Failed time machine backup: volume not available anymore How do I remount my existing backup without loosing the data on the existing backup and why did this happen?

I have a macbook that makes time machine backups to a time capsule.

Now time machine complains that it can't mount the backup volume and do a backup. I checked in finder and still see the network drive mounted for time machine backups in finder. Earlier I changed the admin password for the time capsule, but this shouldn't influence the backup right?

When I go to console.app I get following messages from the backupd service

com.apple.backupd: Starting manual backup
com.apple.backupd: Attempting to mount network destination URL: afp://Short%20TimeCapsule%20Name;AUTH=SRP@Long-Time-Capusle-Name.local/Data
com.apple.backupd: NAConnectToServerSync failed with error: 80 for url: afp://Short%20TimeCapsule%20Name;AUTH=SRP@Long-Time-Capusle-Name.local/Data
com.apple.backupd: Backup failed with error: 19

This isn't definitive, but the first thing to check is whether your system can mount the Time Capsule drive at all. Eject the Time Capsule drive if mounted, reboot your system, reconnect it, and see if it shows up in Finder and Disk Utility.

If not, there's a disk mount problem. You need to figure that out first, because Time Machine will not run without a known disk target to write to.

If the disk does show up, then there's some issue with Time Machine. It could be corruption of your backups, or of your Time Machine binary, or something related.

Sorry this isn't definitive, but I'd recommend checking disk status first to isolate the problem.


Photo backup and management I have run out of space on my 16gb iPad . Over 7.2 go are my photos and video. Is it possible to separate my photos and keep most on iCloud or iTunes, accessing only when I wish to review them.  How can I do so if possible.  I need to free up space. Also, any quick way to delete duplicate photos or files?

Mac or PC? It makes a difference.

Recently on the PC my wife was having a similar problem. The phone will sync everything in the pictures folder. So I created a sub folder called iPhone and set the sync in iTunes to only sync with that folder and not the whole pictures folder. Now she just has to move the pics she wants on the phone to that folder.

On the Mac (going from memory here, so...) you can actually select which iPhoto albums you sync with the iPad. So instead of all photos/videos select only the albums you want/need on the iPad itself.

Make sense?


"Out of Application Memory" Error MacBook Pro (retina) [Mavericks] Looking for some information on this issue.

I have a brand new Macbook pro with nothing on it and am trying to download VMware Fusion 6.0 which is about 530 MB, with no other applications running other than Safari.

I get 1/5 to 1/2 way thru the download and the system gives me this error and asks me to start shutting down applications (only Finder and Safari show in window).  Then it quickly freezes and I have to hard-reboot to recover.

Apple support doesn't know what problem is and is not saying much about if they have ever had someone else report this issue.  Seems to be a lot online about this problem so this is hard to believe.  Does anyone have any information about this issue and if Apple has actually acknowledged the problem yet?

It's difficult to recommend a straight-forward solution, but here are some things I would do to isolate/resolve the issue:

Open your Activity monitor in Utilities and look at the memory tab/Load.
Use another browser (Firefox, Chrome) to see whether the problem is related to Safari
Log in as another user (create new account if necessary) and try from there to see whether it is account-related
Quit Safari and delete ~/Library/Safari/Downloads.plist
Last not least check your download source (link) for the VMware Fusion 6.0


Can I delete my iPhoto themes folder (/Library/Application Support/iPhoto/Themes)? I have no interest in ever using them, although I do use iPhoto to store my photos. Will deleting the entire Themes folder mess anything up?

I found if you leave all the folders starting with Printing... and the Assets folder that are in the /Library/Application Support/iPhoto/Themes folder, you can still print.

Just delete all the other folders and you will regain a chunk of disk space.


iTunes 12 Apple Music search: is there a way to play all songs returned by search? Using iTunes 12 on Mac.  I search for an artist in Apple Music.  I get results, including the artist page, albums, songs.  I want to explore this artist, so I want to listen to a stream of his or her songs.  I can only seem to play one song at a time, each with a new play click, or tediously create a playlist by adding each individual song to My Music, then creating a playlist.  Is there no way to stream search results in toto?

In iTunes 12.3.1, you can play multiple songs from search results by playing one of the songs listed on the initial search results page -- the one divided into "Top Results" "Songs" "Albums" etc. iTunes will continue playing from your search results after the initial song.

However, you cannot play multiple songs automatically from the detailed search results, e.g. if you click on "Songs" to see the all of the matching songs, and play one from there, it will stop playing at the end of the selected song.


How to enable VT-x for Docker on MacPro 2008 So I've read that it is possible to enable Virtualisation on MacPro 2008 however I do not find how.

I know that I have VMX since the output of sysctl -a | grep machdep.cpu.features is :

machdep.cpu.features: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH DS ACPI MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 SS HTT TM PBE SSE3 DTES64 MON DSCPL VMX EST TM2 SSSE3 CX16 TPR PDCM SSE4.1

But I think what I need to enable is the virtualisaiton support which I can check with : sysctl kern.hv_support and output me

kern.hv_support: 0

So how can I enable it ? I've tried to install the EFI update from this official link but it tell me than the update is "not necessary".

The CPU in the Mac Pro 2008 does have VT-x support, so the CPU has the capability in itself.

However, you need to update the EFI firmware to actually enable the support so it can be used from macOS / OS X. You'll need to update to version 1.3.

You can find the download link here:

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL95?locale=en_US

You can find the official explanation from Apple here:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203296

If you already have the EFI update installed, then VT-x should be enabled by default.

If it still isn't you can find the source code for a program on the link below that will both tell you the current state (enabled/disabled) for each CPU-code, and then turn on VT-x.

https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Enable_VT-X_on_Mac_Pro_(Early_2008)

The program requires you to be running Linux on the Mac Pro. You could also run a virtual machine (although slowly without VT-x) in order to run the Linux program from there.

The last thing to try if you cannot get the official EFI updater to install the EFI update, is to flash the firmware manually by following the instructions on this link:

https://pubmem.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/flash-efi-firmware-update-manually-on-a-macbook-51/

However, this is very risky if you don't know what you're doing. You risk bricking the computer if you flash the wrong file.


How to fix a MacBook's sound output which is stuck on headphones? I have a late 2008 My MacBook running OS X Yosemite. It suddenly stopped playing audio through the internal speakers. I've checked Sound under System Preferences, and headphones show up as the selected device for sound output. I tried connecting and disconnecting some headphones, and the MacBook did change the output to internal speakers, but only for a second. I then tried restarting the MacBook to see if it was something with software but it stayed the same. I also tried lightly cleaning the headphone port with a q-tip but that did not work.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to resolve the issue?

Try getting some compressed air at Wal-Mart or Best Buy or another retailer and blow the headphone jack clean with that. A can will cost about $5 and you'll need to be 18 or older to buy it.

If it still doesn't work after that, the headphone jack will likely need to be replaced. Unless you do electronics repair, find a professional to replace it for you.


Lost All Files in a folder because of undo on my mac What just happened? I have a flash drive of mine with a lot of school files that I just planned on doing a format. So before I went to Disk Utility then erasing it to the format I wanted, First I backed-up all its files by creating a new folder on my desktop then just copy pasted all my files from the flash drive to this new folder I just created. Afterwards, I went on erasing my flash drive therefore losing all it's files but It's okay cause I did a backup anyways.

Now when I was just about to put the the files from the new folder to the newly formatted flash drive, I was about to select all by doing shortcut command "command + a" I accidentally pressed "command + z" instead doing an undo and all the files were lost! After that, finder doesn't even allow me to do a redo!

Please help those are a lot of important files now they're all gone in just 1 second and they're not even in the trash. I did a spotlight search of some files I can remember but I still can't find one!

If I understand the sequence:

you had files only on USB and no backup of those files
you pasted those files on to the Mac and we don’t know if you have Time Machine or other backup on the mac
you deleted the files on USB
the files for deleted off the mac (undo of paste is the suspect, but in the end, it doesn’t matter how they went missing)

The only saving grace or reason I would keep using a Mac in this situation would be to open Time Machine and see if there are any local snapshots to recover the data. If there was a local snapshot made any time after you pasted the files - they are easily recoverable - even if your “backup external disk” isn’t connected or mounted.

If you don’t have a backup, shut down the Mac and don’t run the OS until you’re sure you will or won’t pay to recover the files.

Recovering an accidentally deleted  folder in OSX - no Time Machine or backup available
How to recover a deleted file on Mac OS X?


Allowing VNC to control computer under 10.14 (Mojave) I've seen some topics asking for help (others offering it) re: apps asking for permission to use accesibility functions with regards to VNC in Mojave. RealVNC has a page describing the issue and a fix for their client. I use iTeleport, which works with macOS' own screen sharing. The connect app is not really maintained anymore but it's still a great option for iPhone owners.

The problem is, Mojave left it function as view-only and that renders virtually useless.

So, how do you fix this?

I couldn't find an answer online so I took to checking for incoming connections and also in the list of active processes so I could find how to fix it. You need to grant Accesibility privileges to AppleVNCServer which you can find under /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/AppleVNCServer.bundle/Contents/MacOS/AppleVNCServer


What's the max resolution for mini DisplayPort connected to a 2013 MacBook Air? I've got a new 2013 MacBook Air 13", with Intel HD Graphics 5000, and it came with a Mini DisplayPort to VGA adapter within the box. A mini DisplayPort to DVI adapter is also available from Apple.

An ASUS PB278Q 27" 5ms WQHD (2560 x 1440) only gets 1920x1080 resolution using the VGA adapter. I'm not aware of VGA being limited to 1080p, and this is not advertised at all anywhere on the ordering page.

As per Google search of Apple's quite scattered and incomplete docs on the matter, which, in the end, still don't cover all custom-order options provided immediately on the ordering page for a MacBook Air, both VGA and DVI adapters apparently only support up to 1920x1200 resolutions, with dual-link DVI being required for "resolutions above 1920 x 1200" (what does this even mean, I'm buying a MacBook Air, what's "above 1920x1200"?).  http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3382

Why resolutions of Mini DisplayPort to VGA and DVI adapters is limited to 1920x1200?
What is the maximum resolution of Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI adapter as ordered for mid-2013 MacBook Air 13?
Does Apple's official HDMI adapter, "Belkin Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter", support "resolutions above 1920x1200"?  Which ones would that be?
What resolutions would I get with a third-party miniDP to DP cables or adapters, or miniDP to HDMI?

