Re-enable startup chime on new Mac I want to hack my iMac's firmware - or maybe that's a stupid idea, but I got to the conclusion that that would be my only option. And please note that my knowledge of coding is at the level of writing applescripts and Filemaker solutions for my own use so I am way out of my league here. But here's the thing:

I replaced my 2013 imac with a 2019 version and it has no startup chime. Why it was removed, and why it was not made an option, is one of those inane Apple mysteries. Clearly, a lot of people are lamenting this change.

After researching the issue, I learned that the startup chime is embedded in the firmware. Thence came the idea.

So the question to those in the know: Would there be a way to put back the startup chime into my shiny new machine?

Thanks, and I'm sorry if it is the wrong forum, or if the question is unacceptable for using the word "hacking". I am NOT trying to achieve anything nefarious, just a solution for my own use.

PS: I have been aware of the nonworking command line solution, I read it in this very website, I thought it was clear that I was looking for a DIFFERENT solution, involving the firmware, with some creative thinking.  This clearly can be done, Apple could do it if they wanted to, I'm sure some enterprising hacker could do it as well. I'll keep looking.

It's not possible.
From OSXDaily Where’s the Startup Boot Sound on New iMac & MacBook Pro?

One theory promoted online and originating from some web forums was
that you could re-enable the Mac startup chime sound effect by turning
to the command line. The claim was that by launching Terminal app and
entering the following command syntax:
sudo nvram BootAudio=%01

And another variation which you see online are the two:
Disable the startup chime:
sudo nvram BootAudio=%00

Enable the startup chime:
sudo nvram BootAudio=%0

Supposedly, after executing that properly, the startup chime would be
enabled on the Mac again.
But it turns out that nobody bothered to actually test this out,
because it does not work.


How to have my MacBook Pro safely hibernate when out of juice? My all new MacBook Pro was on the battery, and warned me that the battery was almost finished. I left the Mac take care of himself. Later, I plugged the Mac and I pressed the button Power. Hearing the startup sound made me frosty. The Mac had shut down !

When my venerable old MacBook Pro runs out of battery, he goes safely into hibernation, and, when later I plug him and press the button Power, I have the white bars advancing on the screen and everything I had comes back to life ! This is very nice. How to have my new MacBook Pro do the same when he runs out of juice ?

On my new MacBook Pro, I have Mavericks.

Newer versions of OS X support restoring state when you log in. This means that any applications that were open when you lost power, shut down the machine or rebooted would open back up to where they were previously.

Using this mechanism, there is no need to write the 'hibernation state' to the disk, which (a) uses a big lump of hard disk space, (b) takes time and (c) is risky - if there's not enough power to complete writing the data, you lose all of the state.

You can use the following Terminal command to configure this if you prefer:

sudo pmset hibernatemode 25

per the help at man pmset:

  hibernatemode = 25 (binary 0001 1001) is only settable via pmset. The
  system will store a copy of memory to persistent storage (the disk),
  and will remove power to memory. The system will restore from disk
  image. If you want "hibernation" - slower sleeps, slower wakes, and
  better battery life, you should use this setting.

...but please heed the following warning in the help (man pmset):

  We do not recommend modifying hibernation settings. Any changes you
  make are not supported. If you choose to do so anyway, we recommend
  using one of these three settings. For your sake and mine, please
  don't use anything other 0, 3, or 25.


Does the iPod with video have a built in FM radio? I have an iPod with video and in the Settings there's an option to show "Radio". However, when I tell it to show, it doesn't show up in the home screen. Does it have a built-in FM radio?

The Radio option probably refers to an accessory that Apple used to sell, the iPod Radio Remote.

Your iPod does not have an FM radio built in; only the 5th and 6th Gen Nanos have that.

For more information about using the iPod Radio Remote, see this Apple KB article.


iTunes Backup - iOS & Settings only - No Apps Is there a way to backup the iPhone such that none of the apps are included? I can always download the apps from the iTunes App Store after the iPhone is restored. I would like to backup all the settings for Mail, Messages, iCloud, and the OS itself .. but I just don't have enough space on my SSD for the App backups in iTunes.

Short Answer
Back up to iCloud and to iTunes. Then, delete the Mobile Applications folder from Windows Explorer/Finder to remove the apps that have been backed up to iTunes.
Long Answer
Make sure you read the Apple support page before you get started, but basically, I would recommend backing up to iCloud, which says that it will automatically back up your camera roll, accounts, documents, and settings. Then, do a full backup to iTunes by clicking Back Up when you plug in your iOS device. and you can remove the folder Mobile Applications on Windows or Mac by navigating to the Users\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Mobile Applications folder (actual folder names may vary based on operating system).
Pictures
Deleting the Mobile Applications Folder

Look at the directory path at the bottom of the picture, too.


Restarting sound service? My macbook pro running Snow Leopard stopped making sounds a couple hours ago. I've found other reports of people with sounds working through headphones, but that's not the problem I'm seeing. I get no sound when my headphones are plugged in either.

I'm wondering if there's a LaunchAgent or LaunchDaemon to restart which would remedy this. I've already tried killing the coreaudio daemon (and it dutifully automatically restarted) but that didn't fix it.

I need to reboot for an OS update, so I think that'll probably rectify things.

Is there another way?

You can kill the CoreAudio process by opening Terminal and running sudo kill -9 `ps ax|grep 'coreaudio[a-z]' | awk '{print $1}'`. It will restart automatically after a couple seconds.

That fixes some problems my aging MBP has been having, where it sometimes fails to detect headphones or decides the speakers aren't connected. No guarantees it will work for every audio problem, but it's worth a shot.

Source: zakgreant on macosxhints forums.


How to force the opening of UNetBootin? I'm trying to install UNetBootin for a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2012). However, I got this message when I tried to open it. Could anyone be able to tell me what I can do to force its opening?

Try right clicking on it in Finder and then clicking "Open".


Which iOS emojis are currently available across most (all?) modern platforms? I used the "rolling eyes" emoji available in my iOS keyboard in a social media post, but was dismayed to find that it isn't available on my Chrome on windows 7 computer. While I could install fonts/extensions/etc to "fix" the problem on my computer's end, I actually want all my social media audience (such as it is) to enjoy all of my posts.

Is there a list or resource that shows which iOS emoji's are available broadly on windows 7+ and osx with IE, Chrome, and Firefox, and on iOS 5+ and Android 4+?

If not, can we make one here in a single wiki style answer?

You can see a full comparison of most current platforms at https://emojipedia.org
but only as far back as Windows 8.0

For Windows 7: http://classic.getemoji.com


The server quit without updating PID file (/usr/local/var/mysql/NAME.pid) I have installed mysql via brew. First start works, but after reboot, I got the following error:

The server quit without updating PID file (/usr/local/var/mysql/NAME.pid)

I start mysql with

sudo mysql.server restart

If I try to create a pid file on my own via terminal it will created, but after a few seconds it disappear.

sudo touch /usr/local/var/mysql/NAME.pid

Have anyone a idea?

YES.

Following homebrew caveats, did you setup launchd?

To have launchd start mysql at login:
    ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/mysql/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
Then to load mysql now:
    launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist

Well, now using mysql.server is pointless. It basically doesn't work, because (from my poor understanding) mysqld is now managed by launchd, and it is mysqld_safe. I don't know if actually because of that is different from what you control with mysql.server.

The solution I came up with is to not use launchd for mysql from brew.
Rather, I just use the  mysql.server tool to start, stop, and restart mysql.

If you want to follow my steps, this is what you need to do:

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist

And whenever you want to start the mysql server, use mysql.server start.

If you actually want to make mysql start at boot time, you can take that plist and copy it, delete the KeepAlice line, replace the string values under ProgramArguments with /usr/local/bin/mysql.server and start. After that do
launchctl load ~/path/to/com.file.plist


Gmail MSGS sent as text MSGS I’m receiving texts to my phone that are from a gmail email account and not from a phone number.
Any ideas on how to block them or how to move the into the spam folder?
The Gmail email addresses are made up of letters and numbers, or very crude, suggestive names. I didn’t open these creepy texts.

Excerpt from the from article "How to Block and Report Spam Calls and Text Messages" in the New York Times on Aug 15, 2018 See note below

Reporting text messages is a little bit easier: No matter what phone you have, just forward the text message to SPAM (7726). Most carriers participate in a service that will use this information to try and block future spammers.

...

Users of iPhones can report blue-bubble iMessages as spam with the Report Junk link that appears below messages from unknown users.

Note: you may need a subscription to access this article.


Running Ubuntu on MacBook Pro 2015 — run natively (dual boot) or run in virtual machine for longer battery life? I currently use Ubuntu in a virtual machine, using VirtualBox software on my host operating system, OS X, on my MacBook Pro 2015.

However, the battery life drains quickly when Ubuntu is used continuously. The battery life only lasts about four hours at the best. If I do not run Ubuntu, the battery life would be about seven hours.

Will the battery life be longer if I run Ubuntu natively (dual boot), or if I run Ubuntu in a virtual machine, with VirtualBox software?

Booting Ubuntu on a dual boot partition has a similar battery life to OS X, perhaps slightly shorter, due to less efficient optimization for the MacBook Pro's hardware.

In a virtual machine, despite lots of "clever" optimizations and CPU hardware virtualization features, there are two complete operating systems, with two kernels, and two display managers* running. There is no way around the fact that these require significantly more processing power, thus, sucking up more battery life.

If you want longer battery life in Ubuntu, try disabling the eye candy. (This, of course, is assuming the virtual machine is not running headless.)


YouTube Displaying Homepage Incorrectly My girlfriend's iPad Mini has started displaying the videos on the YouTube app home screen incorrectly.
Previously the videos on the homescreen would display in rows, however now, despite the orientation of the device, the video displays at full width. It is almost like the app thinks it is on a phone rather than a tablet.

Is there any way to restore the rows of videos? I checked the settings and couldn't see anything.
Any ideas?

They updated the app. I wrote 5 feedbacks to tell them that it looks stupid on an iPad. Do I have to scroll 2000 times to see my videos. Please write them 1000 feedback so that they revert to the old home page.


