I cannot send GMAIL using Outlook 2016 I have Outlook 2016 and I'm trying to pickup my gmail using IMAP.  I can receive emails, but it does not send when doing a test send on setting up the email. Error code: 0x800cce05

SMTP Server:
smtp.gmail.com
My outgoing server requires authentication (ticked)
Port: 465 (SSL). Also tried 587, SSL, TLS

It works fine on my mobile, works fine with Office 2010. Works fine with Windows 10 mail. But not with Office Outlook 2016.

it might be that you have to allow less secure apps to connect to your gmail account: https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps

more details:https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/gmail/LhWVrYZc_Eo/5EMpldFUC3wJ


Applications Folder on Macintosh HD Shows Empty Before attempting to migrate data from my Time Machine, I looked in to see if my Adobe applications and others were there to transfer.  The folder is empty.  Is this normal?  Thanks.

There are two Application folders. One is under the root directory and should contain all of your Applications. This is /Applications

The other folder is in the User directory, so ~/Applications. ~/ is a shorthand for /Users/<UserName>. That folder is usually empty or has one or two stray Apps in there.


Redial Last Incoming Call without Unlocking Phone I left my iPhone X running iOS 11 at a casino. Someone at the casino called two of my contacts while they had my phone.

1:32 Brian calls my phone to see if we can hear it
6:36 My phone calls Brian
9:32 Nancy calls my phone to see if we can hear it
10:52 My phone calls Nancy

Between 9:32 and 10:52 I miraculously remembered my iCloud password, so we already knew where the phone was and we were on our way there.

But I haven't been able to figure out how they made those calls. I assume it has something to do with them being at the top of the Recent Calls list.

I'm pretty sure (but not 100%) that I had Siri disabled. If I did have it enabled, I would have also had it enabled on the lock screen. But even in that state, I can only get it to show me the last caller and it tells me I have to unlock to make the call.

Is it possible to redial the last incoming call without unlocking?

Yes.

Under Settings > Notifications, if you have "Show Previews" > Always along with  Phone > Alerts > Show on Lock Screen, then all you have to do is tap on the missed call from the lock screen to call it back.


spotify doesn't care about mission control settings I have my Mission Control (el capitan, 10.11) settings the way I like:
"When switching to an application, switch to a Space with open windows for the application" is OFF.

This works very well except for Spotify. Also, I have Spotify "locked" for a specific Desktop.

It's very annoying to do a cmd-tab and switch 3 desktops. And then, it doesn't switch back with another cmd-tab.

How can I make Spotify obey the Mission Control setting?

Spotify doesn't support multiple windows. The reason for this statement is absence of New Window in File Menu. So it switches to the desktop it is at.


Bad WiFi reception when using external screen I know it doesn't make any sense (at least, it doesn't to me), but I have the strangest situation over here:

Upstairs:
I use a MacBook Pro (mid 2010) with a i7 2.66 GHz processor and 4GB of DDR3. The notebook is on my desk on my right side. I've connected a 23" ACD as external screen. When the screen is connected, the lid is closed.

Downstairs:
AirPort Extreme (4th generation) which sends a signal (n-standard) to my Mac (and all other devices in our house).

For some reason, when the external ACD is connected I got a very bad signal. Signal strength even goes down to 1 sometimes. But when the ACD is disconnected and the lid is opened, the signal strength increases to normal proportions (40-80).

I can't figure out why the signal strength is influenced by connecting the ACD or not.
Can you?

I may have an answer for you.

The AirPort card in this model is located at about where the play/pause and volume buttons  are and the antennas are built into the display. When you close the lid, the antennas are being pointed sideways instead of up.

Not only that, but now you've added an extra layer of glass and aluminum to block the radio waves being transmitted from your AirPort card to your AirPort Extreme. This is probably what's causing the issue.

There's not really a fix for this, as it's how the MacBook Pro was designed.

A workaround, however, would be to leave your MacBook Pro lid open when connected to your display. If you prefer your main screen to be the external display, you can change which display is primary. There are some pretty good instructions out there that explain how to do this.


Turned off iCloud Photo Library and now can't see pictures after turning back on Same question was posted a month ago by a different user, but she stopped responding... I have the exact same
Issue.

This is a little complicated. I turned off iCloud Photo Library (for reasons that are unimportant) and the dialog that says "Photos will be removed from your phone, but will remain on iCloud" popped up and I hit "OK".

So 3100 photos were removed from my phone because they were all stored to iCloud.

Then I turned iCloud Photo Library back on, thinking all the 'removed' photos would reappear in my Photos App, but they didn't, and I don't know what to do. I verified that all of the photos are on iCloud by logging into the web interface on my desktop, I just can't get them to show back up in my Photos App on my phone.

Not sure what happened, but they appeared suddenly this morning. They were gone for over a week...and appeared today. Weird...


Stop installing python for each package by brew I have installed python on Mac by Anaconda. Here is the path :

/Users/USERNAME/anaconda3/bin/python
/usr/bin/python

But when I want to install any package that need python, it installs it separately. For instance, I wanted to install the gdb (GNU Debugger) via Homebrew, but it said that python is one of the requirements and then it installed it again.

How can I stop downloading and installing python for every package?

The nice thing about homebrew is it only installs dependencies needed to build the packages and also that you don’t have to choose just one version of a tool.

Why not let brew install what it needs, but control your path so that you’re running Anaconda from the python you prefer?

Also, brew has a cask install of anaconda as well, so that might be an easier path to harmony if you can’t get away from the homebrew installs for tools.


How to create a blank RTF file in AppleScript inside current folder? In regards to this question: How to create a blank RTF file in AppleScript?

Can you modify the code in a way it would save the file to the current location of the app? as in instead of saving it to Desktop, it would save it to wherever the .app is located. That way I could add the .app to the Finder-Toolbar and be able to click it from any folder and create that blank rtf file inside the current folder whatever it may be.

if not possible, then maybe force it to ask for saving-location just like it asks for name.

Thanks

If you want to use the code in that linked answer, as is, and modify it to do exactly what it's presently doing with the exception of creating the RTF file at the location the Finder window is set to, via the .app added to the Toolbar in Finder, then change the following line of code:

Change:

set theCustomRichTextFilePathname to ((path to desktop) & customFilename & ".rtf") as string

To:

tell application "Finder"
    set theCustomRichTextFilePathname to ((folder of the front window as string) & customFilename & ".rtf") as string
end tell

Then save it as an AppleScript .app, not .scpt, and drag and drop it onto the Toolbar in Finder.

While that technically answers your question, nonetheless there's probably other code that may/will need to be modified, but that gets you started.


iOS-iOS device real time sound transfering I'd like to know if there's any way I could connect two iOS devices to transfer sound in real time. Sort of a walkie-talkie device. Anyone would know any apps for that?

Thanks :)

As per my comment, I think the key phrase to search for here would be Push-To-Talk (PTT). Take a look at the following:

Push to talk apps


What happens when macOS "Turns the display off"? When I run this command:

sudo systemsetup -getcomputersleep

I'm getting this:

  Computer Sleep: after 55 minutes

And that corresponds to the setting in the "Energy Saver" Preference panel, the setting "Turn display off after".

So now I'm wondering what happens exactly after 55 minutes? Does the computer actually go to sleep (i.e. all activity is stopped) or is it only switching off the screen?

The command line and preferences use wordings that for me means completely different things so I'm just wondering which one is right?

systemsetup

From the command line you can confirm the state of your sleep situation using the -getsleep argument to systemsetup.

$ sudo systemsetup -getsleep
Sleep: Computer sleeps Never
Sleep: Display sleeps after 10 minutes
Sleep: Disk sleeps after 10 minutes

This setup was accomplished by setting the preferences under "Energy Saver" section of System Preferences like this:

This shows that the display will be turned off after 10 minutes but the system itself will remain powered on. Pay special attention to the tabs in this dialog as well. The settings are different when on battery vs. the power adapter.

NOTE: If we were to unset that checkbox so that the system won't be prevented from going to sleep along with the display the output form systemsetup changes to this:

$ sudo systemsetup -getsleep
Sleep: Computer sleeps after 10 minutes
Sleep: Display sleeps after 10 minutes
Sleep: Disk sleeps after 10 minutes

You can see all the get* settings from systemsetup like this:

$ sudo systemsetup -help|grep "get.*sleep"
Usage: systemsetup -getsleep
Usage: systemsetup -getcomputersleep
Usage: systemsetup -getdisplaysleep
Usage: systemsetup -getharddisksleep
Usage: systemsetup -getallowpowerbuttontosleepcomputer

You can also augment the settings from the CLI as well:

$ sudo systemsetup -help | grep -- "-set.*sleep"
Usage: systemsetup -setsleep <minutes>
Usage: systemsetup -setcomputersleep <minutes>
Usage: systemsetup -setdisplaysleep <minutes>
Usage: systemsetup -setharddisksleep <minutes>
Usage: systemsetup -setallowpowerbuttontosleepcomputer <on off>

pmset

Additionally there's another tool you can use to get/set timings related to the various "sleep" aspects of your system.

$ pmset -g
System-wide power settings:
 DestroyFVKeyOnStandby      0
Currently in use:
 standby              1
 standbydelaylow      10800
 womp                 1
 halfdim              1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 proximitywake        1
 powernap             1
 gpuswitch            2
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            10
 standbydelayhigh     86400
 sleep                0
 hibernatemode        3
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         10
 tcpkeepalive         1
 highstandbythreshold 50
 acwake               0
 lidwake              1


join multiple png images Often I find myself needing to take many PNG images and join them into a larger image.

Specifically, in this particular case, I'd like to take 2 PNGs of roughly equal width (±2px) and different heights and create a new PNG where the first is above the other. E.g.

The join should be seamless.

Is there a command line tool/app that does this? Best would be if Preview offers a solution.

ImageMagick can do this:

convert 1.png 2.png -append result.png

Alignment options can be (optionally) specified using the -gravity switch,

-gravity East align the right edges
-gravity West align the left edges
-gravity center align the centers

Note: using +append instead of -append will stitch the images together horizontally, i.e. side-by-side rather than one above the other.


