iCloud backup does not show up in restore list The only iCloud backups that show up in the list when choosing to restore a brand-new iPhone (4S) are ones from November last year.  However, I know that there should be much more recent backups than that.

If I look at the list of backups on an iPad that uses the same iCloud account, there are more recent backups listed (as well as the older ones that show up in the restore options).

I've tried with a different iCloud account, where the iPhone that's being backed up is still active, and says that the last backup was a few hours ago.  However, it doesn't show any backups available for restore at all.

Is there any way that I can get access to the backup that's (presumably) there?

Not all versions of iOS can back up from backups made using more recent versions (i.e. the backups are not necessarily forwards-compatible).  Confusingly, rather than show these unusable backups in some way (e.g. disabled with an error message available on tap) they simply don't show up at all (at least with iOS 5.0.1).

A new-from-the-box iPhone isn't necessarily running the latest version of iOS; it's running what was latest (or close) when it was boxed.  If the version on the phone is older than the version that was used to make the backup (which is actually quite likely now that iOS updates can be done over-the-air).

Thankfully, there is a simple fix: choose to set up the phone as a new phone, rather than from a backup.  Skip the step where you are asked for an Apple ID, since you won't actually be using the phone like this.

Once the initial setup is done, plug the phone in to iTunes and choose "Restore" (you can skip the backup of the clean-state phone).  This will download the latest version of iOS and install that first, and then offer to restore (either from backups on the computer or iCloud).


How can I reinstall macOS without a working display? I had bought a used MacBook Pro 2013 on which Ubuntu was installed instead of macOS. Its display is broken, so I have been using an external monitor. However, when I tried to follow the official guide to reinstall macOS, nothing was displayed on the external monitor.
Is there a way to recover my MacBook Pro to macOS without paying for a new display?

Normally, the boot process on a computer is displayed on all connected displays. This unfortunately doesn't seem to necessary hold on all modern Apple laptops.
There's a workaround you could try though:

Connect an external display, keyboard, and mouse (ideally, ensure beforehand that this setup is working),
shut down the system (if it's not turned off already),
open the broken display, then
start it up. The Mac will now start booting and of course try to display all information on the broken display.
If you now close the lid during boot, the system will force the video signal to the (functioning) external display. And having an external keyboard (and mouse), you should be able to use your computer!

Alternatively:
In case you have another Mac at your disposal, you could try and hook them up together and start the one with the broken display in "targetdisk mode". (Look up this keyword if the solution above doesn't work and you need more information as to how to hook two Macs up with one another and/or how to start a Mac in target disk mode.)


Firewall on iPhone/iOS (ipfw or pf) I want to run ipfw or pf on my iPhone -- or the equivalent.  Seems simple, but I can't find anything that works.

Device is jailbroken, looked very carefully through Cydia, and even through some of the alternate repositories.  I've tried off and on for months, digging and digging, it's been really frustrating.

I found this post: Can I block ports and network traffic when using Personal Hotspot? here on apple.stackexchange, and tried installing ipfw via theworm.altervista.org/cydia.  It installed without issue, but no matter what I do it just says:

ipfw: getsockopt(IP_FW_GET): Protocol not available

Found this post: http://nixcraft.com/all-about-freebsd-openbsd-netbsd/3726-ipfw-getsockopt-ip_fw_get-protocol-not-available.html which suggests creating a file: /etc/rc.conf, with the following:

firewall_enable="YES"
firewall_script="/usr/local/etc/ipfw.rules"

But that didn't help at all, still get the same error.

I'm aware of the Cydia/commercial software "IP Firewall", which would help with much of what I want to do, but not everything.

Please help!

It seems "simple", but ipfw (or pf) require support directly within the kernel. That means Apple has to compile the iOS kernel to support those particular utilities and their required protocols (ipfw is a front end for ipfw and dummynet, the latter of which does the bandwidth shaping).

Firewall software (like ipfw) in Unix based systems run at the kernel layer (deep) and cannot be added unless the kernel itself supports them. OS X supports ipfw/pf but iOS does not. Apple has gone through great lengths to secure the OS and likely feels it an unnecessary addition (it's not that Apple has turned them off, they simply do not exist so no conf configurations will aid you). This is why you receive the protocol error. While iOS can run the program, ipfw cannot negotiate the required protocols because they simply do not exist.

At best, your only option is to find a firewall that runs atop the kernel, so in userspace (like Little Snitch on OS X for example).


/usr/bin/open executable disappeared I am on macOS High Sierra (Version 10.13.3) all recent updates are installed.
The open executable is not in the /usr/bin folder anymore.

Is there anyway to repair the system so that I can get it again?
I have no clue how this happened in the first place, maybe after the last macOS update. Did I miss something in their release notes?

To clarify, this is not a path issue, the executable just is not there anymore.

Since SIP was disabled there is a high chance this was a user error on my side like the comments suggested. I did not want to do a complete reinstall due to all the hassle that would ensue.

This problem ended up getting fixed by itself when the next macOS update was released. After installing the update the open executable was back at its original place.

Hope this helps people encountering a similar issue.


How to run XQuartz in 16-bit color mode Is it possible to run XQuartz in 16-bit color mode on macOS High Sierra?  I tried the suggestions in this question but they didn't seem to work for 16-bit color.

First, I tried setting the color depth in XQuartz preferences:

When I restarted X and checked the color depth using xwininfo -root it showed Depth: 24.

Next, I tried specifying the color depth inline when starting XQuartz:

xquartz -depth 16

This caused XQuartz to crash with the error: Xquartz: start_x11_server: (ipc/mig) server died

Last, I tried setting the color depth with defaults

defaults write org.macosforge.xquartz.X11 "depth" -int 16

This also resulted in a color depth of 24.

However, setting the color mode to 8-bit using any of the above techniques worked just fine.  XQuartz started up, and xwininfo -root showed Depth: 8.

Any ideas what I might be doing wrong?  I'm running macOS High Sierra and XQuartz 2.7.11 (xorg-server 1.18.4).

Edit: I tried with a value of 15, but xwininfo is still reporting a color depth of 24.

Valid values for "depth" in defaults write org.macosforge.xquartz.X11 "depth" -int n where n is one of the following:

From Display: -1
256 Colors: 8
Thousands: 15
Millions: 24

These values were obtained using defaults read org.macosforge.xquartz.X11 depth after selecting each of the options in the menu.

Here is the output of the defaults (read/write) and xwininfo -root commands:

$ defaults read org.macosforge.xquartz.X11 depth
24
$ defaults write org.macosforge.xquartz.X11 "depth" -int 15
$ defaults read org.macosforge.xquartz.X11 depth
15
$ xwininfo -root

xwininfo: Window id: 0xf1 (the root window) (has no name)

  Absolute upper-left X:  0
  Absolute upper-left Y:  0
  Relative upper-left X:  0
  Relative upper-left Y:  0
  Width: 2560
  Height: 1418
  Depth: 15
  Visual: 0x22
  Visual Class: TrueColor
  Border width: 0
  Class: InputOutput
  Colormap: 0x21 (installed)
  Bit Gravity State: ForgetGravity
  Window Gravity State: NorthWestGravity
  Backing Store State: NotUseful
  Save Under State: no
  Map State: IsViewable
  Override Redirect State: no
  Corners:  +0+0  -0+0  -0-0  +0-0
  -geometry 2560x1418+0+0

$


How to install Boot Camp from content of previously created flash storage? I've installed Windows 7 SP1 via Boot Camp before and kept the content of  the SD card that I created during the process. I want to know how I can copy that content to another SD card and install off of it again.

Probably I have to do some things manually like making the flash storage bootable and/or creating a FAT32 partition from Disk Utility.

(And no, I can't download Boot Camp due to my very limited internet connection)

My rig: OS X Yosemite (10.10.3)

Boot Camp Assistant is already in Applications > Utilities. It doesn't need to be downloaded.

If the card was good enough to install Windows from last time, it ought to be good enough to do it again.


I erased an APFS Volume containing a second OSX installation (trying out Mojave) but my Mac keeps trying to boot into it I added a Second Volume to my Main APFS Container to install and try Mojave (I'm running High Sierra).  I decided that Mojave is not for me and I erased the volume from Disk Utility.  My Mac still tries to boot into Mojave by default when I restart my computer (it fails because that volume doesn't exist anymore).

In order to go into my High Sierra OS, I always have to boot with Alt pressed to choose the boot disk.  If I don't do this, I get the "" icon.

The weird thing is that this volume was indeed erased and does not appear on Disk Utility nor on the Startup Disk menu in System Preferences.

How can I fix this? I want to remove the "Mojave" Volume from the boot disks so that my computer will start normally when I turn it on.

EDIT: I seem to have found something useful in this post, but it is for people who still haven't erased the volume from Disk Utility.  I don't know how to do it in my case, where I already erased it.

You can change the default to boot High Sierra by either of the following:

Select High Sierra from the Startup Disk pain of the System Preferences application.
Hold down the control key when selecting High Sierra from the Startup Manager.

You still have Mojave code in your APFS container. In your case, do the opposite of the answer you linked to.

  BTW: You can also elect to not delete this code. The code will not interfere with the operation of the Mac and occupies very little space.

IN OTHER WORDS:

  Note: Below I have assumed APFS Volume "Preboot" is disk2s2 and APFS Volume "My Recovery" is disk2s3.

You can use Disk Utility under High Sierra to remove the APFS volume containing Mojave. However, removing Mojave also requires steps where commands are issued in a Terminal application window. Below are the remain steps needed to remove Mojave.

Open the Disk Utility application.
Get the file system UUID of the High Sierra volume . Right click the icon for the High Sierra volume in the Disk Utility application and select Get Info. Here, I will assume the file system UUID is 2E0E6320-5D0A-4181-B465-ABFF2CBBFC27.
Boot to macOS Recovery.
Open a Terminal application window.
Enter the command below to disable System Integrity Protect (SIP) on next restart.

sudo  csrutil  disable

Boot back to High Sierra.
Open a Terminal application Window.
Determine the UUID of the deleted APFS Mojave volume. Start by entering the commands given below.

diskutil  mount  disk2s2
cd  /Volumes/Preboot
ls

The UUID of the deleted APFS Mojave volume should be the same as the name of the directory (folder) that is not the UUID for the High Sierra volume (2E0E6320-5D0A-4181-B465-ABFF2CBBFC27). Here, I will assume this is 832D1AE3-C9F2-454F-BE45-64E1ECBA38AA.
Enter the commands below to remove Mojave from APFS Volume Preboot.

rm  -Rf  832D1AE3-C9F2-454F-BE45-64E1ECBA38AA
cd  ~
diskutil  unmount  disk2s2

Enter the commands below to remove Mojave from APFS Volume My Recovery.

diskutil  mount  disk2s3
cd  "/Volumes/My Recovery"
rm  -Rf  832D1AE3-C9F2-454F-BE45-64E1ECBA38AA
cd  ~
diskutil  unmount  disk2s3

Reset the SIP settings, by entering the command given below.

sudo  csrutil  clear

Restart the Mac


Completely restore root and home folder after many problems with Macports and Homebrew I had a long day battling with installing a LAMP environment with Macports. I installed several things, had many problems, tried uninstalling them (not sure if I did), and on and on. Then, I tried doing the same thing in Homebrew. Same story. I then completely reinstalled Mavericks and did it all over again.