After Mavericks 10.9.2 Update, problems running Keepass/Mono I have a rMBP 13" late 2013 model and just updated Mavericks today to 10.9.2 (Software  OS X 10.9.2 (13C64))

I have been using the OSX package of keepass from here (Openix) without any issues before updating.

After updating, if I try to open keepass, the laptop hangs (i get the beachball of doom) and the mono process uses upwards of 98% of the cpu untill I kill it.

I have the mono runtime (version 3.2.7) and XQuartz 2.7.5 (xorg-server 1.14.4), installed. I am not very knowledgable as to how to troubleshoot to see if there is mono or x11 issue, I just installed them to be able to use keepass on my macbook.

IS there anyone else experiencing this same issue?

What steps could I take to begin troubleshooting this?

A useful troubleshooting tool for any OS X application is opensnoop which lets you see file activity on your system. If you run sudo opensnoop -v | grep mono-sgen before launching KeePass you'll be able to watch which files it is opening as it launches.

I ran this to troubleshoot another question about KeePass problems and on my system the first launch of KeePass generates a lot of activity where Mono is opening and caching the fonts on the system in ~/.cache/fontconfig. While it is doing this the application appears to be doing nothing, as the UI doesn't appear until this task is complete which takes minutes on my system. Luckily it only seems to want to do this once, as subsequent starts are about what I'd expect.

And this is only guesswork but upgrading Mono, XQuartz or KeePass or installing other fonts might prompt Mono to regenerate this cache, resulting in another one off slow application launch. Just something to be aware of.


osx hosts file not working my hosts file looks like this

it should open facebook if you try to open google

173.252.110.27 google.com
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1       localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
::1             localhost
fe80::1%lo0     localhost

also after I added that first line I did:

dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

on a OSX 10.8.5 but it doesn't changes anything.

I searched for a while and found different things none helped me.

On this link: Hosts file in OSX Lion not blocking as expected there is a good answer but I don't know how to check which file format I have.

So the question is:
- is there something wrong with my hosts file?
- how do I check which file format I've got

Thank you!

The hosts file does not support wildcards, so you have to map each domain and subdomain,
which means, you need to add

173.252.110.27   www.google.com

as well. If you are redirect to a local version of google, eg like www.google.fr, you need to add that as well.

You can edit the host file easily from a terminal window without changing the file format to RichText or similar by running the following command:

$ sudo nano /private/etc/hosts

You need to enter your password. Afterwards, add your changes at the end of the file, not the beginning.

At the end, flush you DNS cache or reboot your mac.


What files do I edit to be able to maximize Finder windows to fill the screen by shift-clicking the green button? Is there a group of files or a single file I can edit to facilitate maximizing "Finder" windows to fill the entire screen just as other application windows by shift-clicking the green plus button?

Try to use an application like Slate, Amethyst, ShiftIt, or Spectacle instead.

If you use Slate, for example adding

bind m:alt move screenOriginX;screenOriginY screenSizeX;screenSizeY

to ~/.slate makes option-m maximize a window.


Copy Time Machine backup with rsync Is it possible to copy a Time Machine backup using rsync to another HFS formatted disk?  I am concerned that rsync would not be able to track the hard-linked directories that Time Machine uses.

The rsync command is very powerful and versatile, and it can preserve the Hard Links and other crucial information of the Time Machine backup. As from this post (https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-apple-osx-bsd-rsync-copy-hard-links/), you could do:
rsync -azH /path/to/source /path/to/dest/
The flags stand for:
-a: archive mode (copy direcotries, preserve permisions, groups and ownerships, modification times..)
-z: compress while transfering to accelerate the copying process
-H: preserve Hard Links (crucial for Time Machine backups)
You could also add -v (for verbose) to visually follow the progress of your backup.
(I don't know if Time Machine uses numeric group and user IDs, in which case you could add the --numeric-ids flag).
BTW, you may also want to update your rsync through Homebrew (v. 3.x.x), since the one that ships with Catalina is 2.9.6.
I would also add an alias to my backup script in my .zshrc file with two purposes: 1. make it easier to run without having to type everyithing again every time I want to backup, 2. make it less prone to destructive human error (such as inverting the path to source and the path to destination).


How do I instantly lock my computer when screen saver delay is on? I have my security preferences set up to delay for 15 minutes after screen saver turns on and then ask for a password.  (I use two computers and don't always notice right away when the screensaver turns on on my mac.)

However, when I walk away from my mac, I would like to be able to hit a keyboard shortcut or use hot corners to require a password right away.

I've tried using ctrl-shift-power, but that simply turns the screen off while not requiring the password. Hot corners would be ideal if that's possible.

Is there a way to do this?

If you set your screen saver to require a password when exiting and then set one of the screen corners to turn the screen saver on, there you go instant turn my screen saver on gesture.

Unfortunately MacOS does not have a universal keystroke to lock the computer like Windows does.

If you have Mojave you can, the shortcut is there in the Apple menu:  ⌃ ⌘ Q


fsck and Disk Utility won't repair Volume: invalid b-tree node size I accidentally wrote some .iso data to a disk through dd by mistake. I cancelled the command after just 2 seconds but that was enough to wipe the first EFI partition (200MB) and a bit of the second partition where OS X and some files I do really like are stored.

The ISO image I accidentally wrote with dd was 600mb in size so the total damage would be a maximum of 400 MB since I dd from sector 0 until I hit Ctrl + C and EFI partition was gone.

I tried running fsck -fy on that partition but it's a no-go.

sudo fsck_hfs -fy /dev/disk2s2
** /dev/rdisk2s2
Using cacheBlockSize=32K cacheTotalBlock=32768 cacheSize=1048576K.
Executing fsck_hfs (version diskdev_cmds-557~393).
** Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Invalid B-tree node size

I don't know much about HFS+ but on any EXT Linux partition I could pretty much recover everything that wasn't wiped by dd, even if overwritten. Here however I don't know where to start. There are some fancy GUI tools but they probably won't do anything else then fsck does.

It can't be that the whole partition is gone because 400 MB (if the whole ISO would be written - but that wasn't the case) out of 400 GB was overwritten with data by accident. Partition table seems to be alright - gdisk on Linux says it's OK and Disk Utility on Mac as well.

Volume was journaled (seems to be a problem for HFS+ utilities on Linux)

Any tips how to rescue my files?

Download Testdisk. You would have to run it from an external disk. It’s a command line tool. It will diagnose problems with your partition table or filesystem and repair them. It’s very verbose so you won’t need any readmes. First recover your OS X partition and then your EFI partition. Comment back if you need any help using Testdisk.


When can I recycle my Macbook Air (mid-2013)? I was interested in recycling my Macbook Air Intel Core i7 1.7 GHz 13" (mid-2013), however, when I went to get started on the recycling program, this model was not listed. I was just wondering when it would be available to be recycled or if I was doing something wrong or missed something.

The Frequently asked questions about the Apple Reuse and Recycling Program page says (emphasis mine):

Which products qualify for the Apple Recycling Program?
Any Mac or PC desktop or notebook computer may qualify for reuse. Any Apple-branded product can be recycled for free.

We can infer that it's at Apple's discretion to provide free recycling for specific Apple hardware (or non Apple hardware). There is no fixed time line for product ranges to be eligible for recycling through Apple.
Since the MacBook Air Mid 2013 is not listed in the list of MacBook Air models that can be recycled through Apple (the latest at this point being the Mid 2012 model), your choices now are to sell it to someone else (since it's a recent machine and has a lot of value left) or recycle it for free through Sims Recycling Solutions (which means you get nothing for the Mac, as opposed to the standard process where Apple evaluates the value of the Mac and sends you a gift card if it has any value).

Recycle it for free.
You can still recycle it by calling Sims Recycling Solutions at 800-966-4135
for a free shipping label and packaging instructions.


Why are my sounds lagging on my 13" Macbook Pro? System information: 2.4 GHz Intel Core i5, 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3 memory, running on Yosemite 10.10.3, 2014 Macbook pro retina model

Sound on my computer keeps lagging, but not sound on videos or anything like that. If I get an iMessage to my computer, I'll get the message right away but it will make the sound for it 5 minutes or so later.

Same with emails. The sound is delayed to actually receiving them. I've tried restarting my computer and looking around the web, but I don't think it's my RAM, because I've only had the computer for less than a year.

I would RESET the Notification app:

Open the Library folder in your Home folder. Hold the "alt"key and use GO in Finder that will show you the Library folder

In the Library folder, open the Application Support folder.

Locate the folder named NotificationCenter. Drag this folder to the desktop.

Next, open the Terminal application.
Copy and paste each line of these commands into the Terminal window, in order. Press return after each line:
cd getconf DARWIN_USER_DIR
rm -rf com.apple.notificationcenter
killall usernoted; killall NotificationCenter

Close the Terminal app.

Restart your computer.

WARING: be very careful with the rm-rf part and make 101% sure you copied the correct text.


Change Replace keyboard shortcut in Gedit I'm a Linux user trying to get used to Mac. I've already swapped the Command and Control keys around.

I'm using Gedit in Mac now, and the replace key combination I'm used to (Control-H) is hiding the Window.

I've been using Karabiner to remap keys, and have been trying to figure out private.xml syntax to remap this how I want it to behave.

Here's what I have so far (not working):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <item>
     <name>Change Control-H (Command-H Hide in Mac) to Replace for gEdit (Control-Alt-F)</name>
     <identifier>private.control_h_to_replace</identifier>
     <autogen>__KeyToKey__ KeyCode::H, VK_COMMAND | ModifierFlag::OPTION_L, VK_COMMAND,KeyCode::F</autogen>
  </item>
</root>

I've also tried to remap it using Mac's settings > keyboard > shortcuts.

The Mac keyboard is driving me batty.

Your syntax for Karabiner is off.

This will work. Note that, like @klanomath, I have no idea if you're actually trying to use Command-H or Control-H, so you may need to change COMMAND_L to CONTROL_L on the third line.

        <autogen>
            __KeyToKey__
            KeyCode::H, ModifierFlag::COMMAND_L,
            KeyCode::F, ModifierFlag::CONTROL_L, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L
        </autogen>

It also now occurs to me that in your version, within the code, your replacement command is Command-Option-F as opposed to Control-Option-F as specified in the name. So you might need to adjust CONTROL_L to COMMAND_L on the fourth line.


