How to check if iPhone is sharing Wi-Fi network or Cellular data via hotspot? Suppose I connect my iPhone (12.4) to a Wi-Fi network and turn on personal hotspot, which requires me to turn on Cellular. Now if I connect the Mac via lightning cable, I see "1 connection" in the blue strip.

How can I check which one of Wi-Fi and mobile data is being shared?

Hint: I use organizational Wi-Fi.

Regardless of how you connect to your iPhone acting a a personal hotspot, whether it be via WiFi or tethered via cable, you are sharing the cellular data connection.
So, using your example, where your iPhone is initially connected to the corporate WiFi and then you enable the Personal Hotspot feature, you will disconnect from the corporate WiFi and a private (NAT) network will be created with a gateway configured through your cellular network.  Whether you use WiFi or connect via USB, this network will be created
From Apple Support:

A Personal Hotspot lets you share the cellular data connection of your iPhone or iPad (Wi-Fi + Cellular) when you don't have access to a Wi-Fi network.

Why is this the case?  Your iPhone can only connect to a single WiFi network at any given time.  The Personal Hotspot is designed to provide a WiFi signal where you don't have one.  This configuration cannot be changed.

Finding your Gateway....
If you want to see which connection you’re using (which has priority) for the Internet you just need to get the IP addresses of you adapters and run a trace route to see the path.
(Values below are from my iMac; en0 is wired, en1 is WiFi connected to hotspot.  Your values will differ.)
$ ifconfig en0 | egrep -iw inet
inet 192.168.1.54 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255

$ ifconfig en1 | grep -iw inet
inet 172.20.10.3 netmask 0xfffffff0 broadcast 172.20.10.15

$ traceroute apple.com | head -n 1
 1  pfsense (192.168.1.1)  0.481 ms  0.312 ms  0.329 ms

You will get a output telling you which gateway is being used for Internet traffic.  In my case, it's showing me that I'm going through my en0 or wired network adapter.
You could use the netstat -rn command to get your default gateway, but I've found that you can have multiple gateways.
$ netstat -rn | egrep default
 default            192.168.1.1        UGSc          125      109     en0
 default            172.20.10.1        UGScI           7        0     en1

This is why I like to use traceroute to actually (and quickly) "see" where the traffic is going.
Measuring Bandwidth....
The only way to measure bandwidth is to use a utility (service) like vnStat.  It's available via MacPorts or Homebrew.  The system, by default is not measuring bandwidth usage so you'll need a service that gets loaded at boot (or at the users request) to begin logging this data.
A sample output (assuming 2 interfaces) would look like the following:
(with 2 interfaces)
$ vnstat
                      rx      /      tx      /     total    /   estimated
 Internet (eth1):
       2018-09     31.90 GiB  /   28.05 GiB  /   59.95 GiB
       2018-10    281.04 MiB  /   99.45 MiB  /  380.49 MiB  /   12.05 GiB
     yesterday      1.23 GiB  /  473.23 MiB  /    1.69 GiB
         today    281.04 MiB  /   99.45 MiB  /  380.49 MiB  /     397 MiB

 Local (eth0):
       2018-09     25.13 GiB  /  116.94 GiB  /  142.07 GiB
       2018-10    234.75 MiB  /    5.03 GiB  /    5.26 GiB  /  170.76 GiB
     yesterday    520.55 MiB  /    2.21 GiB  /    2.72 GiB
         today    234.75 MiB  /    5.03 GiB  /    5.26 GiB  /    5.51 GiB


Why don't .ico files created in Icon Composer work on Windows? For a couple of months now I've been creating favicons using Icon Composer (which comes with Xcode). It can save .ico files, and I know that sometimes Windows shows (or used to show) larger versions of the icon in some circumstances, so I thought I'd do it that way instead of just using a tiny .png.

Imagine my surprise when a Windows-using coworker tells me that he can't see any of the favicons I've created this way. No Windows browser seems to render them correctly, and only Firefox even attempts to render them at all.

So are .ico files produced by Icon Composer not supposed to be Windows-compatible? If not, is there any quick way to convert them into versions that are? If so, what might I be doing wrong?

UPDATE: Here is an example of a broken .ico file  produced by Icon Composer. My coworkers are all on Windows 7, so it's not just a Windows XP issue.

UPDATE 2: This happens with .ico files saved from both Icon Composer 2.1 (Xcode 3) and 2.2 (Xcode 4). In Firefox on Windows, display of these icons is corrupted; the icon is shifted to the right several pixels, and the right side is cut off and wraps around to the left side, as seen here:
.

Do you get the same issue if you try Hobiconer to export your icons? Superior to Icon Composer in every way, and free.

The commercial successor of Hobiconer called Icon Slate is $4.99 in the App Store, however Hobiconer is still out there for grabs (hence the link to Softpedia's mirrored file)


iPhone 4S keeps old numbers in Messages The numbers that are no longer in my contacts still keep popping up when I try to compose a new message.

Why is this happening? Is there a way to purge the contact list so no already-deleted-contact remains?

Assuming you have iOS 7 (now) I can provide you the steps on how to remove Recent contacts in the Messages.app.

Open Messages.app
Start composing new message
Once the list starts showing up, press the blue 'i' icon next to the number.
Press the redline Delete from recent
You're done, repeat these steps for the contacts you don't want to show up anymore.

EDIT: Community bumped this thread up making me answer it because I never check the dates. I hope I can still help anyone  out with this answer.


I cannot export highlights from Apple Book on iOS13 I try to export highlights from a book purchased in Apple Book but when I select all my highlights, the “Share” button is still gray (so it cannot be clickable).
When I try with other ePub file this method works. Can someone explain me that behaviour and a work around?

The desktop (Mac) Books app still worked for such a book (bought in Apple Store).

Cmd+4 opens the notes section,
Open each of the different chapters in the notes section,
Select all using Cmd+A,
Right click on an empty space in the notes section,
Hit export and send to Mail.


Does the iPod Classic respond to the clicker buttons on the iPhone earbuds? I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the iPad supports the clickers on the iPhone headphones (volume up/down, play/pause, etc). Does the most recent iPod Classic series respond to these buttons as well?

Yep. Check out this link on Apple's site. I'm actually surprised to learn so many devices support it now.

iPhone 4
iPhone 3GS
iPod touch (2nd generation)
iPod classic (120GB 160GB - 2009)
iPod nano (5th generation - video camera)
iPod nano (4th generation - video)
iPod shuffle (3rd generation)
iPad


keystroke when clicking mouse button I want to assign the middle mouse button to the space key, so I can pan in Photoshop and illustrator without using the keyboard.

I'm sure something like that must exist for Mac OS, but I only find references to the opposite which is making a click with the keyboard.

I found Controller Mate that does exactly what I need, but for some reason it doesn't work in Photoshop or Illustrator. I've tried in other applications and it works...

http://www.orderedbytes.com/controllermate/

The bizarre thing is the hand icon appears, but still no pan, even if I have also set the middle mouse button to perform a left mouse click.


applicationDidFinishLaunching - anyway to get this using script/command? Is there a way to detect when an app has finished launching after using open <path_to_app> in a shell? The prompt after issuing the command is immediate, but for apps that take a while to fully launch will timeout events until fully launched…

Using ps aux | grep -i 'path to app' | grep -v grep | wc -l, returns a process ID almost immediately (at app launch time), so no good.

Any help, greatly appreciated.

Resolved by monitoring STATE column for application bundle using TOP. Wait for STATE to change to 'sleeping' for a couple of seconds did the trick (for me anyway).


iCloud for Windows 10: Unable to change location of Shared Photos folder I've recently moved my Pictures folder into a OneDrive folder on Windows. Within the Pictures folder I had my iCloud Photo folders; this required me to update the location of the various iCloud Photo folders in the iCloud settings. This works fine for the Download and Upload folders, but when I try to update the location for the Photo Sharing folder, it always resets to the previous location.

Here's what it looks like before I've set it:

Note the filepath for iCloud Photo Sharing is %USER%\Pictures\iCloud Photos\Shared.

Here's what it looks like after I click the change button and set it to the desired new location:

Note that the iCloud Photo Sharing path is now %USER%\OneDrive\Pictures\iCloud Photos\Shared.

If I then click "Done" to exit to the main options panel, "Apply" to apply the changes, and re-enter the Photos Options panel, I see that the change didn't go through (though it noticeably has for the Download and Upload folders):

How can I move the folder and make it stick? It doesn't seem to be a conflict with OneDrive, since even if I direct it to a folder that's not archived by OneDrive, it won't keep the change for the Shared Photos location.

After digging through the registry, I found the key that sets this location in Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Apple Inc.\Internet Services\iCloud Photos\Settings. The way to fix this is to change the value of SharingPath to the desired location.


Unsupported Macbook 4,1 (2008) on 10.10.5 (Supplementary) - No Audio After Update - What Next? NOTE: If you are not interested in how I got to this point, skip to the last paragraph.

As it currently stands, I have Mac OS X Yosemite running on my black Macbook 4,1. With the following kexts (in addition to the defaults provided by MacPostFactor), I was able to get OS X 10.10.2 running fully, with little-to-no issues:

Intel GMA X3100 kexts (provided via an installer)
IOAudioFamily.kext
AppleHDA.kext
Apple_iSight.kext

I also installed the NoSleep extension, the Software Update Patcher (not before learning the hard way), the AirDrop Enabler, and the System Font extension (which changes the system font to the one used by the Apple Watch). In order to enable the kexts, I had to pull up KextDropper and enter this in the Terminal:

sudo nvram boot-args= kext-dev-mode=1

Everything (including Time Machine :) worked fine without modification after the update to 10.10.2 - except for the fact that I can't change the screen brightness (battery killer status confirmed).

However, I did mention: "not before learning the hard way"...
In order to get to this version number, I had to update from 10.10.0, and when I did that update, I did it without the Software Update patcher. So, I ended up going into the Recovery Image, and deleting 'PlatformSupport.plist' from the Terminal (fun times?). Then, I rebooted into the fully-functioning 10.10.5 (Revision 1) OS X desktop. This, of course, was the easy part. I have now encountered the difficult part.

What I am here to ask about is something that occurred after my update to 10.10.5, Revision 2. When I updated to 10.10.5 (Revision 2 - Recovery Update), everything continued to work, except for one thing - the Macbook is now back to having no audio support. I checked the boot arguments, and that revealed nothing. The kexts I installed are still in '/System/Library/Extensions'. I don't know what happened.

The main question(s):

1) How can I get audio capabilities back for this version of OS X?

2) Should I simply update to El Capitan (from App Store update) instead?

