclinmedz created: 06/13/2011 06:13:00 modified:
  06/13/2011 15:07:33

  The folder then showed properly in the Finder and was again usable. We
  also found that if you created an alias of the folder, you could see
  the data and move it out. Once it was moved out into another folder,
  the old folder could be deleted.


Most-efficient way to copy iPhoto events between computers? I experienced a hard-drive crash recently.  While I was able to recover most of the lost photographs from Mozy, some where lost.  Fortunately, the missing photographs are located on another machine.

** edit **

Computer A: MacBook Pro with Mavericks and iPhoto 9.5.1
Computer B: Mac Mini with Snow Leopard and iPhoto 9.2.3

I want to preserve the existing photos, faces, and events on computer B (the recovered items), but copy the photos, faces, and events from computer A (the missing items).

What is the most-efficient way to do this?

The most efficient way to accomplish this would be to merge libraries. Unfortunately, this is not included as a feature within iPhoto, but can be accomplished using an excellent program, iPhoto Library Manager. It's compatible with all versions of iPhoto v8.1.2 or later.

Your iPhoto Library, by default, is located at: ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library
Either place the iPhoto Library of Computer A on an HFS+ formatted external HDD, or use Target Disk Mode to mount Computer A's HDD as an external drive on computer B. I recommend the former method.

Choose Source Library: path to A's library on external HDD
Choose Destination Library: path to B's library.
See (3) and (4) for Duplicate Handling and Additional Options, then merge the libraries.


Windows repositioned to macbook screen after sleep I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015, OS X El Capitan, 10.11.5) with Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB connected to an external monitor:

Samsung SE790C:

Resolution: 3440 x 1440 @ 60 Hz
Pixel Depth: 32-Bit Color (ARGB8888)
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Rotation: Supported
Connection Type: DisplayPort
Television: Yes

Every time my MacBook wakes up from sleep, all my windows are back to the MacBook screen. I have a similar setup at home (same MacBook but with a Dell 26' monitor) and this does not happen.

Anything I can do about that? If more info is needed, just let me know! Thanks in advance for any help on that!

I found the answer after pulling my hair for a few days...

I actually had to tick the "Displays have separate Spaces" option in System Preferences => Mission Control

Does this setting depend on the monitor that is plugged in? I would suppose the answer is yes, otherwise it would not work with my home monitor... To be tested and confirmed!


Launching commands in separate windows using bash How can I launch commands in new terminal windows?  I've tried the below
#!/bin/bash
open -a Terminal "" -e "/usr/local/bin/zookeeper-server-start /usr/local/etc/kafka/zookeeper.properties"
open -a Terminal "" -e "/usr/local/bin/kafka-server-start /usr/local/etc/kafka/server.properties"

However I get

the file /usr/local/bin/kafka-server-start /usr/local/etc/kafka/server.properties does not exist.

The file does exist: e.g.
ls /usr/local/bin/kafka-server-start shows that the file is in there.
How can I tell it that the properities file is a parameter and not part of the path? Assuming this is the correct way to open a terminal with a new command.
I'm on MacOS Catalina, if it helps.

This is what you're looking for:
#!/bin/bash
osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal"' -e 'do script "/usr/local/bin/zookeeper-server-start /usr/local/etc/kafka/zookeeper.properties"' -e 'do script "/usr/local/bin/kafka-server-start /usr/local/etc/kafka/server.properties"' -e 'end tell'

It can also be done as:
#!/bin/bash
osascript <<-EOF
tell application "Terminal"
    do script "/usr/local/bin/zookeeper-server-start /usr/local/etc/kafka/zookeeper.properties"
    do script "/usr/local/bin/kafka-server-start /usr/local/etc/kafka/server.properties"
end tell
EOF

Or like so:
#!/usr/bin/osascript

tell application "Terminal"
    do script "/usr/local/bin/zookeeper-server-start /usr/local/etc/kafka/zookeeper.properties"
    do script "/usr/local/bin/kafka-server-start /usr/local/etc/kafka/server.properties"
end tell


How do I migrate my wife's iCloud from her paid storage to our family storage? I've set up Family sharing, and have 2TB of storage (the current maximum).  I also pay for my wife's 50GB of storage.  I want to migrate that over to use the new 200GB i've allocated to her out of my 2TB total.

I am sharing my storage plan with her and the screen says "Family members with a paid storage plan will be able to choose if they want to share your plan."

I can't see how to do that on her Mac however.

I've looked under Manage Family, Account Details, Manage... (storage), iCloud Drive options, etc and there is nowhere I can see where I could migrate her existing 50GB subscription to the Family storage.

