Folder action to append to Spotlight comment for files in Finder I am using AppleScript and Python together to gather system information about the Macs in my stock as well as adding some supplemental info to the Spotlight comments field.

Specifically, AppleScript gathers the info on the Mac whose details I am capturing (whilst booted up to an external USB drive). I use dialogue boxes etc to gather feedback about OS version to be installed, the order number as well as the machine's actual marketing name (thanks to https://github.com/MagerValp/MacModelShelf), these are all saved as comments in the final System Profiler *.spx file that is generated/saved by the script.

I then use Dropbox to send the file back to my main Mac (which is running Filemaker). I use a rather complicated Python script to read the XML data of the system profiler file and to then paste the critical hardware info such as serial numbers, HD size and type etc into the relevant fields of the database.

I would like to parse the Spotlight comments of the spx file to get at the addition info e.g marketing name, Model Name and Order Number.

I try using (in Python script)

spotlightComments = 'mdls -raw -name kMDItemFinderComment ' + str(file_path)

to parse the comments. Even in Terminal as a standalone command this returns just a blank line, despite the comments being visible when I right click the spx file and go to 'Get Info'. N.B this is different from the "(null)" I used to get when using other Cloud services such as Sync.com which don't appear to carry-over file meta-data such as Spotlight comments.

If I open the edit the file's Spotlight comments and add just a single space " " character at the end of the string the command works - i.e I get back something like

iMac Late 2012 | 300001234 | 10.12

This can be further split up with the Python command

parts = spotlightComments.split('|')

Anyway back to AppleScript!

I've tried making a folder action to automatically append a single space/" " character to the end of a file's comments the moment something is added to the folder containing it, but nothing at all appears to happen.

Here is my script...

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items

    repeat with currentFile in added_items

        set TheComment to the comment of the currentFile

        set comment of the currentFile to TheComment & " "

    end repeat

end adding folder items to

Even when I swap out the appended string to be something far more obvious there is still no change. I've also tried using Automator.app's 'wizard' for making folder actions as well as manually writing the script, storing it in "~/Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts" and then connecting the folder to the script using "Folder Actions Setup"

How can I append text to existing comments in Finder via automation?

I think I may have found the answer...

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving added_items

    tell application "Finder"

        repeat with currentFile in added_items

            set TheComment to the comment of the currentFile

            set comment of the currentFile to TheComment & "test"

        end repeat

    end tell

end adding folder items to


How do I share sections from the notebook via e-mail in Microsoft OneNote for Mac? I am utilizing Microsoft OneNote version 15.2.2 on a Mac.  Is it possible to share sections from the notebook via email as an attachment that can be edited, instead of only in the body of the email?

Unfortunately, no. OneNote for Mac does not support local files in any fashion, including saving them. You are expected to use OneDrive and SharePoint instead. Your best bet would be to use File | Share | Email Page | As Message and paste the body into a TextEdit Document.


Tilde shortcut duplicates my key When writing, I often need to use tildes like ó (but still need my keyboard to be in English), so I just hold the key down and press 4:

Usually it works fine. But several times have I ended up with this:

I don't know. It's like some sort of lag happens and the keystroke is repeated or something.

This is not software specific: it has happened to me in all sorts of applications with textfields. Even web browsers.

Is this a known problem? Is there a solution?

I am using Mac OSX Yosemite 10.10.3. I have a Macbook Pro 15" Retina Display Mid 2014. I don't use other Macs so I can't say I can reproduce this issue in them. I use the builtin keyboard.

I didn’t know that holding a key in OS X produced a list like that. Very useful!

Not a direct answer to your question, but may help you, is that if you type alt+e then o you will end up the the “ó” character.

The alt+e combination gives you the acute diacritic mark, then you just enter the letter you want to put under it. So alt+e then e works to get “é” too.

You can also do alt+e then shift+o to get “Ó”.


Why does Apple recommend a 2TB FD over a 1TB Fusion Drive for iMacs with 32GB of memory? Under the 'Choose Storage' section on Apple's iMac configuration page there is a blue link titled 'How much storage is right for you? (Choose Storage)
'. In that dialog it says:

  For the best performance, iMac systems with 32GB of memory should be
  configured with a 2TB or larger Fusion Drive or all flash storage.

http://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/imac?product=MK472LL/A&step=config#

Why would Apple a 2TB or larger Fusion Drive or all flash storage for iMac systems with 32GB of memory? Is it related to the size of the sleep image since 1TB Fusion Drives only come with 24GB of flash?

The second part of that statement "or all flash storage" is universally true. Solid state storage that ships with the current (2015) lineup of hardware is almost an order of magnitude faster than HDD technology. If you can make a justification that the increased performance is worth the uncharge then a pure SSD storage chain is a first choice/no brainer solution.

As for the 1 TB vs 2 TB fusion drive - there could be two items in play:

If the SSD component of the Fusion Drive is manufactured as faster than the 1 TB version, that would be a clear win. The page lists the 1 TB flash component as 24 GB of fast flash. The 2 TB drive contains 128GB of fast flash which is 5 times the space for fast file storage.
Just common sense. Internal iMac storage is not user serviceable so if you know you are a power user and need 32 GB of RAM, you likely won't mind the incremental cost of SSD or larger fusion drive and would statistically be someone that would want more storage in a year according to Apple's marketing research and experience.

I wouldn't think the sleep image usage would matter on 10.10 or 10.11 for several reasons:

The image is not purely based on the size of total RAM. The OS thins the sleep image through memory compression and other virtual memory enhancements.
Writing a sleep image file is a large sequential write, which is the one benchmark where a traditional HDD performs quite well as compared to SSD since the drive cache and firmware to write a large chunk of contiguous storage to a spinning drive is quite optimized. SSD really shines for random small IO where the HDD seek times and latency causes large slowdowns.


Create a shortcut/widget to an Accessibility feature I would like to build a shortcut to General -> Accessibility -> MFI Hearing Devices -> Adam Hearing Devices -> Stream to left hearing device, and toggle that off/on. I've been searching the Shortcuts documentation but can't find a way to do this. Is it possible, maybe with another app?

If you go into General -> Accessibility -> Accessibility Shortcut, is there an option to add 'Stream to left hearing device'?

If so, you can then triple click on the home button and that should (providing you haven't enabled any other accessibility features) toggle the stream.

Unfortunately I do not have a MFI device to test this with, however I do use the accessibility shortcuts frequently.


Wi-Fi connection to Mac Mini I am thinking of purchasing a Mac Mini. I currently have a Wi-Fi network in my home using a WebCaster 3100SV router (Japan-NTT). Will I have a problem connecting to my existing Wi-Fi connection for my Windows based Pc's?

As long as your router broadcasts 802.11n or 802.11g WiFi, you should be ok.


Turning off Find My iPhone I just got a new iPhone 6. I synced it to my computer through the last backup I had saved from my old phone. Unfortunately, at the time I was using a different Apple ID, and this ID no longer exists. I want to sync it to my new Apple ID, but first I have to turn off Find My iPhone using the old ID. I can't do this because it no longer exists, but it still asks for the password.

I've tried entering in old passwords and sending an email to reset the password, but none of it works.

You'll need to take your iPhone along with the sales receipt to an Apple store.


How can I add custom week numbers to Calendar? Calendar.app on both iOS and OS X provides functionality to add week numbers. However, I'd like the week numbers to match a custom pattern (numbered by semester rather than by year). Is there a way I can do that?

I do not know of any way of customising the existing function, so I suggest that you make an iCloud Calendar and make a repeated calendar entry for each semester. Example: Make new calendar named Semesters. Make an entry called 201516-1 and set the first Monday of the semester and repeat until the last. Continue making entries 201516-2, 201516-3, 201516-4 until you are done.


Smart App Banner install attribution in App Store Connect App Analytics Reference: Smart App Banners

Are Smart Banner installs included in "Web Referrers" when looking at App Analytics > Sources > Web Referrers?

Definition of Web Referrers:

  Customers tapped a link form a website that brought them to your App Store product page

To me that doesn't sound like it includes Smart Banner installs.

  If you promote your app with Smart App Banners in Safari, you can add your campaign token and provider token when implementing a Smart App Banner on your website.
  source

This section on Smart Banners is a separate section from app analytics / referrers. This again implies to me that smart app banners are not included in web referrers and are considered their own channel.

Does anyone know have a more concrete answer? I find the App Store Analytics incredibly inconsistent and documentation lacking.

I've just finished the below the config. The expected behavior is to see metrics for our Smart App Banner in in App Analytics > Sources > Campaigns. I suppose this is more of a workaround to your original question, but hopefully is works for you to see some data about the interactions with your banner.

add a campaign token (testing now)
add a campaign token and a provider token (have not tested)

<meta name="apple-itunes-app" content="app-id=myAppStoreID, affiliate-data=ct=myCampaignToken">

<meta name="apple-itunes-app" content="app-id=myAppStoreID, affiliate-data=ct&pt=myCampaignToken&myProviderToken">


How to play video to Chromecast with subtitle? I have an .mp4 file and an .srt file. How do I play video to Chromecast with subtitles?

[edited]

Applogize for the lack of information,
i'm looking for iphone / ipad app for streaming to my chromecast

The subtitle file cannot be loaded to play on the chromecast. If the video is already encoded with the subtitles then the Video will play with subtitles. I'm afraid Google needs to add support for playing .srt files along with the video files.


How do I transfer voicemails from old iPhone 4S to new iPhone 5S? I have an iPhone 4S running iOS 8.1.2. I used iTunes to create a backup for it.

I just got an iPhone 5S (also running iOS 8.1.2), and I restored the 4S backup onto it. However none of the voicemails on the 4S were restored in the process.

I entered my voicemail password on the 5S and it didn't download any voicemails.  Apparently AT&T doesn't keep voicemails on their servers after you download them.

All the voicemails are still saved on the 4S. Is there any way to transfer those voicemails onto the 5S?

I think we’ve established that at the time this question was asked, you were left at the mercy of your carrier. There were workarounds, such as plugging an AUX cable into a computer and recording those voicemails, but many of them were rather cumbersome or lossy (or they cost money).

Thankfully, starting with iOS 9, Apple added the option to convert Voicemails to Voice Memos (on carriers that support Visual Voicemail).

