"Sharing only" account not visible in "Users & Groups" since Mavericks Before upgrading to Mavericks, I had a "Sharing only" account called "Shared" with a password, which I used to allow other computers to connect to my Mac. However, since upgrading to Mavericks, this account no longer appears in the "Users & Groups" System Preferences pane. I believe this is because it conflicted with the built-in "Shared" folder in /Users/Shared, so Mavericks probably had trouble with this account when upgrading OS X.

However, the account itself still works, with my old password. Is there a way to delete this account, even if it doesn't appear in "Users & Groups", without deleting the /Users/Shared folder (which is separate; the folder is part of OS X, and my "Sharing only" account has no Home folder).

I have had this issue as well and I found a solution:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4404 on the Apple support website.

Just type the following two commands in terminal:

Quit and reopen System preferences and the sharing account will show up:

sudo dscl . create /Users/root GeneratedUID FFFFEEEE-DDDD-CCCC-BBBB-AAAA00000000

and then:

sudo dscl . create /Users/accountname UserShell /bin/bash

Replace "accountname" in the commands above with the missing account name.


Best TimeMachine solution for macOS Sierra given current hardware? I have an iMac running El Capitan (can't upgrade further) that has been hosting my TimeMachine backup for years. New MacBook Pro can't see the Time Machine volume - doesn't even see the drive connected to the iMac as an option.

I have a blank 4 TB 5.25" drive I can use for an alternate TimeMachine backup. What setup should I use for optimal outcome? Can I connect it to the iMac in a way that will make it available? Enclosure connected directly to the MBP seems far less convenient than the old method, where TimeMachine would just run whenever I was on my home network...

If you buy the "Server" app from the App Store ($20 I think), it will let you once again use your iMac as a network based backup destination for Macs running Time Machine on the network. You can just turn on the Backup feature in Server.app and ignore all the rest.

You can most likely do this without the server app using some command line tricks, but I don't know how off the top of my head.

The only other solution is physically plugging in the drive to each Mac, one by one. But like you said, that's not ideal.


Where is Google Voice and Video installed? After I have installed some programs I can't find them to open them. I have looked in…

the Applications folder
the Utilities folder
About this Mac → More info → System report → Software → Installations as another user explained, and I can I see the program but I cannot open it from this window.

The program I am specifically looking for is called Google Voice and Video, if that matters?

What am I doing wrong? How can I open a program after I have installed it?

You've already looked in the standard spots for application installs (Applications folder, Utilities folder,etc...).

However, if you've installed Google Voice and Video (aka Hangouts), you won't find an application to run (on OS X or Windows). This is a plugin for your web browser - not a standalone application.

Read here for details - but in short, you should run the installer (you've likely already done this), then quit and restart your web browser (Safari, Firefox, or Chrome - whichever you use). The features of Google Voice and Video will then be functional, and you can then use video chat with other Google Video users.


iTunes won't show my Cloud music? My iTunes keeps crashing whenever I try to show my Cloud Music. I go into Preferences > Store and check the box to show the music, but then it tries to load it and it crashes. It'll keep crashing each time I load iTunes unless i check the box off, but I want my Cloud Music seen. How do I fix this problem?

click "view"-> "show icloud music purchase"

note: you have to show menu bar first to see "view" menus


Safari autofill multiple e-mail adresses My personal vCard has multiple email addresses. When I use the autofill feature from Safari I always get the wrong email address filled into the web form. How can I get Safari autofill to use the right email address?

It will default to the first email address in the list, so put the one you want to use for autofill first in your address book and it will then use that one.


How to upgrade a mac from 10.4? An old MacBook still running 10.4 just showed up. Unfortunately, 10.4 isn't new enough to run the software it needs to run, so I'm trying to figure out how to upgrade it something newer.

The usual answers seem to be to buy a Snow Leopard box set and work from there, but Apple doesn't sell those anymore, at least not as far as I can tell. From what I can find, they actually don't sell any physical upgrade media, which is a bit of a problem, since this mac obviously doesn't have the App Store.

What's the best way to deal with this?

Thanks!

If you are in the US or Canada, you can call 1-800-MY-APPLE to order Snow Leopard directly from Apple telesales. It should only be $20, a discount from the original $30 price.

This will only work if you have an Intel Mac, of course.


`launchctl export` command not working? According to the man page of launchctl, there is an export command:

export   Export all of the environment variables of launchd for use in a shell eval
         statement.

However, when I try to use this command, I get the following message.

Unrecognized subcommand: export
Usage: launchctl <subcommand> ... | help [subcommand]

What's going on here? Did the command exist at some point, but was removed for some reason, and someone forgot to update the man page?

Apparently launchctl export is just gone.

FWIW launchctl dumpstate appears to contain that info (and much much more), so given enough effort, one could parse it out of there, I guess.


How to run AppleScript in a Crontab? I am using OS X 10.11.5, I have a crontab file under '/tmp/crontab', in which it contains:

01 10 * * * /Users/Jhon/Desktop/somescript.scpt

When I run crontab -l I get output as no crontab for Jhon

Any suggestion what I am doing wrong here?

Apple recommends using launchd which actually runs cron tasks for MacOS. You can still use crontab -e to edit your crontab, but if you want a one-liner:

(crontab -l 2>/dev/null; echo "01 10 * * * osascript /Users/Jhon/Desktop/somescript.scpt") | crontab - ; crontab -l

See this answer for much more useful details:

How can I configure my computer to run an AppleScript at a specific time? Caveat: without using iCal


Can I purchase regular DDR3 RAM for my MAC (not from an iMac store?) I know that buying and installing RAM from a regular computer shop will be cheaper for me. I was just wondering if a Macbook Pro 17" early 2011 model uses specific 'Mac' DDR3 RAM or if I can get away with any DDR3 RAM?

Generally in principle yes. You do not need to purchase expensive Apple memory.

However you will need to check for each model - the best thing is to go to a reputable memory supply company website which sells certified RAM and look up your model.

You can search for them online but here is a respected store (I have no affiliations with)

http://www.crucial.com


What is the point of syncing with iTunes if I have Google Apps, iCloud and no media? On my iPhone and iPad I use Google Apps for syncing mail, calendar and contacts.
With iOS 5 I now use iCloud for backup (and for syncing Reminders, Bookmarks and Find my iPhone, none of which I really use).
I have no media (music, video or photos) that needs to be synced with the iPhone.

Out of habit, I still sync with iTunes (over Wi-Fi now), but I am starting to question why.
In my setup, is there any reason to sync? Backup seems to happen anyway, and Google Apps sync independently and immediately anyway.
I sync apps in iTunes, but I fail to see the point of it, since I can now download any app I am missing right on the iPhone.

Is there any reason to keep syncing with iTunes? Are there any bad consequences of completely giving it up?

The one thing I can think of is iOS updates. Will I still need iTunes for those?

OS updates will now happen over the air. The only reasons would be to sync a new iPhoto event/album or to sync content that you added manually (ripped CD).

But outside of that, iOS doesn't require syncing.


Mac Pro - some keys in default shift mode My Mac Pro keyboard was working fine few minutes ago, but some keys are typing in shift mode now. What should I do to fix it?

I thought of restarting the laptop but suddenly realised I wont be able to log in.

A-Z in non-caps mode appear like:

aBCdefghijklMNopqrstuVwXyZ

For some reason, my keyboard started working all fine after I connected my laptop to keyboard. I still don't know what was the reason for this.


How to shuffle all songs by an artist in macOS iTunes? It seems like I can only shuffle songs within a single album for an artist. I want to shuffle all the songs from 1 artist.

Found this question abou shuffling songs on iOS, but I have the same question for iTunes in macOS.

How about: 1) create a smart playlist matching the artist name; 2) select the playlist; 3) hit shuffle.  Just a thought.


If I transfer songs to a zip drive and reload, can I get them out of "Purchased"? I no longer have access to the email address associated with my Apple ID, so I'll need to create a new one pretty soon. All possible ways to recover my current Apple ID have been exhausted, so that isn't the issue. I'm wondering if I transfer purchased songs to a zip drive or burn them onto a CD, will I then be able to transfer them back to iTunes but not as purchased content and therefore be able to play them with my new ID? I'm not very technology savvy, so I hope this isn't a dumb question.

This is a bit of a grey area around fair use, but there is software out there that will allow you to remove the drm from iTunes songs. Given that the songs they currently sell do not have any drm, I think it's not a particularly immoral option.

If you want to stay on the clearly bright side of the law, burning the songs to a cd and then re-ripping them will remove the drm and is supported through iTunes. You will lose some quality though.


Is it possible/a good idea to use an ExpressCard SSD for swap? I have a 48GB WinTec filemate ExpressCard SSD which I'm not currently using for anything.  My idea was that I would re-partition it with a 16GB partition for swap and virtual memory (I have 8GB of RAM), and the rest for either random files, or maybe stick a flavor of Linux on there.

I have some concerns about it though.  The drive, while it is difficult to physically remove (you have to press really hard on that tiny 34 slot), it is still possible to remove it without ejecting the disk and powering off the slot.  So if it does get accidentally removed while the system has swap/virtual memory on it, what would happen?  Is there a way I could set it to switch to use another drive if the expresscard drive gets removed?

Another concern is speed.  I normally run at the almost the full 8GB of RAM and usually go over for most the day since I am usually running vagrant, Chrome with lots of plugins, multiple monitors, AirMail, HipChat, Skype, Sublime with lots of plugins, iTunes, and other random applications.  Since I am probably accessing swap frequently is this drive going to be too slow?  I will post the screenshots of the speed tests I did below.

Express Card SSD:

SATA2 SSD:

SATA1.5 HDD:

This seems like a lot of work to me since your swap rates are easily measured and generally not at all the bottleneck that needs alleviating on OS X systems I've managed.

Losing swap will be highly destructive to data integrity so you should have your system backed up regularly and able to be restored and files reconstructed if they become corrupt during a write operation. There are several guides here on how to move swap elsewhere, but I would say it's categorically a bad idea.

If you can post back what your exact hardware model is, perhaps there are better ways to accelerate your workload. I would post about 15 minutes of vm_stat 60 and a picture of your Activity Monitor memory when the system is fullly loaded and stable running your desired workload.