The problem is that I don't know what files should be there and which shouldn't. (I'm pretty much a beginner with this). If I knew, I guess I wouldn't have to reinstall the OS again. How can I completely restore it to what it was before I even opened the Terminal?

Here is what I have in the root directory:

And in my user directory:

(I can upload more images or ls outputs if needed)

All those files look normal to me, including the hidden ones.  Unless you had/have an active backup from a date before your changes, there is no way to "restore" it back to an exact state before "opening Terminal". (That made me chuckle)  That being said...

Should be possible to back up user data (your home folder entirely), erase your hard drive (from the Recovery partition if necessary), reinstall OS X, and move your user data back.  The sacrifice there is any system-level applications/preferences that you've set.  However, it's likely the Homebrew/MacPorts settings on the system-level that are causing your issues.

It really boils down to how much time you want to spend digging through documentation, trying different things, changing different settings to get your system back to the way you want it.  If you have the time and patience, it will be much more rewarding and (possibly) less impactful to your OS X environment.

On the flip side, it's sometimes easier (and more time-effective) to just "nuke and pave" as we call it. :)


Automator: Archive a folder, whilst excluding certain files I am trying to create an automator based workflow whereby I create archives of folders but exclude certain files from the final archive. I would also like to specify the files or folders to exclude (e.g. ".cvs" or ".git" or ".psd" etc).

Here's how I have currently tried to do it, but cannot get step2 below working:

I specify a folder to scan and archive.
Automator/script recursively filters out certain files which I can specify (e.g. ".cvs" or ".git")
Automator creates an archive of the remaining files from step2.

Im certain there must be an easy way of achieving this with automator - any assistance would be appreciated.

Automator won't be enough to do this.

You'll have to devise an applescript (or some other kind of script) to do the filtering, since the automator action "Filter Folder Items" will not work recursively. Any folder will not have the undesired extensions so will be added, even if the folder contains files with those extensions.


Visual studio Code maxs out my CPUs even when its just open I have been learning python using VScode. I've noticed recently that as soon as I start VScode my CPUs get maxed out and my whole computer is sluggish. When I run the activity monitor I see as many as 5 rg processes running and up to 4 'Code Helper' processes. These processes use up to 125% of CPUs. When I quit VScode, the Activity Monitor still reports a lot of cpu percentage for 'Code Helper', and continues reporting that for over 20 minutes after I quit VScode. Does anyone have any idea why VScode is using so much cpu time?  I'm using the latest VScode on my iMac running High Sierra 10.13.5 and VScode version 1.24.1

High CPU is caused most probably by some VS Code extensions. Try running VS Code with all extensions disabled and check if You still experience such CPU.
From my experience the Import Cost extension can cause quite high CPU load..

If the CPU is allright with extensions disabled try enabling it one-by-one (work a little bit between enabling every next one) and try to locate which extension is a real CPU eater.

Here is a very good article about troubleshooting performance issues with VS Code:
https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/wiki/Performance-Issues

Good luck!


Why do I have 2 IPv6 addresses? If I go to System Preferences > Network > Advanced it is shown that I have 2 different IPv6 addresses (both with a 64-bit prefix). Why is so?

If I type ifconfig | grep inet on the terminal, it also shows me those 2 IPv6 addresses (among the other addresses). At the end of one of those 2 IPv6 addresses there's the word dynamic and at the end of the other there's autoconf temporary. Why wonder why should we need two IPv6 addresses and what is the different between dynamic and autoconf temporary.

IPv6 used to be derived of the MAC address of your device. This is the Modified EUI-64 format. Such addresses are recognisable by looking at the middle of the last 64 bits. If they contain ..ff:fe.. then it is probably a EUI-64 based address.

Because the algorithm produces the same 64 bits every time some people were afraid that it would become easy to track mobile devices such as laptops and smart phones. Every network would have a different prefix, but the last 64 bits would always be the same.

That is why Privacy Extensions were invented. A device generates new 64 bits every once in a while and uses that in the IPv6 address. Because new addresses are generated regularly the addresses are marked as temporary. A device can have multiple privacy extension addresses if the system is still using an old address when a new address is being generated. The system will keep the old address for as long as necessary. For new outgoing connections a system will usually use the most recently generated temporary address to maintain a maximum level of privacy.


How to get details of running applications on Terminal? I have found that using activity monitor I get all the information I need. I now just need a way to access this information via preferably Python or even Bash and Apple Script. I just need to get the information at regular intervals and put it in a log file while my program is running.

The terminal command top will give you a list of running processes biggest ones first. Do man top and you will have a complete explanation of the syntax for your version.

Also of interest might be ps, especially if used in scripts. Run man ps for the details.

So, just to add this will give the initial information without any processes shown:

top -o cpu -O +rsize -s 5 -n 0

Based on the example shown in the man page for top.
And this is what it looks like :


Receiving a photo via iMessage: when is it downloaded? I am downloading a photo over iMessage.  When I see the previewed thumbnail image, is the entire photo downloaded? If not, when I open the photo will it be completely downloaded to my phone? Like stored in a folder of some kind? At what point will it be downloaded completely?

Also, if I save this to camera roll, does it transfer folders?

Just a theoretical question; no real utility from it.

I don't know about the theoretical, but the actual choices that offered in Messages include tapping twice on an image to access the Copy command, or tapping once to open in the image in its own window, in which case the usual arrow in a box appears, leading to a number of saving and sharing options, depending on what you have installed.

On the Mac, messages and photos (or any other attachment) are automatically synced between devices and stored in ~/Library/Messages/Archives and ~/Library/Messages/Attachments.


How To Securely Erase Free Space Using Terminal? A friend told me that when you delete a file on your Mac in the normal way it actually stays where it is, but it is just no longer usable by your Mac. The addition of more files to your Mac causes them to overwrite the space taken by those unusable files that you deleted previously.

If this is true then I'm thinking if your Mac got into the wrong hands, that individual(s)  could actually recover files that you have deleted previously (which could be potentially harmful).

Therefore how do you delete them securely first to prevent such potential catastrophe (preferably using the Terminal command) ?

From the Terminal app you can use the program srm (secure remove).
Simply start Terminal, then type:

srm <filename>

For more info, take a look at the man page.
Excerpt:

  srm  removes  each  specified file by overwriting, renaming, and truncating it before unlinking. This prevents other people from undeleting or recovering any information about the file from  the command line.


MacBook Pro battery not fully charged sometimes. Need tips I'm using MacBook Pro and it will be in charge nearly 12 hours in a day. I set the battery indicator to  Percentage, so it is displaying the battery charge in percentage.

The problem I faced is, most of the time it showing 100%, but in some times, it stops (I don't know exactly) charging in 97% or in 99%. For a long time, it remains same until I discharge the battery then put again in charge.

What is the problem here?

Am I using the battery in the right way?

This is by design. It's not helpful to fully charge a battery, and then use a little bit (say 2 or 3%) and then top it back up again. So purposefully, if you have fully charged your battery, it will not start to recharge it until such time as it has lost sufficient charge for a recharge to be worthwhile. It's all about charging your battery efficiently, resulting in minimal wear and tear where possible.

So, to try to illustrate it by example:

You start with a flat battery, and charge it. It gets to 100%
You move desks or something, resulting in a few minutes of battery usage, dropping it to 98%, then put it back on power
The system decides it's not worth topping up 2% worth, and just sits there.  The green light probably shows on the Magsafe to indicate that it's not even trying to charge, likewise the menubar icon shows a plug indicating full charge, rather than the lightning bolt charging indicator
You use some more battery, say dropping it to 92%, before putting it back on charge.  The system now decides that 8% is worth bothering about, and starts to charge.


Will disabling and deleting iCloud photos also delete iCloud shared albums? My photos were taking up too much iCloud storage space, so I decided to "Disable and Delete" my iCloud photos. However, I also have quite a number of iCloud Shared Albums that I've shared with other users. Will selecting the "Disable and Delete" option only delete my own photos uploaded on iCloud, or will it also delete all my iCloud Shared Albums that I have shared with users?
I understand that iCloud Shared Albums don't count towards iCloud storage and iCloud Shared Albums is also activated under a different area in settings (Settings -> iCloud -> Turn on iCloud Photo Sharing). Is it right, then, to think that disabling and deleting iCloud photos (therefore clearing up my iCloud storage) will have no bearing on iCloud Shared Albums? Thank you!

Shared photos don’t count against your storage, but they do depend on you having an iCloud primary library on one device.
We would need to know how you manage your photo library to give any more guidance. You could be iPhone only, iPad or Apple TV or Windows and Mac in the mix. Lots of variables and a call to Apple support is the best way for you to understand your exact setup if you have questions.
In a nutshell, you could delete all the photos from your online library to shrink it and leave just the shared photos to reduce your bill and toll on the free space Apple gives to each AppleID when they activate iCloud.


VNC (screen sharing) stopped worked after enabling filevault2 I used to vnc into my Mac mini (late 2012 model) with my MacBook Pro (mid 2011) before I enabled filevault2. Both macs are running mountain lion at this point. I can no longer screen share with my Mac mini. I can connect using ssh and afp but not vnc.

Is there a problem with FileVault disabling vnc? If not how can I trouble shoot this problem. Any tips?

I can confirm that FileVault 2 does not disable VNC client or service. I use encryption on all Macs and VNC between them frequently (both at home and at my F500 employer).

Can you be more specific about how it is failing? Do you see "Share Screen" option in Finder? Have you tried via Finder > Go > Connect to Server? Does it time out or give an error message?