You can get full resolution with mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort or mini DisplayPort to Dual-link DVI.  Dual-link DVI supports up to 2560x1600 pixels resolution.  DisplayPort supports that resolution or even higher.

You will not get full resolution with mini DisplayPort to DVI.  DVI is limited to 1920x1200 or something similar.  You usually won't get full resolution with mini DisplayPort to VGA.

I do not know whether you get full resolution with mini DisplayPort to HDMI.  I think it depends upon your graphics card.

Bottom line. I would recommend using mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort.


How to disable keyboard play button for Keynote I use music through Spotify while presenting. I want to move completely to Keynote from PowerPoint but one of the things keeping me from doing so is that the play button on the keyboard starts and stops the presentation in Keynote as opposed to starting/stopping music in Spotify. Is there anyway to remove this key binding from Keynote?

What I am reading here is that you want to..

Remove and/or replace the key binding in Keynote that starts/stops a presentation
Remap that keybinding to Spotify

There is a program that does it, it's called Karabiner.  It will allow you to remap keybindings at the application level.


My Fusion Drive Partitioning Seems Wrong/Strange/Wonky See below for diskutil list of my 3TB fusion drive (iMac 27" late 2014) running High Sierra: I assume disk0 is the HD and disk1 is the SSD, and disk2 is the virtual combo that is mounted as my "HD". But I've got a 2 questions:

Why does disk0 have two Apple_CoreStorage partitions? I'd like to do a clean install of Mojave for my upgrade, and if the partitioning is wrong, how do I fix? I assume erasing the disk as part of the upgrade won't change the partitioning. And partitions 2 and 4 are not adjacent, so not clear how I'd merge. And Disk Utility just shows a single 3.1TB drive. Or should I not care?

When I mount and look at the EFI partitions on Disk0 and Disk1, I just see an Apple sub-directory... no Windows/Microsoft anything. And the Startup Disk Utility also only shows "Macintosh HD / MacOS 10.3.6" as an option. But when I boot up holding down Option key, I see a Windows boot option. Where is this boot option hiding?

    **/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER**
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk0
       1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
       2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            2.2 TB     disk0s2
       3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk0s3
       4:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            801.4 GB   disk0s4
       5:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s5

    **/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER**
       0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk1
       1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
       2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            121.0 GB   disk1s2
       3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk1s3

    **/dev/disk2 (internal, virtual):
       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER**
       0:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD           +3.1 TB     disk2
            Logical Volume on disk1s2, disk0s2, ...
            F8575B66-EA8C-4260-96E8-7FEFD183EFC3
            Unencrypted Fusion Drive

CoreStorage Logical Volume Groups
|
+-- Logical Vol Group 8AAC..
 =====
 Name: Macintosh HD
 Size: 3.1 TB
 |
 +- Phys Vol 1ADA..
 |   Index: 0
 |   Disk: disk1s2
 |   Size: 121.0 GB
 +- Phys Vol 37D1..
 |   Index: 1
 |   Disk: disk0s2
 |   Size: 2.2 TB
 +- Phys Vol CFB5...
 |   Index: 2
 |   Disk: disk0s4
 |   Size: 801.4 GB
 +- Logical Vol Family A061..
 ---
   |
   | +- Logical Vol F857..
   | Disk: disk2
   | Size (Tot): 3.1 TB
   | Revertible: No
   | LV Name: Macintosh HD
   | Volume Name: Macintosh HD
   | Content Hint: Apple_HFS LVG
   | Type: Fusion, Sparse

This procedure is going to get you back to a "factory fresh" system where your 128GB SSD and 3TB (spinning) HDD are configured as a Fusion Drive.  Basically, we're going to:

Delete all partitions off all the physical drives
Create the Fusion Drive
Install macOS

Before you begin, ensure that you have

all necessary backups.
a bootable USB installer
WiFi and a working Internet connection (if you want to use Internet Recovery)

Erase the Disks
Using a bootable USB macOS installer, boot up then go into Terminal and issue the following commands:
$ diskutil partitionDisk disk0 1 GPT HFS+ MacSSD 100%

$ diskutil partitionDisk disk1 1 GPT HFS+ MacHDD 100%

Verify that the disks are wiped clean by issuing the command
$ diskutil list

You should see two disks with a single partition each.
Create the Fusion Drive
Create the Logical Volume Group
Next create a logical volume group by "combining" the two drives with the following command
$ diskutil coreStorage create <LogicalVolumeGroupName> /dev/disk1 /dev/disk2

You can use any descriptive name for the group.  Ex:  iMacLVG
When the process has finished, it will output some status information including the logical volume group UUID like below:
Core Storage LVG UUID: XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXX

Copy that number to your clipboard.  You will need it for the next command.
Create the Logical Volume
Issue the command
$ diskutil coreStorage createVolume lvgUUID type name size

Where...

lvgUUID = the UUID you copied from the last step
type = the format you want to you.
name = the name of the Volume.
size = how big you want to make the volume.  Valid entries are in bytes (Kilo, Mega, Giga, Tera, Peta, etc.) and percentage (%)

So, to make a volume that spans the whole logical volume in HFS+ use the following example:
 $ diskutil coreStorage createVolume  XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXX HFS+ "iMac HD" 100%

Once it's done, you've got a clean volume on which to install macOS.  Issue the command to verify that you've got 3 disks:  2 physical and 1 logical.
Install macOS
Exit Terminal and complete the macOS installation.  Restore your data by using the Data Migration Tool if necessary.


Macbook Pro 2020 open with one hand I recently bought a Macbook Pro 2020 base model but I cannot open the lid with one hand. The opening is smooth no doubt but I have to use other hand to the base.
Is this uncommon?

This is totally normal. The variation in the clutch and hinge strength is quite low. The variation in hand placement, position, size, strength, number of digits and bones in people’s hands vary widely.
The kids are designed more for staying open at an angle for years than always opening with the weight of the bottom.
Starting from the MacBook Air and especially the MacBook 12 the weight of the processor is almost never enough to lift only the lid with one finger. Gravity usually needs an assist until many years of wear and openings have happened. Same with the Pro, but those have a higher base to lid weight ratio and you can sometimes get some of them to open without jiggling.


Switching from shared Apple ID to Family Sharing - will we lose app data? I've been sharing my Apple ID (I'll call it A) details with my wife for many years, in order to share app purchases.

We'd now like to switch to Family Sharing.  My Apple ID A would be the "family organizer".

After setting up Family Sharing, my wife would set up her iPhone (in Settings > iTunes & App Store > Apple ID) to use her own Apple ID ("B").  This ID currently has no purchases.

What will happen to her existing apps, some of which have saved local data?

Reading around a bit, perhaps we'll run into this sequence of problems:

The existing apps might still be marked as "purchased by" A.  If my wife wants to update them, she'd need to enter the A credentials (source)... I guess this is OK, but not ideal.
To fix that, perhaps we could delete the offending app and then re-purchase it using her account B (which is now linked to A via Family Sharing).  Updating it then requires her B credentials, which is fine.
But then presumably we'll find that the app's saved local data has been deleted by the reinstall.  Perhaps we could then use iMazing to restore the app data from an earlier backup (source).

Have I understood this correctly?

I also shared my Apple ID with my wife for app purchases, and found the transition to Family Sharing painless. This Apple support page goes into details, and I'll answer some of your specific questions below.

What will happen to her existing apps, some of which have saved local data?

Most likely your wife's iPhone is set up so that iCloud (Settings > iCloud) is using B's Apple ID, and iTunes & App Store (Settings > iTunes & App Store) is set up with A's Apple ID. This makes the transition easy, but just in case please make a full encrypted backup with iTunes.

On your wife's iPhone, go to Settings > iTunes & App Store > Apple ID and click "Sign Out", reboot the iPhone, and then sign in with your B's Apple ID. A should then create the family group and invite B to the group.

The existing apps might still be marked as "purchased by" A. If my wife wants to update them, she'd need to enter the A credentials

The linked answer describes how app authentication works when there are apps purchased under multiple Apple IDs on the same device. The authentication process for Family Sharing works differently.

Under Family Sharing, account B's credentials will be valid for purchases shared by other family members if she has been flagged as a Parent/Guardian by the Family Organizer. This includes apps, music, movies, and iBooks. To download apps made by other members, open the store app that you want to download content from, and go to the purchased page. On iOS devices this is located at:

App Store: Tap Updates > Purchased.
iTunes Store: Tap More > Purchased.
iBooks: Tap Purchased.

The only time that a purchase needs to be authenticated is when a child that has be set as "Ask to Buy" tries to make a purchase.


Prevent Duplicate items in Launchpad from mounted partition I have a MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard. I partitioned the HD, installed Lion on the new partition and used Migration Assistant to copy settings and Applications.

I now have duplicates for most Applications, many seem to point to the Snow Leopard Applications.

I can't find a way to easily identify which apps are Snow Leopard so I can delete them.

The alternative would be to trash the Launchpad db, but how do I prevent Lion from recreating the Snow Leopard items?

What if you ejected the Snow Leopard partition and then looked to see which apps disappeared from Launchpad? Would that be helpful?


Force Time Machine to perform a deep traversal? How do I force Time Machine to perform a deep traversal? I've had this happen when I needed to once before, when it took about 120 minutes to go through 500 GB and Time Machine found about 10 GB worth of data that changed, which was exactly what I wanted at the time.

Now however, I'd like to do this again, but I can't seem to do it. I've tried resetting TM by trashing com.apple.timemachine.plist, booting from my Snow Leopard startup disk (even though I'm running Mountain Lion), and probably other things that I can't think of right now (I've been spending hours on this problem so far).

When I try to perform a backup, TM wants to backup my entire drive, which is about 500 GB, when I know that not everything has changed. I can even use TM to explore folders and go backwards in time and see that many folders have not changed in a while. So, I'd like to force TM to re-index my entire drive so that it picks up only the small changes rather than decides to back up everything.

Perhaps, is there a way to purge the File System Event Store, where Time Machine goes to see what has changed recently? I assume that currently it probably lists that everything has changed, perhaps due to something I did while trying to fix this problem over the past few days.

Deleting the .fseventsd directory on the backup drive would be one way to do it.

