Secure traffic before connecting to wifi/VPN? Usually when you wake up your MacBook, macOS automatically establishes e.g. IMAP or various background sync connections. How can I make sure that all traffic is sent over to VPN connection BEFORE I connect to wifi or my VPN connection fails?

I am using Apple’s built-in VPN client in OS X 10.12. VPN service order is set prior wifi in the OS X Network location. Also, the checkbox for for „Send all traffic over VPN connection“ is enabled.

According to an article by How-To Geek How to Connect Your Mac to Any VPN (and Automatically Reconnect), there is an app that can do this for you, but first:

  The “Advanced” button allows you to configure the VPN connection in other ways. For example, the default settings automatically disconnect from the VPN when you log out or switch users. You could uncheck these boxes to prevent the Mac from automatically disconnecting. Click Apply to save your settings. Before you do, you can enable the “Show VPN status in menu bar” option to get a menu bar icon for managing your VPN connection. Use this menu to connect to your VPN and disconnect from it as necessary.

However, the article also says:

  By default, your Mac won’t automatically reconnect to the VPN if the connection dies.

 VPN AutoConnect by Nova-box is the app the article talks about, but it does not have a very good rating, so I am not sure if it would benefit you.

I use a VPN, but I am not using Apple's client for this. I use the VPN's client. I did download it from the App Store, and it has been great thus far—there is a feature that allows you to prevent any traffic from running until the VPN is up and running.

The VPN I have is  VPN Unlimited - WiFi Proxy. I purchased a lifetime subscription for around $20 from Cult Of Mac when they had a special on it.

There could be Terminal commands for this as well. I have found this other Ask Different question for you to take a look at: Where is the "Send all traffic over VPN connection" setting in OSX 10.9 Mavericks?

This last link to a Tuts+ article How to Use VPN on Your Mac is basically what you said you already did, from my understanding, but I thought it might be useful in case you wanted to double check your steps (since I haven't used the Apple client, I can't speak for it, hence this link).

Good luck!


iOS backup to iCloud: how private? My understanding is that most data uploaded to iCloud from an iPhone is encrypted on some server and that apple possesses the decryption key to this data. For example, files from the Files app can be stored in iCloud Drive, which can then be decrypted by Apple. But what about the generic iPhone backup that essentially stores a clone of the device in the cloud? Can Apple simply decrypt and view the full contents of your device when you back it up to iCloud?

Quoth Apple:

iCloud secures your information by encrypting it when it's in transit, storing it in iCloud in an encrypted format, and using secure tokens for authentication. For certain sensitive information, Apple uses end-to-end encryption. This means that only you can access your information, and only on devices where you’re signed into iCloud. No one else, not even Apple, can access end-to-end encrypted information.

In some cases, your iCloud data may be stored using third-party partners’ servers—such as Amazon Web Services or Google Cloud Platform—but these partners don’t have the keys to decrypt your data stored on their servers.

End-to-end encryption requires that you have two-factor authentication turned on for your Apple ID. Keeping your software up-to-date and using two-factor authentication are the most important things that you can do to maintain the security of your devices and data.

According to the chart in the link below, all iCloud services are encrypted in transit, and all but iCloud.com and Mail are encrypted on the server.
Two-factor authentication is required for end-to-end encryption.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202303


Applications for finding iPhone 4 locally? Like many people, I'm having trouble finding an iPhone 4 for purchase in my area. Right now, I'm using an advanced Twitter search to monitor tweets in my area, looking for people celebrating the purchases of their new iPhones, and I'm calling local personal electronics stores after they receive their shipments.

Are there any applications (web or Mac) that could assist me in my search? Feel free to include applications that weren't designed for this purpose. I'm looking for an iPhone 4, but software that helps with this search could help others looking for hardware at other times also.

I ran a shell script like this when the iPad 2 came out to track local availability at Target stores. The regular expressions might need to be changed if the site's formatting has changed since then.

#!/bin/sh
echo "iPad 2 Wi-Fi Black 16GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1830&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 Wi-Fi Black 32GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1831&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 Wi-Fi Black 64GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1832&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 ATT Black 16GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1833&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 ATT Black 32GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1834&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 ATT Black 64GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1835&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 VZN Black 16GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1836&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 VZN Black 32GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1837&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 VZN Black 64GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1838&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 Wi-Fi White 16GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1839&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 Wi-Fi White 32GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1840&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 Wi-Fi White 64GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1841&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 ATT White 16GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1842&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 ATT White 32GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1843&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 ATT White 64GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1844&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 VZN White 16GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1845&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 VZN White 32GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1846&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;
echo "iPad 2 VZN White 64GB: "; curl -s --data "_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&asin=&dpci=057-10-1847&zipcode=95014&city=&state=" http://sites.target.com/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats_results.jsp?_DARGS=/site/en/spot/mobile_fiats.jsp | grep -A 2 strong | sed -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/strong>
//' -e 's/
//' -e 's/<\/p>//' -e 's/--//' -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'
echo;

(substitute your own zip code for Apple HQ's)


Accessing Time Machine for different computer My hard drive died on Computer 1.  Backed up to Time Machine.  Am now using Computer 2.
I need some files from the desktop of Computer 1.  Can I access them on Time Machine? How?
I have three computers all backing up to that time machine, but all I can see is the backups for Computer 2.  How do I find Computer 1?

If you press the option key when clicking the time machine icon in the menu bar, you can browse backups from other computers.


How do I use Fandango with Passbook? I just purchased a ticket for a movie tonight using the Fandango app on my iPhone 4S running iOS 6. I know that Fandango is one of the current few Passbook supported apps. What I don't know is how to ensure that my tickets will show up in Passbook. Is there anything special I have to do? The Walgreens app prompted me to put my card in Passbook so I was expecting similar behavior from Fandango. Will the tickets just show up in Passbook closer to showtime?

Only certain theaters are capable of mobile ticketing. In the Fandango app when viewing theaters which can accept mobile tickets you will see a notification which says "Mobile ticket available." If you do not see this indicator a mobile device cannot be used as a ticket at this theater and therefore tickets will not show up in Passbook. That said, you can still purchase tickets for the theater and use a confirmation code at the box office.


Deleting all words in MS word file except bold and italic in the terminal command I have a big MS word file. I want to delete all words in the file except the bold and italic using terminal command. Is it possible?

None of the standard utilities serve this exact purpose.

You'll want to custom develop a small script/program to accomplish the task. You could use for example Python, Perl or similar to create the program.


Will this hard drive work with my 2009 15 macbook pro unibody? Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 750 GB SATA 3 GB/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Internal Bulk/OEM 2.5-Inch Mobile Hard Drive

i need to know if this hard drive will work with my computer?

I have 8 GB of memory (maxed out)

I also need to know also if this is a good hard drive.

Has any one used it? Is it quiet? Does it over heat?

No experience with that drive but you may encounter issues with that model MBP  and any replacement drives. Downgrading the firmware may fix the issue or you any need to replace the SATA cable. You may not want to do either in advance but don't be surprised if you encounter a problem.


Why does iterm2 close new sessions immediately? I've made some changes to my .bashrc file in my new MacBook, mainly aliases for common commands.

Shortly after, iterm2 immediately closes every new session or tab with the following cryptic message:

## exec failed ##
argpath= error=No such file or directory

Notes:

terminal works fine.
I've tried to rename .bashrc and relaunch iterm, but the problem persists.

The default shell was a command shell without command, not a login shell.

Solution:

iTerm->Preferences->Profiles->General->Command

Set radio button to Login shell


Teach Safari to ignore case if necessary when opening local html file I'm using Safari to read the HTML documentation that came with something.  Many of the .html files contain links to others amongst themselves where the case of the URL does not match the name of the file.  For example, somefile.html contains

...

but the actual file is named anotherfile.html, all lower case.

The easy workaround is to edit the URL in Safari's address bar, fine for just once but gets tedious when I'm hopping around reading massive amounts of brain fodder.  A harder but once-only workaround is to edit the .html files by hand (or clever perl script or whatever), but I don't want to lose the fixes if I upgrade the thing or have to install it on another machine. (And I don't feel like doing such grunt work today.)

Is there a Safari extension or something that can make Safari try a little harder when opening files, to be case insensitive if it doesn't initially find an exact match?   This needs to work only for file: protocol.

If you do have your drive formatted as case sensitive, use Disk Utility (Applications->Disk Utility) to create a non-case sensitive disk image. Copy all the files over to said disk image and you should be good to go.

It's a little bit of a pain to mount the disk image when you need to look at the files, but probably far easier than attempting to normalize the upper/lower caseness of every filename & href in the html.


How to stop getting macOS beta updates? Previously I was using Catalina Beta

A few days back Catalina came out, and I upgraded to it.

Just now I've got the following update notification:

My guess is that I am still enrolled in the developer beta testing program, and so I continue to receive betas.

If this is correct, how to remove myself from the beta program?

And if not, what's going on?

In Software update preferences, click on details under the gear icon and un-enroll there. This stops beta updates.

Emails and feedback assistant features are still there which need to be removed after signing into

https://idmsa.apple.com/IDMSWebAuth/login.html?appIdKey=4b98a8e6a3a3ce265b93c90207c442b53c45a1afa9ff1dc9bde8bb6928078d3b&path=%2F%2Fbetaprogram%2Flogin_to_unenroll&rv=2#

More details: https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/unenroll


Apple 5S Charge-Only USB Mode Is there any way to make the phone content inaccessible when connected via USB to PC. I want to do some settings on iphone itself so that the Internal storage isn't visible on laptop/PC to which it's connected.

I want to use USB only for charging.