Possibly related (but not identical in nature):

"Apple Stack Xchange | Installing Yosemite on Unsupported Macbook 4,1"
"MacRumors | Post by AtVusr, on Installing Yosemite on Unsupported Macbooks"
"MacRumors | Post by a02, on Installing Yosemite on Unsupported Macbooks"

The last link was one of the first solutions I tested - Voodoo audio kext(s) weren't able to fix this :(

Hello I've the solution.
Download this audio kext.
Drag the two files AppleHDA.kext and IOAudioFamily.kext into the kext utility.app
After all is ok you can reboot and it works :-)

Link : https://mega.nz/#!9hcgFKRK


Detect if Apple Certificate File is Development versus Distribution When building an iOS App, Apple requires that you obtain a Development or Distribution certificate through their Apple Development Program.

Using only the file itself, how can the type of certificate (Development versus Distribution) be determined?

The intention here is not to rely on filenames or human verification.. I need to write a program that can programmatically determine the type of a given certificate by reading its contents.

Thanks.

You can test the certificate for specific OID entries, or more easily but less robustly, view the contents and pattern match.

To extract the contents of a .cer/DER encoded certificate:

openssl x509 -in [PATH TO CERTIFICATE.cer] -noout -inform der -text


Universal clipboard between macOS sierra and iOS 10 doesn't seem to work okay! I've installed macOS sierra (beta) on my MBP & iOS 10 (beta) on my iPhone 5S. Both of them have the latest release. I've connected them in the same wifi network and Bluetooth connection is also active on both of them. So the two-way copy-paste should work seamlessly on these devices. The problem is, copying on MBP & pasting on iPhone works fine but the reverse doesn't. What to do to make this working??

I solve the problem by restarting the iPhone 6. Then Universal Clipboard works as expected.


iphone 4S 6.0.1 has poor wifi reception upstairs I've had an iphone 4S running 6.0.1 for just about a month. I find that it has trouble connecting to wifi when I'm in my room upstairs.  It connects fine downstairs (which is where the combo. router/modem resides.) I tried a Macbook to test the connection in my room and it had a very strong wifi connection.
What can I do?  The wifi seems to work well in other situations, including at work, which is in a hospital, so I'm sure I'm not near a modem/router.

WiFi networks require two-way communication.  Even though your router may have enough strength to send a signal to that room, whatever wireless client device you want to use in that room also has to have enough strength to send a signal back to the router.

Evidently, the Macbook you tested in the room had enough strength to send a decent signal back to the router.  Yet, the iPhone did not.  Signal effectiveness is a combination of a number of variables, two being antenna configuration, and power.  Your iPhone's WiFi antenna and/or power are inferior to the computer's.

What you could do is either move the wireless router closer to (or into) the room, or else set up another access point to extend your network's wireless reach.

To get a new access point talking to your existing network's router, you'll need to consider using wireless-to-wireless repeating, power line network adapters, or an Ethernet cable – Ethernet being the best option, if you can somehow run a cable from point A to point B.


Photos App deleted all of my photos during a transfer to an external drive I know I should have been more vigilant and backed up my drive before transferring, but have never had a problem before. However, this time, all of my precious photos from before my son's birth until now, 8 months later, are completely gone. Is there any way to recover them? The only information that the "Photos Library" is reflecting are a handful of random photos from 2008-2013.

As Tetsujin said, I agree that we cannot help much with the information provided.  But I'd be surprised if they were gone (reasoning at end).  However I will make an assumption that you have a photo library in /Users/username/Pictures/Photos in Library.photoslibrary

I would right click on the "Photos in Library.photoslibrary" file - select "show package contents."  Go the the folder "Masters" and see if you can find your pictures in there.  Do this for both where you copied the folder to and where you copied the folder from.

You can also search in here for something like *.JPG or *.JPEG or type JPG and select kind: JPEG Image.

Anyways, if the images are no longer stored in the package contents of either where you copied it from or where you are copying them to, unfortunately without significantly more advanced methods, they are most likely gone.  However most protocols do a write, verification, then delete, so I'd expect that the file is just not configured properly for Photos to read and your pictures are still there, just the Photos app isn't seeing them.  For example in terminal when you execute a "mv" command you are actually doing:

rm -f destination_path && \
cp -pRP source_file destination && \
rm -rf source_file

Notice the &&.  The destination file is deleted no matter what if it's already there (overwriting a file, so if the copy fails that file is still removed).  The copy, however, must be successful before the source file is deleted.  It doesn't follow symbolic links, but Photos used Hardlinks to migrate from iPhotos to Photos to save space.  So this is not an issue.


Upgrade to 10.10.4 does not complete, ask to restart endlessly On a Macbook Air laptop, on 10.10.3, I'm trying to upgrade to 10.10.4.
The first time, the system downloaded the file. After the download, I had a message saying (I'm translating form french): "download of some updates did not finish; they can't be installed".
Since then, the system update shows with the "update" button, but the system does not redownload the file, I see a notification saying the system will reboot, but actually it will display the above error message.

How can I force the upgrade?

This should be easy to resolve.

Power down and boot into Recovery HD (Command R) or safe boot (shift)
Once you know the OS can boot itself - check for free space. Clean up cache or temporary files or delete large databases that you have backed up (Outlook email, Photo databases, Music Libraries) to get 20 GB of free space.
Run Disk Utility to ensure the disk structure doesn't need repair
Download the combo updater from https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1820?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Run the update by hand and when the installer is running, open the log to watch for errors (Command L and then Command 3) if you desire or can see the log.


Changing my home address in iOS 7 not picked up in Maps or notification center I need to change my home address, following this post. I've moved, so I need to update my address, but it does not seem to work. My new street address does not exist in the map (as I've moved to a newly developed area), and when changing the address in my contact, the old address is still recognized as "Home" in my Maps application. (Thus, also displaying "Right now, it would take you XX mins to drive home" to my old address) Does anyone know how I can correct this?

I was able to clear the map history from Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services -> Frequent Locations. Doing this, changing my contact card and updating my AppleID seem to have solved the problem (Apart from the fact that my street doesn't exist yet).


TextMate 2 changed files' icon? Several days ago, I installed the text editor TextMate 2. I notice that the icons of my .h and .m files which were created in Xcode have been changed to the new one. Like the screenshot below which shows the new icons (i.e. AppDelegate.h) and default icons (ViewController.h) at the same time. I am not sure it is the TextMate that caused this issue because if I right-click -> get info on the new icon, it stills display the default one. My question is how to restore the file's icon to their default looking? Thanks.

What you are seeing are QuickLook preview thumbnails: if you look closely at your screenshot, you will notice each “icon” shows the start of the file’s content. You are correct this is due to you installing TextMate 2, which provides a powerful QuickLook extension for source code files (try selecting one of the files in Finder and hitting space). The original file icon is unchanged by this, hence the fact it appears in “Get Info”.

As to the fact some files still display the original file icon: in my observation, there seems to be a bug in Yosemite’s Finder’s way of handling QuickLook thumbnail generation – some files will be missed at times.

If you want to disable TextMate’s QuickLook plug-in, this answer should help.


I can reach GitHub from guest account only I can't reach github.com; the DNS resolves but then the connection times out (on Safari, Firefox and Chrome). I'm running macOS 10.15.5.

I've run sudo dscacheutil -flushcache and sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder, to no avail.
See this superuser question for all the debugging I've done so far

I'm asking a separate question here because one key clue is that when logging in with my laptop's guest account, I can reach github.com. If I create another admin user account however, the issue is still there.

For that reason I'm wondering: what are the networking-related settings that would apply to regular users but not the guest account?

Edit Adding more debugging info

dig output showing that DNS resolves:

$ dig github.com
; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> github.com
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 54977
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;github.com.            IN  A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
github.com.     59  IN  A   140.82.112.3

;; Query time: 109 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Tue Jun 09 22:07:32 CEST 2020
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 55

Request timing out in curl

$ curl -v --insecure -L 140.82.112.3
*   Trying 140.82.112.3...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to 140.82.112.3 (140.82.112.3) port 80 (#0)
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: 140.82.112.3
> User-Agent: curl/7.64.1
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
< Content-length: 0
< Location: https://140.82.112.3/
<
* Connection #0 to host 140.82.112.3 left intact
* Issue another request to this URL: 'https://140.82.112.3/'
*   Trying 140.82.112.3...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connected to 140.82.112.3 (140.82.112.3) port 443 (#1)
* ALPN, offering h2
* ALPN, offering http/1.1
* successfully set certificate verify locations:
*   CAfile: /etc/ssl/cert.pem
  CApath: none
[...TLS handshake details]
* TLSv1.2 (IN), TLS handshake, Finished (20):
* SSL connection using TLSv1.2 / ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256
* ALPN, server accepted to use http/1.1
* Server certificate:
*  subject: C=US; ST=California; L=San Francisco; O=GitHub, Inc.; CN=github.com
*  start date: May  5 00:00:00 2020 GMT
*  expire date: May 10 12:00:00 2022 GMT
*  issuer: C=US; O=DigiCert Inc; OU=www.digicert.com; CN=DigiCert SHA2 High Assurance Server CA
*  SSL certificate verify ok.
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: 140.82.112.3
> User-Agent: curl/7.64.1
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
< Content-length: 0
< Location: https://github.com/
<
* Connection #1 to host 140.82.112.3 left intact
* Issue another request to this URL: 'https://github.com/'
*   Trying 192.30.253.113...
* TCP_NODELAY set
* Connection failed
* connect to 192.30.253.113 port 443 failed: Operation timed out
* Failed to connect to github.com port 443: Operation timed out
* Closing connection 2
curl: (7) Failed to connect to github.com port 443: Operation timed out
* Closing connection 0
* Closing connection 1

If I curl without -L (i.e. without redirects) then I do get to the site, and get the HTML back:

$ curl -H "Host: github.com" --insecure -v https://140.82.112.3/
...
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
...

The fix was given by the answer to https://superuser.com/questions/1559142/github-com-resolves-but-times-out

My /etc/hosts had the 192.30.253.113 IP for github.com; that IP probably became invalid recently. Removing that line fixed the issue.


Time entries in calendar automatically display month/day/year When in month view, Calendar in Mavericks (os x 10.9.4) normally displays an event followed by the time. Now calendar automatically adds (after the time) month/day/year. For example, if in month view for September 16, I enter "Jury Duty 8:30 AM," into the box for September 16, Calendar automatically expands this to "July Duty 8:30 AM 9/16/14. Any way to get rid of month/day/year?

I'd suggest checking your language & region settings in Mac preferences, particularly under the Advanced options to see if you have an unexpected region or calendar setting there.