However in my experience there have been a few times where Time Machine did a full traversal, estimated that it would have to back up the entire drive, and then proceeded to
 check everything but only back up files that were different. For example, this happened after upgrading from 10.7 to 10.8. The size of the new backup was much less than it first estimated.


Can't delete files from Trash I'm trying to empty my trash, and it seems that I having some problem with encoding:

MacKassner:501 kassner$ rm -Rf t/t/
rm: t/t//t: Directory not empty
rm: t/t/: Directory not empty

Ok then, let's see what's inside:

MacKassner:t kassner$ pwd
/Volumes/DATA/.Trashes/501/t/t/t
MacKassner:t kassner$ ls -la
ls: 07 The Kids (feat. Janelle Monáe).mp3: No such file or directory
total 128
drwxrwxrwx  1 kassner  staff  32768 Jan  7 10:42 .
drwxrwxrwx  1 kassner  staff  32768 Feb  4 18:12 ..

It seems a problem with the special char on that file. I can't empty trash using Finder either (even securely).

EDIT: StackExchange changes a litte bit the exhibition of the special character. Here's a screenshot:

The quick and dirty way to trash a folder is to move another folder with the same name into the existing folder. It looks like you have a folder t which might be amenable to making a new folder on the data drive and name it identically to the folder you wish to nuke and then trashing the "new" t folder.

If that doesn't work, you should be able to open a finder window and attempt to rename the problematic file. See http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201583 for details.

Lastly, if nothing works, consider posting what format the /Volumes/DATA is via diskutil list and sudo ls -laOR /Volumes/DATA/.Trashes/


Can you connect two pairs of airpods to one computer at once I would like to watch a movie with a friend, but silently. Can we each use a set of airpods at once? If not, what about other wireless headphones?

I don't have a pair of Airpods to test this with but it worked perfectly with a Bluetooth speaker and my headphones.

Update: @David Bonnet was kind enough to test this with 2 pairs of Airpods and Apple, unfortunately, has prevented you from doing this by treating them as special devices rather than as generic Bluetooth devices. You can use the steps below to connect to a pair of Airpods and any other Bluetooth or hardwired audio device, but not 2 pairs of Airpods.

Pair both Airpods to the computer. You need to be able to select them separately as Outputs in System Preferences -> Sound -> Output
(Set the output volume for each Airpod now as you can't set it once you select the combined device. You can always switch back to the individual ones and change their volume before going back to the combined one)
Open Audio MIDI Setup in Applications/Utilities

Click the + at the bottom left and select Create Multi-Output Device

Check the boxes next to both Airpods (or any other 2+ output devices)
(Optional) Rename the output by clicking on the name Multi-Output Device in the list

Select the new device you created from the volume menu or from the Sound System Preferences.
Enjoy sharing audio with your friend.


How process hierarchy works in macOS I'm wondering how Activity Monitor relates these two process if the child (Safari Web Content) doesn't have the ppid of the main one (Safari). pstree, which uses the ppid to organize the tree, shows no relation between them.

Here's another example, caffeinate was launched from a shell script inside BetterTouchTool using nohup, and again pstree doesn't show any relation.

Actually what I need is to send a kill signal to "childs" like Safari Web Content using shell script or C api knowing only the "Safari" pid. And I think this might help.

The Safari "child" processes are actually children of the init system (launchd which has PID 1) which explains why pstree or other such unix tools cannot make use of the usual parent pid (or process group) relation:

% ps axo pid,ppid | egrep '81921|81925|82022'
81921     1
81925     1
82022     1

Instead you will need to use an Apple API; the launchctl utility indicates that the "domain" or "ASID" may be relevant:

% sudo launchctl procinfo 82022 | grep -1 81921

        domain = com.apple.xpc.launchd.domain.pid.Safari.81921
        asid = 100006
--
--

responsible pid = 81921
responsible unique pid = 81921
responsible path = /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/MacOS/Safari

But let's post this info before testing what something like launchctl kill ... does.

(Also note the above is from Mac OS X 10.11.6, the interfaces may have been changed by Apple since then.)


macOS weird logout issue There is a weird logout issue on my MacBook Air (13", Early 2015), with macOS Sierra 10.12.4 installed. When I wake up my computer in the morning (it was neither turned off nor hibernated, but simply locked), I found that the system wanted to log out automatically. Since an application wasn't closed (that's Oracle VM VirtualBox, if it helps; an instance of VM was operating) the previous night, I saw a dialog asking whether I would continue to log out (probably in order to let me deal with the unsaved VM state). Also, I saw a file called "logout", 0KB in size, resided in the Downloads folder, which was created in the midnight.

Please help me figure out why this happens. It feels really strange. Thank you.

Check Energy Saver

It may be worth checking your energy saver preferences:

Go to Apple menu > System Preferences
Click on Energy Saver
Click on the Schedule button at bottom right

Now check to see whether your Mac was scheduled to shutdown etc.

Boot into Safe Mode

Follow these steps to boot your MacBook Air into Safe Mode:

Fully shut down your MacBook Air
Restart your MacBook Air
Immediately press the Shift key and keep it down
Let go of the Shift key when you see the login window (NOTE: If you have FileVault enabled you may need to log in twice).
Leave your MacBook Air in Safe Mode until the next morning
Wake your MacBook Air and see if the issue is still present
Exit Safe Mode by restarting your Mac as normal

Once you've booted into Safe Mode, let me know how you went and we'll go from there.


What do I need to know to buy an SSD drive for a 2008 MacBook 5,1? I'd like to buy an SSD drive for my MacBook aluminium (MacBook5,1 from 2008). What do I need to know to buy one which will work fine with it?

I.e. years ago any IDE drive would fit any IDE slot, but I've never worked with SATA drives so I don't know if they are "just compatible" or there are some quirks, similar to what happens with RAM where you have to check the clock rate.

A partial answer:  Other World Computing has extensive tables for their own use of what is compatible with what.  They are also good at answering questions by email.


How can I buy a new 8GB iPhone 3GS that still has iOS 4? My contract with AT&T is up for renewal. My wife has an iPhone 3G. I'd like to use my renewal to score her a free upgrade to a 3GS.

She's on T-Moble and so needs to have her phone jailbroken and unlocked.

I read that all new 3GS models are now bundled with iOS 5.

How can I buy a new 8GB iPhone 3GS that still has iOS 4?  Is the packaging any different?  Are there any telltale signs that indicate firmware version before purchase?

Firstly im not sure the phone needs to be jailbroken and if a contract is up the carrier is required to give instructions on how to unlock.

The packaging is not different.

Not all 3GS models are bundled with iOS5. I would look at some websites that do not sell a lot of these phones, ask shops how long they have had the particular model in stock, if the had them for over 2 months then you're in luck.

You could also look to buy a second hand model, which hasn't had an update.

Can I ask why you do not want iOS5?


throughout repairing, Apple provide a macbook? I am thinking to give my macbook pro to apple service. Because on the right side, USB, hdmi and sd card reader are not working. According to the people in the store, it will take about 3-5 days to fix the problem.

But: I need a computer because I have to study and work on computer. 3-5 days are very important for me. Does any one know if i give my macbook to apple service, they provide me a laptop during repairing time ? If yes, I should pay or not? I still have guarantee..

Location : Bern/Switzerland

Apple doesn't offer warranty replacement Macs during service unless you are paying / participating in the Joint Venture program. It's basically premium service that you pay for as an add-on similar to how AppleCare is an add on that can reduce your repair costs in some cases. I don't know how many countries it is offered, so contact your store's Business team to check. From the USA web site, the program has this as one of it's benefits:

  Premium access to Apple Support.

  You’ll get your own website with easy access to every service we offer
  — custom training, Genius Bar reservations, tech support, and
  workshops. And you can speak by phone to an Apple Genius who can help
  resolve your issue, check into necessary parts, and estimate repair
  turnaround time. We’ll even loan you a computer while yours is being
  repaired. If you prefer to meet in person, you can make a Genius Bar
  appointment at any Apple Store in the world.

You'll need to rent a replacement elsewhere before you turn in your computer or time the repair to when you can afford to lose the days it takes to do the work on it.


/usr/include missing on macOS Catalina (with Xcode 11) Follow up to the same problem on Mojave.

After upgrading to macOS Catalina, none of the C headers can be found in /usr/include. The reason for this may be found in the Xcode 10 release notes (previous version):

  The Command Line Tools package installs the macOS system headers inside the macOS SDK. Software that compiles with the installed tools will search for headers within the macOS SDK provided by either Xcode at:

  /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/MacOSX.platform/Developer/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk

  or the Command Line Tools at:

  /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX.sdk

  [...]
  As a workaround, an extra package is provided which will install the headers to the base system. In a future release, this package will no longer be provided. [...]

(See the link to the question above for details on this suggested workaround.)

Apparently Apple made good on their threat with Xcode 11. How can one install the C headers to /usr/include on macOS Catalina using Xcode 11?

Context: The clang python binding search the header files in /usr/include per default. According to kkurian's answer and the comment I made (in response to this question), there are multiple ways to control this behaviour, if necessary.

Related question: Can't compile C program on a Mac after upgrade to Mojave.

Set the CPATH environment variable in your shell (e.g., put this in your .zshrc assuming you're using zsh):

export CPATH=`xcrun --show-sdk-path`/usr/include

And then try to build your project again.

UPDATE

The OP related to how to install the headers in /usr/include, not how to point clang to the headers wherever they may be.

MacOS System Integrity Protection prevents the creation of /usr/include, even by root. See this related answer.

If you disabled SIP (not recommended) then I imagine something like

sudo ln -s `xcrun --show-sdk-path`/usr/include /usr/include

will do the trick.


Reboot from the command line (stuck processes) I started a remote reboot of my machine but a couple of stuck processes are hanging the reboot.

login with SSH is still possible
sudo reboot or sudo shutdown -r hang
two processes are trying to exit

USER             PID  PPID  PGID   SESS JOBC STAT   TT       TIME COMMAND
root              43     1    43      0    0 ?Es    ??    0:00.00 (mds)
corti            407   376   407      0    1 ?E     ??    0:00.00 (talagent)

I did not manage to kill them (i.e., sudo kill -9 43 or sudo kill -9 407 have not effect)
A remote desktop session is no more possible (last screen that I got was a gray screen with the wheel while shutting down)
Trying to reboot without flushing the caches does also hang (any combination of -n and -q)

Any other things I could try other than going home and physically reboot the machine?

