Empty output when using some shell commands via AppleScript's "do shell script" AppleScript allows you to run shell commands with do shell script. It's easy to assign a variable to an output of such command.
set theResult to do shell script "echo everything"

>> theResult = "everything"

On macOS you also can run Javascript code in Terminal with osascript:
osascript -l JavaScript << EOF

console.log('everything');

EOF

>> everything

However, if you execute this piece from AppleScript, you get nothing:
set theResult to do shell script "osascript -l JavaScript << EOF

console.log('everything');

EOF"

>> theResult = ""

I also tried to assign a shell variable to the osascript output and to print it with echo. Again, works in Terminal:
theString=$(osascript -l JavaScript << EOF

console.log('everything');

EOF
)

echo $theString"

>> everything

But it still does not work when executed via do shell script:
set theResult to do shell script "theString=$(osascript -l JavaScript << EOF

console.log('everything');

EOF
)

echo $theString"

>> theResult = ""

Why is this happening? How to make it work?
I'll appretiate your help.
My goal is to be able to do some text processing with Javascript within an AppleScript script.
I'm not interested in putting Javascript code into external .js file, I prefer to keep it in place.

console.log within osascript outputs to stderr (standard error), not stdout (standard out). Redirect stderr to stdout for the output to be captured to a variable using 2>&1.
set theResult to do shell script "osascript -l JavaScript 2>&1 << EOF
console.log('everything');
EOF"


Is there any way to get rid of the gray area in iCal? The gray area I'm referring to is the area that's not used, say from 12am to 6am.

I want to get rid of this area entirely (It's not the color that's the issue). I don't use that space at all, so it means I have to scroll down to schedule something every single time -- seems very counter-intuitive imho.

Edit: Simplified to one question.

Edit: Still no solution, but some workarounds are provided below. An actual solution would be best though. (Not to take anything away from those who contributed).

I can answer 1. Go to preferences in iCal, and set "day starts at" to midnight, and "day ends at" to midnight. Or... whenever you want the grey area not to go. So 8-6 (default I think) will make 8-6 not grey. Here's a screen scrape of how that looks:


Portable monitor on Mac Mini not detected I purchased a Zenscreen monitor recently from Asus so I can travel with my Mac mini. This screen connects via USB-C. The problem is that it isn't automatically detected unless another monitor is connected to the Mac Mini. I have tried every single port on the back of the Mac. I have turned it on and off again.

I have tried different cables. But the only thing that will turn the Zenscreen on is by plugging my larger monitor into the HDMI port. The mac immediately detects both monitors and at this point I can unplug the larger monitor and the Zenscreen will stay powered on and functional.

Is there anything I can do differently? I don't think it's the Zenscreen because it works with my windows laptop just fine. But then again, it has a monitor built in so it's not really the same situation.

I have had the same problem. I just upgraded to Catalina. I also updated my zen screen to the Catalina upload on the display link website.  My monitor now starts when I start my mini Mac. However, I must make sure I turn off my Asus display when I shut down the computer, if I don’t Shut down the monitor it won’t start when I restart my mini Mac.


How to compile gcc-4.0 on Mountain Lion? So far I've successfully launched the configure, but when I type make, I get the following error, after some time (there's a lot which compile successfully):

ld: unknown/unsupported architecture name for: -arch i686
/usr/bin/libtool: internal link edit command failed
make[2]: *** [libgcc_s.dylib] Error 1
make[1]: *** [libgcc.a] Error 2
make: *** [all-gcc] Error 2

Is there a way to tell gcc not to compile itself for the i686 architecture?

Here's my uname -a if it can help:

Darwin Frizlabs-Computer.local 12.2.0 Darwin Kernel Version 12.2.0: Sat Aug 25 00:48:52 PDT 2012; root:xnu-2050.18.24~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64

PS: I know gcc-4.0 is ancient, but I do need it.

Someone on serverfault answered the same question. So here's the way to compile gcc-4.0 on OS X Mountain Lion (copied from serverfault):

First get the old 4.0 package that was included with XCode 3.1 from Apple's Open Source page

Download the gcc-5493 package and build using:

mkdir darwin
cd darwin
../configure --prefix=/tmp/testplace --enable-languages=objc,c++
make bootstrap
make install


Excel 2011 crashes when I work on a large Excel file I have a MacBook Pro running on Mavericks with 8GB of RAM.

I am using a large Excel file with roughly 250k rows of data (170MB). I would like to delete several sheets in the file but every time I do, Excel freezes and I have to force the application to quit. I am extremely limited in what I can do with this file.

This is being a huge problem for me as this file contains data for my research. What would you advise me to do?

According to this Excel Specifications, it is not the file size, and it is only limited by available memory.

I would suggest you run the Error check in Excel, to find out the errors in you spread sheet that might be causing the lock up.


Homebrew recipe without url Is it possible to create a Homebrew Formula that doesn't need a URL to download?

In my case the recipe just depends on other recipes and installs a homebrew specific shell script.

class Test < Formula
  desc "Test"
  homepage "https://test.com"
  version "1.0"

  depends_on "yschimke/tap/oksocial"

  def install
    (bin+"testoksocial").write <<-EOS.undent
        #!/bin/sh

        echo Hello
    EOS
  end
end

But running this gives

$ brew install ./test.rb
Error: formulae require at least a URL
Please report this bug:
    https://git.io/brew-troubleshooting
/usr/local/Library/Homebrew/formula.rb:193:in `determine_active_spec'

You have to use an url in your receipt, that's mandatory.

You don't have to use the http(s) url scheme, you can also use file:. If you don't need any content, you can use the /dev/null file. It can even have a checksum to silence the related warning.

url "file:///dev/null"
sha256 "e3b0c44298fc1c149afbf4c8996fb92427ae41e4649b934ca495991b7852b855"


How to use OS X HTML Mail signature on iOS Mail I am using an HTML signature in my Mail app on OS X for my iCloud mail account. I created this signature following this instruction: http://matt.coneybeare.me/how-to-make-an-html-signature-in-apple-mail-for-el-capitan-os-x-10-dot-11/

My question is now, is there a way to sync my signature over iCloud to be able to use it on my iOS device? My signature contains links and images. I would like both to appear in my iOS signature, too.

Detailed device information:

I am using a MacBook Pro with OS X 10.11.5 (El Capitan) and an iPhone 5s with iOS 9.3.2.

Thanks in advance

There is a fairly easy work-around to this.  It requires that you setup your email signature in your Gmail account online.  You can include an image, which means it gets uploaded to your Google account, with a permanent reference to it.  Once you've setup your signature in Gmail, just send yourself an email from the online account.  Open this email up on your phone.  Now select the content of the email, your signature, and press copy.  Now go to Settings > Mail and add your signature by pasting it into the signature box.  Your image will be included. If you used different font sizes, they will all be the same now, but Bold, Italics, etc. will be kept.  Even links have the URL intact.  When you send a new mail from the phone, you might not see the image in the mail you are composing, but as the URL is present in the underlying HTML code, the receiving party will see your image in your signature.  This method seems to work with iOS 10.2 PB 3.


Rewrite 'eject remove' command I used the commands:

defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitEject true and
sudo defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitEject true (as stated on this page - Remove eject button from finder)

The command prevented the 'eject' button from working, however i want to undo this command...

Can someone rewrite the command to undo this, so that my eject button can work again?

To reverse any Boolean command, just type the inverse property, so...

true becomes false, one becomes zero

defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitEject false

sudo defaults write com.apple.finder ProhibitEject false


iPhone 4S wth update 8.1.3 I updated my iPhone with the iOS update 8.1.3, and now I am unable to activate my phone because it shows a connect to iTunes screen with no other option.

Finally, when I connect to iTunes, it gives me a message to update or, if it is still not working, completely restore to factory settings.

Although there was no warning that this update is not suitable to my iPhone, now I have no other option than restoring my iPhone to factory settings. Worse, the update fails with error -39

Question: How do I fix my iPhone since it will not start up at all and this error -39 doesn't help me know what's really wrong and if it's my iPhone or my Computer that needs fixing?

Try to put your device in DFU mode, then restore it via iTunes. This method should work with you.


Blue screen when booting from USB backup of Mountain Lion I've not been able to startup my MacBook Pro. I made a backup of Mountain Lion using Lion DiskMaker 2.0.2. When I press option and the power button then select the USB drive, the grey screen with the apple logo and spinner appears then shortly after I get a solid royal blue screen. Is there anyway I can boot from the USB drive backup to fix my computer?

Lion Disk Maker is a third-party utility. It’s likely that updates to OS X changed the startup behavior slightly for how your machine operates.

Any reason you wouldn’t use Recovery Disk? (Command + R on boot.)

You can also try booting to the USB drive, but enable verbose mode (before you select the USB drive, hold down Command + V) to see if there are particular errors shown when it is at that blue screen.

Last bit of hope: the author appears receptive to personal technical support questions by e-mail (that’s pretty cool).


How to create bootable flash drive from macOS High Sierra combo update I have problem installing macOS High Sierra from App Store. I don't understand what the problem is, but when the download completes it suddenly resets. Then when I open up App Store again it only lets download the os again.

I want to clean reinstall High Sierra on my Mac and the only way to do it is to create bootable flash drive because I have a bad internet connection.

I have downloaded macOS High Sierra combo update with a download manager, and my question is can I create bootable flash drive with this combo update?

No, you cannot create a macOS USB Installer from the Combo Update, you need the full Install macOS High Sierra.app to do that.

Have a look at: How to create a bootable installer for macOS

If you cannot get it to download properly on your system using your connection, then you'll have to try from a different location and connection or have a friend download it, or go to an Apple Store.


What hardware do I need if I need to frequently adjust the height and rotation of 2 Thunderbolt monitors? I have a small apartment and have one Thunderbolt display, a retina MacBook Pro, and am considering a second Thunderbolt Display.

I plan on purchasing VESA kits for each display, but am getting hung up on what kind of hardware to buy to handle the rotation of screens and what I should do with my MacBook, and still make the small space aesthetically pleasing.

What options are there to rotate a monitor 90 degrees (so I can view long documents) and to rotate it back so I can multitask or watch videos?

What should I look for in a desk that would work well with this setup?

Two 27" displays will (obviously) take up quite a bit of room. You'll probably want to look for a desk that has built-in mounting points for your VESA arms (or built-in VESA arms) so you don't have to hang the displays off the wall. (If you want to rotate the monitor, Apple's Thunderbolt displays don't have any built-in rotation ability, so you'll need an arm that does that, too. OS X's Displays preferences are where you'll go to set the rotation on the display.)