My initial thoughts are that you should install your OS onto the SSD and have the home folder on the normal "boot drive" rather than messing with swap. Apps will run properly, you can remove just about all installed apps from /Volumes/SSD/Applications and let the Library there and core OS have the entire space for swap and OS. Moving some highly used data files there might make the most sense as well. Again, these are educated guesses and without knowing the CPU / RAM / internals of your specific Mac, there might be better solutions as well.


Get components (path and filename) of POSIX filepath Given:

~/Desktop/Foo.scpt contains:

(POSIX path of (path to me)) as text

Which returns:

  /Users/[username]/Desktop/Foo.scpt

How do I get path /users/[username]/Desktop/ and the file name Foo.scpt as individual pieces?

Just ask Finder he knows how to do it :)

tell application "Finder"
     set parentpath to POSIX path of (parent of (path to me) as string)
     set filename to name of (path to me)

     display dialog parentpath
     display dialog filename
 end tell


How to disable the physical sim and only use the eSIM on iPhone XS/iPhone XS Max? I'm wondering if there is a way to turn off the Physical sim and use only the eSim on my iPhone XS Max. I travel a lot and I'm loving the use of eSIM.

I understand that I can turn off the eSIM if its required, but I wanted to know if there was any way to turn the Physical Sim off and leave only the eSim ON.

Note - I have an unlocked iPhone XS Max.

I found the option buried under Mobile Data Settings. There is an option which states "Turn On this line". Toggle this ON/OFF to turn off the network.
This works for both Physical SIM and eSim.

At any given time, You could -

Have Physical Sim ON and eSim OFF.
Have eSim ON and Physical Sim OFF.
Have both the Sim turned OFF.


Can't see my downloaded app on iPad I bought the Spark Radio app through iTunes and apparently it was downloaded, but I don't see the app on the iPad.  How can I get the app I purchased to appear on teh iPad?

If you can see the app in iTunes but not on your iPad, it means that it didn't sync over. Make sure it is selected as an app to sync.  Alternatively, try downloading it using the app store app on your ipad.


When I open the terminal I get the error /Users/sanjayshreeyansgmail.com/.zshrc:17: command not found: “export When I opened terminal today, I see this error
/Users/sanjayshreeyansgmail.com/.zshrc:17: command not found: “export.

All commands seem to work fine, it is just my inner perfectionest screaming.
I have M1 MacBook Air on Big Sur 11.2.3
.zshrc file:
# >>> conda initialize >>>
# !! Contents within this block are managed by 'conda init' !!
__conda_setup="$('/Users/sanjayshreeyansgmail.com/miniforge3/bin/conda' 'shell.zsh' 'hook' 2> /dev/null)"
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    eval "$__conda_setup"
else
    if [ -f "/Users/sanjayshreeyansgmail.com/miniforge3/etc/profile.d/conda.sh" ]; then
        . "/Users/sanjayshreeyansgmail.com/miniforge3/etc/profile.d/conda.sh"
    else
        export PATH="/Users/sanjayshreeyansgmail.com/miniforge3/bin:$PATH"
    fi
fi
unset __conda_setup
# <<< conda initialize <<<

“export PATH=/opt/homebrew/bin:/Users/sanjayshreeyansgmail.com/miniforge3/bin:/Users/sanjayshreeyansgmail.com/miniforge3/condabin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.8/bin:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.9/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin”

Remove the quotes before the word export and at the very end of the file. This should not be quoted at all, let alone in smart quotes.


Original Apple clock information I've been doing a clean out and I found an original Apple clock. It's over 13 years old at least and is in mint condition in a metal apple box.

I can't find it anywhere on the internet, could anyone tell me how much it is worth or more about the product? (Is it rare or limited edition?)

It was a Marketing campaign by Apple in 2003, giving it for free for Test Drive of they Power Mac G5 called Test Drive (G5TestDrive.ca), a limited edition Apple-branded stopwatch.

  Apple has sent at least some of its apple canada customers a special
  promotion postcards in the mail.the promotion offers a g5 test drive
  (g5testdrive.ca) along with a limited edition apple-branded stopwatch
  (photo) as well as an entry to win a new 1.8ghz g5 powermac and a
  20inch apple cinema display.for a limited time, apple is also offering
  invitees a $200 discount on a g5/display/applecare bundle.again, the
  offer is only open to direct-mail postcard recipients.

http://www.macrumors.com/mac/?sid=20040317155502


Getting Macbook back to original I am selling my 2010 Macboook and was wanting to back up all of my files and information and then wipe it clean and get it back to factory settings...
Can anyone help me? Or point me in the right direction.
Thank You.

From: http://kevin.kevandisa.com/2013/04/how-to-restore-macbook-to-factory-settings/

  Start Computer up, holding OPTION key
  You should now see two hard drive icons, select the one labelled “Recovery”
  Select your language
  Click on Disc Utility
  Click on Macintosh HD
  Select the “Erase” tab
  Erase the Disc
  Now go back to OSX Utilities – Select “Reinstall OSX”
  The recovery setup should be smart enough to download the latest
  licensed
  Operating System for your computer (in my case it was Mountain Lion
   10.8.3)
  Reinstall to Macintosh HD

Also see: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718 and https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4571


How to force iMovie to create iPhoto video thumbnails in the background? I import my videos from my camera into iPhoto along with the stills. Then I use iMovie to create videos from them. Unfortunately every time I open iMovie to get some work done it wants to go through and update thumbnails. Sometimes it is quick, but sometimes it takes quite a while.

Is there a way to get iMovie to make these thumbnails in the background so I am not forced to wait when I open it? I know I can skip it, but usually those thumbnails are for the video I want to work on.

Try importing a movie from a DVD.
If you do, that will give your video options just enough complexity, apparently, to cause imovie to give you a choice;  the left navigation should show that importation event along side of your iphoto movies. This happened to me at least. As soon as I imported from other sources, it no longer kept my ENTIRE iphoto library as the default. In reading what I just wrote, I'm now confused: I'm pretty sure that I put my DVD video through iPhoto first, so, I'm not sure exactly what I did in imovie to make the importation event unique, but in any case, once I did that, I wound up seeing a directory structure where my iphotos videos were no longer the default selected.

Of course, in order to use any of those videos, I now have to click on iPhoto movies in which case I'm back to waiting for the all to load, which still takes a long time.


"File is Locked" message for a folder with thousands of subfolders/files After transferring a massive code project to my Mac, I noticed I couldn't write anything to the files inside due to the "File is Locked" plus an access denied message.

Unlocking the root folder didn't help, chmod didn't make a difference, and granting read-write to everyone and applying to all subfiles didn't help either.

Is there a terminal command I can use to programmatically unlock all folders and files below a specific directory?

I found a perfect terminal set of commands buried in a forum post here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/how-to-batch-unlock-numerous-files-within-subfolders-folders-directory.453818/

Here's the commands I used (my project was located at /APPS/MYAPP):

export UNLOCK=/APPS/MYAPP
find $UNLOCK -type f -exec setfile -a l {} \;
find $UNLOCK -type d -exec setfile -a l {} \;

The type argument is f for files, d for directories.

The exec argument passes setfile, from the xcode developer tools (may need to be installed first), and uses lower-case L to "unlock" (bizarre command line syntax, I know)


Mac App Store keeps prompting me to upgrade iTunes This is a screenshot of the Mac App Store.

I have been updating iTunes for days. Any ideas?

Are you certain that you in fact have iTunes 12.5.1 installed?

Have you manually checked the version?

Seriously, this may be a gift from heaven, if it is your phone. (Tagged as iOS and screenshot is MacOS so I will address both)

The problem is happening on mobile devices and Macs.

The MacOS fix is to manually download iTunes 12.5.1 package and install it that way.

If the link above to Apple's iTunes Download page does not load for you, here is the direct link to Apple's main iTunes page.

For iOS, there seems to be a big problem with people reporting bricked phones.

Go to systems-->notification find the app you do not want to see notifications from and choose "None" as the alert style. Or you can completely kick any app from the notification center.

You can disable most unwanted pop-ups by setting Software Update/ App Store to not automatically check for updates.


photo apps for ipad over wifi I have a lot of family photos and home video stored on network folders (my PC, my NAS) accessible via wi-fi.

Are there photo manager and photo editor apps for me to directly work my pictures on my IPad?

By directly, I mean edit the picture (e.g fix red eyes, contrast) in the photo editor app without having to open a file browser app, copy it to my ipad and copy it back on my network folder. It also mean I can view and delete picture in the folder directly within the photo manager app.

P.S. I am open to jailbreaking my ipad or other solutions such as mounting the folders so they appear as local folder as long as the apps can open these files as it does for the Camera roll.

If your nas supports DLNA then that opens out great possibility's. Just write DNLA photo any you will find plenty of Apps otherwise you will be stuck with NAS unfortunately i dont have any recommendation for nas connection.

This is what i recommend..

https://itunes.apple.com/bh/app/smartstor-fusion-stream-dlna/id410280827?mt=8

https://itunes.apple.com/bh/app/imediashare-lite-video-on-tv/id302026401?mt=8


Can we modify UDID added in iOS developer portal? I have an ios developer account. I by mistake added a wrong device Id in my devices. Can I modify the device id? I am able to modify my device name but not device id.

What can be done?

Please help and suggest.

Thanks.

No, it can't be done. You can only remove devices when you renew your subscription.


Function keys since upgrading to Yosemite Option + F1 takes me to Display preferences, instead of using the current app binding, as it did in Mavericks. Is there any way to override this behavior?

I can't find the binding in Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts.

I see the binding on the Apple shortcut page, and I think it's always been there, but previously applications could overrule the setting.

If it's relevant, the app in question is IntelliJ Idea.

It turns out the problem came from the external keyboard, a Logitech K750. I had to use the Logitech Control Center to get the correct behavior. Why this wasn't a problem in Mavericks, I'm not sure.


Does iPhone battery life last longer using Wi-Fi vs Cellular Network? Just out of curiosity and for my knowledge, from a software and hardware standpoint prospective, I read:

  When you use your device (iPhone) to access data, a Wi-Fi connection uses less power than a cellular network

Do you know why?

The Wi-Fi antenna in your phone has a typical range of few meters. It finds a Wi-Fi router within that range. So the power of the signal should be enough that it would be able to survive for few meters.