Simply open the Share Sheet on a voicemail you want to save, then select Voice Memos.

Voice Memos are supposed to sync via iCloud (although my results have been spotty with that one), and my experience has been that they get included in your iTunes and iCloud backups as well.

You can also save your voicemails to iCloud Drive, AirDrop them from your old iPhone to your new (although that requires at least an iPhone 5), etc.

I don’t know how relevant this question still is to the OP, but if they kept their old iPhone 4s, it is eligible to upgrade to iOS 9, and therefore transfer those voicemails that have been sitting around all this time.


If I remove Apple Loops, will reinstalling Garage Band from the App Store later restore them? I'm attempting to save some space on my new Mac, which had iLife preinstalled. I can confidently delete GarageBand and iMovie for now, since I can easily reinstall them later from the App Store should I need them. However, I'm trepidatious about removing their associated data (which are quite hefty) from /Library/Application Support/GarageBand and /Library/Audio/Apple Loops. Since these are outside the .app, I'm worried that they won't be included along with the App Store bundles. Does anyone know for sure one way or another?

Why don't you just zip them (The Unarchiver is nice) and store them in /Users/Shared until it's clear whether you need them again.

I've always used Shared for folders of Copies, Archives, Removed items, all zipped. Very handy.


Transmit temporary file structure Transmit normally stores files at:
~/Users/esemrow/Library/Caches/Cleanup At Startup/Transmit/300C3B29-9684-443B-9784-9316236D5795/index.php

Is there a way to have it mimic the remote file structure?
e.g. ~/Users/esemrow/Library/Caches/Cleanup At Startup/Transmit/domain.com/www/site/public_html/my_folder/index.php

Not as far as I know currently, no. You can talk to the developers on Twitter: @panic


What happened to some of the symbols in Mac OS X Lion? I was trying to make a mock-up for a video player on my browser and couldn't find the character for a speaker with three sound waves like you would normally see at the top of the screen for audio. When I went online to find the character value for it, I found this &#x1F50A; which renders 🔊 (what is now the Emoji speaker icon). How can I get the symbols I knew back?

You may need to reinstall the fonts Symbola or Quivira on your Lion OS.  Also you may need to specifically select these fonts for the text where you want them to display.


Can the Apple T2 chip be used as a TPM to enable BitLocker? I have a 2019 MacBook Pro, with the Apple T2 Security Chip. I have installed Windows 10 via Boot Camp, and that is working well. I would like to turn on BitLocker in W10 and take advantage of that encryption, but when I try to enable BitLocker, Windows returns the error This device can't use a Trusted Platform Module. Is there any known way to use the T2 chip as a TPM for the purpose of enabling BitLocker?

(I do realize one can enable BitLocker without a TPM - I am not trying to solve that problem. This is about using the T2 chip.)

No, the T2 cannot in any way be used as a TPM for BitLocker. TPM for BitLocker is not a generic term for any type of trusted platform module, but rather it needs to be specifically the Intel TPM specification (latest version is 2.0). The T2 chip does not work in a way compatible with the TPM specification.


Make Notes app copy text as plain text Is there a way to have the Notes app on Mac copy text as plain text? I use Notes a lot but it copies text as rich text. This can causes problems when pasting text to certain apps that pick up on the unwanted font properties of Notes.

In the app where you're pasting the text you've copied from Notes, make sure your document format is plain text, and then use the "Paste and Match Style" command in the Edit menu (or hit cmd-opt-shift-V):

Any macOS app that uses a system standard text field should support this.


timemachine doesn't start or send errors Time Machine is stuck here in this screen i erased my drive to be formatted as journaled and it looks like this now but time machine doesn't respond after configuration

this is what i do but nothing happen

Time machine doesn’t want to back up part of one disk to another disk, but your screen shot seems to show that. To be sure, I would confirm you are not just splitting up one drive and have two devices to set this up.

It might be possible to convince Time Machine from the command line to backup, so if you’re up for that, here are the two commands I would use to get you started:

diskutil list

And then

tmutil destinationinfo

Based on your specific naming, you might be able to add your drive - being careful with characters like ( and ) - I would probably make your backup volume just “backup” without any punctuation like the smart quotes to the left

tmutil setdestination /volumes/backupdrivename

this will tell you where the error exists and try to search for it.
maybe a permission error. remember you maybe have to try the same command with 'sudo'

if the config is done but it won't start try to start the backup from command also

tmutil startbackup && tmutil status

you will notice that backup started at timemachine app


Making a micro MacBook Air (headless) Here's a project I've been desiring for a while. Hopefully this is not too off topic.

I'd like to take a MacBook Air, remove the case, screen, battery, speakers, keyboard, basically everything. I want to have just a motherboard and hsf running osx and usable via vnc over wifi for ultraportable number crunching power.

What problems do you think I might run into? Is there any reason the air won't boot if the aforementioned components are removed?

Bart Reardon is trying to convert a broken MBA into a "computer in a keyboard". The project looks a bit stuck right now, but from one photo you can see he has removed (some? all?) components from the Mobo. Perhaps you could ask him if the thing still works if everything is removed. I’d be interested to know!


Can't open an app as root. Sudo command not found I'm trying to install the torrent downloader Vuze and every time I try to open the Vuze Installer via the terminal, in my case,

sudo /Users/naza/Downloads/VuzeInstaller.app

after put the password the therminal says

sudo: /Users/naza/Downloads/VuzeInstaller.app: command not found

I'm a new MacOS user but I know I can install the app by just going root and log in as root user in another session but I read that is recommended to do it with sudo via the terminal.

I just installed MacOS Catalina, it would be weird if something, as the sudo command, is missing.

I also tried to use the SU command

su /Users/naza/Downloads/VuzeInstaller.app

but it doesn't seem to work. The terminal answers su: Sorry. I read that's because the command isn't on for non-root users, same if I try sudo su  /Users/naza/Downloads/VuzeInstaller.app, the terminal respond su: unknown login: su.

You need to execute the unix executable, normally found in some.app/Contents/MacOS. To browse the app contents, right click on the app, and choose "Show package Contents".

You can simply drag and drop the executable in a Terminal window to get its path. Or you can right click, hold alt and choose "Copy as pathname".

Run the command below first, using sudo on any executable is not recommended.

/Volumes/Vuze\ Installer/Vuze\ Installer.app/Contents/MacOS/JavaApplicationStub

This of course assumes that you have already mounted the .dmg file downloaded from Vuze website.


Finder is using over 100% of CPU and makes entire system slow Every since upgrading to Lion my system has started to slow down, big time.  I realized that the Finder was using over 100% of the CPU, even when I am really not doing anything with it.  I restart it, and after a bit, it is back up to over 100%, making everything else crawl.

I have done a disk repair and permissions repair as suggested elsewhere but that does not seem to help.  Does anyone know how to fix this problem?

I figured out what it was a permissions issue.  Running Fix Permissions in Disk Util fixed the issue.  Strange.  But, found one other place online talking about this and how it worked for them.


Most purchased iOS apps with number of purchases? Where can I find a list of most purchased iPhone / iPad apps WITH the number of buyers?

Nowhere, unfortunately, because the information isn't reported anywhere. Individual publishers sometimes announce their sales and/or number of purchases, but it's uncommon and there's no reporting at all from the majority of the most successful publishers.


Macbook Pro 2016 touch bar freeze in bootcamp after installing Visual Studio with Hyper-V Yesterday I've installed bootcamp, Windows 10 Pro, on my new tb/MBP (late 2016). Everything worked fine until I've installed Visual Studio 2015 (Update 3) with all of its components (50GB~).

After I've rebooted the computer, it took ~10 minutes to load Windows (waiting at the dark screen with Windows logo and dots loading animation). Then - the keyboard and trackpad do not respond (even the keyboard light is turned off). The Touch Bar sometimes works and sometimes not.

I've rebooted to macOS and everything works fine.

I've read many threads and saw that it may be related to Hyper-V, which Visual Studio uses for Mobile Developement.

So, how can I disable Hyper-V so I can get back my MBP to normal? I don't want to re-install Windows, and I can't work without Visual Studio...

I've got Hyper-V working reliably under Windows 10 installed via Bootcamp on a 2016 MBP without TouchBar. The steps are relatively advanced, but were easy to follow and most people on this thread should be comfortable. You install and EFI boot manager called rEFInd (it's the "modern" successor to a tool I used to use on my old MacBook Air called rEFIt). By tinkering with rEFInd's configuration you can get it to EFI-boot Windows with the hypervisor enabled.

Follow the instructions here, CAREFULLY: http://nuts4.net/post/hack-force-vt-x-to-be-always-on-when-booting-to-windows-on-your-macbook

I also followed the steps in this article about enabling "legacy safe mode" for Windows 10 (allowing me to press the F8 key during boot if anything goes wrong): https://medium.com/@naokisatoname/newer-mac-windows-10-on-boot-camp-hyper-v-enabled-infinite-spinning-circle-5631b36f6d1…

The net result is a clean install of W10 via Bootcamp, with working Hyper-V. I need to use rEFInd as my boot manager to EFI-boot Windows, but that's totally fine in my book.

I hope this helps people. I intend to cross post this solution on the other linked threads to get the word out there.

Regards,
Mark


Variable not defined (AppleScript) For some reason the name of thePath comes up as not defined by my Automator workflow.

on run {input, parameters}
    tell application "Finder"
        set thePath to the (first item of the input)
        set namedFolder to ((the name of thePath) as text)
        set namedFolder to ((text 1 thru 13) of namedFolder)
    end tell
    return namedFolder
end run

namedFolder only exists in the scope of your tell block. Define it first thing so that it will persist after you’re done with Finder.

set namedFolder to ""
tell application "Finder"
    ...
end tell
return namedFolder

Alternatively, you could just put the return statement inside the tell block.


Is this crash normal? My Snow Leopard crashed while I was switching from Itunes to the browser.

Basically everything got stuck and a the current song second started to run in loop.

Is that normal ? Can it happen very rarely ? Or should I worry ?

thanks

You should worry if it happens to you periodically. If it happened only once, my guess is one of the background process Mac OS X runs from time to time got stuck for a moment.

BTW, when you say "crash", did you have to reboot your computer? Or did it just got stuck for a period of time?

