Disable WIFI order with keychain access There are two WIFIs at work. One official and one for guests (which is also used to connect to for privat devices like iPhones). I have the same Apple ID and keychain access configured on my private iPhone and the MacBook.

There is a order of WIFIs in the settings to which the device will connect to first. I want to connect the iPhone to the guest WIFI, but the MacBook to the official WIFI. The order of the WIFIs is also synced and changing one will always effect the other one.

Is there a way to disable sync of the order or of a specific WIFI?

I had the exact same problem, and I found this solution to work pretty well for me: By creating a profile that you install into your iPhone, you ensure that only the iPhone will know about the guest network.

Here are the instructions:

Install the official "Apple Configurator app" on your Mac-Book: https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-configurator-2/id1037126344
Create a new Profile: Go to File -> New Profile -> Wifi -> Configure
Enter the name (SSID), password and security settings for the guest network. You may want to check the Auto Join option.
Save the profile File -> Save...

Now delete references to the Guest network from both your Mac and your phone.

Finally connect your iPhone to your Mac and install the newly created profile into your iPhone. File -> New Window -> Select your phone -> Click the green + icon -> Profiles

Now only your iPhone will have knowledge of the guest network and your MacBook will never try to connect to it.

It's also working well in the other direction: Once connected to the Guest network through the profile, my phone will never try to connect to my enterprise network even if it's saved in the keychain. Although I can't explain why .. but this seem to do the trick !


Integrating Zoom with default Calendar I have Calendar events with Zoom links in them. Is there a way so that when I click on the link, Zoom desktop client is used to open them instead of my default web-browser?
I am using MBA M1 with macOS Big Sur 11.2.1.

Thank you for motivating me to actually share the Automator service I made for this!
https://jonathanalland.com/quick-actions.html
Install the Open In Zoom service, then highlight a Zoom URL, right click, and select "Open in Zoom". This has only been tested on OS X 10.9, but I see no reason it shouldn't work on modern macOS as well.
I created this by looking at the zoommtg:// protocol format, and then doing some find/replace magic in shell and Applescript. (I ideally should have used just one, but doing it in two steps was a tad easier, because shell is more powerful but I'm more comfortable in Applescript.)


Why would a new MacBook Pro charger fail in one month? I've got a new MacBook Pro 15" that comes with the 87W USB-C adapter from US.

I live in Turkey and I've got all my MacBooks from US with US chargers, and had no issue with them (as they are meant to be used internationally anyway) for years.

It's been just one month since I've got my MacBook Pro. I don't know if it's relevant at all but yesterday we've tried connecting my MacBook Pro with my friend's MacBook over USB-C to transfer files (it didn't work, or we didn't know how to do it, but anyway) and my MacBook Pro started charging by draining my friend's MacBook's power. It was a 30 second thing, then we've disconnected them and I've charged/used by MacBook Pro for hours using the regular AC adapter for hours. Today it was charging perfectly at a coffee shop that I always visit (and charge my MacBook Pro). I came home and plugged it into the AC outlet that I also always use, but it didn't charge. It didn't even detect the charger (so it's not the "not charging" issue). I've tried my friend's charger and it works, I've tried my charger with my friend's MacBook but it doesn't charge either, so it's the adapter (we've also tested the USB-C cables by swapping, no effect, I've tried all the USB-C ports, no effect either). I've also tried SMC reset, no avail.

However, there is one interesting catch: MacBooks always have this subtle "shocking" effect when they are connected to the AC outlet if I rub my hand on the unibody (it's something that happens with every MacBook I've seen on every charger, on every venue/house regardless of the outlet). Even though the adapter appears totally dead, I'm still having this shocking effect, so some power is delivered to the MacBook even though it's not charging. I've charged my MacBook Pro to 100% using my friend's charger, then I plugged it out and plugged in the "dead" charger. I've left my MacBook Pro attached to the "dead" charger in sleep mode (by closing the lid as I always do), left for about 4 hours, then came back. It was at 50% charge, almost as if the charger drained by MacBook Pro's battery (it's impossible for it to go from 100% to 50% in sleep, obviously, and there aren't any background apps that prevent sleep). When attached to the charger, it was probably still "on" as it was somehow "detecting" the charger (though doesn't detect it as a power adapter/charger) and has been on for 4 hours doing nothing with a turned off LCD, thus draining half of the battery (again, this is just my assumption). I'll probably get a replacement charger, but I'm really interested in knowing what's going on here.

To summarize:

No MacBooks are charging with a specific charger.
It just happened out of blue (no power outages, no liquid spill, nothing extraordinary other than I've tried connecting my MacBook Pro to my friend's MacBook over USB-C, but I've used and charged my MacBook Pro for hours on the now-dead charger for hours afterwards).
Even though it doesn't charge and doesn't detect the AC adapter in power reports, touching the unibody when the "dead" charger is connected still gives the "electric feeling", so there is at least something delivered.
Leaving the "dead" charger connected to my Mac apparently prevents sleep.
My MacBook Pro charges and powers perfectly with my friend's charger and my iPad charger (though they charge much more slowly because of much less power output).

What might be happening?

What might be happening?

You have a defective charger.  It's not unheard of and if you are a manufacturer of products, it's quite common.  With every single product that is made around the world, there is a percentage that fail.  This is called a defect percentage or rate.

  The total number of defects counted on the population in question
  divided by the total population count.

At one point, Apple was expecting a 10% defect rate on iPhones made by Foxconn.1

Does this mean that they are just going to let defects go?  Of course not, but being that these are complex products dependent on the manufacturing processes of other vendors, defects are bound to show up.  Even with the best QA processes in place, it's not perfect.

You received a charger that failed.  This is why they offer you a warranty.

As for the electric feeling, this also is a common occurrence and has been discussed on this site:

How can I avoid my MacBook Pro giving me minor shocks?
Is it bad that my MacBook Air is passing me electricity?
Avoiding electrical shocks/statics

Basically, it boils down to the adapter not being grounded/earthed and using a 3 prong plug (applicable to your country) solves the problem.

1 Apple Expected 10% Bad iPhones from Foxconn?  Mark Graban's Lean Blog, May 6, 2013.


Updating OS X to newer version Does updating of OS X operating system updates built-in software like Apache, git, PHP, Ruby ? If it is what happens with old software ?

Apple occasionally provides updates to system binaries. The older versions are replaced by the newer versions. If you wish for more control over the versions used by certain software, you can use a package manager such as Homebrew.


App store updates won't download I changed my Apple ID password.

I can log successfully into my Apple account using my new password online.

I can download songs from iTunes using my new password.
But When I go into App Store, and select "Updates". I click on Update tab for App, I get prompted for my Apple ID Password. I enter my new password, click OK, the "UPDATE" tab flashes from "INSTALLING" back to "UPDATE". Update  does not complete!

This happens on both my iPhone and iPad and I can't get past it.

How can I fix this?

Did you try via the settings > iTunes and App Store? Click Apple ID and logout and back in.
Login again there, and that did the trick for me.

EDIT: My problem was solved when I removed iCloud from my iPad and iPhone and logged in with new credentials.


MacBook Pro, Mid-2014, SSD replacement I own a MacBook Pro, Mid 2014, and its 256 SSD started facing problems almost 8 months after I bought it.  I've been looking to replace it.

I've read over at iFixit that you can replace it,

But as I understand that not every SSD is compatible. So I was wondering whether this Samsung 850 Pro 256GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Internal SSD would be compatible?

No, that SSD is not compatible with your MacBook Pro, as the form factor is different. Your Mac takes "blade" SSD, while the one on Amazon is the regular old hard drive-like enclosure. Personally, I recommend Intel for SSDs, I've had great luck with them.


Unable to login with Apple ID in iBooks Author I have access to iTunes Connect with my Apple ID, but when I'm trying to sign in with the same Apple ID in iBooks Author it shows the following error:

  This Apple ID isn't associated with an iTunes Connect account.

I'm unable to understand the cause. Is it an issue with iBooks Author?

The error message is misleading. The real issue is that you need a separate Apple ID to publish ebooks.
Here's what you should do:

Go to https://appleid.apple.com and create a new Apple ID. When
asked for an email address, don't re-use the one you entered for
your primary iTunes account. I made that mistake and my account
became inaccessible. I had to call Apple support to finally fix the
problem.
Download iTunes Producer. Install and start it. Log in using your newly created Apple ID to your iTC account.
Create a new project in iTunes Producer. Add the cover image, the screenshots, and your ebook. Set the price and finally submit the book.


How often should I remove the charger from my rMBP? I want my battery to remain healthy. I used to charge it full then remove the charger after it's done, then put it back on when it goes down to 10% .. However this is becoming hectic and I was wondering if I can keep it plugged in the whole day and probably remove just an hour or so before going to sleep.

What is the best way to charge and discharge my Retina Macbook Pro while keeping the battery healthy ?

Quick Answer

Modern batteries, including the ones Apple has used for over a decade, don't need the type of "conditioning" you're talking about.

As a rule of thumb, when you're near an power adapter, plug in. If you're not near one, work off battery power.

There's just one exception to this rule: don't leave your Mac plugged in for long periods at a time, say, over a week. The battery needs to exercise, and if it's plugged in for a really long time, it might "atrophy."

More Details

If you tend to leave your computer plugged in all the time (for example, if you leave it on a desk all the time), get in the habit of unplugging it every weekend. It doesn't need to drain to 0% each weekend, or even close to it. Along this same line, if you're leaving your computer along for over a week, just leave it unplugged.

The one-week timeframe is actually a bit over-cautious, and no harm is likely to occur even if you left it plugged in for two weeks. (Apple's batteries are the best on the market as far as taking care themselves.)

Sources

I'm an Apple-Certified Mac Technician, trained by Apple
Apple's public website: http://www.apple.com/batteries/notebooks.html


Does deleting iCloud photos affect them on devices? If I delete a photo from my iCloud will it also be removed from my devices that are connected to my account?

Yes. This is a good way to clear out space in iCloud.They don't delete immediately, you can recover recently deleted files for a while, but they do disappear from connected devices and will eventually be deleted - any copies you export onto your computer (outside of the Photos app) will not be affected.  I back up older photos from the Photos app, by exporting them to a folder on my Mac, then removing them from iCloud, to recover space when my 5 GB of free storage gets full.