On the other hand, for 3G data transfer, you need to send the signals to the receiving antenna which could be a up to a few kilometers from where you are. So the signal should be strong enough to survive a few kilometers.

To give an idea, let's assume:

Your Wi-Fi router is at a distance of 5 meters.
The 3G receiver antenna of service provider is at a distance of 2 kilometers (2000 meters).
We know that the signal strength is inversely proportionate to the square of distance.

So, in order that we have the same signal strength at the receivers antenna of wifi and 3G; the transmitted signal should be of ratio:

(2000/5)^2 = 160000

So the 3G signal should be 160,000 times stronger than Wi-Fi signal. Hence 3G data transfer consumes more power.

Note: We have not considered packet loss when sending data over longer distances, which, although less significant, contributes to a greater power requirement of 3G transmission.

Source: Kingsley, K. (2013, December 12). What consumes less battery on a smartphone - WiFi or 3G? Why?


"PROGRAMMING KEYS" Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 / Mac Mini OS X 10.9.5 I used to have my up and down arrow keys in the Microsoft keyboard programmed to "send backward" or "bring forward" when using InDesign on my Mac. Somehow I set it back to default settings (so they now move things up and down). How can I reprogram them? I checked the Apple menu>system preferences>keyboard and didn't see those keys listed. I also tried apple menu>system preferences>microsoft keyboard. I assume it can be done here but I can't figure out how. Can someone please explain to me in detail? BTW I'm not great with computers or computer lingo so be very detailed and speak in layman's terms. Thanks!

Try https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/

  A powerful and stable keyboard customizer for macOS.


AirPort Express Base Station "Guest" network does not allow logons. (spinning wheel) I have set up an AirPort Express Base Station (June 2012 model, the current one). For setup, I used a Yosemite MacBook Pro over Ethernet. The AirPort Express has an Ethernet running from the WAN port to a CLEAR modem (a WiMAX service) in "Bridged" mode.

Both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz networks work well, devices connect with password and surf the web.

The third network, the Guest network, does not let any client connect. I've tried both the MacBook Pro, an iPhone 5, and a MacBook Air repeatedly, power cycled, and so forth. When they attempt to join the password is accepted but the spinning wheel never stops and the computer/device never finishes joining the network. We can switch back to either the 2.4 or 5 network instantly with no problems.

Any suggestions? Might Bridged mode be a problem with a Guest account?

The problem is the bridge mode:

From Apple Support:

  The DHCP and NAT option in AirPort Utility application > Network tab > Router Mode (default mode) must be selected on your primary base station (…)

If you had more than one Airport, all secondary stations must have Bridge mode on, given there is one Airport or Time Capsule working as the primary station.


Numbers for OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 I need Numbers for OS X Yosemite. When I try to install from the Apple store, it only gives the option for 4.1. I think I need 3.2.2 or around there.

When I try to install 4.1 it complains:

I cannot find any documentation or links for older versions of Numbers.

Looking for a downloadable/link for Numbers that works on OS X Yosemite 10.10.5.

Searching Apple Support for iWork for OS X 10.10 turned up a download link for iWork 9.3 however, from what I can tell, it may just be an update installer.  But searching Apple Support is a good place to start.  In order to use the App Store version, one would have to update to OS X 10.12 or higher as noted in the OP's question.


XCode 5 - Remove offline documentation? Is it possible to remove all/most offline documentation from XCode 5, to free up disk space?

I would assume it is possible to make XCode (like Visual Studio in Windows) access documentation online, so removing offline documentation doesn't affect any functionality. Yes?

Xcode 5, 6 and 7 documentation itself is located within:

~/Library/Developer/Shared/Documentation/DocSets

You can delete the files and when you re-launch Xcode, it will offer to re-download the current docs if you have automatic updates set.

Before deleting actual documentation, make sure your downloads folder for the images that contain the installers and the documentation are cleaned out:

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.dt.Xcode/Downloads

If you do decide to delete the documentation itself you will no longer have access to it through Xcode — so be careful not to delete the Core DocSets, or any others that you might need access to regularly as you don't fail over gracefully to the web documentation.

The documentation that is available for download through XCode is not simply a mirror of what Apple shows online. The docs available online amount to about 1/2 of what is actually available from the more comprehensive downloaded versions. Online documentation can also be updated to a newer build of Xcode, so downloading a copy ensures you have the correct documentation for your version of Xcode.


Mac freezing, possible virus? I am running Yosemite and experiencing very nasty freezing issues. Once I was able to recover from by reinstalling osx and second time (few months later) reinstalling alone didn't help, but also downgrading user from Admin rights did.

Here are the symptoms:

freezing applications, wheel mouse icon, occurring every 30 seconds or so and lasting about the same time.
CPU usage is near zero. Idle ~97%
ran opensnoop, but it didn't correlate to frezing
once freeze occurs, 'top' any Activity Monotor do not show any activity - they freeze too. But, after freeze ends, I can see the spike in CPU activity. Activity Monitor replays the past events in a fast-forward kind of way, at 10x speed. But there is no way to tell what activity transpired. System was frozen.
it feels like 1/4 of one core of cpu is actually being used for OS itself.
no hardware issues were discovered with AHT.
Safe mode had no impact.

In the screenshot bellow, there is a blimp in CPU usage. That's the freeze. Sometimes they happen for longer, sometimes shorter duration.

I know it's relatively vague problem description, but I would like to hear some theories on what this could be. And if it happens again, how to actually pin point to the process that is causing it.

You can check which processes are using the most time interval in the system calls:

sudo fs_usage | grep -v 0.0000

See: How do I debug an out-of-control “kernel_task” process?

In case your macOS experienced out-of-space scenario, some services can be still in a freeze mode (causing some freeze timeouts) and they need manual unpause by the following command:

kill -CONT -1

Otherwise check whether clean restart helps with anything.

If you had any unexpected shutdown after freeze, it's good to check for the shutdown code.

If won't help, if you experience another freeze, hit ⌘-⌥-Control-Shift-, (Cmd-Opt-Ctrl-Shift-Period), this will trigger sysdiagnose process which will quickly gather system-wide diagnostic information helpful in investigating system memory/performance issues (will appear in /var/tmp). If you're technical person, you can consider uncompressing the generated file and analyse the logs, or contact Apple support if they can help you.

If you believe you've a virus, just install antivirus (such as Sophos Home) to exclude that. But having antivirus, can cause another extra freezes as well, so it's up to you.


Is it possible to have an app meant both for internal employees and external public in the App Store? This question is regarding Apple rejecting the latest build of our iOS app and trying to find the best way to appeal the rejection. Here is the background:
My company has an iOS app that is used by our sales staff (internal company employees) to manage their day to day pipeline while on the go. Since the app is a major competitive advantage in the specific industry, we also advertise it to attract new sales people to come work for us. In order to have them experience the tech, we ask them to download the app, login with temporary credentials tied to their personal email IDs and play around with dummy data inside the app. Since we need the app to be publicly available for these individuals, we have so far published the app on the public app store instead of an enterprise store. While Apple approved our initial build about a year back and all subsequent updates, it recently rejected our latest build citing that the app should be in an enterprise store since it is being used for internal employees. While that does make sense given their policies, we are in a bind since the app also is used heavily in the recruitment process and hence needs to be available publicly.
Has anyone come across a similar situation with Apple? It's not clear why Apple suddenly decided to reject the app after having approved it multiple times over the last year. Were you able to convince Apple to reconsider the rejection, or is it a fruitless exercise?

You could reply to Apple stating that the app actually is not used exclusively by internal employees - but rather is made available publicly for marketing/recruiting purposes. I have often seen that Apple's initial request for further information and clarification results in them approving the app update afterall.
However, if you are forced to switch to the enterprise model - don't worry at all. You can still offer access to potential employees. You would then just host the app on your own web site (or any web site you have lying around really) - and just send the potential employee a link to install the app.


How to add OneDrive as an attachment location in iPad Gmail app? I have an iPad Air that has Office 365 applications installed on it. I use MS Word very frequently and my files are all saved to OneDrive.

I use the iPad Gmail application to send emails and I would like to attach my Word files (saved on OneDrive) to emails, but the iPad Gmail app does not let me select OneDrive files, just Google Drive.

I figured out that I can 'export to Gmail' Word files from my iPad Word or OneDrive app which is great, but there is no 'Save draft' option if I do not want to send the email right away.

To summarize:

Is there a way to add OneDrive as an attachment selection option in the iPad Gmail app?
When 'exporting files to Gmail' how can the email be saved as a draft without sending?

I'm doing this via iPhone but the same findings should hold.

Question 1: I believe no is the answer, unfortunately. The closest you could get to having this button is also having Google Drive, sending from OneDrive to GoogleDrive from inside of OneDrive or a third party multi-cloud app and then using the Google Drive attachment button which exists within the Gmail app. The 'export to Gmail' option you've already found within OneDrive seems like the much better solution to me.

Question 2: I believe the answer to this one is that it's not possible to save the drafts. If you want to work on the email later and hence don't want to send it immediately, the best work-around is to send it to yourself and then edit it and send to the final recipient from your inbox.

Sadly I can't offer a better solution but hopefully this is of some help or at least offers some closure to your query.

Best wishes,

JB_199


generic approach to finding the correct name to run an app from the command line Whenever I am not in a browser or in my text editor, most of my time on my mac is spent on the terminal.

What's a quick, generic way to figure out how to run a gui program from the bash shell?  It seems like we always need to run around and find out that program xyz can be called as 'abc'.

For example, Sublime Text's is 'subl', Kaleidoscope is 'ksdiff'.  Great, but you need to look these up for each and every program.  And there are lots of identical questions, about Finder for example.

What is the best Mac approach to figuring out the command line "alias" for an any app?  Can I make use of the Activity Monitor if the program is open? Do I have to go nose around in the Applications folder?  If so, how can I tell the "command line alias file" from the others?

Or can I use "ps aux" in bash?  For example, on Linux or on Windows, "foo.exe" in the list of processes means that you could just type "foo.exe" to launch that program.  But Sublime shows up as Sublime Text, not 'subl', so don't think that would work.

Bot Sublime Text and Kaleidoscope are special cases as they install either a helper utility or themselves somewhere in your $PATH.

The easiest way to open any application from /Applications is to run

open -a APPNAME

in Terminal, e.g.

open -a Pages       # opens Pages
open -a "App Store" # opens the App Store


Ext4fuse usage to see and browse the volume in Finder I want to copy some files of my old encrypted SSD with ubuntu.