Atom's application window disappeared I have been using Atom for many months on Macbook (now 10.15.7), but in the past week or so, its window has started disappearing more and more often.
If I right-click on a file, and then Open in -> Atom, or click the Atom icon, I do not see the application window.  ⌘ + Tab shows Atom, but choosing Atom does not show the application window.
The  Atom menu does appear at the top of my monitor (see screenshot), but with relevant options disabled: For example, the File menu does not show any open files, nor the option of  opening a file.
I have two external monitors, and sometimes an application will be off-monitor except a small fraction of the application window, but I cannot find such a fractional window.
I tried uninstall/reinstall; I tried unplugging external monitors; I also tried  various Hide/Show options in the Atom dock right-click menu and the main Atom menu; but am still not seeing it.
How can I show Atom?

I had the same problem right now. I then found the Atom windows reduced to a pixel-thin line at the bottom left of the screen. I could expand them from there.


Save and Load Workspaces Is there an app or setting that lets me save (persist) and load workspaces (or "Spaces") on my Mac?

i.e. as a freelance software developer I want it to appear as if I have a completely fresh Mac dedicated to each of my clients' projects -- one Mac per project

Obviously the way to REALLY do this would be to have a whole virtual machine for each project, but that's definitely overkill.  A good compromise might be to make a User Account for each project, but still that is more trouble than it's worth.

The bottom line is that I want to keep everything I do in one project separate from everything I do in another project, but simply being able to Save and Load workspaces as has been common for years in the Unix world would be a 95% solution.

In practice, having a user account for each client actually works very well. The keychain contains items just for that client and you aren't distracted by your work when you are working on client's items. It's all about everything you need for that client.

Between webmail and web project management - you might even be able to keep some critical items out of the user account and be able to access it from multiple places.

I find that iOS is so good on managing the things I need, that I'm using "my" stuff on a computer so much less that one account per big project and a catch all consulting account to keep my personal account clear of work and be very nice for automated billing, crystal focus on the task at hand as well as clean separation of files and configurations where I can put things in a shared folder, but need to take a step rather than having everything all jumbled.

Fast User switching also helps to pop back to another account quickly when needed.


External video cards with MacBook Pro? I need to connect two displays to my MacBook Pro, and I read a recommendation to use external video cards to accomplish this. How can I do this? Do I just buy a video card and some kind of case which can connect to Thunderbolt? I'd really like to use Thunderbolt as it's so much faster than USB2.0.

Since I'm getting a 17" MacBook Pro, I'm also getting an expresscard port. Will I be able to do something with this? Cheap is the price I'm looking for. :)

The most supported option would be to get a pair of Thunderbolt displays and use those. Note that will black out the screen on your MacBook (source).

I don't think there are good cheap options out there.


Mail won't open anymore OS X El Capitan 10.11.5 I cannot get Mail to open everytime I accidentally try to open it it takes forever and never actually opens and then asks if I want to reindex or just reopen - I have tried both options with no results.  I usually have to force quit it as it just freezes everything.  Anyone got any ideas?

OK I finally figured out how to fix it (yay).

I followed this http://c-command.com/spamsieve/help/how-can-i-rebuild-apple to delete the current index which then let me into Mail (finally) and get all my old emails back.  I am so happy to have it back. :-) Thanks for trying to help me!


How can I be notified when my boyfriend tracks my iPhone? I would like to know how often my boyfriend checks where I am. Is it possible to be notified when he checks on me? In the country where I live, Find My Friends is not available.

Unfortunately no,

Find My Friend is a one way communication style app. It allows you to notify people of your location and see their location. Also, you have the ability to notify someone when you arrive, leave a place, or you can send your current location. You can also be notified if someone lease or arrives at a place (and they can do the same), however it does not have the ability to notify you if someone requested your location.


Where are j5create USB to HDMI drivers saved? Does anyone know where I could find the j5create USB to HDMI drivers that I just downloaded, or where they saved? I've searched but I can't seem to find them.

I checked hd/library/extensions and found them. I've included a screenshot, the mct drivers are the drivers in question.


Built-in text editor in Terminal Is there a built-in text editor in the terminal on Lion?

(Like, for example, nano on Linux.)

vim, emacs, nano and pico are all available by default with OS X 10.7.4:

/Users/ian
> which nano
/usr/bin/nano

/Users/ian
> which vim
/usr/bin/vim

/Users/ian
> which emacs
/usr/bin/emacs

> which pico
/usr/bin/pico


Can iPhone 4S' digitizer be fixed? My iPhone has broken LCD glass, LCD is working from inside but I think the digitizer is broken.

I have visited many blogs and websites and most of them described to replace all the screen with LCD and digitizer. I want to know if there is a way I can fix the digitizer or do I need to replace the whole package?

The LCD and the digitiser are a single integrated piece and cannot be separated for repair. As Alex said above you would have to replace the entire lot.

This forum post over at iFixit a very popular iPhone/apple/computer repair blog and shop highlights the fact this cannot be done.

http://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/25507/Can+I+separate+the+glass+from+the+LCD+screen


I've got an error "This site is blocked due to content filtering." The first question is: How it works?

And the main question is how to remove spying and traffic sniffing things from the Mac.

I've uninstalled Microsoft Corporate Portal, restarted, but it didn't change anything.

Clearly, we see that when I open a browser and navigate to http://pornhub.com (NSFW, obviously) it sends a request to 146.112.61.106:80, this is the problem.

I didn't configure any DNS settings:

macOS Catalina 10.15.1

DNS stands for Domain Name System. It takes your human-readable URL (e.g. google.com) and converts it to a numerical IP address for your computer to read (e.g. 172.217.11.14).

It looks like the DNS settings on your router are pointing to OpenDNS servers. OpenDNS is a free content-filtering service that prevents access to adult/malicious sites and is not a spying/sniffing tool (in reference to your second question). Basically, when your computer tells OpenDNS "Hey, look up this website for me," OpenDNS compares the website against a list of adult/malicious sites and if it is on the list, it tells your computer "no, you can't access that website."

To no longer use OpenDNS:

If you have access to your router's configuration page, you can change the DNS settings to point to other DNS servers (e.g. 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 are Google's free DNS servers you can use.)

If you don't have access to your router's configuration page, and as long as there are no rules on the router to prevent it, you should be able to enter a different DNS server address in your Mac DNS settings (which you have pulled up in your last screenshot). Click on the "+" button and put in the two Google DNS servers mentioned above.


Safari (and system) share menu - Messages and other items missing in Sierra System configuration

Running Sierra (10.12.5)
MacBook Pro 13" (Early 2015)

Issue

Messages and many other options are missing from the system Share menu, both in Safari and in the Share Menu extensions pane.

These among others are missing:

Messages (most annoying)
Facebook
Twitter
Linkedin
Vimeo
Flickr

Here's what I've tried so far with no success:

Update to latest Sierra 10.12.5
Run this command line to force-reload launch services
Disable and re-enable iCloud contacts
Disable and reenable System Integrity Protection

Related observations

Under Preferences -> Internet Accounts, I cannot check the box next to 'Share Menu' for Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo etc, even though accounts are correctly configured.

Really appreciate any help!

Update 7/11:

I just got an old 2011 MackBook Pro repaired, and upgraded it from El Capitan to Sierra. The Share menu works as expected, with Messages as an option. Still not working on the machine with the problem.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203129
This is the fix according to apple. I have a very similar problem but this fix enabled only one or two extensions for me. I ran it 3 times. I'm still looking for more info


When attempting to open some MS Word Docs I'm asked to download - STHeiti and other fonts When opening one of my documents in Word 2011 on MacOS 10.12.3, I'm asked to download a series of fonts including: STHeiti and Osaka.

I assume this means the document was opened on a computer with those fonts installed and now the file is convinced they need to exist.

I've tried accepting the downloads but the problem just returns the next time I reboot my mac.

So where should these fonts be installed and where is Office installing them?

The solution was hinted at in the comments.

Open FontBook: Launch Font Book.app (located in the Applications folder).
Find the fonts in question: Select "All fonts" in the sidebar and search for them using the search box in the upper-right corner of the window. Once found, each will be greyed out.
Download the font:Either press the "Download" button in upper-right corner of the preview pane or right-click the font to display the context menu and select "Download".
Smile now that MS Office doesn't ask you skip/download whenever you open that doc again.


auto mount HFS+ filesystem from disk image (.dmg file) I'd like to auto mount my dmg file which represent disk image with single HFS+ partition upon every boot. is it possible through autofs ? do I have to set the location of the dmg file in any configuration file (/etc/...)

thanks

You can simply add the .dmg file to your Login Items in: System Preferences > Users & Groups > (you) > Login Items

The .dmg file will then automatically be mounted when you login.

Update to address comment: "Is there any API to add item to login items programmatically?"

One programatic way I know of, it can be done with AppleScript:

Example AppleScript code:

tell application "System Events" to ¬
    make new login item with properties ¬
        {name:"Mount DMG", path:"/path/to/filename.dmg", hidden:true}

Change "Mount DMG" and "/path/to/filename.dmg" as appropriate.

It can also be done from Terminal using, using the osascript command, with the same AppleScript command:

osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to make new login item with properties {name:"Mount DMG", path:"/path/to/filename.dmg", hidden:true}'

Change "Mount DMG" and "/path/to/filename.dmg" as appropriate.


After syncing iPhone with iTunes, where will the app-related files be stored on my Mac? For example, if I played a game and downloaded some game contents in the app and then saved some game progress, there should be some files generated within the app. After syncing with iTunes, where will those information be stored?

I could find the appname.ipa file in iTunes Music folder, but that's the same app file downloaded from iTunes. For the app files generated after I used it, where will they be stored?

I don't think the actually files are copied, but the backup directory for iDevices is ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup


Mail in Mountain Lion does not search mail server Ever since upgrading to Mountain Lion, I don't get the full search results when searching my Mail. Mail is now coming back with only 2-3 months worth of search and I'm not sure those are complete. I've tried highlighting old messages, changing the order, etc. Other people are experiencing this too. Does anyone know how to fix it?

I had problems with search and deleting the Spotlight index and reindexing helped.

In a Terminal:

sudo mdutil -i off /
sudo rm -rf /.Spotlight*
sudo mdutil -i on /
sudo mdutil -E /

This will trigger a reindexing, which can take a few hours.


iMac 27" mid 2011 black screen The Mac starts up and runs probably on thunderbolt to vga adapter but the built in screen remains black. It has an AMD HD 6770m graphics card so not the one under the repair program.
Any ideas what could be the problem?

Another possibility is your backlight may have gone bad.  You can check by holding a flashlight up to the display and looking closely.  If you can see the icons on your desktop once illuminated with the flashlight then your backlight is out.  This is a relatively simple repair you can have done at the Apple Store.


iPad 2 Wifi + 3G With iOS 4.3.3 has no multitasking gestures? I recently bought an iPad 2 Wifi + 3G. It is not Jail broken and it is completely genuine. It has iOS 4.3.3 pre-installed. I have not updated my iOS yet as I have just bought it today.