Samsung Earphone for iPad mini4 I am having iPad mini 4 . As everyone knows that it comes without earphone. Can I use my Samsung S5 earphone for the iPad? Please suggest me either I have to purchage only Apple earphone only? Thanks

Yes, headphones are headphones and the audio jack is standardized (see this Wikipedia article for more details).


Using Mac as external audio amplifier, while routing its output to USB? I've got a Yamaha mixing panel which accepts my Mac's audio output via USB. Great. Now I would like to pipe the output of the mix back to the Mac's input, and have its speakers play the sound.

Is this possible?

At the moment, as soon as I select the Yamaha mixing panel as sound Output, the built-in speakers go grey, suggesting that they are not used.. but the setup I'm after needs them to be used, but in a very non-standard manner.

If it's not possible, then I "just" need to hook the mixing panel to an amp and speakers, and I'm trying to avoid that.

I found a solution: there's a free little OS X utility called LineIn (written by Rogue Amoeba Software). It just lets you route any audio coming in on the line in connector to any destination, including the built-in speakers.

So now I've got Garagaband routed to USB Audio out.. to the mixing panel, and then its output is piped back into the Mac via the Line input, the LineIn program, and finally to the built-in speakers.


BOOTCAMP partition cannot be mounted After working in Windows for a couple of days, then booting back to OSX - I cannot mount my BOOTCAMP partition in Mac OS X any more. Disk utility shows BOOTCAMP as "greyed out". Trying to mount throws an error "The disk BOOTCAMP could not be mounted. Try running First Aid". I cannot run First Aid because it is also greyed out.

I still can boot into Windows just fine via alt/boot. Moreover even Parallels can boot the Bootcamp partition just fine! (I mean, from OSX, as a virtual machine).

PS. I'm using Yosemite, and Windows 10 Bootcamp.

PPS. If I do this:

# cd /Volumes
# mkdir /Volumes/Bootcamp
# sudo mount_ntfs /dev/disk0s4 /Volumes/Bootcamp

It works fine. But it mounts it readonly, also I want it to mount automatically on startup, like it was before...

UPDATE:
After digging through the system log I found this: "Windows is hibernated. Will not be able to remount read-write. Run chkdsk." - A-HA! This must be it.

But its not hibernated... Ok, guess I have to boot into windows again and shut-down/restart it a couple of times to clear the hibernation flag...

Basically, what worked is booting to Windows natively and shutting it down several times to clear the hibernation flag. Also, disabled hibernation via power-management and via powercfg /h off.


Lost iPad doesn't connect to WiFi A family member's iPad 2 (WiFi), which is connected to my old Apple ID has been locked with a message that says she has to pay $30 to someone online. I said not to pay and I went online, logged into the iCloud account that was attached to the iPad, and removed the Lost status so she could unlock it again.

However, the iPad is still in Lost mode because it can't connect to WiFi (to receive the 'unlost' command from iCloud) and to connect it needs to be unlocked.

There is an option to enter a passcode but the old passcode didn't work.

Any ideas on how I can recover it? Wiping is an option since there isn't much on it anyway.

You can always restore an iPad that’s locked if you have possession of the device and the iCloud account. Also, connecting it over USB to iTunes will often allow you to get it unlocked promptly and on High Sierra - the Mac can share it’s network connection to iOS devices over USB so you don’t even need WiFi on the iPad for it to connect back to the internet and receive an update from iCloud/Apple for the unlock commands that are pending delivery.


Encryption on USB - Mac & Windows partitions I have a  64GB USB stick which I want to use on both my (Mountain Lion) iMac and my (work) Windows 7 laptop.  I don't want to or need to share files across platforms and require the following structure:

Partition 1 - Mac OSX Journaled case-sensitive Encrypted
Partition 2 - Windows FAT 32 (not encrypted)

Each method I have tried doesn't work as it appears that to allow encryption on the Mac partition, the root partition scheme needs to be GUID.  Doing this means my windows machine can't see the (FAT32) windows partition.

If I set the partition scheme to MBR, disk utility doesn't show the option to format the Mac partition as encrypted.

It may be that there's just not a solution to this and I'll need to carry 2 USB sticks or get into sparse disk images, but confirmation of this would be useful. I've read similar posts on the stack exchange & elsewhere but none seem to cover the exact same set-up.

Many thanks for any help

If you don't actually require case-sensitivity, Truecrypt is a free and open-source encryption system that will allow you to do either encrypt an entire volume using the Mac OS Extended filesystem or make a encrypted file container (basically an encrypted folder) that can be used to save files as if it were a separate volume.

You will need to download the program from the link above and install it. The Truecrypt program itself will allow you to create encrypted volumes/file containers and mount the encrypted volumes or file containers to your system to use them.


How to remove autofill emails on Chrome I have a 15" MacBook Pro 2016 and I can't figure out how can I remove the saved auto-fill emails like I can on Windows/Linux using the keyboard:

Select one of the suggested emails from the drop down via arrows
Press ShiftDelete
And viola the email is removed/forgotten

I've found this link on Google Support which suggests that I use ShiftFnDelete on my Mac and it should do the same, but for one laptops keyboard does not have the Delete key, and even though I have the delete_forward key remapped over Caps Lockit does nothing.

Is there any other way I can do this, I'm only interested in solutions via the keyboard, not the other solutions using Chrome's settings etc...

Pick of the auto fill drop down:

If you are loging in with your google account in Chrome browser:
It can be done by signed out your google account after clear all the autofill setting in Chrome setting and un-sync auto-fill setting. Then you will not get any auto fill drop down even though you sign in with your google account again.


Can an Airport Express be used to extend the Wi-Fi of another-non Apple Access Point? My colleague has a cheap Cisco Access Point on another floor. He is using a Mac Pro and the the Wi-Fi is very spotty.

Can an Airport Express be used to extend this network?

Apple seems to be saying in a round-a-bout way here that other routers are not supported for wireless range extensions (with a router connected to Ethernet and the Express not):

Extend an existing Wi-Fi network’s range.
If you already have a
wireless network in your home and want to extend its range, AirPort
Express can help. Just place it in range of your primary base station
— an AirPort Extreme, Time Capsule, or another AirPort Express — and
near the area where you want your wireless connection. Launch the
easy-to-use AirPort Utility app on your iOS device or Mac, and you’re
mere minutes away from long-range Wi-Fi enjoyment.

However, this is only if your AirPort Express is not connected to Ethernet.  Otherwise, you can setup a roaming network. The newer Airport Express models (the ones compatible with 802.11n) can do this.

First, you need the Express connected to Ethernet.  Make sure that the main non-Apple router is set to share a public IP address.  Next, when setting up the Express, just set up its Network name and Password exactly the same as the network used by your non-Apple router.  The network mode needs to be "Create a wireless network," it should Connect Using "Ethernet," and Connection Sharing needs to be "Off (Bridge mode)."


Weird El Capitan interface / icon glitch - clear cache? Yesterday, I've run into a weird problem on my early 2015 MacBook Air.
I was copying over some files from a Windows 7 VM (Fusion 8.0.1) when all of a sudden my host OS' interface ran all sluggish and laggy. Things like switching between Desktops / full screen apps stuttered and opening apps took way longer than normal.
Every sane computer user would probably reboot as step #1 - and that's what I did 3 times - to no avail. Stutter continued. Welp.

Next up was resetting SMC and PRAM; shortly after, the lag issue vanished. Seems to be running just fine now, maybe even a tad bit faster than previously (should note that I upgraded from Yosemite, it was no clean install).

All good now, or so I thought. Opened the preferences panel of one of my VMs in Fusion just to notice something odd. I can't tell whether it is an El Capitan thing that I just happen to have noticed right after those lag issues, or if they are somehow related. Basically, clicking and holding on any of those icons would make them glitch out weirdly (check out the image below).

Now for my question: Any idea how to fix this? Is there any cache that I could clear to force it to reload those interface elements? Or is it actually an El Capitan issue?
I googled this and couldn't find anything. Tried manually uninstalling and reinstalling Fusion completely, didn't help. Tried recovery, repairing disk, tried single user / safe mode, didn't help either.

Not sure this is going to fix it since I haven't experienced it myself yet, but I had issues in the past on older versions of OSX where some toolbar icons would get garbled and booting into safe mode would fix it.

Though documented on this Apple support page, the short of it is that you need to reboot and hold down the shift key after the startup sound plays (release after the Apple logo appears). The computer will boot and run much slower, but it is doing a bunch of housekeeping in the process. Let it complete loading and log in to your desktop and then at some point you can reboot again (no shift this time) and hopefully things are back to normal.


Can't switch theme in MacVim I recently installed MacVim along with Janus. When I'm inside macVim I can change my color scheme with :color freya but if i restart MacVim the them is reverted back to ir_black. I've added freya to my .vimrc.local, but it doesn't help.

Also added the following: set term=xterm-256color

I'm using Lion and I've got a bunch of themes in ~/.vim/colors

Are you sourcing your .vimrc.local by hand? That is not a standard file. MacVIM will read your ~/.vimrc and ~/.gvimrc. I'd suggest you keep your syntax settings in .gvimrc for MacVIM unless you want to use them in your terminal as well.

If you want to keep a generic .gvimrc that is shared by multiple systems and set your color only for this machine in .gvimrc.local you can put the following at the end of your ~/.gvimrc

" Allow for local machine-specific modifications
if filereadable($HOME . "/.gvimrc.local")
  source ~/.gvimrc.local
endif


Left pane in shortcuts of keyboard system preferences doesn't slide I would like to slide the left pane in order to access the list of App Shortcuts.

This is what should happen, as per an image I've found on internet.

And this is what actually happens in my macOS Sierra in Spanish. Additionally, there is a warning about a conflicting shortcut that is not solved after choosing to restore defaults.

Any suggestions?

It has been solved by putting English first in the list of languages in system preferences, and restarting the computer.

When setting the system language back to Spanish, this bug returns. It is way too unlikely to get Apple to attend via http://bugreport.apple.com, so it seems application shortcuts are not available in macOS Sierra in Spanish, at least for some systems. Just in case it affects the bug, the other languages I have down the list are Italian and French.


Accessing files in a Mac/network share on iOS? While on my home local network, I some times want to access images and plain-text files stored on an AFP network share.

But I have not found an app for iOS that allow me to do this. Can someone recommend a solution?

I do not want to use a service like Dropbox.

I find GoodReader to be the best. I consider it as my iOS Finder (by lack of better solutions, sadly).