There are several different caddies for your MacBook (such as the Henge Docks) that will keep it out of the way of your displays.


How I label scatter plot points in Numbers? I have a scatter plot in Numbers using one column of data from my table for X values and another for Y values and want to label (and ideally also highlight) each point with the corresponding entries in a third column (or additional columns). How do I do that?

As of Numbers 3.6 on OS X 10.11, this is not currently possible.

A few alternatives:

Manually add text above each individual point, though obviously a huge hassle.
Use Excel (if you have access), as this functionality appears to be supported.
Use Google Sheets (free), which supports this feature.

Using a Google Sheet is definitely the most cost effective method of the three listed above, and you should be able to easily migrate your Numbers sheet by copying and pasting cells, or by exporting as an .xls file, and then uploading to Google.


Can't mount or repair Transcend 1TB external HD I have a Transcend 1TB external hard drive. The hard drive shows up in Disk Utility but when I click on Mount, the LED of the drive blinks for 2 seconds.  And then nothing happens.  When I clicked on Repair I got this message:

Repairing file system.
Invalid content in journal
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Detected a case-sensitive volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Invalid node structure
The volume HD1 could not be verified completely.
Invalid content in journal
File system check exit code is 8.
Updating boot support partitions for the volume as required.

I don't think that's the problem but my hard drive was almost full and I clicked on backup. And I think the problem happen at this moment.

I tried another USB cable, and on Windows but without success.

Any idea that involves not losing my data is very welcome :)

OS : El Capitan 10.11.6
MacBook Pro (late 2008)

Try using a great app for Mac like Disk Drill, Data Rescue 4 or R Studio to recover your own data, another option is to bring it to a computer store, and they can do it for a fee, as Best Buy does for around $450-$1200. If you prefer a free way, then I recommend using TestDisk, an open source project that will help recover and perform sector by sector scan drives.

I would just leave the drive plugged in and use one of the applications, if the drive is still able to spin (as I'm assuming it is because it will populate in disk util). In Disk Drill, you can click the settings icon beside your drive and click "deep scan". For a 4TB HDD, it takes around 3 days. It should be fine if left running for a few days, and eventually, it will allow you to mount your old drive, and transfer the files to a new drive. Docs for TestDisk are available here

Best of Luck!


Screwdriver for 13-inch MacBook Pro Does anyone know what is the precision screwdriver to use in opening a 13-inch Macbook Pro (Late 2011)? Need to make sure before I head to the hardware shop. Thanks.

Here, according to iFixit Tutorial for a MBP 13" Late 2011, for the case, you'll need:

Three 14.4 mm Phillips #00 screws
Three 3.5 mm Phillips #00 screws
Four 3.5 mm shouldered Phillips #00 screws

If you need more information about others screws, please refers to others tutorials on this website about what you wanna change.


an error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination disk I have a late 2013 retina macbook pro that came up with OS X mavericks.

I have tried to restore my macintosh hard drive from timemachine backup, I followed these steps: rebooted mac holding cmd+R, this shows up os x utilities, then I've chosen "restore from timemachine backup", selected the TM volume and then the date from which I wish to restore the entire mac from, after this I selected the Macintosh HD as destination and clicked on restore, a warning message appears to tell me that this would erase the whole Macintosh HD, I clicked continue. The recovery loads and "erasing destination disk" is displayed, after 20 seconds I get this message: "an error occurred while adding a recovery system to the destination disk". I clicked on restart but the mac didn't load (only the apple shows up). I held the power button and then restarted the mac holding cmd+R, internet recovery started and when it finished downloading, I had the os x utilities menu. I clicked on disk utilities and found out that Macintosh HD was completely erased. I tried to restore from timemachine backup again but still had the the same problem. I even tried the "reinstall os x" option, I waited 6 hours for the download (os x mavericks) and when it finished downloading, I got "an error occurred while preparing the install" message.

I'm totally lost and stressed out, I would really appreciate your help. Thanks a lot.

Look at what diskutil cs list and disk util list commands give me:

I don't know where the disks from disk3 ... to disk 12 are coming from.

PS: before this issue, I had os x el capitan running.

In my case I experienced exactly the same issue and noticed that recovery user interface was pretty old one when accessed using apple+r.

When I used option+apple+r, I got another recovery downloaded, which looked newer based on layout ant this was finally solved.


MacBook Air won't get IP from Tenda 11n DHCP server I have just experience this weird problem.
My MacBook Air would not get issues an IP address by a WiFi router make Tenda model 11n. It would only say that it got a self assigned IP address and had no Internet connection.

It would show up in wireless connections by MAC address.
It would not show up in DHCP client list whatsoever.

I have tried rebooting both laptop and the router, I've tried changing WiFi channel, tried static IP, but nothing worked.

I then tried to add the laptop to the router's static DHCP assignment list.

This has changed something. Although it would still not connect, I was now able to see the laptop in DHCP client list, but with a blank host name.

This made go and check my laptop's "Computer Name", which was something like "John's MacBook Air" in Preferences/Sharing, which resulted in auto-generated NetBIOS name like "MACBOOKAIR-CB8C" in Preferences/Network/Advanced/WINS

As soon as I changed "Computer Name" to something simple like "JM Air", it connected to router's WiFi.

I have now tried to disable WiFi, and change the computer name to something as obnoxious as it previously was. It did not break anything, surprisingly.

I am still not sure why changing "Computer name" fixed this problem, but I found the problem quite annoying and there was no solution anywhere. So please enjoy.


Extract email Password from an Encrypted Backup How can I extract email passwords from an encrypted iOS backup stored in iCloud?

Eek this sounds like a bit of a task. First off you will want to download your encrypted backup from iCloud. You can only do this with 3rd party tools that will probably cost you a little money. You can use http://www.eoosoft.com/how-to/download-icloud-backup-to-pc-mac.html to download the backup from iCloud. Then you can use a tool like http://www.iphonebackupextractor.com/ to extract the information you need from the backup.


“Couldn’t create temporary file” error when erasing free space on startup disk When I tried to erase space on Disk Utility, it couldn't create a second temporary file for my startup disk.

Ran into the same issue while erasing free space on El Capitan. I was doing it from the terminal, and this was likely the error you ran in to:

Error: -69847: Couldn't create temporary file
Underlying error: 1: POSIX reports: Operation not permitted

As @Tetsujin mentioned, there is a solution in this question — though, in this case, I think the easiest solution is to run the operation via the command line, with sudo. From a terminal window, you should be able to do:

sudo diskutil secureErase freespace 0 "/Volumes/[Disk Name]"

This isn't the accepted answer in the linked issue, but it's one of the answers...and way easier than all the other solutions.

The 0 in the command specifies that you want to overwrite the free space with zeros...there are other "more secure" options, although there are arguments that erasing free space may not be necessary at all, when you have a solid state hard drive.


Can I put my iPhone 4 sim card into a new iPhone 4S? I have an iPhone 4, and want to upgrade to an iPhone 4S. Can I just buy one and switch my sim card?

My current iPhone is through my ex's account. I don't want him knowing I'm getting a new one. My name isn't on the account, so I was hoping to just purchase the phone, then put my sim in there.

If you buy a new iPhone and switch SIM's, you'll be fine.

Both the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 4S are using the microsim, so SIM's will fit in both iPhones.

If your current iPhone 4 is registered on the account of your ex, he won't get a notice of SIM's being switched.
However, if you reconfigured the iPhone with a new account, your ex might know the phone isn't registered with his account when using apps like 'Find My iPhone'.


Can water seep into my laptop through the sides of the trackpad? If I use the my laptop while my hands are (very) wet, will the water get into the insides of the computer through the gaps at the side of the trackpad?

Yes - capillary action is strongest in small gaps like the one surrounding the glass trackpad and the unibody frame. That liquid would likely seep and pool on top of the battery.


Maximum size drive for Mac OS X 4 TB = 1.8 TB ?

What is the maximum size drive that can be used with various versions of Mac OS X?

On a white Intel MacBook running Mac OS X 10.6.x, the Disk Utility app recognizes a new Seagate 4 TB (terabyte) drive as 1.8 TB when attached via FireWire in a NewerTech Voyager "pop-tart" style drive holder.

SATA Controller

I had something similar happen to me and I seem to recall it was not so much the O/S as it was the controller in the drive caddy.

The drive is probably SATA 3 and the drive caddy is probably a SATA 2. And there are limitations to drive size in various versions of SATA. If you got a drive caddy with a SATA 3 controller (to USB) and plugged it into your Mac it would likely show all 4 TB.

Mac OS X Volume Limits

Your version of Mac OS X supports drive sizes up to ~8 EB (Exabytes).

See this Apple technical note, Mac OS X: Mac OS Extended format (HFS Plus) volume and file limits.


Running Mac OS X on a Windows PC I have bought a Macbook Pro Retina 13-inch (late 2012 model).

I've been very satisfied with Mac OS X so far and I would like to use it on my home computer, which currently has Windows and Linux on it.

Would it be legal (and possible) to make an ISO image of Mac OS X Mavericks from my MBPr and install it on my home PC for everyday usage among my family members? Or do I need to buy the OS as a separate product now?

Apple’s EULA states that you’re only allowed to install OS X on Apple hardware. If it’s legal to go against an EULA depends on the country and its legislative authority.


How to update latest MacBook pro EFI firmware manually? In short, the firmware cannot be updated either by upgrading macOS to High Sierra or by bless manually. Here comes the detail.

My MacBook pro info:

Attempt 1 - update it by updating macOS from 10.12.6 to 10.13.2

Failed with error message "An error occurred while verifying firmware". Key info in ia.log is as following.

  ROM does not support APFS

  Clearing automation and attempting to rebless.

  Failed to get disk for UUID specified for rebless.

  Operation: Verify firmware failed, Failure Reason: Error Domain=com.apple.osinstall Code=512

If look into previous log of EFI updating, it seems they are quite normal.

  EFI currentVersion: [0000000000D30008]
  EFI updateVersion:  [0000000000D70000]

  /Volumes/bless.YdD7/EFI/APPLE/FIRMWARE/MBP91_00D7_B00.scap created successfully

  Writing firmware update installed cookie (/Volumes/MacSSD/macOS Install Data/.FirmwareUpdateInstalled)

  /usr/libexec/efiupdater finished with status: 0

Thus, I've no idea why High Sierra installer failed to update the EFI firmware at the very first time.