Unfortunately no there is no way to set a default option of how your iPhone interacts with a computer. However if you plug in your iPhone it will ask you if you trust this computer and you click no, then that computer will not be able to see any data on the iPhone.


Recognize encryption from UDIF I have created a savings bundle and encrypted it with the standard SHA 2 algorithm with the usual hard disk utility.
Can I see the encryption anywhere?
They cannot be found in the disk utility or with hdiutil imageinfo.

From what I gather, you're saying that you have created an encrypted .dmg image file using Disk Utility.
You write that it is encrypted "standard SHA 2 algorithm", but this doesn't really make sense as SHA-2 is not an encryption algorithm, but rather a hash function. I assume you mean that you have used the standard 128-bit AES encryption that Disk Utility offers by default.
You can verify that the image file is encrypted by running:
hdiutil info

In the output it will state:

image-encrypted : TRUE

only if the image file is encrypted.
If you want more specific details about the encryption used, you can run this command:
hdiutil imageinfo myimage.dmg

This requires that you know the password to decrypt the image.
For an encrypted image it will show the following under "Properties":

Encrypted: true

And under "Backing Store Information" it will list the type of encryption:

Encryption: AES-128

UPDATE: In the comments you have indicated that you really wanted to know this information specifically for "sparse bundles" (not savings bundles). In that case, you can still use the above mentioned commands to find out if the files are encrypted, however it does not display the encryption algorithm used.
This information is available in a header placed in the token file in the root of the sparse bundle. You can use third party software such as this to decode that information.


IpadOS connect lightning to hdmi and usb together I've got the ipad mini 5th generation. I want to connect it to my monitor, it has usb-c/hdmi ports, also I want to use my usb devices, I've done this with apple tv, but picture is not so good on 4k monitor, and i think about some wired solution, I've got adapters: lightning to usb, lightning to type-c (But it doesn't show picture on my type c monitor) is there any way to use usb+hdmi via lightning together? (maybe some wireless hubs or something else?..maybe someone has a good idea to do it? I think it'll be helpful to a lot of people.

So, if I understand right you have basically two set of questions:

1. can an iPad Mini (5th generation) be connected to a 4k monitor? if so, how? and what can I expect in terms of image quality/resolution?

Yes, it is possible to connect a lightning-iDevice to a HDMI-Display using a Lightning Digital AV Adapter. It will mirror your display. The iPad Mini 5Gen has "1536 x 2048 pixels, 4:3 ratio" and that is what you will see in your 4k-Monitor. (for reference check this video)

2. given that the connction iPadMini-Display is working, can I have more USB devices attached?

Unfortunately, no. And here is a video that shows it ^^
I really doubt there is a way to map the Lightning-pins to HDMI-pins AND to the USB2.0-pins simultnaeously
... if you had in mind to use a mouse or a keyboard, may be you could achieve that over a Bluetooth connection.

Side questions:
Why is my lightning to type-C-USB connection not showing any picture?
This is because of the diversitiy in protocols/standards. Lightning on that iDevice, in terms of USB is essentially USB2.0 and this USB standard does not support video/image transmission. The standard that supports that is a USB-C alternate mode which, at least, requires USB-C on both sides. (you only have one, on your display...)


Automatically Connect to Multiple Servers on Login Following the instruction from Apple: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4011

I can't get this to work for my multiple server logins, because they all have the same name (my user name).  When I try to add the connected share to the Login Items nothing happens, because one with the same name already exists.  How can I get around this?

You are correct. Since both server volumes have the same name, Login Items will think you are trying to add the same exact shares to Login Items.

To get around this, create an Automator application that follows this basic pattern:

Then drop this Automator application into your Login Items. Every time that you login going forward it will run the script, thereby mounting each of your identically-named volumes.


How to disable pretty-print in Safari inspector? Pretty-print is always on by default. How do I make it be off by default?

You cannot disable it. Because the inspector is showing computed DOMs of rendered HTML (with JavaScript and CSS), it is a different thing from original HTML source code (but sometimes looked like the same one). So it is not just pretty-printed.

If you would like to get source code of the web page, see instructions below.

https://ccm.net/faq/33026-safari-view-the-source-code-of-a-webpage


Activate iPhone with any sim? I have bought an unlocked iPhone 5s (I believe it's model A1530) from the Apple Store Australia, can I use any sim to activate this phone?

Could I even use my partners and then put it back in his phone once it's activated?

I only want to use the phone over wifi for now.

If the device is unlocked you can borrow a sim to activate the device. One thing to keep in mind though is you may want to skip setting up iCloud until after you remove the borrowed sim card.

After you've ejected the sim go into Settings > Phone > My number. Either clear the number out (which will be the number of your borrowed sim) or type in your actual phone number. The reason being is iCloud (specifically, iMessage) will want to tie the phone number from the borrowed sim to your iMessage account. It could potentially end up with you receiving iMessages intended for the person you borrowed the sim from.


My iPhone no longer mounts in Windows. Tries to install "MTP USB Device" .. which fails When I plug my iPhone 4 into my Windows 7 Ultimate laptop, it syncs just fine with iTunes, but it no longer mounts on the desktop for me to transfer pictures and videos.

When I plug it in, Windows attempts to install a driver named "MTP USB Device" and then fails.

I've tried a number of things, the most drastic being:

Uninstall iTunes
Uninstall MTP USB Device from Device Manager
Restart
Install the latest iTunes
Restart
Run iTunes
Plug in the Phone

When I did that, Windows claimed it was installing a driver named "iPhone" (yippee!) but then it switched to "MTP USB Device" and failed again.

I've searched other forums and found strange and bizarre ideas that include exploding the iTunes MSI so I can get the Apple USB Device driver -- but that driver is installed and works just fine.

In the mist of giving you an extra idea, and to be frank I have no idea what your problem might be, let me share what I'd do to find the cause and -eventually- fix it.

You seem to have done your Windows homework well, yet results haven't been what you expected. Something I remember doing with Windows when things didn't work (in the Windows95 era this was very common!) was rebooting in Safe Mode and see if anything looked unfamiliar.

In any case, if you still can't manage to make Windows work, before anything else, it would be interesting to make sure that the problem is not in the iPhone itself (probably nothing that an iPhone restore wouldn't fix if that's the case).

First rule of diagnosing a problem: try it on another system. The result of this simple test is going to rule out 50% of the possibilities.

If it works, the problem is in your Windows machine and you might get better luck at Super User (since our userbase here has less Windows experience, tho we have a few geeks around).

If it doesn't work, then the problem is not your Windows (stop removing stuff or it will go coo-coo!).

In that case, you might want to perform a full Restore of your iPhone. I am not familiar with Windows+iPhone combo, but don't you have to Check some preference in iTunes for that "mounts on the desktop for me to transfer pictures and videos" thing to happen? I think it was called "Enable Disk's use" on iPods, but I haven't seen that option in iPhones, but then again, Maybe on Windows this is common. Forgive my ignorance in the subject.

Anyway, just make sure your iPhone mounts on another computer's desktop (with Windows) before destroying your own Windows. For what is worth, I'm not aware of any iPhone mounting on a Mac's desktop, this has got to be a Windows thing, and this is why Super User may be better suited.


How to save chat logs in Messages for Mountain Lion? I always used to save my Chat logs because I use IM in the professional environment. Now I find that I can’t save chat logs anymore. That option is gone. Is there any workaround or hidden preference to enable saving chat logs again?

In Preferences, select Messages and check "Save history when conversations are closed." Now when you quit Messages, it will create a collection of chat transcripts. You can easily access these in your Library folder. From Finder, select Go>Go to Folder and type: ~/Library/Messages/Archive. If you are on Mavericks or Yosemite, the location is ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/Data/Library/Messages. This will take you directly to the appropriate folder.


How can I find out what the App Store is automatically downloading? I can see via Activity Monitor that storedownloadd is receiving a lot of packets and responsible for my ~1mb download. When opening the App Store, I can see only one update (Xcode 8). Can I deduce that this is what's being downloaded?

If not, how can I?

The App Store may not record exactly what everything it does is, but you can try looking a couple places:

/Library/Receipts/InstallHistory.plist has a list of program installation history for the computer (most recent installation at the bottom, with the highest numbered entry).

/Library/Preferences/com.apple.SoftwareUpdate.plist will give you the number of pending updates as well as the last time the App Store checked for updates.

You could also try running /usr/sbin/softwareupdate --dump-state, which dumps the current state of the update daemon to /var/log/install.log.

(As a side note, in my experience XCode updates are usually over 1 GB in size, so an XCode update would definitely run for an extended period and download lots of data.)


Get the Mojave dynamic wallpaper back after upgrading to Big Sur I just upgraded to macOS Big Sur and I noticed the dynamic wallpaper from Mojave is missing, although the one from Catalina is still there. Does anybody know how to the the Mojave dynamic wallpaper back in Big Sur? Thanks.

This one? (Just download it and then right click and "Set Desktop Picture")
https://files.rb.gd/mojave_dynamic.heic
Or maybe have a look here as well


How to sync the data structure of my iPod touch with that of my iPad? I have two device: iPod touch and iPad. All of them use the newest OS.

I have a folder in my Windows, call it c:\mybook.
I put all my pdf books into this folder. No nested categorizing folder for sure.

I import these books from iTune using CTRL+O (add file to library). Then I sync my iPod touch.
From within iPod touch, I make collections based on genres such as Physics, Math, Biology, etc. I move each book to the proper collection. All books have been arranged and I am happy.

Next... how to make the arrangement in iPod to be reflected to my iPad? Hopely using the simplest method. For sure, my iPad has been restored to default factory without any data now.

Thank you.

Sync your iPod Touch configuration back to iTunes and then sync your iPad with iTunes!