If I go to Manage and then Change Storage Plan... there is no option to migrate to the family sharing.

How do I do this?  Specifically how do I do this in such as way as the 10GB already in her iCloud storage is not nuked.

@RDG : That link does not explain how to merge an already existing plan into a family plan that the user has been added to. It merely states that you can:

  If a family member is already paying for their own iCloud storage
  plan, they can choose to switch to your plan or keep their own and
  still remain part of the family. When they switch to the shared family
  plan, they get a refund for the remainder of their personal plan. They
  can't keep their current plan and use the shared family plan at the
  same time.

@Dave Sag: I had the same problem with my family—my son already had a 50G storage plan and after I got a 200G family storage plan and added all my family members to it, for some reason it still showed him as "not using", and nowhere in the iCloud preferences on him MacBook would it allow him to switch to the family plan and get rid of his individual plan.

After a lot of digging I found one article that mentioned that in order to use the family shared iCloud storage you have to be running Mac OS High Sierra (10.13) or higher. Turned out, he was still on Sierra (10.12). After upgrading his MacBook to High Sierra the iCloud preferences now showed a button to "Use Family Storage". Clicking that instantly moved all his iCloud data from his individual storage plan to the family shared storage.

After doing that, it no longer even shows his 50G plan in the iCloud preferences. I'm assuming that it has cancelled that plan. If I find out that it did not automatically cancel that plan and that I have to go cancel it myself, I'll follow up on here to let you know.

Cheers
—Dan


Why is my Airplay lagging? When I use my airport express to play music, the media is still 3 or 4 seconds late but if I change the volume the result is instantly applied.

My Airport is connected throw WiFi to my router and so is my MBP.

Am I the only one facing this? Or is this a common issue? If so, how to explain that the volume settings are instantly applied whereas the music is always late?

This is a "feature" of AirPlay. There is a 2-3 second buffer that makes sure the audio playback is smooth. This only applies to starting/pausing playback, because the volume adjustment is done on the source device, before the audio is even sent to the AirPlay speaker. You will experience this on all devices that support AirPlay.


accountsd eating up all CPU resources when wireless has no internet connectivity it's a shame that the OS have degraded to this levels of breakage and bugs.

There's a way to stop accountsd from eating up all my CPU when I'm without internet access in a wireless connection for LAN only?

So there's any workaround for this? I don't even expect a fix from Apple anymore.

Many friends are ditching OS integrated internet accounts to avoid this issues, but I really don't want to go this path, only if it became my last resource.

After various attempts at disabling and logging out of iCloud accounts on the device, in the end a reset of Keychain fixed it:

Keychain Access -> Preferences -> Reset My Default Keychains


Will Time Machine backup a RAID 1 Drive Will Time Machine backup a RAID 1 Drive.  Will you get single copy of data or is each mirrored drive backed up?

Short: one set of files is backed up.

Long: you can think of the storage system as layered.  At the bottom is a layer of disk partitions representing disks;  see /dev - as in
ls -l /dev/disk
or
file /dev/disk

At the next layer up, these partitions can be used directly (no RAID) or grouped using RAID.  At the next layer up, the (non-)RAIDed partitions can be used for a filesystem;  see /Volumes - as in
ls -l /Volumes

You can see the mapping of disks and filesystems using the mount command (no arguments - repeat - supply no arguments to the command):
mount

Time Machine works at the filesystem level and backs up files and directories; Time Machine does not see the (non-)RAID or partition levels.  Another way to think about it - Time Machine sees file names and attributes (read, write, owner, group, etc.), and those attributes and names do not exist at the RAID level.


How to reclaim free space partition on macOS High Sierra? I was trying to expand my main drive by deleting a third partition I used to have after deleting and formatting with free space:

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

I could not expand my drive and now I can't find the drive I formatted "free space"

To convert an APFS container to free space you'd have to delete the container first:

diskutil ap deleteContainer disk1

Then you can demote the partition to unallocated disk space with:

diskutil eraseVolume "Free Space" %noformat% /dev/disk0s2

You won't be able to reclaim more disk space for your remaining container disk2 (disk0s3) though, because you can't expand disk0s3 to lower block numbers.

As of today you can't move APFS volumes between APFS containers.

