What makes a "Special folder" - a bundle in the finder I know applications are just folder bundles - I assume specifically formatted, and some metadata. I did a copy of my iPhoto Library from another disk - at first it was just another folder, then once I ran iPhoto, it became special again.

What makes a folder a bundle? and how do i restore that metadata on a disk recovery?

The extension of the folder determines if the folder is a special folder. For example, apps have the extension .app, Kernel Extensions have the extensions .kext, etc.

Some folders, like the iPhoto Library, have extended attributes. They can be determined by running ls -@l in the parent directory of your folder. The attribute com.apple.FinderInfo stores the type of the folder.

The easiest way to copy the attributes, in my personal opinion, is to use the ditto Terminal command to copy the files. It works just like cp, except that it also ensures that extended attributes are copied.


iPhone contact search (with letters) doesn't return anything Suddenly my contact searching stopped working. If I write any letter (on search bar) in order to find out the specific contact(which I saved on phonebook with the same letter starting with) doesn't find the matching. [But, interesting thing is that, it's been working with only newly saved contact for some days.]

it's important to tell that in order to solve that issue I synchronized my phone and also restored everyhting after backing up. Unfortunately, it doesn't help me.

Note: My phone is iPhone 4s and iOS 6.1.3.

Do you have any solution or advise fot that?
Thank you in advance.

It seems that you have multiple contact accounts on your iPhone. Open the Contacts app on your iPhone, tap on Groups and then tap "Show All Contacts".

You can now view all of your iPhone contacts in one place.


Why does my Photos library differ in size looking in Finder vs in the "Get Info" of Photos? Hopefully I am under-thinking this issue. I've been going through my Photos library, deleting duplicates and lame pictures. When I went to look at the total library size, I got a different calculation in the Photos app compared to Finder. Photos says the library size is 603GB and Finder says it is 665GB. What is taking the extra 60GB? Is there something I'm missing here? Thank you for your help!

I assume Photos is reporting the total size of all the pictures (and just the pictures). This is sort of confirmed by selecting all the photos in the library and then using Get Info: this shows the same size as selecting the library.

Finder is showing the actual size of the library file on disk. This file contains all the photos but also a lot of other "meta" information about the photos, albums, places, faces, etc. that allows Photos to manage and display the pictures.


Corner radius of Macbooks? I'm working on a sticker which I'll attach to a 15 inch MacBook Pro. I know that the size is:

Height: 0.71 inch (1.8 cm)
Width: 14.13 inches (35.89 cm)
Depth: 9.73 inches (24.71 cm)

but what about the corner radius? And is it the same as the other MacBooks? I'm using a 13 inch MacBook Air and don't have access to a 15 inch MacBook Pro.

Thanks!

tl;dr

What's the corner radius of a 15 inch MacBook Pro?

It is 11 mm to 12 mm. Try measuring mine.


At what resolution will an iPhone only app run at on an iPad Pro? If I run an iPhone only app on an iPad or iPad mini the app simulates running on a 3.5" screen. If I run the same app iPhone only on an iPad Pro what will iPhone device/screen size will it simulate?

375x667pts or 4.7" (iPhone 6 screen)

When running and iPhone only app in the iPad Pro simulator in Xcode 7.1 (publicly available in the App Store) the screen point resolution is reported as 375x667 or a 4.7" screen. This also equates to an iPhone 6 or an iPhone 6+ in display zoom mode. See PaintCode's guide for more details on display zoom mode.

http://www.paintcodeapp.com/news/ultimate-guide-to-iphone-resolutions


Apple AppStore policy change with respect to CoreLocation Posting this question on apple.stackexchange, after 2 downvotes on SOF

I just noticed a change in Apple policy,
Apple Store review guideline too seems to be updated, with this context about Location:

Location data can only be used when directly relevant to the features and services provided by the App to the user or to support approved advertising uses

Read more about CoreLocation here:

A paragraph from the link mentioned, which sounds apt as well:
Applications must have a very good reason to access Location and make that clear to the user through the provided purpose description text or they will be rejected by the App Store team.

So the question is as follows, for using Location with third party ad-network SDKs:

If I access User's Location, and provide the Location to the ad-network, and while submitting my app for review, clearly mention the usage of Location is only for advertising, and that I'm fetching User's Location for serving geo-targeted ads?
An ad-network which access User's location by flag settings. In this case, I mention that Location is being accessed by third party ad-network SDK for serving geo-targeted ads.
Is it likely the app would get rejected?

If so, (a) is there any workaround, like mentioning anything specific/clearly in App Store review process?

Or (b)Location should NEVER be accessed for a third party network SDK?

If (b) is the case, then can anyone help decrypt Apple's so much encrypted message as stated above?

My app went live with CoreLocation Manager settings(which doesn't fetch location by default).


App Store update shows different account I have a new app update I cannot install. When I review my installed user I see my @mac.com address. When attempting to update Cobook, I'm prompted for my @gmail.com account. The strange parts are:

I'm clearly not logged in as the gmail account
The gmail address is configured as a verified alternative ID

I'm running OS X 10.10.1 which was upgraded from 10.9 through the beta up to here. I see a separate issue on lion that doesn't address my problem.

If you are being prompted for another Apple ID when trying to download and update that means the app was originally purchased (downloaded) with that email address it is prompting you for.

In order to fix this, you must either continue to enter the password for the @gmail.com account to download future updates or re-purchase the application under your @mac.com email address.


Can I enroll in Apple's Developer Program from Kuwait? How can I enroll in Apple's Developer Program from Kuwait?

I am from Kuwait. I have Apple IDs associated with the USA and associated with my country of origin. When I try to enroll with my Kuwait based account, I keep getting an error saying:

  Sorry, you can’t enroll at this time.

The short answer is you can’t join if Apple doesn’t offer a store and that SKU in your place of legal residence.

You’d likely want to consult a lawyer familiar with the implications setting up a new legal residence elsewhere or form a company with a legal presence / residence elsewhere. This is more of a bureaucratic / taxation / legal problem than a technical one.

Purchase Apple Developer Program outside of USA
Which countries can an individual iOS developer reside in in order to receive payments from Apple?

At a high level, you don’t get the enter into an NDA to accept confidential builds from apple and you don’t get to list on the stores and get paid when you’re not from the countries where Apple is set up today. You can start building and installing apps yourself, though without needing a dev account.


Shutting down a frozen iPad with broken sleep button My iPad is frozen. I have Assistive Touch enabled. I can touch some buttons in AssistiveTouch, but I can't shut it down. The sleep button on the device is broken too.

Let it use up all the charge on the battery. Then it shuts down automatically, and you can charge it to use it again.


Get folder tag recognised by Automator within Photos library file I am trying to back my entire Photos library to OneDrive, following this early 2016 tutorial: https://www.groovypost.com/howto/share-pictures-OSX-photos-app-OneDrive/

When I step through the "Find finder Items" step in Automator however, it executes the step, but does not find any files or folders tagged as blue. These are not shown underneath the button "Results" either.

My suspicion this has something to do with the step where you have to right click on the library file and select "Show Package Contents", and that Automator now ignores any subfolders in this file.

The tagged "Master" folder can be found by filtering by blue tag in Finder.

I could not find anything on getting folder tags visible within these "packages"/library files.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

Select everything you want inside the package, ⌘+C and ⌘+option+V somewhere else. Adapt your search for the new path. So the files/folders won't be "hidden" inside the package.


Why are my updating iPhone apps "waiting..." forever? I've got an iPhone 4, not quite sure which version of iOS, but I keep current.

Recently, I got an update for one of the apps, started it, and then for some reason it got stuck on "Waiting..." indefinitely.  Another app later offered an upgrade, and when I accepted it got stuck on "Waiting...".  This has been a few days now, with both 3G and wireless available, with no change.

The apps don't have the "delete" button when I touch and hold on them, and I tried deleting them in iTunes but after syncing my iPhone there was no visible change.  (They're free apps, so deleting and reloading is a fine solution, but knowing how to kick-start the updater would be nice.)  The App Store app simply tells me they've been updated.

Any suggestions?

I get that problem sometimes too on my iPhone 4, especially if I'm updating an app and I lose network coverage.

Here's what I'll usually do, either:

Sync with iTunes
Restart my phone by holding down the power and home buttons.

Either of those fixes the problem for me.


Daisy Chain 2 Dell monitors to MacBook Air (mid 2011) I have a mid-2011 MacBook Air and 2 Dell monitors. A 30 inch (U3014) and a 27 inch (U2711).

I connect a mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable from the Air to the 30 inch monitor, and a DisplayPort to DisplayPort cable from the 30 inch to the 27 inch.

The 30 inch powers up as it should, but the 27 inch shows an error message saying that the refresh rate is wrong:

The current input timing is not supported by the monitor.
Please change your input timing to 2560x1440@60hz or any other monitor
listed timing as per the monitor specifications.

When I check the display settings in OS X, the 27 inch monitor doesn't even show up.

Is this a problem with the Air not being able to power up two displays that large?

Or is there anything I can tweak?

Someone told me the DisplayPort in the Air has a max supported resolution - I may have exceeded that.

MacBook Air cannot drive more than one external display.

I have Dell Ultrasharp U2713H and U2711 on my desk and I have tried daisy-chaining them with MacBook Air:

late 2010 (with mini DisplayPort),
mid 2011 (with Thunderbolt interface).

MB Air recognized only the first monitor in chain. Second display in chain mirrored the first one. Your error message is probably caused by signal cooked for U3014 (2560×1600) being fed to U2711 which cannot handle resolution higher than 2560×1440. Have you had lowered the resolution, you might have been able to see mirrored desktop on U2711.

At the moment I do not know (have not been able to find any information) whether macOS included drivers do support MST feature of DP at all.

There is an article About Thunderbolt ports and displays by Apple explaining how many of displays are supported with which Mac (though it does not explain why macOS does not support features (e.g. MST) with some configurations which Windows does support it (see Ed Andersen comment)).


How does Safari (on iOS) decide when to present an SSL client certificate I've installed a SSL client certificate into the version of Safari that comes with iOS 11.4.1. It apparently allows me to access a protected site as expected.