It supports a wide range of protocols and web services such as AFP, WebDAV, FTP, SFTP, Dropbox, Box.net, Google Docs, SugarSync, IMAP and POP3. It used to support iCloud as well, but the feature is gone for stability and legal reasons.

It also makes it easy to upload an annotated version of a file at the same place you downloaded it.

Oh, and if you want to access all of your Mac files, SFTP is the way to go. Once you activated "Remote login" in the Sharing pane of System Preferences, you can connect via SFTP to your Mac with your username and password. As the server, use the address (something like My-MacBook.local given in the same Sharing pane (at least on the same local network).


How to Disable Airport Sniffing? when I run the command airport, it tells me it is sniffing:

Sniffing on channel 1:
    airport en1 sniff 1

I have noticed that many log files are created in /private/tmp

There may be some bad actor that has done this to my mac.

How can I disable airport from sniffing?

I killed it using its PID, but it starts again.

If you run airport without arguments it just prints a description of its options and examples of how to use some of them, including airport en1 sniff 1 to start sniffing. It does not report the current state of the interface.

To actually start sniffing you need to call the command as shown (and replace en1 with your actual WiFi interface):

$ sudo airport en1 sniff
Capturing 802.11 frames on en1.
^CSession saved to /tmp/airportSniffHZ3nqn.cap.
$ ll /tmp/airportSniffHZ3nqn.cap
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  24 Nov 26 10:10 /tmp/airportSniffHZ3nqn.cap

It will keep running (and capturing) until you press Ctrl-C. To analyze the captured data you can use tcpdump or Wireshark.


Special keyboard keys I have this applet made in java, which relies on the users keycode input.
The case is that I have to press "Insert" for a function, which doesn't exist on the keyboard. Another function requires the "Page Up", which is also missing from my keyboard.

I have the BT Keyboard (no numpad).

I did not make the applet and there are no options to change the keyboard-controls.

How can I send these 'keys' to the Java applet?

The page up Key is mapped to fn + Arrow UP.

Other key combinations with fn and the arrow keys are:

Arrow down > page down
Arrow left > beginning of line or begin of page depending on situation
Arrow right > end of line or bottom of page depending on situation

For the Insert Key there's no correspondant key on a Mac keyboard, but you could try using the fn + Enter which I found here. I can't confirm this though as I absolutely have no idea where I could test this out.


How to connect to the switch console port? I download the PL2303 Mac Driver.

In the manual, it seems the step 3 I did not meet:

My case:

I don't know the telephone number and account name fill what, who can tell me about this?

Taking into account your other three posts today, on similar subject, I think you need the free application CoolTerm, and do the configurations there. It is similar with putty from Windows.

FYI: Apple computers are way different in terms of drivers compared with Windows, PL2303 driver is already part of Apple drivers, so no need to install such ones.

A similar question/answer is here


How can I change default print preference to black and white, system wide? I would like to make my printer print b&w as default from every application on my mac. How do I do this?

Go to http://localhost:631/printers
Select your printer from the list.
Choose Set Default Options from the Administration drop-down.
Set the options you would like as default.


Get per process user and system CPU time on OSX via command line? I am familiar with pidstat command that gives separate user and system CPU per process on Linux:

$ sudo pidstat -p 3162
Linux 4.18.0-13-generic (ubi)   26.12.2018  _x86_64_    (1 CPU)

11:26:13      UID       PID    %usr %system  %guest   %wait    %CPU   CPU  Command
11:26:13     1000      3162    0.24    0.04    0.00    0.12    0.28     0  emacs

How can I accomplish the same on Mac OSX?

top on OSX gives these values but only on the machine level and not per process. For processes, it seems to give only total CPU used

Load Avg: 3.26, 3.02, 3.01  CPU usage: 3.13% user, 5.69% sys, 91.16% idle  SharedLibs: 169M resident, 44M data, 11M

PID    COMMAND      %CPU TIME     #TH   #WQ  #PORT MEM    PURG   CMPRS  PGRP  PPID  STATE    BOOSTS
97229  powerlogd    0.0  00:00.45 2     1    51    1160K  16K    1744K  97229 1     sleeping *1[1]

Per process, it shows only the total cpu percentage and not the user and system split.
How do I get both user and system time?

Not sure the information you are looking for is accessible so easily. You could try ps

$ ps -p 407 -o pid,time,utime,etime,comm
  PID      TIME     UTIME     ELAPSED COMM
  407   2:08.23   1:46.36 11-17:10:27 /Applications/Aquamacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Aquamacs

and calculate the system time (TIME - UTIME) and the percentages. This is just the total since the process started though, not an ongoing sampling.


iCloud Synching Scrambles Safari Bookmarks I have a MacBook Pro and a MacBook Air, as well as an iPhone SE. I use iCloud to synch Safari bookmarks. Both computers run macOS 10.12.6 and Safari 11.0.3; the iPhone runs iOS 11.2.6. All this software is up-to-date. Synching has worked quickly and correctly for many months. Synching contacts and Keychain and Find My Mac continue to work correctly.

Yesterday, bookmark order and organization became random.

I tried to flush the Bookmarks data in iCloud by manually erasing the bookmarks on both computers, until both Bookmark lists were empty, then re-adding them (with a Bookmarks.plist file from my Time Machine backup) to one computer. They display correctly on whichever Mac I use...but when the second computer (previously empty)   synchs to iCloud, Bookmark order on both computers is quickly randomized.

Multiple times, I've enabled and dis-enabled Safari in iCloud Preferences on both Macs, and enabled and dis-enabled iCloud itself on all three machines. I've reloaded new macOSs (from Recovery) on both Macs. I've hard-restarted the iPhone. The Bookmarks continue to scramble when a second computer is connected.

There are several hundred bookmarks, and many folders, and I don't relish sorting them manually. Is there any other tactic I might employ to maintain the sort order which appears when the archived Bookmarks.plist is first opened?

This sounds like a Safari issue, not an iCloud or Bookmarks issue, to verify that, lets reset Safari back to scratch. This wont delete any bookmarks. You may want to clear the history too.

How to fully reset Safari on your Mac

  Remove Safari’s configuration folder:

  Open the Go menu in the OS X Finder
  Hold the Option key and choose the Library option that appears
  Move the “Safari” folder in here to your desktop

  Remove Safari’s window state:

  Open the Library > Saved Application State folder
  Locate the “com.apple.Safari.savedState” folder
  Move this folder to the trash

  Remove Safari’s application caches:

  Open the Library > Caches folder
  Locate all folders that begin with “com.apple.Safari”
  Move these folders to the trash.

  Remove Safari Cookies configurations:

  Open the Library > Cookies folder
  Remove the file called “com.apple.Safari.SafeBrowsing.binarycookies”

  Remove Safari’s preferences:

  Open the Library > Preferences folder
  Remove any file that begins with “com.apple.Safari”

  Remove user plug-ins:

  Go to the Library > Internet Plug-Ins folder
  Move all items from this folder to your Desktop (or elsewhere)

  Remove global plug-ins:

  Go to the Macintosh HD > Library > Internet plug-ins folder
  Move all items out of this folder except the following plug-ins:

  *

Default Browser.plugin
iPhotoPhotocast.plugin
Quartz Composer.webplugin
QuickTime Plugin.plugin

  *

That may help with the issue you are having via Safari and not your bookmarks.


How to check if MacBook battery is genuine? My white MacBook's battery has completely died, so I'm looking for a replacement.

It costs $150 from Apple, or about $70 for allegedly genuine Apple batteries on eBay:

I'm leaning toward this cheaper eBay option, but when I receive the battery:

How can I confirm if it is a genuine Apple product?

I am concerned with fire safety and so on.

Update: I bought the cheap eBay battery mentioned above, and it was an obvious fake.

You can't be sure unless you buy it from a Premium Reseller or an Official Apple Store. The difference in price makes me think that this is one of the many fake ones around.

My golden rule on this:
If it looks to good to be true, it most likely is.


Load kext in recovery mode I've developed a kernel-extension and I'd like to load it in all possible modes which are Recovery-Mode, Safe boot and of course Normal mode.

When I stored my kext bundle In /Library/Extensions From normal mode, and then restart my machine and move to Recovery Mode, I couldn't find my kext in /Library/Extensions and therefore I tend to believe that Recovery Mode uses different partition.

My question is how can I access this partition from Normal mode, so when I install my driver, I can also place it where prelinked kernel can load it in Recovery Mode as well ?

I think that is quite simple just make sure you mount your Main drive in disk utility in recovery then make more of your Main drive name then quit Diskutilty and click on Utilties on the upper menu bar and then click terminal and to load your kext simply type kextload -b /Volumes/Maindrivename/Library/Extensions/kextbundle
Just make sure you replace the command I provided accordingly.


Huge inconsistency in disk space measurement, missing 50% of the disk I own a MacBook Pro 13 Retina, OSX reports disk usage as 450Gb, but utilities such as DiskInventoryX tells a different story reporting 226Gb as used disk space:

How can I convince OSX to give me back my disk space?
Given that DiskInventoryX (and other I tested) cannot find where these 411Gb marked as "Other" are what can I do to identify the issue?

Output of df -h

Device Block Size: 512 Bytes

/dev/disk1 465Gi 421Gi 43Gi 91%  110450433 11387165 91%
devfs      184Ki 184Ki 0Bi  100% 638       0        100%

You may be seeing the difference between used bytes versus used blocks on the disk.

If a tool iterates over the files on your disk and totals the file sizes in bytes, the total value will not match the used disk space.

Try using other disk tools to determine the remaining disk space. The df tool should provide some insight df -h.

Consider using a tool like GrandPerspective to view the contents of your drive; it appears better maintained than Disk Inventory X. Be aware that these tools show file size and not blocks used.


Tracing PHP process killed on Mac does not work I'm running a simple PHP process that uses a tiny bit of memory and CPU. The max memory limit is 2G and the script is run from console.

The memory used never exceeds 200 MB. CPU use fluctuates between 10 - 80% of a single core.

At random, the process will be killed with message Killed: 9. There is nothing else given in the error message in the console and nothing appears in the logs.

This even happens if I pause the script using XDebug so that no additional memory can be used.

This happens if I disable Xdebug as well, so I don't suspect that is the culprit.

I've tried rebooting, but still happens.

The PHP script simply pulls a list of ads from Facebook using their PHP SDK v3.2 and then adds them to a database. There is only one worker running. Very simple process.

I have 32 GB RAM and 1TB HD. Running PHP 7.2 with nginx, MySQL 5.7 and redis.