I installed ext4fuse and done sudo ext4fuse /dev/disk3s1  /Volumes/Linux, although I don't know if it is the right partition number (where can I see them in Disk Utility?).

How do I open then the disk in Finder? Possibly in the "devices" section. I navigated to /Volumes and didn't see Linux (or whatever it is).

MacBook-Pro:Volumes mbp$ ls
Linux       Linux2      MacintoshHD
MacBook-Pro:Volumes mbp$ ls -la
ls: Linux: No such file or directory
ls: Linux2: No such file or directory
total 8
drwxr-xr-x@  5 root  wheel   170 Jul  4 15:38 .
drwxr-xr-x  29 root  wheel  1054 Jun 22 05:43 ..
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root  wheel     1 Jun 22 06:01 MacintoshHD -> /

add -o allow_other to sudo ext4fuse /dev/disk3s1  /Volumes/Linux -o allow_other. Source: https://github.com/gerard/ext4fuse/issues/36#issuecomment-237390665


Catalina: After some hours various things start to crash and/or stop working I have noticeg that after some hours or so, Google Chrome starts giving a crashing extensions message, and at that time everything starts acting weird.

If I try to open an application it says "Can't open X Application". Even the screenshot shortcut CMD+SHIFT+4 does not work.

Furthermore, terminal won’t even start at this point:

[forkpty: Resource temporarily unavailable]
[Could not create a new process and open a pseudo-tty.]

How can I troubleshoot this?

I would pick one app and troubleshoot it.

Remove chrome extensions (make a list so you can reinstall them later)
Remove Chrome
Reinstall Chrome
If it still crashes - remove it and make a new admin account (clean environment)
Reinstall Chrome when the main user is logged out and only the new user is logged in.
Pursue support with that one vendor to isolate further if the app is supported on your version of Catalina.

Apply any Apple patches that are released while you are isolating things above.


How can I figure out what's opening a Terminal window whenever I log in? Whenever I log in to my Macbook, a terminal window pops up with what appears to be some Java CLI help text and a [Process completed] (or whatever) at the bottom. It doesn't cause any problems that I can see; I always just close the window and move on. I vaguely remember installing the thing a long time ago that caused this to start happening; but I don't remember what it was or how to find it.

I've Googled "Mac startup scripts" and checked various directories for any obvious culprits, but nothing jumps out. Is there any good way for me to definitively determine what startup item is causing this window to open, so that I can get rid of it? For example does the Terminal app provide any visibility into what command started it up (is that what's printed at the top)? And if so can I easily deduce from that where the startup script/daemon/agent/whatever is?

Basically, what would you do if you were me? Admittedly this is really just an aesthetic annoyance, nothing more. Maybe the sane answer is "I'd leave it alone rather than risk screwing something up." Just seems irritating that I can't even figure out how to stop a window from popping up whenever I reboot my computer.

This might not be too helpful, but you can always check the date you downloaded things in your Applications folder and (if you remember the date, even vaguely) if you delete it, or anything non-essential near that date, then go by the process of re-installing what you want to find out what is causing the problem (or just leave them uninstalled).

This is my recommendation, and if you are still seeing problems I would recommend Apple Tech Support (the official one).


How to restart PostgreSQL installed by Brew in OSX? In Linux, it can be done by /etc/init.d/postgresql-9.2 restart.
My OSX is not a server app.

I think it it can be done by ALTER USER postgres with password '1234'; postgreQSL prompt but I am not sure if it is the meant way.

How can you restart the PostgreSQL server in OSX?

Brew has that covered:

brew services restart postgresql


I have Apple Remote Desktop installed both on my home and office, how do I make them see each other? I have already bought Apple Remote Desktop. And I want to control the other from each side. For example, I want to access files in my home Mac from office. But after running the Apple Remote Desktop, I can't see the computers from the list.

What should I do? Both places have dynamic IP address. I have entered the IP address to search but still can't find the other.

And do I need to make the computer non-sleeping? Even I kept them both unsleep, I can't find each other.

Really hope to get more detailed tips.

Thanks

There are several issues to address in order to successfully connect two different Macs in this scenario.

Consider signing up for a dynamic DNS provider such as FreeDNS so that you can use a domain name rather than an IP to initiate a connection from the local Mac to the remote Mac.  With a small amount of scripting, or by creating a launchdaemon or launchagent, you can have both ends update their IP automatically.

Next, you'll need to make sure that any router, firewall or other edge device on both networks have the proper ports open.  Apple's kbase article specifies ports 3283 and 5900, but make sure you have considered the risks of opening these commonly-used ports to the public Internet.

Also you will need to forward those ports from your router (which has the public/internet IP address) to your home Mac (which has a private IP address not available on the Internet). You may have to contact your ISP if you are unsure how to do that as there are as many ways of doing this as their are different types of routers.

Depending on the network hardware on both ends, you might also be able to leverage a solution such OpenVPN or IPSec to create a persistent tunnel, but that won't remove the need to update the configuration when either end's dynamic IP changes.

Finally, enable Remote Desktop access on both Macs.  Open System Preferences > Sharing and enable Remote Management.  Then, open the Apple Remote Desktop application on both Macs, choose Preferences (command-,), and from the Security pane, enable "Allow control of this computer when this application is running."

Exposing these machines to the public Internet entails risks.  Make sure you are using long, strong passwords for the local accounts, that are not used anywhere else - longer is better than 'complicated'.  Have known-good backups and test them regularly.  Finally, make sure that enabling remote access to any device on your office's network won't violate your organization's security policies, AUP, etc.

ARD is still a good app for remotely managing and controlling Macs, but you may also be better served with a dedicated remote access tool such as LogMeIn or TeamViewer.


Does the upgrading from Parallels Desktop (for Mac) 5 to 6 means reinstall Windows? I have Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac. Does the upgrade to Parallels Desktop 6 means that I have to reinstall Windows 7 and all the other programs?

No, your Windows VM and all the programs installed on it are stored on a virtual hard drive file. Upgrading Parallels won't affect the VM.


MobileMe bookmark sync with Opera I am forced to use Opera instead of Safari on windows, and would like to sync my bookmarks with MobileMe. Is this at all possible?

Not with MobileMe's built in sync function, it only works with Safari.
You could use Opera's Link, which might work ok for what you're after -

Can I use other browsers to access my bookmarks?
Yes, you can log into a web-based user interface using Opera browsers, including Opera for Mac/PC, Opera Mobile or Opera Mini. You can also access your bookmarks using other Web browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari. (Opera faq)


Is it possible to play sound through both the headphone jack and my internal speakers? I'd really like to be able to play sound through both the headphone jack and my internal speakers on my MBP. Is this possible? If so, how?

In my experience, the answer is no. As soon as you plug in the headphones into the 3.5mm jack, it replaces the internal speakers as the default output (and vice versa when you unplug them). There are several discussions around as to whether this is actually a limitation in the hardware or the software, but the end result always seems to be the same.

Now this may not answer specifically what you're asking, but for interest, the only time I've had any success with simultaneous headphone and speaker output is when using a USB device, such as a headset or USB speakers. In order to get this to work, you'll need to plug in the USB device, then do the following:

Start the Apple "Audio MIDI Setup" utility (/Applications/Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup)
Select the "+" in the bottom-left and select "Create Multi-Output Device"

Select the Multi-Output Device that has been added and in the right-hand pane, select both the "Built-in Output" and your USB device. That should look something like this:

Start "System Preferences" → "Sound" and click the "Output" tab. Select the "Multi-Output Device" that's now there.

An unfortunate side-effect of this, as "The selected device has no output controls" eludes to, is that you now can't control the volume in the normal manner. To do this, you'll have to go back to Audio MIDI Setup and do it from there for each of the outputs. So be careful with those headset and speaker levels to begin with!!!

And that's it :) So, now when you play a song in iTunes, for instance, that should come out of both the headset and the speakers.

However, whilst all this may be largely academic without a USB headset or speakers, I did also come across the Griffin iMic which says:

  iMic supports both mic and line level inputs via a selectable switch,
  and provides a line-level output for connecting speakers or
  headphones.

I've not tried it, but if you're willing to spend the money, that may allow you to connect a pair of headphones with a normal 3.5mm jack then, using the method above, get audio out of both the internal speakers and the headphones simultaneously.


iPhone / iPod / iPad Sync Problems I have an iPhone 4, iPod Touch and iPad... And I have problems with syncing.

If I download an app directly to my iPhone and put it in a folder, and then sync my iPhone with my Mac, it will pull that app out of the folder and put it on the last homescreen of my iPhone.

If I download a song to my iPhone and add it to a playlist, then sync my iPhone with my Mac, it will pull the song out of the playlist and maybe even remove it from my iPhone.

If I sync the iPad or iPod with my Mac, it will add a bunch of random apps that I either previously deleted or did not request at all.

Any ideas how I can make this a more managable process?

You might have an old version of iTunes which does not support folders. The current version is 10.0.1 so I would highly recommend upgrading. If you have the latest then try to reinstall it. This should fix your app/playlist issues.

As for the applications being randomly added ... uncheck the "Automatically sync new apps" box if it is checked. If it is already unchecked, then hopefully reinstalling iTunes will fix this too.


How can I associate URL files with a specific browser in Snow Leopard? Until Snow Leopard URL files (.webloc files that you get when you drag a URL onto the desktop) opened with OmniWeb on my computer and some URLs were configured to open with Safari.

After upgrading to Snow Leopard all URL files open with "Finder" which then proceeds to open the standard browser (OmniWeb) for them. I tried changing the association, but Snow Leopard insists that these files be opened with OmniWeb via Finder.

Any ideas what I can do to fix this? I want all webloc files to open in OmniWeb except for specific ones which should open in Safari. I had it configured that way but at some point Mac OS X decided that the Safari ones should open with Finder (which then opens them with OmniWeb) and it just ignores it when I try to change that configuration per file

As far as I know, there is no way to associate .webloc files with a specific application. Your best bet would probably be to use some AppleScript.
I made a little script that lets you generate tiny little AppleScript applications that open in the browser that you select upon creation (OmniWeb, Safari, or Chrome).