I didn't find any option like "Enable Multitasking Gestures" under the General tab of Settings.

Has Apple disabled it in iOS 4.3 now? Or is something wrong with my iPad?

Thanks

Most likely you used that iPad for development, when you connect it to XCode, and set it "Use for development" the Enable gestures switch will appear.


Mobile account, syncing certain files Under mobile account preferences I have selected "Home folder". What exactly is the home folder and how can I find out where mine is? What else does it include, for example does it include the folder Movies and Images? In mobile accounts is there a way to exclude certain files?

I forgot to ask but does enabling "sync home folder" mean that only the current user the account synced or all users of the computer have there home direcotry synced?

Your home folder is by default the folder that opens when you click Finder.

It's located at /Users/yourusername and is usually shortened to ~. This folder includes all the folders which contains your data such as Documents, Movies, Pictures, etc.

Mobile account syncing will sync everything in this folder. To skip items, go to Profile Manager → Mobility → Rules → Skip items.


I bought "ECC" ram for my MacPro1,1 but system reports only shows FB-DIMM I have an old Mac Pro I decided to upgrade. I found a company on eBay selling "16GB 4X4GB DDR2 MEMORY RAM PC2-5300F 667MHz ECC FB-DIMM" for a good price so I bought two units (32GB total). (Kingston PN# F51272F51)

I installed the memory and all 32GB of the RAM is showing in System Report, but it does not show as ECC.

Here's about the Mac itself:

Here's the memory section:

According to Wikipedia, most Registered ("Buffered") RAM is also ECC, but Buffered RAM can also be non-ECC RAM.

Is the RAM I purchased ECC?

It's not showing as ECC because it's not ECC.

  According to Wikipedia, most Registered ("Buffered") RAM is also ECC,
  it isn't always the case.

That's not exactly correct.  Registered memory has ECC functionality, but not all ECC is registered.  Kingston goes on to explain the difference in the FAQ:  What is the difference between registered, unbuffered, ECC and fully buffered memory?

Secondly, the memory you specified, the Kingston F51272F51 is not listed anywhere as being ECC.  It is listed as being Fully Buffered, however.

Finally, looking at the "supported systems" for this memory on Kingston's website, Apple is nowhere to be found.  So, while is technically works, it's not "correct."

Unfortunately, what you purchased on eBay was not accurately described.  The actual memory that you need from Kingston is KTD-WS667


Looking for Software to Scan or Convert to Searchable and Signable PDF I have the occasional need to scan and/or convert scanned images into PDF format. OS X Mountain Lion does this natively, but as far as I can tell it's just an image wrapped in a PDF, so text selection, search, and signing the document isn't possible.

I've tried out the latest free trial of Adobe Acrobat Pro, which has scan to PDF functionality that does precisely what I want. Combined with its ClearScan option I've managed to get pretty decent looking PDFs at a reasonable size that I can search, select text from, and digitally sign. Awesome! Except it costs $199, which is a little steep for very occasional use.

That being said, is there anything else out there that has similar functionality at a lower price point? I'm not expecting free.

One app that keeps coming up in my search is PDFScanner, which makes the resulting PDF searchable by running it through OCR, but from what I can tell it's the equivalent of Adobe's searchable image format. One important requirement is being able to digitally sign the resulting PDF, but it's not clear if PDFScanner can do this. Text selection is nice but not absolutely necessary.

I know of a website that people have used that is supposed to be very good (there is no software to download) and everything is carried out online. It is called FillAnyPDF:

https://www.fillanypdf.com/default.aspx

which includes digital signature. I have never used it myself, but it may turn out to be what you are looking for, but it might just be for form filling.

Alternatively Wondershares PDF Editor for Mac maybe cheaper than Adobe:

http://www.wondershare.com/mac-pdf-editor/?icn=pem01&ici=top_side

I left another suggestion in the comments below however this article by OSXDaily (particularly the comments section) should provide more insight to your needs:

http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/12/pdf-editors-for-mac-os-x-whats-the-best-way-to-edit-a-pdf-on-your-mac/


Disable Siri on lockscreen without password Is it possible to disable Siri on the lockscreen while not requiring a code to unlock the device?

I'm using iOS 7 and I think this was possible in iOS 6.

Yes, under Settings -> General -> Passcode Lock you have a section named "Allow access while locked" and there you can set Siri, Passbook and Reply with message to off.

Edit: Oh, sorry, didn't see that you mentioned without having an unlock code. I just tested and that didn't seem to work, even with activating the passcode lock, setting Siri to off and then deactivating the passcode lock. The switch is in the off setting but Siri still activates.


RSS reader for iphone I'm looking for an RSS reader that has push notifications but I can also filter the RSS feed, like there's an RSS feed I need to subscribe to but I only want to be notified about posts that contain a certain word in the title.

The suitable named Push Reader app seems to be what I'm looking for, it has push notifications that we filtered by keywords, not exactly sure where the keywords are used to filter (like body or title etc) but as far as I can see it's pretty good.

Edit: it filters by keyword at least in the title. I just got a push notification telling me I have homework ;)


How do I play DVDs fullscreen on an external monitor in Lion? MacbookPro6,2 running Mac OS Lion 10.7.2 attempting to run a DVD fullscreen on an external monitor.  My laptop display is primary, but I would like the DVD to run fullscreen on the External (a lovely 23"-er).

I'm fine with using VLC if that's necessary, but I prefer to not make the external monitor my primary display. #ihateyoumissioncontrol

You need to run VLC.

In VLC, go to the Video menu and the Fullscreen Video Device menu and choose which screen you want to use for fullscreen video playback.


Keynote Mac, delete cropped image to reduce file size without losing image resolution quality I have lots of high-resolution images inserted into the Keynote which makes the file very large. Image masking in Keynote is very convenient for me. But I only want a small corner of the images shown in the slides, and I don't need the cropped part anymore. Reducing file size under the File menu loses image quality and the cropped images are still there. Is there any way to delete the cropped part to reduce file size without losing image resolution/quality?

I find that exporting as jpeg keeps sufficient quality and reduces the size markedly.
I usually crop using the screen editor / grab (cmnd shift 4) then open in preview and export as jpeg.


Four finger swipe not working on Magic Trackpad Even though in the preference pane for Trackpad it says "Swipe between full-screen apps" when I'm using the internal trackpad in my laptop, it will switch desktops even if I'm not using full screen apps. However, when I'm using my Magic Trackpad, the 4-finger swipe does not switch desktops.

Solution: Go into settings -> trackpad -> turn off the four finger swipe, and turn it on again.

(Credit to Stiwi for the very efficient Jeopardy Question)


What is the universal Document format on the Macintosh? (format you can be sure any Mac can display)? I'm preparing a document for Macintosh users.
Currently the document is in .doc format.

Will all Mac OSX users be able to view that format?
If not, is there a better universal format to use? (.RTF, .PDF, etc.)

PDFs will open in Preview for viewing - no Adobe Reader required. RTF will open in TextEdit, and can be edited, also with no optional software required. Which one is better depends on whether you want the user to be able to edit the document, or just read it.


Are there any tools available (web tools, PC tools, iPhone tools) to send an MMS to the iPhone which contains images and text? I would like my app to be launched if the user clicks on a custom URL within an MMS, this is working for SMSs but I would like to test it using an MMS.
Does anybody know of any tools available that would enable me to create and send an MMS to the iPhone, with the MMS containing a mixture of images and the url as a clickable link from within the MMS?

(it doesn't have to be sent from on an iPhone, I'm just looking for any way at all to get an MMS onto the iPhone containing an image and a clickable url link).

Thanks

Have you tried sending via email? I think all carriers have an email formatted address for their phone numbers. Here's a random Google result with quite a bit of info:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=507548

Based on the comments, it appears to work with MMS, not just SMS. There's also a few services suggested, there.


I'm trying to peek my old backups I have an iPhone 5s, I have had this phone since 2014. It is pretty beaten up... But it still works. My question is;
If I accidentally restore an older back up on my phone, will I be able to go back into iTunes and restore the most recent back up to get all my current information back on my phone?

Yes, if you have a more recent backup you can always restore that later.


No website opening but network works perfect, dns perfect as well I am relatively new to OSX but I do my best here. I read a lot and tried to solve but did not find a answer which fits to my problem well.

I have a Mac Mini with Yosemite 10.10.2. My network seems perfect and I can ping for example in my Terminal any website, domain etc. also nslookup works perfect for any domain.

How ever if I try to open a website nothing opens and the page loads simply forever. I am connected either with Wifi or Cable but the same result. I tried to activate/disactivate  without success the network adapter. Of course I restarted modem as well. (Besides with my tablet and phone the same modem via Wifi works perfect).

I dont know what else to do. I also do not use any Antivirus, Firewall etc. software in this moment. How ever something blocks me from opening any website. the only thing which helps me is a complete restart of my system.

Thank you  in advance for any tip.

Check to see if your time and date are set correctly. Safari will have all sorts of trouble including with certificates when the time is off.


L2TP/VPN data corruption issue on macOS 10.12 I am experiencing a strange data corruption issue while working on a L2TP VPN, after upgrading from macOS 10.11 to 10.12.  Random corrupted data occurs in the middle of somewhat "larger" downloaded files, e. g. JavaScript resources or any other source files with a file size around 1 ~ 2 MB. It seems the corruption comes up occasionally at file sizes < 1 MB, but quite reliable at file sizes above. The position and content appears to be random. I am attaching a screenshot containing an example of the file corruption which occured in a 1.4 MB JavaScript file.

I never had any problems concerning this on macOS 10.10 or 10.11 and the latest issue results in very annoying consequences. E. g. I am not able to access JS-heavy web apps anymore. Furthermore it is risky to work in live systems of enterprise software when downloading, patching and uploading files. People around me using the same VPN on macOS 10.12 have the very same problem, whereas people still working on macOS 10.11 have no trouble at all.

Does anyone else experience this problem? How can I troubleshoot this?