Disable Rootless on Headless Mac I understand that the way to disable rootless is through the Recovery Partition. However, I have a remote, headless Mac with an attached bootable clone drive that I access via Screen Sharing. Can I either:

a) Boot into the recovery partition using the command line?

or

b) Boot into the clone and change the rootless status of the HD from there?

If csrutil disable doesn't work, you can try to disable it via boot args, e.g.

sudo nvram boot-args="rootless=0"

then reboot


Fusion Drive trouble In trying to resize a bootcamp drive, I managed to get myself in a lot of trouble.  I've successfully managed to get my computer running again, but now I've lost some HD space and I can't resize or remove any of the partitions except for the bootcamp volume.  Any help is very much appreciated.  I am willing to wipe the entire drive and start over with my TM backup, but I can't seem to get the Fusion drive to even allow reformat while in Recovery Mode.

iMac:~ hellman$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Mac HD                  121.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Mac HD                  2.1 TB     disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP                99.0 GB    disk1s4
   5:          Apple_CoreStorage                         402.0 GB   disk1s5
   6:                 Apple_Boot                         134.2 MB   disk1s6
   7:                  Apple_HFS Hell Baby               398.8 GB   disk1s7
   8:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s8

/dev/disk2 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +2.2 TB     disk2
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2, disk1s2
                                 B7F7A5D5-EF16-4221-9630-CF4C93618955
                                 Unencrypted Fusion Drive

iMac:~ hellman$ diskutil cs list
CoreStorage logical volume groups (1 found)
|
+-- Logical Volume Group D1C81059-65FF-4528-B862-9C93152602EC
    =========================================================
    Name:         Mac HD
    Status:       Online
    Size:         2219635531776 B (2.2 TB)
    Free Space:   16384 B (16.4 KB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume 82570857-4FBF-4E5F-ACEA-043B49F9317A
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    0
    |   Disk:     disk0s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     120988852224 B (121.0 GB)
    |
    +-< Physical Volume BE84AD9C-B121-4900-827B-F882607AEFF2
    |   ----------------------------------------------------
    |   Index:    1
    |   Disk:     disk1s2
    |   Status:   Online
    |   Size:     2098646679552 B (2.1 TB)
    |
    +-> Logical Volume Family CA8476E4-5B44-48C4-BC88-10B68F99FC04
        ----------------------------------------------------------
        Encryption Type:         None
        |
        +-> Logical Volume B7F7A5D5-EF16-4221-9630-CF4C93618955
            ---------------------------------------------------
            Disk:                  disk2
            Status:                Online
            Size (Total):          2213780258816 B (2.2 TB)
            Revertible:            No
            LV Name:               Macintosh HD
            Volume Name:           Macintosh HD
            Content Hint:          Apple_HFS
            LVG Type:              Fusion, Sparse

Solved: I used an Apple support link that gave me keystrokes in diskutil to re-map the Fusion Drive in Terminal.  I was able to reclaim all disk space and I'm reinstalling from my Time Machine back up now:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207584


Notifications for completed Time Machine backups? Is there a way to enable notifications for completed Time Machine backups?

With TMNotifier you can send yourself an email when a backup is completed. It also notifies you when a Time Machine error occurs.
The only disadvantage: TMNotifier is not free.
However, there is a free version, but you can only do limited things there... But the small price that has to be paid, it's worth it!


Restore From Time Machine Backup With Incomplete Backup as the Last one I am using macOS Mojave 10.14.6.  I had performed a complete backup on 6th Dec.  My machine was then formatted and the OS re-installed.  Subsequently, a backup took place before I could restore my files.  It also stopped midway. It is
2020-12-09-073227.inProgress
But the latest backup as indicated by the Latest folder is also taken on Dec. 6th. Will the Migration Assistant ignore 2020-12-09-073227.inProgress and restore from the latest backup?

Yes, inProgress backups are ignored by Migration Assistant in my experience. Migration Assistant usually lets you choose which backup you would like to restore. In progress backups don't show in Time Machine when browsing the backup history until they are completed, so they also don't show in the list of backups to restore in Migration Assistant.


How do I recover from asr typo? I was converting the recovery partition from Apple_HFS to Apple_Boot as per instructions here. It was successful. As an experiment though, I tried an intentional typo to see if it would reflect on diskutil list. It didn't, and the record is messed up.

As I'm not aware what exactly asr adjust does, I'm asking here first. What exactly does the command do, and how can I recover from such a typo?

Annotated terminal session:

########### Convert successful, reflected on diskutil ###########
test-session:~ pnda$ sudo asr adjust --target /dev/disk0s3 -settype "Apple_Boot"
Password:
Fsck /dev/disk0s3 ....10....20....30....40....50....60....70....80....90....100
Adjust completed successfully

########### intentional typo here ###########
test-session:~ pnda$ sudo asr adjust --target /dev/disk0s3 -settype "Apple_Boo"
Fsck /dev/disk0s3 ....10....20....30....40....50....60....70....80....90....100
Adjust completed successfully

########### oh sh*t ###########
test-session:~ pnda$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:         Microsoft Reserved                         16.8 MB    disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            40.9 GB    disk0s2
   3: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF               650.1 MB   disk0s3
   4:           Linux Filesystem                         18.5 GB    disk0s4
   5:           Linux Filesystem                         261.1 MB   disk0s5
   6:           Windows Recovery                         523.2 MB   disk0s6
   7:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk0s7
   8:       Microsoft Basic Data                         59.1 GB    disk0s8

########### mission abort ###########
test-session:~ pnda$ sudo asr adjust --target /dev/disk0s3 -settype "Apple_Boot"
asr: Volume adjustment failed: Invalid argument
test-session:~ pnda$ sudo asr adjust --target /dev/disk0s3 -settype "Apple_HFS"
asr: Volume adjustment failed: Invalid argument

.....

You can use gdisk to edit the type of partition in the GUID partition table. It's installed with homebrew:

brew install gptfdisk

l will list out the types of partitions, then you can use t to change the partition type to the one you want, then write it to disk with w

sudo gdisk /dev/disk3
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.4

Warning: Devices opened with shared lock will not have their
partition table automatically reloaded!
Partition table scan:
  MBR: protective
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.

Command (? for help): ?
b   back up GPT data to a file
c   change a partition's name
d   delete a partition
i   show detailed information on a partition
l   list known partition types
n   add a new partition
o   create a new empty GUID partition table (GPT)
p   print the partition table
q   quit without saving changes
r   recovery and transformation options (experts only)
s   sort partitions
t   change a partition's type code
v   verify disk
w   write table to disk and exit
x   extra functionality (experts only)
?   print this menu

Command (? for help): l
Type search string, or <Enter> to show all codes:
0700 Microsoft basic data  0c01 Microsoft reserved    2700 Windows RE
3000 ONIE boot             3001 ONIE config           3900 Plan 9
4100 PowerPC PReP boot     4200 Windows LDM data      4201 Windows LDM metadata
4202 Windows Storage Spac  7501 IBM GPFS              7f00 ChromeOS kernel
7f01 ChromeOS root         7f02 ChromeOS reserved     8200 Linux swap
8300 Linux filesystem      8301 Linux reserved        8302 Linux /home
8303 Linux x86 root (/)    8304 Linux x86-64 root (/  8305 Linux ARM64 root (/)
8306 Linux /srv            8307 Linux ARM32 root (/)  8308 Linux dm-crypt
8309 Linux LUKS            8400 Intel Rapid Start     8e00 Linux LVM
a000 Android bootloader    a001 Android bootloader 2  a002 Android boot 1
a003 Android recovery 1    a004 Android misc          a005 Android metadata
a006 Android system 1      a007 Android cache         a008 Android data
a009 Android persistent    a00a Android factory       a00b Android fastboot/ter
a00c Android OEM           a00d Android vendor        a00e Android config
a00f Android factory (alt  a010 Android meta          a011 Android EXT
a012 Android SBL1          a013 Android SBL2          a014 Android SBL3
a015 Android APPSBL        a016 Android QSEE/tz       a017 Android QHEE/hyp
a018 Android RPM           a019 Android WDOG debug/s  a01a Android DDR
a01b Android CDT           a01c Android RAM dump      a01d Android SEC
a01e Android PMIC          a01f Android misc 1        a020 Android misc 2
a021 Android device info   a022 Android APDP          a023 Android MSADP
Press the <Enter> key to see more codes:


How to find the location of an icon file on OS X? I am trying to find where the icon file is located for certificates on OS X. This is a picture of what I'm looking for:

Do you know where OS X stores the icon for this file?

I couldn't find that exact icon because I wasn't able to produce such a certificate file. If you can tell me where to find such a file, I might have better luck.

I was, however able to find a similar image. It's located at /System/Library/Frameworks/SecurityInterface.framework/Versions/A/Resources/CertLargeStd.png (at least for Mac OS 10.8.2) and it looks like this:

(CertLargeStd@2x.png is the one used on Retina screens.)

This is the image shown when you view a certificate in Keychain Access or Safari:

To find this image, I opened up the Safari panel above. I examined Safari's open files via Activity Monitor, and the image in question was there.


Why does my external harddrive not work when attached to this USB3 Hub? I own a Macbook Pro 15" Mid 2015 which supports USB 3.0 and bought a Western Digital 2TB external USB3 harddrive and a USB 3.0 Hub from Anker with external power supply.

When I plug-in the harddrive directly to the Macbook everything is fine.

When I plug-in an Apple Thunderbolt display to the Macbook's Thunderbolt2 port and then plug-in the harddrive to the USB2.0 port of the display, it works too but it's very slow due to USB2.0 limitation.

So I bought the Anker USB hub and thought it would be alright as long as it has an external power supply. But when I plug-in the hub to the USB3 port of the Macbook and then attach the harddrive to the hub it doesn't work. The drive gets mounted and unmounted automatically in OSX all the time.

Basically like this:

Macbook USB3 ------  USB3 Harddrive                                  OK!
Macbook TB2  ------   Display USB2   ------ USB3 Harddrive           OK!
Macbook USB3 ------     Hub USB3     ------ USB3 Harddrive      Not working :-(

What's going on?