Change the shortcut of cmd+Q for all applications I use cmd+tab, cmd+W, cmd+A a lot and I don't remember how many times I hit cmd+Q accidentally.

Is it possible to change the shortcut for quitting applications from cmd+Q to something else (not to disallow using keyboard to quit applications), ideally for applications all at once (not to do it for individual application one by one)?

This should change the shortcut to ⇧⌘Q for most currently installed applications:

defaults write -g NSUserKeyEquivalents -dict-add $(mdfind kMDItemContentType==com.apple.application-bundle | grep -v { |
sed 's/.*\//Quit /g;s/\.app$//g;'"s/'/\\''\\'/g;s/^/'/g;s/$/' '\$@q'/g" | uniq | tr '\n' ' ')

You could also use KeyRemap4MacBook to change ⌘Q to some other key combination or require holding or pressing it twice to quit an application.


iCloud duplicating folders & files can not be opened (macOS Catalina) I have my documents folder on iCloud. Since installing Catalina folders have been multiplying. The original folder (e.g., Articles) has spawned duplicate copies (Articles 2 and Articles 3).

The original folder is empty, the duplicates contain files, but rarely (maybe even never) the same set of files. Usually the item count in the 2nd instance of the folder is one less that the 3rd instance. The duplicate folders also exist on iCloud.

When I attempt to open a file through Finder I'm ignored - double-clicking on the file produces no result. If I try open filename in Terminal I at least get an error message "The file filename does not exist."

Any idea of what is going on? And how to fix it?

As a troubleshoot I was about to suggest sign out and in, or simply disable document sync in iCloud. But first get all your iCloud documents from the Drive by requesting on https://privacy.apple.com.

Since the latest change prevails in sync, make changes in iCloud and then sign back in.


MapMyRide contains erroneous points on occasion Usually my iPhone 4s and MapMyRide work well together, but occasionally I get weird records where the location recorded 'jumps' from where I really was to another location maybe 5-10 kilometers away - the track between true and false locations being recorded as a straight line. Is this a MapMyRide problem, an iPhone software or hardware problem, and how to fix?

I have observed a similar problem with RunKeeper in the past (not on my iPhone 6 as of yet) and I believe it has to do with the phone struggling to accurately locate itself at that moment. iPhone's "zero-in" on their current location, starting with a big radius and shrinking it as it gets more accurate information. With that, it always assumes that it is in the center of the circle. When the phone chokes on its location MapMyRide will record that location even if it is erroneous, I believe.

What I did with RunKeeper when that happened was simply edit the activity later on a computer. I removed the problematic point and the statistics and route returned to normal. I don't believe I almost ever had that happen more than one or two times in an activity and it occurred rarely at that.

I have not used MapMyRide so I don't know if there is a way to edit your activity. But, in short, I would suspect the phone as the the app isn't the actual source of the location information - it just asks the computer for it.


What audio quality is available on newer iPhones? I am wondering what maximum sample rate and bit depth is available through the USB connection to both the iPhone 6 and 7 (And any other models would be interesting).

I am a registered iOS developer so links to Apple confidential stuff (Or however is works) is OK but still not preferred.

Kind of related is this other question I just asked.

TL;DR: It appears the iPhone 6 supports 24-bit audio and 48 kHz playback.

So I found a way to empirically test playback.

This first screenshot shows a recording of playback over iPhone USB into Quicktime. You can see from the spectrogram that there is data in the 22-24k range, which means that playback is at least 48 kHz.

This next screenshot shows playback over USB straight into audacity. Basically, I played -95 dB and -97 dB tones at both 16- and 24-bit audio. -97dB is below the minimum volume of 16-bit audio. While all the other tones made a sound, the 16-bit, -97 dB chunk of the recording shows no sound, while 24-bit -97dB does play a sound.


Removing camera button on iPhone lock screen How to remove the camera button on the iPhone lock screen without removing the camera from the springboard

I don't want to allow people without access to take pictures using my phone (pictures are shared automatically by iCloud)
But in the same time, I want to be able to use the camera from the springboard.

I'm searching for a native solution under iOS 8.x or later

The only way this can be done is by using Settings > General > Restrictions to disable the use of the camera completely. A side effect is that FaceTime is also disabled.

There is no other mechanism built-in to do what you want.


How can I double a song's length? I have a song in my iTunes (11) library that loops amazingly well, but is rather short in duration.  I'd like to double the length of the song by having it loop once before continuing, so that I can use the extended version in randomly-shuffled playlists.

I know I can extend a song's length by including the same song in a playlist twice in a row, burning the list to a CD, and then merging the songs when I import back (with a gap of 0).  However, this requires throwing away a lot of CDs if I encounter many such songs.

Is there an all-digital way to merge two songs together?

Well you can use any digital audio editor to combine songs. Like Audacity.

  Audacity is a free open source digital audio editor and recording
  computer software application, available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
  and other operating systems.

Here is link that tells step by step how can you do that using Audacity.

http://www.wikihow.com/Combine-Songs-on-Your-Computer-Using-Audacity


Identifying conflicting extensions in classic Mac OS I am experimenting with Sheepsaver and am having some problems. I've got it booting okay into Mac OS and have installed some games and other software. But I think I was a little too eager and installed too much without properly testing things and I'm experiencing a number of freezes. Actually, the screen freezes up and mouse pointer disappears but sound is still playing.

Anyway, I remember in the good old days having some software installed on my Power Macs that listed what extensions conflicted with what.

So, my questions are:

What was that software?
Is it still available?
Does it work in sheepsaver?

I know exactly what you're talking about. It's called InformINIT and it was one of those tools that many of us Mac experts used to narrow down problems with. Even after Apple's Extensions Manager was released with Mac OS 7.5, InformINIT remained an extremely useful tool to identify those pesky control panels and extensions!

In summary:

Yes, you can still download it from here
Yes, it works within Sheepsaver!

As an aside, don't forget you can ask questions here about your Sheepsaver problems.


Different colors between Monitor -> Display I just got home from buying my 2nd 4K monitor. This time, I bought a Samsung 4K monitor, but, I recently returned a 4K monitor from LG due to the same problem.

The problem is that the colors are noticeable different on the monitor respectively the Macbook Pro display.

Which leads me to my question, would the 4K LG UltraFine monitor solve this? If I purchased that monitor, could I be guaranteed that the screen would look the same across the monitor?

Here's a picture of my problem:

Both the LG 4K and 5K look great next to 2015 / 2016 MacBook and MacBook Pro at the angle you have photographed. You could try to set a custom color calibration curve for both displays to bring them closer, but the color shift you have photographed is very large.

Also, be sure to set the contrast and brightness levels on the external display before you attempt software calibration. Lastly, let the display run for 30 minutes before attempting color calibration.


Upgrade then restore, or the other way around? I'm in a situation where I simply cannot upgrade my Mac – the installer says that my disk cannot be used as a startup disk. This probably has to do with me installing dual-boot partitions, but I'm not sure.

I've decided to just wipe the disk and restore from backup. In the process, I'd like to upgrade to the most recent Mac OS version as well.

My question is simply: what is the most reasonable approach – upgrade the OS using a USB stick and then read back from the backup disk, or the other way around: restore from the disk, then run the upgrade?

Thanks.

Apple's Migration Assistant does a great job at importing data from previous installations or backups. Therefore, I suggest you save yourself some time and do a clean install of the version of macOS you want to finally use and then use Migration Assistant to recover your Apps, profiles, etc.

As suggested by @SteveChambers:

back up
create a bootable USB installer or use internet recovery
reformat the drive
install macOS,
restore from backup using Migration Assistant


How do I kill a process that won't die? I'm unable to kill a process using any of the techniques I'm aware of ("Force Quit" in Activity Monitor, top, killall from the Terminal) and wonder if there are some additional steps I can take.

~ $ sudo killall -KILL 77439
Password:
No matching processes were found
~ $ killall -KILL 77439
No matching processes belonging to you were found
~ $ killall 77439
No matching processes belonging to you were found
~ $ killall Mathematica
No matching processes belonging to you were found

FWIW the process is "Mathematica" which I cannot relaunch, Quit, or Force Quit, or sample, either by name or PID, and it appears to have some odd side effects (screenshots don't appear, can't empty trash, and can't even shut down the system).

Are there additional steps that can be taken to really really kill a badly behaved process?

killall kills by process name (which is definitively not 77439 and most probably also not Mathematica). You can use kill 77439 or (if this fails) kill -9 77439 instead (but if the process is really stuck, only a reboot will solve the problem).

Also, due the the way sending/processing of signals (like kill -9) works in Unix/OS X, there are situations where a process will be unkillable. One typical example for this is if a process gets stuck while accessing some external device and never actually gets control back. In such situations a reboot is the only way to get rid of the process.


Is it possible to rename an USB or Bluetooth audio device? I am using a Bluetooth headset. To charge it, I need USB, and when connecting that, it appears two times as audio device - obviously once as Bluetooth device, once as USB device. Both audio devices show up with the exact same name. This is no huge problem, but everything sometimes gets confusing and weird. If I'm in video conferences and busy with other stuff, I don't want to spend even seconds to fool around with that.
Is there a way to permanently rename such a device? I assume both a Bluetooth and an USB device has a unique ID which is the actual way for the laptop and the device to communicate; I guess the name is just a human-friendly label. At least the Bluetooth device is surely a persistent thing inside the Mac, since it knows that it has coupled with the device before.
If that is not pssible, is there a way to permanently block a specific USB device from ever showing up as audio device at all?

After any Bluetooth device is paired and connected, Go to Preferences->Bluetooth and right-click the device you want to rename. From the context menu, select the ‘Rename’ option.


show Apple ID or Email on iMessage How can you change the phone Nr. from showing up on iMessage? I'd rather have it changed to my email or Apple ID instead.

You can go to Settings app > Messages > Send & Receive, and at the bottom under "Start New Conversations From" change it to your preferred option. Your email address and phone number will both appear there.


iMac data recovery - file icon with ? mark My iMac went dead, and was trying to recover data from it by connecting Thunderbolt.  The dead iMac's hard drive did not appear on the other Mac.
As a next step, I was trying to reboot to use Disk Utility for Target Disk mode, when my iMac showed this blinking icon with file and question mark.