For syncing your iPod configuratuon you must only connect it with iTunes. Every time it will be created a backup of the device. After that you connect your iPad (which has been restored to default factory) with iTunes.

Then you can do the following steps which are described on the apple support sites (Restoring your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch).


AppleScript to save current Safari window in webarchive format? Without using GUI scripting, how can I use AppleScript to tell Safari to save the current browser page to a file in webarchive format?  The following produces an error "The document “...” could not be exported as “foo.webarchive” (where "..." is the title of the current web page, whatever it may be):

set the_filepath to "/tmp/foo.webarchive"
tell application "Safari"
    activate
    save document 1 in the_filepath
end tell

I've tried variations on this, such as different file name extensions (e.g., .html) to see if anything works, but an error always arises. I've tried different ways of specifying the file name, but that also produces errors (of a different kind).  I've tried using save ... as ".webarchive" instead of the simple save above, but that produces a different error about "document 1 doesn't understand the save message".

The AppleScript dictionary for Safari 11 has this description:

save v : Save a document.
  save specifier : The document(s) or window(s) to save.
    [in file] : The file in which to save the document.
    [as saveable file format] : The file format to use.

This implies that it should be possible to save the current web page in a specific format understood by Safari (such as, hopefully, webarchive), and that I simply haven't figured out the right syntax.

I have created a bundled script that saves the current tab to the desktop as a webarchive. Credit to newzealandpaul for his webarchiver shell command that powers this script. You can tweak the code to fit your specific needs, but this should do what that code in your question is trying to do.

Here is the bundled script: SaveWebarchive

This works with the webarchiver command bundled;

set fileName to "foo"

tell application "Safari" to set targetURL to (URL of document 1) as string
set commandPath to POSIX path of (path to resource "webarchiver.command")
do shell script "" & commandPath & " -url " & targetURL & " -output ~/Desktop/" & fileName & ".webarchive"

Note that the downloaded script may have the Script Editor interface showing the Log over the entire window.


I'm trying to block game "X" from accessing the internet including updating I'm using OS X El Capitan and I'm trying to prevent a game from accessing the internet including blocking it from checking for updates for the launcher or the game itself.

I've gone into Security -> Firewall -> unlocked settings -> Firewall Options -> Found the game in the list and changed it from "Allow incoming connections" to "Block incoming connections" and it still goes out and finds updates and tries to get me to accept them and update the launcher and program.

In my opinion the update has ruined game play so I don't want the update until they either change it back or they fix the game play enough that I want to play it their way. Until then, I want to block it from even checking to see if there are updates. I want to be absolutely, totally, offline like there is no network cable and not wireless internet or any other kind of internet.

Since this didn't work, please don't tell me to buy another product. Tell me what I did wrong and how I can fix it with what came with OS X.

The issue is that the firewall option stops connections from outside to the app but for an update the app initiates the contact to the suppliers server  so the firewall does not help here.

the program Little Snitch does allow you to control the app starting a conversation with another IP address and so can do what you want.


How To Get Notes On Windows 10? I switched from my Mac to a PC that runs Windows 10 and have all my notes from the notes app on my Mac. How can I get all my notes? Thanks!

If you mean the native Notes App, you can access your notes on icloud.com, unless you don't have them backed up. Then you have to log in. If you have two-factor authentication turned on, you'll have to use another Apple device you own.

If you've successfully logged in, you now should be able to access your notes from the "Notes" app on the website.


How to recover iPhone SE when stuck in recovery mode without data loss? My wife's iPhone SE was overloaded with data and hung up while rebooting. Then after attempting to update to the newest firmware, I kept stuck in recovery mode. The problem is, that the iPhone is too full for recovery. Because my wife didn't make a backup, I want to avoid a flat install. Unfortunately every recovery tool I tried gave the same error and denied work in the middle of the process.

I discovered a windows tool called "no erase ipsw", that modifies ipsws up to version 10.3.3 in that way, that it makes the installer think that it does a complete new install, although it replaces only the system files and lets the user files untouched. Unfortunately is the resulting ipsw not accepted by iTunes, because it is "unsigned", let's say too old for Apples authentication process.

My only hope as far as I see now is to make iTunes think, it is a new ipsw.
Second possibility would be to modify a new / signed ipsw in that manner, that it becomes smaller than the original to save installer space, because the iPhone is over full.

Can anybody out there give a hint?

In iTunes hold down shift. A window should come up asking you to select your file. Try selecting it from there.


How to handle `KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED` straight after Windows Login with Boot Camp? I have a Mac that runs macOS High Sierra, and a Boot Camp with Windows 10 that used to be running and up to date. But now, when I try to open Windows environment, I have got a blue screen with a KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED error message straight after I enter my Windows password. How can I get past this error message and open Windows,  with or without reinstallation, whatever is doable/easier.

I have tried to use the Boot Camp assistant (under OS X), but I get an error message The startup disk cannot be partitioned or restored to a single partition.

I have checked my partition and the possible issue is that I have an additional, 3rd partition disk, called "Windows recovery". I am unable to remove it even in OS X recovery mode ("-" is greyed).

I have tried to run sudo gpt -r show disk0 as per Cannot delete partition (minus greyed out) - non-encrypted, no core storage but I get an error message gpt show: unable to open device 'disk0': Operation not permitted even though I am currently using an admin account.

What could I do to be able to open my Windows?

You are suppose to use the software installed in the Window Recovery partition when something goes wrong with Windows. You stated in your question that Windows crashes after logging in. If so, then try this.

  Note: To get a better view of an image, either click on the image or open the image in a new window.

Boot to Windows 10.
In the login window, hold down the shift key while selecting "Restart", as shown below.

If prompted with the message shown below, select "Restart anyway".

With any luck, you should get the window shown below. Select "Troubleshoot".

In the window shown below, you could select "Reset this PC", but first I would select "Advanced options".

You should now see the Advanced Options window shown below.

Below is a description of these options.

"System Restore" - If Window Update downloaded software that caused your problem, the this may be a good choice. Note: there may not be any restore points.
"System Image Recovery" - You can use this option if you previous made an image file.
"Startup Repair" - You can try this option, but usually this does not repair problems of the type you are describing.
"Command Prompt" - You can skip this choice.
"Startup Settings" - This will allow change boot options at startup. This may allow you to boot Windows, but the problem will not be fixed.
"Go back to the previous version" - This requires that you have a previous version to return to. This usually only works if you have recently upgraded. In my option, this would be a last choice.

If none of these options appeal to you, select the arrow and try "Reset this PC".


Where are the /dev folder and the /dev/null device located on Mac OS X Mountain Lion? I am trying to find them on my Mac OS X Mountain Lion and it seems they do not exist.
I do not think it is a problem of folders privileges.

Maybe it just doesn't exit and I have to create them.

It should be there as a character special file:

bash-3.2# cd /dev
bash-3.2# ls -l |grep null
crw-rw-rw-  1 root  wheel       3,   2 Mar  8 11:04 null

Finder doesn't show these folders so you need to be in terminal to see them.


recover WPA2 passphrase from iPhone4s or its backup? I forgot the passphrase to a WiFi network but my phone still connects to it.

My old iPhone3 used to be connected there, then when I migrated to an iPhone4S the settings were magically transferred through iTunes. I guess the WPA2 key is therefore in the backups (which are not encrypted)

Is there a way to recover this WPA2 key from either the phone directly or from the backups? I read that there is an app for jailbroken phones but mine is not.

Thanks!

If you don't mind jailbreaking your phone, there's an app called “Wi-Fi Passwords” in Cydia that displays the Wi-Fi networks you've connected to and their passwords.


How can I disable media playback in Finder document icons? I'm on Lion now, and hoped that Apple would have added the option to disable the quick preview buttons on the icons some way. Here's the problem I have:

When I click on a video in Finder just to select it, I often hit the tiny triangle (see screenshot above), making the video play inside the icon. This is very irritating, since I have to click the teeny tiny triangle again to stop that.

Finder has a "Show Icon Previews" setting in the view options, but that does not do what I want, as it disables the whole thumbnail preview all together, like so:

This clearly not very helpful. I'm looking for a way to keep the previews, but disable the controls on the icons, so that whatever I do, the icon looks like this:

I'd like to do this for all file types with these silly tiny controls on a 32x32 icon.

The Feature is controlled by QuickLook and therefore you need to either disable the corresponing movie-generator or replace it with a better one.

On 10.11 and higher: Disable System Integrity Protection (SIP)
Go To /System/Library/QuickLook
Compress Movie.qlgenerator

Move the created zip from your desktop to the folder
Confirm with password
Delete the Movie.qlgenerator
Confirm with password

Download qlMoviePreview
(Here is a Download Link for the Lazy)
Extract and Copy the qlMoviePreview.qlgenerator to /System/Library/QuickLook

Confirm with password

Open Terminal and type qlmanage -r; qlmanage -r cache
Maybe a reboot helps for Quicklook to change completely

Now the Finder Movie Thumbnails show an image but have no longer a playback button in it.


LG Display via USBC-HDMI indicating as active even after turning it off I have an LG 4K display connected via USBC-HDMI cable.
After turning it off physically with the button it remains active in MacBook Pro 16 settings and I can move the mouse there.
It happens also when connected via Apple adapter + HDMI-HDMI cable.
And it's working fine when connected via USBC-DP cable. When turning off the display, Mac switching to the internal display only mode.