Your options are then:

Reboot to Internet Recovery Mode

create a partition disk0s2 in the unallocated disk space with gpt. The partition has to have the same size and type as disk0s3.
unmount all container disk2 volumes
dd disk0s3 to disk0s2
delete Container disk2
expand the remaining container

Install High Sierra to container disk1 (the container disk1 mustn't be erased as described in the first part then) and import data from container disk2.

delete Container disk2 afterwards
expand the remaining Container disk1

Backup Mac 2 with Time Machine and restore it after booting to Internet Recovery Mode to a completely erased and repartitioned disk0


OS X/ iOS Password Managers So I have been reading some articles today and I see the 1Password app coming up a lot. Is there anything special with it? I am currently using Wallet for both OS X and iOS and it does its job quite well. I was just curious because Wallet got 23 reviews while 1Password seems to be a lot more popular.

Is there anything making that app better than its competitors?

1Password started as OS X-only, so it's more popular among long-time Mac/iOS users. Their Mac/iOS support should (theoretically) be better because it's their original platform.

That said, I use LastPass on OS X and iOS (and, occasionally, Windows and WebOS) and I'm quite happy with it. I haven't heard of any one cloud password management being significantly particularly better than its competitors nowadays.


Grant non-admin sudo privilege, but with `~` being his own home~ I have heard it to be adviced that, with the general idea of least privilege, Unix-like users should create another account without sudo privilege, in addition to the built-in account with sudo privilege.
In Mac, this translates to be: one should create a staff account for daily use, in addition to the admin account that comes with the computer, being reserved only when necessary.

For concreteness, say bruce is a staff, which I use daily, and batman is an admin, which I use only when necessary.
But how can I, while logging in batman, perform sudo tasks, on behalf of bruce, that is to say with bruce's own ~ and $(whoami) just as if I were logging in as bruce with privilege?

To illustrate this, define /User/bruce/test.sh:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

whoami
cd ~ && pwd
ls ~/Library/Preferences/Preferences/

(Yes, I have done chmod 744 test.sh) I chose the last line for artificial illustration purpose that, normally it seems, ~/Library/Preferences/Preferences/ is not accessible to a staff (i.e., a non-admin).

What I intend to receive, is bruce, /Users/bruce, and successful ls output.

The first attemp is that, indeed, if I open bruce's terminal, but login the bash of batman (in order to get sudo privilege), and run

sudo /Users/bruce/test.sh

I get root, /Users/batman, and successful ls output of ~/Library/Preferences/Preferences/, showing that the home is batman's; this is no wonder.

Or, a possible duplicate (a) asserts that sudo -i -u bruce enables me to execute commands as bruce.
But no! If I (as above) open bruce's terminal, login the bash of batman, and run

sudo -i -u bruce /Users/bruce/test.sh

I get bruce, /Users/bruce, and ls: : Permission denied.

Yet another possible duplicate (b) states that sudo -H -u bruce uses bruce's home.
Well, again when I open bruce's terminal, login the bash of batman, and run

sudo -H -u bruce bash /Users/bruce/test.sh

I too get bruce, /Users/bruce, and ls: : Permission denied.

The reader might think my request is unreasonable; but I just want to know whether it is possible to temporarily grant sudo privilege to a staff -- which may be convenient at times.
For example, if this can be done, when I am doing some short script I need no longer avoid $(whoami) or ~, making it more flexible.
Or, when I run a short script what site I googled suggests, nor do I have to replace $(whoami) by bruce and/or ~ by /Users/bruce.

The last time, as far as I recall, I was irritated by the restriction of privilege, is probably when I ran a layperson-made script I googled, in order to install a LaTeX font.

However, at present I can recollect one instance only.
That is, after I, while logging in batman, brew-ed something using homebrew (for it requires sudo privilege), and logout-ed back as bruce and brew-ed something other.
Homebrew complained a large number of incorrect permissions of certain folders under /usr/local, and urged me to run sudo chown -R $(whoami) blablabla.
It seemed to me that brew had set certain permission to batman's own, and it drove me crazy to fix them one by one.

What do you do to get around the moment, for example, that brew requires sudo, while using a staff account?
Or, after all, is the practice that daily-used account should contain least privilege, simply unrealistic?

There is a flaw in bruce's home folder probably: the permissions of ~/Library/Preferences/Preferences are wrong. Therefore the script doesn't work as expected.