Anyway, if it crashed, the best you could do is send the crash report to Apple when prompted and check the Usual Suspects:

Background processes => System Preferences > Account > Login Items (remove the one you don't need.
Check how much free space you have left and start removing the files you don't need
Maybe try to reindex your hard drive


With dual monitors, changing one desktop will change the desktop of the other screen as well Since I updated my Mac (I'm using a Mac Mini M1, macOS Big Sur 11.2.3), it has a strange behavior now.
I have 2 screens. There is a mirror-like effect but not completely mirrored on both.
I have the same amount of Desktops on both screens.
If I had a new Desktop on one, it will had a new Desktop on the other as well.
When I switch to an other Desktop, say I go to the 3rd desktop in one screen, it will switch to the 3rd desktop on the other screen as well.
And last weird behavior: when I switch to full mode on youtube on one screen, the other screen switch to a full mode but with a black screen.
However, I'm saying it's not completely mirrored because the 2 sceens are still different. I can have different activities on both screen besides the behaviors mentioned.
Am I the only one who got this ?

This is a Mission Control pref.
System prefs > Mission Control > check "Displays have separate Spaces"

Personally, I don't consider it "weird" at all. This is my default working method, but I never use fullscreen, so I never get the blank screen.


Is it dangerous to run a GPU benchmark I wanted to see how my new 13" Retina MacBook Pro performed on GPU stress, so I downloaded some GPU benchmark apps.
In one of the apps, I set the resolution to the same as my screen, and I putted antialiasing to the max...

Then, when I launched it, my computer became (not surprisingly) unresponsive, I did managed to force quit the app though, at which time OS X triggered me an error panel, telling me that there was a graphic error (and I could signal it), but it didn't blocked anything.
A little bit later, after I ran another benchmark, a small black line appeared briefly on the screen (something like 0.5 seconds) and then disappeared.

Is it a normal behavior after a high GPU load ? Or should I worry about it ?
Is it dangerous for the CPU to go to its limits ? (my GPU is an Intel Iris one).

Thank you.

I've seen that error a few time on mine since updating to Yosemite. I've taken it in to get checked out and apple didn't find anything when running their tests. One thing I've done to keep it from popping up as much is to do a NVRAM reset. You can do this by restarting before bootup hold command + option P + R till you hear a second startup chime then release. This clears out some video memory and some other minor settings like volume etc.


Add RSS feeds to google reader from iPad When using iPad, with Safari or some other application, once I find an interesting blog with its RSS feed, how can I add it to my google reader feeds?

If you use an RSS reader like Mr Reader or Reeder, you can add new subscriptions using the + button on the main screen of each.


Backup entire mac hard drive to a usb drive and later restore I would like to backup the entire system drive/partition to a USB hard/flash drive.  I have a 128gb usb flash drive and a 2tb usb hard drive.  I am borrowing a friends macbook air for learning swift/ios programming for a few months.

I figured that I can back it up and restore it later for minimal inconvenience for him.  I would prefer to not have to log in or install anything on it.  I currently don't have his account password but can get it if needed.

BTW the mac is el capitan I think.  It is a different looking disk utility than I have seen in some online screenshots elsewhere.

What I have tried:
Booting to the recovery mode using command +r.
Then I erased the usb drive (name 06192017, format osx extended journaled, GUID partition map).
Then I selected the 06192017 and selected edit>restore.
"Restore from:" I selected "macintosh HD" and clicked restore.
It takes a little while and then fails.  It says "io error" in the details.

I have also tried to select the "macintosh HD" and select file> new image>Image from "macintosh hd"
save as: "macintosh hd"
tags: (none)
Where: 06192017 (my usb drive)
Format: compressed
encryption: none
This also seems to work for a few minutes and then fails. A box says:
com.apple.diskutility error 3

First I tried the 2tb USB hard drive and then I figured there may be a problem with that so I tried the 128gb USB flash drive.  Same results.

I am new to mac OSX.  Am I going about this all wrong?

If I'm understanding you correctly you want to backup the MacBook before you use it, then restore it a few months later so that anything you do over the next few months is wiped out and you can return it to your friend in the same condition you received it.

If this was me, what I'd do is just create a new dust2098 account for myself in the "Users & Groups" panel of System Preferences, and log into that account for the next few months and then before giving the MacBook back, log into your friend's account and delete that new dust2098 account I'd created for myself.

I'm assuming you are coming from a Windows background. Macs are quite different from Windows and don't accumulate quite as much cruft as they are being used. For example, where application store their settings in the Registry in Windows, they are stored in individual plist files within your own account on a Mac. Also where random applications will regularly try to install or make changes to the c:\Windows folder (less so in more recent versions of Windows), on a Mac the /System folder and other critical locations are locked down by the System Integrity Protection (SIP) feature.


What OS X signal strength test apps exist to measure Wi-Fi networking? Is there a way I can get more details on the strength of my Wi-Fi signal?

I'm looking for either an app I can download or a system command that I can run in terminal that will expose the noise of other signals that aren't mine and may be occupying the same channel as my current network.

Apple provides two tools that most people find very adequate for normal network scanning and troubleshooting. One is graphical and the other command line based.

/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications/Wireless\ Diagnostics.app (on newer OS) and /System/Library/CoreServices/Wi-Fi\ Diagnostics.app (on older OS)
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport

The former will draw a very nice graph of signal and noise for you and can perform wireless scans, Bonjour service mapping (both locally and across the internet IPv4 and IPv6), ARP, and just about anything that the normal network utility tool does except for port scanning.

I symlink the airport command into /usr/local/bin so that you can call it from any shell.

Air:~ me$ ls -l  /usr/local/bin/airport
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  89 Apr  4  2012 /usr/local/bin/airport -> /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport

The terminal command is more useful for scanning and changing the way your device joins networks than getting signal or noise information, but airport -I does dump details that normally are shown when you hold the option key and click on the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar (such as MCS, RSSI, Noise, and transmit rates).

If you want more powerful tools, start with these professional quality and reasonably priced apps:

WiFi Notifications - free and simple notifications to narrow down when significant events happen on WiFi
WiFi Signal - runs in your menu bar
WiFi Explorer - full analysis and nice graphs - slightly more expensive


How do I share my Internet connection wirelessly while using it on my MacBook Pro? How do I share my Internet connection wirelessly with other gadgets while using it simultaneously on my MacBook Pro?

I am using a Idea Netsetter 3g dongle for broadband Internet access. However, when I go to the settings to share it with other devices, the MacBook Pro is the only one left out of the connection.

I've used  Idea Netsetter Dongle and shared my internet over the Wifi.

First connect to the Internet with Idea Netsetter 3G
Open System Preferences > Sharing

Select the Network which you want to share ( In your case it's Ethernet Adaptor )
Select the network(s) which you want to share the internet to (In your case Wifi)

Don't forget to switch you're Wifi On

Now if you look at the Wifi Icon on your Menu Bar , You'll notice something different.

Now take any other device ( iPhone , Android Phone , iPad ) and connect to your WiFi Network.

Hope this is what you were looking for !


Getting music off an ipad into the computer I just bought a new ipad, and need to move everything from the old one (an ipad 1) to the new one. I made a sync to the computer. Then made a restore to the new ipad. And then I found it did not copy over my music.
Some of those music files are not in my HD anymore. So if I lose it it might be gone for good. Is there any way in which I can get them out of the iPad in my HD memory.

PhoneView (for Mac), PhoneDisk (Windows or Mac), iExplorer (Windows and Mac, free, but you have to find where the music is)


Can't boot from external APFS formatted SSD I have a Mac mini with macOS High Sierra and an external SSD drive connected via USB also with High Sierra on it.

After converting the external SSD to APFS it doesn't boot anymore - my Mac can't see it as bootable and doesn't show it when booting with holding Option key.

If I go to System Preferences -> Startup Disk and choose the external drive I get an error:

You can’t change the startup disk to the selected disk.

Running bless to place boot files failed.

It seems that macOS can't install some boot files on that disk. Running First Aid on that disk in Disk Utility also produces an error:

Verifying allocated space.
error: Underallocation Detected on Main device: (7219537+1) bitmap address (184373)
Space Verification failed.
The volume /dev/disk1s2 could not be verified completely.

What can I do to restore those boot files and make the SSD finally work? I don't want to erase it and reinstall.

Answering my own question... (happens a lot to me lately)

I did manage to get it to boot from the broken SSD by first booting from a USB drive I prepared earlier with High Sierra install files on it and then installing to the SSD drive on top of the old system.

There was a weird thing happening during first reboot after the installation where my screen would flash and turn off. In fact I think I didn't really finish the installation, I think the installer didn't even copy all the files, but everything seems to work fine now so I'm pretty happy (and my old files and apps are in place).


Website music playable on iOS? just a quick question.

I want to make a website that has an embeded HTML5/flash audio player in with auto-play enabled, now I know there has been some talk that Apple blocks that on all iOS devices, does anyone know why? Is it a technical problem or just a business decision from Apple to not to enable that in the SDK?

Can anyone explain it to me please?
Thanks!

HTML5 and Flash are not the same thing.

Flash is a proprietary browser plugin. Flash is not available on iOS devices, full stop, and support outside of iOS devices is spotty at best.

HTML5 audio playback is supported by mobile Safari as of v6.0 (which corresponds to iOS 6 that came out in 2012) according to this page, as well as Google Chrome which runs on Android devices. Between those two, you are covering 95+% of the market for mobile devices.

Presuming you are targeting mobile devices, HTML5 audio would be the best solution. If you are also targeting desktops, HTML5 with a Flash Player fallback would probably be worthwhile.


MacBook Air and LCD Projector When Presenting a powerpoint I tried to minimize the PP and go online to demo. The site comes up on my Laptop but not on the projection. That only displays the home screen.

You can drag the title bar of the browser window over to the other display. If you open the System Preferences > Displays, then Arrangement tab, you can see where the projector's display is in relation to the laptop display. The main display (typically the laptop's) has a tiny white menu bar depicted in this Arrangement window.

Just click-drag the window in the direction of the second display and it will pop over to the projector.

You can also change the arrangement if it helps. Put the projector above, below, left/right of your laptop display.