Attempt 2 - update EFI firmware manually

According to the chapter 2.0 How Does a Mac Update Its EFI Firmware & How Do You Find Your EFI Version of The Apple of Your EFI , with the following command bless, the file MBP91_00D3_B0C_LOCKED.scap extracted from mac2015002efiupdate.dmg, which downloaded from Apple.com, and the file MBP91_00D7_B00.scap extracted from Install macOS High Sierra.app, it executed successfully.

sudo bless -mount / -firmware <PATH>/MBP91_00D7_B00.scap --verbose --recovery

Shutdown, Power on. It got a flashing LED light indicating the firmware was about to be updated. Then, 3 times power off automatically in a short period, end up with a normal OS X startup. Everything stay still. In another word, the Boot ROM Version hasn't been changed.

Any idea?

Update @11 Jan 2018:

I've just seem a related post Is there any way to manually bless firmware when main disk is external?

It seems that the root cause is running OS X from a second internal disk. Unfortunately the first one of my MacBook is out of order.

Update @13 Jan 2018:

Confirmed the following methods do not work.

replaced the Samsung SSD with original Apple HDD and tried again. The ia.log was same as that of SSD
kept internal hard drive connected, connected the USB external drive or SXCARD reader. It selected the ESP on internal hard drive as the staging EFI. Thus, same result as above.
disconnect all internal hard drive, connected the USB external drive and SXCARD reader. Got the log as

  No appropriate ESP could be found. Error while writing firmware updater for EFI.

The EFI partition is used when the firmware is updated. I assume this EFI partition must be on the primary internal disk. Apple posted that firmware updates require a GUID partition scheme at the archived website Firmware updates for Intel-based Macs require a GUID partition scheme, although the site does not explicitly say this must be the primary drive. When a SDD or HDD is formatted to use a GUID partition scheme by the Disk Utility or diskutil command, the EFI partition is automatically created.

Basically, the firmware update is copied to the FAT32 formatted EFI partition. The firmware is then instructed to update itself. Basically, the same procedure occurs for firmware updates on my HP PC running Windows. So, this is not unique to Apple Macs.

Having to update the firmware to run High Sierra makes sense. The APFS is new and older Macs would need a firmware update before being able to recognize this filesystem and read the boot files.

You used to manually update the firmware. At some point, Apple decided to include firmware updates in the macOS installs. Apple posted this in the now archived website About EFI and SMC firmware updates for Intel-based Mac computers.


How to enable AirPlay mirroring on an iPad mini? On my iPad mini I cannot seem to enable the mirroring feature. AirPlay in the photos app or any video app works fine:

However the AirPlay icon is missing in the taskbar, where it should be according to Apple's documentation:

How can I get back the AirPlay icon? I've already tried rebooting all devices.

Edit: This is what I am looking for (source: Apple Support)

After another round of reboots (first: software update for the Apple TV, second: reboot of the iPad mini), it now works:

It seems that some hiccup was responsible, which was very, very sticky. So the often mentioned hint of rebooting does really work. Just try it often enough... :)


Restoring an iOS backup to a device running an older version My iPhone has iOS 10 on it. My iPad Mini has iOS 9 which is the most recent version available for that device.

Can I restore my iPad Mini with a backup that I made from my iPhone? I only need my contacts and messages.

No. You cannot restore newer iPhone backup to Older iPad. If you want to restore that, you have to upgrade iPad to iOS 10 first. But since iPad mini only supports iOS 9, there isn't a way of doing that.

But you can export contacts to your windows/Mac and then sync data to your iPad. Or simply you can use iCloud to do that. Since you haven't said you need another way of transferring contacts and messages to your iPad, I ain't gonna explain.


I need to put a video in an iPhone 5s frame? How is this done? Something like mockuphone.com. I need to put VIDEOS in an iPhone frame. I have a Mac on OS X.

How can I do this?

You could download one of the product images available at: http://www.apple.com/pr/products/

And then simply overlay the video in iMovie or another video editing software. Those images have special licensing requirements on them so know what you are getting into.


How do I configure a Smart Playlist to show songs not in other Playlists? I have a ton of songs that I classify in named playlists, and would like to have an easier way of knowing if a song has been previously classified or not. The thought occurred to me to make a Smart Playlist that will show me songs that meet the following requirements:

Media Type must be Music (excludes Music Videos, Movies, TV Shows, Books, Podcasts, etc.)
Must not exist in any playlist within the parent Classification folder.
Must not exist in the "Unclassifiable" folder.

I can't get the Smart Playlist to populate with all remaining songs:

Is it possible to create a Smart Playlist showing all songs not in another playlist?

It turns out that the screenshot, or at least the correct version, is sufficient:

No doubt in part to my tens of thousands of songs, and only a few hundreds currently classified, the playlist took sometime to populate. After reading Kyle's comment, I looked at the playlist and nearly my whole library is now present.

So the answer to this problem can only logically be:

Patience


Can I change icon for an app and how? I have XAMPP on my Mac with El Capitan and the icon is strange and I don't like it. It is not the same one as I am used to, on my other computer running WIndows. How can I change it?

You can edit any icon by right-clicking (control-clicking) the application, choosing Get Info, and dragging the replacement icon over the original icon at the top of the window that appears.

You can also copy and paste the image you'd like to use as an icon, as mentioned in Apple's documentation.

This works for files or folders you'd like to change the icon for.


What's a good tool to jailbreak iPad mini? I just bought myself an iPad mini and I'm wondering what is a good tool to use to jailbreak it and hopefully without breaking the device. I've heard a couple names like Evasi0n and Redsn0w but am unsure of their reliability. So, what's a good and safe tool to use to jailbreak it?

I'd use evasi0n - it is fully compatible with the iOS 6 and hence the iPad Mini. The process if fully automatic. More about how to jailbreak here: How to jailbreak iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch running iOS6?


How to make post-Lion Finders find special directory . and ..? Before OS X 10.7, you can navigate to the parent directory in Finder using Go to (Shift+Command+G) to the special directory ...

However, since Lion Finder is no longer able to do this and gives he error message The folder can't be found.

Is there a way to enable Finder to do so?

If you simply want to go 'up' in Finder, you can use the keyboard shortcut ⌘↑.

This is the equivalent of cd .. which is what you would achieve by 'going' to the .. folder. Alternatively, you can select Go → Enclosing folder from the menu bar. A custom keyboard shortcut can be assigned to this menu item using App Shortcuts.


Use FaceTime with the same Apple ID? I and my wife own three Apple devices. MacBook Pro, iPad 2 (only Wi-Fi) and iPhone 4S. All of these are registered with the same Apple ID and Gmail account. With FaceTime I can call to IPhone, but I cannot call from my iPhone. Probably because iPad or MacBook do not have a unique id. How can this be fixed so I can use FaceTime in any direction? I do not want more than one Apple ID as it makes trouble in App Store and iCloud.

You can add another email address for FaceTime in your iPad:

This will allow you to call your iPad uniquely with this id.

Similarly, you can add another email address to your MacBook Pro's Facetime:


Is "malformed base path in GetVolumeEntry" a cause of concern for Time Machine failing to start backing up? I have one Mac that sits at calculating changes and won't start copying files to the backup drive. Both the Mac and the external drive pass Disk Utility checks (repair / verify of the drive and the volume) and this machine has been happily backing up since February every few weeks when the drive is connected. This drive also has worked to back up two other Macs from time to time (both of which completed a backup with no issues three days ago).

Here is the message that gets logged when the Time Machine UI says "Calculating Changes"

com.apple.backupd[585]: malformed base path in GetVolumeEntry

The tmutil status simply shows -1 for the Percent and I expect a NumberOfDeepScannedItems to count up as the changes are "calculated".

Does anyone know if this "malformed base path" is an actual problem or can be disregarded as something not necessarily causing this issue?

I was unable to determine why the malformed base path in GetVolumeEntry is being logged, but I can confirm that it wasn't the cause of the hung backup where Time Machine was endlessly "Calculating Changes".

I stopped the backup in process and then used Finder to navigate to the folder where Time Machine stores the backups for this Mac.

Moving the 2012-08-24-032413.inProgress package to the trash allowed Time Machine to work properly (i.e. start backing up in less than 5 minutes, completing the backup in under 10 minutes). The odd message about the malformed base path remains something that gets logged at the start of each backup attempt, but it's not something that prevents a backup from being saved.

In this case I cared more about a prompt backup than why the partial backup was causing the current one to take so long.


Showing contact name with received SMS from Google Contacts For those of you who have linked your Google Contacts to your iPhone, when someone sends you an SMS did it display the person's name or did it simply display the number?

Because, although I have linked my Google Contacts to my iPhone, I can only access my contacts when I go Contacts -> Groups -> Google Global Address List -> Search.

When someone send me an SMS, only the number is displayed and I have to go Contacts -> Groups -> Google Global Address List -> Search to search for the number and see who it is.

My iPhone contacts are synced with Google Contacts (using an Exchange-type connection; the regular one didn't work) and I had a similar issue, for which I stumbled on the following information by carefully comparing the contact lists.

Contact items (phone, address, etc.) on both platforms are tagged with a label, typically displayed to the left of the phone number or whatnot (in blue on the iPhone). As far as I can tell, if the Google contact has a label the iPhone doesn't use, the syncing protocol won't pick up that number, and the iPhone won't get it as part of its internal database of contacts. Likewise, if you add a phone number on the iPhone with a label that isn't on Google's prebuilt list, then it won't get synced back to Google.

The iPhone will put a name on any incoming or outgoing call for which it can find a phone number, but if the phone number doesn't make it into the phone because it was lost in the syncing process, then it can't display it.

The easiest solution for me was to relabel phone numbers and addresses with the useful common labels "Home", "Work", and "Mobile". There are other idiosyncrasies, but it's way too much detail for this answer, especially since I don't know what the sync code looks like and therefore can't give an authoritative description.


How to choose printer from command line or from a Python application? I am currently developing an application in Python that will run on Macs and will need to print PDF files. In the past I have managed to send PDF files to printer automatically by using some commands in a Bash script. However, I never found a way to specify one printer, it would always send it right into the currently selected printer (usually the last used one).

Does anyone know if there any way to launch the Preview application from command line, or any other way to preview and choose printers before actually printing?

lpstat shows all printers known to the system
lpr -P NAME prints to printer NAME


torsocks not working in El Capitan Just a few weeks ago on OS X Yosemite, it worked fine. Now, after performing a clean install of OS X El Capitan it no longer works. I’m very inclined to believe something in El Capitan is the culprit since it doesn’t work on two different computers but I can get it to work right now by doing it in a Yosemite VM guest inside an El Capitan host.