You can download the script here, or compile it yourself from the code below.

set theURL to text returned of (display dialog "What URL would you like to bookmark?" with title "Enter URL" default answer "http://")
set theApp to (choose from list {"OmniWeb", "Safari", "Chrome"} with prompt "Which application would you like to associate with the bookmark?" with title "Select Application") as string
set theName to text returned of (display dialog "What would you like to name the bookmark?" with title "Enter Name" default answer "")
set theFolder to choose folder with prompt "Where would you like to save the bookmark?"

if theApp is "OmniWeb" then
    set theScript to "tell application \"OmniWeb\"
    activate
    try
        set theTab to make new tab at end of front browser with properties {address:\"" & theURL & "\"}
        set active tab of front browser to theTab
    on error
        make new browser with properties {address:\"" & theURL & "\"}
    end try
end tell"
else if theApp is "Safari" then
    set theScript to "tell application \"Safari\"
    activate
    try
        set theTab to make new tab at end of tabs of front window
        set the URL of theTab to \"" & theURL & "\"
    on error
        make new document
        set theTab to tab 1 of front window
        set the URL of theTab to \"" & theURL & "\"
    end try
    set current tab of front window to theTab
end tell"
else if theApp is "Chrome" then
    set theScript to "tell application \"Google Chrome\"
    activate
    if (count of windows) = 0 then
        make new window
        set URL of tab 0 of front window to \"" & theURL & "\"
    else
        set URL of (make new tab at end of tabs of front window) to \"" & theURL & "\"
    end if
end tell"
end if

tell application "AppleScript Editor"
    set theDoc to make new document with data theScript
    save theDoc as "application" in ((theFolder as string) & theName & ".app")
end tell

Running that will prompt you for the URL, the browser you want it to open with, and the location to save the 'bookmark'.

You can put this in your Applications or Scripts folder for easy access and invoke it whenever you want to save a URL.


Switch spaces with apple script My goal is to switch spaces from within an apple script. My shortcut to switch to the 4th space is ctrl+4, but when I tried this in an apple script nothing happens:

tell application "System Events"
    keystroke "4" using {control down}
end tell

What am I doing wrong?

I do not know why, but using key code instead works

tell application "System Events"
    tell application "System Events" to key code 21 using control down
end tell


Why can't I add events and contacts? I have had my IPhone 4s for a few weeks and I try to add contacts and events but I can't. There is no + (add) button on the contacts and the + (add) button is grey and when I press it noting happens.

I had this happen on my Calendar.  Go into the app switcher and close out the apps that you are having problems with, and then reopen them and try again.  If that doesn't work then try closing the apps and then rebooting your phone.  Hope it's a simple fix.

Let me know if it works.


External 4K display with 2012 MacBook Pro 15" I have a MacBook Pro Retina mid 2012 and have bought a couple of BenQ 4K EL2870U monitors. I've connected the two monitors up to the MacBook through a couple of Mini Display Port to Display Port cables that support 4K resolution, but I'm unable to get the monitors to display anything above 1280 x 720 resolution.

Note that the number of pixels pushed from my MacBook Pro is actually 2560 x 1440 since the chosen resolution is not "low resolution". However, I would rather have 2560 x 1440 "low resolution" than the current 1280 x 720 "high resolution" I currently have, since that gives me less screen real estate than I had on my previous non-4K monitors. If I choose any other resolution ("low resolution" or not), the BenQ just goes blank.

I should at least get it to display all low-resolution modes up to 2560 x 1440, isn't that right? In this related question it seems like even the 3840 x 2160 resolution should be available at 30Hz, but alas it doesn't work for me. Ideas?

By installing SwitchResX I was able to choose 2560 x 1440 (60 Hz) which now gives me the screen real estate I need.

A really neat choice that doesn't give me as much screen real estate, but makes the screen into a retina 1080p monitor is the 1080p30 option. Everything now looks super crisp and I have the same screen real estate as on a full HD monitor.

A bit annoying that I need a $16,- third party application to fix this problem, but it's better than no solution at all.


Does having Bluetooth enabled draw extra power when no devices are connected? I generally turn off Bluetooth on my Macs and iOS devices when I'm not actively using a Bluetooth device. My assumption is that this saves battery life, but I realize that I have no fact to back that up.

Does having Bluetooth enabled draw extra power when no paired devices are within range? What about when paired devices are in range but not connected?
Does turning off 'Discoverable' except when I need to pair to a device save power?

Yes.  When the Bluetooth radio is active it not only turns on the receiver (which consumes power) but also periodically transmits to see if any known devices are in range.

When paired devices are on and within range, they do communicate occasionally even if not being used, and thus consume some power.

Turning off Discoverable will save some energy as it transmits less frequently than when it's not discoverable.

However, Bluetooth is such a lower power communications standard that it's hardly worth worrying about - active Bluetooth use (headsets in particular) do use a noticeable amount of power, but almost any other use, or just leaving it on, is negligible.

Further, for iOS devices the Bluetooth is often part of the RF chipset, and turning it off doesn't have much impact because it shares resources with the other RF functionality of the device, and without turning the other radios off (Wifi, GPS, cellular, nike+, etc) very little actually turns off when you disable Bluetooth.


Missing Safari settings option "Safari opens with" I am running OSX Mountain Lion 10.8.3 and Safari 6.0.4

In Safari, the setting General -> "Safari opens with" is missing.

I remember using this setting to turn off session restore a few weeks back. But now its gone.

Type "Safari opens with" in google and "missing" is autosuggested. So I am not the only one with this problem. However, I didn't find any good pages/posts talking about this issue.

Can any one offer ideas on how fix this?

Edit:

To clarify, its not that some of the options in the setting are missing, but that I don't have the setting for "Safari opens with" at all.
I have the setting Default search engine and below that directly New windows open with, without Safari opens with in between.

That option has been removed from recent versions of Safari.

I'm not aware of which exact build removed it, but I can confirm it is gone and should be gone on all clean installs of Safari on top of OS X 10.8.3 and later. After running all available updates as of May 1 - you should have Safari version 6.0.4 (8536.29.13) and no Safari opens with preference.

Unless you have a defaults write… terminal command to re-enable that setting as a hidden-features, spending time troubleshooting this would be inadvisable since the control you are looking for is gone for now.


When do Apple Authorized retailers get refreshed? How long is it usually between when Apple releases a refreshed product and when authorized retailers like Best Buy and Target get the updates?

I feel like when the last iPod refresh happened it took about a month before Target got the new ones. I ask because my wife is a Target employee and I'm debating how much I want to wait to get the new iPad vs saving 15%.

UPDATE 3/4/11

My wife talked to the analyst, and she said Apple doesn't work with vendors before a release, and it's up to the specific vendor to scramble for orders once the product is announce.  Bestbuy and Walmart will be getting it on the first day.

Authorized retailers can order the new units from Apple more or less at the same time the Apple Stores get the new stuff. But while Apple Stores get the new stuff out on the sales floor at launch, the other retailers, for whom Apple gear is a small part of their business, may take longer to get the new stuff shipped from Apple, into their inventory systems, go through their internal distribution, and get it on their floors.


Thinking of getting rid of my laptop Thinking of getting rid of my laptop and using my iPhone / iPad / Apple TV 4 to access files on the PC now by getting a 2TB Time Capsule.

Will I be able to edit photos, view and edit spreadsheets, etc. on the TB with an iPad Pro as if it is a hard drive? Assuming this is done on my home WiFi network only.

Also, I have a large amount of movies and music in my iTunes library, without loading all that on the TB, will I be able to access those as well?  Assuming this is done on my home WiFi network only.

Yes, you should be able to do all the things you asked, provided you have the correct apps on the iPad.  It's easier to do these things if you keep your docs in iCloud instead of the network share, though.

For instance, I have the MS Excel app and I store all my spreadsheets on a network share or on iCloud.  I can do almost everything I need to do thru the app.  I also have Emby and Plex apps to watch all my movies on the network share.


Can iCloud drive be used for sharing documents produced by third-party apps? I have upgraded to Yosemite and iOS8.02 on all my devices, including a MacBook Pro, an iPad2, an iPad Mini, and an iPhone 5c.

I understand that one can use iCloud Drive to share documents produced by any of the iWork apps and also some third-party apps that have been specifically upgraded to use iCloud drive (such as the Readdle suite of apps and Day One).

But, what about the other third-party apps that have not been specifically upgraded? Can files from these apps also be shared on iCloud Drive?

I don't use Pages, Numbers, and Keynote all that much.  In fact, I prefer Microsoft Office for Mac.  And I have a lot of third-party apps I use a lot more often than any of the former.  And, it does not seem to me that all that many of the third-party apps have been specifically prepared to accommodate iCloud drive.

Unless I am missing something, it would seem to me that it is not necessary for me to upgrade to iCloud drive.  Do you have any advice or comments about this?  Is there anywhere where I might find a list of third-party apps now set up for iCloud Drive?

To take advantages of iCloud Drive, the third-party apps need to implement the Document Provider Extension so you can share those files and send them to iCloud Drive. I’ve explained it in one of the post I’ve written:

Not to confuse document provider extension with share extension where you can only send and upload selected files, document provider extension provides more options to export, import, open, and move files between document storage providers.
The basic functionality each document provider extension supports is export and import. It lets the extension to export or import the files to destination path. To see this extension in action, you may update to the latest Dropbox and turn it on from the More button in Files.

Basically, you can share files from Microsoft Office to iCloud Drive as long they support Share Extension Point or the Export, Import in Document Provider Extension Point.


Add GPS Coordinates to iPhone Contact I like to hike (with dogs).  Please how can I add GPS coordinates to an iPhone contact address field or otherwise like "the lodge near Au Sable Falls, NY" at 44.181430, -73.965213.  There is no road within 2 miles.
I can add it into the Notes field but minor pain to copy/paste each time I need the information.

I added your coordinates Apple Maps, I don't know if the place is correct,

anyway, after finding the correct location on the map, tap and hold if there is no pin to drop one, and then tap on the pin to show options.

You can create a new contact or add to an existing one from there.


How do I remove Keybase from my Finder Favorites? Keybase adds a folder to my Finder favorites that I cannot remove. I've checked the Keybase issues database and this appears to be a known but still not addressed issue, so I think I need to (1) stop using Keybase and (2) fix this in the Finder.