If you can't kill something with -9, and sudo reboot doesn't work, you're pretty much out of options. The process is deadlocked in a manner that has prevented the OS from shutting down.

Have you closed all other Windowed applications? talagent is apparently the process that manages Resume, your guess is as good as mine in determining why it's deadlocked; Errors communicating with a process it was trying to save before closing, disk errors, etc. Since it's attempting to exit, it's unlikely that anything else (forcing system sleep, closing the process it was waiting on) will cause this process to work out it's lock.

The power button is necessary at this point.


How to correctly pipe output into "say" in terminal I realized that the say command can be great when combined with another command/program because it can read you the output. I tried to pipe the output from leave to say by typing the following in terminal, but it didn't work.

leave +5 | say

What is the correct way to do this?

Based on mankoff's answer, this works:

leave +1 2>&1 | while read line ; do echo $line | say ; done

although leave no longer vanishes into the background and lets you carry on typing. Similarly:

leave +1 2>&1 | while read line ; do echo $line | say ; done &

will make it vanish into the background, but will also speak a (harmless) process ID number as well. So neither is quite perfect, but both work.

(I was looking for a solution to:

ping google.com | say

which suffers a similar problem, and someone suggested the above as a solution. I didn't add this as a comment to mankoff's answer because I can't work out how to put spaces and newlines in comments.).


Will my Macbook Air be able to handle dual 4k displays? I have a mid 2013 Macbook Air and I want to purchase two 4k monitors and hook it up to the MBA. Will my Macbook Air be able to hand the two monitors at it's full resolution?

If so, what cables would I need? If not, are there any macbook's that can handle dual 4k monitor at their native resolutions?

Short answer - No.

Longer answer, from Everymac…

  *Although Apple only reports that this model can support a single external display up to 2560x1600, Intel reports that this model can simultaneously support two external displays up to 2560x1600 "daisy chained" via Thunderbolt 2.

The current top spec Macbook Pro, on the other hand, can support 2 external monitors at 4k, but only at 24Hz - same source

  *This model supports a simultaneous maximum resolution up to 3840x2160 on two external displays via Thunderbolt 2. Alternately, it can support a single display up to 3840x2160 via Thunderbolt 2 and a single 1080p display at up to 60 Hz, 3840x2160 at 30 Hz, or 4096x2160 at 24 Hz via HDMI.


Is a downloaded OS X installer from the App Store tied to my Apple ID? At work I use an iMac which I'm going to have to reset to factory settings after my job ends. Since I only have access to slow, unstable internet, I thought it might save some time to download the El Capitan installer from the App Store in advance and create a bootable installer drive, rather than using internet recovery.

After I (erase the drive and) use the bootable installer to reinstall the operating system, will the resulting installation be associated with my Apple ID in any way? Or more generally, will it have any personal information associated with me? I'd like to leave a completely fresh, un-personalized installation of OS X for whoever is going to use the computer next.

If by reinstall the OS, you simply mean reinstall it and not run first-time setup, the resulting installation will not be associated with you in any way.

If you intend to run first-time setup, obviously do not login with your Apple ID during that process, and of course don't input any personally-identifiable information either.

There is metadata in a receipt file in the installer file itself that is associated with your Apple ID. That is not transferred to the resulting installation, though.


Battery Not Charging, remains at 0% I have an Early 2015 MacBook Pro Retina, which I hard-restarted earlier (holding the power button) due to a software crash. It turned off just fine but refused to turn back on again (no backlight, no drive noise, nothing). I thought I remembered a fairly high battery percentage, but to be sure I connected it to power and tried again, unsuccessfully. I left it for a while, then tried an SMC reset with the adapter connected.

This seemed to work, since the power indicator light turned green for a few seconds (which makes sense). This somewhat fixed the issue in that the machine actually showed signs of life when I tried turning it back on, but it would just display a black screen with the red/white low battery symbol and the lightning bolt underneath it.

I left it charging for a while and then had to disconnect it for about an hour to take it with me. When I plugged it back in, it actually powered on and booted up successfully. However, the battery indicator is now perpetually at 0%, and the battery info is rather disturbing:

Battery Information:

Model Information:

  Manufacturer: SMP
  Pack Lot Code:    0
  PCB Lot Code: 0
  Firmware Version: 702
  Hardware Revision:    1
  Cell Revision:    3217

Charge Information:

  Charge Remaining (mAh):   0
  Fully Charged:    No
  Charging: No
  Full Charge Capacity (mAh):   1708
  Health Information:
  Cycle Count:  564
  Condition:    Replace Now
  Battery Installed:    Yes
  Amperage (mA):    0
  Voltage (mV): 8421

I've also tried an NVRAM reset, with no change. I read somewhere that doing an SMC reset while booted up and logged in solved similar problems in some cases, but that seems a bit risky as far as my data is concerned.

I'd really appreciate any ideas - thank you!

EDIT

I should also mention that the charger light isn't doing anything unusual (i.e. not turning on when the charger is connected). Also, the machine is noticeably slower than when everything was working normally.

Strangely but possible, that Battery is End of Life.

I know it is only 3 years old and has only Cycle Count: 564 it should last longer but it shows :

  Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 1708

Which is extremely low and indicates it is over for it.

I have seen batteries with cycle count of only 100 but still needed to be replaced. So the cycle count is not absolute indicator, it is more ment for us Humans to easy understand. While the "Full Charge Capacity" is the real indicator of battery age.

You should know, a new battery comes with >8000 mAh !

Once it reaches <4000 you get the Replace now message for obvious reasons.!

  Also it clearly says "Condition: Replace Now"!


Export from Mac Photos app while keeping date created data? I have some photos taken in 2012 and when I export them as originals to a folder they have a creation date of July 2016. Running an EXIF detailer showed the images to have been taken in 2012, so why does Photos export them and add another date to it?

I tried exporting my whole album from 2009-2016 and noticed some pictures taken in years prior to 2016 to appear in July or other months of this year as well.

I would really appreciate if someone can shed some light on this issue.

Note that, in order for your files to have a created date that matches the EXIF "photo taken" date, you must use Export Unmodified Originals. Modified images may have been edited within Photos which results in a new file being created, and using the normal Export will export that modified file with the later creation date.

There are some options in this post on Photography SE for changing a file's creation date to match EXIF data. You should never attempt to use these on files within the .photoslibrary bundle! Export your files first.

ExifTool is a very powerful command-line application for reading and writing EXIF data in a variety of files, including videos. However, on Macs, it cannot write the file creation date. There's a way around that using a bit of bash scripting.

Here's a command that will work for both photo and video files:

for file in *; do SetFile -d "$(exiftool -p '$CreateDate' -d '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S' "$file")" "$file"; done

Essentially a loop is run over files in the current directory. exiftool is used to read the EXIF creation date tag, and SetFile is used to write as the file's creation date. The way it is written, it will affect all files in the current directory, so I suggest you move all files that you wanted modified into a directory with nothing else in it, and run the command from that directory.


How to force a readonly volume to remount as read-write? I have an external Firewire volume with some filesystem problems. One problem is that Disk Warrior can't fix these errors because there is not enough space left on this volume (in fact, it is completely full - 0 bytes empty, which I suspect is the reason for the FS-problems). Another problem is that this disk gets mounted readonly by the OS, hence I can't delete any files on it to make it possible for Disk Warrior (or fsck) to fix the file system. I have tried the commands in this question but they only generate an error message:

% mount -u -w /Volumes/MyVol
mount_hfs: error on mount(): error = -1.
mount_hfs: Invalid argument

I also tried mount_hfs with different options, but something like this

% mount_hfs -o update /dev/disk3s3 /Volumes/MyVol
mount_hfs: error on mount(): error = -1.
mount_hfs: Invalid argument

How do I force mount this volume in readwrite mode so I can try to delete some of the files on it?

And you don't have to tell me to backup and erase the volume.

Update: I just found the hfs.util command and run it like this

/System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/hfs.util -M disk3s3 /Volumes/test writable

but it just responds with is "usage" page. On this usage page there is an example that looks like this:

/System/Library/Filesystems/hfs.fs/Contents/Resources/hfs.util -p disk0s2 fixed writable

Can't see any difference between that and my command..?

I have to do the following from the command line to get a USB drive to mount read/write:

diskutil list
sudo diskutil unmount /dev/disk2s1 <- (put your volume/partition in here)
cd /Volumes
sudo mkdir <FOLDER_NAME>
sudo mount -w -t msdos /dev/disk2s1 /Volumes/<FOLDER_NAME>

This is with a FAT32 formatted USB stick. Not sure why, but my Mac will only mount these read only when they automount, only started happening recently. Reformatting does not resolve it, even formatting in a macOS native filesystem gives me the same issue. This is happening on multiple USB sticks after many reformats and reboots.

The problem is that I have to do that each time I remove the drive and want to plug it back in.


Transfer from iPad 1 to iPad 2 I understand that backing up in iTunes then restoring the backup to the new device should transfer everything.

But thinking specifically about the case of upgrading my iPad 1 to an iPad 2: Are there any issues I should be aware of if backing up from an original iPad 1 and then restoring to an iPad 2?

It'll eat all your apps souls? Aside from that you should be fine, the process works pretty well.


AppleScript prints out keypresses, doesn't execute them I expect this script to switch applications (command tab):

$ cat hello.applescript
tell application "System Events"
 key code 48 using command down
end tell

But it just prints out a tab:

$ osascript hello.applescript
⏎

I'm on OS X 10.9.4

I've not used it inside a shellscript, only in 'pure' Applescript, but why not just

tell application "myApp" to activate

..it would prevent the randomness of which particular app was next in line.


How can I change Keychain permissions without being physically present? According to Apple's Documentation, for certain operations, the user must be physically present.  However, I am trying to administer a Xcode Server build box via Screen Sharing, and I can't add or remove keychain items because of this restriction. This server is inside of our corporate firewall. Is there a way to remove this restriction for this server?

In the Console, SecurityAgent gives this message when I try to Allow access to a keychain item:

  Ignoring user action since the dialog has received events from an untrusted source

If you have ssh & admin access to the server you could use the security command line tool to manipulate keychain items. It can add & delete passwords, identities and certificates, look at the security man page for the details.