Using Homebrew, I install tor and torsocks:

brew install tor torsocks

Installation goes fine. I then copy over the sample torrc and add ExitNodes

cp "$(brew --prefix)/etc/tor/torrc.sample" "$(brew --prefix)/etc/tor/torrc"
echo 'ExitNodes {es}' >> "$(brew --prefix)/etc/tor/torrc"

I start tor

tor &

Everything goes OK

Oct 16 01:18:50.101 [notice] Tor v0.2.6.10 (git-58c51dc6087b0936) running on Darwin with Libevent 2.0.22-stable, OpenSSL 1.0.2d and Zlib 1.2.5.
Oct 16 01:18:50.101 [notice] Tor can't help you if you use it wrong! Learn how to be safe at https://www.torproject.org/download/download#warning
Oct 16 01:18:50.102 [notice] Read configuration file "/usr/local/etc/tor/torrc".
Oct 16 01:18:50.104 [notice] Opening Socks listener on 127.0.0.1:9050
Oct 16 01:18:50.000 [notice] Parsing GEOIP IPv4 file /usr/local/Cellar/tor/0.2.6.10/share/tor/geoip.
Oct 16 01:18:50.000 [notice] Parsing GEOIP IPv6 file /usr/local/Cellar/tor/0.2.6.10/share/tor/geoip6.
Oct 16 01:18:50.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 0%: Starting
Oct 16 01:18:50.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 5%: Connecting to directory server
Oct 16 01:18:50.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 80%: Connecting to the Tor network
Oct 16 01:18:50.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 85%: Finishing handshake with first hop
Oct 16 01:18:51.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 90%: Establishing a Tor circuit
Oct 16 01:18:52.000 [notice] Tor has successfully opened a circuit. Looks like client functionality is working.
Oct 16 01:18:52.000 [notice] Bootstrapped 100%: Done

Then I try to use torsocks to check if everything is fine

torsocks curl -s https://check.torproject.org | grep Congratulations

No message, which means it isn’t working. I also try to check my IP

torsocks curl http://ipecho.net/plain

It confirms it isn’t working, by showing my real IP.

I also tried various other commands and apps, as well as different ExitNodes (including none at all) and different configurations. Nothing seems to do the trick. It works correctly on Yosemite, and I do nothing differently. Since there isn’t an actual error shown, this is difficult to diagnose.

As a further note (not sure how relevant it is), torsocks show outputs

DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES=""

And here are the Dependencies part of brew info tor

==> Dependencies
Required: libevent ✔, openssl ✔
Optional: libnatpmp ✘, miniupnpc ✘, libscrypt ✘

and brew info torsocks

==> Dependencies
Build: autoconf ✔, automake ✔, libtool ✔

To note that torsocks is the one that doesn’t work. tor by itself does, when configured in System Preferences. This can also be confirmed with curl, by doing curl --socks5 127.0.0.1:9050 http://ipecho.net/plain.

The problem doesn't appear to be in "tor" or "torsocks". The problem seems to be in the version of "curl" shipped with El Capitan.

Similar to yourself if I try torsocks curl -s https://check.torproject.org | grep Congratulations I get nothing back.

However if I try torsocks wget -qO- https://check.torproject.org | grep Congratulations I get the expected replies.

  Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor.
  Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor.

But if you install curl from brew (resulting in a newer version of curl than ships with El Capitan) and then run torsocks /usr/local/Cellar/curl/7.45.0/bin/curl -s https://check.torproject.org | grep Congratulations, you get the expected "Congratulations" messages (note the version number might be different by the time you try this).

  Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor.
  Congratulations. This browser is configured to use Tor.


Mail keeps setting "Save drafts on the server" checked I open "Preferences" in Mail, uncheck "Store drafts on server" and save (Gmail account). However, when I open the preferences again, the "Store drafts on server" (or whatever it says in English version) is checked again.
It really pisses me off. How can turn it off permanently?

I use OS X Mavericks.

Another good option that fixed the problem for me is as follows:

Quit Mail.app.
Log into Gmail in your favorite web browser.
Click on the gear menu and select Settings.
Click on the Labels tab.
Under System Labels, next to Drafts, click on show if unread and uncheck the Show in IMAP box. Now disable Store draft messages on the server.
Launch Mail.app.
Select Mail → Preferences…
Click on the Accounts button in the toolbar.
Click once on the account name and then click the Mailbox Behaviors tab.
Uncheck the Store draft messages on the server box.
Close the window and opt to save your changes when prompted.

Source: Apple Support Communities: Mavericks Mail app and Gmail Drafts folder


What does "The information on this page is out dated" mean when updating apps in iTunes When ever I try to download updates of my iApps in iTunes I get a dialog that says "The information on this page is out dated".

If I hit "Check for updates" again all is well.

Does anyone know what causes this?

Maybe this post can help you.

The most interessant part is last sentence saying :

Update 7/25/10: Fixed in an iTunes update.

What version of iTunes are you running ?


Is it possible to move the first few letters in a string to the end of a cell in Excel? So if I have a number of cells with something like this in them:

women/colour/type

Is it possible to ask excel to move the women part to the end of the cell? e.g.

colour/type/women

I could really do with some help on this.

Thanks in advance

This is a little bit of a hack but try the following assuming the field you want to evaluate is at A1:

=MID(A1,FIND("/",A1,1)+1,LEN(RIGHT(A1, FIND("/",A1,1)))-1)&"/"& RIGHT(A1, FIND("/",A1,1)-2)&"/"& LEFT(A1, FIND("/",A1,1)-1)

This is broken down into three parts (split by the &"/"&):

Left: =LEFT(A1, FIND("/",A1,1)-1) returns woman
Middle:=MID(A1,FIND("/",A1,1)+1,LEN(RIGHT(A1, FIND("/",A1,1)))-1)returns
colour
Right: =RIGHT(A1, FIND("/",A1,1)-2) returns type

Put the parts into the new order add the &"/"& dividers back in and voila.


Disable StrictHostKeyChecking in ssh I am trying to connect to a Linux host using ssh and get the following error

RSA host key for 10.1.1.20 has changed and you have requested strict checking.

I would like to override this, but can't seem to find any combination of options to do this.

I probably set StrictHostKeyChecking years ago, but don't remember how.

I consulted man ssh which informs me the system-wide configuration file is /etc/ssh/ssh_config and default for the per-user configuration file is ~/.ssh/config neither exists.

EDIT
To clarify my question, the option is clearly set. I am trying to discover

Where the options are stored (I don't have the files mentioned in the
man page, which appears to be wrong).
How to change the options.

I am not looking at how to work around the issue I am having (I know I can edit the known_hosts file, but this is tedious every time I try a new server).

To disable strict host checking on OS X for the current user, create or edit ~/.ssh/config and add the following lines:

Host [IP Address]
   StrictHostKeyChecking no
   UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null

A typical example for the hosts in your local network could be:

Host 10.1.1.*
   StrictHostKeyChecking no
   UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null

Depending on your usage of ssh I don't recommend to disable strict host key checking for all hosts.

If you just want to remove the entry for 10.1.1.20 open ~/.ssh/known_hosts with an editor of your choice and remove the respective line "10.1.1.20 ssh-rsa public-key$"


My Mac Mini won't go to sleep For some reason my mac mini refuses to start the screensaver or go to sleep unless I put the mouse into a hot corner. Energy saver is set to 3 mins as is system sleep. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.  i have included a PMSET -G result but  don't really understand it. Many thanks. (Mac Mini, 2.5Ghz intel, 4GB RAM,  10.7.5)

AC Power        -1*
Currently in use:
hibernatemode   0
disksleep   10
womp        1
networkoversleep    0
sleep       5
powerbutton 1
ttyskeepawake   1
hibernatefile   /var/vm/sleepimage
autorestart 0
panicrestart    157680000
displaysleep    3 (imposed by 181)

To debug this, you'll need to open terminal.app and look at the power assertions log. It's pretty verbose, but it really shows what's going on to prevent a sleep from happening.

pmset -g assertionslog

If you need a smaller set of data to look at, just ask for the current status and not an ongoing log of what's set and what's changing.

pmset -g assertions

You can close the window when you're done with the tools.


Is there a dial from Addres Book and tel:/sip: protocol handler script/application available for 10.7? We are currently using Mac OS X 10.6 and snomURLHandler to convert tel: uri's to a http GET request. This computer telephony integration let us click on a telephone number in Address Book.app and let our desktop phone dial the number.

As snomURLHandler version 1.0 by Alastair J. Houghton (2004) is compiled to PowerPC code, and the Rosetta component to run PowerPC code is no longer available in 10.7 (Lion), this situation is blocking upgrade to 10.7 (Lion).

What alternatives are available for snomURLHandler, preferrably a script or application that can be used as a general tel: and sip: protocol handler (to call links starting with tel: and sip: from a web browser) and also be used from Address Book.app?

Note: We are aware of Telify add-on. That is not what is asked for, as Telify only works in one browser (Firefox) and cannot be used from Address Book.app

The source code of snomURLHandler is available at http://alastairs-place.net/hg/snomURLHandler/file/eb798e1a6dc8

Download that source code and compile this to an application using Xcode.


How to restart a stalled iOS restore? I updated my iPhone 5s to iOS 7 using restore install. This cleared the iPhone and then started a restore from iCloud. However, sometime during the restore stalled and did not complete. (In the iCloud settings panel it says "You cannot delete you iCloud account because your phone is being restored.) However, when I leave my phone plugged in overnight the restore process doesn't continue. Is there any way to restart the restore process?

Did you visited the iCloud Backup Restore Troubleshoot Site provided by Apple? If so, which steps did you already tried?

This may also help you. The site is describing how to restore your iOS Device from an iCloud Backup.


Make iTunes delete old listened podcasts (after a while) I would like iTunes to automatically delete the downloaded file after I had listened to it. Ideally I would like to be able to keep them for a few days after I had listened to it but it's not necessary.

Is this possible?

The way to control Podcast longevity is built into iTunes (although the options are limited).

Select “Podcasts” in iTunes and the Settings button should be visible in the lower part of the iTunes window:


Formatting SD card as FAT32 on Mac? Named brand micro SD with 8 gigs on it. Trying everything to format as FAT32, on a Mac running Sierra and I get this error:

/dev/disk2s1 does not appear to be a whole disk

When running this:

$ diskutil partitionDisk /dev/disk2s1 1 MBRFormat "MS-DOS FAT32" UDOO 1024M

Any idea what's going on here?

partitionDisk wants the entire drive as its target, because it's about to erase all partitions & replace with your new parameters.