I finally found the solution. After contacting Anker as well as WD I found out that both, the Hub as well as the harddisk were fine. The cause for the problem was a low quality usb extension cable that was attached to my Macbook. After removing that and directly attaching the hub to the Macbook, everything works fine.


How do OS X terminal sessions persist through reboots? Being an avid Linux user prior to buying a MacBook Pro, I typically have several terminal tabs open at any one time.

In the past, crashes and reboots would generally trash my workflow, and the majority of my respective tab histories. I searched for ways to solve this problem but always came up empty; aside from various techniques that utilised combinations of tools like ssh, screen, tmux, and required a virtual private server (or similar).

One of my favourite things about using my MacBook Pro for writing scripts, and using CLI tools, etc; is that my terminal sessions persist beyond crashes and reboots by default. In fact, I just restored a backup from almost 2 years ago, and when I logged in for the first time, I was presented with my old desktop and three bash shells that comprised a project that I was working on all that time ago.

I would like to know how OS X makes this feature possible. Does anybody here have insight into how it works?

The code to restore Terminal (actually bash sessions) is part of /etc/bashrc_Apple_Terminal which gets sourced through /etc/profile and /etc/bashrc for each bash session running in Terminal.

# Resume Support: Save/Restore Shell State
#
# Terminal assigns each terminal session a unique identifier and
# communicates it via the TERM_SESSION_ID environment variable so that
# programs running in a terminal can save/restore application-specific
# state when quitting and restarting Terminal with Resume enabled.
#
# The following code defines a shell save/restore mechanism. Users can
# add custom state by defining a shell_session_save_user_state function
# that writes restoration commands to the session file at exit. e.g.,
# to save a variable:
#
#   shell_session_save_user_state() { echo MY_VAR="'$MY_VAR'" >> "$SHELL_SESSION_FILE"; }
#
# During shell startup the session file is executed. Old files are
# periodically deleted.
#
# The default behavior arranges to save and restore the bash command
# history independently for each restored terminal session. It also
# merges commands into the global history for new sessions. Because
# of this it is recommended that you set HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE to
# larger values.
#
# You may disable this behavior and share a single history by setting
# SHELL_SESSION_HISTORY to 0. There are some common user customizations
# that arrange to share new commands among running shells by
# manipulating the history at each prompt, and they typically include
# 'shopt -s histappend'; therefore, if the histappend shell option is
# enabled, per-session history is disabled by default. You may
# explicitly enable it by setting SHELL_SESSION_HISTORY to 1.
#
# The implementation of per-session command histories in combination
# with a shared global command history is incompatible with the
# HISTTIMEFORMAT variable--the timestamps are applied inconsistently
# to different parts of the history; therefore, if HISTTIMEFORMAT is
# defined, per-session history is disabled by default.
#
# Note that this uses PROMPT_COMMAND to enable per-session history
# the first time for each new session. If you customize PROMPT_COMMAND
# be sure to include the previous value. e.g.,
#
#   PROMPT_COMMAND="${PROMPT_COMMAND:+$PROMPT_COMMAND; }your_code_here"
#
# Otherwise, the per-session history won't take effect until the first
# restore.
#
# The save/restore mechanism is disabled if the following file exists:
#
#   ~/.bash_sessions_disable


How can I enable Mountain Lion Spellcheck in Google Chrome? Chrome's spellcheck has become cumbersome as of the new auto-correct spell check in Mountain Lion. I love that I don't have to go to the mouse and use a context menu for spell-checking---EXCEPT IN CHROME.

Is there any way to replace Chrome's spellcheck with Mountain Lion's?

Spell check is a system service so by using the standard Mac control for a text box, chrome would magically get to use the service.

Since chrome isn't programmed to use the standard control (they wrote their own implementation) - you would need to either get the chrome devs to change the code or you would need to change it yourself and re-compile your version of Chrome. Both are likely to involve a serious amount of engineering since the code base is quite complex.


iCloud shared calendars won't stay in view only I'm trying to share a calendar with my partner, and she is attempting to do likewise with me.

The first issue is that when sharing a calendar you do not get to select a permissions level, which has to be amended after it has been shared from the default or read/write to view only.  There's no fix for this that I know of, it's just annoying and worth a feature request.

The second issue which is more annoying is that the permissions level for either calendar is reverting back to read/write no matter how many times I ask it to use view only.

I've attempted to change from iPhone/iMac and Web, and the same issue each time.

I've removed sharing access full stop and then re-shared the calendars, no luck.

I do have a shared calendar with someone else that has stayed in view only, but that was shared ages ago so I don't know what I might have done differently then.

Any clues what to do to fix this?

The only way I managed to change the permissions was via icloud.com. OS/X and iOS did nothing.


Prevent someone else from using my iCloud account? I am using an Apple iCloud account that was created for me by a friend. I have a suspicion that my friend is now accessing my photos and videos through this account.

When we created the account, we used his email address for the account's rescue email address. According to Apple:

  Rescue Email Address

  Give us a rescue email address where we can send you a link to confirm
  your identity and let you reset your information should any security
  issues arise. This address is only for communicating information about
  your security details. We won’t send any other types of messages to
  this address.

I have changed my password many times but I believe, because of the above, he can still access the account through the rescue email address we used when we created the account.

Can you please tell me, if I changed my password, can he can find the password out using the rescue email address or not?

To summarize what you should do in one single answer:

Change the rescue email associated with the account. You can do this by going to https://appleid.apple.com/ and clicking on Manage My Apple ID, logging in, and then making sure all the email addresses listed in Name, ID and Email Addresses section of your account are email addresses that only you have the passwords to access. In particular, the Primary Email Address associated with the account should be an email address that you and you alone control.

Under the Password and Security section in the Manage My Apple ID site, change your password. Do this after you change the email addresses on the account so you don't accidentally lock yourself out.

While you're in there, you should make sure your mailing addresses and phone number are also assigned to identities that belong to you and you alone.


AirPods Pro: clogged ears (Airplane Ear or Eardrum Suck effect) with noise cancellation turned on I have recently bought a pair of AirPods Pro and noticed a strange effect. It is difficult to explain, but it feels like a bit softer clogged ears (Airplane Ear) effect. The same like in the airplane or mountains when you move fast up or down. You naturally want to swallow in order to unclog ears and it helps for some time, but then the effect repeats. In transparency mode or with noise cancellation turned off everything feels normally, like generic in-ear headphones.

It is easier to notice this effect when sitting in the almost silent room with AirPods Pro turned on, but without music.

So the question is does anyone also experience the same? Maybe it is a common effect for in-ear headphones with noise cancellation and other brands are affected too? Or should I bring them to service?

The effect you are describing is commonly referred to as "eardrum suck". It's a common complaint for any type of noise-cancelling earphones.
Only some people are sensitive to it, and the stronger the noise-cancellation, the more likely it will bother you. Headphones seem more likely to cause it than earbuds.
According to Brent Butterworth, a headphone reviewer, it's an aural illusion caused by the nature of noise cancelling circuitry (there is no pressure on your eardrum, it just feels that way). It's a little difficult to explain succinctly, but this article goes into all the details: https://www.soundstagesolo.com/index.php/features/178-eardrum-suck-the-mystery-solved


What is the best version of iOS to use on an iPhone 3G? my girlfriend is currently using an iPhone 3G (iOS version 3.1.3 - 7E18) and I've noticed it can be very sluggish. She doesn't use it for much more than the usual messaging/safari/mail. Compared to my 3GS it is pretty terrible.

I used to have a 3G (still do in fact, and it runs much smoother/faster).

So my question is, what is the best version of iOS to run on an iPhone 3G?

I'm going to downgrade (if necessary, which I think might require jailbreak which I'm not thrilled about) or try a restore and see if that fixes it, but I'm not sure if it's even possible to restore her phone but keep it running 3.1.3.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

iOS is always being optimized, and Apple's OS's are known for running faster than previous versions, even on older hardware. iOS 4.0 was bad on the 3G, but 4.1 is much better.

As a rule of thumb, you're always best running the latest version of iOS, unless you're a jailbreaker and/or unlocker, in which case you should run the latest exploitable version of iOS and the baseband.


Run Python Script on computer boot How can I create a python script that runs when the computer boots? I know to get it to run on login I can turn it into an app and add it to a as a startup item in settings, but I need it to run once the computer boots.

How can I make a python script run when the computer is turned on?

I am running MacOS High Sierra 10.13.1 and Python 2.7.10

Use a plist like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>com.username.scriptname</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/usr/bin/python</string>
    <string>/path/to/script.py</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
  <string>/tmp/com.username.scriptname.err</string>
  <key>StandardOutPath</key>
  <string>/tmp/com.username.scriptname.out</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Just make sure you replace the /path/to/script.py accordingly and then save it to your desktop. Then open up terminal and type sudo chown root:wheel /path/to/plistfile it will prompt for password type it in in and when you are typing it it won't give you any visual feedback then press enter. Then type sudo chmod 644 /path/to/.plistfile. Then just sudo mv ... the plist file in /Library/LaunchDaemons/ or /Library/LaunchAgents/ and finally sudo launchctl load ... the plist and your script will run.

And if you have any problem comment below and also tell me the OS your Mac is running.


Software Update Permissions error This is a really weird one. Anytime I try to update any OSX items via System Update I get a bizarre permissions error.

The screenshots tell the story...

Here is my attempt to run the update:

Here is my console log when I run the update:

Lastly here are my permissions on the folder that is being denied from the console log:

The background info about this system is that it is a work computer that was originally set up for another user. He was set up as the admin, then I was given this machine. His account was deleted and mine was given admin privileges.

Anyone seen anything like this?

I've seen errors like this after an Apply to enclosed items was done to the Macintosh HD.

/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxfn_n00000s0000068 shouldn't be owned by your user account, but by _softwareupdate (UID=200). I see errors about …n00000sb400002s (_spotlight=89) and …n00000sm00006d (_locationd=205) as well, which isn't a good sign.

You could just reset /var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxfn_n00000s0000068 permissions to 200:200 with a chown -R (sudo chown -R 200:200 /var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n00000s0000068). /var/folders itself should be owned by root.

Since you've removed it, you could recreate (might have to recreate the 0,T and C subfolders too…) it and set its ownership as above. You could do that now, and it might let software updates download, maybe even install. It also might not.