Two USB-C monitors with 2016 13-inch MBP w/ 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports I have two USB-C monitors (specifically Dell P2219HC), and I am trying to connect to them both as separate external displays. I am using the included USB-C to USB-C cable for each monitor.

If I plug one in, in any of the 4 Thunderbolt ports, it connects to it just fine. If I plug the second one in, in any of the 3 remaining ports, it does not detect the monitor, and the monitor displays a message indicating that there is no USB-C signal from my device. And vice-versa. I am not sure why this is happening.

I am running macOS High Sierra 10.13.6, my graphics card is the "Intel Iris Graphics 550 1536 MB".

I have tried again today, and after plugging the monitors in and out, it works as expected now... I am not sure why this happened. Perhaps my macbook detected one of them as a display and the other as a charger instead of a display? I am not sure.


How to disable HyperThreading on Mac OS X Yosemite? I read that on previous versions of OS X it was possible via hwprefs but I didn't figure out how to use it on 10.10.* (looks like it was removed).
I need to disable HyperThreading for Wineskin.

Indeed there is a solution, but you have to have Xcode installed.

Search for "Instruments" with Spotlight (cmd+space), open the application and go to the preferences (cmd+,). Select the "CPUs" tab and untick "Hardware Multi-Threading".

However, after restarting your Mac it will be enabled again.


Finder's "Date Added" vs. "Date Created" I would like to know what does Finder's "Date Added" mean exactly (added to where?), and how does it compare to the "Date Created" (coming from Windows, there isn't something similar there to "Date Added").

Thanks!

Put simply:

Date Added refers to when the item was added to the directory in question.
Date Created refers to when the item was actually created.

The best way to explain this is to use the example of a screenshot. If you took a screenshot at exactly 12:05pm on 1 March 2018 it'll have a Date Created of 1 March 2018 at 12:05 pm. 1

Now, let's say you move that screenshot at 8:00am on 10 April 2018 to another folder (e.g. you move it from the desktop to your Documents folder), then the Date Created is still the same, but the Date Added will show 10 April 2018 at 8:00 am. 1

Depending on what the item's history is, it can have the exact same date and time in both columns.

1. Note the actual format will depend on your macOS configuration


How to move all iPhoto video files to an external disk or a NAS? The main harddrive of my MacBook Pro is filling up. So I need to move some files to an external medium.

I use iPhoto to import my photos and (HD) videos from my digital camera. I want to keep all my images in iPhoto, but I'd like to move the space consuming videos to another medium.

Is there simple, possibly automated way to move all the video files (.mov) that are in my iPhoto library to an external folder (NAS or disk)?

Try this (not automated, because i don't like automated delete for anything):

Make a "smart album" in the iPhoto with the condition "Photo is Movie". With this you get all movies into your new smart album.
press info (for check how much MB they're occupied)
Simply drag&drop movies out of the iPhoto (long time)
ensure (double check) they are really OK
move the movies from the smart-album into the Trash
empty

(triple check before deleting - do not blame me, when your computer get destroyed or so)


Detect USB thumb flash drive insertions? Is there a way to get a list of recent times when a USB thumb flash drive was inserted? I'm using Sierra.
Thanks

Well, that was easy.

log show | grep ": mounted "


Canon Selphy CP780 Printer for MacBook Air Where can I find information on set up?

Perhaps you should try the GutenPrint print drivers. These open source drivers work for a huge number of printers, the Selphy CP770 and 790 are listed as supported so either of those might work.

The drivers work with all versions of OS X.


Where does a pkg installer install things? I created a *.pkg installer for a command line tool following this guide: Packaging a daemon for OS X.

After running the installer, and selecting "Install for all users", I can't find where my installed files are.

The installer says the setup will take 57.9MB and the copying section takes quite some seconds, so I assume files are actually being copied and there is not an issue with my installer.

Where did those files go? A find / didn't reveal anything.

You can check it from Terminal. Navigate to the folder where You have Your pkg file. Enter this:

mkdir Foo
cd Foo
xar -xf ../NAME_OF_YOUR.pkg
lsbom Bom

This will list files/paths which are included in this pkg.


iOS Calendar Adding Its Own Alerts I am using a Google account on latest iOS, and the Calendar app appears to be adding it's own alerts to all-day events:

Click to enlarge images
Yes, I checked the "default alerts" in Settings:

Click to enlarge images
And even confirmed Google Calendar doesn't have the alerts:

Click to enlarge images
So... what gives? I've also tried deleting the entire Google account from my iPhone and re-adding it. No joy. It's driving me bonkers. Perhaps it's a bug with iOS 9.0.2, or something I'm just not understanding. Is anyone else having this issue/know a fix?

Do you use Apple Calendar on your Mac? (Preferences -> Alerts). Perhaps these are the preferences that push those alerts to your iPhone.


Global vs user Applications Folder What is the difference between keeping applications in the global

/Applications

vs

~/Applications for a single user system on Lion?

Does the applications in the global location get extra privileges when run. I ask to decide whether it would be safe to keep downloaded unofficial applications (got outside the appstore) in the global location.

/Applications is, like you said, global.  Apps run from that folder have no different permissions or privileges if they were in any other folder.  It's the same as running an app in the ~/Downloads folder, it's just neater to have the global /Applications folder.

Having said that, apps in the ~/Applications folder are limited to being run by that user since the ~/Applications folder will have permissions on the folder for the user they're contained in.

In my hunting around, the ~/Applications folder has global read-only access, but that can vary if a user decides to modify the ACLs (Access Control List) aka permissions.

Hope that clears it up for you!


How to rebuild Mac partition showing unexpected GPT table size I'm attempting to rebuild a Mac partition for an external 3TB Hitachi hdd that recently failed to mount. Apart from an unexpected GPT table size which I'll show later, this drive issue seems similar to How to fix Mac hard drive partition showing as Fdisk_partition_scheme.

Here is some background and info. on the drive I've gathered:

Since the drive's enclosure appeared to have a loose connection, it was given a new enclosure. As a precaution and to have a working copy, dd was used to create an image of the entire 3TB drive. For any steps that require a device as input, I attach the image using hdiutil attach -nomount path/to/file.dmg.

The drive was originally formatted with a single partition using Mac OS X Snow Leopard. I found the HFS+ partition type GUID while scanning through the data in the hex editor, Hex Fiend:
53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (Apple Core Storage Container HFS+ FileVault volume container). This was followed by the 1st EFI part entry is at offset 4096:

The 1st EFI system partition is at offset 8192:

I attempted to extract the GPT/EFI and HFS partition information from the above image:

06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 = 6 (start of EFI).

05 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 = 51205 (end of EFI).

06 C8 00 00 00 00 00 00 = 51206 (start of HFS).

6F 94 A9 2B 00 00 00 00 = 732533871 (end of HFS).

The secondary EFI system partition at offset 3000592957440 appeared to contain the same start and end values, and the secondary EFI part entry was at offset 3000592973824.

The 1st HFSJ entry was found at offset 209740800:

The total # bytes given by diskutil info is 3000592982016:

If the HFS main volume size is 732533871 - 51205 = 732482666 blocks, then the logical block size should be 4096 (which gives total # blocks on disk = 732566646). Although a 512 byte block size was given by diskutil info (above image).

Unfortunately gdisk couldn't read the GPT data:

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.4
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: not present

This is what I used as an attempt to start to rebuild the GPT partition table (following How to fix Mac hard drive partition showing as Fdisk_partition_scheme):

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk2 bs=512 count=40
sudo gpt create /dev/disk2

Then I ran sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk2, which gave an unexpected GPT table size:

  start   size  index  contents
  0      1         PMBR
  1      1         Pri GPT header
  2     18         Pri GPT table
 20      1
 21     18         Sec GPT table
 39      1         Sec GPT header

After the above GPT utility results, I wasn't sure which logical block size to use to rebuild the EFI and HFS partition tables.

Thanks for any help!

1/31/2020 Update

I finished using rsync to make another 3TB disk image copy (I've been keeping the original disk image that was created via dd as a backup).

I think I located the 3rd partition at offset 3000458738688 bytes (it was the 1st data string following the end of the HFS main volume). It appears to end either at offset 3000582143352 or 3000582143360 (any input on this is appreciated):

Unlike EFI/GPT and HFS, there didn't appear to be start or end addresses in any headers that I could extract for this 3rd boot partition. Note that I added larger partition images to show this. So I'll try using the above estimated byte offsets (converting to sectors/blocks) as input for the 3rd gpt add step.

Thanks again for any feedback!

Based on the latest information posted in the question, here is what to enter. The assumption is the values posted are correct. The drive used a 4096 sector size. Since image files are fixed at a 512 byte sector size, all the values need to be multiplied by 8.

  Note: You may get an error message when entering the command to destroy the GPT. You should ignore this message.

sudo chown $USER:staff path/to/file.dmg
hdiutil attach -nomount path/to/file.dmg
gpt destroy disk2
gpt create disk2
gpt add -i 1 -b $((6*8)) -s $(((51205-6+1)*8)) -t efi disk2
gpt add -i 2 -b $((51206*8)) -s $(((732533871-51206+1)*8)) -t hfs disk2
diskutil mount disk3

The GPT you posed has a partition type GUID for Core Storage, but the header you posted for this partition indicates the partition type GUID should be for a Hierarchical File System Plus (HFS+) partition. My answer assumed the header is correct.

References

The 16,384 byte size requirement for the GPT Partition Entry Array is defined in section 5.3.1 "GPT overview" on page 117 of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) Specification version 2.8, March 2019.

Technical Note TN1150: HFS Plus Volume Format

GUID Partition Table


Recycle Bin isn't working: all the files are deleted immediately and completely Well, I don't know what happening on my MTL 10.8.4, but yesterday file deleting became very strange. When I press cmd+backspace dialog window with two variants is shown: Delete and Cancel. So the Delete button removes a file completely, and bin is empty then.

So how I can fix that?

In the terminal, enter the following:

ls ~/.Trash

If you get a response "No such file or directory", then just simply restart your Mac. If not, then type this to the terminal if you're an admin:

sudo rm -ri ~/.Trash

Follow the prompts, then restart your Mac.