/dev/disk2s1 is your existing 1st partition on that drive, disk2 is what it's looking for. I'm not actually certain why dev/disk2 wouldn't work, but it doesn't.
That would make your command
$ diskutil partitionDisk disk2 1 MBRFormat "MS-DOS FAT32" UDOO 1024M

You can also simplify the command if you like, as far as
$ diskutil partitionDisk disk2 1 MBR fat32 UDOO 1024M
& it will still work.

As pointed out in comments, the volume name only needs to be in quotes if there's a space. I'd missed that, my bad.

Ref: http://ss64.com/osx/diskutil.html


Why is Mountain Lion more security conscious? Whenever I open an application not downloaded from the App store (or a trusted vendor) I get a warning.

The warning reminds me a bit of the awful window popup that comes up every time you want to open an executable that says something to the effect "are you really sure you want to open this?".

What else about Mountain Lion makes it more security conscious?

Apple computers have long been considered "virus free" although Apple stopped pushing this as a selling point earlier this year in the wake of several Apple targeted viruses.
The truth is that a virus can be programmed for mac much like a software application can, the reason for the lack if infections on mac was merely the same as the reason for lack of some apps in the past, the relative unpopularity vs windows machines meant it was less practical to program for mac.
With macs now being more popular than ever before, Apple now has to implement strict measures to hold on to their clean, virus free image, hence Gatekeeper being added to Mountain Lion.


What is the purpose of the PhotoStreamsData folder? The folder PhotoStreamsData contains the same photos as the DCIM folder, only with a slightly lower resolution. Why create (almost exact) duplicates? Is it only to save some space on iCloud? Can I safely delete it to free up some space? Would deletion make any difference to the iCloud sync?

(iOS 9.0.2, iPhone 5c)

In general, deleting files that an application stores internally is a bad idea. This goes double for iOS since the presumption that users won't be idly deleting things is more realistic across the user-population of an app. The reasons for not deleting things are:

the app (or the system) has a database for tracking what's placed where. Deleting the file without cleaning up the reference at best means you end up with another file. At worst, you have crashes and slowdowns caused by the app/system having to sanity check all the files it has placed on the storage.
the files will appear again as the app re-does the work you've undone.

The reasons to place files in different spaces allows the system to reclaim storage space in the even that a cached file can be cleared to make way for other content. It also is baked in to how Photos works - when you run low on storage space, the app can be more aggressive about compressing the local cached copy of the photo. One setting won't be appropriate for people with 128 GB of storage and 16 GB of storage not to mention as you fill up your storage with other items over time. Also, I bet Apple is only backing up the files that are "authoritative" and not thumbnail or resampled versions of the iCloud originals. That saves bandwidth if backing up to the cloud and storage space on the backup and time to complete a backup.

So, I'd recommend making other changes like deleting large apps, large video files and let Photos be photos with storing multiple copies of images and multiple resolutions in different places.

Your DCIM folder is where the photos taken on that device live - so use care not to delete the authoritative copy of a file until it's backed up elsewhere.


Press enter button using Dictation on Mac Is it possible to use macOS dictation to press the enter button (I want to select an item not start a new line)? Is it possible to press the command or function buttons using dictation?

You can use ‘press return key’ or ‘enter that’.


How to stop auto-replacement of hyphens with horizontal rule? If I wanted a horizontal rule, I'd type a string of em dashes. I can't find easily a way to disable this over-feature in TextEdit prefs ('Text replacement' is unticked) nor System Prefs ('Correct spelling automatically' is unticked). Thanks!

In the Edit menu, go to Substitutions, and uncheck Smart Dashes.


pkg file extracting instead of installing? Recently I noticed my pkg updates are being extracted rather than installed. (for example the MS Office update wanted to extract the file)

Is there a way to ensure that pkg files are installed?

Most obvious cause would be that some other app has taken over the .pkg extension - maybe a file compression utility.

Find any .pkg file &  Cmd ⌘   i  to Get Info.
Where it says Open with, select Installer, then Change All


MySQL server (MariaDB) cannot start I'm trying to start MySQL server (Maria DB 10.0.12, installed via Homebrew) but it's not working.

When I run mysql.server start, it keeps running forever without actually starting the server.

mysql.server configtest tells me the config is fine and there is nothing in MySQL error log.

I haven't actually changed anything to MySQL recently, though I've upgraded PHP and other modules (but I guess that shouldn't be related).

Any idea what could be causing this, or how to debug it?

One place to start debugging this is to check for a err file. It will be named with the hostname of your Mac and you should find it in /usr/local/var/mysql. So if you Mac is called charles the file should be /usr/local/var/mysql/charles.err.


Replacing iCloud on iOS and macOS devices with a macOS server machine Does anyone know, if I can use a macOS server machine to replace iCloud on all other devices (iOS, macOS or even Windows)?

If yes, am I going to lose any functionality and which?

You can't replace all the functionality of iCloud with Server.app.

✓ Full support

Mail, Contacts and Calendars are supported by each individual service. They offer the same functionality, including push.

iCloud Drive is supported through the File Sharing service.

﹅ Partial support

Reminders and Notes are supported in macOS once you add the service separately in Internet Accounts. Your mileage may vary with Reminders and Notes in iOS.

Safari is unsupported, but you can use the file sharing feature to sync symlinked Safari preferences on macOS. This is not possible for iOS.

Keychain sync requires you to sync a keychain using the File Sharing service on macOS. This is not possible for iOS.

iCloud Backup is unsupported but you can use iTunes Wi-Fi Sync to sync to iTunes when on the same local network.

✗ No support

News, Home, Wallet is unsupported, but you can still use each of those apps locally, there's just no synchronisation between devices.

Find My iPhone is managed separately and still requires Apple's servers, even though you don't technically need an Apple ID or to be signed in to iCloud.


Macbook boots up to grey 'prohibited' symbol I'm having an issue with my '09 13" Macbook Pro. When I boot it up, it seems to be booting normally until about thirty seconds in, when the Apple symbol is replaced with a kind of 'no-smoking' symbol, without the cigarette in the middle.

I've removed the drive one and put it in an external holder, and repaired it using Disk Utility on my Macbook Air. It found some things, and said it repaired them. I then put the drive into my Macbook Pro again, and it booted once to only one of my partitions. It acted very laggy and slow, and eventually I had to force kill it with the power button. Now it does the same thing.

I'm in the process of removing the hard drive to try to repair it again, but I wanted to know if anyone here has any ideas on what this could be. Is it the machine itself somehow?

I see this:

There are times when Apple's 'Disk Utility' software isn't as thorough at repairing problems that other applications may be.
I've had 'Disk Utility' tell me that drives are fine, but it is not until after running a program like 'Disk Warrior' (that replaces the Directory structure), that the hard drive feels 'normal' again.
This isn't to plug any particular software, but to let you know that 'Disk Utility' isn't the be all, end all of determining if a hard drive is 'good'.

Given your description of the problem, I'd be inclined to make sure I had a backup. If not, purchase a new hard drive, and get all the data off of the old one as quick as possible. (I agree with @Asmus that it appears that you are about to lose a hard drive).

On the other hand, you may just need to have the mac reinstall the OS, and fix things that way. Either way - make sure you have a solid backup right away.

Good luck.


Mojave requires OS reinstall on restart or power on. MACH Reboot type 14 = page fault. Screenshot SPECS:

Computer: MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014) MacBookPro11,3.
Memory: 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
HD: 1 TB APPLE SSD SM1024F Apple_APFS
GRAPHICS: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB Intel Iris Pro 1536 MB

Everytime I restart my computer or power it on my computer won't boot. I have to enter recovery mode and reinstall Mojave. I've run disk utility but no problems are detected.

Sceenshot of verbose mode:

Ok here is how I fixed my problem. As noted in a comment the issue looks to be caused by a system extension. Here's what I did to fix it.

I ran this command in my terminal: system_profiler SPExtensionsDataType > ~/Desktop/kextList.txt
I opened ~/Desktop/kextList.txt in a text editor and looked for Obtained from: Not Signed
I removed all extensions (kexts) that wasn't signed from /library/extensions and /system/library/extensions and placed them in ~/Documents/Disabled Extensions/
I then rebooted my computer but I still had the same problem.
I rebooted again in verbose mode by holding Command V on reboot
I noticed that this extension was loading com.iospirit.driver.rbiokithelper
I then went through ~/Desktop/kextList.txt and looked for Obtained from: Identified Developer that also had Loaded: Yes set.
I found com.iospirit.driver.rbiokithelper was loaded. I googled it and found it was for Remote Buddy which I no longer used.
I moved /Library/Extensions/RBIOKitHelper.kext to ~/Documents/Disabled Extensions/ and rebooted.
Problem solved! 8-)

I hope this helps anyone else that has a similar problem.


Connected to Time capsule from iOS devices I want to connect to my time capsule using my iOS device (iPhone or iPad) and show all files from it.
Please describe what should I read, how can I do this.

There is currently no native way to view files on a network share from iOS devices.

You will need a third party program such as FileBrowser or Files Connect to browse and view files stored on the Time Capsule.

Files Connect seems to be the most feature complete of the two examples having both Google integration and Dropbox support; they even show a Time Capsule connection in their promotional image as below:

I would also think it very unlikely that any program available on an iOS device will be able to view files stored in Time Machine backups if that is one of your requirements.

Please note the links above are to the apps in UK App Store.


Print e-mail conversation in Mail.app Does anybody know how (if possible) to print a whole conversation thread in Mail.app?

I have a work around for you that works and is a bit quicker than copying to pages.

What you do is:
1. Highlight the emails that you want to print. Either the whole thread or selecting particular emails by holding the apple key and selecting the mails.

Click the 'forward' button. This compiles all the emails into on big email
Print! and you are done.


How to use Secure DNS on MacOS? My Problem

I am using Google 8.8.8.8 DNS, and would like to use its Secure transports for DNS
 feature to make sure nobody is messing with the communication channel between Google and my Mac.

What Have I Tried

Configuring the DNS from the network tab. Did not find any secure option there.

My Question

How do I configure MacOS to use a secure (DNS-over-TLS or DNS-over-HTTPS (DoH))
 connection?

The easiest system-wide option is to use the third party utility “dnscrypt-proxy”:

https://github.com/jedisct1/dnscrypt-proxy

Follow their macOS guide to download, install and configure the program. This will essentially setup your system to that System Preferences show that your DNS server is 127.0.0.1 (localhost), which means that all programs using the system resolver sends their DNS requests to the proxy program running on your computer. The proxy program then handles the communication with external DNS servers using encryption.