How to make custom footer section stick to bottom of page in Pages 5? I'm trying to use Pages 5 to design my invoices. I have a fixed header section for the address and the logo, then a table which is part of the text flow and automatically continues on the next page.
However I would like to have a footer area attached to the bottom of the last page which contains my banking information.
If the table is short, I would like this information to stick at the bottom of page 1. If the table content becomes longer, I would like to have it at the bottom of page 2.

Possible?

This is currently not possible.

You can have it at page 1 and page 2 using a normal footer as you're probably aware, but not automatically move to the last page of a document. You can do it manually as you're also probably aware by using the section inspector, but that's still not automatic and would require you to delete it from page 1 and then add it back to page 2.

You can notify Apple that you would like this feature implemented using their Pages feedback page:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/pages.html


What to do with my screen? As you can see my screen, it gives impression something got scratched on it but that's not the case. What can I do?

What I can see from the photo, it doesn't look like scratches. Instead it looks like the anti-reflective coating is "peeling off". This is a manufacturing defect.

Apple has a program where you can get a free display replacement, if this is indeed the case.

The following laptops are eligible:

• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2013)
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2013)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2013)
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2013)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Mid 2014)
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2014)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2015)
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, Mid 2015)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016)
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016)
• MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017)
• MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017)
• MacBook (12-inch, Early 2015)
• MacBook (12-inch, Early 2016)
• MacBook (12-inch, Early 2017)

The program seems to cover them for 4 years from the original purchase date.

You'll need to contact Apple Support to find out if this is really the problem with your laptop, and whether or not it is covered for a free screen replacement.


Leave Apple Developer organisation and buy personal membership I have an Apple Developer Account, but it's in organization that I no longer work for. How I can leave this organization and buy my own membership in the Apple iOS developer program?

It wasn’t as easy when you asked, but now it’s quite easy to add a new AppleID and then switch roles. Even if the company does not want to do any of the work, you can set up a new AppleID and promote that to the owner and then eject your desired account.

https://developer.apple.com/support/roles/

When that is done, you can reapply. I would open a support case with developer support before you start to be sure they can help and you are cleared. They have been exceptionally helpful to us in getting past employees that quit and move the company accounts around as needed. Just give them time to check on things - the more a rush you are in, the more they wonder you’re trying to pull a fast one.


Use of regular expressions in macOS search fields Does anyone know where I can find the docs describing Regex parsing capabilities of macOS search fields?

What I mean, I'd like to read about the regex syntax rules that are allowed and parsed by the search field. For example, what I didn't know until today that, in macOS Preview (or any other application with a standard search field, guessing) we can use input like this:

"\s" AND "an" AND "\s"

This works and hints that search fields interpret more regex then we know, and this is what I want to read/find out about. The example above searches for "an" with one trailing and leading whitespace character \s within a opened document.

I'd like to know more about those grouping rules and regex characters wrapping/escaping so it can be correctly parsed. Also does this format of input apply to systemwide search fields of any application?

I can't find any docs describing these features and was found only this on developer.apple.com library instead.

Below you can see an example of default search behaviour for a "an" word within a PDF document, it shows all "an" occurences in the results, regardless if you put a space before the "an" word, so your input is " an "

When we put "\s" AND "an" AND "\s" into the search field we get the more desired search result

This makes a huge difference for searches containing common words!

In short: I'd like to know more about the functionality you see above. Where can I find any (official) documentation about it?

The answers provided (so far) are not answering my question, thank you for them though - aggregating more related information is good.

I don't know if you discovered this already but you just need to click on the magnifying glass in the search field, it has a little down-pointing caret which is the clue, see this screenshot:

After clicking choose Insert Pattern and you get a range of options:

This is basically user-friendly regex, i.e. you get tokens you can easily arrange into quite powerful search patterns.

The example in the screenshot is TextEdit however this option doesn't appear to be available in Preview.


Time Machine + FileVault on Lion or Mountain If I stop the backup it says: "now encrypting...", is the data saved "not encrypted" before being encrypted? Can I make it "always encrypted"?

Non-encrypted transfers are a problem for me.

Time Machine on 10.7/10.8 uses the same encryption as any other non-system disk. When you first enable it, OS X has to encrypt the entire disk, which takes a while. The status "Encrypting" just means that it's still working on that.

You can check on the status with diskutil cs list in Terminal. Mixed in with other info, you'll see something like:

Size (Total):       124190560256 B (124.2 GB)
Size (Converted):   2539913216 B (2.5 GB)

That's 2.5 out of 124.2GB complete. Once the disk is fully encrypted, it's done for good and you'll basically never see that status again.


How do I save everything on my phone and clear iCloud storage? I have an iPhone X with 256 GB of storage, which is a lot. However I have very little iCloud storage. How can I save everything that is on my phone, to my phone, and then clear iCloud and wipe it clean? I know that iCloud provides a backup and a way to see things from different devices, but I won't lose my phone, and I can probably find a way to upload single files to iCloud.
I have tried not letting the device upload to iCloud, but the AppleID and iCloud section on settings is grayed out (parental controls) and when I tried it on laptop it just cut off the connection without saving to the device or clearing the space on iCloud.
How can I fix this?

Although I am unfamiliar with the workings of parental controls, I would imagine it's possible to access (a part of) the data stored on iCloud Drive via the Files app. It is then possible to move said data to your "On my iPhone" folder, which will save it to your local file system.
As for the other data: Have you asked your parents for help with removing the data from iCloud? They will most likely have to (temporarily) disable your parental controls, after which you should be able to choose what is synced to iCloud. It should then also be possible to delete said data.
On an unrelated note: I would recommend creating a backup of your iPhone to your laptop. However unlikely, iPhones (as all electronic devices) can die unexpectedly. Having a backup is useful in such cases. If you give more information on the "cutoff" as you described, I would be happy to help with that as well.


How to make and use an USB stick with GParted that will boot on a Mac? I want to create a USB stick with GParted on it that will be recognized by my Mac. Obviously, I want to create it on a Mac, also. This is not mentioned in the documentation here.

I will answer my own question. Since I had a lot of trouble creating Live USBs on Ubuntu and Mac and wanted to dig a bit deeper into the subject and will also list the output of the successful partition schemes.

Download .iso from here under "stable releases". If unsure, chose the 32bit-Version.
Put a USB stick in the slot and look into Disk Utility for its device number (disk1, disk2, diskX, etc). This can be found by clicking the icon "Info".
Open up a shell
Unmount the stick in terminal (nowhere else) with sudo diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX

Make sure you don't dd to a wrong disk, e.g. your working HDD!

Copy the downloaded file with sudo dd bs=1m if=file.iso of=/dev/rdiskX

We use the r for raw in of=/dev/rdiskX to make the copy faster. You should not be using the s1 extensions: these are partitions on the disk, not the disk itself.

The USB stick then looks like this with diskutil list:

/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *7.8 GB     disk1
   1:                       0xEF                         3.0 MB     disk1s2

sudo gdisk -l /dev/diskX will show this (aborting the question is possible with ctrlC):

GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.1

Partition table scan:
  MBR: MBR only
  BSD: not present
  APM: not present
  GPT: present

Found valid MBR and GPT. Which do you want to use?
 1 - MBR
 2 - GPT
 3 - Create blank GPT
Your answer:

Finally, sudo fdisk /dev/diskX will show

Disk: /dev/disk1    geometry: 942/255/63 [15138816 sectors]
Signature: 0xAA55
         Starting       Ending
 #: id  cyl  hd sec -  cyl  hd sec [     start -       size]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 2: EF 1023 254  63 - 1023 254  63 [    535612 -       5948] <Unknown ID>
 3: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused
 4: 00    0   0   0 -    0   0   0 [         0 -          0] unused

OS X will show a dialog to Initialise..., Ignore or Unmount the USB stick when it is put into the slot. Clicking Ignore is safe. I put the German screenshot in, I think it's pretty clear.

When booting the Mac now press alt and there should be an option to boot to that is called EFI boot. This will bring up GParted Live.

But beware, there are some Macs (e.g. Macbook Pro 17" Early 2011 that are not able at all to boot anything other from USB than OS X).


How to rename video `title`? When exporting a video from iMovie it asks for a title. Upon saving the file you'll find it has named the file whatever you input for the title. Now if you rename that file in Finder then open it in QuickTime and show the Movie Inspector, you'll find that the video title is the old title - the title you input in iMovie. Unfortunately you can't edit the title here. It doesn't show the title in Finder's Get Info. So my question is how can you edit the video's title (not filename) without reexporting the movie from iMovie?

If you are running Mac OS X and find that some of your video files have metadata included, then it will have been set in Apple's iTunes. In iTunes you can add, edit or remove all metadata from video files. This is only applicable to certain video types, however, as they must be iTunes recognized filetypes. The file types supported by iTunes are the same as those supported by QuickTime, and so if you have QuickTime plugins installed, you will be able to utilize those as well.

Open iTunes on your Mac.

Click "Movies" or "TV Episodes" on the left.

Select the video you want to edit, right-click it and click "Get Info."

Click "Video." Highlight each field of data and press "Delete." Click "Info" and edit.

Or use free tool MetaZ ( http://griff.github.io/metaz/ )


How can I make Instagram photos shared to Facebook visible to my friends by default? When I share photos from Instagram to Facebook (using the Instagram app on iOS), by default they get "Only Me" sharing visibility:

That doesn't seem very useful to me - I'd rather my friends saw them. In fact, Instagram's help page says that is what is supposed to happen.

How can I fix this? How can I make these photos visible to my friends by default?

As Andrew Ferrier stated in the comments to the question, this is indeed a part of Facebook's privacy settings. Here is how you set it to share to "Friends" by default:

Go to your Facebook.com.
Find the page to edit your Instagram settings.

this should be on YourLinkToTimelinePage/app_instapp
or you should be able to find it at https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications
or in the timeline menu under your profile picture, find it in More

Change your App visibility and post audience setting to Friends

This setting controls who on Facebook can see that you use this app. It also allows you to choose the audience for posts the app makes on your behalf.

Hope this helps you.