Check the following output in my environment executing the script logged in as admin. I slightly modified the script and replaced ls ~/Library/Preferences/Preferences by ls -la ~/Library/Preferences | grep "loginwindow"

/Users/bruce/bin/sh/test-env.sh
batman
/Users/batman
-rw-------    1 batman  staff     192 27 Nov 13:42 com.apple.loginwindow.plist
-rw-------    1 batman  staff     198 24 Okt 21:43 loginwindow.plist

sudo /Users/bruce/bin/sh/test-env.sh
root
/Users/batman
-rw-------    1 batman  staff     192 27 Nov 13:42 com.apple.loginwindow.plist
-rw-------    1 batman  staff     198 24 Okt 21:43 loginwindow.plist

sudo -i -u bruce /Users/bruce/bin/sh/test-env.sh
bruce
/Users/bruce
-rw-------    1 bruce  staff      95 27 Nov 13:40 com.apple.loginwindow.plist
-rw-------    1 bruce  staff     198 27 Nov 13:36 loginwindow.plist

sudo su bruce
/Users/bruce/bin/sh/test-env.sh
bruce
/Users/bruce
-rw-------    1 bruce  staff      95 27 Nov 13:40 com.apple.loginwindow.plist
-rw-------    1 bruce  staff     198 27 Nov 13:36 loginwindow.plist
$USERNAME = root #check this by entering `env` in the shell additionally

sudo su -l bruce
/Users/bruce/bin/sh/test-env.sh
bruce
/Users/bruce
-rw-------    1 bruce  staff      95 27 Nov 13:40 com.apple.loginwindow.plist
-rw-------    1 bruce  staff     198 27 Nov 13:36 loginwindow.plist
$USERNAME = <empty>

Also: there is a major misunderstanding how sudo/su really works. Your admin batman never runs a command "on behalf" of another user. If you enter "sudo some_command" or "sudo -i -u user some_command" it's always the super user's elevated position (and the privilege of an admin to run sudo as determined by the sudoers file and "make himself super user" temporarily) which "executes the command successfully on behalf of another user".

If you have to execute commands with escalated privileges on a daily base with your non-admin user, add him to the sudoers file and add a restricted number of commands only.

Example (control Apache web server):

bruce ALL=(ALL) /usr/sbin/apachectl

or without the requirement to enter a password after executing sudo apachectl as bruce:

bruce ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/apachectl

Or modify the scripts appropriately to stay within bruce's realm.

That said the advice/practice that "the daily user shouldn't be a sudoer" is still valid.

Homebrew is a different beast: it's designed to be installed by one user only - an admin user. Most apps/executables provided by the homebrew environment can be launched by a standard user after modifying the user's $PATH though or using the full path.

Several how-tos exist how to set up homebrew as a multi-user environment (e.g. My Homebrew Multi User Setup). I don't know if this still applies to newer OS X systems/brew versions.


Ping is fast but web is slow? I have my MacBook Pro connected to a cell-enabled iPad.  Ping to stackexchange.com is less than 60 ms.  But web pages are taking ages.  A robot detector for a meta question has been there for several minutes, and the checkbox has still not appeared.

Mail is showing connection errors, as is iTunes.  I don't think it's cell filtering, as various things have worked fine on other occasions.  Maps was a little bit slow downloading imagery but not bad.

I thought perhaps having both USB and WiFi hotspot might be interfering with each other, but turning off WiFi didn't change anything.

The cell signal is poor in this apartment.  But wouldn't that slow down ping by the same percentage as anything else?

Ping to stackexchange.com is less than 60 ms. But web pages are taking ages.

You're conflating Ping speed and actual download speed, something that can't be done.

Ping (how fast a small amount of data takes to travel) is different than download speed (how much data your computer can get through your router per second). It's download speed that determines how fast websites load, not your ping score (as an aside, a ping as high as 60ms indicates to me that your cellular connection is pretty slow, for me ~10ms comes with fast download speeds on LTE).

So how can you find out your download speed? Just search google for what's my download speed (or go to speedtest.net) to measure it. As a baseline, any speed 25 Mbps or faster means the web page will load at a speed I would perceive as "fast" and any speed below 2 Mbps is close to unbearable.

tl;dr: Having low ping does not mean websites will necessarily load fast; download speeds determine how fast a webpage will load.


Karabiner-Elements: How to disable a group of keys in a simple way? Is there a simple way to disable a group of keys in complex modifications in Karabiner-Elements?

Consider an example:

Under the following condition

  "set_variable": {
      "name": "con-1",
      "value": 1
  }

I want to disable all alphabets/numbers/simbols (or most of them at least), except for a and b.

Just for reference, this page discusses how to disable individual keys. Applying this approach to many many keys is not efficient.

I appreciate your insight in advance.

EDIT: I just added two "[ ]" brackets to the final "to":[{ -part, as their lack got s.o.an [error] !

==========================================================================

So, here is a "final version" (some notes to/from a first attempt are appended at bottom):

... some sample code that excludes any typing except letters "a" & "b".
This example is set to only work in TextEdit (for testing purposes) but of course you can change/delete this "conditions" (in last manipulator).