Also relating to an older post in Apple Communities describing a similar (or the same?) issue in older macOS versions:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/30908122?start=0&tstart=0#30908122

Edit 2016-11-08

What's interesting: scp (SSH) downloads are interrupted by an error.

xyz-macbook:Downloads xyz$ scp xyz@192.168.227.123:/srv/www/xyz/ext-5.0.1/build/ext-all.js .
xyz@192.168.227.123's password:
ext-all.js    0%    0     0.0KB/s   --:-- ETACorrupted MAC on input.
ssh_dispatch_run_fatal: Connection to 192.168.227.123 port 22: message authentication code incorrect
lost connection

Whereas curl (HTTP) downloads finish, but contain the above-mentioned corrupted characters.

xyz-macbook:Downloads xyz$ curl "http://192.168.227.123/xyz/ext-5.0.1/build/ext-all.js" -o "ext-all.js"
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 1952k  100 1952k    0     0  1728k      0  0:00:01  0:00:01 --:--:-- 1729k

Edit 2016-11-11

The corrupted data is different with every download of one and the same file:

xyz-macbook:Downloads xyz$ md5 dummy_novpn.txt
MD5 (dummy_novpn.txt) = ca323efb28ed75534f8f6b7b0237d9da
xyz-macbook:Downloads xyz$ md5 dummy_vpn.txt
MD5 (dummy_vpn.txt) = 060bbe9846e7845993041a1481c34b93
xyz-macbook:Downloads xyz$ md5 dummy_vpn2.txt
MD5 (dummy_vpn2.txt) = dacfc661f9a85606afbdfefa72d50516
xyz-macbook:Downloads xyz$ md5 dummy_vpn3.txt
MD5 (dummy_vpn3.txt) = 8c3f06f9ee440947a9e5864748bd7010

Do you happen to have a https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TCDOCK11PSG/ ?
I had the same issue, and it turns out if I moved the ethernet from the port on the OWC replicator, to a USB-C Ethernet, the problem went away.


Yosemite's Preview.app goes to top of document when PDF changes I use Preview.app to view PDFs which I am creating with pdflatex.
In OSX Mavericks, whenever the PDF changed I would switch windows away from Preview and then back, and the view would update, scrolling to the top of the current page when in continuous scroll mode.

Now after updating to Yosemite, Preview.app always goes back up to the top of the document whenever the PDF file is updated. This is extremely annoying and I have found no way to get the old behaviour back. Any ideas? If I choose Single Page mode (⌘2) this seems to stay on the same page, but ideally I would like to keep continuous scroll...

Please let Apple know about this regression in Preview.app's behaviour in OS X 10.10.

If you have an Apple Developer ID, you can also report this via bugreporter.apple.com.


Name: Tags: Where: image frozen on my Mac Air desktop I took a screen shot using Command +5 and apparently tapped "Record Selected Section".  That screen shot icon is frozen on my desktop.
I have tried opening Terminal and typing:  Killall finder. Didn't work.
Then I did same:  Killall Docks.  Didn't work.  I can't trash it. It's frozen.
Thanks,
Valerie

It's been about 1/2 hour since I did the above actions to clear the frozen icon.  I just opened my Mac and the image is gone!!!


Preview Text Annotation Tool In a previous version of macOS the Preview app opened a box at the bottom of the screen and allowed me to click the A (type tool) and place the cursor where I wanted the text, then click to create a starting point.

The current version does not automatically create a text box when you selected the Text Annotation tool.

Can I change the way the current version of Preview works, to match this old behaviour? I don't like having to move the text box where I want it and highlight the word text to begin typing. It was so much easier and faster the old way.

I agree the new way of working isn't great, however the bad news is this is not configurable.

It's a core part of the operating system and the changes for better or worse are the way they are and it isn't a configuration setting sorry.

You could pass this feedback onto Apple here: https://feedback.apple.com


Natural Scroll Direction: On with trackpad, Off with mouse I already tried this:
Changing trackpad scroll direction with AppleScript in Yosemite

But it didn't work.

What I need is when I use the internal macBook Pro trackpad, natural scroll direction is enabled, and when I use an external mouse, it is disabled.

If this is impossible, how about the following alternative: when I plug in a mouse switch to "non-natural" scroll direction, and when I disconnect the mouse switch back to natural.

Hi just found a great app that totally fixed this and so simple! You can set the scroll direction for each device separately.

SCROLL REVERSER
http://pilotmoon.com/scrollreverser/


Retina MacBook Pro running very hot? I have a late-2013 Retina MacBook Pro, and it gets really hot really easily. I've monitored the temp with htop and iStat and they both show the same readings. It's supposed to be able to play some pretty graphics intensive games, at least that's the impression I got. I tried playing Rust (very basic graphics for those unaware of the game) on medium settings, and my cpu temp was hovering around 100. I also tried playing Endless Legend, and my cpu temps were hovering around 100 before I even got into the game, just looking at the menu, in windowed mode, at 1280x800 resolution, with low graphics settings, with no other applications running. Is this normal? Is the game performance of the Retina MBP this bad usually or is mine unusually bad? Are these temperatures safe or will they decrease the life of my computer if sustained for a few hours at a time?

EDIT : Check out the performance trying to play a game of chess here. You can see the CPU temp spike to over 100 degrees in seconds

100C (212F) is the thermal limit for the intel processor in your machine. The computer will shut itself down to prevent damage if necessary. This means a sustained and significant increase above that threshold. Not a spike. The temperatures you report are within normal operating temperatures based on the usage. Tips, moving forward:

Keep your Firmware up to date.
Make sure the back vents are not covered or obstructed in any way. This ensures proper ventilation.
Don’t manually adjust the fan settings, or the like, using applications like “iStat Menus." The firmware in your machine is very good (better than you, or I, or any human being) at keeping the machine cool and dissipating the heat produced from CPU/GPU intensive processes.

Bottom Line: This is completely normal behavior and nothing to worry about.


Jupyter Notebook launches the start page with MacVim instead of Safari So at some point MacVim got associated with HTML pages, and since than when I launch jupyter it defaults to opening the landing page with MacVim instead of a browser.
I have changed the "Opens with" for all HTML files, and indeed if I double click an HTML file it properly loads the page in Safari, but the Jupyter issue remains as is, which is annoying. I have noticed that the icon displayed for HTML files is still MacVim's icon, as if it's the default application.
Has anyone else experienced this? If so, any tips on how to resolve the situation?

I had the same issue. Here is how I fixed:
It seems that using the OpenWith option only works once. To change the default application permanently I did the following:
Select an HTML file and right-click on it. Then you select Get Info and in the Open with section, select a browser as the default application and click on the Change All... button.
I hope it helps


Safari deleting every tab that I open In Safari every time I close the app or turn off my iPhone, every tab that I have open is deleted. I have absolutely no idea how it started, and it deleted a couple important tabs.

Did you try..

Open Safari

Press and hold the back arrow button on the far left hand side of the bottom tool bar.

Your browser history menu will appear on the screen.

From here, you can tap on a link to open it.


Setting up gmail in Mavericks - A connection error occurred I am trying to setup gmail on a clean install of Mavericks 10.9.5. The Gmail settings like enabling IMAP etc are all set.
So now I am ready to add a new account in my mac, by going in System Preferences -> Internet Accounts and click to add a new Google Account.

Entering the email address and password and clicking the ok button, I am getting immediately an error message in red: "A connection error occurred".

I am trying the same directly in Mail app, still the same.
There is no 2step verification and all security settings in Google account are setup so the connection should work. I have also unblock access via the Google Unlock Captcha. But yet I am not able to create my account.

Also, if I try to use a wrong password or username, it immediately tells me that my credentials are wrong, so it seems like there is a communication with Google, but something goes wrong with the Auto-creation of a Google account.

Just to compare the settings: (assumes you already Enabled the IMAP in the gmail).

Incoming Mail (IMAP) Server - Requires SSL

imap.gmail.com
Port: 993
Requires SSL:Yes

Outgoing Mail (SMTP) Server - Requires TLS

smtp.gmail.com
Port: 465 or 587
Requires SSL: Yes
Requires authentication: Yes
Use same settings as incoming mail server

Full Name or Display Name: [your name]

Account Name or User Name: your full Gmail address (username@gmail.com).

Google Apps users, please enter username@your_domain.com

Email address: your full Gmail address (username@gmail.com) Google Apps users, please enter username@your_domain.com

Password: your Gmail password


Airport Extreme and 10/100 Ethernet Switch I have an Airport Extreme (with Gigabit Ethernet) connected up to my cable modem, my Mac, and my PC.  I have one spare port on the AE and thought about hooking up a spare 10/100 Ethernet Switch I have (D-Link DES-1105).  I could hook up the Blu-ray player, etc, to this.

Will hooking up a switch like this (and 10/100 Ethernet devices to that switch) drop the Gigabit Ethernet on the rest of the AE to 10/100?  Or, will the AE keep the Gigabit devices running at full speed, and keep the 10/100 Switch running at 10 or 100 Mb/s?

Auto-negotiating switches, like the one in the AE, will run each port at the speed of it's connection. I think you have to go back to the days of hubs to run into the "port drag-down" issue with one slow device bringing everything connected to the lowest connection speed.


What might fix an installation of KeePass that won't copy or paste on OS X? KeePass will not copy and paste, let alone do autotype.

I have installed the KeePass 2.18 Mac package from http://keepass2.openix.be/. I could not find a more recent Mac package for KeePass, so I also replaced all of that package's  files with those from the  Portable KeePass 2.20.1 (ZIP Package). That was from the page http://keepass.info/download.html, link to actual zip: http://downloads.sourceforge.net/keepass/KeePass-2.20.1.zip. So I'm successfully running KeePass 2.20.1.

I'm running Mono version 2.10.9.

I'm running OS X 10.7.5 on a MacBook Pro.

I can't believe that KeePass's site touts Mac compatibility when it won't copy/paste. That's pretty core functionality to be missing. Searches reveal others have had this problem since 2.18, but no workarounds, no bug reports.

Has anyone been able to resolve this issue?

The KeePass documentation in http://keepass.info/help/v2/setup.html#mono, although not specifically mentioning OS X, describes your issue:

  Clipboard:
  On some systems, Mono's clipboard routines don't work
  properly. In this case, install the xsel package. If xsel is
  installed, KeePass ≥ 2.20 uses this utility for clipboard operations.

So xsel should help. (xsel is available from MacPorts (http://www.macports.org/ports.php?by=all&substr=&page=316&pagesize=50). The source is available here: http://www.vergenet.net/~conrad/software/xsel/#download)

EDIT: But it doesn't. I was curious so I compiled xsel on my Mac. It didn't solve the issue with copy/paste (tested with Portable KeePass 2.20.1), as I feared, I must say. Why? Because as stated here http://www.kfish.org/software/xsel/ xsel is a tool that manipulates the clipboard contents of X11 applications. X11 provides the graphical user interface for Linux and UNIX, but OS X uses Quartz instead, and so does Mono, as I realized (see http://www.mono-project.com/WinForms#About_System.Windows.Forms).