The effective power bug made my iMessage not work I gave a "friend" my number and he sent the effective power code and now my iMessage doesn't work anymore I click on the app for iMessage and the app crashes

Here's a few things to do for a fix:

If you receive one of these messages, there are a few possible fixes that have worked for us and for other people who have encountered the bug. If the Messages app was opened to the conversation with the person who sent the offending message, the Messages app can be reopened to this conversation. Sending a reply message fixes the problem.

If Messages was opened to the conversation list view, the app will crash when you attempt to open it. You can fix this by having someone send you a message or by sending a message to yourself. There are several options for sending a message to yourself, including sending yourself a message via Siri or through the Share sheet in any app.

To send yourself a message in Siri, tell Siri to "Send a message to myself." Siri will open up a dialogue where you can give her a quick message like "Fix" that'll be sent to your iPhone to clear away the malicious message.

Alternatively, you can open an app like Notes, craft a quick note, and use the Share option (the little document with an arrow) to message it to yourself. Sending yourself something though the share sheet of an app opens a new messages window where you can enter your own contact information.

Source: Macrumors


How do I reclaim 36 GB of missing space on my iPhone? I have a 64GB iPhone 5S with iOS 8.4, but I'm only able to access 28 GB of space.

iTunes reports a capacity of 55.92GB, but in the usage graph at the bottom of the summary page, I see:

13.61 GB Free
1.58 GB Other
1.09 GB Documents & Data
5.13 GB Apps
248.3 MB Photos
6.34 GB Audio

The Setting->Usage->Storage app says:

Used: 42.9 GB
Available 13.0 GB

I've tried rebooting and updating the OS from 8.3 to 8.4.

I'm hoping to avoid a solution that involves wiping the phone and resetting it. Is there anything else I can do to reclaim my missing 36 GB of space?

You said you don't want to wipe the phone and reset it, but what about restoring it from a backup? During an iCloud restore, iOS re-downloads most of what it needs from Apple’s servers, so the process might reclaim your lost space, since iOS wouldn’t assign it to anything that isn't actually using it. After the restore, your phone would be returned to the same state you left it in.


Purge contacts information on Mac Last month, for a temporary event, I've added a Polish number (+48 prefix) to 800 of my regular contacts using a vCard file.

Now, this event is finished and now I'd like to remove all those temporary polish numbers from my contacts and keep all other information intact.

Is there a way to easily do that, for example, using an Automator action?

I've deleted my original answer because I initially misunderstood how the +48 numbers were added, sorry about that.

Instead of using AppleScript, I'm going to offer you a different solution because while I could and did modify the original AppleScript code to delete the entire number that had a +48 prefix, nonetheless there were errors that stopped the script from executing completely during the testing phase. So I'm opting for a different solution over debugging the AppleScript code.

This solution requires exporting the entire contents of the Contacts.app to a vCard file (.vcf), modifying it using a RegEx in sed, and then importing the modified vCard file (.vcf) back into Contacts. Note that this method will replace all existing contacts with the updated new allcontacts.vcf file and should not be an issue as it's really only removing the information you stated you wanted removed, just in a roundabout way.

NOTE: These directions were tested under OS X 10.11.5 with the Contacts.app using its default preferences.

Open Contacts.
Backup Contacts, click: File > Export > Contacts Archive…

Now that Contacts have been backed up, do the following...

Select the first contact and then press commandA to select all contacts.
Click: File > Export > Export vCard…
In the Save As dialog box it will show as, the name of the first contact and n others,  change it to: allcontacts
Copy and paste the following command into Terminal, then press the Space bar to add a space afterwards.

sed -i.bak -E '/^TEL.*\+48.*$/d'
From Finder, drag and drop the allcontacts.vcf file onto the Terminal window. Note that in Finder, the .vcf extension may be hidden and it will show in Terminal.

Example: sed -i.bak -E '/^TEL.*\+48.*$/d' /Users/me/Documents/allcontacts.vcf

Now press enter to modify the allcontacts.vcf file. A backup of the original is created as: allcontacts.vcf.bak

Now import the updated allcontacts.vcf file into Contacts.

File > Import and select the allcontacts.vcf file, then click Open.
On the "Are you sure you want to import n cards?" sheet click: Review Duplicates…
On the ensuing sheet select Keep New and check the Apply to All checkbox then click Import.

The Contacts telephone entries containing numbers with a +48 prefix have been removed.

The target lines in the allcontacts.vcf file will have the following pattern and note the example below is not the only way it can present and thus the need to use a RegEx aside from the phone numbers themselves being different as the value for type= can vary too.

Example line in the vCard file: TEL;type=CELL;type=VOICE:+48 697 107 394

The RegEx is: ^TEL.*\+48.*$

Explanation:

^ assert position at start of the string.
TEL matches the characters TEL literally (case sensitive).
.* matches any character (except newline). Quantifier: * Between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed [greedy].
\+ matches the character + literally.
48 matches the characters 48 literally.
.* matches any character (except newline). Quantifier: * Between zero and unlimited times, as many times as possible, giving back as needed [greedy].
$ assert position at end of the string.

So, the sed command, sed -i.bak -E '/^TEL.*\+48.*$/d' file backups the file (-i.bak) and deletes any line starting with TEL that contains +48. Which based on how lines are stored in the vCard will just remove the lines needed to accomplish the task as lines starting with TEL that have +48 in them can only be the lines you want removed.

NOTE: The also assumes you did not previously have any numbers with the +48 prefix before you updated your Contacts with the original vCard file that contained the numbers with the +48 prefix.


How can I enable the "back" button of a Razer mouse? I couldn't find a way to get the back button of my Razer mouse to work with both Safari and Chrome, is there a workaround for this issue? I'm so used to surfing the web this way.

EDIT
I apologize for being unclear. I'm not using the Mac mouse, I'm using Mac mini with my Razer mouse. I installed the driver for that Mouse, unfortunately it only allows me to set the sensitivity and acceleration. I also tried to install Google Chrome, but it doesn't work either. When I click the side button of my mouse, it doesn't go back to the previous page. Under Windows, the default behavior of the back button in a mouse is to navigate back to the previous page, but it's not the case under Mac.
I really try to find a solution since I'm so used to the "back" button in my mouse. I feel so uncomfortable when having to click on the back arrow on my browser.
Could any one help me out? Thank you.

I made an open-source macOS utility called SensibleSideButtons that turns the side buttons on any generic mouse into universal navigation buttons. The application runs in your menu bar so you don't have to install any extra drivers. My approach is to bind the buttons to virtual left and right three-finger swipe gestures, which offers several benefits over the usual approach of binding the buttons to ⌘ + [ and ⌘ + ]: almost universal adoption across the OS (including Xcode), avoidance of destructive behavior, no menu bar blink or annoying noises, and commands only sent to the specific window under your cursor. The only requirement is that your side buttons emit standard M4 and M5 events, which most mice do.


Macbook pro 2009 update not taking effect I downloaded the update for OS X Yosemite 10.10.3. I restarted when it told me, but the update did not take effect. When I manually rebooted, that didn't work either. How do I solve this?

In the Updates section of the App Store, if the 10.10.3 update is fully downloaded, the "Update" button next to it should be replaced by a "Restart" button. Click it, then click "Restart" on the notification that'll come up in the upper right of the screen, and then a restart will happen and the update will be installed.


Prevent files in a folder from being moved? On a Mac, is there a way to prevent files in a folder X from being moved by any means (by the Comd+C then Comd+Opt+V on Finder, or by mv command on the command line, or by other apps etc.) to another folder Y, but still allow files to be written/added to the folder X, and still allow files to be copied from the folder X?

If needed, please answer specific to Mac 10.11 to 10.14, and take into account both HFS+ and APFS file systems.

You can use Access Control Lists for this. Run

chmod +a "USERID:deny:delete_child" DIRECTORY

to prevent the user USERID from deleting anything from the directory. To undo, run

chmod -a "USERID:deny:delete_child" DIRECTORY

PS: If you want to have it applied to current and future subfolders beneath DIRECTORY as well, use

"USERID:deny:delete_child,directory_inherit"


disable Time Machine scripts My 2013 iMac was recalled by the factory for some issue with the drive. The drive was changed and I started afresh - I thought. It turns out that I was running some schedule on Time Machine which updated every time there was a change in file parameters. Which means always. One adviser suggests that this old script has been transported onto the new drive, but now I can't get to it to stop it. I do not run Time Machine and make all my back-ups by another program.

Does anyone have any idea if anything can be done to fix it?

All you need to do is just toggle off time machine. The scripts are for people that want to inherit an old backup folder when they continue to use time machine.

See tmutil inheritbackup command line tool for details and the manual page.

https://developer.apple.com/legacy/library/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/tmutil.8.html
Can I inherit a Time Machine backup if I clone my HD?

  Inheriting is typically only one step in the process of configuring a backup for use by a machine. You may also need to use setdestination, associatedisk, or both, depending on the situation.


How to get url of selected image in google images? I write Automator workflow which will attach google image miniature, able to be selected on context menu or hotkey enabled.

Now I am trying to figure out which type of object sees Automator when I right-click on image in safari. I tried web-content, image, documents, everything else, but nothing works.

Also I tried actions like Get opened safari document + load images from web-content, but it is not my case.

Is it possible at all, to add context menu option to google image?

Okay, my way is to ask Safari do javascript which will get all what I need (I mean urls of full-images) for current page, when user presses hotkey.

The trick is that when you select (hower) image, you see a black box at bottom of mini-image. Certanly, it means that HTML has been changed, so I just figured out that changes (display property changes from none to block) and ask JS to get any blocks with that property, when user presses key.

See code below for details.

tell application "Safari"
set result to (do JavaScript "
               function f()
               {
                   var imageHolderElements =  document.getElementsByClassName('_aOd rg_ilm');
                   for (var i = 0; i < imageHolderElements.length; i++)
                   {
                       var style = getComputedStyle(imageHolderElements[i], null);
                       var display = style.getPropertyValue('display');
                       if (display == 'block')
                       {
                           var src = imageHolderElements[i].parentNode.getAttribute('href');
                           var parameter = 'imgurl=';
                           var index = src.indexOf(parameter) + parameter.length;
                           console.log(index);
                           var result = src.substring(index, src.length);
                           console.log(result);
                           var paramDelim = result.indexOf('&');
                           if (paramDelim > 0){
                                var result_result = '';
                               result_result = result.substring(0, paramDelim);
                           }
                           console.log(result_result);
                           return result_result;
                       }
                   }
               }
                var x = 1;
               var x = '' + f(); x" in current tab of first window) as string
return result
end tell


"brew link node" creates/removes different number of symlinks when repeated I was upgrading Node.js node through Homebrew's brew upgrade, and it didn't link correctly.