The USB-C ports on most MacBook Pro laptops all natively output a DisplayPort signal.  Most are Thunderbolt 3 though there are a few that are only USB with Alternate Mode display.    So, when you go from that USB-C port to HDMI, you're converting the signals.  That signal may stay high because the conversion isn't "clean."  This is why I always recommend using an active adapter that will recreate the signal versus a passive one that just "rearranges the signals."   I believe that will sort your issue as well.
However, on a DisplayPort input on a monitor, there's no conversion - the signal is clean.  So, when you turn it off, it's off.  If you can use DisplayPort, then I recommend that over HDMI There's no conversion and it's a better signal.
What you're seeing is just one of the many idiosyncrasies of HDMI.  If you're going from a HDMI source to an HDMI end device (monitor/TV), it works fairly well.  However, the moment you have to convert, that's where things start to go sideways.

What's wrong with HDMI?
Macbook Pro detects the screen, but external screen stays black (mini dp to hdmi)
Logical HDMI display reconnection
External Monitors Flicker when plugged into my Mac


How do I get out of the "continuous pages" mode? How do I get out of the "continuous pages" mode?

It annoys me like hell! I want to see whole pages with a bit of space around them.

Is this another thing that iWork 13 can't do?

Just a one pixel line separating different pages in image below.

This is currently not possible. The gap between pages is not customisable and it is not possible to disable continuous scrolling.

You can provide feedback to Apple regarding this at the following page:

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


Texts with iPhone and iCloud Will a text that is stored in iCloud get deleted from iCloud when you delete it from your iPhone?

Yes and no.

For practical purposes, texts aren't really "stored" in iCloud. I say that with two caveats. First, Apple may store them for their own use and second, they may be stored through your iOS device's iCloud backup.

As such, when you delete a message off of your iOS device, that change doesn't populate to other devices, and it isn't deleted from iCloud until your device backs up itself to iCloud (likely over night). The message will be deleted only from your device unless the backup occurs.


Upgrade iMac late 2009 with SSD I've thinking to upgrade my iMac late 2009 with an SSD. Its has a SATA II port and now uses a HD Hitachi 7200rpm. In your opinions, if I'll upgrade, I can see an increase of performance or not?
In my project i've thinking to put SSD (250GB) in HD slot and buy an external case for HD in order to store photos and other big files.

Surfing online I've found some forums talk about temperature sensor on HD. I didn't understand  which problem there are with this component. Can you explain me if there are problems?

Here are some points from my Upgrade of my old iMac (late 2009, Model 10,1, #A1312)

You can expect a significant Performance increase when starting Apps or saving Data, but overall-performance is depends on you RAM size too. If you are  working with Photoshop f.e. you should def. have more than 8GB (on 10.10) - the more the better.
You will encounter Problems with the Heat-Sensor. Apple uses a non-standard 3-Pin on the Hitachi HD to access the Heat-Sensor build into the Drive. Other HD or SSD will not have that, so you cannot connect the Heat-Sensor to the Mainboard. The result: the OS will turn up the Fan speed to a maximum, which is annoyingly loud. You can counter that effect with an additional Software to control the Fan speed, f.e. 'HDD-Fan Control' or 'iStat-Menu‘ and others.
In order to fasten the SSD, usually in a 2,5" Format, into the internal 3,5-Slot of the iMac you need a Frame for the SSD. Annoyingly some of the Frames have Screw-Slots in which the Apple Srews do not fit. You should read the excellent visual Tutorial from iFixit for replacing the HDD (Link is for my Model, check your Model before attempting to follow it).

Conclusion: even though it's a PITA, i never regretted doing it.


A shortcut for Merge all Windows on macOS Sierra Are there any shortcut for the command merge all windows feature that comes with macOS Sierra? I did not encounter about an shortcut for this command and I did not see any property in Automator app. If is it possible, it will be nice improvement for productivity when we working with tabs rather than windows.

Open  → System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → App Shortcuts.
Click the + to add a new shortcut.
Choose All Applications from the Application dropdown.
As the Menu Title, enter Merge All Windows (*see note at the bottom).
Input a key combination of your choice as the Keyboard Shortcut. I use Ctrl ^W.

Now all applications with a menu item called Merge All Windows will respond to that key combination, and collapse all your windows into one.

Starting with Sierra, it is also possible to open documents in new tabs rather than in new windows. This is enabled by going into  → System Preferences → Dock and setting Prefer tabs when opening documents to Always.

If you would like new Terminal sessions to open as new tabs as well, you can achieve this by placing a file named .bashrc in ~ (your Home folder), with the following line in it:

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to click menu item "Merge All Windows" of menu "Window" of menu bar 1 of process "Terminal"' >/dev/null 2>&1

Note: Merge All Windows may differ based on your operating system's language. If you are not using the English (US) locale, open Finder, and click the Window menu to determine the name of that command in your locale.


Does Apple allow crypto-currency mining in ios app? I have been looking into the feasibility of creating an app that mines crypto-currency. I have been searching the appstore for similar apps but none have come up where the miner is part of the app. Does anyone know if Apple allows mining from app? i.e would an app that does mining have even the slightest chance at being approved?

A quick skim through the App Store Review Guidelines didn't reveal anything obvious.

That said, section 2.4.2 currently contains the following:

  Design your app to use power efficiently. Apps should not rapidly drain battery, generate excessive heat, or put unnecessary strain on device resources.

I'm guessing that would be the clause they'd use to reject any crypto currency mining, which would by definition be CPU/GPU intentive.


If my Mac is connected to ethernet and WiFi, which will it use? As per title. I have ethernet issues at home and if I just turn WiFi on my MacMini, will this take over or will it default to ethernet unless I pull the cable out?

You can select the preferred connection in System Preferences -> Network.
Then use the Gear-Icon and select "Set Service Order...".

Your system will then prioritize the connection at the first position.


How to prevent user from moving a custom app to Trash? I am building an OS X Cocoa app for an administrator who doesn't want the user to remove the app by moving it to Trash. This is not going to be on the App Store.

How does Apple prevent users from deleting App Store or Chess app etc.? Can the same logic be used for third party apps?

Apple adds an access control entry to some apps, that denies delete access to the "everyone" group:

$ ls -lde /Applications/App\ Store.app
drwxr-xr-x+ 3 root  wheel  102 Feb 16 22:21 /Applications/App Store.app
 0: group:everyone deny delete

However, if the user you're trying to keep from deleting this is an administrator, they can remove ACLs, and then delete things freely. Admins can also remove or disable launch daemons. Basically, if someone has admin rights on the computer, they can get around your attempts to lock things down. See this previous question where CommaToast makes a valiant effort at figuring out how to lock something down against an opponent with admin rights... but I can still think of ways around his measures.

On the other hand if they're not an admin, then it's trivial: they can't delete things from /Applications anyway.


How to update XCode with a different userid? So i have been given a macbook by my employer which was used by previous developer for iOS development. Now Appstore is asking me to update XCode to new version and when I am trying to update , it keeps asking me to login using Apple ID. In pop up window, it keeps showing me old user's apple id and doesn't let me change also. It is frustrating that Apple doesn't allow a different user to update the software unless that user has installed it. Any solution for this problem?

I came across https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10395077/updating-xcode-using-different-apple-account this. The solution here says to delete the XCode from launchpad and then reinstall it. My question is if I delete XCode , will it affect existing iOS project files which were created using XCode?

Delete the app from /Applications and then re-download it from your preferred Apple ID. Launchpad deletion is a bit cleaner, but does the same thing, preserving user files created by Xcode, but deleting the application itself.

Unless you stored project files in /Applications, you won't affect project files or user settings since they get stored by default in /Users


Logitech mouse used on El Capitan I CANNOT get my mouse to easily move from one monitor to another. I literally have to wave the mouse in the direction of the other monitor and that sometimes works, though it's very clumsy. I can't understand this weird problem. The mouse just does not want to go the other monitor, no matter which monitor. If I'm on one, I can't get to the other .

If you look at System Prefs > Displays  > Arrangement, does it look like this?

or more like this?

If it looks more like the latter, then you will only be able to drag the cursor from one screen to another at the point they intersect on that picture. Trying to cross the border anywhere else will not work.

Also make sure that the arrangement in the picture is an actual representation of your physical layout & not, for instance that your secondary screen is represented at the wrong side of the primary. If so you can just drag it to a better position.
Clicking one of the monitors on the control panel will edge it in red, on the picture & also your actual screen itself, so you know for certain which you are moving. Try to line them up to the best physical representation you can.


Can there be problems copying files from AFPS to other file systems? I have a simple question: I bought a NAS from Synology and I copy my files from macOS (my filesystem is AFPS) to the NAS with Samba, formatted in ext4. Sometimes I also copy files from AFPS to NTFS (I'm using the Paragon Software). I never had any problems, but I want to be sure: Can there be problems due to these different file systems for example that files won't be copied, because the target system doesn't support the filename? macOS would tell me, if this is the case?

Files content is just bytes and the FS job is to handle it and that's all, by copying a file you just copy the bytes and not how it being handled. SMB send the data as a raw data and the "other side" receive it as a raw data and handle this data according to it's rules.

So to answer your question, the FS does not matter.


How do i sync an iPhone 4 (that has never been synced) to a computer without losing all of my pictures and data? I got my iPhone in may, and have never synced it to a computer. I would like to now so that I can out music from my CDs on it. But when my friend synced her iPhone 4 to a computer it erased all of her pictures. What can I do so that doesnt happen?

Either iPhoto or Image Capture will let you pull all your photos off the phone to get the safely onto the computer. From there you can store them wherever you want.

DropBox also has a camera upload function now so you can upload straight to DropBox from the phone, or from the computer when you plug your phone in.

Just make sure you use iPhoto or Image Capture first when you plug in your phone.