How do I do (2): how do I force the removal of an item from my Finder Favorites that I cannot remove in the normal way (using the items menu or dragging out of the sidebar)?

The following worked for me in macOS High Sierra.

To remove Keybase from under Favorites on Finder's Sidebar, I did the following:

Open: Keybase
Click: Settings
Click: FILES
Uncheck: [] Enable Keybase in Finder

Click the Remove & Restart button on the ensuing dialog box.

Drag Keybase from under Favorites on Finder's Sidebar until the (x) appears and then let go.

Even after rebooting my Mac, Keybase did not reappear under Favorites on Finder's Sidebar. All is as it should be and I can continue to use the other features of Keybase.

If you no longer want to use Keybase and completely remove the App and support files, then do the following:

Close the Keybase app and it's Menu Extras icon.

Then using AppCleaner:

Open: AppCleaner
Drag and drop the Keybase app onto AppCleaner.
Click the Remove button.

Note: I am not affiliated with the developer of AppCleaner, just a satisfied user.


Terminal window as its own app During my work day as a software developer, I frequently have multiple Terminal windows open, each dedicated to a specific purpose and directory. I switch between them on a regular basis.

I'd like to create entirely separate applications for each of them. This would give me several benefits over and above the normal windows I have now:

Separate icons in the Dock
Separate icons in the Command-Tab task switching
I could pin each window to separate spaces.

Is there some way to accomplish this?

@mankoff got me on the right path. Here's what I had to do in order to get what I want:

Copy Terminal.app to a new file (ex: MyTerminal.app)
Change the icon of the app by:

Copy an icon image to the clipboard from Preview
Right-click (Command-click) on the app
Select "Get Info"
Click the app icon in the upper left corner
Pasting the new icon image from the clipboard

Right-click on the App and choose "Show Package Contents"
Change the following values in Contents/Info.plist:

"Bundle display name" -> "MyTerminal"
"Bundle identifier" -> a unique app-specific string. I chose "ca.softcraft.myterminal" as I own the domain "softcraft.ca"
Bundle name -> "MyTerminal"
Document Types -> Delete
URL Types -> Delete
Application has localized display name -> uncheck
Exported Type UTIs -> Delete

I deleted a bunch of the localization settings (Contents/Resources/*.lproj) as they're not necessary for me; I just need English
In Contents/Resources/English/InfoPlist.strings, I deleted the "CFBundleName" and "CFBundleDisplayName" override settings
In Contents/Resources/Initial Settings, I deleted all but one of the *.terminal files.

I'm using a custom terminal setting, but there's no reason you couldn't use Basic
In Contents/Resources/Initial Settings/settings.plist, I made sure my "Default Settings" value was set to the name of my .terminal file

I set the values in the .terminal file to match what I wanted on open

This is just a .plist file with a different extension; you can use Property List Editor to modify it
You can also set these using Terminal itself and then export them
I mainly changed "CommandString" to be what I want launched when I run the new "app".

This works excellently. The new "Terminal" apps are independent of each other and of the main Terminal. I can spin off new ones fairly quickly now.

I also did this with Firefox to create a site-specific browser for my development website. (I had tried Mozilla Prism but found it too limiting).


Is it okay to rely on CocoaPods when deploying an app? Can I deploy my app to AppStore with 5-10 cocoapods? All pods have MIT licence.

Yes, you can add as many cocoapods to your app as required, it makes no difference regarding the count of packages.

Many of the most popular apps have a dozen or more packages.  However, whether or not you should be using that many packages is an entirely different question.

Also, your point about the MIT license is a good one.  You should also be acknowledging all these package creators within your app somewhere.  For example, in my app's Settings page I have a tableview row that lists the packages my app uses.  App Store review will not check for that but it I think it's required with the MIT license.


Zoom content not screen with Magic Mouse many windows users used to use Control + Mouse Scroll Wheel for zooming in and out.

But in macOS this doesn't work. I can zoom with gestures using touchpad, but I mostly use Magic Mouse.

There is an option to enable zooming screen, but not the content in Accessibility settings. This is not what I am trying to get.

Command + + on the other hand works in some applications (in most applications I need), but this is keyboard combination, is there any way to get the same result as Command + + but with Magic Mouse Scroll ?

I would be grateful for any help.

Thanks

Sorry,i never saw Content before(too rush),,CMD + Magic mouse scroll in most cases doesn't increase the font size, 'zoom' in. Increasing the font size system wide isn't possible without setting it specifically for Applications (if you know the menu title) in keyboard shortcuts. However, you can emulate a system wide zoom in level with a double tap of the mouse (using magic mouse) by turning that system feature on in:

System Preferences > Mouse > Smart Zoom

But still Incase of screen,,Go to System Preferences > Accessibility, and in the list on the left click the item "Zoom".

Then make sure that feature is enabled (checkmarked) in the pane on the right, and that Control has been set as the modifier.

Then Just hold down the [control] key, then slide your finger to the top or bottom of the mouse, and you’ll zoom in and out just like you would with a mouse scroll wheel.

Hope this solves your problem!


Request for experience: when has having only 16GB on your iPhone inconvenienced you? Today I regretted having only 2 GB on my Shuffle, because it meant I could not store the three most recent episodes of my favorite podcasts; but so far I have never used the full 16 GB on my 2nd Generation iPod Touch.

Now I am looking at replacing the iPod Touch and a very early Android cellphone with an iPhone 4S.  The contract will be $1680 over two years, so the $200 cost difference between the 16GB and 64GB model verges on negligible; but I care; I could get the small size and donate $200 to pancreatic cancer research.

What are people doing with the second 16 or 48GB of storage on their iPhones?  Movies?  Whole music collections?  DOS emulators?

Presumably people who have 16GB iPhones made that capacity choice based on what they thought their needs would be.  For those who subsequently discovered that 16GB was not always enough, what were the circumstances?

First-hand answers are more useful than second-hand, though if you have a friend, colleague, or family member who frequently berates him or herself for being stingy with memory, the details would be useful too.

Video Capture, more photos, larger image sensor and better camera on the iPhone 4S means I'll spring for 32. Even with iCloud and all the music streaming options, I find I always want 4 GB of core music (and another 2.5 of podcasts) with me. Having room for more serious app and book (PDF) storage will be very nice.

The 14 GB iPhone 4 I've used since it launched was sufficient except for maybe a handful of times where I wanted more space. Especially when using iMovie to assemble slide shows and short video updates on a longer trip. Also, if an apple keynote or other hour long video comes out, I don't have the space to accommodate such videos.

Those are the few times when "the 16" wasn't enough for me. I now don't take several databases with me using bento and filemaker pro since I want more space for songs and camera footage.

I initially thought of a white 32 iPod Touch and the smallest black 4S - but having all the space and speed in one package makes it more of a computer to me. I can grab a bluetooth keyboard and get short work done if needed. I'm also quite eager for AirPlay and a 4S.


Find in all open TextEdit documents? Is there any way to find a string in all open TextEdit documents (rather than just one document?) I have hundred plus such open documents, unsaved.

The following example AppleScript code when run from Script Editor, or saved as an AppleScript application, will present a search string dialog box for you to type in the search string.

If a match is found, it then creates a new TextEdit document with the name(s) of the document(s) containing the search string. If no match is found, it displays a dialog box with a message.

if running of application "TextEdit" then
    tell application "TextEdit"
        set docCount to count documents
        if docCount is greater than 0 then
            set searchString to ""
            repeat while searchString is ""
                set searchString to my getSearchString()
            end repeat
            set documentNamesList to {}
            repeat with i from 1 to docCount
                if text of document i contains the searchString then
                    copy name of document i to end of documentNamesList
                end if
            end repeat
            if documentNamesList is not {} then
                set AppleScript's text item delimiters to linefeed
                set documentNamesList to documentNamesList as string
                set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
                set docText to "The following TextEdit documents contain the search string: " & ¬
                    searchString & linefeed & linefeed & documentNamesList
                make new document with properties {text:docText}
                activate
            else
                display dialog "No documents found containing the search string: " & ¬
                    searchString buttons {"OK"} default button 1 with title "No Match Found"
            end if
        else
            display dialog "There are no open documents to search..." buttons {"OK"} ¬
                default button 1 with title "No Open Documents"
        end if
    end tell
else
    display dialog "TextEdit is not open..." buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end if

on getSearchString()
    return text returned of (display dialog ¬
        "Enter the search string:" default answer ¬
        "" buttons {"Cancel", "OK"} default button 2 ¬
        with title "Search Open TextEdit Documents")
end getSearchString

Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not contain any additional error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors. Additionally, the use of the delay command may be necessary between events where appropriate, e.g. delay 0.5, with the value of the delay set appropriately.


Ways to extend lap top battery life on Mavericks What are some ways to extend lap top battery life on Mavericks? I've heard that disabling notification center via the terminal can help. I've also had a friend tell me that disabling window animations can make a difference; however, the effect from this seems like it wouldn't be noticeable. Are there any other ways?

Disable Notification Center

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.notificationcenterui.plist killall NotificationCenter

Disable Window Animations

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticWindowAnimationsEnabled -bool false

Disabling Notification Center or disabling those animations won't have any real effect.

The best way to increase battery life is to turn down the brightness of the display. If for example a MacBook Air is idle and the display is set to maximum brightness, the display consumes about three times as much energy as all other components. You can see power consumption information from http://www.apple.com/environment/reports/:

                     off    sleep  idle with display off  idle with display at maximum brightness
13-inch MacBook Air  0.26W  0.69W  1.6W                   6.0W
15-inch MacBook Pro  0.33W  1.09W  8.53W                  15.6W
15-inch retina MBP   0.30W  0.87W  not mentioned          17.2W

You can use top to find processes with the highest accumulated (-ca) CPU use:

top -ca -o cpu

You can see the average CPU use of processes over a longer period by for example adding this line to crontab:

* * * * * ps -eco '\%cpu= comm='|sed $'s/^ *//;s/ /\t/'>>~/Desktop/cpu

Then run this later:

awk -F$'\t' '{a[$2]+=$1}END{for(i in a)print a[i],i}' ~/Desktop/cpu|sort -rn


Method to switch between group of groups of Mission Control Spaces? I often find myself switching between multiple distinct tasks over the course of a day. For each of these distinct tasks, I have multiple Mission Control Spaces that I switch between.