Are there any specific privacy issues that may result from this installation? In particular, how does Safari decide when to present certificates such as mine to web sites? I'd ideally like to have a configuration where Safari ties the certificate to a particular site (or URL) and presents the certificate (i.e. attempts authentication with it) only when I visit that site. Is that possible?

Safari (or any other web client) doesn't present its client certificate unless requested by the website. So your client certificate is safe. The server is always the one asking for the certificate, sending along its own certificate. Therefore, your browser will see that the certificate do not match the one you have and will result in failure, unless the server sends the right certificate to match yours, in this case, you can be sure you're on the good website.


How to configure a MacBook so that it keeps a static IP-address when disconnected? I have a client/server software that uses IP to communicate. It happens that both client and server is located at the same MacBook, and when I travel I disconnect it from the IP network, making it loose the static IP-address obtained by the network card from the IP network. This sets a stop for the IP connection between the client and server.

Both the client and server software is configured to use a specific IP-address and reconfiguration of this address within this software is not possible.
This makes it impossible to change the client/server IP-address configuration to localhost/127.0.0.1, as would be the most obvious solution.

Are there any other way that I can configure my MacBook (Yosemite) network configuration so that it keeps using the static IP-address even if I disconnect it from the IP network?

Open Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
Enter the following command: sudo ifconfig lo0 alias 192.168.1.100
Type root password
Quit Terminal


Undo refusal of app’s access to mic I am using Scratch which is based on Adobe Air, I believe.

At some point I mistakenly denied access to my microphone on that program (it asked me "May Scratch access your microphone" or something along the lines through the OS, and I said "no" by mistake).

Now I can't seem to find a place where I can recover the access and allow Scratch to access my microphone.

Any ideas where that toggle would be?

Security & Privacy

You can control which applications have access to the computer's microphone using the Security & Privacy panel:

System Preferences.app > Security & Privacy > Privacy (tab)

To modify the list, select Click the lock to make changes.


How to programatically add folder to Spotlight "do not index"? Is there any way to programmatically add a folder to Spotlight's "Privacy" tab?
Either through Terminal or Applescript?

Often I want to click on an item in Spotlight results in Finder, and have that item's folder no longer be indexed.

I found that if you

sudo defaults read /Volumes/foo/.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist Exclusions

you can see an array with all the items excluded.

But if you try to

sudo defaults write  /Volumes/foo/.Spotlight-V100/VolumeConfiguration.plist Exclusions -array-add '/path/to/folder'

it does NOT get added to the Privacy tab in the Spotlight Preference Panel, nor does it get de-indexed.

According to an answer here, a folder can be excluded from Spotlight indexing (achieving the same effect as adding it to the Privacy tab, although the folder won't actually be listed there) by either

adding .noindex to the end of the folder's name, or
creating an empty file .metadata_never_index inside the folder (eg with touch folder/.metadata_never_index)

You will need to restart Finder after adding  .metadata_never_index, either killall Finder from Terminal or logout from the Apple menu and then log back in. This method doesn't work in Mojave and later.


Do iOS 6 maps include public transit information and routing? Lately I'm spending a lot of time in London, even though I'm not British.

I rely heavily on the iPhone Google-based maps for transit information, I tell it where I need to get to, and it recommends a bus, tube, etc.

Does iOS6's new Maps app still have this feature? I've read in a few places that it doesn't, but I can't believe Apple would break such important functionality with a new iOS version.

If it doesn't, is there any way to get the old Google maps in iOS6?

As of right now, no, the new Maps app lacks transit directions. Instead, when you select Public Transit as your travel mode, it pops up a list of installed (or available from the App Store) apps that can provide local transit directions.

And, as of right now, no, there is no Google Maps app in the App Store (though you can still use Google Maps effectively from Mobile Safari).

There not much to do but conjecture as to why the Apple-made Maps app doesn't include transit. From Dan Moren's excellent iOS 6 review at MacWorld:

  This is an odd solution for Apple, which usually prides itself on
  providing a consistent experience. But I suspect that handling public
  transit directions simply wasn’t an option for Apple at this point,
  and if it came down to offering a third-party experience versus no
  feature at all, Apple opted to not leave its users completely
  high-and-dry.


Slightly broken SD card is not readable on macbook I put the SD card (sandisk ultra 32gb) in the card slot in macbook pro. But it is not getting detected. When I tried to find on Disk utility it doesnt show up. I have very important data in the SD card which I am not able to procure. Please help. Thank you

There's really no such thing as 'slightly broken' when it comes to electronics.

If it's just the contacts, it may be possible to replace them. If you cracked the circuit board, then at best you will have to send it to a professional data recovery company, who will be expensive & make no guarantees of recovery.

At worst, you now know why it is extremely unwise to ever trust something as delicate as an SD card or USB stick to be a repository for the only copy of any data. No important data should ever be kept in only one place, two at minimum & three to be sure; the third not in the same building as the other two.


Shoot a video in iPhone 7 Plus' Portrait mode I need to shoot an interview with my iPhone 7 Plus, and I'd like it to have the beautiful bokeh effect (shallow depth of field) that the Portrait mode in the camera has. However, my iPhone only lets me take pictures in Portrait mode, not video.

One possible workaround is to record the built-in preview of Portrait Mode with QuickTime, which would work great except for the controls showing up, which cannot be cropped out.

Is there any way to record video in Portrait mode (or hide the controls from my iPhone's screen so I can record using QuickTime), or at least is there any other way to get the bokeh effect while recording a video from my iPhone?

Thank you in advance.

No, you cannot do this without a jailbreak.(unless you were doing stop motion).

The workaround you mentioned would work, though. How to crop a video(cropping the frame around the subject): https://filmora.wondershare.com/video-editing-tips/free-video-croppers.html

You can record the screen like this using Quicktime:(I don't have an iPhone7 so I don't have portrait mode):


How to change the size of the icons that appear in the Terminal.app After updating to MacOS Catalina 10.15.4 the icons that appear in my Terminal.app have become extremely small. As you can see in the picture, there is a big gap between the arrow -> that is preceding the tilde ~, which didn't exist before. (This is zoomed in 200%, use block cursor for scale.)

Is there a way to change the size of icons in the terminal?

It looks like the arrow is actually text, printed by your shell as part of the prompt. As far as I know, Terminal is restricted to a single text size throughout the window, so you can't really resize the arrow without resizing everything else as well. You could try to comb through the font for a bigger-looking arrow.

As for the spaces, there seems to be an explicit space character after the arrow, and then another before the colour-changing sequences in your prompt. You could always remove those to make things a bit tighter.

You also have a couple of seemingly empty %{...%} constructs in there. That makes me suspect that there are actually some unprintable characters there, probably containing some terminal control codes, possibly to put some text, like a clock, somewhere else in the window. It is possible that those unprintable characters are somehow generating unwanted spaces.

It looks like you might want to read up on how the prompt generation in zsh works. This is documented in the zshmisc man page, which you can reach by running man zshmisc (for the top-level documentation, run man zsh).


how to store Time Machine backups on NFS and keep metadata? There is a Mac OS 10.7 (Lion) desktop, it stores Time Machine backups on a separate partition. Also there is an Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise) server with NFS daemon running, it exports a /BACKUP disk. This disk is mounted by Mac OS desktop and I'd like to copy Time Machine backups to this network disk. Which tool shell I use to store backups properly with all associated metadata, hfs extended attributes and forks?

If you're explicitly looking to make a copy of the existing backups (a backup of the backups), you will need to make a disk image with Disk Utility. Time Machine uses hardlinked directories which are only supported by HFS+, so you need HFS+ in a container.

You'd be much better off running netatalk on the Ubuntu server, which will share the disk over AFP, allowing Time Machine to back up directly to it. Here's one guide: http://pwntr.com/2012/03/03/easy-mac-os-x-lion-10-7-time-machine-backup-using-an-ubuntu-linux-server-11-10-12-04-lts-and-up/


MD5 checksum on multiple file? I have files like this.

md1.gz
md1.gz.md5
md2.gz
md2.gz.md5
....
md300.gz
md300.gz.md

Is there any application (or command line) to check the md5 of all files ?

EDIT: Currently I use cfv from macport. work great without any modification

The md5 command will check multiple files for you. Simply list all the files you want after the command. I.e. md5 md1.gz md2.gz md3.gz. It will output the md5 hashes like so:

MD5 (md1.gz) = 1c2c02b085a1bc2fed683eca86c0df02
MD5 (md1.gz) = c5515451d8f90a822457a4a8e4bf1791

If you want just the hashes, use the -q flag, it will print only the hash, without the identifying information.

I'm guessing that you want to compare the hash of the files against that in the corresponding .md5 file. You could write a quick shell script to check each generated hash against the one stored in the .md5 file.

Something like this should work:

#!/bin/bash

for file in "$@"; do
  generatedhash=$(md5 -q "$file")
  storedhash=$(< "$file".md5)
  if [[ $generatedhash != $storedhash ]]; then
    echo "Hash for file '$file 'does not match"
  fi
done

Save that to a text file, call it something like checkmd5.sh and do chmod +x checkmd5.sh in the terminal.

It will print out a warning for all files that don't have a matching hash. It prints nothing if the hashes do match. It's quick and dirty, so apologies if it doesn't work for your particular case. But based on the examples you gave, if you run ./checkmd5.sh md*.gz it should check the hashes of the .gz files against the corresponding .md5 files and tell you if any are bad.


How do I watch Youtube videos without Flash on Safari? Is there a way to watch Youtube videos without Flash installed on Safari?

If not, are there any other solutions?

Yes, most YouTube videos are also available as HTML5 videos. You need to sign in to YouTube and join the HTML5 trial -- see http://www.youtube.com/html5 for details.


Force language change on focus into terminal Is there any way of forcing input language set to default one on terminal/iterm focus?

Basically what I want to achieve is setting current keyboard input language to English on switching back from other programs.
Scripting solutions would work as well.

Couldn't find a in-built preferences settings in iTerm. But you can use the KeyBoard Maestro to achieve it. If you don't have then download from the official site.

Open KeyBoard Mestro.
Create a group in Groups section (to hold all your specific automating processes).
Now create a macro with the name Set iTerm Application Language.

a. Add New Trigger -> The focussed window -> The focussed window changes

b. Add another trigger -> This application -> Select iTerm -> Select Active -> Repeating every 1 seconds.

c. Add New Action -> Select Set KeyBoard Layout -> Select the keyboard layout (i.e., language preference).