What does this mean and what am I supposed to do?

The folder with the question mark means your iMac can't find a bootable operating system. You can try the following:

Press and hold the power button for a few seconds to power down your iMac
Press the power button once to turn your Mac back on and immediately press and hold the ⌘R keys on your keyboard to try starting your iMac from Recovery. Keep them pressed down until you see an Apple logo or globe.
If prompted, select a Wi-Fi network to connect to the Internet as part of startup.
After the Utilities window appears, choose Startup Disk from the Apple menu.
Select your startup disk
Click Restart.

Hope this helps. Let me know how you go.

NOTE
If you don't see your startup disk in the Startup Disk window at Step 5 above, try the following steps:

From the Utilities window, open Disk Utility
Select your startup disk from the left-hand side of the window
Click on the First Aid tab.
Click on the Repair Disk button
When it's finished quit Disk Utility.
Choose Startup Disk from the Apple menu.
Select your startup disk
Click Restart.


How to disable Command+Shift+R? I have been using command+shift+R in Sublime Text forever (super+shift+R in Sublime). On my iMac all that happens is that I hear a beep (on Sierra).

It is really annoying and I can't find a way to remove the shortcut or remap it. Anything I've tried so far hasn't yielded any results.

Karabiner isn't working in Sierra and I tried some other app BetterTouchTool that doesn't seem to help either.

Is there a way to force my Mac to unbind that shortcut?

A beep indicates that the shortcut that was pressed was not interpreted by apps on the system. This means the shortcut is already unbound, so it seems you're having some problem with Sublime Text itself rather than the shortcut being bound to something else.


User Crash, but old user data is (seemingly) still on HD? So our late 2015 iMac locked up the other day, and I had to restart it.  My wife and I both use the computer, both with our own (both admin) users.  I was logged in on my user when the machines crashes.  After the restart, the computer booted to the user login screen, only my wife's user showed - mine was gone.  Logging in on hers, it looks like my user is just "gone" - doesn't show in System Preferences.  However, when I go to /Users, there is a folder with the my user name, but very little data in it.

But I have hope that somehow, somewhere, my files remain?

Our 1.02 TB HD is 98 GB away from capacity.  My wife's entire user is only 432 GB.  So there's a missing 500ish GB.... that would seemingly line up my missing user and data.

Apple advised me to update to Catalina (hadn't gotten around to it yet), which I did, but that didn't bring anything back.  Obviously restoring the user would be ideal, but really all I care about is my music, pictures, etc.  Anyone have any idea on how to get at that information, that is still seemingly on the HD?

Questionable advice from apple.  I suspect you do not have a backup of your data. You should have a backup of all your data.  Since you do not have a backup, this implies you do not have administrator level knowledge of macOS. You best find a professional to look for your data.

If you really, really need your data, you need professional help. One of the best professional restorers is "drivesavers.com".

This isn't a good time to be running around trying to fix your computer.  The best advice is to buy a new computer and wait until it is safe to go out. Another good advice, is to buy an external drive and run from the external drive. An external SSD from OWC is what I'm running on now. Here is what I am using for my startup drive: https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/ME3NH7T00/  plus https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_6G/

You should use the terminal to look around the root of the harddrive, / and the user directory /Users. The thing is the more you use your machine the less likely you will be able to recover your data. https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-11071  Please post back the result of:

ls -l /Users

While requiring administrator knowledge of the mac, you can try:

Immediately backup your wife's data
You should try cloning the drive of your machine
You should try all data recovery on the clone of your drive.
get an external drive
install macos on the external drive
try to find a data recovery app that will get back your data

a bunch of data recovery tools:

Perhaps Disk Warrior will be of some help:
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/

"Stellar Phoenix Macintosh - Mac data recovery software, recovers data from damaged, deleted, or corrupted volumes and even from initialized disks."
They have a trial version, so I guess you can see if your data can be recovered...
http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-data-recovery.htm

"Data Rescue II is the best data recovery software on the market for recovering files from a problem hard drive. Data Rescue II works when other tools fail. Data Rescue II is also completely safe to use since it does not attempt any risky repairs to the drive while its scanning."
http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

FileSalvage is an extremely powerful Macintosh application for exploring and recovering deleted files from a drive or volume.  FileSalvage is designed to restore files that have:
-- been accidentally deleted.
-- become unreadable due to media faults.
-- been stored on a drive before it was re-initialized/formatted.

http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1

"TestDisk is a free data recovery utility. It was primarily designed to help recover lost data storage partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally erasing a partition table)."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TestDisk

Wondershare Data Recovery for Mac

"Recover lost photos, video, documents, email and archive files from any Mac-based hard drive or external hard drive, iPod, USB drive, SD card, digital camera, mobile phone, and MP3/MP4 player, due to accidental deleting, formatting, virus infection, improper operation, unexpected power failure, and other unknown reasons. Also, iPhone recovery allows you to recover lost photos, videos, SMS, contacts, note, calendar and call history from iTunes backup file. With the free trial, you can preview all your recovered images, videos, music, documents and archive files prior purchasing this Mac Data Recovery."
http://software.bigbigsoft.com/data-recovery-mac

"If there is any chance of recovery at all your best bet is Prosoft Data Recovery." by macjack

https://www.prosofteng.com/datarescue-mac-data-recovery/

Eric Root's list:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/30259740#message30259740

Chterando's list:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/31780403#message31780403


VLC Player Staying On Top Of The Opened Applications On Desktop I want my VLC player not to minimize while I am on the windows of other applications. Whenever I click another window the VLC player window will go behind the my currently clicked window but I want it to resist being on top.


What is the difference between millions and billions in printer/scanner colour settings? The "Printers & Scanners" Setting preference pane has two color options: "millions" or "billions" of colors. I can't tell the difference. Is there a reason to choose one over the other? Perhaps specific circumstances?

I'm scanning old photos and determining the tradeoff for time/energy/file size. "Billions" appears to make photos three times the file size of "millions" and I can't discern whether there are archival benefits.

Old photos are unlikely to have colour depth in the millions nevertheless billions. In such a case, there is no point scanning images at anything higher than 24-bit. (See comments below.)

In a nutshell, in certain circumstances some users may opt for billions of colours if they're doing high end photography, graphic design, large format printing, etc and if their hardware supports it.

So, using scanners as an example, colour (or bit depth) is the amount of information a scanner gets from what you’re scanning. Basically, the higher the bit depth, the more colours that can be recognised and the higher your quality of scan will be.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, in summary:

Grayscale scans are 8-bit images recognising 256 levels of gray
a 16-bit colour scan can recognise up to 65,536 colours
a 24-bit colour scan can recognise up to 16,777,215 colours
a 32-bit colour scan can recognise up to 4,294,967,296 colours
and so on

Note: The above is only a basic explanation and doesn't get into alpha channels etc.

Hardware support

As I mentioned above, opting for billions of colours will also depend on whether your hardware supports it. Obviously, displaying more colors requires more memory. Most computers today will have a GPU with enough memory to support 32-bit colour. Older computers, on the other hand, may only support up to 16-bit colour. Regardless of this, your display also needs to support this too.

Likewise with scanners. Not all scanners can scan at the same bit depth. Using my summary above, a scanner only capable of 24 bit can recognise up to 16,777,215 colours, well short of the billions that some can scan.

I can't tell the difference

You stated in your question, "I can't tell the difference".

This isn't surprising as I doubt many users could tell the difference between 16-bit and 32-bit colour scans, prints or displays. However, users with particular software capable of showing/differentiating between gradients, shadows, transparency, etc that require a wide range of colour combinations may notice a difference, and this is where it gets back to the specific circumstances you alluded to in your question.

[EDIT]

IconDaemon's comment prompted me to add an example of when a user may want to scan at a higher resolution and colour depth than what their own computer/display supports.

Last December I had to produce some large-format posters for my sister-in-law and, to do this, I had to use her much older Mac to design it. While her older Mac wasn't capable of displaying billions of colours, her scanner was capable of doing up to 48-bit scans. So I scanned in the required images using 36-bit for colour depth and 600dpi for the resolution.

Then, on her outdated Mac I used Photoshop CS5 to put it altogether and export the files as high-quality press-ready PDFs. These files were then taken to a service bureau which printed the large format posters. However, if the original images were not scanned at a high enough quality, then the large format prints would have been pixelated and the lack of colour information would have resulted in a print where some of the effects (e.g. transparency, etc) would not come across very well (if at all).


Can't rearrange Mission Control spaces I can't rearrange full screen spaces in mission control.  When I drag one to move it, it never seems to stick back onto the mission control bar.  If I drop the space on the bar the animation shows it going back to the dock and it disappears from the mission control bar.  I can drag the space from the bar to the desktop.

It tends to leave behind a semi transparent image of the full screen view (similar to the one that can be dragged around in mission control) and this persists even after mission control is closed.  The only way to get rid of it is to restart my machine.

What's going on and how can I fix it?

Just to reconfirm that I understand it correct, the issue is:

On trying to move full-screen apps between two spaces by going into spaces (press F3 button or 3-finger swipe above), it (full-screen app) just slips to one the desktops and doesn't get accommodated like desktops (space is created automatically by the GUI for insertion and you can drop the desktop there).

Have found the following:

Generally restarting the Mac solves this issue for some time (few days) but then it returns again.
Once the full screen app drops into one of the desktops, pick it and insert it where you want in the top spaces panel.

This is not exactly a solution but a workaround or change of habit if you don't want to restart your mac for something so trivial.

Hope this helps in reducing the inconvenience.


safari sometimes can't load sites or sometimes it loads sites without css I am a software developer experiencing strange errors with safari.

Sometimes safari loads some of the github.com pages without styles. The same happens with my heroku dashboard: https://dashboard.heroku.com/apps. But only sometimes.

With heroku I had much more stange errors:
'Safari can't load the url: heroku.com '

In chrome these errors never happen...
I tried to load these pages in chrome immediately when I observed the error and for my biggest surprise in chrome everything was working. (I have fiber optic huge bandwidth internet so this is a very strange question.)