My sw_vers output:

ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.14.2
BuildVersion:   18C54

System Integrity Protection status: enabled

This is the essence of the script:

$ads = $this->getApiAdAccount()->getAds($fields, $params);

$ads->setUseImplicitFetch(true);
$ads->rewind();

if (!$ads->valid()) {
    return false;
}

while ($ads->valid()) {
    $adData = $ads->current()->getData();

    try {
        if (!Campaign::find($adData['campaign'])) {
            dispatch(new ImportCampaign($adData['campaign']));
        }

        Ad::updateOrCreate(['id' => $adData['id']], $adData);
    } catch (\Exception $e) {
        $this->error($e);
    }

    $ads->next();
}

There is no specific spot it fails. I can run the Laravel job worker (redis queue) to process the code and insert/update the tiny array of data it processes on each loop.

How can I trace the source of this crash?

I've tried dmesg and dmesg | grep -E -i -B100 'killed process' as suggested elsewhere, but no useful information comes out.

The behavior you're seeing is not a problem with the hardware, the operating system, or lack or resources.

Instead it is simply the way that Laravel queueing works. If the worker takes too long to process a job, there's a timeout and the worker is killed with signal 9. Similar if the memory usage exceeds a set amount, the worker is killed.

You can set these limits with for example the --memory option.


disable call from mac ring I don't know if this is the correct way to describe this or not... so here goes:

a) I have an iPHONE, a MAC + Tablet.

b) It is important that I keep my mac + tablet - attached with my apple id for other reasons.

c) I also really like the fact I can answer my cellphone via my MAC or TABLET

d) HOWEVER ... most often I leave my MAC + TABLET at home, and take my cellphone with me - when I am away from home - my MAC rings, and my TABLET rings - rather loudly according to "she who must be obeyed"

Why: Because my tablet & laptop are often plugged in charging.-

This is also bad - because when I get a "SPAM CALL" - my iPhone very nicely routes it to voice mail, but ... my Tablet and MAC ring at ear-breaking decible levels.

According to "she who must be obeyed" violence upon my MAC + TABLET may occur if I cann't fix this.

e) BUT - I do not want to LOGOUT of iCLOUD ... for other reasons above -- My question is this:  I need some way to mute the ringing, or control the volume when I am not home.  Or possibly turn this on - when I am actively using the computer, ie: with when locked - disable this.

If you go to Settings on your phone and then go to Phone, there is an option that reads 'Calls on other devices'. You can turn that off when you leave and the other devices should not ring. Only your iPhone. It will list other devices on your network and you can turn off the ones you choose.


Separate bank account for second app? I am developing an iOS application for a business associate of mine. Is it possible to associate a second bank account for the revenues of that application? Or do all funds generated from a single Apple ID flow into a single bank account?

You can't associate a bank account with an app.

You could have different bank accounts for every single contract you sign with apple:

iOS Paid Applications
iAd App Network


Zipfile deleted itself? Last week I downloaded a zipfile from a website on my mac. When it finished downloading the file automatically opened (which it normally doesn’t; I would normally have to double click it first). This was already strange but I didn’t think too much of it.

It asked me for a password, which I did not know. When I clicked “cancel” the archive utility just quit.

After that, when I looked in my downloads folder the file was no longer there. So I looked in my trash folder to be shocked to see that the file wasn’t there either. So basically, the file was behaving very strangely and had just deleted itself.

What does this mean? Is this just something archive utility can do? Or can it be that the file might have been malicious?

The zip file cannot “self delete”.
There is a setting for “Archive Utility” in most versions of Mac OS X / OSX / macOS where you can specify you’d like to delete Zip files after extraction.
See:

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/delete-zip-files-after-extraction

Check if you have this feature turned on:

If you have this feature turned on already:
I believe this is intended to work only after a successful extraction.  It shouldn’t work if the extraction fails.
One possibility is that only some of the zipped files in the zip were password protected.  (Yes, you can create a zip file with a mix of password protected and “unprotected” files.)
If the zip had even just one non-password protected file (like README.TXT) that unzipped correctly, it may be present and Archive Utility might have deleted the zip.  This seems doubtful.
If you do not:

Perform a spotlight search or command-line search for the file name.
Scan your hard drive for errors using a Disk Utility.
Re-download the file (look for a link in your browser history, if needed and available.)


Cannot format SSD in optical bay I tried to install a new SSD with a higher capacity in the optical bay. But OS X cannot format the SSD. I also tried to swap with an HDD but the same problem occurs with an HDD. Failure format or something like this. The drives have SATA III, I checked Mac info. Intel 6 series chipset with 6GB for both HDD and optical bay interfaces which means SATA III (?). When I format the HDD through USB I can write to it via SATA, but Disk Utility suggest repairing. If I check this drive, Disk Utility cannot repair this drive.

How to resolve this problem?

Macbook Pro 13", late 2011

I tried to repartition in two parts. The partitions are created, but before it is complete, and names are assigned to the partitions, Disk Utility fails.

Intel 320 series works without problems in OptiBay, but it has SATA 2, so looks like a SATA problem.

Have just faced a similar problem with MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2011) and SSD installed into the Optibay. Operating system: macOS 10.12.3 (16D32).

«Disk Utility» got stuck on the «Waiting for partitions to activate» phase of the erasing process.

The solution, which worked for me, was to put the SSD into the main bay and the HDD into the Optibay.


Delete songs from iPhone but keep in iPod I want to delete songs from iPhone but keep in iPod in iTunes. when uncheck songs from library, this erase from both devices. Is there a way to remove all the songs just from iPhone?

Create two separate playlist, one for the iphone and one for the ipod.  Drag in the songs you want for each playlist and then just sync these playlists to the appropriate device.


Where can I learn more about LTE coverage and build out schedules in the US? I am looking for sites that do a good job of reviewing / documenting current LTE data coverage in the US. Where do the carriers have coverage maps and plans for build out documented? Also, are there any independent sources that measure actual performance and coverage so that we can educate ourselves about the options available for data on the new iPad?

Not much in the way of a major community database of real-world speeds, sadly. Here are some other resources:

Verizon's LTE coverage map
AT&T's HSPA+ coverage map (and overview)
Overview of all major carriers, and another (older)
More general information on current/planned deployments
Verizon coverage map with speed tests - Minneapolis/St. Paul area only.

You might also use the FCC's GIS data to find out more about what towers already exist.  Presumably, they're not going to build new towers for LTE - just add antennae to existing sites.


As of iOS 13, what filetypes does Safari's Download Manager support? As of iOS 13, Safari now includes its own built-in Download Manager; the idea is that for supported filetypes, a user can simply tap on a link from within a web page and Safari will offer to either open the file (essentially mirroring its old behaviour in pre-iOS 13 builds), or download the file to a location of the user's choice which can be changed from within Settings/Safari.

What isn't clear, however, is which filetypes the Download Manager supports. As an example, I've seen a reference to Safari being able to download MP3 files (https://www.cultofmac.com/629362/safari-download-manager-ios-13/), but in my own testing as of iOS 13.2.3, tapping on a link to an MP3 file simply opens it - as was the case in iOS 12.

So, my question - is there a definitive list of filetypes that Safari will offer to download when tapped?

There’s no definitive list of file types which download automatically, since it’s not based on file type but rather the server providing the content. Safari supports every file type if the server is set up to provide a download.

You can force a download of a link to a resource rather than opening the link by holding down on the link and choosing Download Linked File.


Safari search bar searches with random search engines Most of the time, when I search something using the Safari search bar, it gives me results from Google. Sometimes however, it uses the default search engine of my ISP. How can I fix this and what are the reasons it is happening?

Assuming that everything's on the up-and-up with your ISP, this kind of behavior typically is a result of some connection failure between your ISP and Google ("Hmmm, I can't find Google, so I'll route this to our search engine instead.") - and in my experience it's most often due to DNS issues.

One easy way to figure out if it is due to DNS issues is change what DNS servers your network connects to. Two options are Google itself (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for IPv4 service or 2001:4860:4860::8888 and 2001:4860:4860::8844 for IPv6) or OpenDNS (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 for IPv4 or 2620:0:ccc::2 and 2620:0:ccd::2 for IPv6).

Depending on the current DNS servers your computer/network is currently using, you could even see faster lookup performance.


How can I add > 200Mb/2h tracks to iPhone with iCloud Music Library enabled? I have a bunch of music tracks that are either longer than two hours or larger than 200Mb (DJ sets) that I'd like to play from my iPhone, along with a whole lot of "normal"-length music. These large tracks are not supported by iCloud Music Library.

How can I sync these large tracks to my phone once I enable iCloud Music Library?

(I realise this may functionally be a duplicate of some previous questions but I'm hoping the "long DJ sets" framing is a solved problem for somebody.)

It’s still not possible so I’ve worked around the problem by removing the long tracks from my music library and managing them with Evermusic instead. Seems to be working well so far.


What is SiLabsUSBDriver.kext? What is SiLabsUSBDriver.kext? Is this part of the official Yosemite system and if so, how do you know? Where can someone go to find this out from Apple directly? Thanks.

It's the kernel extension for the Silicon Labs USB to Serial driver.

It is not a part of OS X Yosemite as it's not included in the Install OS X Yosemite.app bundle.


any Virtual Ipad/Iphone applications for PC that has network connections? I am looking for a virtual emulation of an Ipad or Iphone that I can run on a PC machine so I can create video tutorials on things such as setting up our corporate email  or how to connect the devices to our network. I have found some applications via Google and youtube, but so far they do not support a network connection.  I know there are android emulators that do this, but haven't found an IOs one. If anyone could point me in the direction of one it would be greatly appreciated.

I would prefer free software, but am willing to pay as long as its in a reasonable price range.

I got the answer below, but I found a pretty promising site for anyone who happens to be looking for the same thing. Miricast and AirPlay emulation

As there are no emulation / simulation engines that I've seen that work well enough to run tutorials in anything resembling a smooth manner, your least expensive option would be to get a cheap secondhand iPad and then use AirPlay emulation software on the PC to capture the screen and make your videos.

You could even save money by taking static screen captures and then animating them on the PC.

The only simulator that even comes close to what you need runs on OS X and is part of Xcode delivered from Apple. You could probably virtualize that, but the cost there is more than buying cheap used iOS hardware. Even an iPod touch is often good enough for walk through videos on basic settings for corporate users.


How to stop iPhone from "erasing its contents" when I want to "manually manage" it? In iTunes there is a checkbox to "manually manage music and videos". However when I tried clicking it, there's a popup saying that I can only do so after erasing all data on the phone:

How do I "manually manage" the phone without it erasing off its data?

After trying bmike's answer below, the popup message still appears. Currently my "Tones" and "Books" are ticked (synced). If I try to unsync them, there's this message:

The solution is a two part solution.