There's a workaround for copying username and password to clipboard, as explained in this thread http://sourceforge.net/projects/keepass/forums/forum/329221/topic/5106260:

  Ureka (sic). Your 2.19 is on the path to copy paste working on the MAC via
  Mono! Your button to copy the username, and your button to copy the
  password works now!!!

The poster above refers to these buttons (portable KeePass 2.20.1 shown running on Windows (sorry, no Mac nearby)):

For copying the username:

For copying the password:

EDIT:

I'd like to share how I compiled xsel in case somebody needs it on OS X:

Install X11 from http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5293 (this only applies to OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" users).
Symlink header and library files from /opt/X11/include/X11 to /usr/local/include/X11 and from /opt/X11/lib to /usr/local/lib (alternatively you can symlink to /usr/include and /usr/lib):

$ sudo ln -s /opt/X11/include/X11 /usr/local/include/X11
$ for lib in $(ls /opt/X11/lib/lib*); do sudo ln -sf $lib /usr/local/lib; done

Otherwise you will get lots of errors about files not found or missing symbols. I tried passing the non-standard X11 directories as an option to ./configure without success.
Download from http://www.vergenet.net/~conrad/software/xsel/#download and extract, for example, to your Desktop.
You need gcc plus libraries. Install Xcode and then install the command line tools from Xcode>Preferences>Downloads>Components.
Change directory, configure and compile:

$ cd xsel-1.2.0
$ ./configure --prefix /usr/local
$ make
make  all-am
if gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.     -g -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing -Wall -Werror -g -std=gnu99 -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wno-unused -MT xsel.o -MD -MP -MF ".deps/xsel.Tpo" -c -o xsel.o xsel.c; \
    then mv -f ".deps/xsel.Tpo" ".deps/xsel.Po"; else rm -f ".deps/xsel.Tpo"; exit 1; fi
gcc  -g -O2 -fno-strict-aliasing -Wall -Werror -g -std=gnu99 -Wdeclaration-after-statement -Wno-unused   -o xsel  xsel.o  -lX11
$ make install

You can also install xsel with MacPorts using the command sudo port install xsel. In my setup it also required the symlinks for the X11 libraries and header files and needed much longer to compile.

I'd also like to share some caveats when using KeePass on a Mac:

KeePass 2.18 (from http://keepass2.openix.be) has trouble with case-sensitive HFS+. KeePass.exe is typed Keepass.exe (notice lowercase 'p') in KeePass2.18.app/Contents/MacOS/startkeepass.sh (so that it silently fails). I had to use a USB flash drive formatted with case-insensitive HFS+ and run KeePass from there.
I had a lot of trouble getting KeePass 2.20.1 to work on OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion". It couldn't get rid of the error message:

System.ArgumentException: Directory does not exists
Parameter name: path
  at System.IO.FileSystemWatcher..ctor (System.String path, System.String filter) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at (wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.IO.FileSystemWatcher:.ctor (string,string)
  at KeePass.Util.IpcBroadcast.FswStartServer () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at KeePass.Util.IpcBroadcast.StartServer () [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at KeePass.Forms.MainForm.OnFormLoad (System.Object sender, System.EventArgs e) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoad (System.EventArgs e) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0
  at System.Windows.Forms.Form.OnLoadInternal (System.EventArgs e) [0x00000] in <filename unknown>:0

I finally found the culprit: The release notes for version 2.20.1 state (http://keepass.info/news/n121004_2.20.1.html):

  Changes from 2.20 to 2.20.1:
  On Unix-like systems, KeePass now stores most of its temporary files in a private temporary directory (preferably in $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR).

According to http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html:

$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR defines the base directory relative to which user-specific non-essential runtime files and other file objects (such as sockets, named pipes, ...) should be stored. The directory MUST be owned by the user ...

XDG_RUNTIME_DIR was not set. I set it to a directory I owned and KeePass worked like a charm:

$ echo $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR
$ mkdir ~/.mono
$ export XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=~/.mono/; mono --desktop /Volumes/USB_Flash_Drive/KeePass-2.20.1/KeePass.exe


Install Mac OS on external drive: disk locked I am trying to install Mac OS Big Sur on an external drive (Samsung portable SSD T5 256GB) following the macworld directions. I get to the very last step, however there is a message that the disk is locked and it can't be selected, so can't install macOS on it.

I have previously installed macOS on the drive using restore from backup, but I just want a minimal OS install, not all my stuff from a backup.
I have also tried to select the drive as the boot disk, but get a message that I can't select the drive because "the bless tool was unable to set the current boot disk".

There is a previous question Disk Locked” macOS reinstall! however I don't think that helps, there's also a post on an Apple discussion forum about the bless tool, but that doesn't help either.
Any ideas on how to rectify this?

Of course after hours of trying, I found an answer soon after I posted.

I connected the external drive
From the app store, I found Big Sur and clicked "Get". Because I'd already downloaded the installer, it started after a few moments
I clicked continue and accepted the Ts & Cs
When the "select disk to install" came up, only the internal disk was shown so I clicked the "Show all disks" button
The external disk was also shown, so I selected it
A message said the disk couldn't be used as it wasn't APFS with GUID partition map
I backed out of the installer, ran disk utility, erased the disk and formatted it as APFS with GUID
Ran steps 1 to 4 again, this time the install proceeded
20 minutes later I had a bootable external drive.

The above is far simpler than the MacWorld instructions.


permanently turn off discrete graphics chip on macbook pro My trusty 2011 mbp discrete graphics chip has died.
It wouldn't boot- just gets to a point in the boot and shows bad lines on the screen and hangs.  It even hangs on a USB recovery disk so it isn't the internal drive/settings.

I put the mbp into target disk mode and moved /System/Library/Extensions/AMD6000Controller.kext folder, cleared the kernel caches and restarted - and the computer works!
Yay, but now the screen is really laggy - and is not usable.
Wondered if there are tweaks I can do to the the AMD6000Controller.kext info.plist that will cause the integrated graphics chip to always be used?

I called apple, and even though the macbook was 5 years out of warranty, and the warranty extension program had finished end 2016, they still honoured the warranty.  So i got a new logic board for free.  Happy days. ;-)


How do I combine these two shell commands into a Service? I run the following two commands on markdown files to get a nicely formatted PDF.

pandoc file.md -o file.html --css=markdown.css
prince file.html file.pdf
rm file.html

How would I automate this? I'd like to right-click a markdown file, navigate to services, and choose convert markdown to PDF.

I know I should use Automator and I tried but couldn't link the right steps together. In my example above, file is the filename that needs to be the argument. I got as far as starting a new Automator service, choosing Files & Folders, and Get Selected Finder Items and got stuck there.

Update: Pandoc = http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/

Prince = http://www.princexml.com/

Update #2 for clarity

If I am in a folder with a markdown file named test.md,  then the complete command line syntax would be:

pandoc --from=markdown --to=html test.md --css=~path/to/css/markdown.css -o test.html

(Note: I have been able to automate this as a service and have named it Markdown to HTML)

Here is that code:

 for f in "$@"
 do
/usr/local/bin/pandoc --from=markdown --to=html "$f" --css=/Users/fooo/Documents/Code/css/markdown.css -o "$f".html
done

Now to convert that bit of html to PDF is something I am not able to link in. But the command line syntax for that would be:

prince test.html -o test.pdf

What about an Automator service like this one:

The payload is the shell script

 for f in "$@"
 do
    pandoc "$f" --css=markdown.css | prince - "$f".pdf
 done

Whatever the selected file or files, the service runs them through pandoc's Markdown parser, then takes the resulting html and processes it with prince, naming the output the original file name with a .pdf extension added.

The piping removes the need for you to manage temporary files.


Problems with resizing terminal I have a recurring problem with the Mac terminal.

Start terminal
mysql
Ctrl + Z
mysql
Resize the width of the window
Ctrl + Z
fg 1 (switch back to first mysql)
Type some text that reaches the end of the line

PROBLEM: Mysql seems to still think the window has the original width, so when the text you type reaches the right hand side of the terminal window, the text starts jumping around like crazy as you type, because it is not repositioned correctly.

WORKAROUND: If I change the size of the window just one character, the problem is solved, but it is annoying having to do this several times per day.

I thought of possible things that could be wrong:

Bug in MySQL/MariaDB
Bug in Terminal
Wrong Terminal settings
Wrong Bash settings

Anyone have a solution to the problem, or know who is most likely the culprit, so I know where to direct a bug report?

I think this happens because the window resize signals are sent while the app is suspended, so it won't receive them. One way to fix it may be to manually send the SIGWINCH signal to the process while it is in the foreground. From another terminal, run:

killall -WINCH mysql


Issues with WIFI Authentification pages I realized yesterday that I could not see authentification pages of some WIFI. I'm running High Sierra 10.13.

Apparently to solve this issue I have to go to Keychain Access > Preferences > Certificates => disable OCSP and CRL.

The problem is that "Certificates" panel doesn't exist anymore.

Some people said that I had to find an old version of keychain.menu (TimeMachine's backup) but I don't have an old backup.

Could someone please update their old version of keychain.menu or help me one way or another to disable OCSP and CRL?

Thank you very much

Solution:

I had to remove all DNS and empty my DNS cache.

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

resolved my problem


How to print and email PDF from any OS X application on PDF letterhead? On the Windows PC there is a nice eDocPrinter PDF printer driver from Iteksoft that prints from any Windows application to a PDF file overlayed with a PDF of the corporate letterhead and even attaches the result to a new mail message in the default mail client.

Regression

The Automator.app in 10.8.5 doesn't seem to overlay PDF files, Automater.app only overlays image file formats.
There is a PDF printer driver project at sourceforge which doesn't overlay and doesn't e-mail.
Then there is the PDF Letterhead app, which isn't a printer driver, loses it's settings on every quit and requires the creation of an intermediate temporary PDF file because this isn't a printer driver.

Who can give a hint how to create an new mail message having a PDF document attached that is overlayed with a PDF letterhead using the Mac OS X print dialog?

The latest version of PDF Letterhead in App Store keeps its settings. You can also choose "Open in PDF Letterhead" from the Print Menu. This saves you from creating a temporary PDF file.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pdf-letterhead/id976548033?mt=12


Why does my MBP mid retina 2012 run so slowly when using it's built in monitor? I'm having severe performance troubles when I'm using the laptop's built in screen as opposed to an external display.

Whenever I stop using the external display, many of the OSX animations become slow and choppy.