I haven't tried but it looks like sudo security dump-keychain -i <keychain> may do what you want.

I suppose that you could use the security tool from the terminal via Screen Sharing if you didn't have ssh access.


Is there any way to look at and modify the Application Layer Firewall via the command line? We have an issues where an application changed it's service name and UAC prompted users to allow or deny, and a lot of users clicked deny. If users go in to system preferences, security, firewall and then change the rule from deny to allow, it's fine, but at this scale, it's just not happening fast enough for us, and we want to have users report in with this application ASAP.

I'm assuming there is a way. Is there a defaults domain or a plist that can be modified?

I looked here, but when dumping out the config, I don't see any of the existing rules I see in the GUI.

Thanks!

Never mind. That link I posted was an older version of OSX. This article had the right version and it works for me!

Thanks!


iPhone 6s not displaying names on text messages I have a brand new iPhone 6s which suddenly stopped displaying names on text messages after I downloaded iOS 9.3. Any new ideas?

I tried the answer above but that didn't work for me. After some trial and error turning off contacts in iCloud and then turning them back on worked for me.

Go to settings > iCloud
Turn off "Contacts" option
It will ask you if you want to delete the contacts synced on the phone or keep them. I deleted them.
Verify that the contacts are gone. (Optional)
Go back to the iCloud settings and turn the contacts on.

This worked for me. Took about a minute for all contacts to resolve in Messages app. I am on iOS 10.2 and this happened when my phone turned off unexpectedly due to battery issues.


In Numbers, how can I determine the default formatting of cells in rows that have just been added to a sheet? When using Numbers, I have noticed that whenever I add a new row above existing rows, all of the formatting for the new row is exactly like the rows below it. However, if I add a new row below existing rows, the formatting is reverted to the default formatting for a brand new sheet. There are other inconsistencies around the choices that Numbers makes when determining the formatting of new cells and rows, but this is the one that I find to be more consistent.

Is there a way to set up a default formatting (font name and size) for all new cells and rows? Something like the default templates in Microsoft Office. Any pointers will be appreciated. Thanks.

I found the following tutorial at Apple that has the answer to my own question: The default table styles are always taken from the table style list that you choose from the panel on the bottom-left corner of the screen.

The solution to my problem is to use the Create New Table Style command under the Format menu and adding a brand new table style. As long as this new style remains selected, it is the one that the table will keep as a whole.

I have tried this at home and it works as advertised.


Apple Watch Apps Don't Load I received my 38mm Apple Watch Sport only a little under a month ago. So far, I love it. It works great... usually. Plenty of people online have complained about slow load times when opening apps, especially 3rd party ones. But for me, they rarely open at all. I'll wait for minutes, long enough for the device to lock, and still nothing. The only solution now is to restart (usually a forced restart by holding down both buttons on each device) both devices and try again. It's getting to the point where it's pretty frustrating to have to restart at least twice or thrice daily, especially since when I enter my password (it's text) on my iPhone, it freezes for 3-5 minutes and then restarts and lets me use Touch ID. Restarting sometimes doesn't solve the problem anyhow.

Anyone else having this issue? It's been happening now for a few weeks.

Some stats:

My watch arrived on June 1, 2015
My watch has 82 applications, 100 photos, and no songs
My watch is running watchOS 1.0.1
My watch has 5.6 GB of space available
My phone is an iPhone 5s 64 GB running iOS 8.3
My phone has 238 MB left (but that fluctuates frequently; could this be a source of the issue?)
My phone often has problems staying on wifi and likes to drift off onto 4G whenever it feels like it (sporadically, and not super often, but I felt this was mention-worthy)
My phone is around 2 years old now

Thanks in advance.

Update: I've realized that restarting my Apple Watch might be enough to temporarily solve the problem, and the issue only seems to come up after I install a new app on it. Another thing to keep in mind is that the Apple Watch app on my iPhone is faulty, and often crashes or does not work properly.

Update 2: Now I think I can  positively state that there is no pattern to my Apple Watch functioning or not. I've just proven the previous update wrong, then. I wish this issue had some predictability.

Update 3: My watch has been pretty good all of today (June 29, 2015), but just started acting up again. Here are a few things I noted that may prove useful:

The watch responded perfectly for at least 3 hours straight, during which I was able to use it to read books, search the web, and add cards to Trello lists.
I attempted to load Trello an hour later. The app loaded, but after loading, it showed the circular loading icon on the home screen without any of the icons showing.
I did some testing:

I let Trello run, and it crashed.
I opened it again. I timed 32 or so seconds before it crashed again, staying on the loading screen this time.
I restarted the watch normally, and tried again, but it didn't load.
I then force restarted the watch, letting it sit on my wrist for a few minutes after starting up. It didn't ask for my password.
I immediately went to the Trello app. After maybe 5 seconds (I didn't time this one), it loaded perfectly.

I'm baffled by the apparent lack of a pattern here.

Update 4: This is starting to feel like a journal. There truly is no pattern. All day (June 30, 2015) I have been restarting both my iPhone and Apple Watch, with the watch working for only 10 or so minutes at a time. I can't get any apps to load consistently.

If I discover any other clues, I'll post another update.

Not sure if you're still having this issue and this is also for future users who have the same problem as well. A lot of people experience the app not loading problem.

The solution to this is fairly easy. All you have to do is restart your Apple Watch. You can do so by pressing on the side buttons (Digital Crown and the button below it) at once. Just wait for it to restart. If it doesn't help, reset it into factory settings.

Source: Cupertino Watch


How can I set the camera to default to HDR on? I'd like to set my (iOS7) iPhone's camera to always default to HDR on. I do enable HDR when I'm taking pictures, but it always seems like the iPhone forgets the setting and goes back to HDR off.

This depends on the "Flash" settings you select:

Flash-Auto : HDR - Auto
Flash-Off : HDR - On
Flash-On : HDR - OFF

So, whenever you force the Flash ON, HDR reverts to OFF. Alternatively, turning Flash OFF retains the HDR ON setting


Mac OS X Lion Finder Window Size I know that when I close a finder window the next time it opens, it will open at the same size.

This works with me for a while, but sometimes all the finder windows just go back to the default size (Small window) except for the Macintosh HD folder!

Why is that? How can I fix it? It is VERY annoying.

Whenever you close all finder windows, the last window closed seems to determine the default size for new finder windows. By 'new finder windows' I mean those created with the Command + N shortcut. If you happen to Command + double click on a folder to open it in a new window it does not always respect this 'default size'.


Make sure App Store doesn't update apps over Mobile Data I know one can turn off Automatic Updates with Mobile Data using Settings. I am wondering if it is possible to ensure that no apps are updated using Mobile Data by accident. For example, I just updated all my apps because I didn't notice I wasn't on Wi-Fi.

Is it possible to turn on some sort of alert or notification?

There is no such mechanism of displaying an alert or notification when attempt is made to update apps over Mobile Data. (If you think about it, such a mechanism won't make any sense, as you may or may not notice the notification/alert when update is attempted over Mobile Data).

Your best bet is to turn off Mobile Data for automatic downloads. Go to Settings app → iTunes & App Stores and turn off the switch for Use Mobile Data.

You can also choose to turn off Automatic Downloads of Updates, but that setting will apply to both Wi-Fi and Mobile Data.

Alternatively, you can turn on Low Power Mode by going to Settings app → Battery → Low Power Mode. This will turn off automatic downloading of Music, Apps and Updates. An active Low Power Mode is indicated by orange colour battery indicator in Status bar.

The unintended side effect of this approach would be that it will also turn off automatic download of updates over Wi-Fi.

Lastly, the best approach in my personal opinion would be to turn off Mobile Data for App Store app by going to Settings app → Mobile Data. This way there wouldn't be any intended or unintended downloads via App Store over Mobile Data. Also, this way you would be reminded when browsing the App Store, that you are not currently on Wi-Fi, even if you accidentally try to download or update an app.


How do I know when my 100$ search ads promo credit is exhausted? In Apple's terms for Search Ads Promo Credit thay say that you will not be notified. I currently have 30$ which I am spending on ads. But I also have the 100$ promo credit. I currently have only spent 20$ worth of ads.

So how do I know when my promo credit is being applied? Will I just have to do the math until 130$ is spent? Or will there be something which indicates for example if I am currently spending promo credit?

I don't think there's a specific way to know.  I have the promo $100, too, and I was looking into this.

The only way I found out was to check on the available balance every few weeks.  Even doing that, you have to accept that you might go over the promo amount.  Of course, this is exactly what Apple is hoping will happen (in my personal opinion; I don't have any proof for that).


Changing XAMPP directory/file permissions On my old Windows setup I used a symbolic link to store my htdocs folder in my Skydrive folder and still work with XAMPP. I've just bought a MacBook and trying to accomplish the same thing but seem to be having trouble. I have created an alias of the htdocs folder in Skydrive and placed it in the XAMPP directory but I'm having file permission problems in the form of…

Access forbidden!
You don't have permission to access the requested directory. There is either no index document or the directory is read-protected.

If I understand correctly, instead of just changing the Skydrive folder permissions I also need to change the parent directories so "/Users/Adam/Documents/Skydrive/xampp/htdocs" needs to have read and write permissions for "everyone". When I change to that everything works as it should but I'm wondering if there's a better/safer way of doing it?
I don't really understand the file permissions, is that "everyone" just other users on the computer, nothing network related? If so everything should be fine as I'm the only user on the laptop.

Instead of using an 'alias' at the Finder level, you might want to use the terminal to create a 'symlink'.
The command to do this is ln so you can learn more with man ln - but you can also check out these two articles that explain the concept a little clearer than the man page.

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2001110610290643
http://gigaom.com/2011/04/27/how-to-create-and-use-symlinks-on-a-mac/

To answer your other question, yes, everyone means EVERYONE, in addition to every user on the laptop.


Is it possible to COMPLETELY delete a Book from my purchased books? Yesterday, I saw that my brother has downloaded an "hentai" on my Mac (shame on me, I didn't lock it !) I deleted it, but it stays on my purchased books, and I don't want it !

Is it possible to totally remove a book from my account's purchased history?