If you routinely want to sync one device with two libraries, the easiest manner is to disable all automatic syncing on the first iTunes library before you bring the iOS device to the second computer.

You can always wait for the "erase" warning and cancel the sync. (which is the point you have in your screenshot). At that point, go into the current device settings and turn off automatic sync for all of the categories that cause the warning dialog to appear. Keep in mind, that music, ringtones, and other settings can all get the warning to pop up, so your work may not be done by simply un-checking music. The settings on the computer you get the warning are in conflict with the settings from the previous computer so you have to reconcile that before the manual sync can start.

Once you have figured out all the "silos" that matter to you, you can easily take one device to multiple computers for backup but only certain computers for syncing. Using one computer to sync the data (contacts and calendar) and another for the media is a use case that Apple fully supports in iTunes. Once you set things up, you should not expect to have issues with a one device and many computers situation.


iPhone 5 displaying single 1x icon instead of 2x? All of the icons on my iPhone 5 display at 2x, but for some reason, my SchoolsFirst eDeposit icon displays the 1x image. Any idea how I can fix this? I tried deleting/redownloading the app, and hiding it in the "Purchased Apps" section of iTunes, and nothing worked.

The app probably doesn't have a 2x icon. Apple doesn't allow apps in the store with only 1x, so I assume this app has not been updated in a very long time?

Contact the developer and ask them to fix it. Nothing else you can do, only the developer of an app can modify it (this is a security policy enforced on iOS to prevent malware attacks).


What do the various iTunes Match icons in iTunes mean? Enabling iTunes Match adds a new default column to song lists in iTunes that displays several new icons:

What do each of these icons (as well as no icon at all) mean?

Apple's iTunes Match: Understanding the iCloud Status icons KB article explains.

So, your icons in order are:

Available for download
Waiting
Error
Duplicate
Ineligible

If you're having problems, take a look at the Troubleshooting iTunes Match article.


How to setup two OS X boot partitions plus Bootcamp and Data? Is it possible to set up he following combination of partitions; how?

two OS X partitions, each bootable (one for the main system, another for testing new OS X releases)
a Bootcamp bootable partition for Windows 7
data partition shared between OS X and Windows?

I don't need access to either of OS X boot partitions from Windows. And vice versa: don't need to access Windows boot partition from OS X.

I use MacBook Pro 13" 2010, Windows 7 64-bit, OS X Mountain Lion.

It should be possible to partition the HDD like that but not in a default setup with Boot Camp and Windows 8/8.1 is recommended:

The hybrid MBR/GPT necessary for Boot Camp Assistant to install/boot Windows doesn't allow more than 4 partitions:

Apple CoreStorage or Macintosh HD
Recovery HD
your future Windows 8/(7)
a place holder in the MBR linking to the GPT (some count the EFI-partition as the fourth one, but this doesn't seem to be true)

So a different approach is necessary:

Skip the hybrid MBR and use a pure GPT setup. Alternatively a multistage boot loader setup with rEFInd may also be possible.

Here is an obviously working setup for Windows 8 (source):

Check the comments there before proceeding.

Windows 7 may work as well with this guide. Here is an opposing point of view which claims that it is impossible to install Windows 7 in native UEFI-mode.

Warning: These steps require you to completely  erase your hard drive! Make sure you have all the materials and have backed up all of your data before proceeding.

Materials:

A recent MacBook Pro (this will probably work on other Macs, but I don’t have any to test with) I’ve tested this on the 1st-gen Retina 15″ and a 13″ 2nd-gen i5 model.
A disk drive capable of reading DVDs (you’ll need an external drive for MacBook Retinas or MacBook Airs)
A Mountain Lion Installer thumb drive
A CD/USB drive with the “Windows Support” files from Bootcamp
A Windows 8 Pro Install DVD

Procedure:

Put the Windows 8 Disk in the disk drive
Option-boot the computer and choose to boot off the “Windows” disk (Do not choose “EFI Boot” but make sure that it does show up, you’ll need to use it later)
Once the installer gets to the setup screen, hit shift+f10. This will bring up a command prompt
Type the following commands (this assumes that you only have one hard drive):

diskpart (this puts you into the windows partitioning shell)

select disk 0 (this selects the primary hard drive, make sure you don’t have any extra drives connected)
clean (this erases your entire hard drive by removing all partition information)
convert gpt (this converts your hard drive from an MBR partition table to a GUID partition table)
create partition efi size=200 (this creates the efi partition where the bootloader will live)
format fs=fat32 (this formats the EFI partition as fat32 so that Windows can write to it)
create partition msr size=128 (this creates a “MicroSoft Reserved” partition… because microsoft)
create partition primary (this uses the rest of your free space to create a usable partition)
format fs=ntfs quick label=Windows (this formats the Windows partition and labels it as “Windows” which is what OS X will see)
exit (this exits the windows partitioning shell)

wpeutil reboot (this tells the computer to reboot)

Option-boot the computer when it reboots, but this time choose “EFI Boot” instead of “Windows”
        Remember to press the any key to boot into the installer!
Choose to use a Custom Install and install Windows 8 to “Partition 3″ (The only primary partition)
    Make sure you leave the install disk in the drive through the whole install or you could get a BSOD
Install the Windows Support software from your CD/USB drive to gain full functionality of your computer
    Congratulations! You now have a natively-EFI-booting Windows 8 Install! Now, on to dual-booting OSX…
Open “Disk Management” in Windows.
Find your “C Drive” partition and resize it by right-clicking on it and choosing “shrink volume”

Shrink it by the size you’d like your OS X installations and the shared volume to be (e.g. if you want to give the 3 partitions 200GB, use 204800MB)
Right-click on the now empty area at the end of the drive and make 3 new “Simple volumes” Don’t format it.

Reboot the computer into your OS X Installer thumb drive
Open Disk Utility

Choose “disk0s4″ as this will be the 4th partition on disk 0
On the “Erase” tab choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” since this is what OS X likes to use.
Give it a label that you like (e.g. “SystemML”)
Hit Erase
Choose “disk0s5″ as this will be the 5th partition on disk 0
On the “Erase” tab choose “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)” since this is what OS X likes to use.
Give it a label that you like (e.g. “SystemExperimental”)
Hit Erase
Choose “disk0s6″ as this will be the 6th partition on disk 0
On the “Erase” tab choose “ExFAt”.
Give it a label that you like (e.g. “WinMacShare”)
Hit Erase
Exit Disk Utility

Install OS X on your new partitions.

If step 8.2. fails you have to partition the unallocated space manually after step 9 in Terminal.app with

gpt -r show /dev/diskNumber

to get the partition table, and

gpt add -b StartBlock -i IndexNumber -s SizeOfPartition -t PartitionType diskNumber

to add partitions.

You have to format the volumes afterwards with Disk Utility.


tar is giving a symbol error in a bash install script? I've been trying to install meteor and as part of the install process it downloads node from a tar file which it pipes to tar. But the tar extract command is erroring out with a missing symbol?

I used homebrew to brew install gnu-tar --with-default-names

NODE_URL="https://nodejs.org/dist/v8.1.3/node-v8.1.3-darwin-x64.tar.gz"
curl "${NODE_URL}" | tar zx --strip-components 1

Will return this:

lazy symbol binding failed: Symbol not found:
_utimensat
Referenced from: /usr/local/bin/tar
Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

dyld: Symbol not found:
_utimensat
Referenced from: /usr/local/bin/tar
Expected in: /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib

In your example you are using bsd/macos curl with gnu tar, that won't work. Unfortunately many dev programs rely on the apple bash and trying to upgrade things to gnu can break bash scripts.

brew won't even let you install curl "natively"

brew install curl
==> Downloading https://homebrew.bintray.com/bottles/curl-7.54.1.sierra.bottle.tar.gz
==> Caveats
This formula is keg-only, which means it was not symlinked into /usr/local,
because macOS already provides this software and installing another version in
parallel can cause all kinds of trouble.

to fix your problem with the bash script you'll want to rename gnu-tar from tar to gtar, the following will do the trick

brew uninstall gnu-tar
brew install gnu-tar


How do I get shutdown codes using terminal in macOS How can I use Terminal to get my shutdown codes, going back to the weekend?

I'm on Mojave 10.14.6

You can just enter the following command into Terminal:

log show --predicate 'eventMessage contains "Previous shutdown cause"' --last 168h

The 168h refers to 168 hours, which I've used so that the command goes back a week (since you want to capture the weekend).

However, you can change the 168 to another value if you like.


MacBook Air won't maintain a good wifi connection but iPhone does? Both my MacBook Air and iPhone are connected to the Internet using my home Wifi connection. Whilst my iPhone loads up google, YouTube, Maps an other apps that use the Internet just fine. My MacBook Air will not maintain its connection to the Internet and when it does it is very, very slow (1.7Mbps). I've set the service order correctly in System Preferences > Network.

I can't upload and screenshots as I'm posting this via iPhone. Please help!

If your Router has two different antennas sending on different frequencies, see if your iPhone uses a different one as your Air, and if so, try to connect to the other one.


VLC 2.1.5 (all versions and 2.2.0) plays only audio not video My 27" iMac on Yosemite, presents the same symptoms described in  'VLC in Mac does not show video window 2'. I tried all the actions available ie reinstalling, trashing preferences, the solutions proposed in the above mentioned questions etc but the result is the same: for all formats on file open or on double click, the application opens a new video window who closes immediately and the clip plays only the audio track.
The same clips play OK on QT, RealPlayer, MPlayer etc.

I've experienced something similar with VLC. Typically, I play vids in full screen on my second display connected to my MacBook. When I am not connected to the external display and I play a vid, VLC seems to want to still play in this dual display mode. So it's like it's playing on a ghost second display.

If this is your situation, the easiest solution is to simply press 'Escape'. That pulls the vid out of full screen mode (on the ghost second monitor) and displays it in windowed mode.

From there you should be good.

(P.S. I just wrote this same thing in another similar VLC post earlier today... Must be something in the air.)


Creating an animation from a bunch of .pdf files I have histograms in a bunch of hundreds of .pdf files.

I would like to find a way to make an animation from these files to use in a Powerpoint presentation.

How can I do that ? It would also be great to be able to view the animation with Quicktime.

You could try the following:

Join your PDF files: How to merge pdf files in Mac OS X – CombinePDFs
Convert your PDF to Keynote format: PDF to Keynote
Create your movie: Exporting Keynote Presentation to QuickTime Compatible Movie File

Later you can use your created .MOV in another Keynote presentation.