If you plug the phone into your computer and set it up with iTunes it might prompt you to reset it to automatically sync with that computer. You can do that after you've removed the photos using iPhoto.

If you do sync with iPhoto it'll give you the option to remove the photos from your phone after syncing - that's your choice.

Finally, if you're worried about losing photos, you can configure iPhoto on your computer to use Photo Stream, and on your iPhone too in the iCloud settings. That'll copy the photos to the cloud, and then iPhoto automatically, so you don't need to plug in your phone to sync each time.

Most of this assumes you have a Mac computer, btw, you don't make clear whether you're syncing to a Mac or PC.


Using Apple Developer as proof of sales between two companies We are currently negotiating with a company where that company will use our technology (image recognition) to create an iOS app. We will receive a Royalty based on sales and we do not know the company enough to feel that we can trust them. Neither me nor my co-workers at our start-up are Apple developers.

We want to specify in our licensing-agreement that they should show us their sales via documents from their Apple Developer account. What are the possibilities / do you have any input on what kinds of documents we should specify?

I give the three ideas I am thinking of so far:

Include us as receivers in apple-emails if they are generated on a monthly basis on sales.
Send us PDF from sales-reports from Apple.
Give us special login-password once a month to check.

Is there any better that I am not aware of?

All the best
Duran

The app developing company will publish on the App Store under an App Developer license from Apple. You can ask them to create an iTunes Connect account for your company under Sales role. Using it you get access to Sales, Trends and App Analytics.

For further details you can refer to the Apple Developer support documents, iTunes Connect Resources and Help and User Roles - iTunes Connect.


Get current client from Airfoil At work we use a Mac mini running Airfoil as an endpoint to stream music through the speakers.

Ideally, I'd like to query that machine to ascertain the name or address of the current client streaming media to it.

I'm happy to do this from another machine on the network, or from an agent on the Mac mini itself. Is this possible?

I appreciate this is not ideal, but when a remote client connects to Airfoil Speakers on my machine, I see a line similar to the following generated in the Console, coming from /var/log/appfirewall.log

Firewall[85]: Allow Airfoil Speakers connecting from 192.168.1.72:52013 to port 5000 proto=6

So potentially you could cat or tail the appfirewall.log looking for "Airfoil Speakers" using something like

cat /var/log/appfirewall.log | grep -i "airfoil speakers connecting"

and parse out the IP from the relevant lines.

Alternatively, I notice that Airfoil supports AppleScript so maybe there's something you could do with that. Or you could drop Rogue Ameoba an email, I've always found their support to be excellent.


Would reformatting my Mac and restoring the latest Time Machine backup be likely to improve its stability? My MacBook Air used to be rock solid, but it has grown increasingly unstable over the past year. For example, this afternoon I can't switch to my other user account. I select the account from the fast user switching menu and nothing happens.

Part of me wants to just start over, reinstall and reconfigure OS X and all of my applications from scratch. It would probably solve a lot of problems. But I have so much work invested in my current configuration. It would take days or weeks to fully rebuild.

I'm thinking the next best option would be to wipe the drive and restore my latest Time Machine backup. I know that Time Machine doesn't back up everything -- caches, log files, etc. -- so maybe restoring from backup would have a "rejuvenating" effect. Or it could just be a complete waste of time.

In general, is reformatting and restoring from Time Machine a good way to get a Mac running like new? Or is it merely "worth a shot"?

There could be various causes for a Mac that runs slow during certain times:

too many applications running on the system (launched at login or explicitly by the user)
inadequate RAM
inadequate free space on the drive
file permission issues
corrupted files or configuration
updated OS and applications that need faster hardware, and so on

For all these cases, reformatting and restoring from Time Machine will not help.

If you'd like to clear caches and logs and repair permissions, there are far quicker and easier ways to do it than a time consuming reformat and restore from Time Machine. Make sure you have a backup and then try some of these utilities (you can also search for "OS X cleanup" to find other utilities):

OnyX
MainMenu
Cocktail
CleanMyMac 2

If these do not help:

if you're running OS X Mavericks, check the Memory Pressure information in Activity Monitor - this will tell you if RAM is inadequate for the applications you're running
try trimming down the number of applications that are running. Start with items launched at login (go to System Preferences > Users & Groups and then to the Login Items tab)
free up disk space (if it's quite low)
using Activity Monitor, check which applications use a lot of CPU and either remove them or reinstall them afresh (trash the application with a proper uninstall utility like AppCleaner so that its preferences and other files are also deleted and then reinstall it)
as a last resort, you may have to do a fresh install of the OS, followed by a fresh install of your applications, followed by a restore of only your data from the Time Machine backup (do not restore the entire applications folder or the home folders since that would bring back corrupt preference files, if any)


Preview.app: How can I quickly find all highlights with specific colour in PDF? I have a couple of PDFs (some of which are 500+ pages long). In these PDFs I made a lot of highlights, when I read through them. I came up with a colouring system, such that each colour is associated with a particular theme. Now I would like to focus on one theme/colour. I.e. quickly jump through, say the Pink highlights. However Preview.app, in its 'Highlights & Notes' panel, only shows colour for notes. I am not able to see which colour I used on the highlights.

Can I somehow get an overview of the highlights and their highlight colour? Perhaps in a different program (Skim)?

I just found this link where someone used Skim and additional AppleScripts to do exactly what you are looking for, I think.

Update: As the above link is currently inactive, the page can also be reached on blogspot and web.archive.org.


How do you get a program to load earlier when you log in to Mac OS X? I'm running Mac OS X Lion 10.7.4 on a late 2011 MBP. I use a Logitech mouse with it, and rely on the Logitech Control Center software to configure the mouse speed/acceleration (I prefer it over the Mac OS X mouse acceleration).

The problem is that every time I boot up and log in, the mouse pointer will be extremely slow for about a minute, because it takes a minute before Mac OS X loads the Logitech Control Center. Is there any way to get Mac OS X to load it earlier?

EDIT in response to gentmatt's answer:

You are right, when I uncheck the "Reopen all windows when logging back in" box, then the Logitech Control Center loads almost immediately when I log in.

However, when I check that box, it doesn't take the Mac a whole minute to reload all my windows.  For example, I just tried it with 6 Firefox windows open and Activity Monitor open.  When I logged back in, all 6 Firefox windows and the Activity Monitor finished loading in no more than 10 seconds, however the Logitech Control Center still took about 1 full minute before it loaded.  I was watching the processes in the Activity Monitor, and during that minute there was no activity at all while I waited for the Logitech Control Center to load, and then all of a sudden 7 different processes loaded at the same time (backgroundinstruments, warmd_agent, imagent, AirPort Base Station Agent, Logitech Control Center Daemon, EpsonLowInkReminderAgent, and iTunes Helper).  Why would those processes take a minute before they loaded, when the Firefox windows and Activity Monitor finished loading after just 10 seconds?

EDIT (June 3):

@gentmatt: Do you run Firefox?  I just noticed that Firefox seems to be causing this problem.  When I restart with the "Reopen windows when logging back in" box and still have Firefox running, then I'll get the 60 second delay for the Logitech Control Center and other processes when I log in.  But if I quit Firefox before I restart, then there's no 60 second delay when I log in again and the Logitech Control Center and other processes load immediately when I log in.  I just tried restarting without Firefox open, but with some Chrome and Safari windows still open, and when I logged in again, the Logitech Control Center loaded almost immediately before the Chrome and Safari windows had finished reloading.  So the 60 second delay definitely seems related to Firefox.

The only way I can think of is to add the Logitech Control Center app in the list of app which launched at startup.

Preferences < Accounts < Login Items

But considering the fact it takes your Mac about a minute to load this app, I'm guessing the app is already in the list.

The fact that you have to wait a minute or so means your Mac is still booting (and loading all the software). I can't think of a way to increase this speed beside adding a faster drive or adding more RAM. But that's quite radical (and expensive) just to make your boot process a tiny bit faster.

An other thing you can do to speed up the boot process is to limit the apps your Mac has to open automatically (so it will get to the Logitech Control Center faster) and to clear your desktop (so you Mac don't have to waste time and RAM by loading all these icons and shortcuts).
This and more tips, are listed in this (rather old) article.


How to download images from an xml feed using terminal? How can I download png images from an xml feed that looks the following way?

<ListBucketResult xmlns="http://url1.com">
  <Name>imagesToUse</Name>
<Prefix/>
<Marker/>
<IsTruncated>false</IsTruncated>
<Contents>
  <ImageStuff>imagetodownload.png</ImageStuff>
  <Size>17293</Size>
</Contents>

I was taking a look at this question on here about the same topic, except that I don't need to rename them, just download them.

Being new to shell scripts, I'm not quite sure how to do this (although I can definitely do this in 2 minutes in objective-c).

I have tried creating the following script and running bash myscript.sh

#!/bin/bash
URL='https://theurlwiththexml.com'
i=0
for u in $(curl -s "$URL" |
           grep png |
           sed -E 's/.*<ImageStuff>(.+)<\/ImageStuff>/\1/'); do
    curl -s "$u" -o $i.png
    (( i++ ))
done

But nothing happens. It just prints another line without errors.

After curl http://theurlwiththexml.com:

sed -n 's,.*<ImageStuff>\(.*\.png\)<.*,\1,p'|xargs -I, curl http://url1.com/, -o ,

sed -n disables printing, \( and \) are a portable way to specify groups, and p prints the pattern space. xargs -I specifies a replacement string and curl -o specifies an output file.

Or using xmlstarlet, parallel, and wget:

xml sel -t -v //ImageStuff|parallel wget http://url1.com/{}

sel is an abbreviation for select, -t -v uses the value template, and //ImageStuff is an XPath expression that matches all ImageStuff nodes.