Any idea is welcome.

Try restoring safari to factory default:

Settings
Safari
Delete history and data
Check the advanced tab if everything is clear, else clear it.


Moving full screen apps between monitors shortcut Does anyone know if it is possible to move a full screen app to another monitor using a shortcut? Or if there is no existing shortcut would it be possible with Applescript?

BetterTouchTool has "Move window to next monitor" as one of its predefined actions but this only works on desktops and not with full-screen apps.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Simon

Did you consider using Keyboard Maestro?

Here is an example of how I deal with moving windows through screens. I just tried to move full screens apps -never tried before- and seems that didn't work well. But you could modify my macros to Exit full screen before moving to the next screen and Enter full screen after that. The macro for that is called Type a Keystroke.


Can a MBA 2014 output 2560x1080 at 60hz? I've got a MacBook Air 2014 and I want to hook it up to a LG 29UM65 monitor.

The native resolution is 2560x1080. Can the MBA 2014 (Thunderbolt 1) output at that resolution at 60hz?

I bought a few of these panels last month on special.  They are great. I just tried to hook up my MBA11 2014 to the display and here are the options I got.

It doesn't look like it does 2560x1080

Here is what I get when I try it on desktop mac


Is Apple MacBook Pro compatible with the LG LED PG60g projector? Recently I bought an LG portable LED PG60g projector. What cables would i need to connect them and get started?

If your MacBook Pro has a HDMI connection, you just need an HDMI cable. (The current MacBook Pro's have built in HDMI.)

If you don't have built in HDMI You need a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter and a HDMI cable. (If you have a ThunderBolt port, this can be used as a Mini DisplayPort connection)

You could could also us a Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter. This will work for most applications and presentations. However, VGA will run into issues with rights managed video. DVD's, iTunes and many other video streaming services will not be allowed to display on a VGA connection.

If you actually have the new MacBook (non-Pro) with the USB-C connector, you will need a USB-C to HDMI adapter.


Bookmarking an on-screen position in macOS? When looking at something in macOS, how can I put some kind of horizontal line so that I don't forget my position on the screen?

Let's say I'm reading a list shown on the screen,
and I've mentally processing the bottom quarter of the list, so I want to put a marker there so that when I come back from lunch I know where I need to resume from.

My ad hoc solution so far has been to position a Finder window at the point where my region starts. But I end up using Finder for other tasks and can easily loose my "bookmark".

A possible alternative to using a Finder window as a bookmark is using the built-in Stickies app (if you are not using the apps as a fullscreen space).

Simply open the Stickies app and make a new note via File > New Note. While the sticky window is selected, you can make it float on top of other windows at Window > Float on Top. This will make the sticky note remain on top of the other window, regardless of app focus. You can resize the sticky to your liking and you can even collapse it to make it much smaller.

It's not an elegant solution and it falls apart if the sticky or the window are moved, but it is better than using Finder as a bookmark.

Here is an example of what it looks like floating on a list of numbers on an active Chrome window:


Show Package Content option not available in High Sierra on a pkg file I want to "Show Package Content" of a pkg file which is inside this dmg file : https://desktop.visio.renater.fr/scopia/entry/pic/ClientComponents.dmg

So I drag'n'drop the pkg file which is inside the dmg to the "Desktop" folder.

Then I right click on the pkg file and here is what I see :

Can you help ?

The Show Package Contents is used to show the contents of an application. If you go to an application on you mac and right click on it, you get a menu and one option is to "Show Package Contents". This applies to apps.

There is a way to show the contents of a pkg file but you must do it using the terminal.  Just type the following command: pkgutil --expand /path/to/package.pkg /output/destination/. A description of this is given here.


Is there a command to install a dmg I want to install a dmg file on a remote server. All I have is an ssh access.
Since a DMG is a disk image, I tried to mount it, but mount does not seem to recognize its format.

file says my dmg file is a VAX COFF executable.

First, mount the dmg image : sudo hdiutil attach <image>.dmg

The image will be mounted to /Volumes/<image>. Mine contained a package which i installed with: sudo installer -package /Volumes/<image>/<image>.pkg -target /

Finally unmount the image: sudo hdiutil detach /Volumes/<image>.


Mac OS X Mojave Typing Lag When typing Hebrew letters, the output is delayed and quite laggy. This is not happening in English, as can be seen in the following video (when nothing is being outputted - I actually press the ש button, it only gets displayed when I release it):

It happens with every application, not just with Chrome.

You can disable the Character Picker by typing this command on terminal:

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false


Early 2011 MacBook Pro SMC firmware update question OS has been upgraded to Mavericks. Can I still run the SMC firmware update 1.7 said to be for OS 10.75 and 10.82? Would it hurt anything to try this firmware update with the later OS?

If software update doesn't prompt you to update, then either it has been circumvented by other updates or it has already been applied.


Sharing an Apple ID on different iPads, but having different Contacts My daughter has my old iPad, and we share the same Apple ID, for convenience with purchasing. However at present we also have a shared Contacts list on the two iPads. It would be better to have separate Contact lists, to go with our separate email accounts.  Is this possible? And if so, how?

Perfectly possible, you essentially both need a free iCloud account, that you log into for the purposes or mail/calendars/notes/contacts etc etc.

You each log into iCloud from within Settings > iCloud with your unique ID, and turn on any appropriate option within that page once you are signed in.

Then, for the App Store, go to Settings > iTunes and App Store and log in again, only this time simply both use the the same ID that is associated with all your past purchases.

You can log into different ID's for different services like Facetime/Messages/App Store/Mail at the same time, it really doesn't mind.


How to open and read particular files on iOS (.xpt .por)? What apps on iOS can open .xpt and .por files? I think they are called binary or stata/sas files in general? How do you open them on iOS? Is that not possible?

.xpt files are SAS XPORT files; .por files are ascii data files created by SPSS.

StatsGuru for SPSS is a iOS app:

  Stats Guru is a tool to help social scientists determine the correct
  statistical test for their data. The tool then provides a walk-through
  for each test, using SPSS Version 21.

SAS Mobile BI is an iOS app.

  SAS® Mobile BI empowers decision makers with business reports and
  dashboards anywhere, anytime! SAS Mobile BI, part of the SAS® Visual
  Analytics solution, enables you to access and interact with reports
  and report elements such as graphs, tables, KPIs, and data grids.


Computer freezes after update 2020-002 on High Sierra. How to revert / cancel update? Since security update 2020-002, I'm having lots of trouble with a macbook pro early 2015 running high sierra

The computer freezes all the time

From what i read, this update causes problems when the graphics are solicited a little more than standard  which is my case as I have 24" external monitor always plugged to the computer (hdmi) and i use software such as illustrator and indesign on a daily basis

Is there any way to revert/cancel updates on mac os ?

If it is not possible, my only option would be to get Catalina.
In case something goes wrong with Catalina, i would like to know how to get installers for Mojave and/or High Sierra (i don't 'purchase' mac os versions so i don't have them on my App Store purchased tab)
Is there a direct link to the dmg install files ?

Thanks

Rollback procedure

The only way I found to be able to fight bad OS updates, and to revert an OS update is the following procedure. It is a procedure to have in place before any
update and at the same time it is a heavy and pretty good backup policy.

Buy a dedicated disk for this backup and rollback policy, twice the capacity of the disk of the Mac you want to protect.
Make a full bootable backup of your OS with Carbon Copy Cloner (you can try it for free to make your own opinion about the quality of this software).
Once this backup is complete, test it by booting your Mac on it and check everything is OK (your vital applications at least).
Reboot your Mac on its internal disk and make a log file to track which versions of your OS you backud up correctly. For example I use a basic text file I maintain with vi (and rcs):

backup disk name        version of the OS saved        date of backup

Make the update that App Store proposed you and check everything is OK (your vital applications at least).
If this update is OK, just continue with it: end of the backup procedure.

Else, make a rollback of your previous version saved on your backup disk with Carbon Copy Cloner.

Practical time spent on this procedure

one hour for backup CCC,
half an hour for checking the backup,
one hour for MacOS update,
2 full days for testing the new MacOS version,
one hour for rollback CCC if the new MacOS is ill behaving,

total:   2.5 days (essentially testing a fresh new MacOS version).

Practical time saved with this procedure

between 1 day and 3 years, depending on the time Apple will take to fix a misbehaving version of MacOS.


Obtain bad URL from Safari's current tab with Applescript The web site my.yahoo.com has an irritating bug (I'm surprised it works at all) where clicking on one of its links sometimes produces a URL such as the following:

http://sports.yahoo.comhttps//sports.yahoo.com/news/rested-kings-ready-host-not-rested-hurricanes-082033171--nhl.html

In the example, you can see that "http://sports.yahoo.com" is repeated twice. I wanted to find the easiest way to correct these URLs while surfing. Sadly, I cannot even perform the first necessary action, which is to pull the URL from the title bar of the current tab. You would think sending the following command to Safari in an Applescript would work:

set thisTabUrl to the URL of the current tab in window 1

Sadly, apparently, if the URL is invalid, I get:

file:///Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Resources/

Is there some other way I can coax Safari to give me the contents of the URL area of the current tab to then process in the Applescript, which will then attempt to set the current tab's URL to the correct url and open that page? I'm pretty sure I have the rest of the necessary code, to open the correct URL in that same tab.

For extra credit, what might be the most effortless way to launch this script when encountering such a bad URL while surfing in Safari?

I've tried numerous times to reproduce the issue, however I couldn't. So this solution was tested by manually entering a standard URL twice, via copy and paste, and going from there. I also used the bad URL you've shown in your question.

In Safari, this essentially tries to build a valid URL from of the double URL using AppleScript run as an Automator Service when pressing ⌘B and sets the current document (window, tab) to the proper URL.