How to stop apps from opening automatically when I plug things in I do iOS development work, and I can't stand how iTunes and iPhoto automatically open when I plug in a device.

I don't want anything to ever open automatically when I plug something in.

How do I make it so?

In iPhoto > Preferences > General select "Connecting Camera opens: no application"

In iTunes select your device and go to Summary and make sure "Automatically sync when this iPhone [or whatever device it is] is connected" is unchecked.

I'm not certain the second one will completely solve opening iTunes since I can't test it as I don't have a cable here with me.


Applescript to keep a button pressed until I press it again? I need an extra modifier key which acts kinda like Capslock by using AppleScript - or maybe you've got another proposition?

I would bind it to some key combination in BetterTouchTool.

A quite simple "self-regulating" way to switch between modifier keys WITHOUT being able to read their state could be to utilize their innate "effect" on a user's keyboard.
Write two scripts:

  [script 1:]  tell application "System Events" to shift key down

  [script 2:]  tell application "System Events" to shift key up

Toggling shift: apply a shortcut (e.g.) "option o" to the 1st script, "option shift o" to the 2nd one.

Now, each time you press "option o" when calling the scripts, this will STILL toggle "shift" as "System Events" will receive "option shift o" in case of a previously active shift key ...

(Another way might be to use a global variable  or even a plist file.)


Can I map mouse mouse buttons 3 and 4 to control the system volume? Is it possible to map mouse buttons 3 and 4 to control system volume on a Mac? KeyRemap4Macbook doesn't seem to have the functionality, nor SizzlingKeys. I have them both. Is there some way to manually bind these buttons to control system volume?

What kind of mouse? Is there a proprietary driver for it?  Kensington has a driver for their mice & trackballs that can assign their buttons.  Before I had  an effective Kensington driver, I used USB Overdrive. It works with a lot of multi-button HID devices.


How can I create Apple Dictionary File? There is generally a dictionary.app on the Mac-OS.
But there isn't any dictionary development kit on the X-Code.
Now i use the X-Code (Mavericks and Yosemite).
So I downloaded the the auxiliary tools package from developer.apple.com/downloads and applied it to the /Applications/Utilites/.
And run the command "make" and "make install".
But when I reopen Dictionary.app, it couldn't do any action about of my Dictionary file.
What's the problem?

I want to make my own dictionary now.

If you successfully made a dictionary you should put the file in /Library/Dictionaries.

In Sierra you have to make that folder yourself, as Apple has moved its own dictionaries to another location and no longer has this one.  It should still work, however.

You can find useful information in Apple's Developer Documentation


Can you use the Apple Watch with an iPod touch? I may or may not be be getting the new Apple Watch. Before I think about it I want to know if I can use it with an iPod Touch 5th generation instead of an iPhone.

Is the apple Watch locked to the iPhone 6 only or can I use it with an iPod Touch. If I can use it with a iPod what features will I loose or what will the ones be available.

On every page about the Apple Watch, it's stated at the bottom of the page that Apple Watch :

  Requires iPhone 5 or later.

This means no iPod touch.


Encrypt FAT USB drive under El Capitan (10.11) I have a USB drive I would like to encrypt. It's formatted in FAT (for use with Mac & Win) and I can't seem to find a way to encrypt it as:

FileVault doesn't encrypt FAT.

TrueCrypt can be installed after modifying the installer but doesn't run under 10.11 for me (library file missing) and there seems to be no solution, since TrueCrypt is no longer supported.

Is there any solution to encrypt the stick without resorting to using a different computer?

You could look into VeraCrypt which is the open-source successor to TrueCrypt and exists for Windows, OS X, and Linux. It can also open existing  TrueCrypt containers. https://veracrypt.codeplex.com

Like TrueCrypt, VeraCrypt can create an encrypted CONTAINER FILE which is like an DMG or ISO image file and can be copied, so it would fit on a FAT32-formatted USB drive as long as the file size remains below 4 GB, as FAT32 cannot contain individual files larger than that. For this a container file you can choose between FAT, exFAT, and OS X Extended as the internal format. For maximum compatibility between Windows and OS X, FAT is the right choice. ExFAT can take files larger than 4 GB and is supported by Windows XP, but it is not supported in OS X before 10.6.5 Snow Leopard.

Finally, you can also use VeraCrypt to create an ENCRYPTED DRIVE VOLUME, so that the whole USB drive or a partition itself is encrypted. However, VeraCrypt doesn't encrypt existing files directly. First you create an empty  encrypted container file or drive volume, then you copy your files to it.


Remap ESC to Option-ESC in Office (Excel, Word, etc) with karabiner-elements When I am using Safari in full screen, and I press ESC key it's minimized. So that's why I started using karabiner-elements.

I install it, I use the first option in this page and the problem is solved.

Now, I want to know if in Office (Excel, Word, PorwerPoint) I can use the same settings.

In the page I mentioned before I didn't find the option I want.

In the video that I attach, the screen is minimized when I press ESC.

If I understand your question correctly, you'd like to have ⌥ Option Esc function like that of remapped Safari's Esc key.

In Karabiner Elements, you have to modify the JSON  file and remove the entry making it for Safari only:

You have to remove the following section:

{
              "type": "frontmost_application_if",
              "bundle_identifiers": [
                "^com.apple.Safari"
              ]
            }

Karabiner-Elements has a number of examples that you can base new keys from.  It's also important that your read the manual on how the application functions.


How can I add a ipfw forward rule to little snitch? I use the following rules to connect to my nginx server on a vagrant machine:

sudo ipfw add 100 fwd 127.0.0.1,8080 tcp from any to me 80
sudo ipfw add 100 fwd 127.0.0.1,8090 tcp from any to me 443

after installing little snitch, it seems to have made ipfw useless and i can't figure out how to apply a forward rule to little snitch?

Since ipfw is also removed in Yosemite the solution is to use pf

create a file in /etc/pf.anchors/

e.g. com.myapp

rdr pass on lo0 inet proto tcp from any to any port 80 -> 127.0.0.1 port 8080

NOTE: Add a trailing line break. Otherwise pf will say you have a syntax error.

edit /etc/pf.conf add right after rdr-anchor "com.apple/*":

rdr-anchor "myapp"

and after load anchor "com.apple" from "/etc/pf.anchors/com.apple":

load anchor "myap" from "/etc/pf.anchors/com.myapp"

NOTE: Add a trailing line break. Otherwise pf will say you have a syntax error.

Next, reload the rules into pf by running sudo pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf

Finally, enable pf by running sudo pfctl -e

Source: https://github.com/basecamp/pow/issues/452


MBP battery won't charge I have a MacBook Pro Early 2011 model A1278 which wasn't turning on, then I bought a new battery and it ran just fine. But the charger isn't charging it up (the charger is also fine, I tested in another MBP). I tried to reset SMC, NVRAM and cleaned the charging port, but nothing happened.
Now the battery just died (0%) and I don't know what to do, since I can't charge it up. Is there anything I can do to make it work?

Thanks in advance,
Luiz

It appears that you didn't fix the original problem which was why your MBP wasn't turning on in the first place - your battery wasn't charging so you had a dead battery.

You have already verified that...

the battery is good (it's new)
the charger is good as it works on another Mac
the logic board is good because when the battery has juice, it works.

Now, it seems that since the battery has gone to 0% and the charger is plugged in, your MBP is dead, correct?

That means you Mag Safe DC In board is most likely shot.

This is fairly simple to fix (I am assuming you changed your own battery). iFixit.com has an excellent tutorial on how to replace this component.  The good news is that this component is fairly inexpensive ($11 on Amazon).


Deleted Documents folder doesn't show up anymore iOS-HELP (File App) In the "File" App from my iPhone 7.

I deleted the default "Document" folder by accident and it doesn't show up in the recently deleted or anywhere else on my iOS devices.

In my Mac shows up no problem.

I tried to re-sync iCloud on iOS' settings but after 1-2 mins same thing as before.

After a while without doing anything manually iCloud will do an automatic re-sync and the Documents folder will reappear! So no problem, just 10-20 minutes and done!

If it doesn't show up in 1 hour or so, try to "manually re-sync" iCloud by using the switch in the Setting on one of you iOS devices.
So:
Settings>"Your name">iCloud>scroll down>iCloud Drive
Switch OFF and ON one time, and then wait again for 10-20 minutes (slower the internet, slower the sync).


When MacBook runs out of battery after restart message problem detected occurs For some months I have the following problem: After a restart (when my MacBook Pro 2017) runs out of battery, and after having logged in, a message that the computer was shut down unexpectedly occurs. Is this behavior normal?

Does anyone has a similar problem? Do you need more information regarding this problem from me?

With best greetings,
Leon

I think it's normal, because before exhausting the battery completely (around 3-5%) it goes into a sleep mode. But if it is completely exhausted, the message it mentions is displayed and allows you to restore what you had previously opened or restart the startup.


Mavericks update broke ssh key-based authentication I regularly ssh to one of my OS X boxes. I have configured ssh key-based authentication i.e. added my client-end ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to server-end ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 with restricted enough permissions. This setup has worked fine for years over multiple OS X versions.

However, upgrading to OS X 10.9 Mavericks broke this setup. ssh login prompts for password. Logging in with password works but I want passwordless key-based authentication.

(I know the solution to this now. Documenting it here in case it helps others.)

Turns out it was about the key file name.

authorized_keys2 was the correct one to use for SSH2 keys a loooong time ago when I first configured the key-based authentication. For years, authorized_keys2 file was deprecated but still working. In Mavericks version of opensshd the support has been dropped.

This can be fixed with a simple rename:

cd ~/.ssh; mv authorized_keys2 authorized_keys


Is MacKeeper a contoversial App that new Apple Users should be educated to stay away from? I see adverts for this particular app all over the place. Is it true that people should stay well away from it, as it could potentially do more harm than good to your Apple Computer, and to your wallet!!

It's certainly true that the app is controversial - search the Apple Discussions site for more on that - and while there were certainly issues with early versions current versions are reported better.

However, there are many with very significant reservations about the sales tactics the company uses - pop-ups, paid-for recommendations on review sites etc - and that its uninstaller didn't work for many versions, so users kept getting further advertisements, allied with the  facts that the things the app claims to do are either a: unnecessary or b: can be done with free or cheaper alternatives means that the app undeniably has a bad name with many Mac users.

And again, for citation: search the Apple Discussions site for much, much more about this app.


Apple Music: "For You" section not refreshing on iTunes 12.2 I'm using Apple Music on two devices: MBP and iPhone 5. Got the problem that iTunes doesn't automatically refresh the "For You" section on my MBP, unlike the iPhone. The CMD+R doesn't work as well.
The only way to get fresh suggestions and playlists in "For You" is to kill and restart iTunes.