You could remove /var/folders, but I've seen a system that didn't like that. If the permissions on it are mangled and you'd like to try without it, I recommend renaming it in single user mode first.


Lock fullscreen app positions Is it possible (natively, or with a 3rd party tool), to lock the position of fullscreen apps in Lion?

My problem is... whenever I click on a fullscreen app in the dock, it takes me to that app, but it jumps to the front of the queue of fullscreen apps.

I would very-much like these apps to be locked in-place, so their positions can't be changed.

Is it possible? Thanks!

There is actually a quite easy fix to this:

Launch System Preferences.
Select "Mission Control."
Uncheck "Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use."


Transfer IPA file to iPhone I'm using Cydia Impactor and wish to copy an IPA file from my PC to iPhone 5 running iOS 10.3.3.

How do I do that?

Plug your iPhone into your PC
Open Cydia Impactor
Drag the .ipa file onto Cydia Impactor
When prompted, enter your Apple-ID email address and password


MacBook unable to visit websites while connected to Wifi A month ago I made a wrong manipulation in the Network settings of my computer and since then I cannot browse any websites nor use the Mail app when I connect to my office’s WiFi or at the local café. There, I need to connect to my phone’s 4G in order to browse and check my emails normally, which obviously consumes a lot of data. Another way to be able connect there is to use a VPN. But without the VPN activated, I'm unable to connect.
When I am at home, it connects normally. So there is somewhere some incompatibility with other networks. Is it a DNS or proxy problem ? How can I solve this ?
Please help !

Mine does that too. Sometimes (depending on the brand of device you have) it can block unstable or WiFi networks.


Has anyone tried to use a VGA monitor to the latest mac mini? I recently purchased the latest mac mini (with an included HDMI to DVI-D connector). My monitor is VGA so I want to still utilize it. The problem is, Apple does not sell DVI-D to VGA adapter.

I'm looking at buying one on ebay. Is that the right adapter to use? Has anyone tried connecting the latest mac mini to a VGA monitor?

Why use DVI-D as an interface? Your machine already has an HDMI and Thunderbolt port, and Apple recommends using a VGA adapter on the Thunderbolt port for that. See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4806?viewlocale=en_GB .


Do I need to be concerned with timezones when creating events in my iCloud calendar? I live in California, and I need to enter over 20 events onto my calendar. These events are taking place on the east coast of the United States, which is where I will be during the events. How do I enter these events on my iPhone (to my iCloud calendar) so that the events list the correct times?

If I create an event beginning at 8pm and ending at 10pm for example, I do not want the event time to be shifted by three hours (going from PDT to EDT) when I travel. Since I am managing about 20 events on the calendar, it would be a hugely unpleasant task to update all of the events by hand.

For this example event going from 8pm to 10pm, do I:

enter the event on my calendar as 8pm-10pm while in California
enter the event on my calendar as 5pm-7pm (which would be the local time in California of an event 8pm-10pm on the east coast using daylight saving time)
locate or change a setting on my iPhone that makes calendar events disregard timezones
do something else?

If you have a number of events you want to enter and you have their times in another zone, it's very handy to use Calendar's time zone support.

First, go to Calendar->Preferences, and click Turn on time zone support.

This will enable a dropdown in the titlebar of your Calendar window:

You can then use this menu to change the display of everything in your calendar to a new time zone.  Pull it down and select Eastern time (or whatever other time zone or city your event is in), and Calendar will convert all your times to that zone.

At this point, you can start entering events, using the times listed in the program for the event.  You will also see a new detail in the event detail popup:

This shows what time zone the event is in.

Once you've entered all the events, turn the time zone back.  That will display all your events in your own time zone.  If you are syncing with your phone (which knows what time zone it is in) all the events will remind you at the right time.


How do I add a directory to PATH when using `zsh` in Sierra In macOS Sierra 10.12.x, what is the modern way to add a directory to the PATH environment variable that can work across shells or specifically work with zsh shell (I switched from the default bash to zsh).

I have seen some Questions and Answers such as this one that are bash-specific. And I have seen some such as this one about launchd but it seems I've read launchd is not the right right in later versions of macOS (not sure). I could find no specific references for Sierra, so I am posting now.

I am trying to install Maven with instructions saying:

  Add the bin directory of the created directory apache-maven-3.3.9 to the PATH environment variable

export

To change the path within your shell session, not system-wide, you can use the bash-style export command with zsh, as documented here.

The name of the PATH variable is case-sensitive and must be all-uppercase.

export PATH=$PATH:/folder/you/want

To verify your change, run:

echo $PATH

You will see results like this.

  /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/folder/you/want


MacOS Sierra how to reduce priority of iCloud drive sync? I have an older Macbook air and since upgrading to Mac OS Sierra get major performance issues. I see over 1000 threads in activity monitor and am trying to understand if it is due to iCloud drive sync process. CPU intensive tasks can freeze the mac, and operations take longer than expected

It is currently uploading 100,000 files to cloud. How can I reduce the priority of this upload to make sure iCloud drive threads have absolute lowest system priority possible and do not interfere with other processes?

Bonus question - how do I exclude folders from sync?

Bonus question, Exclusion: In MacOS Sierra, you have one option in Apple menu > System Preferences > iCloud > iCloud Drive Options > Desktop & Documents Folders - on or off. It's all or nothing, therefore you should reconsider iCloud for small files, for example I tried it with some .dotfiles and very soon dropped that idea as my CPU time was eaten up.

Same goes for Dropbox (but my experience is 1.5 year old here, so maybe Dropbox is now better-handling small files) Other thing I tried was syncing .zipped files / containers - that was working fine but in after a while I droped that too- what I found best is TimeMachine "set it and forget it" config you can access from the outside.

I know that it's not the answer you are looking for, I can only say from my experience, after few months of cloud syncing I put it on external solution where I sync a local drive and forget about it, QoS takes care of upload priority and file sync isn't my Mac's CPU problem.

Worth remembering: if you start using iCloud, there is no way to delete certain files (which is absurd) - for example you can't delete files Applications leave in your User ~/Library, I know it sounds crazy, but just google for "iCloud delete all preferences" or similar


Will apps fail to download if I'm still on iOS6? I am still running iOS 6 on my iPad.

I have several apps that are failing to download right now (error message is "unable to download update at this time") and I'm wondering if it could be because I am not on the latest OS?

I have done the following troubleshooting:

Reset home network
Reset the iPad
Tried to tap on the app needing updates so that it triggers it to start
Verified that my account works fine
Verified free space (10+ gb)

I'm not sure what other troubleshooting I can do, so I thought I'd see here if my OS version was a potential problem or what else I should look into next.

It turned out to be a network issue.
Even though I had reset my home router, it came down to how far away from the router I was. I guess the iPad couldn't get a stable enough connection to meet the needs of the download (even though the wifi icon on the ipad showed full strength). Moving closer to my wireless router resolved the problem.


Does Parallel still allow booting from a Bootcamp partition with HIgh Sierra? Will I be able to create a Bootcamp partition that I can boot into from Parallels once I've upgraded to High Sierra?

Yes, but there are a few issues. See Known issues with macOS 10.13 High Sierra and Parallels Desktop for Mac:

  Known issues

  Cannot create a new Boot Camp VM.   Fixed in version 13.1.0
  Cannot start an existing Boot Camp VM. Fixed in version 13.1.0
  Cannot install macOS High Sierra to a virtual machine with Apple File System type.  Fixed in version 13.1.0
  Cannot install Kaspersky Internet Security for Mac on macOS 10.13 High Sierra.  No workaround.
  Video artefacts when switching desktop spaces in Full Screen mode.  No workaround.
  A VM installed from Mac Recovery partition cannot upgrade to macOS High Sierra. No workaround.
  Parallels Tools system extensions are blocked in macOS High Sierra VM.  In macOS High Sierra VM open System Preferences > Security &
  Privacy > General > click 'Allow'. See KB 124244
  Cannot deploy Parallels Desktop to Macs with macOS High Sierra (host OS).   See KB 124289


How to view CPU clock rate in GHz or MHz? I am looking to get the new 12″ MacBook and as a result I would like to know the clock speed (in GHz) my current MacBook Air (late 2010) is running at so I know the processor on the MacBook will cope.

At the moment I know my processor running at the lowest frequency is 1.86GHz (as shown in System Information) and when I look in Activity Monitor as suggested here it only shows me the CPU usage and not the current clock speed. I have also looked at this suggestion but again it does not show me my processing frequency.

The reason why I want to find out the current speed my MacBook Air is running at is because Turbo Charge (explained here) can have it's clock run at various speeds from moment to moment. I have also tried Intel's power gadget software as suggested by @grgarside however my Air's CPU is not supported as shown here.

Intel Power Gadget can show the current CPU frequency.


How does the OS X font fallback system work? I'm trying to design a font containing symbols for internal use in our organisation.

I've created a font using this tutorial, and I've assigned a symbol to the unicode position 0xF600. This lies within the 'Private use area', and doesn't appear to have any fonts which are supplying it.

I've created my font and installed it. I've tried with the font in either ~/Library/Fonts or /System/Library/Fonts.

If I insert this character () in TextEdit or any system text box I get either a box or some kind of mark contained within a box. Either way, not my character.

If I manually set the font to my font, the character is displayed.

However, I notice that other characters don't work like this. If I'm using Helvetica, and I insert a Chinese character, the symbol is taken from a different font which can display that glyph. So clearly there's a mechanism to fallback to a font which contains the character.

Are some fonts blessed by the system? How would I get my font to be the fallback?

EDIT: I've tried clearing the font cache with sudo atsutil databases -remove, didn't affect it.

EDIT 2: After poking around a bit and doing some reading, there's a font called LastResort.ttf that is the final fallback for all the unicode characters, there must be a precedence set somewhere in the system, so that that is always last. I wonder where that is...

OS X normally will not display a character in the Private Use Area unless you manually set the font in the app.  I understand this is intentional, since every font could have a different glyph at the same PUA code point, and it only makes sense to display something when the user specifies the font.

I think it should also work when the right font is selected via CSS or other markup in a document being read.