Now create another macro with the name Set Other Application Languages.

a. Repeat a in previous macro.

b. Add another trigger -> This application -> Select Any Application -> Select Activates.

c. Repeat c from previous macro.

You are all set. While switching windows between iTerm and others, you can see the keyboard preference icon changing in the top menu bar on the right corner.

Note : The keyboard layouts will appear only if they are added in System Preferences -> Language & Region -> Input Sources.
And the names of the macros can be anything. If you wish to deactivate the triggers, disable them by clicking the Tick mark on top-right side.


Macbook Pro stuck after I enter my password For last 2 days I am not able to login to my MacBook Pro. It was working fine and suddenly for no reason after I last shutdown my mac I am not able to login.
The mac starts up fine and goes to the login screen. After I enter my password the progress bar is stuck in 70%-80% and sometimes at 100%.

I tried resetting NVRAM and SCM but it didn't help.
I also tried following the steps mentioned in Justin Silver’s blog post but it also didn't help.

As mentioned in the post, I moved all the 3rd Party items from /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/Extensions to /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Library/ExtensionsDisabled. Since I was not able to find any *.kext in /System/Library/Extensions older than 2016, I didn't moved any *.kext from /System/Library/Extensions location.

My MBP is mid 2012 and have the latest OS X, also I have 1TB HDD and 8GB RAM.

I am not able to login using SafeMode as FileVault is enabled. I even tried login in Single User or Verbose mode but I am not able to do so.

Can anyone help me to fix this.

I found a solution for this problem by robertk1 and he writes the following:

  I would enter my password correctly and then the cursor would change to the spinning pinwheel and just sit there forever. The only way out was a power off reboot.

This is exactly what happend with my machine and it looks like it's same with yours. I hope this also works with FileVault enabled. There are two ways to solve this. With and without a guest account.

In case you do have access to the guest account follow these steps by hijoncon:

  Login as guest
  Open Terminal (cmd + space then search terminal)
  Enter su your_account
  Enter your password
  sudo find /private/var/folders | grep com.apple.LaunchServices | grep csstore
  Remove every .csstore your find like this sudo rm /private/var/folders/cd/someLongRandomNameHere/someFolderNumberHere/com.apple.LaunchService-whatever.csstore

If you don't have access to the guest account you can try different ways to get into the machine (like SSH) robertk1 suggests:

  To do this, you'll either need to be in a recovery console, or ssh
  into the machine, or boot from an external drive, or otherwise somehow
  get to a command prompt.

Once you are in the machine you can delete the files like described above in the last steps.


Install and boot Windows from USB hard drive? I would like to install Windows 7 on an external USB 2.0 500 gb hard drive. Is it possible to both install to and boot from this USB drive from my MacBook Pro 2010?

As far as I know Microsoft lock their Operating Systems so that you cannot run them directly from an external storage device. Microsoft say something about it not being a 'primary means of storage.' More like them making an attempt at stopping people running multiple computers of on copy of the OS, as allowing them to install it on any storage would allow people to make loads of copies. Hence, Linux does not have this problem. I personally do not do much gaming, and have never needed Windows on my MacBook Pro, so have not dabbled in the whole 'Windows on my Mac' thing. If you really do have a problem with sticking Windows on the MBP's Hard drive and booting either natively or through virtualisation, then the following links may help, although the guides are designed for XP and I have no idea if they will work on 7.

Prepping the install CD (scroll down)

Installing

As I said, I cannot guarantee this will work for 7. I hope, however that I have helped in some way.


Screen sharing - Remote screen off turns main display off I run El Capitan + Server on a mac mini that is plugged on a TV via HDMI and to which I access via Screen Sharing.

Recently (since the El Capitan upgrade?), when the remote computer goes to sleep or quits Screen Sharing, the main screen also shuts off (which is of course undesired).

Anyone has an idea where that may come from and/or how to correct it?

EDIT

Apparently this is an El Capitan bug; I have filed a bug report; anyone who encounters it is welcome to do the same. Here is a protocol to reproduce the bug:

Log into Headless Mac Mini from remote Mac via Screen Sharing (while no user is logged in),
Start some video player on Mac Mini (plays on TV/physical screen) and close the Screen Sharing app on remote - the Mini doesn’t go to sleep, as expected,
Connect back, stop video player, let Mac Mini go to sleep,
Connect back again, start video player again, close Screen Sharing from remote again >> now Mini goes to sleep immediately and TV goes black.

I believe that the answer to this is to use Remote Management instead of Screen Sharing.

Remote Management includes Screen Sharing, but when you disconnect it does not seem to turn off the screen, at least as of 10.11.3.

See also: How to stop display from turning off when I disconnect a Screen Sharing client.


Unable to mount Time Capsule from a Macbook when backups work I have two Macbooks (A and B). A backs-up to Time Capsule (TC), while B does not. I used to mount TC and move files there, which I don't want to keep on A or B.

Few weeks ago it became impossible to mount TC on A, while B is still mounting fine. A continues to do backups to TC as usual. A does not show TC in left sidebar in Finder (B does), but one can find it via Networks. Trying to connect to partition takes forever. The partition is showed as mounted, however, /Volumes/ does not have it so as Disk Utility.

I restarted both TC and A, but the problem persists. Is there anything else I can reset to solve this issue?

Buttons to unmount and to "connect as..." do not respond:

$ df -g
Filesystem    1G-blocks Used Available Capacity  iused   ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1          232  226         5    98% 59416761 1564485   97%   /
devfs                 0    0         0   100%      696       0  100%   /dev
map -hosts            0    0         0   100%        0       0  100%   /net
map auto_home         0    0         0   100%        0       0  100%   /home
$

Re-adding the Time Capsule to Time Machine may work
I used to face problems with the mount. Removing the Time Capsule (TC) from A's Time Machine and re-adding helped.
Otherwise, the obvious ultimate solution would be to remove the A's backup from TC completely and take a fresh backup.


Can I submit an iOS App update to the App Store but hold the release of the update for a later date? I have an app that I have to update to work with the new backend.

The new backend will be deployed some time in the next X days.

Is it possible to submit the update for review, but not have it released immediately after it gets approved, so that I can release the new version of the app after I swap the backend with the new one?

Is it possible to submit the update for review, but not have it released immediately after it gets approved

Yes. It's possible to do so.

When submitting your app for review on App Store Connect, simply select the option to manually release the app instead of automatically release. This way, once the app is approved by Apple, it is kept at hold for release on the App Store until approved by the developer. You are also notified by email by once the app update is approved.

Refer to the following linked App Store Connect Help documentation pages:

Manually release a version

  If you choose to manually release a version when you submit your app for review, you can release the version after it’s approved and the status changes to Pending Developer Release. If you have an app in the Pending Developer Release state for longer than 30 days, you’ll receive an email reminder from Apple.

Submit your app for review

  In the Version Release section, select a release option:

  Release the app yourself: Select “Manually release this version.” (Later, manually release the version.)


Desktop backgrounds keep switching position I've had a problem with my Mac Pro since I first bought it. I have a setup with six 1920x1080 screens (3 screens wide, 2 screens high). I've processed some nice (large) photos, so I could set them on these screens and still make it look like one big photo. I've calculated and cut out the bezels from the photos and it looked very nice. The problem though: my Mac can't seem to remember which one goes where. An example:

Looks nice, doesn't it? Yet, I regularly boot my Mac and see this:

The photos that are actually part of my background have been moved to a different screen and then there are two parts from older desktop background that have been reintroduced (bottom left and right).

I've tried removing every single folder from the background selection dialog window, and just adding the one I want (if that helped, I could live with it), but it doesn't seem to help. Every single OSX update (I've just updated tot 10.11.3) gives me a little hope that it's fixed, but it never is.

Do you guys have any idea how I can keep the backgrounds in place, or, stretch a single image between multiple monitors (preferably without third party software).

In case you wonder, the Mac does remember where the displays are relative to each other. I can move my cursor between screens without a problem.

I look forward to your response(s).

Mac Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Try to do these things.

Check that you have this option unchecked. I am sure you have it unchecked, but just in case :) It may be set to 'Change picture: When logging in'. So let's make sure that this is not the reason.

Then you may try to enter following command in terminal:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Desktop.plist

After this, set your desktop pictures again, reboot and see if it helped.
This may be strange, but try to uncheck this option:

It's not actually resetting your backgrounds but creating a new desktop   space on every boot. Check your spaces by pressing the mission control button (F3 on mac keyboard), it should show a bunch of desktops.

Anyway, let me know the result (via comment). Question is interesting.


Garageband - Remove Dead Space at End of Track I was sidetracked while recording something off of the internet into Garageband. How do I cut off all of the dead space at the end of my recording?

By saying cut off all of the dead space, I assume you wanna crop the track to remove silence at the end of the track? If I'm right, here is 1 solution:

Add the track to your iTunes
Right click on track and Get Info (or just cmd+i)
Select Options tab
Tick stop, and select time you want track to end and press ok
Go to iTunes Preferences: cmd+, (comma)
In General tab, click on Import Settings and select your output format, eg. MP3, then ok
Click on your song, go File > Convert > Create MP3/AAC version
When this is complete you can find this track by right clicking on it and say Show in Finder

Hope this is what you wanted? If not, it might help someone else as this option has been silently removed from the right-click context menu. :) Let us know.


WhatsApp notifications show contact name instead of sender-defined name When I get a message with WhatsApp and my iPhone is locked, I cant see sender's name as they set it in their own WhatsApp. I see the name which saved in my Contacts. Already 3 days like that... I want to solve this problem. I want to see the sender's name on the lock screen, not the Contact name.

The simplest way is to not have that person in your contacts or have their Whatsapp name in contacts. You can't have them both in your contacts and also just display the regular Whatsapp username as far as I know.


How to use WiFi and Ethernet at the same time Brief Description:

I need my Ethernet card (en0) to see all traffic under 192.168.2.xxx.

However I also need to use WiFi card (en1) for all other traffic.