  $ brew update
  (snip-snip formulae were updated)
  $ brew upgrade
  (snip-snip other upgrades)
  ==> Upgrading node
  ==> Downloading http://nodejs.org/dist/v0.8.11/node-v0.8.11.tar.gz

  ################################################################## 100.0%

  ==> ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/Cellar/node/0.8.11
  ==> make install
  ==> Caveats
  Homebrew installed npm.
  We recommend prepending the following path to your PATH environment
  variable to have npm-installed binaries picked up:
    /usr/local/share/npm/bin
  Warning: Could not link node. Unlinking...
  Error: The brew link step did not complete successfully
  The formula built, but is not symlinked into /usr/local
  You can try again using `brew link node'
  ==> Summary
  /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.8.11: 856 files, 13M, built in 108 seconds
  (snip-snip other upgrades)

I followed the recommended steps to force linking it.

  $ brew link node
  Linking /usr/local/Cellar/node/0... Warning: Could not link node. Unlinking...

  Error: Could not symlink file: /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.8.11/lib/node_modules/npm/scripts/relocate.sh
  Target /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/scripts/relocate.sh already exists. You may need to delete it.
  To force the link and delete this file, do:
    brew link -f formula_name

  To list all files that would be deleted:
    brew link -n formula_name
  $ brew link -f node
  Linking /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.8.11... 756 symlinks created

I was stunned with the number of symlinks, so out of curiosity I tried linking it again.

  $ brew unlink node
  Unlinking /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.8.11... 755 links removed
  $ brew link node
  Linking /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.8.11... 352 symlinks created
  $ brew link node
  Warning: Already linked: /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.8.11
  $ which node
  /usr/local/bin/node
  $ brew unlink node
  Unlinking /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.8.11... 351 links removed
  $ brew link node
  Linking /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.8.11... 304 symlinks created
  $ brew unlink node
  Unlinking /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.8.11... 303 links removed
  $ brew link node
  Linking /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.8.11... 304 symlinks created
  $ brew unlink node
  Unlinking /usr/local/Cellar/node/0.8.11... 303 links removed

The process stabilizes at 304/303.

Why so many symlinks?
Why does the link/unlink number change from 756 to 303?

Edit: ran the same update/upgrade/link/unlink procedure on a colleague's computer - in this case the symlinks went from 775 to 318 to 226, where it stabilized. Does anyone else have similar numbers? Do they depend on other installed brew recipes, or perhaps on npm modules?

Do you have several versions of Node installed via homebrew? Every time it updates node homebrew puts the newest version alongside the old one and then updates the symlinks to the newest version. Running the brew cleanup should reduce that up a bit for you.


Is a SSD with the following First Aid report salvageable? Barely 2 months old Samsung NVMe M.2 SSD is not readable by my Mac anymore. This is an external disk in an enclosure. I purchased a different enclosure too to confirm that the problem is with SSD only.
Following is the result of running First Aid on it:

As you may have noticed, the device shows up twice in the Disk Utility. When I try running First Aid on the second entry for the device, I get the following result:

My question:
Is there any way I can salvage the data on this SSD?
Does anyone here have some trick up their sleeve to fix this without attempting a format/erase?

There are several data recovery programs for the Mac. A few are Stellar Recovery, EASEUS, and Disk Drill.  There are several others as well. A google search on "Mac data recovery ssd" will find these and more. Most of these are not cheap. Often in the $50-$60 range. Several may offer free trials though so you can test the app and maybe recover your data in one trial.
I can't really recommend one over the others. I used Stellar once and it recovered some of my data off my HDD.  SSDs are more difficult.


How to make available iOS app to different client's MDM We have developed and Enterprise iOS app and we want to deliver this app to different clients.

Each client have thousands of employees and they will manage themselves the deployment of the app in their employee's devices.

Want we want to do is to deliver the iOS App (make available) to our clients MDM's. We have a Cisco meraki as MDM.

Whats the correct way to go?

When it comes to AirWatch, I as MDM admin have the option to upload a file, containing the application. So you would have to deliver your IPA file to your client. Now, it's just me guessing, but I would believe every MDM that allows to publish internal apps has this option.

Another option, and I guess it would be the preferred one, is managing your app as B2B app in the VPP program. Here is a write-up I found of how the process works.

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/apple-in-the-enterprise/how-to-purchase-and-deploy-custom-b2b-apps-through-apples-vpp/


Weight of a refurbished Macbook Air package I want to know how roughly the weight of a refurbished Macbook Air package, I need this as to know how much it will cost me for the international shipping.

Here its URL from Apple Store

So we have :

MacBook Air 13" : 1.35 Kg
45W MagSafe II : 558g
MacBook Air Box :
Outside delivery cardboard box.

Amazon says their delivery weight (same config) is about 6.4pounds (2.9 kg).


How to get rid of different mouse tracking speeds on dual screen setups I am using a MacBook Air 11" 2011 Model with Mac OS X Lion hooked up with a Cinema Display 27" and I am getting two different mouse tracking speeds (I am using a Apple Magic Mouse) when I move between the two screens in a two screen setup.

I have to move the mouse 20cm to move the cursor from one end of the 27" screen to the other.

However, I have to move the mouse 40cm to move the cursor from one end of the 11" screen to the other!

I can only adjust the mouse tracking speed in the system preferences, increasing it does make it faster on the 11" screen, but makes it too fast on the 27" screen...

Anyway I can fix this? This issue did not occur when I was running a MacBook Pro 13" when Snow Leopard and the same 27" screen.

I don't think you can. Read this article on TUAW:

    that's because the mouse speed option cannot be set on a per-monitor basis. Mouse tracking is controlled as part of system defaults, in the Universal Access preferences pane.

    The actual preference is called mouseDriverMaxSpeed and can range as an integer between 1 (lethargic) and 32 (zippy). Here's how you'd read the current setting from the command line:

    defaults read com.apple.universalaccess mouseDriverMaxSpeed

    Whatever number you set to feel right on one monitor will either feel draggy or hyper on the other.


Computer name keeps changing OSX 10.10 (14A389) Since I upgraded to Yosemite 10.10 (14A389) my computer name keeps changing adding a (2) and (3) and so forth.

Any ideas how to fix this?

Go to Macintosh HD > Library > Preferences > SystemConfiguration
and delete the following files:

com.apple.airport.preferences.plist
NetworkInterfaces.plist
preferences.plist

Then reboot the Mac.

The host names should be recreated correctly.

(According to http://forums.imore.com/os-x-yosemite-10-10/304804-my-computer-name-changing-10-10-a.html these are instructions provided by an Apple tech.)


Activating NightMode (Do Not Disturb) at a designated time of night? I am often on call for work, if my phone rings it's very important that I can answer it. I set the ringer on loud when I go to bed to wake me if called.

However the contract only covers certain times so I don't want to be distracted by every notification/message coming in when I am not on duty.

Is it possible to configure Night Mode to come on automatically at (for example) midnight?

I've looked into some of the Alarm/Timer functions which offer a few options "When Alarm  Ends" but I've not seen what I'm looking for.

Do Not Disturb has Manual or Timer modes, though it is fixed times, not 'until alarm goes off'

Details at Use Do Not Disturb on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

With Do Not Disturb, you can silence calls, alerts, and notifications that you get while your device is locked. You can also schedule a time or choose who you'll allow calls from.

Turn Do Not Disturb on or off

When Do Not Disturb is on, a crescent moon  , or half-moon, icon will appear in the status bar. There are two ways to turn Do Not Disturb on or off:

Tap Settings > Do Not Disturb. Choose Manual to turn on Do Not Disturb now or set a schedule.
Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open Control Center. Tap the crescent moon.

Set a schedule

If you don't want to be disturbed at a certain time, you can set a schedule. Tap Settings > Do Not Disturb and turn on Scheduled. Then set a time.
Schedule Do Not Disturb time

Change your settings

You can also choose when you want to be disturbed:

Allow Calls From: Allow calls from everyone, no one, your favorites, or specific contact groups stored on your device or your iCloud account.
Repeated Calls: If someone calls you twice within three minutes, the call won't be silenced.
Silence: Choose to silence calls and notifications always or only when the device is locked.


Macbook Pro, two external monitors, clamshell mode and heat I use my Macbook Pro 15 (mid 2015) with two Asus PA248Q monitors. It has Intel Pro gpu.

I was just wondering that does it matter heat wise if I keep the lid down?

The hinge seems to have some kid of deflector for the fan so it should push the hot air out.

I was just wondering that can I even stress the Macbook Pro 15 so much that it would cut off and shutdown at emergency heat limit?

From MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) - Technical Specifications:

  Operating temperature for the Macbook Pro Mid 2015: 50° to 95° F (10° to 35° C).

You should be able to use it in closed-display mode (a.k.a. closed-clamshell mode) just fine providing the back hinge has a way to dissipate heat appropriately. If it gets too hot, it will auto shut down after the max temperature is reached.


How can I record my iPhone's screen? I'm wondering how I could record the screen of my iPhone without jailbreaking? Are there any Apps that will do this? I know how to take a screen shot but I don't know how to record video.

Since iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite, you can connect the iPhone to your Mac using the Lightning connector, and it will be available as a video camera. Then you can record video of what happens on the screen using QuickTime Player.

(Source: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/app-previews/)

With previous versions of iOS and OS X, you can use AirPlay mirroring on your phone and  an AirPlay receiver/recorder like Reflector or X-Mirage.


How to prevent sending of hostname via DHCP? I am trying to prevent OS X from sending its hostname to the DHCP server. For example, in OpenSuse systems there is DHCLIENT_HOSTNAME_OPTION="AUTO".

I cannot find a similar option in OS X for this, does somebody know more?

I was trying to answer the opposite question: why does my Mac NOT send a hostname in DHCP requests.

After discovering that some Macs send hostnames and others do not, I found the cause in my case: spaces in the Computer Name.

For the gory details, see my Server Fault posting. if you don't want your computer to send a hostname, you could put a space or another unusual character in the Computer Name, and that should do it.