This has since moved from iTunes to within the iBooks app, but the procedure is exactly the same:

Open iBooks
Click iBooks Store in top-left corner
Click Purchased
Click the x in the top-left corner of the book you want to hide

And to unhide:

Open iBooks
Click iBooks Store in top-left corner
Click Account
Click Manage next to Hidden Purchases
Click Unhide below book in question


Secondary display turns off when I close the flap of my MacBook pro running on High Sierra I wanted to play some retro games, I connected a ps3 controller so that i could play on a big screen.
As soon as I close my MacBook pro's flap, monitor also mirrors it.
I saw on youtube that a person was using the mac and he closed his flap, but everything was running fine.

The mac has to be plugged in for it to still work with the lid closed.

If you have a USB-C power port, you may have to unplug the cord from both the MacBook and the brick, and then plug it in again. Sometimes it comes loose on one of the ends


How to get an applescript to play a song file Okay so I want an applescript app that plays a song. The song isn't already on the computer and it's contained inside contents/resources of the app's package contents. This is my current code

tell application "Finder"
    set apppath to POSIX path of (application file id "com.apple.ScriptEditor.id.play" as text)
end tell
set song to {apppath, "/Contents/Resources/song.mp3"} as string
set songpath to POSIX file song as text
tell application "QuickTime Player"
    activate
    open songpath
    play the front document
    tell application "System Events"
        set visible of application process "QuickTime Player" to false
    end tell
end tell

On my computer this code seems to work. However when distributing it, other computers get an error in quicktime. The document “song.mp3” could not be opened. The file doesn’t exist. Any help?

Edit: Fixed an incorrect variable which doesn't fix the problem because I changed the code to post it here and mixed it up.

Activating QuickTime is a lot of overhead for playing a single file.

You can use afplay instead:

do shell script "afplay " & songpath


Does find my iPhone still work if I transfer my number to another device? My phone is currently trapped under a collapsed building. It is showing up on find my iPhone so it's still alive! I ordered a new phone as I don't know when or if they can recover it. If I activate the new phone with my old number, will I lose the ability to track my old phone? I'd like to keep watching it to see if it continues to survive.

If you transfer the number to a new cellular data plan, and the phone is not connected to a wifi hotspot, your phone won't be able to report current GPS coordinates to Apple's Find My Phone servers. In short, I think the answer is no, but as @HLLB pointed out, your phone's battery will probably die before the phone number port is completed, so better get to digging!


AppleCare - Can I Cancel The Monthly Plan After Doing a Repair? If I get AppleCare today and pay $7.99 a month for coverage on my iPhone and then do a screen replacement next month, would I then be able to cancel the monthly subscription the month afterwards?

I know that with the $149 upfront plan, you won’t get a refund for discounts / services you’ve already received.  Would the scenario I described above be allowed?

Most products are covered by AppleCare+ these days, so you would need to read the terms and conditions for your specific region where you purchased it to be sure.

https://www.apple.com/legal/sales-support/applecare/applecareplus/

In the US you can cancel the monthly iPhone (and most other iOS/watchOS product) plan at any time for any reason.

8.2 Monthly Pay Plans
You may cancel this Plan at any time for any reason.

It then spells out the details on how to cancel and what happens when you do.


Can I hide software updates in Mavericks? In 10.9.2 (not sure about earlier versions of .9) I can find no way to stop the nagging software update requests from the App Store. I've heard of people uninstalling software which works in some cases. But for some apps I just don't want the latest version.

Has anyone found a fix? I don't care how complicated it is, I just want to stop hearing from the App Store. I really don't like the App Store.

Just uncheck Automatically check for updates in System Preferences > App Store

Though you might consider leaving "Automatically check for updates" and "Install system data files and security updates" checked but unchecking the rest.


Apple and Windows font differences? I used the symbols font on a slide created using PowerPoint for Mac, and when I opened the same file in Windows the characters turned into squares. Does anyone know what is going on?

The Macintosh Symbol font dates from.. well.. the Macintosh. I used Font Book to do a "Get Info" on the Symbols .ttf font file on my otherwise up-to-date iMac, and the most recent copyright date it bore was 1999. Whatever charming memories may appertain thereto, I remember Symbol mostly as the one-time proprietary Adobe --> Apple PostScript font which Microsoft Explorer would reproduce on its web pages, but which Outlook would not reproduce in formatted email and MS Word would choke on in .rtf files. Before .pdf files made it possible to embed fonts and exchange WYSIWYG documents in a trivial manner, and before Microsoft eventually licensed Symbol from Adobe, we used to suffer along with (I think) Wingdings / Webdings substitutions for situations where the Windows folks had to have the material show up on their screens.

Thing is, PowerPoint is a world into itself--and only a limited set of fonts are reliable among Windows OS variations, much less when Macs are included. A web search for "safe powerpoint fonts" will show you that Symbol isn't among them--nor, as tubedogg pointed out, is it any longer part of a standard Mac system install.


Check the status of a Finder copy-paste operation from Apple Watch Today I had to leave my Mac, while a copy-pasting operation was in progress with a large number of files. I found myself wanting to know how long the operation had left (and if it had encountered any issues, duplicates etc.). This left me wondering, would there be a way to view this progress on an Apple Watch?

I'm not entirely sure if this already exists via an app on the App Store (please let me know, if there's one) or if someone has coded a sideload app. Either way, let me know because I'd love to investigate. I understand how the app would encounter issues interacting with the actual macOS, but I wonder if anyone has any insight.

Perhaps if not for the Apple Watch, but for the iPhone?

I doubt such an app exists even for iOS, leave aside watchOS, for watching Finder file operation progress. This is a very specific use case and I am not certain if there are any official APIs that lets you obtain this data in a watchOS or iOS app.

A simple solution that I can think of is to install a VNC viewer app on your iPhone (many available on the App Store). Configure your Mac for screen sharing. Now using the viewer component on your iPhone/iPad, you can visually see the screen of your Mac and check file operation progress.

VNC apps are not just viewer and you can also control your Mac from your iPhone, thereby giving you the ability to perform operations on your Mac remotely.


What does this technical specification about GSM iPhone mean? This is the text from Wiki on "iPhone 4" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4

Connectivity:
GSM model:  quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE(800, 850, 900, 1,800, 1,900 MHz)
Quad-band UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (800, 850, 900, 1,900, 2,100 MHz) (800 MHz
is not yet officially supported by Apple)

very confused, if Apple does not support 800MHz then why they put the 800 in the specification?
Can someone explain what that technical specification means?

If you keep reading...
Connectivity

In contrast to Steve Jobs' announcement at WWDC 2010, recent Federal
Communications Commission documentation has shown that the iPhone 4
contains a penta-band 3G UMTS antenna, not a quad-band 3G UMTS radio,
as advertised by Apple.
According to the FCC documentation filed by
Apple, the radio inside the iPhone 4 supports 800, 850, 900, 1,900,
and 2,100 MHz. The 800 MHz frequency, which is most commonly used in
Japanese mobile phones, is not advertised as being supported by
Apple.[51] However, the 800 MHz band is a subset of the 850 MHz band,
which probably explains why the device is advertised as
quad-band.[citation needed] The chip-sets were manufactured by
Skyworks Solutions[52] and Infineon for GSM version.


How to convert Windows-based ISO for Mac OS X Installation DVD? I made an ISO image from Mac OS X Snow Leopard Installation DVD using PowerISO on Windows machine. The ISO file size is 7.6GB, but when I mount the ISO using PowerISO, what I can see is only the files for Windows (900+MB). How can I convert it back to Mac format ISO?

That's pretty normal to see only the files for windows, when you are mounting the ISO image on a windows!

Even if you have inserted a MAC OS Installation DVD (physical) into tray and openned it in a windows machine, you would have seen only the Windows files and not the MAC files.


How to test what my audio output latency is on MacBook? I am trying right now to test my auditory reaction time using a script I wrote at the command line (using the classic echo -ne '\007' beep).

I am getting reaction times always greater than 340 ms. When I try this with a visual prompt (echo go) instead, I am getting about 280 ms.

Apparently human audio reaction time should be faster than visual reaction time (according to lots of published studies).

Of course, it could be that my visual reaction time is faster, but how can I check what my MacBook audio output latency actually is?

You really cannot measure the latency "through" the OS because of the overhead of queuing and managing the processes.  To be "more accurate" you'd need to write a program that could directly access the kernel so that you could evaluate the actual time between events - the beep and the keypress.

However, you can get fairly close in bash by using the time function. I've created a basic bash script that will prompt the user to press Enter after waiting for a beep to occur after a random period.

# generate a random number between 3 and 10 for seconds to wait for beep
t=$(( ( RANDOM % 10 ) + 3 ))

echo "When you hear the beep, press Enter!"
echo
echo

sleep $t

# beep the computer and get the time
time echo -ne '\007'

# wait for keypress and get the time
time read keypress

You'll get three time values twice.  They are defined as:

Real - the time start to finish of the call measured if you had a stopwatch in hand.  This accounts for all processes running at the time.
User - this is the time spent in the user space outside the kernel and is the actual CPU time spent executing the task
Sys - this is the time spent inside the kernel and is also the actual time spent by the CPU.

For more information on this see Real, User and Sys process time statistics.

So, in order of accuracy, Real is in the ballpark, User is pretty darn close, and Sys is dead on balls accurate, as far as the CPU is concerned.

Sample Output:

When you hear the beep, press Enter!

real    0m0.000s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.000s

real    0m0.812s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.000s

In the above example it shows that the latency according to the computers "stopwatch", there was a .812s difference between when I heard the beep and pressed Enter.  The resolution of the time utility is not granular enough to measure the time elapsed to execute each command so we assume it happened "immediately."

Running it again....

When you hear the beep, press Enter!

real    0m0.003s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.002s

real    0m0.924s
user    0m0.001s
sys     0m0.002s

From this one, we can see that there was some overhead that caused the process to account for more time.  If we subtract the top values from the bottom, we can get pretty close to how much time elapsed.

But is it accurate enough?

No.  This is why you need a device called an Audiometer that is a purpose built piece of hardware that measures the time between the two events - sound and keypress.  It's much more accurate because it removes the overhead of the CPU management and gives you a truly accurate elapsed time.


What is my MacBook's firmware password after using setregproptool? In attempting to automate setting up firmware passwords through DeployStudio, I accidentally wrote a bad script loosely based off Dash's post Setting a firmware password that did not work as intended.