– The "Excluding" is prepared by Shft-Ctrl-A which solely sets "none_but_ab" to true (1).
– Next in line is a Stop-manipulator (security first); it sets "none_but_ab" to "0" after holding "x" 2 sec.
– Both following parts out-put our "a" and "b" letters, excluding them from following annihilation.
– The fatal last manipulator grabs "any: key_code" and renders it to "none" …
– Be careful with your Stop-mechanism: singular keys work best, modified combos may fail!

– Some more ideas:
By adding "command" ("shift") to the last "from", you could prevent app-Cmd-shortcuts (capital letters).
Karabiner El. can start before login (Preferences > 'Copy the current …'); "password" would be affected!
I also would like to know how "Shift" could be applied to "any":"key_code", forcing capital letters, or if numbers can somehow be "selected". Well, let's see …

{ "description": "=============  vk_none but a,b  ============= ",
   "manipulators": [
        {
           "from": { "key_code": "a",
                     "modifiers": {
                         "mandatory": ["left_shift", "left_control"]
                   }              },
             "to": [
                    { "set_variable": {
                      "name": "none_but_ab",
                      "value": 1 }    }
                   ],
           "type": "basic"
         },
         {
           "from": { "key_code": "x" },
     "parameters": { "basic.to_if_held_down_threshold_milliseconds": 2000 },
"to_if_held_down": [
                    { "key_code": "x" },
                    { "set_variable": {
                      "name": "none_but_ab",
                      "value": 0 }    }
                   ],
           "type": "basic"
         },
         { "from": { "key_code": "a" },
             "to": [ { "key_code": "a" } ],
           "type": "basic" },
         { "from": { "key_code": "b" },
             "to": [ { "key_code": "b" } ],
           "type": "basic" },
         {
     "conditions": [
                    { "name": "none_but_ab",
                      "type": "variable_if",
                      "value": 1 },
                    { "bundle_identifiers": [
                              "^com.apple.TextEdit" ],
                      "type": "frontmost_application_if"
                    }
                   ],
           "from": { "any": "key_code",
                     "modifiers": {
                          "optional": ["any"] }
                   },
             "to": [ { "key_code": "vk_none" } ],
           "type": "basic"
                   }
                   ]
}

(Here are some remains from a first (deleted) answer at this:

note the twisted "any: key_code" part that calls every key, including "modifiers…any"

Interestingly 'from-to' units within{manipulators: …} Karabiner.json are worked through from top to bottom until one is executable.
So if you want particular letters (a, b) to work nonetheless, you must call them previously.

Starting value for any variable is "0" … values will "live" while Karabiner is running!

… while experimenting I made my monitor sleep, but when I typed my pw – one letter simply was not recognised. I had to start from an external drive and change my code. )


Does the macOS installer use GPU? I have an old Macbook Pro (15-inch, mid-2010). Unfortunately,

(mechanical, non-SSD) hard disk has bad sectors; it needs to be replaced,
the GPU is faulty, if it is in use, the kernel panics; sometimes within several minutes from the boot up.

I figured out the procedure for installing a new working hard drive, yet before I do that, I have to ask:

Does the macOS installer rely on GPU? If yes, is it possible to make the installer not to use GPU?

Is your Mac a dual-gpu model? I've seen cases where the descrete GPU goes bad and causes crashes, but if you disable it and go integrated GPU only, it will function normally. Worth a shot.


Can search history be seen by Apple ID? I was searching up homework answers 3 years ago on my iPod but my cousin and I share an Apple ID that she made, and before that and before I had her Apple ID I had my Uncle's I don’t want them to know and tell my mom. Did they see my search history?

It is possible to see search history.

If Safari for iCloud is enabled all enabled devices will be able to see your search history when going into the tabs screen to see what tanks are open. NOTE: This is only recent history. I doubt that 4 years back you will be able to view it.

If you want to turn off search history go to Settings -> [your name] -> iCloud and turn Safari off.


How can I recover photos from Photo Stream to my computer? My iPhone's screen decided to die on me, so the screen is black, and I got a Samsung to replace it. The problem is that I can't get anything off of my phone. I did back up to my iCloud but how I am going to get all of my photos that I saved on iCloud?

As this is tagged photo-stream I presume that you 'backed up' to Photo Stream. You can recover the photos from your Photo Stream by opening the Photo Stream on your computer.

~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub

Inside this folder are all the photos from your Photo Stream. Copy them to your new phone.