Create an Automator Service with the settings as shown in the image below and save it as: Fix Bad URL

Then in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services, scroll down to General, select Fix Bad URL, click Add Shortcut and type: ⌘B

AppleScript code for the Automator Service:

on badURL()
    try
        --    # Put the bad URL on the Clipboard.
        tell application "Safari"
            activate
            delay 0.5
            tell application "System Events"
                key code 37 using {command down} # ⌘L
                delay 0.5
                key code 8 using {command down} # ⌘C
                delay 0.5
            end tell
        end tell
        --    # Retrieve the bad URL from the Clipboard.
        set theBadURL to get (the clipboard)
        --    # Trim the first eight characters off of 'theBadURL'.
        --    # This is done because the bad URL can have an occurrence of both 'http' and 'https' in the string in either
        --    # order and by trimming off, it lessens the amount of logic necessary to build a good URL from the bad URL.
        --    # The good URL, after all, is going to be built from what's after the second occurrence of either one.
        --    # Test first for 'https' then 'http', as that makes more sense logically to do so.
        set theBadURL to do shell script "awk 'BEGIN { print substr(\"" & theBadURL & "\", 9) }'"
        --    # Build the good URL from the bad URL.
        set theGoodURL to do shell script "awk -F 'https.*//' '{print $2}'<<<" & quoted form of theBadURL
        if theGoodURL is not equal to "" then
            set theGoodURL to "https://" & theGoodURL
        else
            set theGoodURL to do shell script "awk -F 'http.*//' '{print $2}'<<<" & quoted form of theBadURL
            if theGoodURL is not equal to "" then
                set theGoodURL to "http://" & theGoodURL
            end if
        end if
        return theGoodURL
    on error eStr number eNum
        display dialog eStr & " number " & eNum buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon caution
        return
    end try
end badURL

on run
    try
        tell application "Safari"
            activate
            set thisTabsURL to (get URL of current tab of window 1)
            --    # Check for bad URL and if found, build a good URL from it.
            tell current application
                if thisTabsURL contains "file:" then
                    set theGoodURL to my badURL()
                    tell application "Safari" to set the URL of the front document to theGoodURL
                end if
            end tell
        end tell
    on error eStr number eNum
        display dialog eStr & " number " & eNum buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with icon caution
        return
    end try
end run

Note that while I tested this under OS X 10.8.5 and macOS 10.12 and it did work under my test conditions, nonetheless it may not work properly every time under every condition and hence why the try and on error statements are being used in the code. Hopefully this will trap any error(s) with appropriate output to then enhance the code to handle any error(s) that didn't occur during my testing.


Creating a bootable macOS installer error I'm following How to create a bootable installer for macOS guide by Apple, but it's giving me an error. When I execute

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

It gives me this:

dyld: Library not loaded: @executable_path/../Frameworks/IAESD.framework/Versions/A/IAESD
  Referenced from: /Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia
  Reason: no suitable image found.  Did find:
    /Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/../Frameworks/IAESD.framework/Versions/A/IAESD: mmap() error 1 at address=0x103C4F000, size=0x00006000 segment=__TEXT in Segment::map() mapping /Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/../Frameworks/IAESD.framework/Versions/A/IAESD
    /Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/../Frameworks/IAESD.framework/Versions/A/IAESD: mmap() error 1 at address=0x103C65000, size=0x00006000 segment=__TEXT in Segment::map() mapping /Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app/Contents/Resources/../Frameworks/IAESD.framework/Versions/A/IAESD
ADMINs-MBP-2:~ ADMIN$

I'm using OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 on a Macbook Pro 2015.

The USB device is a 1TB External Hard Drive, Mac OS Extended formatted.

Installer files might be not available in the installer
Proceed with https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/307118
UPD: so even after processing steps you still receive such error. The problem is because of macos yosemite. When using the same app on 10.14 it works. Don't known, maybe some earlier versions would also work.


See tooltip on touch screen devices Is there a way to easily see web element tooltip on touch screen devices like iPad or iPhone?

For some elements on site, e.g. tags this can be achieved by taping and then go back in web browser’s history (screen shot from Google Chrome on iPad):

I’m looking for method that works on any elements, as if I use mouse pointer.

There's no such generic method because tooltips are not "native" to the web - they're implemented by web sites using generic means. Not every web site will create them the same way, and as such there's no generic method.

In this case Stackoverflow uses a jQuery-based popup system that attaches to event handlers for the mouse (for example the mouseover event). For touch based systems web pages should take advantage of touch events or similar to provide an alternative to users on touch screen devices.


Only hibernate when closing the lid, display sleep otherwise? I am looking for a way to hibernate (i.e. RAM saved to HDD then turned off) only when closing the lid. When the lid is opened, I expect OSX to simply turn off the screen after X minutes (i.e. everything keeps running). Mostly what a Windows PC does out of the box.

pmset does not seem to make possible controlling what happens when closing the lid.

Hibernate only (not sleep) when closing the lid:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25

And to go back to "normal" behavior:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 3

As for the sleep behavior with an open lid, just slide the Computer sleep timer to Neverin System Preferences > Energy Saver. Alternatively do

sudo pmset -a sleep 0


How i recover my icloud username and password My device is iPhone 4. I forgot my icloud username and password. How can i recover my username and password ? Would you please help me ? Its important as i cant use my device.

Try this site: Find your Apple ID.

  If you can't remember your Apple ID, just provide us with some information and we'll find it for you. Then we'll help you reset your password.


Spotlight search still searchs when not selected Why does my iPhone 5c save deleted emails and messages and displays them when spotlight search is turn on. There doesn't seem to be any way to delete them other than to reset and use backup to restore.

Mail stays in Trash until you empty it.

Did you first empty the trash?

Select Edit, then Delete all.


Split audio from different applications to different audio outputs I'd like to be able to have audio from 2 different applications go to 2 different audio outputs (say speakers from line out, and bluetooth audio headset). Is this possible on OSX 10.11.6 through standard system prefs or an external audio manager or something? Cheers.

As @IconDaemon says, your two potentials are Rogue Amoeba & Soundflower, paid or free.
Personally I don't trust Soundflower any more, it started to get very crashy around Mavericks & I've not really touched it since.
It was made by Cycling74, then given to Rogue Amoeba to host, but they've long abandoned it so its maintenance has been from whoever posts the most recent re-write.

Rogue Amoeba have 2 apps, one that records, Audio Hijack $49, one that just routes, Loopback $99. I've not really played with Loopback but Audio Hijack already can do most routings.

I made some pretty pictures of possible routings using Audio Hijack on this answer - https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/203009/85275

A third choice is Plogue Bidule - which I just found overkill & never really spent the time to learn it


iMovie 10.0.6 for Yosemite help needed Help!! I'm lost with the interface for iMovie 10.0.6. I have created iMovies with previous versions of iMovie (the most recent being iMovie 9).  When I installed and then opened iMovie 10.0.6 on my MacBook Pro running Yosemite, it also imported every last movie and clip I'd ever used and placed them in Events and Projects with no rhyme nor reason (at least not apparent to me).  Now I can't seem to create a new Event or Project without part of a previous project being a part of it. I'm lost - obviously - and no, I'm not computer illiterate just iMovie illiterate I guess!!

I'd love a written tutorial on using iMovie 10.0.6 that starts with the very basics but have been unable to find one -- I do better with written directions that watching YouTube videos - I need that step by step. Any suggestions from anyone?

I wouldn't say it's for no rhyme or reason, obviously,things sorted chronologically will always be easier to find. But this is just a slight overlook on your part, very slight. You can create a new project with the following:

clicking on the 'Add' icon in the topbar or pressing ⌘+N.
Create with whatever theme you seem fit.
Name it whatever suits you, and select the corresponding event your creating a movie from.
This will automatically add the project to the same year or folder the event is in (keeping things together, more efficient workflow)
You know if an event has a working project if there is a movie slate next to it's name.

Is a fast link to your movie.
This is where you cut/exclude/split and select certain clips to drag-n-drop into the timeline (#3)
This is your working timeline, anything you've added to the movie will display here. All transitions go here as well.
Self-explanitory

This is a very very fundamental tutorial, there are thousands of features packed into iMovies you might have to review their own tutorials here : http://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.0.6/


Can I not share external hard drives through my Macbook's standard file sharing system? I'm trying to share an external hard drive through lan file sharing (SMB). The sharing works for folders and file in my Macbook. I have set up a “Sharing” account that I give access to the files I want to share.

The problem is that the “plus” button to add a user with access to that folder is greyed out when I select the hard drives, so I cannot add my file sharing account. And the users that already have access cannot be edited, they're also greyed out, as is the minus button. Basically I cannot edit anything.

I have also tried using my administrator account since that one is already added to the folder's users with access list, but I cannot make SMB work with that account.

The hard drives are in ExFat and Fat32 formats. I know I can share them through my WiFi router, but I need to share them through my Macbook.

I tried adding my Sharing account to the Permissions box on the Get Info dialogue, but PathFinder didn't let me save the changes (it didn't give me a reason), and Finder just says that “You can read and write” but doesn't show me any other options to add, subtract, edit or see other users with access.

I don't know if this is a sharing issue, a permissions issue or both.

So, is sharing an external hard drive possible? If so, what am I missing?

To add to @nohillside answer you can share a FAT32 formatted drive but not set  permissions as the filesystem doesn't support it.

If you want to control access to files on the USB by permissions then format it using a filesystem that supports it (such as HFS) and changes will be avaliable in File Sharing.


The OS X GUI won't accept any passwords (but the command line will) The graphical side of OS X has stopped accepting passwords for any account. I am definitely typing them right, but the password box just wiggles "no." And here's the weird part: I can log in from >console mode. I can log in via SSH. sudo works just fine. The command line happily accepts my password; the graphical side absolutely refuses.

Things I've already tried:

Created a new user from the command line. Couldn't log in as that one, either.
Used my Apple ID to reset my password. That part worked, but when OS X autofilled the new password and tried to log in for me, all I got was the "no" wiggle.
Backed up ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain and replaced it with an empty file. Nope.
Created a fresh system keychain with sudo /usr/sbin/systemkeychain -C -f. Nope.
Booted into the recovery partition and verified/repaired the disk and its permissions. No apparent effect.
Update: Booted into safe mode. Still couldn't log in.
Confirmed that there are no wireless keyboards connected to the computer. Confirmed that the keyboard locale was what I expected it to be. Confirmed that Caps Lock was off. Typed my password into the username box so I could see it for myself. I promise you, I am typing it correctly.