OS: OS X Lion

I am using a separate network location to deal with this specific use (since this is a for a robotics project that communicates via Ethernet). Ethernet (en0) had to be set up as a static IP (192.168.2.10) per the requirements for the device I am connecting to. All connections on the Ethernet card (en0) should be 192.168.2.xxx as specified above. WiFi (en1) is set up as DHCP to a router since their is no point in assigning it as a static for general purpose traffic. Ethernet (en0) is set up as priority over WiFi (en1).

I would also like to keep this under the network location preferences if at all possible since I do not require this feature to be on all the time.

I would really appreciate your help on this. No one I have talked to knows how to solve this.

The solution was extremely simple.

Prioritize ethernet to be first.
Under System Preferences->Network Settings: where EN0 is Manually configured, leave the router field blank.

I thought the router field was required, so I filled it in. My Ethernet connection has a "router" per say, but it is not used to access general connections. By filling in that field, the Mac OS would automatically try to create a default route through the Ethernet NIC. This would redirect all miscellaneous traffic through the wrong router.

I also tried to delete this route in the routing tables before I found the solution to my problem. This would delete the route appropriately and allow the my software system to run correctly. However after around a minute or so, the route was re-added (as I later discovered) by the operating system. After the route was re-added the connections would fail, so I had to restart the process all over again. This fix proved to be unproductive.

I hope this helps someone with their networking issues.


Setting up a git (ssh) server using OS X Server I would like to use OS X Server to set up a git server that I can ssh into from other machines on my network.

I realize that Xcode Service has repository functionality built in, but I am looking for a more universally accessible system (from Windows or other machine without Xcode), and my Xcode Service setup broke with Yosemite anyway. I also realize that git is already installed on my machine and that I can set up an ssh server by a method like this or this, but I don't want to make a new user or deal with things on the local machine level like the first post says (I have a full server already and I want to use its resources), and I don't want to install gitolite/gitlab/etc.

To sum up, I am looking for a way to host ssh-accessible git repositories on my machine using only git and OS X Server. Thank you for your time.

You need to create a "bare" git repo: a repository that can never have files checked out. Everyone pulls and pushes from the server like normal, but nobody can actually work on the server (unless they make a non-bare clone).

If you are creating a new repository called "my_bare_repo.git", you can make it bare like so:

cd /Users/git (or whatever)
git init --bare my_bare_repo.git

Using your git server

On the client machine, you would clone the repo like so:

git clone ssh://user@yourmachine.domain.com/Users/git/my_bare_repo.git

If you have an existing local repo, you can add a remote origin like so:

git remote add origin ssh://user@yourmachine.domain.com/Users/git/my_bare_repo.git

Then use the server app to set up "sharing only" users that can use ssh services. You can manage the users and profiles locally or remotely through web and/or server app. The ssh access is controlled in the Server entry in the top left - then click on Settings on the right and select SSH.


Synching Mail Sent folder on new computer I have an iMac and a 2009 Mac Pro 4.1.  Both run OS X 10.11.3.  I recently used Migration Assistant to move data, applications, and settings from the iMac to the Mac Pro.

I had some other problems that I had to get fixed with the Mac Pro before I could make it my primary desktop machine.  The problems took several days to get solved.

Because of this situation, the Mail Sent folder has gotten out of sync on the two machines.  While all incoming mail shows up on the Mac Pro, none of the email Sent (to others) from the iMac shows up on the Mac Pro.

As my Sent mail serves as a useful resource, does anyway exist for my Sent folders to synchronize (other than sending my self every mail that I've sent over the days from the iMac)?

Have you checked that the "Sent option" is correctly enabled in your devices?
In iMac:

Open Preferences > Account;
Select your account;
Press the "Mailbox behaviour" tab;
Make sure the "Store sent messages on the server" option is enabled. In this way, sent messages will be stored on the server, and will downloaded in all your devices.


How to add image to file format .mp3 on a Mac? I use a Mac and have artwork I would like to add as images to sound .mp3 file.
I am aware that I can create a .mov file using QuickTime media player which is already built-in on my Mac, but I’d just like to attach art, not translate the whole file into a new format.
What tools or scripts or apps can do this task?

There are several places you can do this:

within iTunes. Simply right click, select Get Info, then select the artwork tab and select “Add Artwork”

from Get Info (Finder). Right (Option) click the file and select Get Info. Choose Artwork, then select Add Artwork. Select the art work you would like to embed.

in VLC. Go to Media Information screen CommandI  which will bring up a window of all the tags including artwork. Simply drag your artwork to add it.

via a tag editor like Music Brainz Picard. You can easily add the Artwork by dragging it to the artwork “field” in the editor and save it.

command line via ffmpeg
ffmpeg -i musicfile.mp3 -i coverart.png -c copy -metadata:s:v title="Album Cover"-metadata:s:v comment="Album Art " musicfile.mp3


User management for an AFP share I've been tasked with setting up an AFP share on a server running Mountain Lion. My question is mostly about best practices and to find out if I'm doing this right. My only prior experience has been (very) basic NFS and SMB shares focused mostly on Linux.

So here's the situation.

There will be (to start) approximately 7 or 8 users that will need access to various parts of the share. I basically need two access levels (for now). One that can access everything (an admin), and one that can only access a subset of everything. Pretty standard right?

In the sharing dialog, I can add shared folders and add users to the specific shares. So I've created the the shares and I was just going to add all the 2 or 3 admin users to all the shares, then the remaining users to the specific shares they need access to. The UI doesn't seem to expose anything of the nature, but can I manage the users independently of the shared folders? Put another way: can I mark a folder as belonging to a particular group and assign users to that group in order to grant them access to that particular share?

My recommendation for best practices would be to use Server.app ($20 on the App Store) to perform file sharing. The benefit of using Server.app is that it supports more advanced file sharing configuration. For example: you can set ACLs (Access Control Lists - a list of permissions) on different folders for the group access that you want in System Preference -> Sharing. However, by default those ACEs (Access Control Entry - a single permissions entry in an ACL) will not support permissions inheritance. Permissions inheritance keeps file permissions in the share point set correctly (so that the entire group continues to have read/write access). The absence of inheritance becomes problematic when one user of the group has written a file to the share, and another user attempts to modify it - by default, the ACL that specifies read/write at the root of the share will not have inherited permissions to descendant files/folders

The best way to manage the permissions on a share point is usually to do it by creating groups. That way, you can set the permissions on share points to allow group access to the folder/share. This makes it easy to provide users access to that share in the future, as you'd simply add them into the group. For example: most "normal" users (including the "admin" users) should be part of a group that's allowed access to the general-use shares (or all shares, as you've mentioned). Your "admin" users will be part of a group that has access to the other "restricted" share points. Setting each of those groups up as an entry (ACE) in Server.app -> File Sharing will allow permissions inheritance to occur.

If you really want to use the System Preferences -> File Sharing setup to serve files, I'd recommend using System Preferences -> Users & Groups to create groups to control access. However, be aware that you will likely run into permissions problems somewhere down the road.

Although you can use chmod on the command line to specify ACLs that do support inheritance, it's a little bit cumbersome for some users.


iPhone won't stop connecting to bluetooth, interferes with mouse My iPhone keeps pairing itself to my Mac. I know because every time it happens my mouse lags horribly until I remove it.

Things I've tried:

Reset the Bluetooth module
Factory reset all connected Apple devices
Remove all devices
Select device > remove device

When it happens, it is only listed in the Bluetooth menu item; it's not listed in System Preferences > Bluetooth.

Until recently I had an app called Typeeto installed which enabled me to use my Bluetooth keyboard on any other device without unpairing and re-pairing. Basically, it transmits to the Mac, which transmits to the device. I believe this is the root cause and I removed the paired devices from it and deleted it. Still no luck.

Never mind. Deleting the com.apple.bluetooth files in /Library/Preferences and ~/Library/Preferences seems to have taken care of it.


Is there a way to bring back the full status bar in Safari 9? Contrary to what Apple (or a Google search) seems to think, I don't want a more minimal status bar—I want one that stays in place, is the same height and width at all times, and doesn't distract me by flashing in and out.  Much like I've had through all of Safari's existence up until now.

Now it's changed, and I can't find a setting to move it back.  Is there another option (perhaps via Terminal magic) that can unlock a more "classic" feel to the status bar?

So let's go through the options here:

defaults write com.apple.Safari ShowStatusBar -boolean true

No effect.

Minimal status bar extension

It auto hides.

Ultimate status bar extension

Yup, auto hides too.

Statusbar-lite

Guess what? :/

While searching around though, I found a great deal of people asking how they force the bar to autohide. It's a common complaint in editorials as well, and seems to be the one constant of all the Safari extensions.

After an extensive search - what you're looking for does not exist at this time :(

Hardly the first time Apple has taken away control from a user, either...

Tl;dr: Apologies, but it's time to let it go - it's gone.

HOWEVER....

One of the extensions I found is open source and appears to be easily editable. Specifically, this one, and by removing a line of JS, I can force the bar to stay on the screen, and replace it with blank text (so it looks correctly).

Here's the thing, it's still just an overlay on top of the page, it's not a part of the safari "window" as the old status bar could be, and doesn't show all of the same information either.

Here's what the effect looks like

And here's the extension package. You can see the changes made from the official release to make this possible as well.

Installing this requires jumping through an extra hoop since I'm not a registered Apple dev, so here's what you need to do.

Download and extract the package.
In Safari, go to Preferences -> Advanced
Check the "Show Develop menu in menu bar" box
In the newly added menu bar item, click on "Show Extension Builder"
Click on the plus sign in the bottom left of the new window and hit "Add extension"
Navigate to where you unzipped the .safariextension folder
Accept the security warning
Reload any open webpages

Usual disclaimers apply, your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, kids eat free, etc.


How to fix messed-up MacBook disk partition table? I have broken the disk of my Mac doing partitions with gparted. Now, nothing boots (except pendrives) and the OS X Rescue Disk recognizes the disk as Virtual Whole Disk. Nothing works, repairing or partitioning the disk throws errors.

Is there a Linux utility to reformat the disk completely as I could reinstall Mac OS X? It is extremely urgent, I am extremely nervous because it is for work, and I really don't know what to do. I do not need to recover data, just reinstall.

Yes. Boot into the mac's recovery, and reinstall (or repair) the drive.