Safari bug renders browser useless Here's a video of what's going on. I've tried to completely reset Safari by following several methods on the web but the issue persists.

I'm on Mojave using Safari 12.1. I have no idea what this issue is and can't find anything like it on the web. Help!

So I just ended up installing the latest Beta version of Safari. I really just need the browser to test web development anyway. Not an ideal solution but whatever works.


Can I use Airplay without Apple TV or Airport I have my PC, IPad and a AirPlay compatible speaker

My question is:

Can I use AirPlay to hear my IPad music in my speaker only with ITunes software only, or I need necessarily to buy AppleTV or an AirPort in order to use AirPlay?

In order to use AirPlay is necessarily to have AppleTV o an AirPort??

Rogue Amoeba has a few applications that work together for this sort of thing. Check out Airfoil: http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/


Notes app broke on Mac Pro after macOS Sierra upgrade I upgraded to macOS Sierra and my Notes app crashes as soon as its launched.

Has anyone else faced this issue?

Crashed Thread:        13  Dispatch queue: NSManagedObjectContext 0x6080001c41a0

Exception Type:        EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)
Exception Codes:       0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:
*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'CKException', reason: 'data can not be nil'
abort() called
terminating with uncaught exception of type CKException

Application Specific Backtrace 1:
0   CoreFoundation                      0x00007fff9adb052b __exceptionPreprocess + 171
1   libobjc.A.dylib                     0x00007fffaf488cad objc_exception_throw + 48
2   CloudKit                            0x00007fff9a6d71d0 -[CKEncryptedData initWithEncryptedData:] + 0
3   CloudKit                            0x00007fff9a6d747b -[CKEncryptedData copyWithZone:] + 92
4   CloudKit                            0x00007fff9a6976cc -[CKRecord copyWithZone:] + 1706
5   NotesShared                         0x00007fffaa6ede18 -[ICCloudSyncingObject newlyCreatedRecord] + 75
6   NotesShared                         0x00007fffaa803ce0 -[ICNote(CloudKit) newlyCreatedRecord] + 65
7   NotesShared                         0x00007fffaa6be0aa +[ICCloudContext deduplicatedRecordsForCloudObjects:] + 703
8   NotesShared                         0x00007fffaa6b8e76 -[ICCloudContext operationsToModifyRecordsForCloudObjectsToSave:delete:deleteShares:saveUserSpecificRecords:addDependencies:] + 1037
9   NotesShared                         0x00007fffaa6c2208 -[ICCloudContext _processCloudObjects:completionHandler:] + 1914
10  NotesShared                         0x00007fffaa6c19fd __53-[ICCloudContext processObjectIDs:completionHandler:]_block_invoke

I'm not sure currently, but basically some text/special symbols is to blame.
As stated here: http://forums.macrumors.com/threads/notes-crashing-in-macos-sierra.2000203/

Katalyst2 said: ↑
Me too -- mid-2013 MBA 13. Damn annoying!
EDIT: And as usual, as soon as I post a problem report, I somehow manage to fix it :)
What I just did now was log into iCloud.com and I made a tiny edit to one of my notes (in my case, I deleted one line on a to-do list). Then I waited a few seconds for the data to refresh, and then I tried opening Notes locally again.
Let us know if this works.


MacBook Pro M1 external display connection issue I am trying to connect my 2020 MacBook Pro (M1) to an external display via a thunderbolt 3 dock.
The dock is the Kensington SD5200T which supports M1 Macs with 1 external display.
The screen I am trying to connect to is the ASUS PG349Q via DisplayPort (1.2).
The MacBook is running the latest version of macOS (Big Sur 11.2.3).
When I connect the MacBook to the dock using the included Thunderbolt 3 cable the internal display flickers (resolution changes, windows flash on and off the display) until it eventually connects to the external display (this can take upwards of 1 minute).
I made a video demonstrating the problem, it can be found here.
I have tried the dock and MacBook with an LG 5k thunderbolt display which works fine and I'm using the DisplayPort cable from my PC so I know the cable isn't the issue.
Does anyone know how to fix this?
Update:
I downloaded SwitchresX but unfortunately, it did not resolve my issue.
Then I tried a DisplayPort to USB-C cable connected directly to the MacBook but this also didn't work (no video output).
However, I tried connecting the dock's DisplayPort to the monitor's HDMI (1.4) port using an adapter and it works! I only get 50Hz instead of the monitors 120hz but at this point, I'll take this as a win.
Thank you to everyone who commented, I really appreciate the help.

Numerous people report issues with ultra wide screens (width > 2*height) and M1 Macs. By my count, there have been three questions here in the past week.  There are 12 pages in this macrumors thread.
I suggest a web search for "Mac m1 ultrawide" to get a feel for the number of problems.
Apple have acknowledged the issue, but are yet to provide a fix. For a report on this 9to5Mac.
To reduce the number of uncertainties, try and get the monitor to work without any dock.  When that fails, contact Apple.
I am aware that this "answer" does nothing to resolve problems with utrawides, it is little more than a pointer to it being a widespread issue.


TimeMachine backups on multiple volumes? My TimeCapsule's file system got damaged and I lost my TimeMachine backups. It it possible to backup to two different volumes, for redundancy?

Yes, when you go to the Time Machine preferences, just select Use Both when adding the additional drive.

From: OS X El Capitan: Use multiple backup disks

  Time Machine rotates the backup schedule among the disks. For each disk, Time Machine backs up everything that’s changed since the last time that disk was used. If you designated items that shouldn’t be backed up, the list of excluded items applies to all backup disks.

  If you use multiple backup disks, when you click the Time Machine icon  in the menu bar and choose Enter Time Machine, you see the timeline for all the accessible disks used for backing up. To see the timeline for a specific disk, click the Time Machine icon, press the Option key, then choose Browse Other Backup Disks.

Note that there is a similar page for each of the last few major OS X releases too.


Delete definitely a message from Mail I am subscribed to a newsletter, everyday I get emails but once I read them I delete them. After sending them to the trash and emptying it, next day I receive the usual email, but the previous email is also shown below the new email. The problem happens with my gmail and hotmail accounts.

How can I set things up so that when I delete a mail from my Gmail Inbox, it also gets deleted on the servers and other devices?

I don't want them to be somewhere around I don't need them. Every time I receive an email from the newsletter I got a list of all the emails dating back to 3 or more months. I remember I delete them one by one and then emptying the trash but no luck next day there were all of them as part of the "conversation".

There is a several hundred word long tutorial,

Full Step-by-Step Tutorial  taken from here, that I have used to solve this problem so in addition to the author testing it, I too have things fully working.

Here are the steps from the article as well as details from the two key steps.

Step 1: Configure Apple Mail preferences

Step 2: Assign mailbox functions

Step 3: Set the [Gmail]/ prefix on custom labels

Step 4: Designate which labels show in IMAP

Since this is the most important step, here are the details

  While you’re in the Labels tab, uncheck the “Show in IMAP” box for All
  Mail because you don’t want that showing up in Apple Mail anymore.
  This is important to ensure the delete button sends messages to the
  Trash in Mail.app. The “Show in IMAP” box will determine which labels
  appear in Apple Mail. Feel free to uncheck the “Show in IMAP” box for
  any other labels while you’re at it. Changes are saved automatically.

Step 5: Forwarding and POP/IMAP

This also is a key step where google allows you to delete a message once it's removed from tha “last visible IMAP folder.” By hiding the All Mail label in IMAP, there should only be one “visible” copy of your message, so when you delete the message in Mail, it will now move the message to the Trash.

Step 6: Restart Apple Mail

Step 7: Test it out

I've tested this on Lion 10.7.5 and works perfectly.
All images are from Jeff Schuette as is the quoted text explaining how google can be set up to work like all the rest of the Mail servers to delete messages when you trash them.


How can I stop "Word is finishing analyzing your document"? I'm writing a document about 100 pages with MS Office 2011 for Mac. While I'm editing the content, Word would halt almost every minutes with "Word is finishing analyzing your document" message and a running progress bar.

At first it's only a short pause; however, as the document gets larger, the halt time gets longer too. Now it would take about 10 seconds to finish each "analyzing", and while Word is "analyzing" any operation is not accepted, until the progress bar runs to the end. And that's driving me crazy.

I've done the search and I know that problem existed since 2004. But all this year it seemed not to be fixed with some consistent method.

I'm using a Apple Mac OS X version of Office, and I don't have any pieces of software from Adobe installed. No PDFMaker, no PDFWriter, no PDF{anything}, no Acrobat, no Acrobat Reader, no CS, even Flash is manually removed.
The "Add-Ins" folder inside Office folder is empty -- I've just ensured that with "sudo rm -Rf *" terminal command under that directory.
The "Startup/Word" folder is also empty, too.
There is no such template called PDFmaker.dot or PDF{anything} in the template tree: I've check them all.
Auto spell check is off. Auto grammar check is off, Auto correction is off. Auto saving is off.

The only thing I've suspected now, is Auto-Text. That document is a technical spec and it's filled with figure captions, table captions, foot-notes, and cross-references. That message would almost surely show up when I'm performing adding something in the middle of document that will push some content to the next page. But I can't find a way to turn-off the auto-update of Auto-Text.

Any idea would be appreciated -- but please focus on MS Office. That's my job and I've to be "compatible" with others.

How to stop word 'finishing analysing your document' - Go to:
Word/preferences/edit. Then untick 'keep track of formatting'. It'll stop this from happening.

Note however - if you want to 'select all' (from the 'style' box - when selecting a style-type to change), you need to re-tick the above box.