This is not the problem where the login process appears to start before returning to the login screen. Whatever mechanism verifies passwords for the GUI appears to be returning false no matter what.

I'm on a late-2009 iMac (iMac11,1) running 10.9.2. I could back up my files and reinstall the OS, but I'd really, really rather not. Help!

After checking the system log at the suggestion of @Asmus, I tracked the problem down to a misbehaving PAM module. (It had been working fine for weeks; I don't know why it suddenly screwed everything up.) Thanks to everyone who commented!


Can I remove one partition on an external drive, while keeping the other intact? I have an external USB drive, which I've partitioned into separate FAT32 ("MOVIES") and OSX ("TIME_MACHINE") partitions:

I now wish to remove the FAT32 partition and just use the OSX partition.

Aside from reformating the disk with a single OSX partition, is it possible to:

remove/erase the FAT32 partition, then
expand the OSX partition to take up the entire drive

without losing the contents of the OSX partition?

Disk Utility can't do it, but iPartition can - http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php

Tested on both GUID & MBR formatted drives.


How to verify installation of a new battery in an iPhone? I didn't join crowds a few years ago when Apple slowed down the iPhone clock to preserve battery charge, i.e., I didn't change the battery of my iPhone SE. My battery charge life has been satisfactory, since I'm a smartphone minimalist, i.e., relying primarily on the native apps, and banishing them from operation when I'm done (flicking up) [1]. No streaming video, and maybe streamed audio for a few minutes a year. Infrequent browsing, email, and texting, especially this winter with lockdown.
This winter, I was out in the wintery cold and the battery charge dropped from 70% to whatever level causes the phone to shut off and not start again. It was a real downer because I really needed the data connection to look up information and I needed the phone to call someone.
Around the January timeframe, I visited the Apple Geniuses for the first time in my life and asked for the battery to be replaced. Since then, however, I've never seen the battery deplete so quickly. My usage hasn't changed. The only explanation would be if an iOS update at the same time caused more activity. That would be quite the coincidence, for that to happen exactly the one time that I changed the battery over the space of years.
Is there any way to confirm that the battery actually got replaced?
NOTES: [1] I found that if I didn't banish the camera or Google Maps, the battery charge depletes quickly.
STEPS TAKEN

Tech support performed remote diagnostics, confirming the 100% battery health.  I'm not sure what details are generated by the diagnostics.

They advised upgrading to iOS 14.4, which apparently has charge preserving features for iPhone SE.  I still saw the pronounced charge depletion when the phone is almost always unused.

The next advised step was to refresh the firmware.  Since I didn't want to install something as massive as iTunes on the computer, they said that an Apple store can do this.  The Apple store tried to do so today (2021-03-14), but the procedure requires a factory reset.  I didn't have the time this weekend to re-establish the environment of my iPhone (including accounts and apps), so I decided to install iTunes at a later date and do it myself.

The staff provided helpful advice. While they agreed that banish apps might help if the phone is hardly ever used, I can also remove risk of unwanted CPU usage by closing the browser tabs. I will do this.

Similarly, using low power mode shuts down many background activities that need restarting, and was meant only to extend the last drops of charge. It's not meant for normal usage, so I will disable that (it was inconvenient to have to re-enable it all the time anyway).

Is there any way to confirm that the battery actually got replaced?

There are a couple ways you can use to check the battery status/health on your iPhone:

Check for your iPhone's battery's maximum capacity under Battery Health status in the iOS Settings app.

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT208387

Maximum battery capacity measures the device battery capacity relative to when it was new. A battery will have lower capacity as the battery chemically ages which may result in fewer hours of usage between charges. Depending upon the length of time between when the iPhone was made and when it is activated, your battery capacity may show as slightly less than 100%.

A newer/recent battery should show a number close to 100% for the Maximum Capacity value. You can access this information under Settings app → Battery → Battery Health on your iPhone.

Check the battery charge cycle count and charge retention capacity on your iPhone.
You can check the battery charge cycle count and charge retention capacity on your iPhone by using a 3rd party app called coconutBattery. A charge cycle count gives an estimation of full charge and discharge cycles endured by your iPhone.


Repair or recover drive from recovery mode My main HDD is failing to boot. (Neither Normal, Safe mode nor Single User).
I can only boot from Recovery Mode or DVD.

The scenario was the following:

Computer was asleep (lid down).
Lifted the lid then connected USB mouse.
Mouse nor trackpad nor keyboard responded.
Closed the lid, removed the USB mouse then opened the lid again.
Trackpad and keyboard responsive once again, but after trying to close some programs computer freezes.
Shutdown computer by pressing power button for 10 seconds.
At restart computer doesn't boot anymore.

When booting in verbose I noticed the following:

...
...
USBMSC Identifier (non-unique): 000000009833 0x5ac 0x8403 0x9833
disk0s2: I/O error.
0 [Level 3] [ReadUID 0] [Facility com.apple.system.fs] [ErrType IO] [ErrNo 5] [IOType Write] [PBlkNum 2] [FSLogMsgID 61471212] [FSLogMsgOrder First]
0 [Level 3] [ReadUID 0] [Facility com.apple.system.fs] [FSLogMsgID 61471212] [FSLogMsgOrder Last]
jnl: unknown-dev: update_fs_block: failed to update block 2 (ret 5)
jnl: unknown-dev: journal_open: Error replaying the journal!
hfs: early jnl init: failed to open/create the journal (retval 0)
Kernel is LP64
com.apple.launchd                       1          com.apple.launchd
com.apple.launchd                       1          com.apple.launchd
***
com.apple.launchd                       1          com.apple.launchd
** /dev/rdisk0s2 (NO WRITE)
** Root file system
   Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557-393)
jnl: disk0s2: replay_journal: from 13043200 to: 3971072 (joffset 0x15502000)
disk0s2: I/O error.
0 [Level 3] [ReadUID 0] [Facility com.apple.system.fs] [ErrType IO] [ErrNo 5] [IOType Write] [PBlkNum 2] [LBlkNum 2] [FSLogMsgID 1396728806] [FSLogMsgOrder First]
0 [Level 3] [ReadUID 0] [Facility com.apple.system.fs] [DevMode devfs] [MountPth /dev] [Path /dev/disk0s2] [FSLogMsgID 1396728806] [FSLogMsgOrder Last]
jnl: disk0s2: update_fs_block: failed to update block 2 (ret 5)
jnl: disk0s2: journal_open: Error replaying the journal!
hfs_mount: journal_open == NULL; couldn't be opened on Macintosh HD
mount_hfs: Invalid argument
FIP USER Space POST: Integrity test failed!
BootCacheControl: could not unlink bootcache playlist /var/db/BootCache.playlist: 30 Read-only file system

After that it just gets stuck and never gets past that.

I booted in recovery mode then tried verify and repair disk with disk utilities put is seems to be OK. However Macintosh HD cannot be mounted.

Tried fsck_hfs from Recovery Mode terminal then got Macintosh HD cannot be repaired.

I'll want to know if there is anyway to rescue the system without reinstalling Mac OSX or at least a way to recover some files from the drive before reinstalling Mac OSX.

there may be no way to rescue the system without reinstalling Mac OSX.
you might look into booting into single-user mode
that said, to the extent you care about un-backed up data on the hard drive,  it might be wise to recover files BEFORE trying to reinstall/recover further
I have had good luck with DiskWarrior
You MAY be able to boot the broken disk/laptop in "Target Disk Mode" - if it has Firewire, if you have the cable, and if you have another Mac with Firewire to attach it to.
Failing that, you or a person with appropriate tools could remove the internal disk drive, attach it to a USB/SATA adapter of the appropriate kind and use DiskWarrior on it.

Good Luck!


iOS App That Delivers Push Notifications for Twitter Hanshtags Is there an iOS app (free or paid) that sends push notifications when a new post with a certain hashtag or keyword is tweeted?

I see Twitterrific can send a push notification when I get @mentioned or get a direct message, but I can't see how to configure it to subscribe to a #hashtag and push me a notification.

Can this be done with one app or multiple apps/services?

iOS apps don't work to filter based on keyword, so you would need an app that has a server side component that reads your stream continually and then sends a push notification to your device.

I would start with IFTTT - https://ifttt.com/ and then look at Pushover - https://pushover.net - if the former doesn't meet your tastes or needs.


Can I play chess on my Mac from the command line? If I were feeling insufficiently geekish on any particular day, and thus found the GUI Chess App to lack an appropriate amount of tech credibility, is there a way to play chess on my Mac from the command line?

Yes! The OS X Chess app relies on the sjeng engine, which has a command line version. Type /Applications/Chess.app/Contents/Resources/sjeng.ChessEngine and press enter to play:

Make moves with the coordinates of the origin and destination you want: e1e4 moves the piece at e1 to e4.

Sjeng doesn't take any command line arguments, but you can edit the config file (stored in /Applications/Chess.app/Contents/Resources/sjeng.rc). This will probably mess with your settings in the GUI Chess app; make a backup before editing.


My Fusion Drive unlinked in two pieces (SSD+HDD) and I want to restore it again in one piece i have an iMac 27′ late 2012 and I have a problem with my Fusion Drive … suddenly the SSD part and the HDD unlinked and now i have two separate disks .. I ran in Terminal: diskutil list and diskutil cs list witht he following results:

Can somebody help me how to continue from here to link the two disks again in one (Fusion Drive as previous).

Update: After deleting the Logical Volume Groups I get the following partition table:

To recreate a Fusion Drive you have to delete both Logical Volume Groups and create a new one. This will delete all data on both volumes "Macintosh HD".

Booted to Recovery Mode open in the menubar Utilities > Terminal
In Terminal enter diskutil list and diskutil cs list.
Check that both disks (disk0 and disk1) are the internal disks with a size of 120 GB and 1 TB/3TB depending on your Fusion drive.
Delete both Logical Volume Groups with:

diskutil cs delete lvgUUID #with lvgUUID: the UUID of the Logical Volume Group

In your case that's:

diskutil cs delete DD7FD...
diskutil cs delete 597C4...