Open/Reopen dialog regarding Finder keeps popping up? After upgrading to Mojave (10.14.4) Finder appears to crash producing the following dialog:

I've also noticed .crash files accumulating in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports regarding Finder since doing the upgrade.

Looking at these .crash files it appears Finder is crashing:

$ ls |grep Find.*.crash | wc -l
     388

Example .crash file:

$ more ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Finder_2019-05-05-105000_smingolelli.crash
Process:               Finder [17433]
Path:                  /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder
Identifier:            com.apple.finder
Version:               10.14.4 (1143.4.5)
Build Info:            Finder_FE-1143004005000000~4
Code Type:             X86-64 (Native)
Parent Process:        ??? [1]
Responsible:           Finder [17433]
User ID:               502

Date/Time:             2019-05-05 10:49:44.583 -0400
OS Version:            Mac OS X 10.14.4 (18E226)
Report Version:        12
Bridge OS Version:     3.4 (16P4507)
Anonymous UUID:        45606DD2-800B-B008-F8D7-C4E0D1D10A51

Sleep/Wake UUID:       EA3613C3-1281-4C1B-95C1-4380FA6BC430

Time Awake Since Boot: 36000 seconds
Time Since Wake:       31 seconds

System Integrity Protection: enabled

Crashed Thread:        5  Dispatch queue: TDesktopViewDataSource: Sort

Exception Type:        EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes:       KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000018
Exception Note:        EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Termination Signal:    Segmentation fault: 11
Termination Reason:    Namespace SIGNAL, Code 0xb
Terminating Process:   exc handler [17433]

VM Regions Near 0x18:
-->
    __TEXT                 000000010a179000-000000010a8d0000 [ 7516K] r-x/rwx SM=COW  /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder

Application Specific Information:
dyld3 mode

Thread 0:: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff337193bd CFBasicHashAddValue + 155
1   com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff3371fa76 CFDictionaryAddValue + 187
2   com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff33748309 __CFDictionaryApplyFunction_block_invoke + 22
3   com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff337480f2 CFBasicHashApply + 105
4   com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff33748071 CFDictionaryApplyFunction + 130
5   com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff3378a955 ___CFPrefsDeliverPendingKVONotificationsGuts_block_invoke + 289
6   com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff33748309 __CFDictionaryApplyFunction_block_invoke + 22
7   com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff337480f2 CFBasicHashApply + 105
8   com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff33748071 CFDictionaryApplyFunction + 130
9   com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff3378a7bc _CFPrefsDeliverPendingKVONotificationsGuts + 246
10  com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff3378a6c4 __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_A_BLOCK__ + 12
11  com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff3374ddd7 __CFRunLoopDoBlocks + 394
12  com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff3374db34 __CFRunLoopRun + 2772
13  com.apple.CoreFoundation            0x00007fff3374ce0e CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 455
14  com.apple.HIToolbox                 0x00007fff32a399db RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 292
15  com.apple.HIToolbox                 0x00007fff32a39715 ReceiveNextEventCommon + 603
16  com.apple.HIToolbox                 0x00007fff32a394a6 _BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInModeWithFilter + 64
17  com.apple.AppKit                    0x00007fff30dd3ffb _DPSNextEvent + 965
18  com.apple.AppKit                    0x00007fff30dd2d93 -[NSApplication(NSEvent) _nextEventMatchingEventMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 1361
19  com.apple.AppKit                    0x00007fff30dcceb0 -[NSApplication run] + 699
20  com.apple.AppKit                    0x00007fff30dbc3f0 NSApplicationMain + 777
21  com.apple.finder                    0x000000010a17f9f1 0x10a179000 + 27121
22  libdyld.dylib                       0x00007fff5fbc13d5 start + 1
...

How can I resolve this issue?

Research this particular issue kept leading to this as one potential solution.

macOS 10.14 Mojave problems: how to fix them
The last time you opened Finder, it unexpectedly quit while reopening windows

To find & delete the preferences file for Finder. This file is located here:

$ find ~/Library/Preferences -name com.apple.finder.plist -ls
18015144       48 -rw-------    1 smingolelli      staff               24369 May  5 19:50 /Users/smingolelli/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

You can delete it like so:

$ find ~/Library/Preferences -name com.apple.finder.plist -delete

Deleting this .plist file for Finder stopped Finder from continuing to crash.


Changing the color of the path in Terminal.app I would like the CasebashMac:bfgenv chris$ part of the following line to appear in a different color in my terminal.

CasebashMac:bfgenv chris$ python

I set the PS1 variable in my .bashrc to achieve this.

Open Terminal
[editorofchoice] ~/.bashrc
Add a line with the following:

PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '

Save the .bashrc
Exit Terminal and re-open. You should now have a green prompt.


Mail app is slow/unresponsive under macOS Mojave. What can I do? After installing the public beta of macOS Mojave, the Mail app became slow/unresponsive.

I have already restarted the system. It did not help.

What can I do?

After I chose "Mailbox" - "Rebuild", the problem was immediately solved.


What's the difference between "Empty Trash" and "Secure Empty Trash" I suddenly notice an option called Secure Empty Trash. While Empty Trash is normally gotten by pressing Right Click on the Trash icon, for Secure Empty Trash, we have to only press Command button at that time.

I also notice that with Secure Empty Trash the System takes longer to empty the trash than normally. Why is that? What's the difference between them? And when should i use "Secure Empty Trash"?

This excerpt from Tech Republic explains it quite well (emphasis mine):

  The Secure Empty Trash command prompts Mac OS X to perform a
  seven-pass* erasure of the file Instead of just removing a directory
  entry to the file or files in question, Mac OS X's Secure Empty Trash
  command initiates a series of seven different passes in which random
  information is written to the hard disk sectors previously occupied by
  that file. In fact, Apple states that this secure erasure meets United
  States Department of Defense security standards.

*This is incorrect. It's a 1X pass. See edit.

In comparison, "Empty trash" does not write over the 'deleted' data at all - it just marks the blocks where this data is stored on your HDD as available for use. It does not erase the actual data you discard.

Writing over a disk even one time takes a while. Simply telling the system "these blocks are now available to be written over" takes no time as well.

You should use "Secure Empty Trash" if you are deleting sensitive information and you want to make sure it won't be recovered in the future.

Edit:

That Tech Republic article is incorrect. As Andrew Medico correctly pointed out in his answer, securely emptying the trash performs a 1X pass. From Apple's Training Manual:

  There are varying levels of security offered depending on the number of passes and whether each path uses a specific data pattern or random data. Disk Utility in OS X offers multiple sanitization options for an entire volume or free space. A seven-pass erase option is available that meets U.S. Department of Defense standards (DOD 5220-22M).

  Users can also initiate sanitization while deleting files using the Secure Empty Trash command in the Finder. This command overwrites files as they are deleted using a single-pass erase.

While the Erase Free Space option in Disk Utility offers 7X pass, the secure empty trash feature is only a 1X pass. Tech Republic seems to have conflated the two.


iPhoto not recognizing memory card, but mounts in Finder I am running Lion with most recent version of iPhoto.

I can access the memory card in Finder without problem, but when I launch iPhoto the card does not show up to import photos it contains. I have tried rebuilding my entire iPhoto database and settings by pressing option+command while the app is in the process of starting and selecting to rebuild.

Any ideas?

Connect the memory card and launch the program Image Capture (found in the Utilities folder in both /Applications/ or in Launchpad, if you're running Lion. In the lower left corner of the screen, there should be a menu that says Connecting this camera opens...; from the menu, select iPhoto from the list.

This should make iPhoto launch when you connect this memory card.


MacBook Pro - Install slower memory than specified? I recently bought a a pair of DDR3-1066 SODIMMs to upgrade a Mid-2010 MacBook Pro.

On the packaging for the memory, it says "Compatible with MacBook Pro: Mid-2010, Early-2011, Late-2011". However, according to Wikipedia, the 2011 models require DDR3-1333.

What would happen if somebody bought this memory and installed it in a 2011 MacBook Pro?

Would the memory run at 1333 speed (and if so, could this cause issues)? Or would the machine slow down to accommodate the slower RAM?

Edit: The memory is Corsair CMSA8GX3M2A1066C7. A picture of the packaging is below.

Is it really true that Corsair is recommending memory of the wrong speed?

What will happen?  Either one of the following:

It will work but the memory will run at a slower speed
Your MacBook Pro won't boot

I personally don't use slower memory than what is recommended, but I have upgraded machines that had slower memory and those were working just fine when I did.  However, it's a pretty good bet that if Corsair says it's compatible, it will work.

If the memory isn't compatible, you aren't going to harm anything.  Your computer won't boot and will more than likely give you a series of tones indicating your memory is bad.


Uninterruptible Power Supply not shutting down Mac Mini running Yosemite We just received a brand new Mac Mini, which came with Yosemite pre-installed. Our UPS is set to shut down the computer after running on battery backup for 1 minute. I have tested this with an iMac running Mavericks (10.9.5) and the UPS behaves as expected, but on the Mac Mini running Yosemite the computer does not shut down and just continues to run off the battery.

Updated to add: I tested with the CyberPower 825VA and the Mac Mini running OS 10.10.0. Today I installed OS 10.10.1 update and tested again with the same results. I also tested with a Furman F1500-UPS in place of the CyberPower unit and there has been no change in the behavior.

Updated 11/28/2014--I have verified in Terminal that "haltafter" is on and set to 1. I also tried triggering a shutdown by "haltlevel" 100 (shutdown when battery dips below 100%) and the machine is still not shutting down. I tried booting from an external drive that has OS 10.8.5 on it, but the Mini would not let me do this.

Updated 12/01/2014--I booted the aforementioned iMac from an external Yosemite boot drive and it displays the same behavior as the Mac Mini. No progress on the issue thus far.

Updated 12/08/2014--I have now tested 3 different brands of UPS with 3 different Macs all with the same results. Have gone back & forth with Apple support about this for the last week and they haven't informed me of any progress on this issue yet. I will update when/if this is solved.

Updated 12/15/2014--After reporting this bug to Apple and several back and forth calls with them, this issue has been passed up to the engineering team that deals with Power Management. I was told I might hear something back today if there's a quick fix or workaround, otherwise this issue may not be resolved until 10.10.2 is released.