Sublime Text 2 in OSX: all fonts are bold regardless of theme or font I have a weird problem on mac (OSX 10.7): any theme or font I choose - all fonts appear in bold. I sync all settings with Dropbox and on Windows 7 and Ubuntu the fonts are normal.

Don't know if it's an OSX problem or sublime, but did anyone run into this issue?

on retina screen, i was used "font_options": ["gray_antialias"] and got perfect result


Apple Mail 9.2: How to specify port and SSL options for incoming and outgoing IMAP servers? When setting up a new IMAP account in Apple Mail 9.2, it gives me no option to specify the incoming and outgoing ports, not SSL options. See screenshot below.

The ability to do this would be most helpful as some mail accounts do vary from the norm in terms of default ports and SSL. When I do fill in all the fields asked for, I get the spinning progress animation for a long time before it gives up with an error (shown). I have no idea if it had tried several different ports (including the ones I want to use) or if it just kept retrying on the same (wrong settings).

Other email clients give the option to set the ports. At the moment I don't have these available and need to use Apple Mail.

OK... this is irritating, but possible... you used to be able to force it to ignore at that point, then set it up manually from the Accounts pane.

The El Capitan version looks like you need to do that initial setup from System Prefs > Internet Accounts, rather than directly in Mail itself.

Start from the right pane - 'Add Other Account...' [scroll down to see it, for some reason the + - buttons are unclickable. If you do, they grey out]
then Mail Account.

You get a very similar dialog as in your question - fill it in as before.
It will error, as before - the major difference being that 'Sign In' changes to 'Next'

& you're in... hit Next & select Mail &/or Notes & Done.
Close the Prefs.

If Mail is open, quit & relaunch.

Mail prefs/Accounts now has the bare bones of your new account, from which you can manually set up all the necessary ports, using the Advanced tab for incoming prefs & the still rather annoying Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) drop menu for outgoing.


Is it possible to have the dock in different positions in different desktop? Is it possible to have the dock in different positions in different desktops? In particular I'd like to change the settings between a normal desktop and a desktop where there's an app at full screen. In this way I'd keep the dock in lower side of the desktop when there's an app at full screen and vertically on the left side during normal use.

I have this problem that, sicne I usually have the dock vertically on the left, it pops out everytime i go to the far left in an app I'm using with full screen, and using this app I have to move the mouse to the left quite often.

No that is not possible. The dock location is set on the System Preferences/Dock pane. I tried setting it different for different spaces but all spaces (desktops) used the same setting.


Count Lines Viewed from command 'less' I run command less

ls /usr/bin | less

got many lines of directories.

2to3-
2to3-2.7
AssetCacheLocatorUtil
AssetCacheManagerUtil
AssetCacheTetheratorUtil
BuildStrings
CpMac
...

How to enumerate them ?

According to its man page:

-N or --LINE-NUMBERS
      Causes  a  line  number to be displayed at the beginning of each
      line in the display.

So:

ls /usr/bin | less -N
  1 2to3
  2 2to3-
  3 2to3-2.7
  4 2to32.6
  ....


iCloud numbers reference date/value from another table I am trying to create a daily budget tracker with separate tables for each month, which I have created.  I now want a front/first table to show:

the balance as at today's date
the amount spent today (if any)
and maybe the balance tomorrow (not too bothered about this one if too difficult).

I would like to say 'if 'January 2016::A1 = TODAY(), January 2016::E1 or if January 2016::A2 = TODAY(), January 2016::E2 and so on looking at each date value across all tables in columns A and when it finds today's date to enter the value in the corresponding E column.

Hopefully this is possible?

Many thanks

If you have a sheet for each month then simply, on the next month in question Edit the balance Bought Forward cell, start with = and then flick back to the previous table and click on the cell with the total for the month. this will then bring that balance forward - repeat the process for all the months and it will show you the projected balances for the year. I use the same type of system, have for many years and it works very well.


Why is my launchd job running at boot even with RunAtLoad key set to false? I have a launchd plist file that I use to run a program at a selected time every day. It works, but it also runs the program whenever I boot the computer or unload and reload the job using the GUI program LaunchControl---even though I have the RunAtLoad key set to false?

The complete plist file is below; it is located in /Library/LaunchAgents/:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>RunAtLoad</key>
    <false/>
    <key>KeepAlive</key>
    <dict>
        <key>SuccessfulExit</key>
        <false/>
    </dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.adbot.plist</string>
    <key>LowPriorityIO</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Program</key>
    <string>/Users/wcm1/programming/ricedh/adbot/adbot.py</string>
    <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/com.adbot.plist.err</string>
    <key>StandardOutPath</key>
    <string>/tmp/com.adbot.plist.out</string>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>10</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>30</integer>
        </dict>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

Thoughts?

You likely have an interaction between the SuccessfulExit and RunAtLoad keys. The launchd plist manual page mentions an inversion takes place if RunAtLoad is set
:

  SuccessfulExit

  If true, the job will be restarted as long as the program exits and with an exit status of zero.

  If false, the job will be restarted in the inverse condition.  This key implies that "RunAtLoad" is set to true, since the job needs to run at least once  before we can get an exit status.

Others have struggled with this behaviour, see launchd ignores RunAtLoad=false.


Host Wi-Fi Access Point without tethering How can I make my MacBook host a WPA2-encrypted wireless access point without tethering?

I don't want to share my Internet connection and I don't want an ad-hoc network, instead I want to host a real /24 closed Wi-Fi network using just my MacBook.

I'm not sure how to provide it with a specific network range however the best way to make an ad-hoc network on your Mac is to disconnect from any other network (as you mentioned you don't want to share a connection you want to make a new one), open System Preferences -> Sharing -> Internet Sharing and share wireless over wireless, it should give you the option to configure your SSID and Security from the same settings page.Hope this helps!


Dock Question - Application folders with the Applications I know this may be sacrilege but the OCD monster in me really would like to create application folders on the left side of the dock and have them fan out when I wanted to use them.

For example, having all the Microsoft Office apps in a fan to choose Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc. Having a fan with easy access to apps like System Preferences, Console, Terminal and Disk Utility. Putting the iOS apps like Music, Photos, Messages and FaceTime in a folder to fan out. Whatever I set the folder icon to be should be displayed in the Dock for that group.

Yes, there are everyday apps like browsers, email and Xcode that I still want explicitly on the dock as individual icons. I know I can have folders to the right, but I prefer to use that space for my project folders, Documents, Downloads and open windows. I would prefer putting the moderately used apps in a place where I can still access them from the Dock without overextending or opening via a Finder window or desktop folder.

Thanks.

PS: What's the deal with Dock spacers? Why do they need to be a full icon width? Can't we have a half-width option?

This is a partial answer.

You can put any group of items in a Dock fan by putting symlinks to each of them in a directory, and dragging that directory from Finder to Dock.  You may need to change its options to Fan after dragging it in.  You can also paste any image into the folder's icon in a Get Info window.

But as far as I know, you're stuck with it on the right unless you put the whole Dock on the left edge of the screen.


What solutions exist when apps don't download or update on iOS 6? I've been having a problem with installing and updating apps after upgrading to iOS 6 on my iPad (3rd gen). When I click the Install or Update button the button, it turns inactive with "Installing" word on it, while the app's icon on the SpringBoard says "Waiting".

I tried even buying a new app, but it is exactly the same. Deleting the app and trying again doesn't help. What's interesting the problem doesn't seem to affect my iPhone 4S.

I noticed several people at Apple Support Communities are affected by this, too.

I had the same problem and after none of the other suggestions worked (changing date/time, shutting down and restarting), I went to Settings > iTunes & App Stores, then clicked on Apple ID > Sign Out.  After signing back in, I was able to start downloading apps again.


Fusion drive upgrade: how to get my installation back afterwards? I'm planning an upgrade of my iMac 27". An SSD will be added and combined with the existing HDD into a Fusion Drive. I have just reinstalled everything recently and like to keep this installation.
My plan is to clone the HDD to an external drive using SuperDuper or something along these lines, the install and create the Fusion Drive and afterwards clone back onto the Fusion Drive.

Will this work? Or will cloning back "destroy" the Fusion Drive setup?

Personally I did the same thing. No, Cloning and restoring the clone to the fusion drive will not "Destroy" the fusion drive.


How can I share Apple Remote Desktop's list of machines to other computers? We have a server that runs ARD and we use it for Network Discovery. I'm in the process of writing a few scripts to grab the ARD lists and push them to Support Analysts machines.

However the com.apple.RemoteDesktop.plist is not the key file here.

Does anybody know if this is possible?

I believe you can do this with automator.  You can have an automator script pull your list of ARD computers, (I suppose you could do this from the remote task server as well,) and then execute various functions after that list is pulled in.

You can also of course execute AppleScripts (and therefore shell scripts,) through Automator as well, so this should be all you need.

In short: Yes!


Which wifi repeater to buy that can be OS X configured? I need to extend my Wi-Fi and would like the type that just plugs into the mains.

I cannot find a repeater or extender that does not use Windows to configure.

Is there a repeater or extender which can be configured with OS X?

You can use Apple's AirPort Express to extend wireless networks. This can be configured from AirPort Utility in OS X.


iCloud says "Password is wrong", but I think it's correct iCloud says "Password is wrong", but I think it's correct. How should I proceed?

Head over to https://iforgot.apple.com/ and follow the procedure there, including contacting Apple Support if everything else fails.

When an account gets locked - even the correct password won’t work so talking to someone that can help you in a locked account situation is the best strategy since they will also be sure you’ve used the correct troubleshooting steps like checking system date, restarting the device, trying another network based on what their dashboard shows for your account.