You can download “dnscrypt-proxy switcher” to be able to quickly switch on/off the proxy usage from the menu bar.

Another possibility is to use only programs that in themselves support DNS-over-TLS or DNS-over-HTTPS. This is for example Firefox or Google Chrome. However, extra configuration is necessary.


Can't disable 'Check spelling while typing' in 'Notes' in OSX El Capitan 10.11.6 This is driving me crazy.

In 'Notes', with a note text open/active, I uncheck 'Edit->Spelling and Grammar->Check spelling while typing'. Now the red underlines disappear from words believed to be spelled incorrectly, as expected. I close 'Notes', open it again. The same note text is active, but the red underlines are back. Checking the menu item above, I see that it is now checked again.

How come this setting won't stick when closing/opening 'Notes'? If I open/display another note text, then open/display the first note text, the red underlines are not back - it is only when 'Notes' is closed that this setting seems to be forgotten.

I have tried this:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2577594 (changing some system-wide settings, however written for a different version of OSX)
...but it doesn't help.

Possibly a similar problem (not entirely clear) on OSX Yosemite, however no solution:
How to completely, utterly, disable spell-check on OS X Yosemite?

Quit all applications.

System Preferences > Keyboard > Text Tab. On the right side you should see "Spelling : Automatic by Language". In drop down list, choose "Set Up..." then uncheck English.

Nightmare free from those red underlines :D

Drawback: doing so will disable Spelling checking in system wide, while you may want to disable in one specific app only.


Any way to be sure, that Macs don't come with built-in hardware keyloggers? What the title says. If this is the case, even if you choose to delete everything OS X related and put entirely Linux in your box; you'd still be screwed. Hardware keyloggers sit between the keyboard and the motherboard, and record everything typed to memory (perhaps to be siphoned off to a remote server without your knowledge the first time the machine gets online) Also, macs are famously sealed-off black boxes that how it works under the hood is kept an intentional mystery by Apple.

Well, your thoughts, fellow mac-folk?

Any system can contain embedded an hardware keylogger or trapdoor. Most of them do contain the last one. But a keylogger isn't as easy a task to integrate in a completly undetectable way. A keylogger will have to log.
Here is the weak point where you will be able to detect it.
Whichever is the way to log a keylogger will use, you will see something grow inside (hidden disk space, hidden memory space) or escape one way or another (network, light, radio-wave, sound, infrared).

When I look back at the way some bug in serious software aren't fixed, I can be nearly certain that a keylogger won't stay undetected for long.

A keylogger will talk and bug.

Taking into account the risk involved for any company trying to make such an evil minded choice, and a dangerous one (the keylogger once discovered will also be used by the enemies)
I doubt any risk aware company will take this risk.

From my point of view, this is clearly a vital and an unacceptable risk.


Mavericks menu bar Wi-Fi icon does not refresh In Mac OS X 10.9, once I am connected to a Wi-Fi station the menu bar Wi-Fi icon no longer refresh (the spinning wheel does not appear). This complicates station switching as I have to turn off and on the Wi-Fi.

Do you know how to revert this behavior to how it worked in Mac OS X 10.8, or an alternative tool to make Wi-Fi connections?

Update: As I mention  below, I realized that rebooting the machine the Wifi icon refreshes until I Fast Switch to another account. In this precise moment it stop working.

Here are few steps to try-

A- To check your functionality  run the

airport -s

in Terminal.

That should show you the scan results.

B- If there are no results check your hardware profile in About this Mac (this is mine)

Card Type: AirPort Extreme  (0x14E4, 0xE9)
  Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.106.98.100.22)
  MAC Address:  14:10:9f:f0:29:8c

Check the com.apple.airport.airportutility.plist for been up to date (recent) or just delete it.

C- If above worked then your WiFi Icon in the menu bar is broken.

Press and hold the cmd key and drag the WiFi Icon to desktop (and it will vanish).

Restart.

Go to

/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras

And click on

  AirPort.menu

That will bring your WiFi Icon back (hopefully working this time).


How accurate is the iPhone X location data? First of all, I understand there are similar posts, however, they are to do with previous generation iPhones. This is specifically about the iPhone X.

How accurate is the GPS information that developers can get when using the iPhone X?

I am thinking about making a Raspberry Pi project where I need to get precise location data to create a map and calculate speed for some telemetry system I am making.

To check that it is do able first, I will test it with my iPhone X as I already have all the hardware. If the GPS is not accurate enough, I will go straight to the Pi setup. For example the GPS module I will be using updates location 10 times a second. What does the iPhone X do?

How accurate is the GPS information that developers can get when using the iPhone X?

It's a subjective question and the perceived accuracy of location data may differ based on usage, location and signal availability. While the real answer can only be obtained by actually capturing the data, I'll try to share some information which can help you with your query.

iPhone X along with its contemporaries iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, are the first iPhones to include support for not one but four geolocation services:

A brief description of each one of them:

GPS: Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Air Force.
GLONASS: Globalnaya navigatsionnaya sputnikovaya sistema, or Global Navigation Satellite System, is a space-based satellite navigation system operating in the radionavigation-satellite service. It provides an alternative to GPS and is the second navigational system in operation with global coverage and of comparable precision.
Galileo: Galileo is the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) that is being created by the European Union (EU) through the European GNSS Agency (GSA). One of the aims of Galileo is to provide an independent high-precision positioning system so European nations do not have to rely on the Russian GLONASS, Chinese BeiDou or US GPS systems, which could be disabled or degraded by their operators at any time. The use of basic (lower-precision) Galileo services will be free and open to everyone. The higher-precision capabilities will be available for paying commercial users. Galileo is intended to provide horizontal and vertical position measurements within 1-metre precision, and better positioning services at higher latitudes than other positioning systems.
QZSS: The Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) is a project of the Japanese government for the development of a four-satellite regional time transfer system and a satellite-based augmentation system for the United States operated Global Positioning System (GPS) to be receivable in the Asia-Oceania regions, with a focus on Japan. The goal of QZSS is to provide highly precise and stable positioning services in the Asia-Oceania region, compatible with GPS.

While GPS support has been available since iPhone 3G, GLONASS was added starting with iPhone 4S (ref: List of iOS devices).

Some references from the Web which back the claim that availability of multiple service support will lead to more accurate positioning data:

iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and X Support the Galileo Satellite System for Better GPS:

  According to the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency, Galileo support in the new iPhones will allow users to benefit from more precise positioning that's able to combine GPS, GLONASS, and Galileo signals. Galileo, says the agency, has a modern signal structure that's able to help users better maintain their position fix when navigating through cities worldwide.

  Multi-satellite support also increases signal availability in urban areas where buildings can obstruct the sky and limit the number of visible satellites. Galileo has 15 operational satellites in orbit and three that are in testing, compared to 31 GPS satellites and 24 GLONASS satellites. By 2020, Galileo is expected to have 30 satellites operational.

The latest iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X are Galileo-enabled:

  Among the new features of the latest Apple offerings is the fact that the newest versions of the iPhone are Galileo-enabled. The resulting ‘multi-constellation’ capability means that users of the new iPhones will be able to benefit from more precise positioning that combines GPS, Glonass and Galileo signals. The use of multi-constellation increases signal availability, especially in urban environments, where buildings obstruct the sky and limit the number of satellites visible. In terms of accuracy, Galileo’s modern signal structure has better resistance to multipath, which helps users maintain their position fix when navigating in cities.

New iPhones better serve you in different parts of the world with support for Galileo and QZSS satellites

  Combining GPS, GLONASS and Galileo signals lets new iPhones increase signal availability in urban environments where buildings obstruct the sky and limit the number of satellites visible.

  In terms of accuracy, Galileo’s signal structure is said to provide better resistance to multipath, which helps iPhone users maintain their position fix when navigating in cities.


Airport Extreme mesh network over Ethernet I have purchased three Airport Extreme routers.  I have a cable modem in one room that currently feeds into our primary router (which I want to replace with an Extreme), which feeds into a switch, which then distributes Internet and LAN services over ethernet via CAT5 to an office upstairs and another office a few rooms over. (The walls in our building are thick, so I can't do a purely wireless mesh.)

What I want is basically for one Extreme (the one next to the cable modem) to be my primary router and DHCP server, and the other two to be access points extending the primary network.

I tried using the Airport Utility to set it up following their instructions to extend a network, however, it seems that it was trying to do so wirelessly, not through the ethernet cables I had plugged into the Extremes. As a result, the two access point Extremes kept losing their connections to the primary Extreme.

How can I get this setup to work the way I want it to?

On the satellite AE's, set the WAN port to bridged, and make sure all three AEs have the same SSID, security, and password.  Connect satellite AEs to the main AE via ethernet cables (or all three to a switch). I do this at my house and it works flawlessly.

I believe one of the other answers is incorrect based on the information above.


ps on remote Mac doesn't work I have a Mac Mini (latest model I believe) running OS X 10.7 at a remote location that I can only access via SSH.

The problem is that the ps command* does not work. When I run it in any form, from any user, it just freezes and I can't do anything: I'm forced to close the terminal window. The rest of the machine appears to work fine, but any script that relies on ps does not work anymore.

This has happened several times now on different remote machines (same model and OS), and can be fixed by rebooting, but I'd prefer to know the actual cause so I can prevent it happening again. Does anyone have any ideas how to fix or diagnose this problem?

*ps,top,w,killall all experience this freeze, and so does lsof when it is run as root.

I had this issue when upgrading from OS X El Capitan 10.11.6 to Sierra 10.13.6
After checking for non Apple kernel extensions as follows
kextstat | grep -v com.apple

I found a number of Acronis True Image 2020 kernel extensions
Despite moving it from Applications to the bin I had to use their cleanup_tool to fully remove the kernel extensions that were blocking ps
Once I did that, and rebooted ps -ef and other commands then worked as normal.


How do I backup photos *from* iCloud Photo Library My Macbook is beginning to run out of space to "Keep originals" of the photos I have in the Photo Library, and I don't want the only copy of the photos to be in the cloud.

How can I create a hard copy of the library, probably on an external hard drive, after unchecking "Keep originals" on the Mac? I'm OK with running some backup procedure manually.