Updated 01/22/2015--After seeing Eric's reply below, I installed OS X 10.10.2 (14C106a) beta. I only tested with 1 UPS so far, a Furman F1500-UPS, but it is now functioning as expected.

I had the same problem with my new Eaton 3S 550 UPS. I gave installing 10.10.2 beta a try (build 14C99d) and now it works! So hopefully the functionality should be back for other UPS models as well once 10.10.2 is released.


How do I set "Show in finder" to reveal location rather than open files (in default program)? I've had this problem for a while now on Yosemite. It all started when I tried to change Alfred to reveal files with forklift rather than finder.
Since I couldn't get that to work i've reverted back to finder except now both Alfred and Chrome "show in finder" just opens the file instead of revealing in finder.

I've avoided fixing it for a while by using the terminal open /path/to/folder but that is super inefficient.

I couldn't find a similar question addressing this (frustrating) issue.

Thanks.

here’s a fix:

Open the Terminal App and type/cut & paste the following:

$ sudo killall -KILL appleeventsd

Hit return, enter your password, and you should be all set.


Using Automator to call a Service I use save my PDFs to my Evernote account.  I would like to automate this process at the end of the day.  Can I use Automator to call the existing service "Add to Evernote" at the end of the day?

I made such a service.

See

https://blog.tempel.org/2015/09/RunServiceForAutomator.html

and

https://github.com/tempelmann/RunServiceActionForAutomator


AirDrop between MBP and iPad not working I have a mid-2012 MacBook pro running Yosemite and an iPad Air 2 with the latest iOS 8. The 2 devices can connect via Bluetooth (at least they claim to be connected), however, neither initially showed up in the others AirDrop widget.

Both BT and WiFi are turned on, AirDrop is enabled (set to Everyone), but the Finder window stayed blank. I rebooted and reconnected the devices which did not help.

Funnily, I can send a file to the iPad via the Share context menu, and after selecting the iPad it suddenly showed up in AirDrop, but the other direction does not work.

How can I diagnose what the problem might be?

I unfortunately have no solution to offer you, but I need to point out that the answer by TheBro21 is actually incorrect. AirDrop should work between Macs and iOS devices provided that:

The iOS device supports AirDrop and runs iOS 8 or later
The Mac was made in 2012 or later and runs OS X Yosemite

Since both requirements are fulfilled in your case, it should work. I does for me. If it doesn't, I'd keep looking or take it up with Apple (since your iPad Air is still under warranty, I'm sure they'd help you out).

Source: https://support.apple.com/kb/PH18947


OS X Serial Number in VM I was wondering after installation of Mountain Lion on VMWare or other virtualization softwares (on a mac) will it show the same "serial number" in "About This Mac"?
And is it possible to customize that serial number, for development and test?
And if it's possible, is it legal?
(I know changing "Hardware UUID" is possible)

I have an OS X client VM within VMware Fusion.  It does have a serial number (starting with VMW...).  This is different to the host Mac.

VMware Fusion seems to generate the serial automatically, but it is not obviously stored in the vm's configuration files.  Also not mentioned in the vm logs.  My guess is that it is 'burnt' into the .nvram file when the vm is created or copied.

As you know the UUID can be changed, but the only references I can find to changing the serial number relate to downloadable OS X vm images.  For example: Change serial hack  This supports my guess in the previous paragraph.

Legal? Using downloaded images breaches Apple licenses - but you are not doing this.  Serial number: Not so clear as it does need to be globally unique - it would be bad to change it to a value used by another vm or physical mac.

But, I don't understand your need to change the serial.  VMware will make sure it is unique if you copy vms to create development and test environments.


Why are there two  + I shortcuts in preview? I'm used to using Preview for simple edits to images - cropping, censoring, highlighting, rotating - and I try to use shortcuts as much as possible. Previously I would use Cmd + I to show the inspector. A while ago I noticed it wasn't working. Upon further investigation I noticed that Cmd + I also invoked the Show/Hide Toolbar command.

Why are there two shortcuts for the same menu command, and is there any way I can change this for my macs I use regularly?

This is OS X 10.11.6, if it matters. Preview 8.1 (877.7).

Edit to add info: I have no app defined keyboard shortcuts except for "help", see below screenshot...

Because you (or someone else) change it in keyboard shortcuts.

Check your Keyboard shortcuts..

It should be

and


Without using the mouse, how do I trigger 'Print' in Gmail (using Google Chrome on the Mac)? Gmail has keyboard shortcuts for seemingly everything (including features I’ve never even used or heard of), but there appears to be no keyboard shortcut to print.

It also does not seem possible to make a custom keyboard shortcut to select “Print” either.

So far the closest that I’ve come is discovering that when a new message is loaded, I can press ⇧Tab twice to select the “Print” icon, and then press Enter to trigger it. But this completely fails if you have done almost anything after opening the message such as selecting some text, etc. So it is not reliable enough to be useful.

I’m hoping that someone either knows some JavaScript magic or perhaps there is a Google Chrome extension out there which might make this possible.

(After this many years of Gmail being around, I have to assume the lack of a keyboard shortcut for printing is intentional. Perhaps someone at Google thinks we ought to be living paperless lifestyles, or they figure if you keep all of your email in Gmail rather than printing them to PDF then you’ll use Gmail more. However, I suppose the ‘why’ really isn’t all that important, but it does seem like a strange oversight. At least to me.)

Update:

I guess I should have been explicitly stated that neither ⌘P nor File » Print will work.

That's why Gmail has its own print icon which opens the message in its own window. Otherwise Chrome tries to print out the sidebar and everything else around the message and you won't even see the main message as part of the printed page or PDF.

Here is one way that I triggered the Print sheet in Gmail within Google Chrome using a keyboard shortcut:

Doing this on macOS High Sierra1, in Automator, create a new Service.1

Set Service receives1 no input in Google Chrome

Add a Run AppleScript action, replacing the default code with the following example AppleScript code:

tell application "Google Chrome" to execute front window's active tab ¬
    javascript "document.getElementsByClassName('T-I J-J5-Ji T-I-JN L3')[2].click();"

Save the Service as, e.g.: Google Chrome Gmail Print

1 In macOS Mojave, and later, an Automator Service is called a Quick Action. There are also other minor nomenclature differences but they should be more obvious when comparing them to pre-macOS Mojave Automator workflows.

Assign the Service a keyboard shortcut in: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services

I assigned ⌃⌘P to the e.g. Google Chrome Gmail Print Service.

Now in Gmail, within Google Chrome, having an email opened showing the print icon, as shown circled in red in the first image below, and I press ⌃⌘P the Gmail Print sheet, as shown in the second image below, is revealed.

Note that in the standard view, as shown in the Gmail image above, there are four ElementsByClassName with T-I J-J5-Ji T-I-JN L3 as the class name. Index [0] and [1] are used by the Collapse all icon or Expand all icon that will show, when applicable, to the left of the Print all icon [2] and index [3] is used for the In new window icon to the right of the Print all icon.

 Note: The example AppleScript code is just that and does not contain any error handling as may be appropriate. The onus is upon the user to add any error handling as may be appropriate, needed or wanted. Have a look at the try statement and error statement in the AppleScript Language Guide. See also, Working with Errors.


Cannot format "Macintosh HD" I am trying to roll back my OS from High Sierra to Sierra. When I attempt to install it I get this;

So I assumed I had to format my "Macintosh HD" partition to procced. However, when I tried to do that I got;

The laptop is still working fine, so clearly it was nothing dreadful, but I'm no futher with my attempt to roll back. Any advice?

You are getting this error because a newer version is installed on your mac the same thing happened with me but I was able to find a solution

First you would need to download macOS Sierra Installer, now the problem is how to get it right, see if you go to the Purchased tab in the Mac App Store, you can redownload previously purchased macOS versions there (even if they are older than the currently installed one).

Then you would have to make a bootable disk containing the Install macOS Sierra.app

I am providing you a link to a YouTube video which will help you in creating the bootable USB stick link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4H5hKuI7yg&t=130s

I am also adding the command required to create the bootable disk:

sudo (path to the create install media file under installer.app>Contents>Resources) --volume {path to the USB stick (You are trying to make bootable)} —applicationpath (path to your Install macOS sierra.app)

e.g:

sudo /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app/Contents/Resources/createinstallmedia --volume /Volumes/MyVolume --applicationpath /Applications/Install\ macOS\ Sierra.app

Please make the necessary changes as per your files and volumes

And one more thing if you don't find the installer under purchased tab then you can download it from here : https://itunes.apple.com/cz/app/macos-sierra/id1127487414?mt=12

After you have successfully created the bootable disk you will need to press command+option or only option as soon as you power on your mac the next screen which appears will show you all the drives connected to your mac select the bootable drive and press enter after that you will be taken to a recovery mode where you can successfully format the new APFS formatted drive with the Old Apple Disk Formatting Version in order to install an older version of macOS!


3TB Fusiondrive split, Need help My Fusiondrive has split and I really need your help.
I made a backup and I am ready to delete everything clear slate.
How can I get everything fixed?
Thanks a lot for your help.

diskutil list

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *121.3 GB   disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            121.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Boot OS X               134.2 MB   disk0s3

/dev/disk1 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *3.0 TB     disk1
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
   2:          Apple_CoreStorage Macintosh HD            2.5 TB     disk1s2
   3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3
   4:       Microsoft Basic Data 200gb                   208.6 GB   disk1s4
   5:       Microsoft Basic Data 200gb2                  208.5 GB   disk1s5
   6:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk1s6
   7:       Microsoft Basic Data 4                       354.4 MB   disk1s7
   8:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk1s8
   9:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk1s9
  10:                  Apple_HFS 3                       67.5 GB    disk1s10
  11:       Microsoft Basic Data 5                       471.9 MB   disk1s11
  12:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk1s12
  13:                  Apple_HFS 1                       471.9 MB   disk1s13
  14:                        EFI NO NAME                 104.9 MB   disk1s14

/dev/disk2 (internal, virtual):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:                            Macintosh HD           +2.6 TB     disk2
                                 Logical Volume on disk0s2, disk1s2
                                 E6BEBC47-429D-4A0B-BBAA-78283E95CE02
                                 Unencrypted Fusion Drive

I managed to delete everything in the command line and i now have 2 drives (ssd and hdd). I then installed OS X on the SSD and this is how it looks like.

diskutil list
/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_HFS 1                       3.0 TB     disk0s2
3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
/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_HFS Untitled                120.5 GB   disk1s2
3:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk1s3


How can I remap arrows keys to other short cut? I am a programmer, I need to use arrows keys a lot, so can I remap these keys to other keys?