Source: http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/trash.html#Anchor-Empty-49575


Adding on my command to services menu or adding keyboard shortcuts OnMyCommand allows commands to be added to the shortcut menu. Unfortunately, I can't add them to the services menu or add a keyboard shortcut for them. Is this possible?

Use Apple's automator and save the result as a service. If you select the right conext for the service it will appear in the right click menu. You can add shortcuts to services using System Preferences > Keyboard > Keyboard shortcuts. Click somewhere to the right of the service name (near the right edge of the white box). A field appears and you can type a shortcut. This is not very intuitive.


Should I verify copied files and with which software? I would like to move/copy a large size of files from on hard drive to another. Do I need to verify the moved files to be on the safe side or is that over-kill? If not, what software should I use?

On Windows there is a software called Teracopy for this.

This discussion seems to suggest that Finder verifies copied files when copying across media (but not otherwise). This means that you don't have to verify it yourself. The only problem is I can't find proof or official confirmation that this is true. So I wouldn't 100% trust it.

In any case, if you want to make sure manually, there are two kinds of tools you can use.

Option 1: Use tools that tell you whether you copied successfully. This QA shows you how to use diff tools (command-line or GUI, your choice) to do it. stuffe's answer to your question shows a quick and dirty way to be reasonably sure the copy operation was ok: just check the total folder sizes.

Option 2: Use rsync. Rsync is a tool that can find differences between the copy source and destination, and update the destination to reflect the source. It's different from cp -R because (1) it tells you if there are differences, so it kind of does that diff does and (2) it only needs to copy over the differences, which makes it faster when the destination is almost up to date.

There are three common ways you might want to use rsync:

rsync --dry-run (aka rsync -n) to tell rsync to display what files need to be updated without doing anything. This is basically like diff.
Just use rsync to copy files over, and run it again to verify and fix differences.
Some people say that Finder copies faster that rsync. You can use Finder to do the initial copy, then use rsync once to verify and fix differences.

Important rsync flags to know:

-v, verbose, makes rsync print what is being copied. This is good for the verification step, so you see what didn't get copied right earlier.
-a, archive, sets a bunch of other flags that tell rsync to preserve modification time, permissions, etc. If you only want to preserve a subset of file metadata, read the rsync man page to see which flags you want to set.
Some people are saying that the version of rsync included with Mac OS does not support copying HFS extended file attributes, which store things like whether the file extension is shown, "Open with…" settings", spotlight comments, tags, etc. To get the latest copy of rsync, install Homebrew and brew install homebrew/dupes/rsync.


Why is Time Machine not saving Google Chrome History file? I need to restore Google Chrome (Canary) browsing history from a Time Machine backup. It seems Time Machine has backed up all the profile files in ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default except the History file. Oops. Why is that, and how can I restore Chrome's History from a backup?

Why Chrome history is not backed up

You are correct that the ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default location you reference is where Google Chrome's history (among other things) is stored.

However, (and I don't recall exactly where I originally came across this), that App developers can determine which files (if any) they want skipped by a Time Machine backup and that Google doesn't allow Chrome's History to be backed up by Time Machine after changes made in 2009.

Although I only use Google Chrome occasionally, I personally get around this limitation by manually backing up the five files not backed up via Time Machine. The five files in question are:

Favicons
Favicons-journal
History
History-journal
previews_opt_out.db-journal

Restoring your missing Chrome history

Now, in terms of restoring your currently missing history, you may have some luck if you have a Google Account. If so, you could check whether you had Chrome Sync enabled. If you did, Chrome Sync syncs your history (as well as bookmarks, passwords, etc) to your Google Account so you can use them on other devices.


How can I erase Bluetooth devices on my Mac I had an bluetooth audio device (Bose SoundLink Wireless Mobile speaker) remembered on my MacBook Pro running OS X 10.8.5. Now I don't have it anymore and I want to link it with another audio device and it seems to be unable to forget the Bose one and link with my current device, how could I erase the Bose device?

In System Preferences > Bluetooth, make sure that Bluetooth is on and the Show Bluetooth in menu bar check box is checked. Then hold down alt or option before clicking the Bluetooth toolbar menu icon.  Now, in the device's contextual menu you can remove it.


Network's DNS queries redirection to localhost Before saying anything, I would like you to know that my experience in the field of network administration is about 3 days long, so please treat me like the newbie I am. I have also been looking around 2 of these 3 days trying to find the best way to achieve my objective, and I have found similar questions around the internet, but I have not been able to do it.

I am running an Apache2 server on localhost:8080 from a Mac OS X fully updated Lion. This Mac is connected through Ethernet (interface en0) to a wireless Access Point. In the AP, I have set up the gateway to be 192.192.192.1, and I have given that IP address to en0. The objective of this network is redirecting anyone's http/https petitions to the localhost of the gateway, showing them the page that apache is serving.

-If before this point there's any conceptual mistake, please let me know-

As far as I have understood, the best way to do this redirection is using the pf.conf file and pfctl, but the man page of pf.conf left me with a bit of a WTF face. I have found in freebsdonline.com these instructions to do something similar:

# --------- pf.conf ----------
int_if="fxp0"
ext_if="fxp1"

rdr on $int_if inet proto tcp from any to any port www -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080
pass in on $int_if inet proto tcp from any to 127.0.0.1 port 8080 keep state
pass out on $ext_if inet proto tcp from any to any port www keep state
# ------- end pf.conf -------

The thing is that this pf.conf seems to be forwarding packets between 2 interfaces, and I dont need that (do I?). Could you help me to adapt, or at least understand that lines? And is there anything else I need to do once that lines have been added to pf.conf?

P.S: If you know any easier way of doing this redirection stuff, I'll be glad to hear it. I though about using dnsspoof, but I haven't been able to find it for OSX.

Since you didn't mention it, I would make sure to navigate to:

/private/etc/apache2/

and open (using your text editor of choice; vi/m works, of course)

httpd.conf

Once you're there, make sure that lines 39 and 40 (or thereabouts) read:

Listen *your_web_site's_address*:8080
Listen 8080

If it reads

Listen 12.34.56.78:80
Listen 80

Then that is certainly a big part of your problem, as the server is listening on the wrong port altogether. As always, make sure to properly configure your firewall(s)!


How to ssh from iPad with external keyboard and Emacs? I am thinking about retiring my portable for an iPad + keyboard. (With Amazon/Linode/etc as server.)

I tried the iSSH app and ran Emacs in a terminal (not X Windows), using the Apple external keyboard.

This is unusable. Some extra chars are generated with control-F and option for Meta (Escape) generates some extra characters. There are probably other problems.

Terminal programs can't just remove/add/modify stuff as they like! Especially not for Emacs!

This problem was discussed already at the iPad launch.

The specifics for iSSH was discussed at least last November. (A fix was promised for the next release, which was in March.)
http://groups.google.com/group/issh/browse_thread/thread/b58508bb42a3241e?pli=1

I saw in other discussions a few months ago that the "Prompt" app should work better, but that it had other problems? It was updated a few weeks ago.

Any advice on how to make this work? Prompt?

Edit, a conclusion:
I have checked Prompt now. It doesn't have programmable keys and no way to get the Alt X to send real ESC X. I'll see what chars are generated by the keyboard and if I can put that into Emacs.

So iSSH has programmable keys (and lots of other features) except for control keys, but no working Control. And Prompt has working Control keys but no possibility to set up keys. The union of them would be perfect. :-(

At least both applications are under active development, so this should show up.

Prompt is generally considered to be the best (or at least among the best) SSH clients for iOS. I've never used it specifically for emacs (as I don't use emacs) but I've never seen it send strange extra characters, even when sending control characters to, say, nano.

Edit: Prompt version 1.3.2 now has a feature where you can use the Escape key as a Meta key.


Is there an app for manage documents for OS X? I'm searching for an app like iTunes or iPhoto but for documents which manage documents for me.

I assume the finder itself could manage documents, but please explain how the helpful properties of finder or another app can work more like iTunes and iPhoto on OS X.

The closest analog I know of for general purpose document organizing in an "everything box" similar to iPhoto/iTunes would be Yojimbo.

http://www.barebones.com/products/Yojimbo/

It lets you catalog and organize information in quite powerful ways. Also check out Evernote if you want files to be in the cloud and don't already use a service for syncing. I've heard Together is also worth investigating but never really known anyone that used it or tried it myself.

Finder is capable of using tags and smart searches, but most people that are inclined to do that have already come up with a folder hierarchy that uses the filesystem for storage and spotlight for indexing files. It really depends on how much time you want to invest in cataloging and the volume and type of files you are organizing.


Latest iOS 9 doesn't show WiFi symbol, even when connected to WiFi How do I display the WiFi symbol when connected to WiFi? iOS 8 used to show the WiFi symbol in place of LTE when connected to WiFi. Now, after the iOS 9 update, it always display LTE, even though I'm connected to WiFi. It shows I'm connected to my router in settings, and I also pinged my local router with a ping app.

iPhone 5, iOS 9.0.1.

It should show up so the fact that it doesn't indicates a problem. In the past, Apple has focused on reliability for newer models and then subsequently released a X.1 version with under-the-hood work done for older devices. So it wouldn't surprise me if it is a deeper problem.

Two simple things to try right off would be a hard reboot of the device if you haven't already. You can do that by holding the home and power button down until you see the Apple logo. Also, make sure that you are on the latest version of iOS. iOS 9.0.2 is out now, so update and hopefully that will solve your issue.

If that doesn't work, you have to take it up a notch. You could try resetting all preferences to see if that solves the problem. Go to Settings - General - Reset - Erase all Settings to perform that function. If that doesn't work, the other main thing to try would be to restore the phone. Make sure you have a backup (I always like to have two), wipe the device, then restore.


Rubber band scrolling on Snow Leopard? Is there any way to turn on rubber band scrolling in Snow Leopard?
I cannot upgrade to Mavericks because I need Rosetta but I would like to have the scrolling behavior of Lion, Mountain Lion and Mavericks.
Any ideas?

This is currently not possible.

The question was asked on Super User too a while back:

https://superuser.com/questions/774509/enable-rubberband-scrolling-on-mac-osx-snow-leopard (deleted, archive.org)


Mouse not reacting to hover when bamboo tablet unplugged I have a mid-2010 15" Macbook Pro with 10.8 installed, and I use a Wacom Bamboo tablet (one of the older ones, it's model MTE-450). I've noticed that whenever the tablet is plugged in, many hover states for the mouse no longer work for the trackpad and generic plug-in mice.