I suspect what's happening is that my external display always uses the discrete graphics card for acceleration. I also sometimes work quite close to the limit of my physical RAM. This probably makes it hard for my integrated graphics card to work efficiently.

Any suggestions on how to force this machine to use the discrete graphics card EVEN when not using an external monitor?

Specs below:

  Model Name: MacBook Pro
  Model Identifier:   MacBookPro10,1
  Processor Name:   Intel Core i7
  Processor Speed:    2,3 GHz
  Number of
  Processors:   1
  Total Number of Cores:  4
   L2 Cache (per Core):   256 KB
  L3 Cache: 6 MB
  Memory: 8 GB

  NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M

  Intel HD Graphics 4000

To force the usage of the discrete graphics card in your macbook you can uncheck the automatic graphics switching checkbox in the system preferences/ energy saver panel

As the message states, this does drain the battery faster.
However, your mac should not behave as you describe, I suggest taking it to a service desk so apple can take a look at it, or call apple to ask why it is so choppy.


Pictures are not deleted from "Photos" iphone app when deleted from "Google Photos" When I delete a picture from "Google Photos" on my iphone it is not deleted from the "Photos" app. How to fix this?
Thank you

When deleting on my iPhone, it asks if I will "Allow "GooglePhotos" to delete this photo? This photo will be deleted from iCloud Photo Library on all your devices." I can choose not to allow it and it will only be deleted on my Google Photos app.

I evidently have iCloud Photo Library turned on, and backup and sync on the Google Photos app turned on as well.

Also, check on Settings > Privacy > Photos to see if Google Photos is allowed to access your pictures.


Why did the emoji and predictive input stop showing up on Touch Bar while typing in WhatsApp desktop Mac app on MacBook Pro? When I first began using WhatsApp Mac app on a new MacBook Pro, the emoji and predictive text were working normally whenever I was typing in the WhatsApp desktop Mac app. I could quickly access the emoji on the Touch Bar and predictive texts show up too on the Touch Bar.

But suddenly it stopped working. The emoji and predictive text stopped appearing on the Touch Bar whenever I open WhatsApp app.

What is causing this problem? Is there any way to fix it?

The issue still persists when logging in to other user accounts. And the emoji and predictive text show up on the Touch Bar normally when I use iMessage app. I tried uninstalling & installing WhatsApp app to no avail.

I had the same problem, but it went away after I manually went to the App Store and installed the latest version of WhatsApp desktop


Is it possible to use an iPhone device for storage? I know that through iTunes you can store images, audio etc. on your iPhone. But is it possible to access the iPhone and store any kind of files for later retrieval, much like a memory stick?

There's an app called Phone Disk that seems to do exactly what you need. The one downside is that it needs to be installed on the host computer to work.


I only see a .pkg file when restoring from DMG in TransMac. What is wrong? I finally got my hands on a second-hand MacBook Pro (Early 2011). However, the disk is corrupted and doesn't boot, and Internet Recovery proves ineffective as the OS X Lion Setup fails. This is the only somewhat-modern Mac that I own, so I tried to make a USB installer via windows. I used a genuine Apple install DMG (Located Here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211683), and when I go and restore the USB with the DMG file I only see a .pkg file, in place of the installer files. It also doesn't show up in the boot menu of the Macbook.
I have seen other people have success with this method, so I'm not seeing what I'm doing wrong. (See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OpF0jJMJzI) What should I do differently?

I found a quicker and easier way to do this, so I'll share it here.
I found a website called https://bootableinstaller.com/, and it works like magic. If you run the script (Included with download), it converts the installer DMG into a bootable ISO.
As for my original problem:
It looks like I tried to flash the installer DMG without unpacking the .PKG file properly. The script mentioned above does that for me.


How does WireShark work on OS X? What processes does it interact with? I'm looking for deep/detailed research into how the MacOS TCP stack works. Namely, what are the files/Dynamic Libraries that offer this service?

What Libraries does WireShark interact with?

My goal is to trace a logical chain of drivers, processes, and configurations that enable a TCP connection to work.

I'll inspect the version of the files, their corresponding default settings, and anything else that can influence their behavior.

My goal is to diagnose the issue described in this question.

Wireshark uses the /dev/bpf* devices.
From the Wireshark install readme.txt (describing system modifications):

/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.wireshark.ChmodBPF.plist. A launch daemon that adjusts permissions on the system's packet capture devices (/dev/bpf*) when the system starts up.

The bpfx devices are mechanisms designed to inspect network traffic (i.e. exactly the use case for WireShark).
Or as man bpf says:

The Berkeley Packet Filter provides a raw interface to data link layers in a protocol independent fashion. All packets on the network, even those destined for other hosts, are accessible through this mechanism.
The packet filter appears as a character special device, /dev/bpf. After opening the device, the file descriptor must be bound to a specific network interface with the BIOCSETIF ioctl. A given interface can be shared by multiple listeners, and the filter underlying each descriptor will see an identical packet stream.


I'm trying to make a service to archive a folder using tgz. I can't get this to work I'm trying to learn to build services on my iMac running High Sierra. I open system preferences and then I click on Keyboard. From there I click on the Shortcuts tab. I get the window shown below.

From this pane, I click on Services on the left and check the box "Archive as tbz" on the right. I then give the shortcut control-command-a as the keyboard shortcut. I then close System Preferences and go to the folder with the folder I want to archive in it. I select the folder I want to archive then right-click on it. A context-menu comes up with Services at the bottom. I click on Services and see my new service at the bottom. I click on it but nothing happens. What am I doing wrong?

I've tried closing the System Preferences and going to Finder and run my service from there. No luck. After that, I tried running the service by right-clicking on the folder to archive. No luck. I looked up in Google "how to make a service mac" but no luck. Their method didn't work. Now I'm out of options. I also tried using the key shortcut but that didn't work either. I tried doing the same but used zip instead of tbz but zip didn't work either. Can somebody help me make a keyboard shortcut or a service?

The following services are installed by Entropy:

Archive as 7z
Archive as rar
Archive as tbz
Archive as tgz
Archive as zip

Setting ⇧⌃⌘A on the Archive as tgz service does create a .tgz file in Finder; however, I first had to trigger it from the Services menu in Finder before the keyboard shortcut worked. This is also where I found the Entropy icon on these services.

Note: I had to add ⇧ to ⌃⌘A because in macOS Catalina ⌃⌘A is: Make Alias

I also did not have these services on a clean built macOS Catalina system until after installing Entropy, without even running it first, these services appeared in: System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services


Xcode: Jump back within file? Let's assume:

I'm looking at function foo. Inside foo, a function bar is called.
I follow bar to the definition (in the same file) to see what it does.
Now I want to go back to foo

Is there a shortcut for this? I know about "Go Back" and "Go Forward", but they only work when bar is defined in another file, and not for going back and forward within the same file...

It seems that it works like this in the current Xcode version 9.2.

I can jump back and forth inside the same file using "Go Back"/"Go Forward".


Downgrading a new Mac to OS X Tiger? I have a kinda odd question. In theory, would it be possible for a new Mac (Lets say a fancy new MBP) to downgrade from macOS High Sierra to a OS X 10.4.11 Tiger Intel build? If so, what would be the complications of doing so, and would doing so make it irreversible?

Golden Rule: No Mac can run an OS older than the OS it shipped with.

The hardware drivers do not exist, as the hardware wasn't invented at the time.

From Snow Leopard Server 10.6/Lion 10.7 you could virtualise it in Parallels etc, but nothing before that.


How to open a specific port in Firewall OS X 10.9.4 How do I open a specific port in the firewall?
I can not use the "allow connections from application" as I want to open the port for Jenkins, that is not on the list...

I had the same issue under OS X Yosemite (10.10.3).  Found this blog post that provides clear instructions.  We can't use ipfw any more, as it's deprecated.  Instead, use pfctl, which unfortunately lacks a nice command line way to tell it to open a port.  Instead, you need to:

Open /etc/pf.conf in a text editor.
Add a line like this:

  # Open port 8080 for TCP on all interfaces

  pass in proto tcp from any to any port 8080

Save the file.
Load the changes with:

  sudo pfctl -f /etc/pf.conf

If you need to open a udp port, change tcp to udp, if you need both, add a second line.  Additional detail can be found in man pf.conf.

Also make sure your server is listening on the actual interface you want it accessible over (or all interfaces, using 0.0.0.0 or ::0), not localhost (127.0.0.1 or ::1).


Does Etcher replace rEFInd? Installing Linux on a Mac has always been complicated by the need for running rEFInd.

Yet Ubuntu's instructions for installing on a Mac mention Etcher (step 3), but do not mention rEFInd.

Can you confirm that to completely displace macOS and end up with a single-boot Mac running Ubuntu, these instructions are sufficient, and there is no need to run rEFInd?

You can do a clean install of Ubuntu on a Mac without needing to install rEFInd.

The procedure for installing depends on the model Mac and the version of Ubuntu.

The rEFInd boot manager can be useful in the following situations.

You want a menu with operating system choices to appear each time the computer boots or reboots.
You want to select the default operating system to boot from the currently executing operation system.

rEFInd is a boot manager. This means rEFInd does not actually boot an operating system. rEFInd just instructs the firmware which operating system to boot.

Since you wish to only install Ubuntu on your Mac, then there is no reason to install the rEFInd boot manager.


How do I download a URL using Applescript I used to be able to download URLs from an Applescript, but I lost the Applescript. I want to enter a URL: i.e.: "http://wpclassic.com/go.php?http://www.revolutiontwo.com/download/tv.zip" and have it prompt for a place to put the file.

set the URLs to the text returned of (display dialog "Enter the URLs you would like to download. If you have more than one, separate them with commas please:" default answer "")
set the destination to (choose folder with prompt "Choose the folder you want to download the URLs to:")
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ","
repeat with this_URL in the URLs
    tell application "URL Access Scripting" to download this_URL to the destination with progress and unpacking
end repeat
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""

If you are using Lion, the above code won't work (Apple removed URL Access Scripting for some reason). Use the shell command curl instead, as shown below:

set the URLs to the text returned of (display dialog "Enter the URLs you would like to download. If you have more than one, separate them with commas please:" default answer "")
set the destination to (choose folder with prompt "Choose the folder you want to download the URLs to:")
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ","
repeat with this_URL in the URLs
      do shell script "curl -L " & this_URL & " -o " & POSIX path of the destination
end repeat
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""


“cannot open” when trying to save screen recording in quicktime player After choosing a file location to save a screen recording, the movie will start to save, then it says "Cannot Open" and nothing is saved. I can retry but it still doesn't. I just saved a video before this. It's on macOS High Sierra. 10.13.1. This same issue is plastered all over the Apple.com help forums but there are no answers.