Some earlier versions of OS X did not have this "feature" and did display PUA stuff.  I don't know how they chose which font to use when more than one had something at the code point selected.


Replacing HDD on 2007 17" iMac My iMac's HDD has died so I need to replace it. I don't just want to go like for like, does anyone know what the upper limits of the machine are?

I have a 1TB USB drive plugged in, so I'm assuming the BOIS can cope with up to a TB which is fine. What I'm more interested in is restrictions on the SATA version and buffer size.

I'm not well versed on the mechanics of a HDD, so forgive me if any of this sounds naive. I just want to get the most bang for my buck.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Rich

As seen in Apple Discussions your iMac has the SATA2 controller.

Also there are no limitations from the controller for the cache size of the HDD.

So you may easily go for an 7200 SATA2 16MB/32MB cache

note: The last 17" iMac, was the late 2006 model which I assume thats what you have :)

edit: Even if your iMac is SATA 1, it wont have any compatibility problems. It will just perform as much as it can (1.5Gbps/s)

last edit: If you use this tool you can see successful user upgrades and benchmarks of various hard drives.


Google chrome extension between Mac and PC I'm using Google Chrome both on my macbookpro and my pc.

On my PC which running IDM extension on Google Chrome. But on my Mac i really don't need that.

So my question is: how can i use google chrome on mac without IDM extension? I'd like to keep my bookmark.

Here's a way:

Log in to your Google Account on Chrome (top right)
Choose the sync everything you want (including extensions)
If everything is synched, go to settings (Cmd + ,) and under synchronisation settings uncheck extensions
Remove the IDM extension

Make sure you have synch set up on your PC as well


Is there a way to find the age of a specific Mac? Is there a way to decode the serial-number of your Mac to get more information ?

Few ways found after searching -
1. Mac Tracker
Mactracker provides detailed information on every Apple Macintosh computer ever made, including items such as processor speed, memory, optical drives, graphic cards, supported OS versions, and expansion options. Also included is information on Apple mice, keyboards, displays, printers, scanners, speakers, cameras, iPod, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, Wi-Fi products, Newton, iOS, Mac OS, and OS X versions.
http://www.mactracker.ca/
2.Coconut Battery 2.8
It has this nice feature which shows the age of your mac inside the App -
Calculates the age of your Mac using the coded production date in the serial number of your Mac.
http://www.coconut-flavour.com/coconutbattery/


How to pair Bluetooth mouse with Apple Watch? Can I pair my Bluetooth mouse with Apple Watch? Or, can I get the functionality of a mouse with my Apple Watch?

watchOS wasn't designed to be used with a mouse. As such, it does not include mouse drivers or a mouse cursor, and therefore will not pair with a Bluetooth mouse.


Temporary folder to a setup script I'm creating a bash script which will download, run and remove a bash script.

I'm thinking to use the /tmp

Which temporary folder could I use to it?

The easiest to create a unique temporary folder is to use mktemp:

my_tmpdir=$(mktemp -d)

This will generate a unique name (e.g. /var/folders/8b/mn2vgjs42gs83krfy1fwxwb80000gp/T/tmp.LYnaqveK), create the directory with that path automatically and assign the path to my_tmpdir.

What I usually do within shell scripts or functions is

function do_stuff() {
    local t=$(mktemp -d)
    trap "rm -rf $t" RETURN
    (
        cd $t

        ## do stuff
    )
}

This will run the whole script in a temporary directory, it will also make sure that the directory is removed again afterwards.


Is there a way to find out which app on an iPhone just made a sound? My phone is making two sounds, but not providing any other notifications.  I have no idea what is causing this.  How can I track this down?

I have it paired to an Apple Watch, and have Google Inbox installed (but not Gmail)

You should check your Notifications settings (Settings -> Notifications) and see which apps have "Sounds" turned on. I also recommend restarting your phone.


Is there an iPod app to easily switch wifi on and off? Is there an app whose only purpose would be to change the wifi prefs, by starting or stopping the wifi on iPod Touch? I would like to have an icon on the home page, and a simple click on it will switch the state of the wifi.

Through the App Store? No. Apple's guidelines don't allow apps to turn on or off Wifi.

Jailbroken? Yes. There are program such as SBSettings that will do just what you want to do.


Good Newsgroup Client for OS X I've just switched to OS X and am struggling to find a good, easy to use, and preferably free/cheap newsgroup reader. Does anyone have any good suggestions?

Unison by Panic is quite good. It's fully featured and looks nice but the UI is a bit wonky at times.

https://panic.com/unison/


Is there an app to quickly download and install a list of non-App Store apps? Now that the Mac App Store exists, if an app is available there I prefer to buy it there instead of on the developer's site. This has several advantages, but the one that I've been enjoying recently is the ability to sign into the store on a new or freshly wiped Mac, go through my list of purchases, and click "Install" next to each app I want to reinstall. Leave the computer for a bit, come back, and they're all installed and waiting for me in /Applications.

However, there are a number of non-App Store apps that I like to reinstall as well. Some, like Transmission, would not be allowed in the App Store for rule violations, and others, like VLC, are kept out because of license issues. Is there an app that I can use that acts similarly to the Mac App Store app, but allows me to quickly and easily download and install third-party apps?

There's a service for Windows and Linux called Ninite that seems to do this, but they don't appear to have a Mac version. Another possibility is AppBodega, but it doesn't seem to have the concept of an "account" so I'd have to still remember and hunt through the list of apps in the app.

One solution could be to use Dropbox. Instead of installing your applications to the Applications folder, you can install them to the Dropbox folder instead. The only drawback is that some of the applications data may not be copied over unless you mess around with the settings and folders the data is stored in. However, this may not be an issue with applications that don't have many settings, such as VLC.


Airdrop Directional File Flow I can't seem to transfer a file from my iPhone to my MacBook (running Big Sur 11.2) recently. I have already checked and that both devices have their Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on. Both devices are set in the "everyone" mode for airdrop. I cannot find the device in the airdrop menu on my phone, and it just shows "No People Found". I have handoff and firewall off on my Mac. However, it works when I send a file from my Mac to my iPhone.
I have searched other questions on this site, but those say that there are no response when they click on it instead of "no people found".
Edit: I've also tried to disable airdrop and enabling it again as well.
I rebooted my mac and it works now. I still wonder why it doesn't work though.

If it doesn't happen again, you'll probably never know. That's unfortunately the reality of things.
AirDrop, as much other software today, is based on several very complex subsystems. Bugs happen and it can be difficult or almost impossible to explain them or locate them, unless it is possible to reliably reproduce the problem.
It is very likely that some bug caused some software that AirDrop depends on to be in the wrong state. It could be a driver failure, a bug in the network protocol implementation, or any other bug. When you rebooted the Mac, everything starts over from a valid state - and you won't experience the problem.


Two different apple id 's contacts sync together I have sign out my apple id and deleted my contacts then sign in my friend's apple id and merge his contacts.Then sign out his apple id.But the problem is when i have sign in my own appID,contacts were combined together.now our contacts are synced.i don't understand why this has happened and i don't want him to have my contacts.what should i do now???

You mentioned, "I have sign out my apple id and deleted my contacts then...", if you are sure about that, you don't have to worry about your friend getting your contacts.

After your friend signing in their Apple ID on your phone, you or your friend probably might not select to delete the contacts after signing out from your device. That would be the reason that you can see your friend's contact.

You can easily restore your contacts via iCloud (https://www.icloud.com/#settings).


I can't get messages from my iPhone to my car's audio system - does iPhone support MAP? I recently purchased a new car (a Toyota if that matters), and on the weekend I discovered that I should be able to receive SMS and MMS messages via the car’s audio/navigation unit.

I spent about two hours trying to get this to work with my iPhone 6s, but nothing I tried worked. All other functions seem to work fine. I can play Apple Music, podcasts etc through the unit. I can use voice control through the unit. I can make and receive phone calls through the unit. I can import my address book just fine. What I can’t do is import/receive text messages.

I’ve tried rebooting my iPhone. I’ve tried repairing my iPhone to the car’s audio system multiple times. I’ve tried changing the settings on the car’s system from being the one to initiate the bluetooth connection to letting the phone initiate the connection and vice versa.

Looking over the owners manual again I see that for a smartphone to support the messaging function it has to support the MAP bluetooth profile.

Does the iPhone 6s support the MAP bluetooth profile? If it does, how can I get this to work?

Firstly, all iPhones since the iPhone 5s support the Message Access Profile (MAP). For more information see Bluetooth profiles that iOS supports.

As for how you can get this to work, it seems to me you’ve done a great job of trying to troubleshoot this. However, one thing you probably missed (because it isn’t at all obvious!) is the fact you may need to enable Show Notifications.

To do this:

On your iPhone go into Settings
Tap on Bluetooth
Find the listing for your car’s device and tap on the info icon (it’s the blue circle with an i in it)
Now make sure that Show Notifications is enabled

Once you’ve done that, try again to use the messages function. Please note, however, that many car units won’t import messages already on the phone, so the best way to test this is to have someone send you a text while the phone is connected.


Compress folders with lots of duplicate files I have a hierarchy of folders which contain lots of duplicates files (it's a series of versions of a LaTeX document, and while the evolved a lot, many of the figures are identical in multiple versions).

I tried to compress it with Maverick's native “Compress” right-clink menu item, but it doesn't seem to take advantage of the duplication (it leads to 15% compression, though I have at least 30% duplicated files in size).

So I'd wondering: are there common compression formats which would be good enough to take advantage of duplicated files? What app should I use for compression in that particular case?

I use 7zip to handle this and encodings issue. I use it from macrpots/command line, but there're many GUI versions


Turn off iPhone lock on home wifi Is it possible to / is there an app that can turn off your iPhone lock when the device is connected to your home WiFi?

This is not possible if your iPhone is not jailbroken.

If your iPhone is jailbroken, then there are a couple apps that let you disable the passcode on the lock screen when you are connected to your home (or any trusted) WiFi:

AutoProtect
CleverPin


Paste the current date-time in OmniOutliner While writing in OmniOutliner, I would like to insert the current date or current date-with-time.

Is there such a feature as "Now" in OmniOutliner 5.4.1 for macOS?

From the menu Edit->Insert Time Stamp - and you get a set of options.

Some of those have short cut keys e.g.