For example, normally if you hover over the three buttons at the top left of a window, they'll show a "x – o" pattern. However, if my tablet is plugged in, and I move the mouse over to hover, no hover occurs. This is the same with the dock icons, and with close-tab on Safari. Unplugging the tablet does nothing, and so far only a restart will fix this.

Any tips on how to start fixing?

Have you installed the latest 10.8 compatible driver for the Bamboo?

You can find it here: http://cdn.wacom.com/U/Drivers/Mac/Consumer/530/PenTablet_5.3.0-3.dmg


Merging APFS Containers using the Disk Utility Application I recently deleted my dual boot from my mac, but I am now left with two partitions that I can't figure out how to merge. I would like it to be normal again with just one container: Macintosh HD. I'm running MacOS Mojave.

Here is my current situation as shown in the "Disk Utility" application and the output from the diskutil list command.

If you wish to do this in the GUI, you can do advanced hard disk editing with Paragon Hard Disk Manager.
Not "merge" merging the containers, but most likely you'll need to remove a containter and then resize main container where the macOS resides. It can be done on the fly - i.e. you can edit the same partition/container from which you booted the system. Paragon Hard Disk Manager has 10 day trial period, during which you can use all its functions.


In OS X 10.10.2 the Finder's Preview function is not working In OS X 10.10.2 the Finder's Preview function is not working. If I select some image or pdf files I cannot see file's preview and only see wait logo. How can I fix these error?

I found some solution about qlmanage. Fixing Quick Look issues in OS X This can clear and rebuild the thumbnail's caches, however this program hung and did not finish.

From: Easy fix for Mac Finder preview thumnails not displaying

Delete all from your home > library > preferences. Delete all: com.apple.finder.plist

Proceed with logout and then login again.

Tried it, it should work!


Which text editors take advantage of Lion's Versions feature? I've been a fervent user of Textmate for many a year, and I hope to continue to be one. However, the versions feature of OSX seems like a great and easy to use idea.

I'm mostly doing HTML, CSS and PHP, and I am a solo developer. Admittedly, I probably haven't spent enough time trying to work it in, but I've never managed to fit SVN or git into my workflow. However, I recognise their potential usefulness.

So, are there any lightweight text editors suitable for web designers/developers that work with Versions?

Useful features would include:

Syntax highlighting
A project view/sidebar
Auto-indent

TexShop, the Latex editor, now supports Lion versions. It is not a general Text Editor but can be used as such and supports many of the features you requested.

http://pages.uoregon.edu/koch/texshop/lion.html


macOS Mojave (10.14) - how to get a full installer without using the macOS Mojave Patcher Tool I just want to install macOS Mojave (10.14) on one of my Macs without an internet connection. Therefore, I need an "offline" installer.

With previous versions of macOS I used the createinstallmedia command without any problems. However, this time I can't use this because when I download the installer from the Mac App Store on another Mac I only get a file that is 22 MBs in size.

I am aware of the "macOS Mojave Patcher Tool" but for my own reasons do not want to use this.

In summary, how do I create/obtain an offline installer without having to use the macOS Mojave Patcher Tool in a situation that downloading from the Mac App Store isn't possible?

Link from Apple to create offline installer:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201372
Under "Download macOS" there are links in blue to macOS Catalina, macOS Mojave, macOS High Sierra, etc.
Click the link & scroll down to step 4 - the link to download your desired OS will open the app store & bring you to the download page.
Note: you need to open the link on macOS using Safari for it to work properly.


Configure an Airport to connect to internet via a wireless hotspot? The situation:  I have free access to Time Warner (TWC) and Optimum hotspots around the USA.  Conveniently one is located within range to my apartment.  I would like to setup an Airport Extreme or Express to use this wireless internet connection instead of the traditional way of plugging in via ethernet.

In my Optimum account settings I can register a MAC address (i.e. my Airport's MAC address) that allows me to bypass any authentication.  Is there no mode in Airport Utility that allows me to simply source my internet connection from another wireless network?  My end result is to have a normal, functioning, NAT / DHCP network in my home.

Here's how I would do it:

I would use any old router to bridge from the hotspot into your house, making sure that the bridge is in optimal distance of the Provider Hotspot.

Once I have that configured and I know I have connectivity to the internet, I would hardwire the Airport Extreme into the bridge to have the home networking functionality, as set up through Airport Utility.


How to display network statistics in the menu bar? I already know how to view network activity using Activity Monitor. But today I saw someone with network statistics displayed in the menu bar:

How is this achieved?

As you can see in your screenshot, that Mac has a number of applications that use the menu bar - I can recognise 1Password, Docker, Dropbox, CreativeCloud. But, in addition, an app can display changing information in the menubar. It can, like the one shown, collect system information and display it - in this case network stats and probably disk use/free information.
I don't recognise the one being used here, but I thoroughly recommend iStat Menus which as well as showing configurable statistics in the menu bar, shows further detail in dropdowns.
The application's home page iStat Menus shows dropdowns and menu bars.
This is the app against which all menu bar displays are measured.
I am an enthusiastic user.


1 item could not be synced. See iTunes for more information Possible Duplicate:
  iTunes Sync: X items could not be synced. See iTunes for more information

I am trying to sync some MP3s to my iPhone 4S and keep getting the above message. I have seen some replies to this kind of query but only in relation to photos or videos. What more information am I supposed to be looking for?

iTunes displays an alert when it is unable to sync specific audio or video content to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod. iTunes offers a checkbox to not show the alert again. If you select this checkbox, the alert will no longer appear during sync.

Connect your device to your PC or Mac.
Wait until your device has appeared on the left side of the iTunes window under Devices.
Right-click (PC) or Control-click (Mac) the icon for your device.
From the shortcut menu, choose Reset Warnings.


iCloud missing in settings iOS 10.3 After installing iOS 10.3 last night, iCloud is missing in my settings.

Can anyone help or advise ?

Starting with iOS 10.3, the Settings app features a section dedicated to your personal profile at the very top. You’ll find the old iCloud submenu in there.

Screenshot courtesy of MacRumors:


Mavericks - strange behavior creating simlink in root directory I want to create a simlink called /home, that points to /Users.  The command sudo ln -s Users home (executed in /) should work; at least, I've demonstrated that the syntax is correct by creating a similar simlink in my home directory) but it's not working well in root.  I somehow managed to create an actual directory, that now can't be removed ("resource is busy").  Then I cd'ed into /home and tried to run

/home$  sudo mkdir chap
mkdir: chap: Operation not supported

Anyone understand what's going on?  Or should I keep my cotton-pickin' fingers out of /?

/home is already used by automount, see /etc/auto_master and the various man pages for details.


Clear cookies on iPhone 6+ How do I clear cookies on my iPhone 6+?
I cannot complete an assignment for business.
My company instructed me to clear cookies in order
for it to operate correctly.
So, how do I accomplish this task?

Navigate to Settings > Safari. Then scroll down and click the Clear History and Website Data button. This clears history and cookies

If you dont want to clear history, and just cookies then do the following:

Press Settings on the Home screen.
Scroll down to Safari. Press Safari.
Scroll down to Advanced. Press Advanced.
Press Website Data.
Press Edit.
Press the red circle with the minus sign next to the cookie you want to delete.
Press Delete.
Repeat step 7 until you've cleared all the cookies you want to delete, then press Done.


What is the maximum supported resolution of the MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) for an external monitor at 60hz I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013). It has 8GB Ram and Intel Iris 1536 MB .

I want to buy a good external monitor, but I can't find a straight answer as to what this model supports with either Thunderbolt or HDMI.

What is the maximum supported resolution of this model for an external monitor at 60hz ?

(Please note that I don't care about any answers for the 15-inch model or 2015 versions. I only care specifically for the Late 2013 13 inch)

According to Apple's MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) - Technical Specifications...

So it looks like 1080p is the 60Hz limit.


What is the latest iOS 8.3 baseband for iPhone 6? I want to update my iPhone 6 to iOS 8.3, but my device is unlocked with R-Sim. I want to know if the new iOS firmware will update the baseband & relock my device. Please help.

2.23.03 for a european (Austria) GSM
Perhaps contact the vendor if it's compatible.


Using a Magic Trackpad and a USB mouse at the same time I know that the Magic Trackpad is not good for a few things (I personally don’t like trackpads in general too much when I’m on a laptop). I tend to start looking for a mouse. (18 years of mousing around may be too much for my old brain).

However, there are certain things about the Magic Trackpad, that could be handy and that are virtually impossible with a mouse. I don’t like the Magic Mouse because you have to lift your “left button click finger” to perform a right click. (I’ve tried it for a while).

So I was thinking, has anyone connected a Magic Trackpad and a USB mouse at the same time, is it possible to have both (and working) and move the hand to either when needed?

Anyone experienced this?

Yes, this works. I have a Magic Trackpad and a Logitech MX Revolution (wireless, through a USB dongle) connected to my Mac at the same time and change between them at will. Have never had any problems with this setup - I even use it both at home and at work.


Specifying the keyboard layout for Chinese input I use both Chinese (pinyin) and Japanese (romaji) input and am used to having them mapped to a standard US keyboard layout. However my regional setting is Switzerland since I'm studying here and “internet services may vary according to region”. Strangely, the Japanese input uses the US keyboard layout, but Chinese uses a European layout (not sure what, but z and y are switched). (Irrelevant to problem).

My inputs are, in this order:

English (US)
German
Japanese (Kotoeri)
Chinese

As Tom pointed out, in Kotoeri's preferences the layout can be defined. The Chinese input however uses the last layout of a Latin input, in this case German.

There also doesn't seem to be an option to customise the order of these inputs. My workaround is to cycle backwards, but this obviously is a special case. If anyone has a better solution it would be appreciated.

You set the Latin keyboard layout for Japanese input in the Kotoeri Preferences.  For Chinese, the IM normally uses the last Latin keyboard layout that you have used.

Settings you make in the system preferences/language & text/language or formats tab are irrelevant for the keyboard layout.  Only the input sources tab affects that (and Kotoeri preferences when that is chosen as an input source).