How can i get my apple id by terminal in MacBook? How can i get my apple id via terminal command?
I tested dscl command in my terminal with the following parameters?

dscl . -list /Users AppleID

dscl . -list /Users UniqueID

But i didn't get anything with these commands. I need to get my apple id via command line.
Any suggestion?

The information about the currently logged in Apple ID can be retrieved with the following command: defaults read MobileMeAccounts Accounts
Alternatively, you can take a look at the tool mas-cli. With the command mas account you can also query the Apple ID.


Can I simply install a fresh OS X without a thumb drive? I've always installed a new OS X install via a thumb drive. However, at that time, I only had a single hard drive. Now, I have two hard drives, but the question is: Do I still need a thumb drive now?

I would say I simply copy my main installation to my second hard drive (Carbon Copy Cloner?) and then format the main drive and simply run the installer, stored on the second drive and install OS X on the first drive. No need for a thumb drive, right?

That should be possible. At least it was possible for previous OS X's, but I don't see why they changed it. So yes, you can run the installer from the second hard drive onto the first one. You can even install any other OS X onto another partition on the same hard drive.


How to restore hidden Library folder in Time Machine I want to restore the hidden user Library folder from Time Machine but I am unable to see it when I enter Time Machine. Read on.

I thought the hidden Library folder would appear if I used the Terminal command to either reveal the hidden Library folder AND/OR to show all hidden files and folders. Both commands work outside of Time Machine but they don't show any hidden files or folders when I am in Time Machine space.

Is it possible to see and/or restore the hidden Library folder in Time Machine?

I appreciate any help? I'm stuck.

P.S. I am using 10.8.1 if that is helpful to know. And the Time Machine backup that I am trying to restore my Library folder from was from my previous hard drive in which I was also running 10.8.1. I switched to a new hard drive.

If you use the Finder's menu "goto" while holding down the Alt, the library folder is visible in the menu:

Select it. The finder shows the content of /Users/<your name>/Library. Now start Time Machine by clicking on its icon in the dock – violà, you have what you want:

When you want to access another invisible folder that is not listed in the 'Go' list in Finder you can go to the same folder and choose for 'Go to Folder' or CommandShiftG. Here you can type in any location you want to goto.


Launch Genius via AppleScript I would like to launch a Genius playlist for the currently playing song in iTunes via an AppleScript.

A prerequisite would be for the script to work when iTunes is in full screen.

And ideally, it wouldn't :

bring iTunes to front
leave an error message when genius isn't available for that song
depend on the system language

I found this script, but it doesn't work for me when iTunes is in full screen. Still, it's a great start.

It would maybe be possible to use the protocol the iOS "Remote" app uses, but that seems to be overkill.

Any help would be appreciated.

(the goal is to launch genius from softwares like Keyboard Maestro or Alfred)

Try this :

tell application "iTunes" to try
    activate
    with timeout of 10 seconds
        reveal current track -- error if no current track
        set tName to name of (first window whose its class is browser window or its class is playlist window)
    end timeout
on error
    return "Can't find track!"
end try

tell application "System Events"
    tell application process "iTunes"
        try
            set b to (first button of window tName whose value of attribute "AXDescription" is "Genius")
            if not (enabled of b) then return "Genius button disabled" -- (film, video clip,...)
            perform action "AXPress" of b
        on error -- no Genius button (radio, podcast, .....) playlist
            return "Can't create genius list from that track!"
        end try
        delay 2
        tell front window to if value of attribute "AXSubRole" is "AXDialog" then -- dialog opened.
            perform action "AXPress" of button "OK" -- close the dialog
            return "Can't create genius list from that track!"
        end if
    end tell
end tell
return "Done"


Convert entire iTunes library to MP3 then delete old version? Is there an easy way to Convert an entire iTunes library to MP3 format then delete old version? I know you can do it manually, but then you have to go check every other song and delete it, is there a fast and easy way?

I would select all the music you want converted, and make a playlist out of them. Next convert the files. Then select all the songs in your new playlist and delete them from your library by pressing Option Delete (OS X) or Shift Delete (Windows).

Additionally, I hope you aren't converting lossy music to MP3, as that would produce lesser quality files for no benefit.


Yosemite: prevent 'Bring All to Front' behaviour on Command-Tab On Yosemite, using Command+Tab will bring all the windows of the selected application on top of everything else, similarly to using 'Window->Bring All to Front' when inside the application.

Note that Yosemite does manage interleaved windows, when manually clicking on background windows. It is possible to have two applications A and B, each with two windows each, and have (front-to-back) A1, B1, A2, B2 interleaved windows.

However, when using Command+Tab to select application A(or clicking on the application icon in the dock) will bring A1 and A2 on top of everything else.

It would be really nice to be able to only bring on top the last used window of a given application (namely A1), instead of all of them, hence preserving the interleaving of the other windows.

I'm not looking for Command-Tab to display all existing windows of all applications (like Witch, proposed in other answers), just not to bring all windows to front. and would like to avoid using Exposé/Mission Control (which requires more inputs).

Interestingly, I can already use SpotLight search with 'Terminal' for example, and this will bring the last active Terminal window in front, but not the other ones. This is what I would like to happen when using Command+Tab.

Do you know if there is any way to do this? I'm happy with some esoteric command-line solution.

Cheers,
Chaos

I had the need to run a terminal (to do git commits) over the top of another window (which shows diffs between files). I therefore ran in terminal...

sleep 2; open -a Terminal

Then switched to the diff window with CMD+Tab. After two seconds, Mac OS X foregrounded the single Terminal window I was typing commands in.


RAID system with external hardrives I have a few external ssd hardrives (My Passport, in my case). I would like to integrate them within a system that provides reliability in case of failure, by producing redundant information across the devices, seamlessly from the User point of view.

What would be a product worth considering?

First let's clarify one thing: RAID is not the same as backup. Building a RAID array out of several (presumably USB) external drives would have many drawbacks. See this question I asked a while back for the explanation. I suspect what you really want is passive and seamless disk/data backup in which case OS X's built-in Time Machine works great. And if you have Mountain Lion it is capable of using all of your external drives to store the backups.


Lost username and password to new Mac Got Mac mini 2011 Lion Server today. Fitted extra RAM. Started up fine. Put in first bits of info. Then it does the restart and duh! Didn't write down user name and password. Did connect to internet via LAN Ethernet but cannot use wireless as needs the MAC number for to use as I setup router this way.

I am not a techie and have no idea what to do. Lion came pre-installed so no install disk and no drive anyway.

When I start up asks for username and password and of course in my haste never wrote a blasted thing down. Anyone suggest anyway out of this impasse?

Boot the mini while holding down the Option (Alt) key. It should give you a menu where you can select the Lion Recovery partition. From there, you can reset the passwords or (if needed) reinstall the OS.


Problem with Apple Time Capsule Being Used to Extend a Wireless Network I have a Time Capsule (it's the last version, not the current one) that is connected to my FIOS modem and serves as the base station for my home wireless network in my three story house.

I have an older Time Capsule (two versions ago) that I have been using to extend the network.

The base station is on third floor. Testing near the 3rd Floor time Capsule I get download speeds of 35 - 55mb.

Near my chromecast enabled television on the first floor, with the extender Time Capsule either on the second floor or first floor, I used to get download speeds of 5 - 15 mb, good enough for Netflix.

Suddenly, I'm getting download speeds by the television of 0.02 mb.

It I turn off the extending Time Capsule, so the whole house has to rely on the one base station Time Capsule on the third floor, I get rates of .8mb - 4mb on the first floor near the TV, not usually enough to reliably use Netflix.

In the first floor kitchen, which is two floors below, but directly under, the base station Time Capsule, I get 15mb - 35mb download speed. But I don't need Netflix in the kitchen!

Is the extender Time Capsule just broken?Can it be fixed? Is it worth fixing?If I replace do I have to use an Apple product like the Airport Express, or will any wireless router work?

It sounds like the Time Capsule isn't functioning properly. It may be worth scheduling a free appt at the Apple Genius Bar. They can tell you if there is a recall or if by some chance the repair/replacement is covered under warranty. Perhaps it needs a firmware upgrade? You can check in the Airport Utility on a Mac or iOS device. More info here on Apple's website.

One more thing to consider... Since you are getting decently fast speeds in one location, but not in another, is it possible that there could be something interfering? Oftentimes a refrigerator, microwave, metal paneling in a wall, etc. can disrupt the WiFi signal—although I would expect the connection to be intermittent and fairly slow.

You may consider switching the two Time Capsules to see if the same issues occur with the other one as well. This can at least isolate it to either being a defective Time Capsule, or some other environmental element. It could also be a defect with the Chromecast. Is that possible?

Aren't wireless issues fun?? :) so many possibilities!

Most name brand wireless routers can work as an extender of an existing network. So, no, it definitely doesn't have to be an Apple product. However, make sure all extenders are in "bridge mode" so that they truly do act as an extender and aren't trying to create their own subnets. If you do get another router, it will not be in bridge mode out-of-box. You'll need to configure that using the router manufacturer's documentation.


Is there a way to enable emoji on TouchBar for every text field? I don't see any other advantages of TouchBar xD. So emoji enabled only in certain apple apps.

I know, that it's app support story, but what about browsers? I want, for example, to use emoji in Facebook chat, or other web based chats in Chrome.

Does the Touch Bar support emoji for every field?

Yes.  The touch bar will support practically anything the developer wants to include.  The more appropriate question is, can you enable it?

Not unless the developer of the app allows you to.

The Touch Bar is an extension of the UI and is meant as another interface that the developer can utilize the enhance the experience.  See About The Touch Bar.

So, from the same document, you can see that emogis are available via the character picker but that character picker won't be available in the App unless the App developer enables it.