On a US keyboard

⌘| for Short date and time
⌘⇧| for Long date and time

Difficult on a UK one as you need shift to get a | so you only get the short date and time.

See the OmniOutliner help. It has a detailed entry for Edit menu


Macbook Pro Hard Reset? ... Can't install OS X Was given a 2009 Macbook Pro after original owner attempted to hard reset. Reinstall of OS X unsuccessful from OS X Utilities. I get as far as agreeing to terms, and signing in to App Store with my Apple ID, and then get this message:  "This item is temporarily unavailable.  Try again later."  I start school tomorrow and I am royally screwed if I can't figure this out. All data is clearly erased, as well as all Apps. Any info pointing me in the right direction is greatly appreciated.

Let me add this as a viable alternative for "if ya just gotta have it right now"

Take it to an Apple Store - they'll do it for you.


Export photos from iPad or Apple TV I have a lot of photos in which I have tagged people, given it the right information and so on. Sadly, I lost all these photos when I did a clean install of OS X Lion. The photos were being synchronized to my iPad and my Apple TV and therefore I have the photos on both of those devices with faces and all the correct information.

Does anyone know of a way to extract the photos with all the information (especially the faces) from the iPad or the Apple TV and into iPhoto?

This is untested but two options spring to mind:

Use iPhoto on iPad to transfer to iTunes (Not free as you need to buy iOS iPhoto)
There's an option to share/save the photos to iTunes. You might need to make an album first and add the photos.
Make a new photostream on your iPad, add all the photos. Open up iPhoto on mac and copy them across from this photostream.


iPad mini Smart Case problem - Sleep when folding over the back I just got an iPad mini with Retina Display (from the Apple Store) and a Smart Case.

The problem I'm having is that when folding the smart case over the back, the magnets of the Case would put the iPad to sleep.

I'm headed to the Apple Store today, but wanted to know if anyone else had experienced something like this, and if so, if was the iPad's or case's fault.

As good as industrial manufacturing is these days, there are always variances. Chances are the magnet in your Smart Case is a bit stronger than Apple intended. You can either wait for the magnet to lose some of its magnetism, go to an Apple Store and have them replace it for you, or try holding your Smart Case a little differently as illustrated below.


How can I buy an app from the App Store and download it to my wife's iPad? How can I buy an app from the App Store and download it to my wife's iPad?

Gift an item on an iOS device

Find the item in the App store or iTunes store that you wish to gift.
Tap the Share icon in the upper right.
Tap the Gift icon.
Sign in to the iTunes Store with your Apple ID.
Type the email address for the person you want to send the iTunes Gift to.
If you want to, add a message.
Pick the day you want to send the gift.
Select a theme for your gift.
Tap Buy, then tap Buy to confirm.

Gift an item on Mac or PC

Sign in to the iTunes Store with your Apple ID.
Find the item in the App Store or iTunes Store that you wish to gift.
Click the arrow to the right of the price and select Gift This.
Type the email address for the person you want to send the iTunes Gift to.
If you want to, add a message.
Pick the day you want to send the gift and click Next.
Select a theme for your gift and click Next.
Confirm your gift purchase and click Buy Gift.

Ref: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201783


Cannot add gmail account to iOS I just had a major hack and had to change password.

Apple mail will not accept my new password with Gmail, so I cannot add that mail account.

As was suggested to you in the comments, you will need to provide more information in order to get some relevant help

Generally speaking the steps to follow are:

Change your password and write it somewhere. I suggest using a password manager.
Login to your google account from your phone with the new password.
Step 2 being a success mean that you indeed changed the password to the one you thing you did.
Add the account in the iOS Mail app and write again the same password carefully in order to avoid any typos.

If 4 failed, it means that you have 2nd factor authentication enabled for you google account.

This means that you will need to generate an application specific password from here and use that as your email password in the iOS Mail app.


Extract WhatsApp Backup Today, I found a phone I thought I had lost a few years ago (an iPhone 5s).
 I was wondering if I could extract the saved WhatsApp conversations from the iPhone to my PC and be able to read them?

I don't have the same phone number anymore, so I don't know if I could use another number and restore my chats.

Is there any way to extract those threads and read them? As it turns out, I also have them Backed up in iCloud, if that helps.

Introduction
The problem lies with the fact that WhatsApp does not store a history of your chats on its servers (except undelivered ones). That means that unlike other messaging providers, WhatsApp cannot simply repopulate your chat history on every device because there is no central location (server) that stores them for you. While this is a great step towards privatizing your chats, this makes things all the more difficult for your case.

Analysis

In early 2017, WhatsApp has encrypted its backups to iCloud, which means that if you lost your iPhone prior to
this, you may (optimistically) be able to read them in plain text.
This would probably require you to connect the iPhone via cable to a
third-party app on your Mac/PC like iPhone Explorer or
iExplorer. I used these years ago to extract files hidden in
the file system of an old iPhone 4. But I think it is saved to say
that there is absolutely no guarantee that you will even be able to
open any WhatsApp files you may find (due to encryption).
It seems to be entirely possible, however, to restore your current iPhone from the backup of the old one and view your messages that way. For what its worth, you are better off not risking your current chat threads, so do a backup of your current state. Therefore you can always restore it to today's version if things start to go wrong.
You may be interested in this article which discusses ways to transfer chat histories to other phones (Android, in case you switched to one - you didn't mention).

Conclusion
Based on the (limited) options available to you, I'd recommend trying the second one first as you will have the greatest chance of actually reading the messages, compared to option one and three. Please read through this guide to learn how to restore your chat history. I am interested if it works for you. Let me know how you get on.


Texting from iPad to Android On my original iPad Air 2 I was able to send text messages to Androids. I recently had to replace my device, however (good thing I had AppleCare!).  With the new iPad, though, I can no longer send text message to Androids.  Also, I would like to not use a 3rd party app as I was able to before without a 3rd party app.

How do I set that up again?

First, you will need to confirm that your iPhone is set up correctly to send and receive messages. In order to send SMS messages, you must have an iPhone that is connected to your Apple ID. You can check by going to the iPhone's Settings app -> Messages. Confirm that "Send as SMS" is enabled and go into Text Message Forwarding. Make sure that your iPad is there.

Next make sure that your phone number is listed under "Send & Receive at".

On your iPad, open Settings -> Messages and make sure that the phone number is listed under "Send & Receive At".


How to backup an encrypted Core Storage volume off-site? Given a hard disk with an encrypted Core Storage volume (but not the decryption password, because the backup service should not have access to that), how would one go about backing it up in a way that allows for pushing it to a cloud storage provider (like Amazon S3) and for incremental backups in the future (because you don't want to to push a full 1TB every day when only a couple of blocks have changed)?

Proposed solution:

You have an Amazon EC2 instance, with elastic block store large enough to hold the whole of the image you intend to backup:

backup-host.yourdomain.com:
/mnt/EBS/my-desktop-backup/coreimage.dmg
/mnt/EBS/my-laptop-backup/coreimage.dmg

Where:

/dev/ebs-disk-001 -> /mnt/EBS/my-desktop-backup
/dev/ebs-disk-002 -> /mnt/EBS/my-laptop-backup
etc.
etc.

or

backup-host.yourdomain.com:
/mnt/EBS/my-desktop-backup_coreimage.dmg
/mnt/EBS/my-laptop-backup_coreimage.dmg

Where:

/dev/ebs-disk-001 -> /mnt/EBS

Your initial backup would take a long while to sync, but if you employ rsync to sync, then you can eventually have the remote image catch up to your local image's changes.

Once it is caught up, you can then initiate an EBS snapshot on Amazon's side for the EBS volume containing your encrypted image.

Rinse and repeat for each backup period + snapshot you want to have backed up to the remote server, taking the following items/requirements into account:

The Encrypted Image needs to be unmounted.
The remote image copy needs to be 100% synced with the unmounted local image.
The snapshot needs to be done with the remote EBS volume sync'd, filesystem buffers flushed, and with no changes pending.

With this, you will be able to do the incremental backups using Amazon's cloud technology.

S3 has some serious limitations, which would not suit your needs, for this particular purpose.

The EC2 instance, if fully backed by EBS, can be shut down when you are not doing a remote sync. Ie, when your backup kicks off, you can have it fire up the instance via Amazon's EC2 API, and get the dynamic name or IP address. Once it confirms it is up, it can kick off the rsync backup. When done, it can shutdown the remote image and initiate an Amazon EBS volume snapshot action.

Edit:

rsync does chunk/block level diffs for larger files. You can specify the size of the block diff:

--block-size=SIZE

You can also specify the data stream being sent to the remote server to be compressed, saving you on traffic.

Caveats about S3 vs EBS:

Unless the solution you employ supports splitting the single large file into segments and sending them in parallel, Amazon S3 throttles the data being sent down to under 400KB/sec after a certain size.

I employ rsync differential backups on my servers to S3 as compressed tarballs. Even at tarball sizes of about 500MB, S3 will throttle. In order to work around this, you need to split the file you are sending up into parts, otherwise, the backup to S3 will take forever.

Whereas an EC2 instance with EBS volumes will be faster and not require the need to split files, simplifying backup and restoration.


Get notified about new iOS releases Is there a way to get notified about upcoming iOS final releases, maybe a week or a few days before the actual release happens? For major releases, there seems to be a GM seed before the actual release happens, but for minor releases (like the upcoming iOS 9.3), there are just a bunch of beta builds. I'd like to skip testing my app with all of the beta builds and just focus on the most recent one, a few days before the release actually happens.

Historically, Apple has not pre-announced specific release dates for updates or major releases. This is likely done to allow Apple to better deal with last minute problems.

Your best option is to follow Apple Developer News. An RSS feed is available for this information.


Is Dashboard on life support? In the past week or so Apple's language translation widget (which uses SYSTRAN for translation) has stopped working, and in searching for a replacement widget I noticed that a lot of former widget developers have now abandoned support for their widgets, citing Apple's lack of support for Dashboard itself.

Are there any announcements or plans by Apple regarding the future of Dashboard?

UPDATE (2-Aug-2017) - The Translation widget now seems to have been fixed, after a few weeks of being broken. It's not clear whether this was an Apple problem or a SYSTRAN problem. The above question still stands though - does Dashboard have a future ?