How to hide quoted text in Lion Mail? In Mail's conversation view, by default, quoted text is hidden and can be shown by clicking "See More from XXX" in the bottom of each message. After clicking that, how can quoted text be hidden again?

From the list of mails, change the mail and come back to the previous one. It automatically folds all the quotes when you revisit it.


escaping space in shell script path I have tried both methods of escaping the space in the Path in the following script:

#!/bin/bash -x
PGHOME="/Applications/pgAdmin 4.app/Contents/SharedSupport"
$PGHOME/psql --username postgres -c "drop database $1"

I've also tried changing line 2 to:

PGHOME=/Applications/pgAdmin\ 4.app/Contents/SharedSupport

In both cases I get the script error:

  ./pg10-restoreDb.sh: line 3: /Applications/pgAdmin: No such file or directory

From the shell, I can execute /Applications/pgAdmin\ 4.app/Contents/SharedSupport/psql no problem

What could be causing this error?

You can either quote or escape the space when you define the variable, but then you must also double-quote it when you use it:

#!/bin/bash -x
PGHOME="/Applications/pgAdmin 4.app/Contents/SharedSupport"
"$PGHOME/psql" --username postgres -c "drop database $1"
^            ^
|            |


How can I add a due date to OS X Reminders? I would like to know if it is possible to add the due date checkbox shown in my screenshots to the OS X version of Reminders. I am not looking for the notification option, just the old fashioned due date option.

The due date checkbox is not an option normally. "Test item" was created on the OS X Reminders app.

However if I make one, "Test item 2", on iCloud.com, I have the option to add a due date. This is then changed, through iCloud, on my Mac.

This leads me to believe that maybe a file could be changed on my Mac to enable this option to be turned on by default.

You can use AppleScript with this one-liner to create an item with the Due Date independent of the Remind Me Date:

tell application "Reminders" to show (make new reminder with properties {name:"New reminder", due date:(current date)})

Or you can use Automator to create a Service that does the same thing. That way, you can assign a keyboard shortcut to it in System Preferences. See the Services list under System Preferences… Keyboard… Shortcuts… Services.

In Automator, add the New Reminders Item snippet and make sure Due Date is checked. Use menu item File… Save to save the workflow in the default location (~/Library/Services/). The Service should now be visible in the Reminders application, under menu item Reminders… Services….


Brother MFC-J6720DW "not connected" to MacBook Pro Yesterday I suddenly found that I could not print to my Brother MFC-J6720DW from my MacBook Pro (running Mac OS 10.12.6), nor could I use the scanning function. The other Mac on the Wi-Fi network cannot print on it either

The printer was connected by Wi-Fi and as far as I know nothing has recently changed on the network. My laser printer on USB is working fine.

I have reset the printing system as advised to another person who had a similar problem. However, when I try to add the MFC printer I get an error message. So, I connected the printer to the MacBook with an ethernet cable and found that I could now add the printer and actually print to it.

However, I cannot figure out how to add the scanner functionality. I downloaded the latest scanner driver from Brother & installed it, but I can't see how to add the scanner to the printers/scanners list. (I had no trouble adding my transparency scanner which is on USB.)

I'm sure the answer must be really simple but I'm somehow missing it. It would be good to know why I can't add the printer over Wi-Fi - I could connect to it with Safari and interrogate the administrative functions over Wi-Fi.

in friendship

Rowland

OK, it's working again but I'm puzzled how I achieved it.

I turned off the Wi-Fi on my MacBook to confirm that the connexion to the printer was definitely only via the ethernet cable, and after I turned it on again I saw "MFC-J6720DW multifunction" as the name of the printer. I added that and then was able to unplug the ethernet cable and both print and scan over Wi-Fi as before. I don't know why that should have been effective because I had already done a system reset on the Mac without success in being able to use the printer over Wi-Fi.

Sorry to have wasted anyone's time!

in friendship

Rowland


After the upgrade to El Capitan, Photos crashes After upgrading to El Capitan Photos app crashes after 75% of conversion process. Neither rebuilding the library launching Photos with Alt-Command had success. The rebuild process stops at 5% saying the Library was not recognized. Same creating a new library from scratch and copying inside it the Masters and Resources folders. At the moment i cannot view my 150 Gigs of photos.
See https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7252715?start=0&tstart=0

Create a new library, and import all of the other images from the Masters folder. Photos allows you to import images in sub folders, so dragging the masters folder should work.


Drag-dropping M4R Ringtone to iTunes 12.0.1 to appear in iTunes ringtone folder? I followed the instructions here for older iTunes but things have apparently changed in iTunes 12.0.1 and iOS 8.1. The drag-dropping and the double-clicking the M4R file do not work anymore. So

How can I create a ringtone to appear in iPhone and iTunes ringtone folder for iTunes12 and iOS8?

I just tested and the process worked correctly in iTunes 12.0.1. However, I did initially encounter an issue when I tried to add a file that had the same name and was the same size as a song already in my iTunes Library.

Here are the steps I followed:

I dragged-and-dropped MyFile.mp3 into iTunes.
I right-clicked on it and chose "Create AAC Version".
I right-clicked on the AAC version and chose "Show in Finder".
I dragged-and-dropped the AAC version onto my desktop, creating a copy.
I renamed the file on my desktop to MyFile.m4r.
I dragged-and-dropped the file back into iTunes. This didn't do anything. However, having read that iTunes sometimes refuses to import files like this, since it thinks they are identical, I removed the AAC version from iTunes.
I again dragged-and-dropped the m4r version into iTunes, and this time it showed up in the Tones section of the Library correctly.


How to restore pre-update OS from Time Machine? I've never actually restored with Time Machine, not sure how it works.

My machine is messed up since updating to a Yosemite Beta and installing nvidia drivers.

How do I go back a few days?

I ONLY want to restore the system/drivers, NOT my User folder, etc.
Can I just restore /System, /Library, and /Applications ?

If you’re looking for a certain file or folder, start by connecting the external drive that you use for Time Machine backups or by making sure that you can connect to your Time Capsule. Click the Time Machine item in the menu bar at the top of your screen (it looks like a clock with an arrow running counterclockwise around it), and choose Enter Time Machine. Here, all of your saved backups will appear in chronological order. Use the visual timeline on the right side to scroll through your backups and look for specific items or folders.

Select the file or folder you want, and press the Restore button. The file(s)/folder(s) will automatically be copied to your desktop or to the file’s original folder. This may take some time, depending on the size of the transfer.


Unable to configure to native resolution on LCD of retina macbook pro I have late 2015 issue macbook Pro with 2880x1800 native resolution. How do I use that resolution? The max that I can configure using the built-in tools is 1920x1080.

I am on High Sierra.

Apple's System Preferences don't allow you to change to full native resolution.

You can use the displaymode command line tool to change to the native resolution.

Download the binary from the "releases" section, and extract it if necessary.  Then from Terminal.app, cd to the directory the displaymode file is in and run:

./displaymode t 2880 1800


Question for applescript with dragon Dictate I want to make a program that will take the question I ask it, input it to WolframAlpha, take the answer, convert it to text and the say the text.

    set defaultAnswer to ""
set cancelButton to "Cancel"
set buttonResearch to “ReSearch”

display dialog "Query: " default answer defaultAnswer buttons {cancelButton, buttonResearch} default button buttonResearch cancel button cancelButton with icon 1
copy the result as list to {button_pressed, text_returned}

if (button_pressed is buttonResearch) and (text_returned is not "") then

    open location "http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=" & my encode_text(text_returned, true, false)

    set a to "http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i="
    set b to my encode_text(text_returned, true, false)
    set c to a & b

    set myFile to (POSIX path of (path to temporary items)) & "curl_file.xml"
    do shell script "curl -L " & c & " -o " & myFile

end if

-- encoding high-ASCII characters:
on encode_char(this_char)
    set the ASCII_num to (the ASCII number this_char)
    set the hex_list to {"0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F"}
    set x to item ((ASCII_num div 16) + 1) of the hex_list
    set y to item ((ASCII_num mod 16) + 1) of the hex_list
    return ("%" & x & y) as string
end encode_char

-- TEXT ENCODING: encode spaces and high-level ASCII characters (those above 127)
-- encode_URL_A = encode most of the special characters reserved for use by URLs.
on encode_text(this_text, encode_URL_A, encode_URL_B)
    set the standard_characters to "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"
    set the URL_A_chars to "$+!'/?;&@=#%><{}[]\"~`^\\|*"
    set the URL_B_chars to ".-_:"
    set the acceptable_characters to the standard_characters
    if encode_URL_A is false then set the acceptable_characters to the acceptable_characters & the URL_A_chars
    if encode_URL_B is false then set the acceptable_characters to the acceptable_characters & the URL_B_chars
    set the encoded_text to ""
    repeat with this_char in this_text
        if this_char is in the acceptable_characters then
            set the encoded_text to (the encoded_text & this_char)
        else
            set the encoded_text to (the encoded_text & encode_char(this_char)) as string
        end if
    end repeat
    return the encoded_text
end encode_text

How do i access the temporary file?

This does the query part. The encoding routines are from https://macosxautomation.com :

set defaultAnswer to "Albert Einstein"
set cancelButton to "Cancel"
set buttonResearch to "ReSearch"

display dialog "Query: " default answer defaultAnswer buttons {cancelButton, buttonResearch} default button buttonResearch cancel button cancelButton with icon 1
copy the result as list to {button_pressed, text_returned}

if (button_pressed is buttonResearch) and (text_returned is not "") then

    open location "http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=" & my encode_text(text_returned, true, false)

end if

-- encoding high-ASCII characters:
on encode_char(this_char)
    set the ASCII_num to (the ASCII number this_char)
    set the hex_list to {"0", "1", "2", "3", "4", "5", "6", "7", "8", "9", "A", "B", "C", "D", "E", "F"}
    set x to item ((ASCII_num div 16) + 1) of the hex_list
    set y to item ((ASCII_num mod 16) + 1) of the hex_list
    return ("%" & x & y) as string
end encode_char

-- TEXT ENCODING: encode spaces and high-level ASCII characters (those above 127)
-- encode_URL_A = encode most of the special characters reserved for use by URLs.
on encode_text(this_text, encode_URL_A, encode_URL_B)
    set the standard_characters to "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789"
    set the URL_A_chars to "$+!'/?;&@=#%><{}[]\"~`^\\|*"
    set the URL_B_chars to ".-_:"
    set the acceptable_characters to the standard_characters
    if encode_URL_A is false then set the acceptable_characters to the acceptable_characters & the URL_A_chars
    if encode_URL_B is false then set the acceptable_characters to the acceptable_characters & the URL_B_chars
    set the encoded_text to ""
    repeat with this_char in this_text
        if this_char is in the acceptable_characters then
            set the encoded_text to (the encoded_text & this_char)
        else
            set the encoded_text to (the encoded_text & encode_char(this_char)) as string
        end if
    end repeat
    return the encoded_text
end encode_text

The problem to speak the result is not the speaking itself but to select the relevant parts. So better look for a tool that does that, or even better yet, use the website's services for that, often they have some sort of interface.