#!/bin/sh
diskutil mount Recovery\ HD & wait
hdiutil attach -quiet -nobrowse /Volumes/Recovery\ HD/com.apple.recovery.boot/BaseSystem.dmg & wait
OLDPASSWORD= ""
CONFIRMPASSWORD= "password"
/Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/Applications/Utilities/Firmware\ Password\ Utility.app/Contents/Resources/setregproptool -m command -p $CONFIRMPASSWORD -o $OLDPASSWORD
diskutil unmount force Recovery\ HD & wait
echo "New Firmware Password is Set"

If you can tell already, when setting the variables for OLDPASSWORD and CONFIRMPASSWORD, I should not have added that extra space because I got "command not found" errors.

However, I ran the script through DeployStudio (Postponed execution not checked) and a password WAS set. I just don't know what it is. I tried "password" and empty password. Does anyone have an idea what it could be? The only this else I could do is send the macbook to Apple Repair.

Since OLDPASSWORD and CONFIRMPASSWORD are both unset, the command your script executed was:

/Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/Applications/Utilities/Firmware\ Password\ Utility.app/Contents/Resources/setregproptool -m command -p -o

I don't know for certain (and I'm not about to test it), but I'd expect that this has taken "-o" as an argument to the "-p" option, and hence set the firmware password to "-o".

BTW, in addition to removing the spaces after the "=" in assignments, you should also double-quote all references to variables, like this:

/Volumes/OS\ X\ Base\ System/Applications/Utilities/Firmware\ Password\ Utility.app/Contents/Resources/setregproptool -m command -p "$CONFIRMPASSWORD" -o "$OLDPASSWORD"

This will prevent the shell from doing weird things with variables that contain spaces and/or wildcards, or are blank (like OLDPASSWORD in your script).


Can you daisy chain 2 Macbook Pro's onto a single power pack? Can I feed another MBP by USB-C cable from a port on the first laptop?

Power packs can deliver 1.5A (at 220V = 330W) over USB-C to the MBP. MBP power requirement is 4.3A (@ 20.2V = 87W). So seems the power pack can handle it.

Ah but port delivers  900 mA (Milliamps) at 5 V = 4.5W. So guessing answer is no. But my amateur electronics may be wrong so confirmation appreciated.

Allan's answer is not correct, I was able to daisy chain my Mac. I am currently at a conference without my charger and I have daisy chained my Mac to another Mac (both USB-C 2017 Mac Book Pros). Both Mac's are closed, so there is not much variance in usage as both are idle. I opened the screens and checked the power level on both every 10 minutes. The second Mac charged much slower and seemed to charge faster once the first Mac was fully charged, but it still seemed slower than normal to charge.

---------------------------
| Time    | Mac 1 | Mac 2 |
---------------------------
| 0  mins | 81%   | 22%   |
---------------------------
| 10 mins | 89%   | 24%   |
---------------------------
| 20 mins | 96%   | 26%   |
---------------------------
| 30 mins | 100%  | 29%   |
---------------------------
| 40 mins | 100%  | 33%   |
---------------------------
| 50 mins | 100%  | 37%   |
---------------------------
| 60 mins | 100%  | 42%   |
---------------------------


Formatted APFS in Mojave shows file format in system report as MS-DOS just fitted an ssd to my Mac Pro 5.1 Mojave enabled, working ok but when I looked at the system report it says the file system is ms-dos, is this a problem? the only option I had for formatting the ssd in disk utility was APFS which I chose

Thanks Ted

Everything is fine as the EFI volume is supposed to be formatted MS-DOS FAT32, and as you can see your disk0s2 volume is as should be Apple_APFS.


iCloud drive for desktop, documents, and downloads folder and dropbox in its own folder Can I use iCloud drive for desktop, documents, and downloads folder and then use dropbox in its own folder? Their files won't intersect but wondering if this is a bad idea.

This is perfectly fine.
In fact, you can have multiple services all running like iCloud, OneDrive, DropBox, etc.  Each will have their own folders.  Documents, Downloads, and Desktop by default sync to iCloud.  The other services do not re-map those folders to their services.


Portable Monitors for MacBook Pro? I'm looking for a Portable Monitors for my macbook pro (possibily a 14'')
Do you happen to know some model that is working on a mac?

I found this one (ThinkVision LT1421) but it does not work completely.

Have you tried the latest DisplayLink manager software? It is a bit of a battery-guzzler and has some limitations r.e. 3D acceleration, but may be an improvement on the native OS X driver.


Time Machine - Bootcamp and Virtualized operating systems? Just for my curiosity and knowledge, from a Software and Hardware perspective, is the Time Machine capable of backing up my personal Documents and Files located in my Windows Bootcamp Partition and eventually also my Document and Files located in my Virtualized Operating Systems (using Parallels for example) that I create on my Mac side?

Boot camp does NOT backup files that it is not programmed to backup. If you set up Time Machine to backup Macintosh HD, it will only backup Macintosh HD. Also, Time Machine probably will reject backing up a Windows system. In order to backup your Windows, you either need to get another backup disk or partition your current one. Then, you can use the system Windows backup.


How do I search for a mouse that uses Mac's built-in bluetooth? There are lots of wireless mice out there that work with Macs, but most require an extra USB thingy that takes up a USB port on my Macbook (and most Macbooks have few USB ports). What search terms should I use to look for a wireless mouse that uses Mac's built-in bluetooth?

P.S. I am looking for alternatives to Apple's Magic Mouse.

These search terms: bluetooth mouse, os x

Most Bluetooth mice work well with OS X.


macOS High Sierra restarting by itself during sleep I have a 2017 MacBook Pro 15″ with High Sierra. I never turn off my laptop, instead I simply put it to sleep, so next day it's easier and faster to turn it on.

But often when I wake it up the next day, it has rebooted by itself. How can I see the shutdown/reboot cause, to try to fix it?

Here is the result of command "pmset -g"

System-wide power settings:
Currently in use:
 standbydelay         10800
 standby              1
 womp                 0
 halfdim              1
 hibernatefile        /var/vm/sleepimage
 powernap             0
 gpuswitch            2
 networkoversleep     0
 disksleep            0
 sleep                15 (sleep prevented by nsurlsessiond, nsurlsessiond, sharingd, coreaudiod)
 autopoweroffdelay    28800
 hibernatemode        3
 autopoweroff         0
 ttyskeepawake        1
 displaysleep         15
 tcpkeepalive         1
 acwake               0
 lidwake              1

You can find the last shutdown cause by examining the logs. Run this command to filter the logs for shutdown causes:

log show --predicate 'eventMessage contains "Previous shutdown cause"' --last 24h

You can then lookup the shutdown cause code in this table: macOS Shutdown Causes.


Disable Xcode Command Line Tools I changed the Command Line Tools in Xcode settings, hoping it would solve an error with arm64e, but xcodebuild ended up taking over make command which makes the compiling process slower with my Theos project.
Xcode does not allow me to revert changes of Command Line Tools, is there other way to revert the change? I don't want xcodebuild to run when using make

I readed every solutions I found online but nothing helps, tried reinstalled Xcode, xcodebuild still present with make in Terminal

Quit Xcode
Open a Finder window showing your Xcode program
Open a command line prompt (terminal.app is fine)
Type xcode-select --switch
Drag the Xcode program icon you want to be default into the command line window and release the icon
Press enter

The select tool lets you have multiple versions of the tools and switch back and forth or even request an install from Apple of the tools without having Xcode.app installed. If this process fails, your Xcode preferences are corrupted, so you’d uninstall the app or make a new user profile to validate whether the app preferences or user preferences need to be trashed or fixed.


How to get Automator to treat text as RTF? I am writing a book and trying to add a service to provide syntax highlighting to text selected in Pages with Automator. I have a service accepts selected text and runs it through a shell command (pygmentize) which converts it to syntax highlighted RTF.

The problem is that when the text is returned, Automator treats it as plain text and I get gibberish back. I've tried changing the accepts back and forth between rich and plain and it doesn't make any difference. I've tried piping the output through textutil to no avail.

My only work around for now is to have the shell command copy to the clipboard with pbcopy and then use an Automator to grab the contents of the clipboard. I'd rather find a way to do this without having to wipe the clipboard, any suggestions for getting Automator to treat my shell commands output as rich text?

Is there anyway to make this work with AppleScript?

I usually use scripts like this instead of Automator services:

try
    set old to the clipboard as record
end try
tell application "System Events" to keystroke "c" using command down
do shell script "export LC_CTYPE=UTF-8; pbpaste | /usr/local/bin/pygmentize -g -f rtf | pbcopy"
tell application "System Events" to keystroke "v" using command down
delay 0.05
try
    set the clipboard to old
end try

If the clipboard is empty, trying to get it results in an error.
pbpaste and pbcopy use ASCII if the locale variables are unset. I couldn't get pygmentize -f rtf to work with non-ASCII characters though.
Without the delay set the clipboard to old would sometimes be run before the text would get pasted.


What is the root username and password for CUPS 2.1.0 I don't remember creating one and I'm just trying to print in black and white.

Normally you don't need to enter a root username and password to use CUPS. The error is likely to be in /etc/cups/printers.conf You could check the authorization entries in your printers.conf

Even simpler though is that CUPS.org recommends just using your normal admin username and password when asked for authorization:

  Use the username and password for your computer.

You will need an account with admin privileges: most OS X computer owners have such an account, it's usually only in an lab or a company where you wouldn't have admin privileges.

I hope this works in your case, Esmeralda. If it doesn't please post some follow up information, such as your printers.conf file.


Permission Problems for copied files from NAS I access my Synology NAS via AFP and can open/edit all of my files directly on it. But when I copy a file to my desktop I can't open it. Finder tells me I don't have appropriate permissions.
When I look at the permissions (CMD + I) on …
… my NAS:

(unknown): read & write
everyone: no permissions

… my desktop:

staff: read & write
everyone: no permissions

ls -l will print (for both paces): ----rwx---  1 suntrop  staff  35354  4 Jul 10:32 File.docx
Is this a problem on the Mac or Synology or my settings?

Sounds like a permission problem. I had a similar issue. Files created by one user in two groups (administrator & user) on NAS were not being able to read by users only in the user group. I tried reseting ownership/permissions using File Station from DiskStation and did nothing. I figured something was wrong with root folder permissions on shared folder - and yes, they were owned by root and 777 chmod.