Don't prompt for opening certain external apps in Chrome Chrome prompts me before opening external apps. Is it possible to add certain apps to an allowlist (e.g., Zoom, Notion) so that I'm not prompted each time?

So I think you are referring to protocol handlers - this is the message that says "Are you sure you want to open this link in ?"
If so, try this:

Quit Google Chrome.
With Finder selected, hit the Shift-⌘-G and enter
the folder address ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome.
Open the "Default" folder, and open the "Preferences" file in a text
editor like Text Editor.
Search for the phrase “excluded_schemes,”
which houses your list of protocol handler preferences in the text
file.
Search for the protocol (like “itmss” for iTunes, or
“slack” for Slack) and change its state from “false” to “true,”
taking care not to remove any punctuation.
Save the file, and re-open
Chrome.

** This only works if you've previously left "Always use this app for this filetype" unchecked, and may not work for all versions of Chrome  ***


Purchased TV Show will not play - Screen stays black and progress bar won't move I'll start this with saying that the following question is relevant, but the answer didn't solve the problem for me:

A purchased and downloaded iTunes television show will not play

I'm running iTunes Version 12.10.7 12.10.8.5, which is the most recent version at the time of writing this on Windows 10. I bought and downloaded the latest season of Doctor Who two days ago.
Initially I had trouble downloading some of the episodes, with error 2072 being thrown in the process. The solution I found online (deleting the Downloads folder in iTunes Media and letting iTunes recreate it) worked to solve this problem and I could download the episodes.
Now they are on my device and I'd like to play them, but the episodes that showed me that error while downloading can't be played now. Starting them opens the player window and displays progress bar and control buttons, but the screen stays black and the progress bar doesn't move.
Other episodes that didn't have this problem downloading are playing fine.
I've tried the following:

Delete and re-download the broken episodes

Delete the broken episodes and re-add them from my device

Check for updates on iTunes and my device (there were none)

Restart iTunes as well as my device.

Check if my device is authorized to play my purchases (it is, otherwise the other episodes of the season wouldn't work either, i guess)

[UPDATE] I also tried downloading the episodes to my iPad (where they do play) and transferring them to my PC from there. However, as soon as they are on my PC, iTunes refuses yet again to play them. This sounds to me like a library corruption. I think I'll try to rebuild it next.

[UPDATE 2] After literally spending hours rebuilding my library (even with exporting and re-importing my old one as xml) it worked for a bit. Right until I closed iTunes and reopened it a while later. Then it got much worse: Now all TV shows that I purchased from the iTunes store either won't play at all or have no sound when they do.

[UPDATE 3] After I did that, I tried completely uninstalling and re-installing iTunes, completely with emptying out my library again. Took me some hours to get everything back up and lo and behold: No changes whatsoever. No TV shows that I bought on the iTunes store can be watched, neither downloaded ones, nor on stream.

[STILL UPDATE 3] I've also unauthorized every device linked to my account and re-authorized my computer. Didn't work either.

It could be many things from a missing video codec, to a corrupted iTunes/Quicktime installation, to an old video driver or hardware acceleration on the video driver.
Find a video that doesn't play that you have purchased already. Don't use rentals or streams.  This gives you a baseline to test without incurring additional costs.
Make one change at a time then test iTunes with the known troublesome video.

Make sure Windows is up to date run Check for Updates.
Go to your computer manufacturers support web page look up your model and check the video driver version verses the one you see in Device Manager. Upgrade it if it is not the latest version. Some vendors provide tools to make this easier. These tools help you keep your drivers up to date, run such a tool as an alternative option.
Turn off Hardware Acceleration (Display Settings -> Advanced Settings -> Troubleshoot -> Reduce Hardware Acceleration)
Run Disk Cleanup to clear your Temporary folders.
Run virus/malware scans.
Run a Disk Check (Right-click drive -> Properties -> Tools -> Check)
Delete & Re-download the purchased content
Follow this Apple Support guide to completely uninstall, re-install iTunes on Windows. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204275 Also uninstall Quicktime if you have that installed.

It's possible that Apple had technical difficulties, some people report a video that had a black screen working properly at a later date with no changes made on their part.
You can actually report the problem and possibly request a refund from Apple for those rentals that didn't work. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204084


How in IRSSI can I switch channels? CTRL + number doesn't work I just installed irssi using Brew in High Sierra. Using iTerm 2, I can't figure out how to change windows (channels). Pressing CTRL 2 for example doesn't take me to channel 2 like it would on an Linux machine.

Does anybody know the key combination that would make it work on iTerm and High Sierra?

My Google skills were horrible so I posted the question. Found out it is ESC+number.


Why does my recent calls list have entries from the future? My iPhone's recent calls list correctly shows all the calls I've made or recieved, but some of them apparently have timestamps from the future:

This screenshot was taken on Jan 7th. The call labelled "1:15 PM" was made that day. The ones at the top of the list, labelled 1/12/13, were actually made sometime the previous week.

I was messing around with the phone's date and time in response to the Do Not Disturb bug. I had switched "Set time automatically" off, and changed the phone's date manually -- probably to 1/12 though I don't recall exactly -- and left it that way (actually forgot about it) for a while. My phone's time was definitely manually set incorrectly when those calls happened, and that seems pretty likely to be the cause.

I suspect that the answer is "No", but is there any way to correct these records?

I've tried restarting the phone and monkeying around with the date and time again manually, but there's been no change to the list.

This is an iPhone 5 running iOS 6.0.1

Unfortunately, there's no way to change the Recent calls timestamps.

You will either have to wait past the 1/12/13 or you could consider deleting those numbers. Course, you would obviously lose the phone numbers, and that data, but it would keep your true recent calls on top before it starts working again on 1/12/13.

It appears to be indeed changing time on the iPhone that has caused this issue, as I was able to repeat it easily. In testing it, I switched off "automatic" time, and change the date to tomorrow. After that, I made a phone call and then changed it back to set the time automatically. The phone call that I made during the manual time change indicated that I made the call tomorrow. 1/10/13, in this case.

So, your iPhone uses local time - the time that displays on the phone at the top of the screen - to log, order, and display recent calls.


Can't Load Apple Hardware Test When I updated my MacBook Air (5,2, mid-2012) the installation got hung up and it started chiming as if there was a memory issue... I have attempted to run AHT, and either option-D or D get "Cannot Load EFI/Drivers/Testsupport.efi" Apple Support either did not know what that meant, or that it was caused by my third party (OWC) SSD. Tried the GitHub site to no avail (both loading and/or booting from a USB). My apologies in advance if this is reinventing the wheel...

I would manually download the AHT for your MBA and run it from a USB. The steps to do this are as follows:

Create a bootable USB flash drive by using Disk Utility's Erase function. Make sure you choose OS X Extended for the format and the GUID Partition Map for the scheme. For the purposes of these steps, also give your USB the name AHT when you're erasing it.
Download the AHT for your particular MBA here
Mount the downloaded image (it should mount as AHTCThree)
Now you will need to copy the AHT to your USB flash drive. To start, Launch the Terminal app (usually found within the Utilities folder)
In the Terminal window, enter the following:

cp -r /Volumes/AHTCThree/System /Volumes/AHT/
Now we need to make the USB flash drive bootable, so enter the following line in Terminal:

sudo bless --folder /Volumes/AHT/ --file /Volumes/AHT/System/Library/CoreServices/.diagnostics/diags.efi --label AHT
Enter your Admin password
Leave the USB flash drive plugged in and restart your MBA
Immediately hold down the Option key
Select the AHT from the list and boot up

NOTE for other readers: - The  AHT download and Terminal commands used in this answer are only for Mid-2012 MacBook Air models (both the 11" and 13"). Do not attempt this if your model Mac is different!


How can I Access my files from a different start up disk I am have problems with a Mac not starting up (macOS 10.13.6, MacBookPro 13” early 2015)  I created a new start-up disk on an external hard drive and wanted to recover files before going further but the Files on my user account on my laptop are locked - even though I am using the same Apple ID, name and password.

You'll need to add your user account to the folders and files using the Get Info (CMD + I). Unlock the gold lock and click the + add yourself with Read & Write permissions to each folder and the files within.
Since that is quite tedious you can do it from the command line in an easier fashion.  Open Terminal and do the following:
($ is the prompt for a normal user and # is the prompt for root or sudo elevated equivalent. You don't type the $ or # symbols)
$ sudo -s (type your password when prompted)
# chown -R <username>:staff /Volumes/<internal_disk_name>/Users/<username>

It will take a while for the ownership to cascade down all the files in your home directory on the internal disk. Let it run.  The -R means recursively drill down the entire tree of files and folders from your old home folder the whole way.  There are likely a great number of files to process.
Once it finishes go back to Finder and you should be able to copy your files to back them up.  Then you can delete everything on the internal disk and re-install the operating system and restore your data from the external disk.


Applescript to update year tag for audio files I have a lot of tracks in iTunes where the files are named "music-NNNN.mp3" with NNNN being the year the track was recorded. How can I use Applescript to automatically set the year tag for these files based on NNNN?

I created an AppleScript for you that will parse the filenames of any selected iTunes tracks and set the year tag accordingly.

Paste this into AppleScript Editor and run it (or save it as an application):

tell application "iTunes"
    repeat with theTrack in selection
        set theFile to location of theTrack
        tell application "Finder" to set theName to name of theFile
        set theYear to my parse_year(theName)
        if theYear is not "" then
            set the year of theTrack to theYear
        end if
    end repeat
end tell

on parse_year(filenameText)
    -- returns the year if it exists in filename with form song-1965.mp3, else returns empty string
    try
        set yearResult to do shell script "echo " & quoted form of filenameText & " | perl -ne 'print $1 if s/(?<=-)(\\d+)(?=(\\..*|$))/$1/'"
    on error
        set yearResult to ""
    end try
    return yearResult
end parse_year

A few notes:

It doesn't go through the whole library, only the currently selected songs (you can of course select your whole library).
It only matches filenames with that end with a - followed by a number (and optionally an extension).

It will match these:

songname-1946.mp3
anothersong-1977
songname-1965.someextention

But not these:

songnoyear.mp3
song123
song-1232-someothertext

It will overwrite any year already entered in the metadata.