Can't enable RemindersDebugMenu in High Sierra defaults write com.apple.reminders RemindersDebugMenu -boolean true

doesn't work on High Sierra. How to do it?

The debug menu can no longer be enabled in Reminders with High Sierra.


Visual Voicemail won't let me play back or adjust greeting I have a new iPhone SE running iOS 9.3.1, restored from a backup of my old iPhone 4S. Also I have changed carriers upon getting the new phone to Cricket from AT&T.

When I set up the new iPhone, it installed carrier updates from iTunes and the Phone app let me set up my visual voicemail with the passcode and custom greeting, and I tested it out and the visual voicemail worked.

Now, however, when I go to the Phone app and tap Greeting in the Voicemail tab, it brings up the page that would let me play and record a new greeting, but the only working button is Cancel. All the buttons appear as if they work but they don't respond.

I've tried resetting the Voicemail passcode in the Phone settings, I've tried resetting network settings, I've tried rebooting. The problem remains. What is the solution?

One other note, though I can't tell if this is coincidence or the cause, perhaps you can enlighten me: I wanted to completely wipe my old iPhone so it would be ready for another to set up as their own, but that phone's WiFi doesn't work right, and so in order to get internet access enough to unlock iCloud and do the erase, I took my Cricket sim out, and (with a nano to micro sim adapter that came with my Cricket SIM originally) put it in to the 4S so it could get some 4G internet and authorize the erase. After I put the Cricket sim back in the iPhone SE, I noticed it occasionally lose the LTE connection that I don't recall it doing previously in the last week that I had the new phone. Could be a fluke though. And I don't know if the Voicemail greeting problem was around before because I wasn't checking it and wasn't getting lots of voicemails exactly. Also I tried giving myself a test voicemail and it wouldn't let me play it back, though after some resetting or I don't know what the playback works again. Don't know if that's useful or irrelevant or rambling.

Edit: The bit about my iPhone losing LTE, I think I've narrowed down the problem. I think it's just because Cricket isn't yet using VoLTE and I wasn't testing many phone calls. As it stands though I cannot change the greeting except through calling voicemail directly. This is not a massive problem though I would like to know what could be going on or if I should contact Apple Support since this is a new phone.

Also I kept playing around with it and at one time I did get the Greeting controls to work. And then it stopped working again. Don't know what's up or why that would be caused. Is it possible what I did with the SIM would cause this?

My Iphone 6 uses Verizon. I successfully changed VM greeting a couple of days ago then tried to change again the same day but none of the VM greeting buttons would work except cancel.  Called Verizon and they had me reset all settings. Still didn't work. The told me to re-set network settings and still didn't work.  The referred me to apple and I did a did a back up and restored using by back up.  Still didn't work. They wanted me to try to restore as new without the backup which I was reluctant to do.

Just deleted VMs and Delted VMs, and (for now) I'm able to record and change my VM greetings.  Thanks Kal-al


2017 iMac Windows 10 on BootCamp 6.1 wont shutdown I have a brand new 2017 iMac on which installed windows 10 Pro. I installed the Bootcamp support software and for the most part the system works fine. Except for one annoying issue - I cant shutdown or hibernate the system it will only restart. I have done as much research i could and FWIW -

Fast startup on windows 10 power settings is disabled.
Installed and reinstalled Bootcamp windows 10 support software.
Don't know if this is an issue the Intel Management engine.

At this point i am going to have to remove windows 10 and make do with windows 7 unless someone can help me with this problem. I am worries i have restarted so many time already it may damage the SSD or some other component of my shiny new iMac. Please help. Desperate!!!

iMac with bootcamp windows 10 reboots 3 seconds after shutdown (no fastboot, no wol)

I couldn't find a software fix but if you have any type of device or even a hub that supports USB PD connected to thunderbolt 3 port simply removing it while shutting down resolved my issue

by your description I couldn't tell if your issue is same as mine so do check what is connected to tb port


What is the best way to set up Google mail, contacts and calendar? (consolidated) I'm trying to understand what the best way to set up Google mail, contacts and calendars on my iPhone and iPad. There seems to be plenty of options, all of which have downsides spread over lots of different postings and websites.

Here are the key issues I've found so far consolidated into one place:

Google mail

Exchange: Drafts don't synchronise. Searching for old emails doesn't always work. Google have announced that Exchange ActiveSync support will no longer be available for non-business accounts after 30th January 2013.
Gmail: No support for push email.
Gmail app: Cannot swipe messages in the inbox to delete them (only archive supported), notifications of new email sometimes open up the wrong email, mobile phone numbers aren't clickable, selecting an email address in any other app will not open Gmail to send a message (this is an iOS restriction), no custom alert sounds for certain contacts/groups and only a limited number of emails are readable if you have no data connection.

Calendar

Exchange: Additional newlines sometimes end up in the description of appointments. Google have announced that Exchange ActiveSync support will no longer be available for non-business accounts after 30th January 2013.
Gmail: Additional subscribed calendars aren't displayed.
CalDav: Birthday events in a subscribed calendar that has been hidden from view in the calendar app still show up in the Notification Center. Subscribed calendars in Google Calendar will always trigger an alarm on iOS (based on your default alert times) even though Google reports that none are set up. Changing an alert time will after a short while cause you to end up with two alerts on an appointment within iOS, one at the new alert time you wanted and one at the default alert time.

Contacts:

Exchange: Not all fields (including pictures) are synchronized. Some address fields end up getting swapped (eg. town is displayed above the first line of the address). Google have announced that Exchange ActiveSync support will no longer be available for non-business accounts after 30th January 2013.
Gmail: Not possible.
CardDAV: Now recommended by Google as the preferred method. Will sync more than 3 email addresses. Syncs in both directions. No support for push. Contact group syncing is not supported. See related question.

Is this correct? Is there anything else missing?

The Verge gave a good writeup recommending the Gmail App + CalDAV + CardDAV: http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/5/3732364/best-way-gmail-google-calendar-iphone-how-to

The Gmail app solves both downsides you mention above. For CardDAV, it does a 15 min fetch, which is plenty good enough for me, so I don't see lack of push as being a real problem.


Some "sources" in Cydia are empty - how to get the content? I've just upgraded my iPhone 4 to iOS 5.0.1 and also jailbroken it. I've waited with the upgrade until the jailbreak because there are some tweaks I don't want to miss. Now that I have iOS5 jailbroken, I want to re-add those tweaks, but I don't find them in Cydia.

Looking at the sources in Cydia, I see that Modmyi.com and Cydia/Telesphoreo are listed and they do contain lots of items, but Big Boss and Dev Team and cydia.zodttd.com are also listed, but when I select each then there's nothing in there.

So it would appear that some of the repo's are not properly set up. To test this, I removed Big Boss and hit the "Add" button to add it again, but got an error message "Did not find repository".

Aha, it turns out that the sources have moved. They're no longer located as specified in Cydia, so of course Cydia can't find any content.

The solution was to remove the faulty sources and add them again by following these instructions: http://www.appleiphoneschool.com/how-to-add-a-source-to-cydia/


When should an iPhone or MacBook Battery be replaced? Maybe some kind of tests or similar information.

If an iPhone has 75% from design capacity should it be replaced or not?

The simple answer to your question is to replace the battery when you feel your device needs to have the battery replaced. In other words, if your device no longer functions as long as you need on battery power, then it's time for you to consider replacing the battery (or the device).

You don't specify the exact models of your devices, but any MacBook produced in recent years has a battery rated at capable of 1,000 charge cycles. Also, clicking on the Battery icon in the menu bar will indicate its health and, if necessary, whether you need to service or replace it.

In terms of iPhone batteries, they're rated at capable of a maximum of 500 charge cycles. Apple has also confirmed that a future iOS software update will provide users with info about the health of their battery, allowing them to determine if the condition of their battery is affecting their iPhone's performance.


How can I add login and logout sounds to OS X 10.8.x? I would like to add login and logout sounds to my Mac. How can I do this?

Save a script like this as ~/Desktop/test and make it executable with chmod +x ~/Desktop/test.

#!/bin/bash

afplay /System/Library/Sounds/Blow.aiff

You can then add a LogoutHook key to /var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist with sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LogoutHook ~/Desktop/test. It can be deleted with sudo defaults delete com.apple.loginwindow LogoutHook. You can run a script at login by adding a LoginHook key or by using launchd.

See also these questions about running scripts on logout and login and Daemons and Services Programming Guide: Customizing Login and Logout.


Is there a simple way to convert a Unicode text file to PDF on the command line on macOS? What is a simple way to convert a Unicode text file to PDF on the command line on macOS?

One can open a text file in e.g. TextEdit and print it as a PDF. Is there a command line equivalent?

The following has been tested on Mac OS 10.12.1.

To convert a Unicode text file text.txt to a pdf file text.pdf:

textutil -convert html test.txt
cupsfilter test.html > test.pdf

To specify font:

textutil -font 'Menlo Regular' -fontsize 11 -convert html test.txt
cupsfilter test.html > test.pdf


The volume customer keys of my Mac don't work anymore I used to press F10 to mute, F11 to decrease volume and F12 to increase volume, but all of them suddenly stopped working. If I press any of those keys now, they send me to another screen that has nothing to do with the sound volume.

How can I fix them?

Basically

Open System Preferences
Select "Keyboard"
De-select "Use F1, F2, etc., keys as standard function keys"