QuickTime is Version 10.4 (928.5.1) - the version that came with my MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2016).

After the saving progress bar gets to about 1/4, it flashes "cannot open this media may be damaged quicktime" then "Cannot Open"

I'll add a video below to show exactly what

To debug, I did confirm that a 5 second video with voiceover could save. However, a 25 minute video will not. I closed that video and recorded another screen recording for 10 minutes long and same issue. In the past I've been able to record 10-30 minute videos and save. Now it only allows small videos.

Video of what happens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBME45Ks3_o

Sounds like a permissions problem. If it’s a bug I suspect it will be fixed in a future macOS update. Not much help, I know.

Until then, you have to peek behind the curtain:

Unsaved recordings are stored at ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Library/Autosave Information/
The file will be called Unsaved QuickTime Player Document.qtpxcomposition, or similar
Show Package Contents on that file
Inside is Screen Recording.mov which you can copy and keep


How to make a Mac harddrive partition non bootable Just recently added an SSD drive replacing the optical drive. Carbon Copy the whole partition and now left with 2 bootable drives. How do I make the old partition no longer bootable? I've changed the default boot using Startup Disk utility, but want to make the partition completely non bootable

Thanks

To check whether a disk drive is bootable, open Terminal (in Applications>Utilities) and type (replace /Volumes/SSD with the folder your disk drive is mounted at):

bless --info /Volumes/SSD/

If the output looks similar to this:

finderinfo[0]:      0 => No Blessed System Folder
finderinfo[1]:      0 => No Blessed System File
finderinfo[2]:      0 => Open-folder linked list empty
finderinfo[3]:      0 => No alternate OS blessed file/folder
finderinfo[4]:      0 => Unused field unset
finderinfo[5]:      0 => No OS 9 + X blessed X folder
64-bit VSDB volume id:  0x844F837C9317318A

your computer won't be able to boot from the drive.

For comparison, this is what the output of a bootable disk drive would look like:

bless --info /

finderinfo[0]:     62 => Blessed System Folder is /System/Library/CoreServices
finderinfo[1]: 327769 => Blessed System File is /System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi
finderinfo[2]:      0 => Open-folder linked list empty
finderinfo[3]:      0 => No alternate OS blessed file/folder
finderinfo[4]:      0 => Unused field unset
finderinfo[5]:     62 => OS X blessed folder is /System/Library/CoreServices
64-bit VSDB volume id:  0xD9A24BFA7A5E7EDC

The command bless includes option --unbless to unset volume bootability (from man bless):

  --unbless directory  Use the HFS+ volume mounted at directory and unset any persistent blessed files/directories in the HFS+ Volume
                                Header.

So if you find out in the output above that your drive is bootable, "unbless" it:

sudo bless --unbless /Volumes/SDD/


Can you boot an internal HDD with OS X as an external drive on another Macbook? I have a broken 15" 2011 Macbook Pro and am waiting for the replacement to arrive. (It'll be another week; I'm on an island and on a budget.) I know the HDD is fine, though.

A friend is willing to lend me her 2010 17" Macbook Pro. My work environment is complex and I don't want to riddle her system with my updates and patches and shell scripts (and I'd like to avoid the 6 hours plus it would take to set up on a new machine). However, she doesn't want me to replace her MBP's hard drive with mine.

Can I take my HDD (it's a Samsung SSD), get an external USB or FireWire enclosure (I suppose it should be FireWire for speed), and boot OS X from it right away on the 17" MBP?

To boot from your HDD:

Get the hardware:

Get a SATA to USB adapter.

Remove the HDD from your 2011 MacBook.
Connect it the 2010 MacBook using the SATA adapter.
Power up the 2011 MacBook and hold the Option key until you see the boot menu appears.
Select your HDD (you will see its name) and boot from it.

To only access your data:

You can use Target Disk Mode (TDM):

Connect both MacBooks using the Firewire 800 ports.
Make sure the 2010 MacBook is running.
Power on your 2011 MacBook and press CMD+T to start it in TDM.
Your 2011 MacBook's HDD will appear in the 2010 MacBook's Finder

You should absolutely try to boot your 2011 MacBook's HDD using the TDM method.


Bluetooth mouse won't connect, after turning Bluetooth off it won't turn back on Fresh install of Boot Camp on macOS Mojave with a Windows 10 ISO from the Microsoft website. I'm trying to connect my Bluetooth mouse (which works fine and connects on macOS Mojave) to Windows and it won't find the mouse.

I have disconnected and removed the mouse from macOS.
I have tried 'updating' my Bluetooth radio to "Apple Broadcom Built-in Bluetooth".

Doing this results in no Bluetooth functionality with the device showing error code 10 in Device Manager.

The current configuration for my Bluetooth settings in Device Manager is:

Bluetooth

Bluetooth Radio
Microsoft Bluetooth Enumerator
Microsoft Bluetooth LE Enumerator

Now the weird thing. Whenever I go into the general Bluetooth settings to add a device, if I use the toggle to turn Bluetooth on/off, I can turn it off, but then I can't turn it back on unless I uninstall and reinstall the driver, or restart my machine.

Windows OS

DESKTOP-4BSAGG1

OS Name: Microsoft Windows 10 Home
OS Version: 10.0.17134 N/A Build 17134
OS Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation
OS Configuration: Standalone Workstation
OS Build Type: Multiprocessor Free

MacBook Specs

13-inch Macbook Pro (w/ Touch Bar)
Running macOS Mojave (Latest Version)
Bootcamp v6.1

create a USB drive with windows support software using Bootcamp Assistant (mac os)
go to windows and install that support software from the USB drive
go back to macOS
remove ALL Bluetooth devices from mac os
set windows as the startup drive
restart and open windows (click mouse and keyboard when you see windows logo)
go to Bluetooth settings and try to connect

worked for me ...for a moment...then I lost it when I set macOS as startup drive.


Microsoft Teams Silencing Soundflower I am getting very odd behaviour from Soundflower while in a Microsoft Teams Meeting using the native app.
When I am not in a Teams Meeting, the system volume for Soundflower remains where set (see below)

When I join a Teams meeting, Soundflower volume slider snaps to 0 (see below).

This is happening on macOS 10.14.6 and is constrained to just Teams, for instance, recording the Soundflower output through Quicktime is absolutely fine.
Update:
For clarity the sound settings in Teams are

Output: Built-in Output
Input: Soundflower 2ch

The output of another program is routed to Soundflower 2ch.

As of Microsoft Teams Version 1.3.00.30874, this is no longer occurring on macOS Mojave 10.14.6


Keyboard malfunction progression: first ED, then FG, now T I have a MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015), and since a while the keyboard is malfunctioning. At first the E and D keys problematic, then F and G, and now it's T. To be clear, the others are working normally again. So now it's only the T that is a problem.
Can somebody explain why this happens, how this works, how it will proceed and if I can do something about it now?
This is not the keyboard with the butterfly design, that had so many problems. This keyboard is from before that disaster.
Small update: when logging in, the T does not work at all, so I had to change my password. I tried many things, long hard presses, in each corner of the key. In the end I had to use an external keyboard to login. Now - logged in - the T works more or less.

The entire top case assembly controls the physical mounting as well as the electrical connection. I would see if you need battery service for it and pay for that repair. Get two problems fixed for the same cost.
Without removing the battery, it may be hard to know if this is liquid damage / corrosion or mechanical issues like grit or just physical parts wearing / breaking or it's electrical connection on the USB bus. Also, a battery that expands could cause all the issues and need service.
I would get a quote for repair and then wait till you can't use external / bluetooth keyboard and they pay for a repair if it's not covered by Apple. Sometimes Apple extends coverage for batteries and keyboards, so it doesn't hurt to ask for a quote - sometimes the price comes back zero.


Whole disk encryption. How can the kernel be encrypted? A standard pitfall of disk encryption on Linux is needing /boot unencrypted. Specifically the bootloader and initrd. Encrypting the entire disk means putting those somewhere else, e.g. on a USB stick.

edit: I have now learned that grub can now decrypt a filesystem containing the kernel at boot so it's only the bootloader that needs to be unencrypted under Linux

I am under the impression that it's "known" that FileVault implements whole disk encryption. I certainly believed this was the case. This is slightly difficult to demonstrate without a bunch of links to external sites. A couple of internal ones:

brute-force-on-whole-disk-encryption and
whole-disk-encryption-with-a-windows-only-bootcamp

And an existing question that answers essentially this question
is-file-vault-2-whole-disk-encryption-or-whole-partition-encryption

It seems fairly clear that file vault works at partition granularity and that Apple uses a separate boot partition. I can't find any evidence to suggest that file vault can be used on the boot partition.

I don't understand how it can boot so far as to offer a login prompt if the whole disk is encrypted. What am I missing?

For reference, the system I'm interested in is using apfs rather than cs and does not have a T2 chip.

At the most basic level, Apple controls the firmware and stores the absolute minimum information needed to present the illusion that an OS is running at the pre-boot log in screen when FileVault is enabled.

This is documented quite extensively by Apple:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201159 - Product security certifications, validations, and guidance for macOS
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204837 - Use FileVault to encrypt the startup disk on your Mac
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208862 - Mac Computers that have the T2 chip

Prior to the T2 chip which serves as a sort of trusted module to authenticate if the OS being booted is properly signed / encrypted and/or not tampered with, this pre-boot information can be stored in NVRAM as well as the EFI / recovery HD which don’t get encrypted with a key that needs a user password/passphrase to unlock the main storage.

When you change the background or users that are allowed to unlock FileVault - this cached data is saved outside the encrypted portion of the disk so we are presented with the icons and graphical log in screen. When I see Apple say the startup disk is encrypted, I take that to mean the Macintosh HD logical volume only which stores all user data and all OS but not the firmware and pre-boot data. (except for the T2 chip enabled hardware which are special cases and not the norm yet)

You can confirm this with either commend below based on whether your OS supports APFS and APFS containers which is the new standard for volumes and encryption or HFS+ and Core Storage containers.

diskutil cs list
diskutil apfs list

The other exciting change that’s in progress relating to the T2 chip on the new MacBook Pro and the iMac Pro is that it can enforce encryption to the internal storage whether or not anyone takes the second step of FileVault encryption. Specifically, it will generate an encryption key and start encrypting all data before the user account is even created. An SSD from any of these will not be readable if taken to another computer whether that computer has a T2 chip or not. The keys needed to decrypt the entire drive are stored solely in the Secure Enclave.