Folders with Icons on iOS Recently, I organized all of the apps on my iPad, and came to a realization: it would be great if I could make the folders have their own icons. What I mean is this (right), as supposed to this (left):

I have already looked for some ways to do this, but the only thing I've found is something called is a Cydia tweak called TinyGrid, which does let you customize the icons of the folders, but not change the image for them (you can change the size, etc.). Currently, my iPad is not jailbroken, but if the solution is jailbreak-only, I may be willing to jailbreak it. Thanks in advance for your help.

First of all, let me just put this out there: any tweak that tweaks the appearance like this is going to require that you jailbreak ;)

While not exactly what you're looking, A3Tweaks has achieved a somewhat similar alternative to what you're describing! It's called "Apex 2 (iOS 7)". It is a paid app, but at $2.99 it's not entirely unreasonable. However, it is slightly different that being just a folder with one icon. Rather than wasting your or my time writing out exactly what it does, what it looks like, or how it functions, you can check out an excellent write-up at iDownloadBlog.

Hope this helps!


Image Compression Power point Presentation 2011 I am trying to make a presentation, and am facing a problem.  I am facing picture compression issues . In addition to this saving problem, that pictures become worse quality every time I save the file, I am experiencing problems while trying to insert files. All pictures are inserted blurry. This applies for emf, png and, pdf.

I cannot find these advanced settings from Powerpoint for Mac 2011. How can I import/insert pictures to Powerpoint in their original quality? How can I control the picture compression?

I am using a Yosemite 10.10.2 version. Please help..!

Insert the image> Highlight it> Format picture tab> Compress> Picture quality> Select the desired option.
You'll likely want to choose Picture Quality: "Keep current resolution"
and Apply to:  "All pictures in this file"
You'll need to do this once for each new file you create, since it's a per-file setting, not a PowerPoint-wide setting.

Source


Attempting to update app asks for a different iTunes account password I am trying to update WhatsApp. It is asking me for an iTunes password of a different email address and I can't change it.

I rebooted my phone, signed in and out of iTunes and it is not changing it.
What should I do?

Will I lose the existing conversations if I change the Apple ID following the instructions in the answer provided (I.e. Deleting whatsapp in the old ID and downloading it with the new Apple ID? Or is the conversation linked to the phone number, not the app?

The Apple ID being requested will be the Apple ID that was used to purchase the app originally. It can't be changed, since it is linked to the specific app. If you wish to use your Apple ID instead, you can delete the app from the device and re-purchase it in the App Store using the correct Apple ID.


Can I copy app data from an old iPhone backup to a new, set-up iPhone? I recently got a new iPhone. I backed up my old iPhone in iTunes, and then set up my new iPhone as a restore-from-backup. However, I was just looking at my new iPhone and realized some apps failed to copy over.

Is there a way to copy the app data from the old iPhone to the new-but-already-setup iPhone, or do I need to start over?

I know I can download the apps, but can I transfer the data? Part of this is game data that I know does not live in iCloud or any server.

After iOS 8, according to this document by Apple, app contents are no longer backed up by iTunes. I suggest using iMazing to backup your old phone, and restore it on your new phone to get the app content.


Check if newly released iOS app is worldwide available on the AppStore I will release my iOS app soon and I read that there is a delay for up to 5 hours until the app is available on the AppStore worldwide. I'm in Austria (Europe), how can I check if the app is already available on the US AppStore? (or better yet if it's available everywhere)

I only know of a manual way checking it.

Open App Store and click at the flag circle bottom right.

Now select the country you want to check for your app.


Is parallels 7 better in performance then Vmware Fusion 4? I got Vmware Fusion 4 when I bought my MAC Book Pro ( core i7 2.0Ghz Quad Core 6MB Cache, 4GB RAM and 500GB HDD). I installed Win7 first on Vmware and then later WinXp. In both case the Virtual Machine was slow, it lagged and even the host OS LION, started to lag.

I assigned 1.5GB to 700++MB RAM and also gave upto 4 cores, but performance was slow.
Did some research online and found that Parallels 7 is alternate to vmware. But is parallels 7 better in performance compared to vmware fusion 4?

Ars Technica recently did a rundown of the performance differences between Parallels 7 and VMware Fusion 4: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/10/virtual-showdown-parallels-desktop-7-and-vmware-fusion-4-reviewed.ars

The general takeaway seemed to me to be that Parallels is delivering better performance outside some very particular uses.


Command path for exit How would I find the command path for exit?  I have already tried which exit but that returns nothing (it just goes to a new line).

I have also played around cd /usr/bin, and when in that directory using ls -R, but I haven't found it.

You're not going to find it in any directory because it's a builtin command (man exit):

  Shell builtin commands are commands that can be executed within the
  running shell's process.  Note that, in the case of csh(1) builtin commands, the command is executed in a subshell if it occurs as any component of a pipeline except the last.

A list of the Bash builtin commands for macOS can be found at the top of the man page (man builtin).


Application switcher not cycling anymore on hold 10.9.5 here

Suddenly my Application Switcher won't cycle anymore on hold. It still can cycle between apps one by one, but if I hold command tab it will stop after reaching the right end of the row. Before that it used to keep cycling until I release command tab.

It's not so much that the loss of this minor feature is annoying, it is why it happened in the first place. As far as I know I didn't install any new app nor change anything. I found out that the same is true for any session not just mine. I also tried safe boot to no avail.

Thanks for any hint.

It looks this is a duplicate of this question.

I have the same situation - no cycling beyond endpoints (cycling backwards you can do via Ctrl + Shift + Tab).


Adobe Illustrator CS6 on Mojave with Java 8? I ran into the common issue where Illustrator CS6 was unable to open in newer Mac OS version and asking for Java 6 to be installed.
While I have already installed Java 8, I found this thread where a few answers pointed to the possibility of using Java 8 as long as two empty directories are created: Adobe Illustrator CS6 with Java 8?
However, it appears that most users there are using El Capitan or older versions, and since there are some SIP related operation involved, to be on the cautious side, I want to know if anyone tried/knew the same solution proposed in the above thread would work for Mojave (10.14.6)? Would this cause any issue with future updates?

The answer given by Zac Jackson still applies to Mojave: you would have to disable SIP in order to create the required folders. Illustrator's reliance on Java is very slight: the main problem is the 'check' at startup.
Arguably, it's easier just to install Java 6 SE anyway. Java 6 doesn't interfere with Java 8, you can have both installed with no problem.
Only Illustrator and Dreamweaver need Java: the other CS6 apps do not.
However, as Mojave gets older and older, your best option is to run Creative Suite inside a virtual machine running an older OS, like El Cap, and/or migrate to cheaper, more up-to-date apps, like Affinity Designer, that are just as good, if not better, for many uses.


convert all paragraphs using a style How can I convert all paragraphs using a style to another style?
I have a Document using "Default" style with justification set.
I want to change all to plain left justified.
I have created a new Style with the desired features.

The short answer to your question is: Select each block and apply the new style.
But once we are talking about more than a few blocks of text, it's easier to change the current style than to apply a new style.
To do that:
When you have the format sidebar open and you make format changes to a defined style (in your case "Default"), the name of the style in the dropdown menu  at the top gets an asterisk ("*") and an "Update" button.
When you click that button, the style gets updated and through that all the elements that use that style get updated as well.
If you want to discard the style change instead, just select the name of the style again in the dropdown.


Extract text between two unicode symbols using AppleScript or bash? My goal is to take text from a standard .txt document, and use (preferably) Terminal or Applescript to extract text between the symbols ▶ and •. While there is only one ▶ symbol there are multiple bullet points, so being able to extract data between only the first bullet is vital. I am partially educated in the ways of bash, so explanation would help me out a lot, otherwise I might screw up. TIA, Jake

This runs with Bash, but it evokes some Ruby code:

ruby - <<EOF
puts /▶[^•]*•/.match("▶the first •2•3•4•5•666643")
EOF

If you decide to use AppleScript, you have a lot of options for what to match against:

on run {input, parameters}
    set var to "▶the first •2•3•4•5•666643"

    set output to (do shell script ¬
"ruby - <<EOF
    puts /▶([^•]*)•/.match('" & var & "')[1]
EOF")

    return output
end run

Alternatively, sed can be used, which is easier for working with files:

sed -E 's/.*▶([^•]*)•.*/\1/' filename.txt


Move files to individual folders, using file name as folder naming convention for folder, using Terminal I've been looking for answer on the web now for a few hours and can't find what im looking for. What i want to do is move each file in a directory to a new folder using the name of the file, excluding the extension.

/Movies/Filname.avi ---> /Movies/Filename/Filename.avi

I know how to do each individual file, but can i do it reclusively for the whole folder using one command or a script.

This should do the trick.

#!/bin/bash
shopt -s nullglob    #avoid problems in directory with no files
ext=avi              #the file extension to search for
for f in *.$ext; do
    d="${f##/}"      #gives us just the filename
    d="${d%.$ext}"   #strips the file extension
    mkdir "$d"       #makes the directory
    mv "$f" "$d/$f"  #moves the file
done


How fast should my MBP internal drive be? I'be been experiencing an ongoing (if not precisely measurable) feeling that my MBP is underperforming, and it seems to be related to disk IO. I recently downloaded a disk benchmarking tool, to see how the disk is performing. The issue, however, is that I don't know from that how the disk should be performing. Where can I find numbers to set my expectations?

This is a late-2010 17" MBP with a 7200RPM Hitachi HTS725050A9A362 drive.

I'm also not sure 100% if the issue is in disk I/O; I'm trying to narrow the problem down. Other slowdowns, for example, include text entry in this form; typing the word "slowdowns" back there, for example -- I'd completely finished typing it before the text appeared in the form field. So, it seems likely that there are other things going on.

Yep. That's not a disk issue. My suggestions / theories:

FileVault could be a reason for slowdown, and a pretty big one if your disk is very cluttered. Even with FileVault off, disk clutter can slow down your computer if it's excessive, specially on startup (though not when you're typing). I consider "disk clutter" to be about 80-90% of your disk space used.

RAM could be a factor too, especially if you're running memory intensive apps. Your manual should have some more info on how much RAM your MacBook can have: up to what you can expand it (perhaps 8 GB). When your RAM gets full (you can see how full it is in Activity Monitor), it starts transferring memory pages from RAM to your HDD, which is considerably slower than the lightning fast RAM. Perhaps this could be an issue, because when your apps need that cache, it needs to load it from a slower source.