UPDATE (2-Nov-2017) - I just upgraded to High Sierra (10.13.1) and while Dashboard is still very much alive, the Translation widget has now completely disappeared !

UPDATE (15-Oct-2019) - With the release of Catalina, the Dashboard is now officially removed from OSX. Mojave (10.14) was the last version of OSX with dashboard support.

I'm just speculating here, but...

It does seem like apple has left dashboard to die a slow death. I think that we started seeing proof of that, when they introduced a dropdown menu for disabling Dashboard in Mountain Lion (I think). Before that it could be done through the terminal. This was like apple admitting that  people don't really use it that much, so let's give them the option to disable it.

In one of the more recent versions of osx, they disabled dashboard by default (Yosemite, maybe?). I'm pretty sure that unless by some miracle there's a dramatic change in how much people use dashboard, Apple is absolutely going to kill it off at some point.

At least from the users perspective, it's hard to justify the existence of Dashboard, when we got menubar apps that do essentially the same thing and maybe even a little bit more in some cases.

A possible replacement for that translator widget could be Instant Translate.

List of other possible replacements for widgets.

Calendar:

Itsycal (Free)
Calendar 366
Plus (~$18)
Fantastical 2 (~$60) - A full fledged Calendar.app replacement that also has a menubar app.

Weather:

WeatherBug (Free)
Forecast Bar (~$6) I could be wrong, but I remember this one having the option to set a notification like say every day at a specific time. When I tried this, I remember setting it to 15:50, 10 minutes before getting off from work. Don't trust me on this though... I can't remember for sure.

Calculator
 - You can calculate straight in Spotlight. You can always click the magnifier glass icon on the top right of the screen or use the default shortcut to open Spotlight Cmd+Space. Just write it right there: (20-10)/2. Escape key closes spotlight.

Stickie notes

The native app: Stickies.app - There are third party stickie apps, but let's face it, this should be more than enough for most.
Memo (Free) - I'm only mentioning this, because you can password lock memos, if you want. When you lock a memo, the content becomes hidden. They can also auto lock after a while.

  A few honorable mentions for people who like to customize things like there is no tomorrow.

  iStatmenu has a clock replacement (native menubar clock can be hidden from System
  Preferences). The clock replacement can be customized pretty much how
  ever you want. It even has a "fuzzy clock", which shows the time in
  words: twenty past nine. Personally I find that cool, that's why I
  mentioned it. Anyways, the clock can be clicked to show a calendar
  (much like those other apps).

  uBar is a Dock replacement that can also show the time and when you hover over it, it shows a very plain calendar. Pretty much just to keep track of what day it is, I'd say.
  Clicking it opens the native Calendar.app.

  Übersicht Is very much like some sort of spiritual successor to Dashboard. You can download
  widgets that show stuff
  like Weather, Time, Calendar, Disk Space... etc. It's basically an
  overlay on top of your desktop. You pretty much can't be afraid to
  dive into some CSS to use this app, because each newly installed widget seems to require
  you to change poisition, font size and colors.


Terminal vs Shell vs Processes on ARM (Apple Silicon) How does Big Sur and ARM (Apple) silicon handle the following permutations?
Say I run Terminal as x86_64 using Rosetta2, then does that mean I must use a x86_64 shell?
If indeed I use an x86_64 shell, can it only execute x86_64 processes or Universal bins?
Similarly, if I use a native Apple Silicon Terminal, does it mean I must run an ARM shell?
I hope what I'm asking makes sense.
I ask as really what I'd like to do is use Home-brew a certain way. I want to use an ARM version of iTerm2 (Universal binary), then run latest ZSH (may be x86_64 depending on what version brew installs, then also use a mix of ARM and Intel binaries.

There's some mis-understandings about what each of the elements are...

Terminal - The terminal is just the utility that allows you to execute commands.  Think of it as a "window" into the system.  You can open a Terminal on a PowerPC Mac, then establish a connection to an a new M1 Mac that in turn connects to X11 desktop running on Linux on an Intel CPU.  In other words, the Terminal doesn't determine what environment you ultimately work in.  If you're on the new M1 Mac, the Terminal will be the native M1 compiled Terminal.

The shell is the environment in which you operate; it's the actual user interface.  You're probably familiar with Bash and Zsh (default shell since Catalina). This too will operate as the native compiled environment, so if you're on the M1 it will use the shell compiled for that platform.  The shell is just how you send commands to the OS to do things including run binaries.

Executing binaries depends on what that binary was compiled for.  We know that a Linux binary (even compiled on x86) won't run on macOS.  The binary has to be compatible or you need something that gives you that compatibility.  For example, FreeBSD has a Linux compatibility layer. This is where Rosetta comes in; to make Intel instructions compatible on Apple ARM.

Rosetta is the tool or "layer" that allows you to run x86_64 instructions on the ARM chip.  So, if you want to execute a widget that is only available on x86_64, you would run that on Rosetta.
So, using your example, you would run the universal binary of iTerm2 (native to ARM)  to use the universal binary Zsh shell that was compiled on ARM to either launch the universal binary tool natively compiled on ARM or the x86_64 tool compiled under Intel via Rosetta.
From the comments:

I wonder why Homebrew team are suggesting to open terminal under Rosetta?

Doing some related research on MacPorts, there are many, many ports that do not yet support compiling under ARM; Bash is one of them and I've included the Port Health page for reference.  See below:

They will tell you to open Terminal (or iTerm2) under Rosetta to ensure you're initializing an x86_x64 environment.

If a binary includes both arm64 and x86_64 instructions, the user can tell the system to launch the app using Rosetta translation from the app’s Get Info window in the Finder. For example, a user might enable Rosetta translation to allow the app to run older plug-ins that don’t yet support the arm64 architecture.

So, Terminal (or iTerm2) will be universal (runs natively under ARM) but the environment will be able to support the x86_64 instruction set.


Dock disappearing when using the Show Recents menu item? I just discovered that if I Turn Hiding On and right click on the iTunes app in my dock and press Show Recents, then my dock will no longer appear when I move my mouse to the bottom of the screen until I log out and back in. I have the latest version of Lion and I was wondering if this was only me.

This may be only you, which could be an issue with the preference files, etc.

Show recents (with a Dock that hides) for me shows the transparent dark screen, and whatever icons that should be there for that app, and shows the dock fully available.

Once clicking on the desktop though, to get out of this mode, my dock hides again as it should.

I would recommend removing the Dock preferences, which is located at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist, and then restarting the dock.

You should open the Terminal (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app), and then run:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist

then run

killall Dock

to restart the dock. You may have to set up your dock icons again, but this may help the dock not showing back up after using 'Show Recents'


How to access ITunes Store in foreign country Suppose I have an AppleID linked to my credit card in my country. Now I would like to browse the ITunes Store of another country.

I know I have to create another AppleID linked to a credit cards (or any other payment option) of that country. However I do not have such a credit card.

My question is: Can I browse or/and consume content in the ITunes store of a foreign country, where I have no credit card, bank account, etc. ?

It depends on the country you will plan to open the account on.

For example, if you want to open an account on US or UK, you could select None as payment method. Payment methods you can use in the iTunes Store, Mac App Store, App Store, and iBooks Store, same website for UK.

If you want to open in in Spain, you don't have this option. ¿Qué métodos de pago puedo usar en el iTunes Store?.

Best option is to open any websites I post before, go to the bottom of the page, select the country you want and check available options.


Backing up just photo files from Photos library A similar question was asked before but doesn't go into the detail I am looking for-
Backing up Photos library to external hard drive

I would like to backup my Photos library but I don't want to use the .photoslibrary because there appears to be a bunch of meta material. If I right-click and do "Show Package Contents" I see a "Master" folder which appears to have exactly what I am looking for. Just a folder hierarchy with all the original images. Can someone confirm if this is the case? As well, what would I be losing if I go this route?

You'll have your original pictures without edits, if backing up just the "Masters" folder.
From what I've seen, and depending on your configuration, this are some of the folders and educated guesses on what you will be losing:

Database folder: Database info on Albums,  faces, persons, and sharing history, keywords, places
There seems to be information on your iPhoto database, probably there if you upgraded from it to Photos.app as I did
Previews (which may be there if you have iCloud Photo Library as I do)
Projects
Faces thumbnails
Thumbnails


Mid '11 Mac Mini boot loops at Apple logo, but can boot to Safe Mode So the previous issue I had with my Mac Mini has morphed into a worse one and now it won't even boot normally, it just endlessly boot loops at the Apple screen. However, I have ran Apple Hardware Test twice and it comes back with "no trouble found." I'm really at my wit's end with this issue and am ready to just reinstall OS X entirely (I'm on OS X El Cap 10.11.6), but am not sure that would help...but I think it must be a software issue since I can boot to Safe Mode. Does that sound right?

So far I have tried:
- Turning the Mac Mini over and opening the bottom panel to let heat
   radiate out better.
- Disconnecting everything but keyboard/mouse & monitor.
- Ran AHT several times (always just says "No trouble found."
- Booted to Apple -R to recovery: recheck disk and ran repair
   permissions.
- Pulled both 8GB RAM modules (one at a time, of
   course) and tried booting with only one.

I'm out of ideas here. Any feedback here greatly appreciated.

EDIT: No idea how or why it's able to run in Safe Mode, but I think this must be a hardware issue because I am not able to boot to either Recovery or a Linux Mint USB. Both also cause a boot loop!

Reinstalling from Recovery mode should work. Here is how to enter recovery mode. On a normal working computer, it usually takes a few tries to get into recovery mode as the timing is very important. Maybe try a few times to get into recovery mode. Make sure you go into the regular Recovery Mode and NOT Internet Recovery Mode.

Another thing you could try is to see if it is a hardware problem or a software problem. You could check this by creating a bootable usb drive with another OS(it doesn't really matter which OS) and attempting to boot into that OS on your Mac Mini. If booting into another OS works, you'll know it's a software problem.

If you have access to another Mac use this guide(by osxdaily) to safely install macOS onto your Mac using a bootable USB drive or use this guide(by apple).

If you need a .dmg file for macOS/OS X(to create a bootable USB on non macOS/OS X systems) try this link.