- If the photos you want are on iCloud:

Download the files as follows:

Launch the Photos app
Go to the Photos > Preferences
Click on the iCloud tab
Click on Download Originals to this Mac

If you hard drive is full, then before doing this change the location of the iPhoto Library to an external drive.  Instructions for that are here: http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/01/25/how-to-safely-move-your-macs-iphoto-library-onto-an-external-drive

See below to get specific photos in the iPhoto library.

- If the photos you want are currently on your hard drive:

Copy or set your backup software to copy the following item:

/Users/your-username-here/Pictures/iPhoto Library

That should do it.

This is not a standard file, it is a package, so if you want to copy specific photos you can control click the file then choose "Show Package Contents".  You will then see a folder with various items including subfolders that contain your photos.  I believe the originals are stored in a folder called Master and are organized by date.  You can copy what you want from there.  Some back-up apps will even allow you to sync these subitems as opposed to the entire package.


Can I still download OS X Mavericks for Free? I never upgraded to Mountain Lion or Mavericks and now that Yosemite has arrived  I thought of upgrading but I find that some of my software will not work with it. So I would like to upgrade to Mavericks for now. Is it still possible to get the free upgrade? I no longer see it listed in the Mac App Store.

Yes, it is still possible to download Mavericks: http://www.techspot.com/downloads/6268-mac-os-x-mavericks.html

That is a upgrade from Mavericks 10.9.4 to 10.9.5 (not a full version of Mavericks which is a 5.3 Gig file.)

But maybe the software not working on Yosemite may neither works on Mavericks.


Retina MBP 2015 does not recognise third external monitor I am trying to get this system to run:

Laptop lid closed.
1 Monitor connected with DVI-miniDP adapter to a thunderbolt port
1 Monitor connected with DVI-miniDP adapter to a thunderbolt port
1 Monitor connected with a DVI to HDMI port on the HDMI port.

I can only get the notebook to recognise 2 of these displays. I can get the third display to work, only if I disconnect an existing one.

Interestingly, if I replace one of the DVI-miniDP displays with a VGA-miniDP adapter on one of the TB ports, then all 3 displays work. Yet I don't want to keep a displayed with VGA (for obviously limitations), so I was wondering if some can provide some pointers on how to make this setup work correctly.

Running 10.10.4

It depends which MacBook you have. The cheaper ones only have integrated graphics processor (Intel Iris Graphics 6100) which runs from your CPU. The expensive ones have a separate graphics card (AMD Radeon R9 M370X) with 2Gb memory which supports more display or higher resolution displays.

Macbook with integrated Intel graphics:

Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 3840 by 2160 pixels on up to two external displays, both at millions of colors.

Macbook with AMD graphics card:

Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 3840 by 2160 pixels on up to two external displays, both at millions of colors.

Source: Apple MacBook Pro Retina specs - Graphics and Video support


How to see if MacBook Air is "talking to" USB to Ethernet adaptor (without an Ethernet device at the other end)? I've been using an Apple USB to Ethernet adaptor plus a short Ethernet cable to connect to an Ether net device (Raspberry Pi in thins case).

Normally when I connect the lights blink on the device and everything works nicely using VNC Viewer.

Today no blinking lights or connection.

Is there a way I can check to see if I at least have a USB connection from my MacBook Air to the Apple USB/Ethernet converting dongle? Something I can do on my laptop that shows the dongle is there and connected by itself?

I'd like to check that part if possible as the first step in debugging my connect problem.

You can check if the Mac sees the Ethernet adapter by doing [Apple menu] / About this Mac, clicking System Report, and then looking at USB in the Hardware section.


iPhone messages to iPhone number to manage account I followed directions on getting iPhone messages to iPad. When I clicked on receive only my email addresses showed up- my cell number not there
How do I add phone number. I have iPhone 6

First thing to do, on your iPhone go to settings, then messages.
Look at the bottom where it says "send & receive" and select.
Now look to see which you have selected under the "you can be reached by iMessage at...does it show your phone number or an email address?
If it shows an email address, change it to your phone number.
Next, go back one screen (select messages, in top left corner).
Once there, look down to the middle where it says "Text Message Forwarding" and select.
Here you should see your iPad (and any other device you have attached on your Apple iCloud account) and turn the iPad on.
Close out of settings on your iPhone now.
Now go to your iPad settings and then Messages.
Check at the top to confirm that iMassage is turned on.
Next look halfway down where it says Send & Receive and select.
Now look to see what you have selected under the "you can be reached by iMessage at and make sure your phone number is selected.

That's it. If you don't see your iPad in step 7, then you haven't logged into it with your iCloud account (or at least not the same Apple ID as your iPhone)and will need to do so before proceeding.
Also, I have found it is easiest to use your iPhone phone number only and no email addresses, otherwise you can end up with two different conversations with the same person.


How can one copy photos off an iPad onto a Windows computer (prior to syncing)? My father wants to sync a bunch of photos from his Windows PC to his iPad for a presentation.  But he's never synced photos before.  And he's downloaded a number of photos from his camera directly to his iPad.  I fear his iPad contains the only copy of some of his photos, and he doesn't want to loose them.  When my father turns on photo syncing in iTunes, he gets a warning that photos on the iPad not previously synced will be lost.

If my father was using a Mac, I would tell him to open iPhoto and download the photos from the iPad before syncing.  How can he do the equivalent with Windows (or perhaps with an app)?

http://blog.laptopmag.com/how-to-quickly-transfer-images-from-an-ipad-to-a-pc

A PC, like a Mac, will see the iPad as a camera. Instead of using an application to load the photos, you can just browse to them in Windows Explorer and copy them to a local folder.


Can I reinstall macOS on my Mac after it's been turned into a Linux box? I inherited a Mac Pro Tower with CentOS on it. I want to reinstall macOS on it using an external CD/DVD drive that's plugged into a USB port.

I have tried holding down the C-key on startup.
I have tried resetting NVRAM.

Any suggestions on how to get some kind of Mac prompt? I know zero about Linux.

Can I reinstall macOS on my Mac after it's been turned into a Linux box?

Of course you can, there's no Mac (or any computer for that matter) that has been irreparably limited to never running it's native operating system ever again.

Yes, you can "brick" things but that's usually a firmware issue or in Apple's case, a security "thing" that you couldn't either unlock the firmware or the FileVault encryption.

  I have tried holding down the C-key on startup. I have tried resetting NVRAM.

Holding the C key tells the Mac to boot from the CD/DVD drive.  Did you have an install disk loaded?  If not, it's not going to do anything
The NVRAM is your pre-boot environment that sets things like which partition is your startup volume or what the screen resolution at boot should be.  Resetting your SMC/NVRAM is Internet folklore that it somehow fixes things when in reality, in 99.99% of the cases, it's not related to the problem at all.

The 2008 Mac Pro originally came with Leopard (10.5.x) but can run El Capitan (10.11.x).   The best way to get this installed would be to get ahold of an El Capitan USB Installer and install it that way...

have a friend with a Mac download and create the installer for you
take it to an Apple store and they will assist with the installation

When you get the installer created, simply put it into a USB slot, and hold the ⌥ Option key while booting.  This will take you into the boot manager where you can select the USB drive as the boot volume.


Safari has some strange colors now Safari has suddenly started showing some strange GUI colors on the bookmarks screen. They seem to have started shortly after applying the latest iTunes update, although not IMMEDIATELY after (a few hours, and only after rebooting my machine). This is what it looks like now (I have not changed any settings):

Is there a way to make it appear normal again?

EDIT:

I have uninstalled, rebooted, and even tried removing all apple settings from my "AppData" directory. Nothing is helping so far.

I don’t have a lot of Windows Expertise, but I assume that uninstalling Safari (and iTunes) and try installing them from scratch (after a nice reboot), might fix it.


MacBook Pro doesn't stop when I close the lid It's a 13" late 2009 model and I never had this problem up until now. Also the stop action from the  menu doesn't seem to work.

(I have installed Caffeine but I don't think it's the problem because the macbook won't stop even if the application is closed.)

Create a new user account.  Log out of your current user and into that new user.  Close the lid or use the apple menu.

If it sleeps, it's an application running in your user account that's preventing sleep from happening.

If it doesn't, it's system wide, maybe even a hardware problem.

Need more information :)


Messages font size can't be changed in Yosemite I noticed in Yosemite, Messages has two menu options under the View menu, "Make Text Smaller" and "Make Text Bigger." But unfortunately neither option does anything at all. Is this a bug? Do I have something in my settings preventing this from working?

Under 10.10.2 when you're typing inside a message to be sent those menu options function and increase/decrease the size of messages that appear above the text input. The text input itself doesn't actually change text size though.

In Messages > Preferences there's a slider that does the same thing.


Keys are not repeating with Yosemite after 10.10.2 I never had a single issue with yosemite, until yestersday after updating to 10.10.2.

Now I press a key and hold it and it is not repeating anymore.

but the problem is selective. Spaces repeat. Symbols, punctuation mark repeats but numbers and letters don't.

Any way to make that work again?

Nope, that is set (look pic).

found the answer: type this on terminal

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false


how to stop password popups I have a new macbook with osx 10.8.2

Every time I want do delete a file, open a downloaded file, and numerous other actions I have to enter my password. Is there a way to turn this off?

That sounds odd, have you tried repairing permissions on Disk Utility? I assume you're the only owner of that macbook.

Anyhow when you try to delete a critical file it will prompt you for your password.

You can also enable the root user:

  sudo passwd root

If you log in as root it won't prompt you anymore but this will give access to any application to your system. This way you'll be vulnerable to all kind of malware including trojans.


Dictating spelled numbers in English and other languages Is there a way to have iOS voice dictation spell out numbers?  I mean speaking  145 and having it write "one hundred forty five"; this would be useful in English and other languages. Although it’s not that common to spell out numbers in English, in my experience it seems a lot more common in foreign languages such as Italian and German.  It’s really difficult to spell out the very long words in those languages and so this would be a gr8 feature

I’ve done a lot of searching and tried different things  but nothing seems to work, including here on stack exchange  where almost everything on this topic is several years old.  In fact some of the posts I read indicate that there was the reverse problem years ago  that was solved by saying “numeral”  beforehand  to avoid spelling the number.

Edit:
In response to @MeanAverageMeanie I installed GBoard and tried dictating "eleven plus fourteen equals twentyfive" in Italian, German, and English. Unfortunately, it still produced numerals rather than spelled words in each case, as seen below using Gboard within the iOS Mail app:

The answer is to install Google’s GBoard keyboard. Its voice dictation feature automatically spells out numbers like “forty-five” rather than typing them out as “45”. I don’t know why iOS doesn’t do this. I’ve tried, but ultimately it was Google to the rescue. It also works in other languages, i.e. French “quarante-cinq” and Spanish "cuarenta y cinco”.