For example, while I'm working on X, I might have an Excel window, then a PyCharm window, then a Finder window, then another Excel window. Then, when I'm working on Y, I might have an RStudio window, then a Chrome window, then a PyCharm window, then a Finder window.

Each of these is open to a very particular thing, and the order helps me cognitively by letting me maintain a model of "where things are physically".

My best solution so far is just to have lots and lots of Spaces, with task X being Spaces 1-4, and task Y being Spaces 5-8. The problem is that looking at Mission Control can then be incredibly confusing - so many windows, such small thumbnails. It's even worse when there's multiple monitors.

I would love to have a "meta-spaces" capability where I can switch between the Spaces for X and the Spaces for Y (and maybe also for Z, etc.). Ideally, this would be with a keyboard shortcut.

As far as I understand, no such capability exist natively in macOS. Neither am I aware of any such general purpose, third-party tool which works on top of Mission Control.

While the following solution doesn't completely fulfil all your requirements, it may help to a certain extent in achieving the desired.

In such a scenario, I'd separate groups of such task-focused Spaces (1 or more desktops) by a blank Space/Desktop as shown (by blank I mean a desktop with a blank image set as the background wallpaper):

Since each desktop can be assigned a different wallpaper, you can create a custom wallpaper with largish text for the blank Desktop, indicating the group of Spaces with the custom task.

This could help you in quickly locating the desired ground after invoking Mission Control.


New Facebook in-app sounds In the last update, the Facebook app for iOS 8 has started adding squishing/swooshing nosies as you navigate or like posts. How do you disable these annoying noises? I have notifications set to off, sounds set to off for the app, but short of muting my entire phone, they keep existing. I don't want to have to mute everything, just the in-app noises for FB.

In the app, go to tab More. Then Settings → Sound and disable In-App Sound.


Equivalent key to alt+backspace on Linux In Linux and bash I use alt + bksp to remove the word before the cursor.

On mac the option / alt + delete does not work.

e.g If you typed aaaa bbbb you will get aaaa afterwards

Any suggestion?

this functionality is provide by "readline", http://unixhelp.ed.ac.uk/CGI/man-cgi?readline+3. Most of keys are same as Emacs,

so, you can type control+w to delete the word just before the cursor
or for example,you can change the preferences of the terminal.app, use option as Meta key. Meta+Delete do the same thing


OS X El Capitan port forwarding to Parallels VM using pfctl I have Parallels Desktop 11, which does not have support port forwarding to VMs (just the Pro version supports it). So I am trying to use pfctl to forward ports to my Parallels VM.

I have followed this answer to setup the port forwarding.
Forwarding is enabled with sysctl net.inet.ip.forwarding=1

I have specified this rule.

rdr pass inet proto tcp from any to any port 51414 -> 10.211.55.9 port 51414

10.211.55.9 is the static IP of the Parallels VM.

However the port forwarding does not work for VM. It can successfully forward port x to port y on 127.0.0.1 but can not forward port x from Mac to port x on Parallels VM.

What could be going wrong? Is it Parallels which is dropping packets etc?

There are two solutions for your problem with Parallels Desktop 11 (this doesn't apply to Parallels Desktop Pro/Enterprise 11, which both provide a convenient interface to configure port forwarding - nonetheless the solutions should work also in those enhanced versions):

Instead of attaching the VM's network interface to the "Shared Network" use a bridged interface (e.g. en0 or en1) and configure it with a IP/netmask in the respective network. Then you don't need NAT/port forwarding.

If you insist on a NAT'ed network do the following:

In the example below I use nc as server. To run a server enter nc -l -4 port and to connect to this server use nc server-IP port. You may also specify a source port: nc -p source-port server-IP port.

Here I use nc -l -4 11111 on the VM. To connect to this server I would run nc server-IP 11111 from a host in the same network. After starting the server and connecting the client you can simply enter some text, which is sent to the other console. To connect from a third host in a different network to the VM nc-server I want to use nc NAT-host-IP 22222. So I have to forward NAT-host-IP:22222 to VM-IP:11111. NAT-host in this case is the Mac hosting the Parallels VM.

attach the VM guest's network interface to the "Host-only Network". Usually Parallels' host-only network has the following host configuration (check this by entering ifconfig on the host machine):

vnic1: ...
...
inet 10.37.129.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 10.37.129.255

So configure the VM guest as following:

IP: 10.37.129.x (with x ≠ 0,1,2,255) - below I assume it's 10.37.129.10
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 10.37.129.2
DNS: a real DNS server like 8.8.8.8

On the NAT-host machine enable forwarding in /etc/sysctl.conf:

net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
net.inet6.ip6.forwarding=1

and reboot the host.
On the NAT-host machine (with an example IP of en0: 192.168.0.2) create an anchor file org.user.forwarding in /private/etc/pf.anchors

sudo touch /private/etc/pf.anchors/org.user.forwarding

with the following content and a trailing empty line:

rdr pass on en0 inet proto tcp from any to any port 22222 -> 10.37.129.10 port 11111

On the NAT-host machine modify the file /private/etc/pf.conf but keep a trailing empty line

original file:

...
scrub-anchor "com.apple/*"
nat-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "com.apple/*"
dummynet-anchor "com.apple/*"
anchor "com.apple/*"
load anchor "com.apple" from "/etc/pf.anchors/com.apple"

to

...
scrub-anchor "com.apple/*"
nat-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "com.apple/*"
rdr-anchor "org.user.forwarding"
nat on en0 proto {tcp, udp, icmp} from 10.37.129.0/24 to any -> en0
pass from {lo0, 10.37.129.0/24} to any keep state
dummynet-anchor "com.apple/*"
anchor "com.apple/*"
load anchor "com.apple" from "/etc/pf.anchors/com.apple"
load anchor "org.user.forwarding" from "/etc/pf.anchors/org.user.forwarding"

Parse and test your anchor and your pf.conf file to make sure that there are no errors:

sudo pfctl -vnf /etc/pf.anchors/org.user.forwarding
sudo pfctl -vnf /etc/pf.conf

Enable pf with:

sudo pfctl -e -f /etc/pf.conf

To test this start the nc server on the VM with  nc -l -4 11111. Now on a third host in your physical network enter nc 192.168.0.2 22222.

After a reboot you have to start pf again. If you want to enable pf permanently check my other pf related answers.

After a system update or upgrade some of the original files above may have been replaced and you have to reapply all changes.


Does anyone know how iOS Safari 9 handles page crashes or freezing? We have a web app which is freezing in Safari 9 and Safari 10 on iOS 9 and 10. Worth noting this is a web page which is touch responsive, the users then add this web page to the Home screen of the device by opening the page in Safari and clicking 'Add to Home Screen'.

The app seems to sometimes freeze in Safari 9 and Safari 10, and no buttons are clickable. From what I can see the actual device seems to lock up and freeze sometimes but recovers after 1 or 2 seconds, I've tested this by looking through the recent apps, and this seems to freeze, this is happening on multiple devices and we have a theory it could be due to a third party app causing the devices to freeze.

My theory is that when the actual device (iOS) is freezing for 1 or 2 seconds, that the device is trying to unfreeze itself and it kills all the scripts running in Safari which is causing our application not to recover from the freeze, does anyone know if this is how Safari actually works? Or if this theory is possible?

Thank you! :-)

Apple engineers wrote the code, but it's not available for inspection so the larger context is yes there is a system but we don't get to see it.

You can look at the logs an iOS device generates by plugging it into Xcode on a Mac or the Apple Configurator. If you do that, you will see that when an application crashes entirely - there will be a log file (that optionally is sent to Apple) explaining what crashed on a technical level.

The second level of logging is when an app (Safari in this case) burns too much CPU. This is likely what you want - when a web page has excessive javascript, buggy javascript, continual tracking and acts more like a program than a short document to be rendered once - you will get a spin dump that again is mostly engineering data - but you will know the OS noticed the app was nor behaving like a short, quick efficient worker. The have spin in the file names.

Lastly, you can avail yourself of the well documented and very powerful Safari development tools by enabling debug and inspecting what Safari is doing on an extremely granular level to include errors, warnings, code inspection, timing to the millisecond, etc...

https://developer.apple.com/safari/tools/


Is whatsapp is available for iPhone 2G with iOS v3.1.3 Is whatsapp available for iPhone 2G with iOS 3.1.3?

Unfortunately, no.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/whatsapp-messenger/id310633997

  Compatibility: Requires iOS 4.3 or later. Compatible with iPhone.
  This app is optimized for iPhone 5.


How do I find out which app uses which distribution certificate? I want to build the app using Expo React Native. Expo can handle all credentials for me automatically: distribution certificate, push notifications key, and provisioning profile. Unfortunately, we cannot have more than three distribution certificates, and we already have three.

I want to revoke one of them, but without breaking any of the existing apps. How can I find out which app uses which certificate?

I had to work this exact same thing out today. I had multiple distribution certificates that had the same name and needed to figure out which apps were using which certificates. Apple really should make it more obvious, but once you know where to look, it's pretty easy to work it out. A bit convoluted, admittedly...

The following instructions require you to use your browser's inspection tool. I've written them for Chrome but the instructions are nearly identical for IE/Firefox/etc.

Sign in to Apple Developer
Click Certificates, IDs & Profiles in the menu
Make sure that you are viewing "Certificates"
Click a distribution certificate and take note of the URL. The last part of the URL is the certificate's ID. Make note of it.

https://developer.apple.com/account/resources/certificates/download/12345ABCDE
Certificate ID = 12345ABCDE

Click "< All Certificates" to return to the main list
Click "Profiles" to view your app profiles
Click an app to load it's profile info and then click the "Edit" button
Right-click the name of the certificate that is selected (the one the profile is set to use) and click "Inspect"
You will see the certificate ID for that app in the source code:

    <input type="radio" name="certificateIds" id="12345ABCDE" value="12345ABCDE" checked="">

            Certificate Name Here
            Jul 15, 2020

If you have a large number of apps then this is going to be a lot of work. Given that Expo can pull your app list and show the certificates they're using, there's clearly some type of API that can retrieve the information. More than likely it's a component of fastlane, but I haven't dug too deep into which tool it could be.


Opening Xcode on Mac I am new to Mac as well as Xcode. I have installed Xcode. When I click on Xcode on the toolbar or on Mac HD --> Applications --> Xcode, I do not see any editor opening. Please advise if I am doing anything wrong.