In iTunes, open the dropdown menu for your account (to the right of the apple logo at the top of the screen) and select "Choose Artists for You."
On the next screen (floating bubbles of "what you are into"), hit "next" without making any changes.
On the next screen (floating bubbles of "your favorites"), hit done.

On my Mac, this refreshes the "for you" every time. Pressing the "new" button as suggested by others has no effect on my Mac.


I want to forward Apple mail to G mail account I am running OS X Mavericks.

I want to forward my apple mail (happens to be verizon.net) to my gmail account.

I want to read all mail in gmail.

Is this possible?

Apple mail is just a mail client, to forward your mail to gmail, the set up needs to be done on Verizon.

You will need to log into Verizon web mail and then set up forwarding from there to gmail, otherwise you are forwarding your mail twice. Once from Verizon to your computer running Apple Mail and then again from your computer to google.  Depending on how good the Verizon web mail/mail server is forwarding should be easy to set up.

What you want to do is cut out your computer all together.

If you want to really set up forwarding from your computer i.e. from Apple Mail you would set up a rule in the following way:
While in Mail:

Press ⌘+, to bring up the preferences window

Select the Rules tab

Click "Add Rule"

Put in your "Description"

Select "Every message"

Under "Perform the following actions"

Select "Redirect Message" to put in your gmail account.

Please note that these instructions are for Mail 5.3 but should work with newer versions.


Formatting mac and encrypted memory Currently I have a 128GB SD for data in my macbook, but is encrypted using utility. If I format my mac, the stored key will be gone.

How can I do this safely? Is there any way to do this without losing access to my SD?

Thank you

I'm a little unclear what your configuration is...
If your "128GB SD" is an external drive: Unencrypt the data, reformat macbook, encrypt data again.

If your "128GB SD" is the drive that you wish to reformat:
Copy the data to another external drive unencrypted, reformat your drive, copy the data back onto it and encrypt it over again.

Is there anything keeping you from doing either of these?


Lync 2011 Sign-in Issues So on my windows laptop, Lync 2013 is set to automatically configure the connection settings, however when I try to automatically configure the connection settings on my mac it doesn't work.

Is there any way to get the automatic connection settings from my windows laptop so that I can set them manually on my mac?

I just downloaded Lync from Office 365 and had the exact same problem. After a bit of googling I realised that my Lync version was 14.01 and there was an update to 14.09 available. Updating solved my log in problem. Very simple (And stupid: 1. Why does Microsoft not update the package at Office 365? 2. How can login be broken to start with?).


Buying used Mac mini to run latest Xcode I want to get into iOS development, but unfortunately my laptop is running Windows 10 and I don't want to deal with virtual machines and other headaches related to developing with Xcode on Windows. I want to develop for iOS in a native apple environment. I also want it to run the newest version of Xcode.

So I've decided I will buy a used Mac mini, but I don't know exactly which is and isn't necessary. Also, I don't want to deal with buying a lower end Mac mini (one which doesn't fit the requirements) and upgrading it myself, since I have never done anything like that before and I don't need crazy computer power anyway. So basically....

How much memory do I need? How much memory does Xcode take up? Xcode is basically the only thing I will need on there, iOS development stuff only.

How much ram does it need to run comfortably? obviously not 1 or 2 GB like some older ones, does 4 GB or 8 GB work?

All the other computer terms like 2.26GHz Core2Duo and 128 GB SSD, are those relevant for my needs? If so are they enough?

I don't have a budget but I would ideally like to spend around 300ish including price of mac mini, monitor, keyboard and mouse.

Any help is appreciated.

When I open only Chrome and XCode with a small project, my Mac uses 3.2GB of memory. You don't want swapping. If you only want to do simple programming, 4G of memory will work fine. You will want to be able to open Stack Exchange in the background...
The standard SSD and CPUs will do
Make sure your system is compatible with the latest OSX. If it is not, you cannot test compatibility with the latest version and might not be able to upload your software to App Stores. I would buy a version that I expect to be supported in the next OSX software update.
(currently Mac mini 2010 or newer, at least)

So, in short, Mac Mini 2010+, 4G, better 8G of ram. First hit online sais 260$, so that's around your budget.


Screen Time blocks Google websites because YouTube is restricted I'm using Screen Time's feature to block a website:
System Preferences -> Screen Time -> Content & Privacy -> Limit Adult Websites -> Customise... -> Restricted -> https://youtube.com/

Funny thing is, when I try to visit google.com or any of its subdomains (drive.google.com, calendar.google.com), I get this:

I looked at the Network tab, but there I only see requests to the google.com domain, but no requests to youtube.com. And what's even funnier is that when I visit youtube.com by entering it in the address bar of the browser, it loads without any problems. Do you have any idea why Screen Time behaves like this and how to fix it?

Your problem is that Google, as part of its single sign-on (SSO) process, also logs you into YouTube. For most of the Google applications, it can set cookies that are valid on *.google.com, but for YouTube, it redirects you to https://accounts.youtube.com/accounts/SetSID with a sign-on token; you can see this URL briefly flash up when you log in.
It's this redirect that's tripping up your filter. As described in other answers, you can restrict your filter to www.youtube.com, or you might be able to explicitly whitelist accounts.youtube.com.


What version of Silverlight works with the latest 10.7 release? Can you install Microsoft Silverlight from microsoft.com and are you able to open the Preferences without it crashing?

I'm trying to isolate this problem, and it could be a Mac problem, or a Silverlight problem.

I am hearing that it works fine on some people's Macs and not on others, but there is no obvious pattern to it.  It could be that it doesn't work on particular versions of Mac OS X, or it could be that 3rd party software that some people use, messes up Silverlight.

Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac lab to try it out on several computers so I would really appreciate some feedback on this if you have a Mac.

If you have a PowerPC based chipset or a Mac with a version older than 10.6 (Snow Leopard) then you probably should not bother testing this because Silverlight only supports Intel chipsets and 10.6 and up.

If you are able to test out the latest version of Silverlight 5, please list your exact Mac OS X version, and what version of Silverlight installed fine for you.

I'm wondering what version of silverlight works best with Lion?

Silverlight - 5.0.61118.0

MacBookPro9,2

50 - 10.7.5(11G63)

5 - 10.8.2(12A269)

Silverlight Prefs come up just fine.

Installed programs:

Chrome 24

Safari 6

Firefox 18

All updates

iLife

iWork

Office 2008

Adobe CS3

VLC

Smart Notebook


Recovery key set by my "company, school, or institution" on private laptop I want to enable FileVault encryption but in the dialog I encounter this message:

  A recovery key has been set by your company, school, or institution.

I don't have my laptop set up by a company, school or institution because this is my private laptop.

This dialog may be related to some profile-files I have recently installed for university in order to get the VPN to work. How can I reset this so that I can use my own recovery key?

I am using macOS 10.13.

This Apple discussion says:

  After a couple of exchanges with our engineering team they have recommended two things you may try.

  The first solution is as follows:

  Disable FileVault
  In the system directory, go to "/Library/Keychains"
  Move the files "FileVaultMaster.keychain" and "FileVaultMaster.cer" to the Trash.
  Deleting the files should then allow you to enable FileVault on the system and provide a recovery key. Refer to article http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5077 if you have questions regarding the location of the files.

  Second solution:

  Performing an erase and reinstall of the computer system will reset the master password and allow you to encrypt the drive again.


FTDI USB device not removed after unplugging I have an FTDI USB adapter for loading software onto Arduino's, but it comes with a slight problem. 90% of the time when I unplug the USB cable, the device is not removed as a USB device. It remains listed under System Information > USB > USB 3.0 Bus. This does not seem like a problem at first, but the USB port is not usable anymore. So I use the other USB port on my MacBook. Same thing happens and so both USB ports are useless. After a reboot, I can start over.

Not a big problem, but I really hate to reboot every hour or so. Is there a better way to "remove" / eject the device?

I've found the Apple FTDI driver behaves more predictably than the one from FTDI.

Use kextstat | grep FTDI to see which driver you have. On my MBP I had com.FTDI.driver.FTDIUSBSerialDriver (2.3) ... which exhibited the (unwanted) behavior described by the OP.

I removed that driver with sudo kextunload -b com.FTDI.driver.FTDIUSBSerialDriver.

Next time the FTDI dongle was installed, the apple FTDI driver was loaded automatically. kextstat|grep FTDI reports com.apple.driver.AppleUSBFTDI (5.0.0) ... Now I can remove and replace the dongle and it continues to be recognized by the Arduino IDE.

Hope this helps.


Always show markup toolbar in Preview As the title says: is there a way to permanently show the markup toolbar in Preview?

(working on OSX 10.10.1 Yosemite)

In addition to the already mentioned Shortcut ⇧+⌘+A Preview in El Capitan (and Yosemite I guess) features a toolbar icon that allows to open the markup toolbar with a single click instead of clicking through the View menu:

To make the Toolbar visible, go to View > Show Toolbar in the menu. (Thanks to Rachel for this aditional hint!)


Share my Mac’s internet connection (WiFi) with my iPad or iPhone via Lightning cable I seem to remember connecting my iPad or iPhone to my MacBook Pro laptop using a Lightning cable. From there I was able to let the iOS device access the internet via the Mac’s existing WiFi connection.

  [internet]↔[WiFi]↔[MacBook]↔[Lightning cable]↔[iOS device]

I vaguely recall using System Preferences > Sharing > Internet Sharing. But I see only Thunderbolt Bridge and Bluetooth PAN items, nothing for over the Lightning cable.

If the Lightning cable cannot be made to work, might the Bluetooth PAN item let the iOS devices us a wireless Bluetooth connection to use the Mac’s internet connection?

Using macOS Sierra, and iOS 11.

Check System Preferences > Network

There appears to be a problem with your network configuration. You should indeed have seen a iPhone USB item in that list of “Ports”.

Check your System Preferences > Network settings. On the left you should see an item for the network interface name something like “iPhone USB”. If not, try using the Location popup menu at top to Edit Locations and add a new location. Alternatively, you might try the + icon button to add an interface of that type to that list.

Now go back to your System Preferences > Sharing > Internet Sharing where you should now see an item named something like iPhone USB.

From there, turn on the Internet Sharing checkbox to start sharing. If it does not work, try rebooting your iPhone (hold down Power/Sleep button).

You can test to be certain by turning off your iPhone’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Cellular Data. If you have internet access, then you must be using the USB cable connection to access the internet over your Mac’s Wi-Fi connection.