Does iOS download only changes or whole app when updating an app? I noticed the downloading of app updates is really fast on my iPhone X (iOS 13). Like for example the facebook app shows about 250MB in size on the update screen of the appstore but it's finished downloading in about 10 sec over WLAN in flight mode. Despite I have 40Mbit/s (5MByte/s) internet speed. So it should take about 50 seconds for this download. I am sure the update file(s) is/are compressed but this would mean like 250MB/5 = 50MB, which sounds like too much of possible compression for an app file. I mean it's not a text file with many redundancies.

So I wonder if updates contain only changes to the app but then the programming logic would have to allow that which I doubt that many developers do this because I saw this behavior not only in the facebook app but in most app updates.

A more plausible reason would be that the size shown next to the update on the appstore is the uncompressed/installed size of the app. Does anyone know?

Starting with iOS 6, the app store will automatically produce an update package for all new versions of apps submitted to the store. This package is optimized for updating an app from one version to another and contains files that have changed between the prior version of an app and the new version of the app, excluding files that have not changed.

When used optimally, an update package is significantly smaller to download than the full package of the app and the update will install more quickly. Also, in many cases, this mechanism allows updates to large apps to be downloadable over cellular networks where app downloads are subject to a size limit.

In addition to new content, the update package contains instructions on how to transform the prior version of the app into the new version of the app. New files will be added, modified files will be replaced with their updated counterpart, and deleted files will be removed as part of this transformation. As far as the developer and user are concerned, this process is entirely transparent and the resulting updated app will be indistinguishable from a full download of the corresponding updated version of their app.

So, Delta updates are possible to set up in iPhone apps which totally depend upon the developer. H

Reference: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/qa/qa1779/_index.html


How to show current time in mac terminal prompt? I have this:

PS1+="\D{%H:%M:%S}";

But this displays the time the prompt started. I want the prompt to show the current 12 hour (not 24 hours) time live (so it keeps changing, and then when a command is made, save that time before going to the next prompt (so, without pressing enter / return on the keyboard). So the time the command was made is saved and visible too.

Is this live updating of a time-based prompt possible?

Simple answer: \T is the code for 12hr time in HHH:MM:SS. So, you'll get:

$ export PS1+="\T"
08:56:25 $
08:56:26 $
08:56:28 $
08:56:30 $

In the case you have the PS1+ is appending onto an earlier configured PS1 variable - you'll need to modify to your needs.

This is a live variable in my version of bash on High Sierra. I copied and pasted above hitting enter to show the seconds incrementing.


How to create input language (e.g. english) with different input keyboard (e.g. Danish) I use onenote on OSX and it uses the input language as proofing language so I have two input langauges (English and Danish) however I use both langauges with a Danish hardware keyboard. Any possibility to tweak the English input language to use Danish HW keyboard?

(I know this is possible on Windows but I cannot find the option to do it on OSX)

Use Ukelele to make a custom keyboard layout which has US as the name but uses the key mapping for Danish.  Hopefully OneNote will switch to English proofing when you use this.

httpL//scripts.sil.org/ukelele


How can I enable invisible files with "Transmit" FTP client? How can I enable invisible files with "Transmit" FTP client ?

It asks me to show them only if I override one of them. I actually would like to always see them.


Change the functionality of the function and control keys on macOS Sierra I want switch the functionality of the function and control keys on the keyboard of the MacBook Pro.

There is a similar question to this, but unfortunately the software mentioned, now called Karabiner, doesn't seem to work with macOS Sierra.

Is there a method to make this achievable in macOS Sierra?

Karabiner is being rewritten from scratch to support Sierra in the form of Karabiner-Elements. You should still be able to accomplish it with this "light" version.


How to write the names "iPhone", "iPad", etc. in all capital letters? Just curious about whether it is iPHONE, IPHONE, or just never written in all capital letters. Is there a style guide or something on this issue?

As initially mentioned by Neil, the Apple Publications Style Guide is the place to look.

From page 34:

  What to capitalize: Follow these rules when you use title-style capitalization.
  Capitalize every word except:

  Articles (a, an, the), unless an article is the first word or follows a colon
  Coordinating conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, for, yet, and so)
  The word to in infinitives (How to Start Your Printer)
  The word as, regardless of the part of speech
  Words that always begin with a lowercase letter, such as iPod and iTunes
  Prepositions of four letters or fewer (at, by, for, from, in, into, of, off, on, onto, out, over, to, up, and with), except when the word is part of a verb phrase or is used as another part of speech (such as an adverb, adjective, noun, or verb).
  Starting Up the Computer
  Logging In to the Server
  Getting Started with Your MacBook Pro

That is, the i in words like iPod and iTunes (and iMac, iPhone, iPad, etc.) are never capitalized.

I don't believe that, given a choice, Apple ever uses all caps, although the only specific rule I've found is on page 33:

  Don’t use all caps for emphasis.


iOS Shortcuts feed Siri command via text input For my “drive to work” shortcut I would like to continue playing whatever podcast I last listened to. There isn’t a shortcut for this so I have to say “hey Siri play podcasts” which achieves the above.

Is there a way to pass that string to Siri so she executes it automatically in a shortcut, rather than having to say it out loud?

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to add existing Siri commands to shortcuts. Siri Shortcuts doesn't support Podcasts actions either.


MongoDB doesnt' work after update to macOS Catalina 10.15 I recently installed macOS Catalina 10.15 Beta 1. Now, when I try to launch my MongoDB application by running:

> mongod

I get the following error:

I have attempted to go to Security & Privacy and hit the Open Anyway button, but I get the same error.

Any thoughts on how to launch the application from the command line?

Move your old /data/db folder into a non root folder and do the following:

brew uninstall mongodb
brew tap mongodb/brew

brew install mongodb-community

"brew install mongodb" won't work anymore as the mongodb is removed from the homebrew-core.

check https://github.com/mongodb/homebrew-brew for more info

ref: https://stackoverflow.com/a/57881349/10818622


Apache truncates files at 65536 bytes after Mavericks upgrade I was using a mac-ports based LAMP stack before upgrading to Mavericks from Mountain Lion and all was fine..

After the upgrade, apache has started truncating static files..  If I use curl to fetch a static asset, like a Javascript file, it the connection hangs at 65,536 bytes downloaded.

The file is ok (if you cat the file, the whole thing is readable)
Browser/cURL works fine with other hosts.
Tried OSX permissions check
Tried upgrading macports -> port selfupdate -> port uninstall all -> port clean all -> port install $everything and the behavior continues..
lsof reports that apache is reading all the correct library references to the mac ports versions..

It turned out that by having internet sharing on, something bad was happening with the inbound TCP buffer on the NIC interface as remote users could pull the asset off my box without a problem.

Turning it off fixed the problem...


Can't quit iTunes normally I am using 10.12.5 and iTunes 12.6.1.27. Whenever I quit iTunes it will hesitate, the main window disappears but the menu bar remains, but the process keeps running and the icon in the dock shows it's still there. And a click on the icon and the window reappears. In Activity Monitor iTunes won't disappear, but it doesn't show any %CPU, then it almost immediately reappears. It will force quit.

I don't have any plugins for it. Same result even if iPhone, iPad aren't connected. I've deleted prefs and reinstalled iTunes. It WILL quit if I restart in Safe Mode.

I looked at Console,and I get stuff like this:

    NSApplicationBundleIdentifier = "com.apple.iTunes";
        NSApplicationName = iTunes;
        NSApplicationPath = "/Applications/iTunes.app";
        NSWorkspaceApplicationKey = "<NSRunningApplication: 0x7fc1e713b030 (com.apple.iTunes - 12343)>";
Jul  8 10:37:54 riMac iTunes[12576]: Entered:_AMMuxedVersion2DeviceConnected, mux-device:3
Jul  8 10:37:54 riMac iTunes[12576]: Entered:_AMMuxedVersion2DeviceConnected, mux-device:2
Jul  8 10:37:54 riMac iTunes[12576]: Entered:_AMMuxedVersion2DeviceConnected, mux-device:1
Jul  8 10:37:54 riMac iTunes[12576]: tid:1103 - unable to query device capabilities
Jul  8 10:37:54 riMac iTunes[12576]: tid:1a203 - unable to query device capabilities
Jul  8 10:37:54 riMac iTunes[12576]: tid:1303 - unable to query device capabilities

Jul  8 10:38:21 riMac iTunes[12576]: _send_message (thread 0x700005e4f000): Could not securely send message size 443: SSL_ERROR_SYSCALL errno (Broken pipe).
Jul  8 10:38:21 riMac iTunes[12576]: _send_message (thread 0x7fffb4a963c0): Could not securely send message size 406: SSL_ERROR_SSL (error:1409F07F:SSL routines:SSL3_WRITE_PENDING:bad write retry).
Jul  8 10:38:21 riMac iTunes[12576]: AMDeviceStopSession (thread 0x7fffb4a963c0): Could not stop session with device 2: kAMDSendMessageError

Ideas?

I figured it out. For those who have the same problem, it was Cindori's Command Center utility. Repeatable on my machines: iTunes won't quit with CC running; will quit if CC isn't running. CC has a function to control iTunes; should have remembered that.


Stop my Mac from downloading Apple TV content I have an Apple TV where I subscribe to Seasons for various shows and watch them on my TV. The problem is that my Mac is also downloading the same,  storing it on the hard drive.

These are very large files, and I don't want to store them locally or use my bandwidth to download them.

How do I stop this from happening? Is there a setting in iTunes to make it stop?

Make sure that you have "download pre-orders when available" disabled in your iTunes preferences by going to iTunes > Preferences under the Store tab. Then, untick If you have this selected in itunes you are telling itunes to download all new shows that you watch. If you untick it new future shows will not download.


How can I activate my iPod if my PC is running Linux? I just bought an iPod, and when I turn it shows an image with the USB cable and iTunes. It wants me to plug it to a computer with iTunes? But I use Linux, what do I do?

A few solutions, not all of them good:

If possible, update to iOS 5 (probably at the Apple Store) and don't use iTunes.
Find a friend with a Mac or a PC and get them to activate it.
Go to the Apple Store (as Randolph said) and ask them.
Run Windows in VirtualBox (or another VM solution), and use iTunes from there. (thanks, Fake Name)
Get sixty million of your best friends to switch to Linux and all complain at Apple for a Linux port of iTunes.
Run iTunes in Wine, if that's possible.