And last, but probably the biggest: your apps. Check if any apps are eating your CPU in the background using Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor). Also, check on System Preferences for any apps loading when you login (Accounts > Login Items tab). Try to get rid of some background apps you might not need. Flash is a CPU hog, and it has happened to me that it slows my whole web browser down to the point where even typing is slow.


Mail unexpectedly quits - MacBook Pro - macOS High Sierra My Mid 2012 MacBook Pro runs High Sierra 10.13.6 and Mail application version 11.5 modified 01 Oct 2020 by Apple Store Security update 2020-006. Mail worked until today when it quit unexpectedly while using signalspamv2plug-in.
I am unable to re-open Mail despite doing it in Safe Mode.
01 December 2020, sorry to have bothered you all, problem solved by uninstalling the SPAM filter which created havoc.

01 December 2020 - Problem solved by uninstalling the offending SPAM filter, sorry to have bothered you all.


Can't create App Store account? Every time I attempt to create an App Store account, I get the following error:

  Your session has timed out. Please try again.

  Code: 5107

This error has persisted for weeks; I'm effectively locked out of the App Store, and everything that comes from it. (Which, as a developer, means a lot of things, since tons of stuff annoyingly depends on Xcode.)

All you need to use for an App Store account is your Apple ID.

If what you're trying to do is create an Apple ID and you keep running into Code: 5107 errors, you can try using a browser instead to create your Apple ID.

To do this:

Launch Safari (or your preferred web browser)
Go to: https://appleid.apple.com/account
Complete the form etc to create your Apple ID

Once you've created your Apple ID (or if you already had an Apple ID), sign in to the App Store. You can do this as follows:

Launch the App Store app
Click on the Store menu
Select Sign In...
Enter your Apple ID
Enter your Password
Click on Sign In.

If I've misunderstood your question, please let me know.


Unable to find an album in iTunes while I see it using web browser So I'm in Australia and I bought Apple Music, I wanted to pull a particular album I really enjoy.

  Artist - Recoil, title - 1+2

While I can see it in browser by googling it.

Above screenshot is from iTunes via browser where I'm not logged in.

I'm unable to see it in my iTunes app on iPhone and Mac when I search using phrases "recoil" and / or "1+2.

The last one in search results is Hydrology, while (1+2 - the oldest LP) should appear on the very right but it does not. Is it because of some licensing issues in Australia Apple Store? What could be the issue. Could other people from different countries try to search it and check if it appears?

Your link to the iTunes web preview points to the US store. Looks like that the album is not available in the Australian store. Some albums are region specific. That's why you could not find it in the Apple Music app on your iPhone.


Saving a picture to a file in Skitch with one click? Is there any way to press a single button in Skitch and have it save the current image to a folder of your choosing (e.g. Documents). This is as opposed to using the drag and drop feature and having to open up finder and only then dropping the picture there.

I'm looking for something simple like the Save to history button on top.

If you press ⌘ Command+E, it brings up an Export window where you can select the destination to export:

(I would suggest pressing ⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+O to switch to the Documents folder, but it seems this doesn't work in Skitch's Export window!)


Connecting iPhone Xr to a PC that doesn't have iTunes on it I'm trying to pull some video off a friend's iPhone.  It's an iPhone Xr, Software Version 12.2 according to the About screen.  I want to copy the video to a PC running Win7 SP1.  I don't own an iPhone, so I don't have iTunes on my PC, and I'm trying to avoid installing it.

I connect the phone to the PC and the phone prompts with "Trust this computer?"  I press Yes.  I look at my PC.  There's no popup on how to handle files like if you plug in an external device.  I look at My Computer in File Explorer, and there's no iPhone present.

Is there some setting or something I need to tinker with to get my PC to see the iPhone?

I ended up finding an answer in a YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuJgHIipTvM

I will summarize in the event of link rot:

Connect the iPhone to the PC with a USB cable
Click the Start button in the lower left corner, and open the
Devices and Printers window
At the bottom of the window you will see a section labeled
"Unspecified"
Right click on Apple Mobile Device USB Driver and choose
"Properties"
Click the "Hardware" tab, and then the "Properties" button
Click the "Change Settings" button
Click the "Driver" tab and then the "Update Driver" button.
Click the "Browse my computer" option, and then the "Let me pick
from a list" option
Change to the MTP USB Device driver

It worked for me, after I did that I was able to see the iPhone attached to my PC.  I had to open and close the Windows Explorer window a couple times before it would actually let me see the DCIM folder on the iPhone, so don't get frustrated if it doesn't work right away.

Hope that helps anyone who might stop by and see this answer!


Can I Search The Passwords Stored in my Keychain? I use unique passwords for everything, and most of them I do not write down. I just let Keychain manage them.
As I'm sure you know, "i hacked your email, give me $800 in bitcoin" emails are all the rage these days. I know they are fake, these passwords are not my computer passwords or email account passwords. They are from online accounts, and I'd like to know WHICH online accounts.

So it would be very handy if I could look at the password, search keychain, and use that to determine which website I have an account on, had their security breached.

In the absence of any better suggestions ;)...

Unlock Safari > Preferences > Passwords.
Then select all entries (select one first, to bring the right area into focus, then select all entries by pressing the cmd+A keyboard keys), which will make all passwords visible (usually displayed as dots.  Earlier versions of Safari need the "Show passwords for selected websites" box ticked).
Now click on the "Password" tab, to sort them alphabetically.  Look for your password.

As bonus, all sites with the same password will also be displayed underneath each other.


Update OS X recovery USB stick with Mavericks I've got a Snow Leopard 8GB USB stick that I got from my MacBook Air. Now that Mavericks is available, I'd like to update that USB stick with Mavericks.

I can't seem to be able to format that disk:

$ diskutil list
/dev/disk1
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     Apple_partition_scheme                        *8.1 GB     disk1
   1:        Apple_partition_map                         30.7 KB    disk1s1
   2:         Apple_Driver_ATAPI                         2.0 KB     disk1s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Mac OS X Install        7.7 GB     disk1s3

I've tried the Disk Utility, it recognises the USB stick as an optical disk, and it refuses to erase it (I guess because my MacBook Air doesn't have an optical drive).

I've tried the following:

$ sudo fdisk -i /dev/disk1
fdisk: could not open MBR file /usr/standalone/i386/boot0: No such file or directory

    -----------------------------------------------------
    ------ ATTENTION - UPDATING MASTER BOOT RECORD ------
    -----------------------------------------------------

Do you wish to write new MBR and partition table? [n] y
fdisk: /dev/disk1: Permission denied
$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/disk1
dd: /dev/disk1: Permission denied
$ sudo diskutil eraseDisk jhfs+ newdisk /dev/disk1
Started erase on disk1
Unmounting disk
Error: -69877: Couldn't open device

What else can I do? I'd like to erase it and format it as HFS+ (journaled).

The Apple-provided system restore USB stick is read-only. There are a few un-official tools you can use to make it into a 'regular' USB stick if you search. More information here.


An apple script for google dictionary pronunciation The following is the link to Goole dictionary pronunciation files:

http://ssl.gstatic.com/dictionary/static/sounds/20160317/pronunciation--_us_1.mp3

If you substitute "pronunciation" with your own word, you get that word's pronunciation.

I wonder if it is possible to develop a script in mac which allows the user to type his word and the script fetches its pronunciation through the above link. I can already use the automator to fetch the definition for a new word (by using the code presented here) through the link below by adding words after the equal sign.

https://www.google.com/search?sa=X&biw=1440&bih=737&q=Dictionary#dobs=

But I don't know how I can insert words in the mentioned place in the pronunciation link.

In bash, it's very easy:

cd ~/Desktop; curl --remote-name-all --silent --url \
http://ssl.gstatic.com/dictionary/static/sounds/20160317/\
{wrought,drought,rough,thorough}--_us_1.mp3

That will download the files for wrought, drought, rough, and thorough, and save them on the desktop.

If you want to put it in an AppleScript:

    set word_list to {"wrought", "drought", "rough", "thorough"}

    set my text item delimiters to ","
    set my text item delimiters to {word_list as text, "{word-list}"}

    set curl to "cd ~/Desktop; curl --remote-name-all --silent --url " & ¬
        "http://ssl.gstatic.com/dictionary/static/sounds/20160317/" & ¬
        "{{word-list}}--_us_1.mp3"

    text items of curl as text

    do shell script the result

To obtain user input to allow a user to supply a word to feed into the URL, replace the first line with these two:

    display dialog "Enter a word:" default answer "pronunciation"
    set word_list to {text returned} of the result


How to disable SSH passphrase keychain saves in OS X Sierra I like having my SSH passphrase stored for the duration of my MacBook session, so that I don't have to keep entering it every time I SSH into a server, but when I restart my computer I want to have to enter it again (I don't want my passphrase encrypted and stored on disk in the keychain). This wasn't the case until I upgraded from Mountain Lion to Sierra; ever since then, it has been permanently storing my passphrase in my keychain. I can open the keychain preferences and delete my SSH passphrase, but the next time I SSH into a server and it prompts me for my passphrase, it is immediately added to the keychain again.

How can I get back to what I had with mountain lion, where my passphrase would be stored for the duration of my MacBook session, but then I would need to reenter it the next time I turn my MacBook on again.

There is a new option UseKeychain in Sierra, which defaults to yes and which is a reason for this behavior. If you do not like that, edit the configuration in ~/.ssh/config (or create this file):

UseKeychain no
AddKeysToAgent yes

The second option will tell the SSH agent to store the keys, which has the same result as if you had used ssh-add to enter your passphrase beforehand.


Does a voice text get deleted? I sent a voice text to a friend, but didn't save it on my thread. And it was automatically deleted after the default 2 minutes.

Does the voice text stay on the recipients messaging thread until they have a chance to hear it, and then decide weather or not to keep it?

Basically, do remote deletes on their thread happen once it's been deleted on my thread?

There is a setting under Settings -> Messages -> Audio Messages section. There is an "Expire" option, where you can select 'after 2 minutes' or 'never'. That is why it disappeared from your message thread.