Here are some things to try
+ Try double clicking
+ Also you might be right-clicking on the mouse - try left-clicking.
+ If no luck, go to Mac HD -> Applications, then click once on the Xcode icon and choose Command-O or Choose Open from the File menu (top left of screen).
+ Failing this - go to Mac HD -> Applications -> Utilities and open Terminal. Then run

open /Applications/XCode.app

If all these fail - post back the response from Terminal.

Also - please post your OS version, and the version of Xcode (click on XCode once and then type Command-I or choose Get Info from the File menu). The version number will be listed in the General section of the pop-up window.

Do you know how XCode was installed (e.g via AppStore or was it installed a download file)?


How do I split Fusion drive on Mojave / APFS? I have a 2013 iMac (27" 3.5GHz i7, model id iMac14,2, EMC 2639) that has a Fusion drive. I want to replace the Fusion's internal HDD with an SSD. My understanding is that I should split the Fusion drive before performing this.

I referred to the article https://www.macworld.com/article/2015664... which discusses the use of diskUtil and Core Storage to get the GUIDs and split the drive.

However, invoking disktutil coreStorage list returned ‘No CoreStorage logical volume groups found’. I then tried diskutil list, which returned more information, apparently showing the fused drives as ‘synthesized’. I read a bit about this in other discussions, and it seems like this is perhaps a Mojave/APFS version of a Core Storage Fusion config.

I’m wondering what I need to do to split my Fusion drive. Is there something else to use, or do I not even need to split the HDD/SSD before replacing the HDD?

Here is the output from diskutil list (I'm booted from an external drive named "External Drive". I think the first three entries are for my internal Fusion drive, and the last two entries are for the external drive:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk2         3.0 TB     disk0s2

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk2         121.1 GB   disk1s2

/dev/disk2 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +3.1 TB     disk2
                                 Physical Stores disk1s2, disk0s2
   1:                APFS Volume Preboot                 28.7 KB    disk2s2
   2:                APFS Volume Recovery                20.5 KB    disk2s3
   3:                APFS Volume VM                      2.1 GB     disk2s4
   4:                APFS Volume Macintosh HD            9.6 MB     disk2s1

/dev/disk3 (external, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *4.0 TB     disk3
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk3s1
   2:                 Apple_APFS Container disk4         4.0 TB     disk3s2

/dev/disk4 (synthesized):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      APFS Container Scheme -                      +4.0 TB     disk4
                                 Physical Store disk3s2
   1:                APFS Volume External Drive          81.6 GB    disk4s1
   2:                APFS Volume Preboot                 45.7 MB    disk4s2
   3:                APFS Volume Recovery                512.5 MB   disk4s3
   4:                APFS Volume VM                      17.2 GB    disk4s4

Thanks.

-Allan

I did this earlier today on an iMac.
Boot to a Mojave USB boot installer.
Then Utilities → Terminal.
The commands are along the lines of:

diskutil apfs list

Then make note of the “virtual disk” that is the “Fusion Drive”. This is made up the PCI Flash and the other spinning drive. You can see how the text output of the drive structure is hierarchical.

Let’s say that virtual container disk is identified as “disk0”

diskutil apfs deletecontainer disk0

This command will split your fusion drive, and leave you with two new drives to format via Disk Utility (which you can run in the same USB Booted environment you’re already in).

Format them (the SSD and the other drive) as whatever you want.

I recently did this prior to replacing the slow spinning disk that comprised the 1TB of my Fusion Drive. Replaced that with a 500GB SSD which is SATA3. Installed Mojave onto the 24GB PCI “Blade” Flash and formatted the other SSD.

I then store User home folder on the larger SSD, and macOS and other apps run off the faster PCI-based SSD.


Is it possible to have a variable in the title of an Automator Service file? When one right-clicks selected text on a Mac, one is presented with various contextual menu items.  You may notice that some of the item titles contain the selected text.

For example, the Dictionary.app shortcut:

  Look Up "selected text"

Can this level of title adaptability be replicated with a Service created by Automator.app? Or are Service titles completely fixed?

The filename given in the "Save service as:" sheet, to the saved Automator Service, is what will appear on the Services context menu, sans the file extension.  It is fixed, sans renaming it, and cannot be a dynamic name automatically, as no mechanism is provided for it in a user made Automator Service.


Network proxy setup in terminal I am trying to create a bash script that will update the mac's proxy settings and a few other places when a user changes their password every 60 days. So far I am trying to use this command for the proxy

networksetup -setwebproxy wi-fi proxy.example.com 8080 on "$USER" "$NewPassword"

but when I run the command after the proxy has been set up, it gives an error.

networksetup[32852:1867937] error -25299 attempting to create account and password for proxy: proxy.example.com:8080

The error will only shows up when the username and password have been previously set up, but if I delete the username and password from the GUI, then run the command it will setup the authentication.

Anyone have any ideas?

You need to delete the proxy password programmatically, something like -

security delete-internet-password -s $PROXY
networksetup -setwebproxy Ethernet $PROXY 8080 on $USER $PASSWORD

Here, the -s tells it to delete the internet password that has the server set as proxy.example.com

Once it's deleted you can recreate the web proxy entries.

If you want to find the passwords to test before deleting, you can do the following, and confirm you get only one entry. You can also set a comment (use KeyChain Access), and confirm it shows up in the icmt field:

security find-internet-password -s 'proxy.example.com'
keychain: "/Users/alex/Library/Keychains/login.keychain-db"
version: 512
class: "inet"
attributes:
0x00000007 <blob>="proxy.example.com"
0x00000008 <blob>=<NULL>
"acct"<blob>="username"
"atyp"<blob>=<NULL>
"cdat"<timedate>=0x32303139303231383032343431305A00  "20190218024410Z\000"
"crtr"<uint32>=<NULL>
"cusi"<sint32>=<NULL>
"desc"<blob>=<NULL>
"icmt"<blob>=<NULL>
"invi"<sint32>=<NULL>
"mdat"<timedate>=0x32303139303231383032343632395A00  "20190218024629Z\000"
"nega"<sint32>=<NULL>
"path"<blob>=<NULL>
"port"<uint32>=0x00001F90
"prot"<blob>=<NULL>
"ptcl"<uint32>="htpx"
"scrp"<sint32>=<NULL>
"sdmn"<blob>=<NULL>
"srvr"<blob>="proxy.example.com"
"type"<uint32>=<NULL>


Apple Updater (Windows) Won't Download Updates? I have an update for iTunes and iCloud yet neither will download. It downloads less than a megabyte but hangs up. My internet connection is fine and very fast. What is going on?

Note: I am on Windows 8.1 64bit.

I am going to assume this was a temporary problem with Apple. The update recently installed without an issue and was very quick.


How can I read a time machine backup on a Windows PC? I want to recover some files from a time machine backup (an external harddisk) but the I have only access to a Windows 10 Pro PC right now.

Is it possible to read from the time machine backup from a PC?

Time Machine uses native MacOS file systems so not without extra software.    A possibility untried by me would be the Paragon drivers from https://www.paragon-software.com/home/.

If you are a bit adventurous you could also look into running MacOS in a virtual machine and let that access your USB-disk.

Safest bet though is to borrow someone elses Mac and let that access the disk.  After mounting the backup image, you can navigate to the latest backup and then the file you need.


How do I report an unauthorized copy app uploaded to App Store? I am a contributor to TableTool, a modest app for editing CSV files. Somebody took our source code, copied it and is charging money for the identical app, Quick CSV.

I don't mind this, our project is Open Source and copying our code is allowed, even for commercial purposes. Even though this developer, Erik Wegener is just benefiting from someone else’s (communities’) work.

The logo used is deceptively similar to ours which is intended to imply an official association. Also, they are using our product's name as a search term which is intended to imply an association.

This is improper use of our product's icon and name. How do I make an official complaint to Apple?

Try getting in touch with Apple via the App Store Content Dispute page.

  If you believe that an application or Search Ad available in the App Store violates your intellectual property rights, you can use this form to submit a claim to the App Store Legal Team.

If you suspect copyright infringements, you can use the info provided in the Legal Claims of Copyright Infringement page.

Note: Please don’t treat this as professional legal advice of any sort. Just a couple of pointers to get you started towards potential resolution.


Need to connect mac-mini and thunderbolt display to a Dell U2713HM for dual monitor 2560x1440 I need to run a dual 27" 2560x1440 mac-mini. I already have a thunderbolt display and I tried connecting a Dell Ultrasharp with 2560x1440 to the HDMI port of the mac mini - that doesn't work.  There is a spare Thunderbolt port on the back of the Apple display, so do I use that and connect to the Dell?  If so, what port on the Dell do I use to get the full resolution - HDMI, DVI, Ethernet?

HDMI is out because the Mac Mini's HDMI port maxes out at 1920x1200. You're going to need to grab an adapter to go from Mini-Displayport to either dual-link DVI or Displayport, which are both supported by the Dell.

Now, the Thunderbolt display can't directly output Mini-Displayport for boring technical reasons (see question 20). There must be a non-display Thunderbolt device between the display and the adapter I mentioned above. The cheapest example I've found is the Seagate GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt Adapter (STAE122), which has two Thunderbolt ports for daisychaining and retails for about $180.

The full chain:
Mac Mini -> Thunderbolt Display -> STAE122 -> MiniDP to DP or DL-DVI adapter -> Dell monitor


MacBook Pro Keyboard Backlight Error Icon? When I use the Keyboard Backlight buttons (F5 and F6) I get this error icon?

https://ibb.co/bwod2T

It appears this warning icon means that it's too light to turn on the Keyboard Backlight. Very misleading icon suggests an error.

You can test this by holding a flashlight up to the light sensor.


App for reading Academic PDFs My question is very simple.
I read a lot of scientific papers, full of equations, references etc... and sometimes going back and forth through all the pages is annoying.
A nice feature of TexShop is the ability to preview referenced equations by hovering over the reference (see screenshot below).
Is there an app for MacOS which allows this feature while reading PDFs? Preview is fine for my purpose, but it misses this nice feature.
Thank you!

You can open pdf files with TeXShop even if you don't have the corresponding TeX files.
In the Finder, control-click on the file and choose Open With / TeXShop.
In the Terminal, do open -a TexShop foo.pdf.