Please use the complete UUIDs - I'm too lazy to write them down completely.
Rebuild the Fusion Drive with:

diskutil cs create FusionDrive disk0s2 disk1s2

This will create a new Logical Volume Group
Enter diskutil cs list to get the new lvgUUID
To create a new Logical Volume enter:

diskutil cs createVolume new_lvgUUID jhfs+ "Macintosh HD" 0g


How to allow mouse pointer to move to smaller display? I have two monitors connected to my Mac (running Mojave).

A sits "left" and has resolution 1680x1050
B sits "right" and has resolution 2560x1440

So, when I put my mouse in the "top" of B, and move it left ... it just slides "nicely" onto A. But: when I put the mouse on the bottom of B and move it left ... the mouse pointer will be stuck at the left border of B.
Of course: B's height is 1440, and A's height is 1050 ... so when the mouse pointer is at y=1300, well A only doesn't have that.

But for me, it would be perfectly fine if the mouse just showed up on the bottom of A.

My current workaround is to remember to first move the mouse up when I get stuck.

Is there a (built-in) setting that allows me to change this behavior?

Don't think possible for the reasons Tetsujin noted above. In past my workaround for different sized monitors was to position them corner to corner - e.g. top left or top right. It was easier to remember (for me) that the mouse would only slide to the other screen if I put the pointer in the corner of the current screen. Also meant windows I slid to the edge of current monitor would not accidentally slide partway onto the other screen.


Ways to find messages from blocked contact info Is there a way, or ways, to retrieve iMessages or text messages sent to me by a number or email address I have blocked on my iPhone 6?

Text messages that are blocked are not saved. So you cannot go in to see old text messages.


How can I uncompress a tar.xz thats been compressed on ubuntu and uncompress it on mac with the archive utility? I have a file sent to me as a file_name.tar.xzfile thats been compressed on ubuntu and I want to uncompress it on my mac. This isnt readily available out of the box so I looked up and installed a brew called gnu-tar.

I know that I can uncompress it on the terminal but I would like to use this with the archive utility on my mac.

Any ideas on how to achieve this?

Archive Utility doesn't currently support .tar.xz files. You can provide feedback to Apple at apple.com/feedback.

While Terminal can uncompress .tar.xz as you note, if you're looking for a GUI-based solution you can install:

 The Unarchiver

which has support for .tar.xz.


Help creating zip files with 50 files in each I have a folder containing 7.000 images that needs to be zipped into zip files containing only 50 files each.

Any way of doing this automatically? Any script, Automator workflow, batch whatever would be helpful.

I am not very experienced in using either, so please be specific.

I am running OS X Yosemite.

Here's a quick and dirty BASH script.

Assumptions: All of your photos are in a folder, and there's nothing else in this folder.

#!/bin/bash
zip_count=0
files_zipped=0
folder_number=1
div=50
numfiles=(*)
numfiles=${#numfiles[@]}

mkdir zips

for file in *
do

  file_list="$file_list \"$file\""
  let "zip_count=zip_count+1"
  let "files_zipped=files_zipped+1"

  if [ "$files_zipped" -eq "$numfiles" ]; then
    echo "Final ZIP..."
    echo $file_list | xargs zip -9 zips/$folder_number.zip
  fi

  if [ "$zip_count" -eq "$div" ]; then
    echo "Next Zip..."
    echo $file_list | xargs zip zips/$folder_number.zip
    let "folder_number=folder_number+1"
    zip_count=0
    file_list=""
  fi

done

You can download it here

Once you've downloaded it:

Open Terminal.app and change to the directory with your photos in it e.g. cd /path/to/photos
Run the commmand bash ~/Downloads/zip50.sh (assuming you've downloaded the script to your downloads folder.)
A new folder called "zips" will be created in the folder with your photos.


preview pdf scrolling (also page up/down) Has anyone else encountered this (below) odd scrolling behaviour in Preview or found a better fix or workaround?

I am using preview (version 9.0 909, 2016) from Sierra (mac OS 10.12) to view pdfs produced by pdflatex.  For preview to stay on current page when the file is rewritten, I have kept my previous settings:

Preview→preferences→PDF→ [✓] Start on the last viewed page
Preview→preferences→PDF→ Opening for the first time: Show as Single page

With the current version the scrolling behaviour has changed.  My document will not scroll in any of the standard ways.  None of these work:

Pageup/pagedown on keyboard
two-finger scroll on trackpad while pointer is over document
one-finger scroll on magic mouse while pointer is over document
Preview→Go→Up

However the following do work:

two-finger scroll on trackpad while pointer is over menu bar or tool bar
one-finger scroll on magic mouse while pointer is over menu bar or tool bar
any of the above if document magnification is decreased or increased slightly (it opens in "⌘9 Zoom to fit" mode)
switching to continuous scroll mode

Speculation: Preview is stuck halfway in its "scrolling within page" mode, as a vertical scrollbar appears, and either scrolls a small amount without the view changing, or doesn't move.  However, it can't scroll to the bottom and then progress to the next page like it normally would.

Preview's continuous scroll mode is my current workaround.  This is tolerable, but I have Stockholm syndrome from previous versions of Preview, where a file change would reopen the document at page 1 in this mode, so Single page mode was my workaround for that.

What seems to be happening is that when we used to set Preview in "single page" as the default, a newly-opened document window was exactly the right size, and you could easily up/down arrow through the pages.

However, now it instead opens the document with the page ever-so-slightly too large for the window from side to side, so Preview switches into "Oh, you've zoomed in and you'd like to scroll around this ONE page", and so the arrow keys become the scrolling around that ONE page keys.

Except that since it's vertically the right size, up/down doesn't scroll.  Left/right arrows will, though.

If you slightly enlarge your window (or shrink the page) to include some space all around, you'll see the up and down keys work without the option/alt key.

And this behavior is still screwed up as of 2017-05-29 (OS 10.12.5).


Can't enter utilities when rebooting? For some reasons I need to disable System Integrity Protection (SIP). But when I try to enter utilities by rebooting my Mac with Command+R, I get an earth icon and a message about recovering from internet.

After an extremely long time waiting nothing seems to happen.

All I want to do is go to Utilities so I can disable SIP. How do I do this?

Assuming I understand your question correctly, it sounds like your booting your Mac to start up from macOS Recovery over the Internet.

If this is what's happening, then your most likely pressing the Option Command R keys during bootup (instead of just CommandR).

If you're absolutely sure that you're only pressing the Command R keys, then perhaps try using the Command key on the other side of the keyboard (in case you've got a problem with your keys).

By the way, the full process to disable SIP is:

Start your computer
Immediately hold down the commandR keys to boot into
recovery
Click the Utilities menu and select Terminal
Type csrutil disable and press return
Close the Terminal app
Select Restart.... from the menu

Let me know if this helps or if you're still having problems doing this.


Creating a pre-recorded lecture on macOS I have created a PowerPoint presentation and I want to create a video of me presenting it. I'm looking for a software to make my life easier. The features I'm looking for are:

Can record a 25-minute video for free.
Works on Mac.
Can record the screen and me (audio+video).
Lets me rewind while recording and continue from there, so that if I make a tiny mistake I can just go a few seconds (or one slide) back and continue recording.

This is not a regular opinion-base recommendation question, because I haven't found even one software that answers these needs. PowerPoint for Mac doesn't record video (only audio) and the built-in screenshot program doesn't record it either. I can use zoom and share my screen and record, but feature number 4 isn't supported.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

The fourth point about rewinding video and re-recording is unheard of. Let's say you made a minor mistake while speaking, best you can do is one or more of the following:

Open the video editor, add a text box that shows the correct thing to say, make it visible in the video as an overlapping window for 3-4 seconds. This is a common method to fix mistakes in post-shoot editing.

When you realise that you've made a mistake, immediately repeat the last sentence with the correct word and let the recording go on. While editing it later on, trim the portion where you misspoke and delete that part. There will be an slightly abrupt cut but not a big deal in lectures.

All this is possible in iMovie for macOS. It's free and easy to use. Also use help centre: https://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.1/#/mov5ec96da08
For screen recording, Quicktime is a good option. If you want to appear speaking in the video, use Photo Booth and put it in a corner such that it appears on the screen.
Other way is to use a camera and use clips from both the camera and the screen in the final video.


How can one debug imagent issues? I have just upgraded to OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and am attempting to use Facetime and iMessage.  Upon entering my Apple ID into the respective applications and attempting to sign in, I receive the following error message:

  The server encountered an error processing registration.  Please try again later.

Whilst I assume that imagent proceeded beyond the authentication stage (as providing incorrect credentials results in a different error message), I am unable to ascertain exactly what went wrong.  I cannot find any log file (nor any option to enable logging) that shines light on the subject.  Is it possible to audit imagent activity?

I have found various suggestions, some of which appear to have worked for others:

Force quit the imagent process;
Reset /etc/hosts to default state;
Enable ntp;
Fix permissions and/or delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imagent.plist;
Delete certain Apple-issued certificates from the user's login keychain;
Use Google's public DNS resolvers;
Disable all firewalls and packet filters;
Delete the contents of /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration;
Reset NVRAM/PRAM;
Reboot.

I have tried all of the above, with no improvement.

I have tried using two different Apple IDs: one a simple MobileMe account (ending @me.com) that has been transferred to iCloud; the other an old .Mac address (ending @mac.com) with which additional non-Apple email addresses have been associated and verified.  The computer is connected to iCloud with the former account; and I have previously used the latter account successully with Facetime on the same computer (when running Lion) and with iMessage on my iPhone and iPad.

I am at a loss to understand how I should proceed.  Whilst I would be grateful for any suggestion that fixes the problem, I would be far more grateful for a canoncial answer that describes how imagent issues can be debugged in the future: e.g. how to enable logging or similar.

I removed the file

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist

and after a reboot the error

The server encountered an error processing registration. Please try again later.

was gone (Mac OS X creates a new 'NetworkInterfaces.plist' file during the boot process).

The file

/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist

contains informations about the network interfaces, it looks like the upgrade from 10.7 to 10.8 broke something (at least on my system).