I have downloaded the karabiner, however, I cannot define the complex modifications rules myself, karabiner only provide default rules. Yet, I want some new rule, like arrow up can be triggered by fn + i.

As you are a programmer you won't have any difficulty in editing Karabiner-Elements Complex Modifications yourself.

They are to be found at: ~/.config/karabiner/karabiner.json and can even be edited or expanded with BBEdit (or TextEdit).
Here's an example how I configured my own arrow key(s):

{ "description": "Up_arrow to Page_up",
  "manipulators": [
                   { "from": { "key_code": "up_arrow",
                               "modifiers": {
                                     "mandatory": ["left_control"] }
                             },
                     "to":   [ { "key_code": "page_up" } ],
                     "type": "basic"
                            }

Here's the JSON Reference Manual: https://pqrs.org/osx/karabiner/json.html


Apple AppStore App Preview - mov format If we submit the App Preview in the MOV format, will it be compressed on the Apple side to a shorter format (e.g. MPEG4) or will it be streamed to the user as MOV?

In another word, do we have to convert the recorded MOV to MPEG4?

As we all know MOV are very big and not good for streaming.

.mov is a container format that encompasses a variety of codecs. .mov is also a file format, not streaming (which is presumably how video is distributed for the App Store.)

I'm still somewhat unsure of what backend is used by Apple for their video streaming, but I believe they use their own HLS backend, which uses the MPEG-4/H.264.

Note that Apple transcodes whatever you upload, so it doesn't really matter how you upload it–except for possible differences in upload times and whatever additional time is needed on their end to transcode it.


Errors from whatis command. Unable to rebuild database with makewhatis? How can I update the whatis database?

$ sudo /usr/libexec/makewhatis
Password:
makewhatis: /usr/share/man/whatis.tmp: Read-only file system

I believe being able to update this database will solve some other issue I'm having. My path to discovery as follows...

I recently started noticing that fish shell completions were annoyingly slow on my machine, possibly shortly after upgrading to Catalina.

I did a little profiling with fish -d5 and noticed that the majority of the time was spent on the apropos command. I did some reading and learned that the tools apropos, whatis and makewhatis are all related. They index man pages and make them searchable. Fish shell is (correctly) using them to offer helpful completions.

When I run whatis or apropos standalone, I get the following output:

$ whatis man
hugo-gen-man(1)          - Generate man pages for the Hugo CLI
groff_man(7)             - groff `man' macros to support generation of man pages
groffer(1)               - display groff files and man~pages on X and tty
man(1)                   - format and display the on-line manual pages
man.conf(5)              - configuration data for man
zshall(1)                - the Z shell meta-man page
xml2man(1)               - MPGL to mdoc (man page) translator
makewhatis: /usr/lib/./libgutenprint.2.dylib: No such file or directory
makewhatis: /usr/lib/libsasl2.2.0.1.dylib: Not a directory
makewhatis: /usr/lib/libldap.dylib: Not a directory
makewhatis: /usr/lib/libsqlite3.0.dylib: Not a directory
makewhatis: /usr/lib/libcom_err.dylib: Not a directory
...

Followed by at least 100 more lines of the "Not a directory" messages. I believe it is all these useless lines that are slowing things down.

So I thought maybe I just need to rebuild the whatis database (perhaps after the Catalina upgrade?). However, it doesn't seem to work:

$ sudo /usr/libexec/makewhatis
Password:
makewhatis: /usr/share/man/whatis.tmp: Read-only file system

So this part is a little disturbing. How can I rebuild the whatis database? I have a hunch this will solve my issues if I can figure it out.

The following can be used as a workaround for the macOS 10.15.1 version of the apropos command, wherein it spews out complaints of the form makewhatis: /usr/lib/lib … .dylib: Not a directory.

First create the workaround script:

$ mkdir -p ~/workarounds
$ sed -e 66s@/usr/lib@@ /usr/bin/apropos > ~/workarounds/apropos.macos_10.15.1
$ diff /usr/bin/apropos ~/workarounds/apropos.macos_10.15.1
66c66
<     for d in /var/cache/man $manpath /usr/lib
---
>     for d in /var/cache/man $manpath
$ chmod +x ~/workarounds/apropos.macos_10.15.1

Next add an alias to your shell to tell it to use the workaround script, until a newer version of the canonical script becomes available.

For Zsh you can use the following command:

$ /bin/cat <<END >> ~/.zshrc
# Workaround for broken apropos command.
alias apropos=~/workarounds/apropos.macos_10.15.1
END

For other shells such as ksh or bash, use ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile, as appropriate.

What does the workaround do?

Apropos requests (and man -k requests) are handled by the /usr/bin/apropos script. That script searches for “whatis” database files in all the directories of the man path (see man —path), plus /var/cache/man and /usr/lib. The checks for /var/cache/man/whatis and /usr/lib/whatis appear to be there for historical reasons, however those files are not actively generated in Mojave or Catalina. A lot of different people have contributed to the various flavours of Unix over the years, and many of them had different good ideas about where to put different types of files. At some point in time, somebody decided that /usr/lib would be a good place to put a whatis file, and at some other point somebody else figured that /var/cache/man would be a good place. Others thought that the appropriate place would be the respective man page directories. Different solutions that seemed appropriate at the time. The apropos script has traditionally checked those locations in case a whatis file was present.

With the move to making the system directories on Catalina read-only (a good move), whatis database files can not be written to directories such as /usr/share/man. There are different ways that Apple could handle that, but for this release somebody decided to alter the apropos script by making it generate results on the fly by calling /usr/libexec/makewhatis.local for any man page directory that does not contain a whatis file.

That new apropos code works fine for actual man page directories, and for /var/cache/man (since it doesn’t exist), but it fails for /usr/lib. The workaround detailed above just eliminates /usr/lib from the list of directories searched.

As a final step, set yourself a reminder for a month or two from now to check whether Apple has fixed the apropos script. If so remove your workarounds, by removing the alias and the workaround script.


Type straight quotes (",') when smart quotes is turned on I love smart quotes in macOS, but for those few times where I really need a straight quote (when manually typing  links, for example), I can’t find a quick keyboard shortcut to insist on the straight ones.

Is this possible with a simple keyboard shortcut?

Update: The most effective way seems to be creating a custom keyboard shortcut for turning off/on Smart Quotes in individual applications (Edit > Substitutions in supported applications) for those few times I do need a straight quote.

I added " and ' as replacements for something, then the replaced quotes were not converted to smart quotes in a few quick experiments. For example, setting "" and '' to be replaced by " and ' respectively:

Typing ""foo"" ''bar'' resulted in "foo" 'bar' with normal quotes. As shortcuts go, just double tapping the button instead of single tapping makes for a convenient shortcut.


Should the MacBook Air have the same amount of charge as its stated capacity when 'Full Charged'? The following is an extract from System Information (under power):

 Charge Information:
  Charge Remaining (mAh):   6517
  Fully Charged:    Yes
  Charging: No
  Full Charge Capacity (mAh):   6690

Is this simply an example of the charger not topping up the battery to conserve cycles, poorly calibrated battery or an issue with my machine's battery?

"Fully charged" does not mean exactly 100%, but somewhere between 95% (or even less) and 100%. Obviously it is better for battery life if the battery is not immediately loaded after a small percentage of charge was consumed, if your MacBook is connected to the charger. So you do not have an issue with your battery.


How to tell Mac Mail that a sender isn't spam? I have a business colleauge that my mail prgramme thinks is sending junk mail.
I have added them to my contacts.
I also set up a rule that any email from that address go into my inbox, but neither of those steps have worked and all messages still go into junk.

Can anyone recommend what else I could do?
Many thanks

Lets assume your email provider is gmail.

If that person is marked as Junk Mail in gmail, it will be forwarded as such to your Apple Mail.

To fix it go to your gmail (web site) and fix it there.


What will happen if I restore my iPhone from itunes? So, What will happen if I restore my iPhone from itunes?

Your iPhone will return to factory settings as if you had a new iPhone.


How to remove iPhone music from Amazon Music app? There's an setting in Amazon Music app "Add playlists from device" which lets you select from playlists in your iTunes library. I enabled this once and music from my iPhone added to the Amazon Music. However now I turned it off but the device music still in the Amazon Music app, how can I remove these songs without going to each one individually and remove it?

Unfortunately after contacting Amazon, it looks like the only way is to remove the Amazon music app and reinstall it again and download the songs that were downloaded before!


How much faster is the flash storage on the MacBook Air than SSD? I heard that the flash storage in the MacBook Air is faster than SSD since it doesn't need to go through a SATA interface. How much faster is the MacBook Air's hard-drive compared to a traditional SSD?

It's still a SATA interface, just miniaturized, hence it's name mSATA.
There is a great picture at the following link that shows just how tiny an mSATA drive is compared to a regular 2.5" laptop hard drive.
Intel's SSD 310: G2 Performance in an mSATA Form Factor


What's the NB30 or MM-TD in an iPhone description in GSX? What's the NB30 or  MM-TD in an iPhone description?
I always see these nomenclatures Non block, etc, what does it mean?

The iPhone 6S exists in basically two versions:

Models A1687 and A1688 has support for LTE bands 1-5, 7-8, 12-13, 17-20 and 25-29

Models A1633 and A1634 has support for LTE bands 1-5, 7-8, 12-13, 17-20 and 26-30.

The extra band 30 is a special AT&T band. The iPhone supporting that band were sold by certain dealers in the US.

The NB30 on your iPhone description just means that you iPhone does not support LTE band 30.


Choosing Dictionary.app spelling language I'm Venezuelan, so my native language is Spanish. But I have my MacMini and my MacBook in English because that's the way I like to work, it's better for my (and my job). Usually, when I access Dictionary app (mostly with Alfred), I can just look out the definitions, synonyms and whatnot in English, but not in Spanish.