I've managed to fix this by:

On the Synology - control panel - win/mac/nfs - goto Mac File Serivce (AFP) and turn off Apply default UNIX permissions (Mac file services enabled) - root of your problem
log on to NAS via ssh, go to most root shared folder and do

chown -R nobody:users shared_folder/
chmod -R 755 shared_folder/

used info from here, here and here.


Sound setting for guest user account (Yosemite) I have two accounts: primary and guest. In the primary account headphones is using as an output audio device and for the guest account USB is using. Previously all outputs are configured automatically. I mean when I enter in primary account headphones sets as default audio and when I enter as guest USB sets as default. I didn't make any manual switching. After update to Yosemite, the guest account was to inherit the settings of the main. It is possible to set the audio output by default for all accounts except one of them?

UPD: I did some tests and came to the conclusion that the system now does not remember settings for each user, and applies the current setting of audio output for all accounts.

I'm having a similer issue.  I posted about it here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/27369846#27369846

I can copy that post here if its appropriate and doesn't violate terms etc.?


Force CD ejection from SuperDrive My SuperDrive, USB connected to a 2012 Mac Mini with latest El Capitan OS X, has been working just fine until I tried to rip a purchased CD from a small singer songwriter. It hung up on the last cut and iTunes could not proceed to finish ripping the CD and eject the CD.

I tried to eject with the eject button, and by restarting the Mac. I would get a clicking sound from the drive on the restart  but the disc would not eject. I unattached the drive and then reattached it and now the CD does not show up in the  Finder sidebar at all. I used drutil also, got a clicking sound from the drive but would not object.

Does it sound like now the drive is destroyed or are there any suggestions how to get that disc out? Thanks so much for any help!

There are lots of ways to get the system to try ejecting the disk, most of them detailed here: http://www.wikihow.com/Eject-a-CD-From-Your-Mac

My favourite is restarting while holding down the mouse/trackpad button.

If the drive is making noises but the disk does not come out, it is possibly hitting or caught on the edge of the slot. I have had success in using something like a business card or piece of paper and inserting it above or below the edge of the disk (or using two cards, one above the disk and one below the disk). When the disk is being pushed out by the mechanism, rather than hitting the edge of the slot, it slides along the card and does not get prevented from being ejected.


How to exceed ram limit? I recently bought a used MacBook (a1181, early 2009) for extremely cheap and I was curious to ask if there was a way to exceed the 4gb ram limit. I was actually trying to get 8gb in it. I know, kind of a dumb question.
It currently has 4gb in it.

I also patched it so it could run OS X High Sierra if that helps any.

Thank you!

According to Mactracker, your MacBook 13-inch, Early 2009 (A1181, early 2009) can handle 6 GB RAM, or 2 GB more than Apple's 4 GB spec. You'd need to use a combination of a 4 GB and 2 GB 200-pin PC2-5300 (667MHz) DDR2 SO-DIMM.

See also: Apple MacBook "Core 2 Duo" 2.0 13" (White-09) Specs at EveryMac.com


Volume Randomly Goes to Maximum with Bluetooth Headset I have tried using two different bluetooth headsets with my iphone 6 and when using the headset and hitting the "call" button on the iphone, the volume will sometimes go to maximum level.

Basically I push the "call" button on the bluetooth headset and sometimes the "beep" noise that brings up Siri is extremely loud. To remedy the issue, I have to turn down the volume on the bluetooth headset, but when I do this it shows the volume as minimum on the iphone. For some reason this actually does bring down the volume, but is only temporary. Randomly it will get set back to maximum.

Is there any way to fix this?

Please provide more details and possibly screenshots. Is the Ringer on maximum loudness or the 'Volume' on maximum loudness? It would make sense if the headphones respond differently to the 'call' feature than to media, just like the iPhone itself does.

I don't know, it's just a guess based on the little information that you provided.

Please indicate which of these you are mentioning, if not both.


How can I get 2560X1080 resolution on my LG 29UM58-P monitor, connected to my 13" MacBook Pro? I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13"-inch, Early 2013) with 8Gb RAM and Intel HD Graphics 4000

I also have a 19" Polyview 16:9 monitor connected via Thunderbolt to VGA adaptor, which displays its native resolution of 1440x900.

I recently purchased an LG 29UM58-P ultra wide monitor, which has a native selection of 2560x1080 at 21:9 aspect ratio, connected via my HDMI port. Unfortunately, all windows and text is stretched to fill the screen.

In System Preference --> Display --> Resolution --> I can choose from 1600x900, 1080p, 108i and 720p. I have selected 1080p at 60 Hertz.

I've also downloaded the Onscreen Control app from LG's, but can't seem to access it in System Preferences even after selecting it in Security & Privacy --> the Accessibility panel ??

How can I get my monitor to display its native resolution at the correct aspect ratio without stretching all the windows etc?

Many thanks in advance for your help! :)

According to MacTracker, your 13" 2013 MacBook Pro can support:

up to 1920 by 1080 pixels on HDMI;
up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on Thunderbolt.

So you need to swap the connectors used by each display.


2015 MacBook Pro 13" screen on a 2015 MacBook Air 13" Can I replace the display in my 2015 MacBook Air 13" for a 2015 MacBook Pro 13" one? Would it work?

It may work, but at the least, you won't be able to close it properly. The LVDS cable is similar, but not identical, so you may have some extra cable parts floating around inside the enclosure. Short answer: it may work, but it is definitely not recommended. The way the top case (display) connects is slightly different. The screws would fit in the correct spots, but because the display is of different depths, it would not close properly.


How many fans does a MBP 13" late 2013 have? I was wondering how many fans a MBP 13" retina from late 2013 has, since I downloaded iStat Menus to check for internal temperatures because I thought my mbp was running fairly hot...  Now in the menu of the app, I can only see the speed of the RightSide fan, and I was wondering whether there is a leftside fan as well?

Can someone also specify the normal working range temperatures of this type of mbp, since I hope these temperatures are not really creating a problem.

The late 2013 Macbook Pro 13" only has one fan. You can see here in iFixit's teardown.

Apple don't publish figures for normal working range temperature for their devices, and unfortunately you'll find many and varied opinions online. Apple do publish a short guide if you are concerned that your Macbook is overheating though.


Running meld: AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'append_search_path' After upgrading to Mountain Lion 10.8.5 I can no longer run meld via X11. I get the following. I've tried searching around for solutions but found nothing that works.

$ meld
/opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gtk-2.0/gtk/__init__.py:57: GtkWarning: could not open display
  warnings.warn(str(e), _gtk.Warning)
/opt/local/bin/meld:111: GtkWarning: gtk_icon_theme_get_for_screen: assertion `GDK_IS_SCREEN (screen)' failed
  gtk.icon_theme_get_default().append_search_path(meld.paths.icon_dir())
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/local/bin/meld", line 111, in <module>
    gtk.icon_theme_get_default().append_search_path(meld.paths.icon_dir())
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'append_search_path'

After finally stumbling upon this https://trac.macports.org/ticket/35697, I installed XQuartz to replace X11 and restarted. meld now works


Can I automatically launch an app at a specific time on Mavericks? For years, I've been using iCal to automatically launch apps using alarms.  I'd create a new event in iCal and set the alarm to launch an app rather than show a notification.  The option to set alarms to launch apps or URLs (etc) seems to have been removed from Calendar in Mavericks, which means my automatic apps don't launch anymore.

How can I gain this functionality back in Mavericks.  It doesn't have to be in Calendar (though, grrr, I wish that still worked!  I loved having a calendar that showed all of my automatically launched apps and times at a glance!).

Example: There's an excellent Flickr app called SuprSetr which I'd like to automatically launch each morning at 3:55 am.  How?

The great thing about a specific question is that it can be given a specific answer.

For example, the OP said: "There's an excellent Flickr app called SuprSetr which I'd like to automatically launch each morning at 3:55 am. How?"

Answer: Save the following as com.tjluoma.SuprSetr.plist (or whatever name you prefer, but it should end with .plist) and put it into the folder ~/Library/LaunchAgents (where ~ is your Home Directory):

<?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>AbandonProcessGroup</key>
    <true/>
    <key>Disabled</key>
    <false/>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.tjluoma.SuprSetr</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>/usr/bin/open</string>
        <string>-a</string>
        <string>SuprSetr</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>Hour</key>
            <integer>3</integer>
            <key>Minute</key>
            <integer>55</integer>
        </dict>
    </array>
</dict>
</plist>

And then, once the file is in place, you should enter this command in Terminal:

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.tjluoma.SuprSetr.plist

Then it will be ready to launch the app SuprSetr at 3:55 a.m. every day. (Note: if the computer is asleep at 3:55 a.m., it will run when the computer wakes up.)

From that specific example, once you understand that what this plist file does does is tell launchd to run the Terminal command:

/usr/bin/open -a SuprSetr

at the hour '3' and the minute '55', then it should be easy to extrapolate from that to other apps that you want to run at other times.

Now, if you want to write these all by hand, you can do that for free, but an app like Lingon is a good choice (I'd recommend not buying the Mac App Store version, as the app seems to me like something that Apple is not going to like in the world of sandboxing, and you'd get a more feature-rich app from the developer.

My personal preference is for an app called LaunchControl which is free to try, and then the developer asks for something reasonable like US$10, but there is no DRM, no license codes, but instead relies on the good ol' honor system. (It’s my hope that people who use it will live up to the developer's faith in that system.)


iPad still plays the music when muted - how can I truly turn off sounds? When I mute the iPad with the buttons on the side, the iPad is still playing the music quietly. This is really annoying and I would like to turn the sound completely off. Is there a solution to this?

If you are on iOS 12, swipe from the top-right of the screen to get to control centre.

Then make sure you slide the volume down:


How do I access and view cache HTML5 videos located in Safari or Chrome cache? I want to view and possibly remix a video on youtube.  I have seen many demos and articles describing where the cache is on older versions of the browsers, but now it seems that Safari is stored in a .db file, and I haven't figured out chrome.

How can I extract and save an HTML5 file in a way so that I can view it later, or edit it in a video editing program?

If you just want to download a video, you can use youtube-dl.

Downloading a YouTube video with Safari:

Enable using the HTML5 player from https://www.youtube.com/html5.
Enable the develop menu from Preferences > Advanced > Show Develop menu in menu bar.
Select Develop > Show Page Resources.
Reload the page.
Double-click the videoplayback resource.
Focus the location bar and press option-return.