'imagent' itself has no debug option but you can try tools like

dtruss

or the

Instruments.app

to monitor the program. Instruments.app is part of XCode and a GUI to dtruss.

Or you can monitor the network traffic between imagent and the server.


Erased Macintosh HD and installing OS X Lion again I erased my Macintosh HD from Disk Utility with a journaled encrypted format and I wanted to install OS X 10.7 Lion. I left it to download and install overnight because it took about 16 hours.

When I checked it again it gave me a weird screen that has a circle with a slash inside it, like a stop sign. What can I do?

Is it this prohibitory sign?

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2674:

  Circle with Slash - could not load boot.efi, or some other issue

Does the Mac shut down after it shows the sign? http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3742:

  If there are five new kernel panics within three minutes, the Mac will display a prohibitory sign for 30 seconds, and then shut down.

You could try repairing the disk or the OS X partition:

Hold command-R on startup
Open Disk Utility
Select the disk (like APPLE HDD HTS541010A9E662 Media) and press the Repair Disk button
Select the OS X partition (like Macintosh HD) and press the Repair Disk button

You could also try erasing and reinstalling again, but choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) instead of Mac OS Extended (Journaled, Encrypted). You can enable FileVault later from System Preferences.

If the drive is grayed out in Disk Utility or not shown when you try to reinstall OS X, you might need to replace it with another drive.


Unable to deselect items in migration-assistant I had created a test user upon installing Mountain Lion, now I want to import my regular user from backup, but only that particular user and no other users nor applications. However in the Migration-Assistent window all check boxes are greyed out for my most recent backup (both for my carbon copy clone and the TimeMachine backup) even though I could change the selection for a much older backup. What can be done to allow me to make a selection instead of needing to import everything ?

This posting seems to suggest it might be something to do with Server.app software - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4157337?tstart=0

On the new machine, you might try removing Server.app from the /Applications folder and restarting. It might be that you need to remove Server.app from the backup before doing the migration - perhaps you can boot from the clone and remove it from the clone. Removing Server.app from the /Applications folder should cause the system to warn you that it will shut down all the server services, but should otherwise leave the server data and settings intact so when Server.app is reinstalled everything will be as it was before.

Server.app seems to also cause probelms with "not enough room" warnings that are incorrect but still prevent Migration Assistant.app from completing its job as detailed in Migrate OS X using Migration Assistant and Time Machine - not enough space


Any way to have windows be restored to the correct space when opening an app? Every time I open an app and it restores the windows that it has open, they generally restore to whichever space is currently active, rather than to the space the windows were originally on before I quit the app. For example, if I have several terminal windows open on different spaces, quit Terminal.app and relaunch it, then the terminal windows all reopen, but do so on the current space. TextEdit, Xcode, iTunes, Messages, all of the apps I use have this problem. The only one that reopens its windows to the correct space is Finder.

This is annoying, because it means that every time I reboot my computer I have reorganize all of my spaces again. And I have lots of windows open, and they're all organized across six different spaces. It's getting tedious.

Is there a trick, hack, or something I can use to fix this?

It's unclear from your question whether you have done the obvious so I will mention it just in case.
When looking at a specific space, right click (option click) on the icon (in the dock) of the app you want to "pin" to the specific space . There will be two options shown that say something like "this space" or "any space" (I'm sorry, I'm not on my Mac so I can't be more precise, but I think you will be able to understand this method)


How to show hidden files on mac without Terminal I need an easy way to switch files visibility on Mac. I know about Terminal commands how to show hidden files and hide files. However, I need a tool to make this task faster and easier.
I was trying to find a special app in the App Store, but found nothing. Is there any way to show/hide hidden files without launching Terminal? Any tips or apps?

On MacOS Sierra you can use shift ⇧ + cmd ⌘ + . shortcut on keyboard to toggle between 2 states. No need for any plugin/app. It works out of the box.

You can see it here in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdLjJU_kAT8&feature=youtu.be


Stuck in a boot loop after failed update to Mavericks, can't reformat HDD I recently tried to upgrade a 2008 Mac Pro from Snow Leopard (10.6.8) to Mavericks (10.9.2) using the free upgrade available in the App Store. The upgrade seemed to go without a hitch until the machine restarted, after which I get the Apple logo with a progress bar---it takes about 20 minutes for the progress bar to advance all the way and then the machine spontaneously powers off. When powered back on the process repeats itself.

So far I have tried:

Reboot into recovery using command+r. This works and I'm able to launch the Disk Utility. This shows S.M.A.R.T Status : Verified. Running Verify Disk on the HDD (topmost level of the tree) shows no errors. However, running verify on the Macintosh HD partition does show errors and asks me to run Repair Disk, which tells me I have irreparable errors and suggests that I back up my data and reformat.
Reformat. Still in recovery mode Disk Utility, I first tried running Erase under the Erase tab on

the HDD, resulting in: Disk Erase failed with the error: Couldn't unmount disk. (in retrospect this makes sense because initially I was booting to the recovery partition on the same disk)
the Macintosh HD partition, resulting in: Couldn't open disk.

Next I tried selecting the HDD and the Partition tab. I attempt to remove the Macintosh HD partition by clicking on the minus, but the system hangs on Preparing to remove partition.
Try USB recovery disk. After all of this failed I started to suspect that Disk Utility was refusing to make changes to the HDD since I was booting to the recovery partition on the same disk. I then made a bootable USB recovery disk using the Recovery Disk Assistant and am able to boot to it by holding the option key on startup. However I am still unable to erase the disk using the methods above and get the same error messages.
Try to force unmount HDD. It appears to me that the system is still mounting the HDD even when booting from the USB recovery, thus preventing reformatting. But attempting to force an unmount fails:

diskutil unmountDisk force disk1

results in

Forced unmount of disk1 failed: at least one volume could not be unmounted

I'm at a loss for what to try next. It seems unlikely to me that the disk is failing since the SMART status is OK, but I suppose that is a possibility too.

EDIT

Following @chillin's suggestion I tried booting to a Mavericks USB install disk, created following the instructions here. Holding option on startup I'm able to select the USB and boot appears normal, but with the same result that I am unable to unmount the internal disk to format, even using diskutil unmountDisk force disk1 (I get the same error messages for all methods described above). I do notice that the option to reinstall OS X has been replaced by an option to install, so I am confident that I'm actually booting to USB.

EDIT 2

Following @Édouard's comment I tried booting in verbose mode using command+v at startup. It seems that fsck_hfs is caught in a loop "repairing" and rechecking the drive, which it does 3-4 times before the machine gives up and powers down (see picture 1). The line /dev/rdisk1s2 (NO WRITE) catches my attention. Could this be why fsck is unable to make the necessary changes to repair the drive?

I’m afraid your hard drive is dying. Updating can be somehow hard drive intensive, so it’s not that surprising that it died during an update. If you have no backup, copy your important data to another hard drive with another computer1.

You can still try to save it with utilities such as DiskWarrior.

Otherwise, you’ll have to buy a new hard drive and install it in your Mac Pro, then copy your data back to it.

And start doing regular back up right now.


Error-"Unable to write to the last block of the device." I am trying to setup a new hard drive into my Macbook Pro. However, I keep getting an error in disk utility that states, "Unable to write to the last block of the device." I saw another person was able to solve this by replacing a dead hd cable. Could someone explain what they meant by dead hd cable, or have any other ideas on how to fix this? Thanks for the help

Testing cabling is more of an empirical exercise. First you disconnect and reseat both ends of the cable. Next, you put in the new cable and if the problem goes away it was the cable. If you suspect the cable on an intermittent problem you replace the cable and leave it in after reseating doesn't reduce the frequency of the issue.

I'd start with reseating things and re-testing. Since you have a good test you'll know pretty quickly if it's the drive, the cable or the driver board / software that's causing the write failure.

Also, check that the drive has updated firmware / appropriate firmware for your version of OS.


Why the storage of Documents showing wrong in mac? macOS High Sierra Version 10.13.6

I recently removed some of the large files in my mac and checked the storage.

I'm shocked to see this. The Documents folder in which all my files and other folders were kept is 32.39GB.

But in the main Documents I see 129.47GB. Please see the following image.

Initially I searched for this problem and found this Spotlight doesn't work anymore in OS X Mountain Lion

I did that, but it didn't work.

Any help is appreciated. thanq

The System Information view is misleading by naming it "Documents"

Under the category "Documents" it will trow everything in in that is not in the other sidebar listed categories.

For example in my case, it will show all my Movies as Documents.

The misunderstood display .. it says my "Documents" are 92GB which is not true for Documents Folder.?

In your case....


Numbers: divide in a column I have a price list:

12,560
14,340
11,890
...

Is there a simple way to divide these cells by a number at once?

The "spreadsheet" way to do this is to do the division in another column.

Lets say your data is column A, starts a row 1 and goes to row 10 (that's A1:A10 in spreadsheet reference language).

In a unused column, row 1, you could enter:

=A1/10

And the copy and paste that formula from row 2 down to rows 2 through 10 in that column. Numbers will automatically increment the A1 reference in the pasted cells.

The divisor (10 in this case) can also be a reference if you like. Just make it a fixed reference so it doesn't automatically increment as you copy and paste. Lets say B1 holds the value you want to divide everything in column A by. You'd use:

=A1/$B$1

as the formula and copy and paste. The $ in front of the column name and row number tell Numbers not to auto-adjust those values as you paste the formula around to different cells.

Here is an example Numbers '09 file.

Column A is data
Column B is A divided by 10
Column C is A divided by whatever value is in E2, change E2 and you'll see the values in Column C change.


Is there a simple UI hack to auto-hide the menu, but keep the menubar? I never use the menu items but I'd like to put more icons in the menubar itself.

The (application contextual) menu items are useless to me without keyboard navigation, but they take half of the menubar, I'd love to just get rid of them.

I'm wondering if there's a simple hack to get rid of all the menu items except for the apple icon (and maybe the current app name)?

Thanks

Yes there is, and it's free :)

I asked this same question on reddit a few months ago and the amazing @w0lfchild (dev of mySimbl) created it!

https://github.com/w0lfschild/moreMenu