The only way I know how to switch the language is changing the global language settings (via System Preferences > Language and Text). This means that the whole OS would be in Spanish. I would like to be able to use both languages in Dictionary.app, at the same time, so I can look out definitions, synonyms, and else in both languages (specially through Alfred).

Any way I can achieve that?

The Dictionary.app supplied by Apple only has English and Japanese, regardless of what language you set your OS to.  You can add modules as explained here:

http://m10lmac.blogspot.com/2011/12/more-dictionaries-for-dictionaryapp.html

Dictionary.app has nothing to do with spellchecking, that is done by other parts of the OS.  You can change the spellcheck to Spanish in Apple apps by going to Edit > Spelling and Grammary > Show Spelling and Grammar.


Why is my instant hotspot on Yosemite / iOS 8 inconsistent? Sometimes, instant hotspot works in a split second. Sometimes, it works after 30 seconds, and other times, it just says "failed". In all cases, the state of the Mac running Yosemite or the iPhone is the same. To fix it, I have to restart one or both devices. What is the factor that is causing it not to work so I can always just turn it on without guessing which device to reboot? Is it something with bluetooth?

It appears this issue still exists on the latest version of OS X (El Capitan, 10.11). I was able to find this in my system logs:

10/9/15 5:25:03.213 PM   sharingd[679]   17:25:03.212 : Tethering: Request failed (id = 5D648B94-FFEB-44B2-BC8D-E116CA674465, duplicates = NO, error = Error Domain=com.apple.identityservices.error Code=23 "Timed out" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Timed out, NSUnderlyingError=0x7f9cfaece050 {Error Domain=com.apple.ids.idssenderrordomain Code=12 "(null)"}})

It would appear that there is some sort of connection issue with Apple's authorization servers (which it needs to validate the iCloud credentials). However, I received this at a time my iPhone had no connectivity issues (full cellular service).

Filed a radar (23058238) with Apple. I'll update this answer when/if I hear anything.


Messages app crashing I can't open Messages app on my iPhone 5S with iOS 8.3 (no jailbreak) - it crashes on start. I suspect a malformed message caused this, so I want to delete all messages from all senders to see if it helps.

I tired allowing iOS to delete messages older than 30 days, but it didn't help - the bad message is recent, and I can't afford waiting a month to be able to use SMS again. I also don't have any older backups I could restore.

Is there any way I can delete all messages without opening the app itself? Or some other way this problem could be fixed?

It could be the recent iMessage bug. Here is the fix Apple has provided on its website. Hope it helps.

support.apple.com/HT204897


Python path added to $PATH -- cannot find origin I just installed Python 3.6 from python.org on macOS Sierra.

Somehow, the path to python's bin is added to my every $PATH but I can't figure out how:

22:15 : echo $PATH
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.6/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/Library/TeX/texbin

Now, /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin is the default value in my /etc/paths and the X11, git and TeX parts come from the 3 files in /etc/paths.d/. But I have no Python-related file in /etc/paths.d/.

And there is nothing related to Python in my ~/.zshrc.

Does anyone know where the Python bit of $PATH is coming from?

zsh reads from up to 4files on start up

  If ZDOTDIR is not set, then the value of HOME is used; this is the usual case.

$ZDOTDIR/.zshenv
$ZDOTDIR/.zprofile
$ZDOTDIR/.zshrc
$ZDOTDIR/.zlogin

You need to look in all of them.

.zshrc is read every time a shell or sub shell is started.
.zprofile is read when you start a login shell - ie the first shell you start through terminal, and this is where I would put the PATH changes


Should I disable wifi if I use ethernet? Is there any benefit in disabling wifi on my Mac Pro (connected to a time capsule via ethernet)?

I notice that with it disabled airdrop doesn't work and iTunes wireless sync misbehaves.

but will it affect speed of LAN transfers?

Well, you can choose which one would be preferred (by dragging it to the top in the Network preference panel):

As far as I know you cannot get a FASTER transfer by using both at once...


Model number of iPhone 4S Officially Unlocked Can someone please tell me the model number (something like MC920LL) of their Officially unlocked iPhone 4S 16GB White, that Apple started selling since Nov 11.

There are various other contract-free phones available but they are not truly unlocked since there is a risk of being locked in the future maybe.

So if anyone has bought the OFFICIALLY unlocked white or black iPhone 4S from apple directly, can you PLEASE share the model number?

Many thanks!

The model number doesn't have anything to do with whether the phone is locked or not. The model number is tied to the unit's hardware components. All current black and white iPhone 4S' have the model number: A1387

The only time you'll see a different model number during the same production line is when Apple makes a hardware change (such as the iPhone 4 GSM and CDMA versions, or the 3GS "old" and "new" bootroms).

More details found over at Apple.


Can I use a Verizon iPhone 5 on T-Mobile’s LTE network? I'm thinking of switching to T-Mobile and I am waiting for the 6 to come out. I don't want to switch, have to buy a 5s use it for a week and then turn around and buy the 6. So will the Verizon iPhone 5 work on T-Mobile’s LTE HSPA+?

Yes, but only HSPA 21mbps in select areas, you will atleast have 2g coverage. LTE will not work though


Unable to partition internal Toshiba drive for OS X re-installation, Trying to resurrect an older MBP and I'm at my wit's end on how to go about it. Hoping you all might be able to shed a helpful light on things.

The MBP in question is circa 2012 and immediately boots to the OS X Base System on startup. When going through the 'Reinstall Max OSX' option (High Sierra, in this instance) I'm able to proceed past the license agreement but lack any disk volumes besides the Base System (which I clearly can't override). Additionally, the base system itself seems to take up roughly 350 GB of the total 500 GB hard drive.

When moving through Disk Utility options I am only able to run a First Aid check or Partition both the OS X Base System and the internal Hard Drive (a Toshiba MK5065GSXF HDD). When attempting to partition I have no option to increase the number of partitions. Additionally, the OS X Base System now registers as being 500 GB in size in this menu.

So,long story short--the hard drive seems borked. If anyone has any ideas on what I might try next, I'm all ears. Otherwise, this little dinosaur may end up being recycled.

Don't let that poor dinosaur extinct yet.
Now I'm sorry but I'm not sure what you are referring to with 'base system' that's taking up 350GB. Assuming that it's the recovery partition, was that already in the drive? It sounds like partition map is broken.
If you are willing to wipe that hard drive clean, there are few things you can try.
Erase the disk using terminal in recovery mode and run verifyDisk and repairDisk. If this works then you could probably just create new osx extended partition to install osx.
If partition map is broken, you could use external computer to repair them using third party software.
And since you mentioned that it's a MBP from around 2012, does it have an optical bay? if your model is the ones before retina screens, there is a high chance of broken SATA cable. It is a known issue with MBP from those times, and it breaks quite often, leading to very confusing hard drive problems. If possible check if hard drive works fine on other computers and if they do, it is likely that it's your SATA cable.


iPhone X constantly pocket dialling (et al) I have an iPhone X running iOS 12.1.2.

I find when I pull it from my shirt pocket it has often been "working" itself, I will be in some random app. Sometimes that results in a pocket dial or FT call, sometimes I'm in Messages with gibberish typed in, etc.

FaceId is turned on and the screen lights up when I look at it, so why is it going active in my pocket? Is there any way to stop this? It's very annoying.

Just in case this is a help to any future readers, I found the reason for my iPhone XS constantly pocket dialling being emergency contacts. When FaceID fails in my pocket, it manages to tap emergency and then either dial a random number or go into my Medical ID and call one of my emergency contacts.

Turning off emergency contacts has almost completely solved the problem, the only other problem being raise-to-wake which commonly activates in my pocket. I used a OnePlus before this (which sucked), but it did have this awesome feature called Pocket Mode which prevented the screen activating in my pocket - which I do miss.


Disable instant reboot by crtl-cmd-power or bring up a confirmation or wait timer Being a newbie to Mac I found it very strange that Ctrl+Cmd ⌘+Power instantly kicks my computer to reboot without even printing a warning of any sort.
The problem is that sometimes I mix it up with Ctrl+Shift+Power which is for screen lock. Neither I use any of these very often hence few times I accidentally hit reboot instead of screen lock, luckily without any unsaved work to recover..

Is there a way to either disable a instant reboot key combination or, if that's not possible then force to bring it up some "Are you sure" message ?

It's quite strange that such a dangerous feat is so easily accessible without any confirmation or keypress for X seconds before initiation of reboot is something user would expect at least.

Those keys are hard wired to that power operation. Apple did this because otherwise there is no hard power switch on the computer. I suggest using a smart corner to lock your computer, so you don't accidentally mix it up with restart or shut down (Cmd+Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Power).


MBP 15" early 2011 shuts down after login without power cord Update #1:

  I uninstalled gfxcardstatus. Now the only times it shuts down instantly
  are when I initially log in (tried on user with Filevault and one
  without), and when I log out from one user and log into another.  I've unplugged while logged in, I've put it to sleep and
  come back, I've logged out and back in (as same user), and it stays on. It always
  shuts down if I log in from a fresh reboot.

I've seen issues where the MBP shuts down after login, and where the MBA shuts down without power, but this is just a little different.

The computer works fine when plugged in. No issues. The problem comes up when it's unplugged. This started just after I updated to 10.10.4, although I don't know whether it's related.

Start computer with or without battery, get to login screen.
Can maintain this state for minutes at a time plugged in or on battery on login screen.
When I log in, the computer's immediate action is to shut down. Screen just goes dark -- no warnings, no nothing.

Any ideas? SMC reset did not help. Magsafe light looks yellow or green as is appropriate to charging situation. No other weird behaviors or warning signs.

System information -> power shows nothing weird:

Charge Information:
Charge Remaining (mAh):   5955
Fully Charged:    No
Charging: Yes
Full Charge Capacity (mAh):   6547
Health Information:
Cycle Count:  143
Condition:    Normal
Battery Installed:    Yes
Amperage (mA):    1337
Voltage (mV): 12468

I get no notification of any kind after it starts again as is described by this question.

It might be your GPU.  Try going to System Preferences->Energy Saver and changing the "Graphics" setting.  If it was on "Better battery life" then set it to "Higher performance", and vice-versa if it already was on "Higher performance".