Your friend will have it in their message thread until they listen to it, and then the phone will either remove it after 2 minutes or keep it, depending on what their setting is.

So to be clear: what you see in your message thread isn't in any way linked to what your friend sees in theirs. If your message gets delivered to two Macs, three iPads and one iPhone, this concept applies to pictures as well. Each device that has the message handles deletions independently of the others.


How to change preference pane unlock dialog language? During the Mountain Lion installation I have selected the English language as the system language. However, the dialog asking for my password – that appears when you need to install an application, or when you want to unlock a preference pane – is in Dutch. I'm currently in The Netherlands, but I don't see how this might be related to the language of one type of dialog.

Here below an image of the dialog. As you can see there's even a mix of Dutch and English:

I haven't been to other countries yet with this MacBook Pro, so don't know if it's actually dependent on location.

How can I fix this issue?

In the end I solved the problem by removing all languages except English from the list found in System Preferences -> Language & Text and restarted.


Storage only shows "Other" + Fluctuating storage I have a late 2009 Mac, and my storage keeps depleting in front of my eyes. Despite disabling local snapshots on time machine, searching for numerous apps to figure out where the space is going, repairing disk utility (which displays invalid block count and then corrects it despite that it'll fluctuate again), and reinstalling Maverick/ restoring from a backup I have been left with my storage all becoming "other."

Along with that the storage is still fluctuating. At this point I'm thinking I should probably just wipe my Mac (what they finally told me after two hours at the apple store) because I can't figure out where this bug seems to be coming from and I've feverishly searched Google.

Does anyone have any ideas that might be able to help me, I'm truly desperate. Thorough instructions would be very helpful.

I wonder if your Spotlight index is corrupt or Spotlight is turned off for the volume, and thus classifying all of the files as "Other". Try rebuilding the Spotlight index.

You can tell the Finder List View to report the size of all of the folders; however, this will not show you things your user account can not see. To find what is using up your disk space with Admin access and good visualization, I prefer the elegant UI of DaisyDisk which you can download as a demo to try. Or you can use free GrandPerspective.


How can I add tags or groups in Apple Contacts? I have people in my address book, but I want to organize them by topic.

Like Work or Office or Friends or well, you get it.

How can I do that on the desktop? I'm assuming its using the group feature, but I can't figure out how to add someone to a group.

How can I do that on my iPhone? Is that even possible?

In the macOS Contacts app, you can create a new Group by either going into File → New Group or pressing ⇧ shift ⌘ cmd N.

To add a contact to that group, simply drag them from the main list to the group in the left side-pane. If that pane is hidden, you may make it visible by going into View → Show Groups or pressing ⌘ cmd 1.

As of iOS 10.3, it is not possible to manipulate groups in the iOS Contacts app, only filter by groups.

You can perform these operations using the web apps at iCloud.com, although doing so using Safari for iOS is very difficult.


How do I open a .gid file? I have some files that have .gid extension. What Mac software should I use to open it?

I use OS X 10.5.8.

It could be a Windows global index file (.gid) or something else completely different depending on where it originated from. If indeed it is the common Windows type, it's used basically tell Microsoft help documents where to position the window on the screen, not much more.

If you want to open it
Control mouse-click > Open with... > Text edit

It might be gibberish or it might not; either way you could take a look if you're completely curious. Sometimes unknowingly, mistakenly, or haphazardly, software developers will use .(lll) whatever in relation to the software they've created while another application or computing platform also uses that extension; this can result in confusion, problems and conflicts.

Take a look at this document which lists the most commonly used extensions.


Can you distribute an iOS app outside App Store using a single bundle identifier? Is there a way to distribute an iOS application to customers with a single bundle identifier outside App Store?

The software firm I work for is providing iPad software to several large companies. Right now we're using the Apple Developer Enterprise Program.

Each of these companies receive an IPA file with their own bundle id e.g. com.SuperApp.FirstCustomer, com.SuperApp.SecondCustomer. The companies install and manage our software using their own Mobile Device Management (MDM) system.

A 3rd-party component we would like to use in our software, PSPDFKit, is a lot more expensive if each of our customers have a dedicated bundle ID.

We don't want to distribute our software through App Store, we just want to send the IPA files directly to our customers – and our customers also prefer this way of the app distribution.

You should not be using an Enterprise Program membership in this way. The Enterprise Program should only be used to distribute apps to devices owned by the enterprise member company I.e. your company's devices.

You can use a regular organisational Apple a Developer membership to distribute a B2B to your client organisations.

You use App Store Connect as for a normal App Store app, but in the pricing and availability section you make it a private app and list the Apple Business Manager organisation IDs that are permitted to access the app.

As well as being "the right way", B2B apps are lifetime signed like any other App Store app; you don't need to worry about refreshing distribution profiles and signing certificates periodically.

There is a great WWDC 2019 session that covers this.


Changing the command prompt of Terminal I have found myself to grow fond to CentOS's command prompt which looks like the following:

 [user@host directory]$ cmd

I, personally, do not like how Mac OS X Terminal is laid out, which is:

 host:directory user$ cmd

Is there any way to change the prompt of Terminal's commands to make it look more like the first one? I am very new to these things.

If you are using bash, simply do
PS1='[\u@\h \w]$ '

More details and options in man bash (search for PROMPTING)

If tcsh, do man tcsh and search for "prompt"


Tell age of SSD by using iostat? I did

  iostat  -Id disk0

on my MacBook Pro (MacOS Sierra) and found the total number of reads/writes done on the SSD. Is it true that this is indicative of the age of the MacBook? Should a new MacBook have very few reads/writes? Mine has a power cycle count of 10 but a very high number of transfers (2050247) at 28.6 KB/t i.e. around 55GB worth of reads and writes. Something seems off here...

No, iostat gets it's information from the OS, not from the hardware.
You could use smartctl - see this answer


Kernel Panic (?) on new 2014 MBP I bought a new 2014 macbook pro two weeks ago and yesterday I've had 2 consecutive grey screens with restart and another one today. It happened while opening a movie in vlc or when exiting full screen in vlc.

The error report is here. Can anyone read it? Thank you

Mon Sep 15 20:08:12 2014
panic(cpu 0 caller 0xffffff800d6dc24e): Kernel trap at 0xffffff800d6a3699, type 13=general protection, registers:
CR0: 0x0000000080010033, CR2: 0x000000000dbdd000, CR3: 0x000000006b0b508c, CR4: 0x00000000001606e0
RAX: 0x0000000000000001, RBX: 0xff000000ff000000, RCX: 0xffffff80335efe30, RDX: 0x0000000000000821
RSP: 0xffffff81fd8dbd20, RBP: 0xffffff81fd8dbd50, RSI: 0x00000000252ab7e5, RDI: 0xffffff80140075e8
R8:  0x0000000000000000, R9:  0xffffff81fd8dbed0, R10: 0x0000000000000000, R11: 0x0000000000000000
R12: 0xffffff80140075e8, R13: 0xffffff8011f36000, R14: 0x000000000003f000, R15: 0xffffff8043e6abc0
RFL: 0x0000000000010286, RIP: 0xffffff800d6a3699, CS:  0x0000000000000008, SS:  0x0000000000000000
Fault CR2: 0x000000000dbdd000, Error code: 0x0000000000000000, Fault CPU: 0x0

Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address
0xffffff81cfa03c50 : 0xffffff800d622f79
0xffffff81cfa03cd0 : 0xffffff800d6dc24e
0xffffff81cfa03ea0 : 0xffffff800d6f3746
0xffffff81cfa03ec0 : 0xffffff800d6a3699
0xffffff81fd8dbd50 : 0xffffff800d67833e
0xffffff81fd8dbf20 : 0xffffff800d6dc68c
0xffffff81fd8dbfb0 : 0xffffff800d6f364b

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: Google Chrome He

Mac OS version:
13E28

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 13.3.0: Tue Jun  3 21:27:35 PDT 2014; root:xnu-2422.110.17~1/RELEASE_X86_64
Kernel UUID: BBFADD17-672B-35A2-9B7F-E4B12213E4B8
Kernel slide:     0x000000000d400000
Kernel text base: 0xffffff800d600000
System model name: MacBookPro11,3 (Mac-2BD1B31983FE1663)

System uptime in nanoseconds: 22017411075576
last loaded kext at 21996892478151: com.apple.driver.AppleIntelMCEReporter  104 (addr 0xffffff7f8fc28000, size 49152)
last unloaded kext at 18693822674439: com.apple.driver.AppleIntelMCEReporter    104 (addr 0xffffff7f8fc28000, size 32768)

It looks like your "BSD process name corresponding to current thread: Google Chrome He" is doing that.

Turn it off and run VLC to verify.

I do not know why, but you can go to the Chromium web site and look for solutions there.


Trying to restart a MacBook Pro that went off by itself with a battery that indicated "Service Battery"? My daughter's MacBook Pro (Late 2011 model) just went off while she was using it.

Battery was reporting that it required servicing, so apparently, she was pushing it.

After it went black, it would not turn on anymore, even though it said the battery was full (before it went off) and the charger was plugged in.

Now when the charger is plugged in, the charge light flickers very faintly or is a constant faint green (really faint).  The charger is good because it can charge my son's MacBook Pro just fine and shows a bright orange while charging.

We've tried long power button holds to force a restart, but nothing seems to work.

Update: MacBook Pro was brought to an Apple store. They swapped out the battery and put in a new Magsafe connector which they assumed might be faulty. Neither of those fixed the problem. So they suspected it was the Logic Board and said it needed to be sent out.

This MacBook Pro was sent out previously and received a logic board replacement earlier in 2014. Now it's potentially going to get another logic board replacement. We told the representative at the Mac service desk (aka Genius Bar?), and they said something about there not being a warranty on the logic board and they don't have a "defined lifetime". If it is a logic board, that will make it the third logic board that's been in this MacBook Pro.

I woke up yesterday morning to this article in my newsfeed:

http://www.businessinsider.com/man-fixes-laptop-by-putting-it-in-the-oven-2014-12

When we replaced the first logic board, I had found that this is a widespread problem and people are trying to get Apple to address it.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/01/16/owners-of-late-2011-macbook-pros-report-critical-gpu-failures-system-crashes

I will update this answer with what Apple comes back with when the laptop is returned from its second trip to the faraway fix up land.