How to sync folders between iPad and Mac? I have a jailbroken iPad and a Macbook Pro running OS X Yosemite with PPSSPP (PSP emulator) installed on both. What I need is to make folder with saves automatically sync every now and then. My first thought was BitTorrent Sync, but it seems it can't sync system folders. Is there any way to do this or I'm stuck with playing only on one device?

You could install FTP on the device, and set up a AppleScript that copies the data from your iOS device every 15 minutes. Then, you could set up a folder action, and whenever your Mac's folder is modified, it copies the contents of that folder to your iOS device.

(Note: I can't give you any example scripts since I'm not on my Mac right now.)


Cannot Add New Apps to Mac Catalina Input Monitoring on Security & Privacy I'm trying to get my Wacom Cintiq Pro 13 working over a USB-C cable connection.

The Wacom instructions tell me to drag and drop Wacom Tablet Driver and Wacom Touch Driver into my "Input Monitoring."

However, Input Monitoring will not accept drag and drop. The empty list of apps displays "Apps that have requested access to monitor input from your keyboard will appear here."

What should I do here?

It looks like there is no way to add new app if no other app asked for this permision - there is no list with +/- buttons. I've installed discord - and it appeared in the list - then I was able to add WacomTabletDriver and WacomTouchDriver from /Library/Application Support/Tablet/ to this Input Monitoring apps list...

However, you may just have to add other apps that requested control like photoshop.

How do I use a Wacom Intuos 3 with OS X Mojave (10.14.5)?

This is correct and Wacom is wrong. Apps have to ask formally for this entitlement in code, so Wacom needs to ship a fix so their application or driver asks for permission.

They are also correct for some people, once permission has been granted to software that asked properly, you can drag and drop, but that is either a bug or not how newer Apple software works.

Until it’s clear, update your Apple software if you feel the drag and drop is a bug that Apple will fix. Contact Wacom for an update or support when their instructions fail you.


Keyboard Shortcuts for Volume Real quick, I own a Macbook Pro 2010.

I recently purchased a new Razer Naga mouse, and aside from using it for gaming, I've been adding various keyboard shortcuts into my mouse's side buttons. Whenever I try using the buttons to control my Macbook's volume and for controlling music play, I'm noticing that the buttons register as F7 - F12 rather than what I'm intending.

I was wondering, would anyone happen to know the exact keyboard commands in order to control the volume and music playing?

KeyRemap4MacBook worked with my trackball:

<item>
<name>test</name>
<identifier>private.test</identifier>
<autogen>__PointingButtonToKey__ PointingButton::BUTTON4, KeyCode::VK_CONSUMERKEY_VOLUME_UP, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L</autogen>
<autogen>__PointingButtonToKey__ PointingButton::BUTTON5, KeyCode::VK_CONSUMERKEY_VOLUME_DOWN, ModifierFlag::OPTION_L | ModifierFlag::SHIFT_L</autogen>
</item>

See the source for the key code values and predefined settings.


Macbook air '14 adapter on new Macbook pro I have a MacBook Air from 2014. In its charger, I attach the following component (a).

I got a new MacBook Pro 16 but unfortunately it came with (what I presume to be) an american adapter (b) as you can see below.

Can I use adapter (a) on my MacBook Pro 6 charger with no issues?

Yes, the plugs are designed to be interchangeable. (In fact, Apple sells a 'World Travel kit' that just consists of all the different plugs.)
It's not really an 'adaptor', as such: just a switchable part at the end of the cable.
The three-pronged plug is a UK power plug.


Can't re-enable FileVault after growing `system` partition I recently disabled FileVault in order to grow my system partition.  This ended up being rather more complicated than expected, but it worked out in the end.

Now that I have resized the system partition, I want to re-encrypt my drive, but I'm getting this error when I attempt to engage FileVault:

FileVault can't be turned on for the disk "system".

Some disk formats don't support the recovery partition required by encryption.
To use encryption, reinstall this version of Mac OS X on a reformatted disk.

This is strange, since the disk has a recovery partition — it was actually moved by Disk Utility in the process of growing the system partition.  Here's what diskutil and gpt have to say about it:

$ diskutil list disk0
/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *512.1 GB   disk0
   1:       Microsoft Basic Data                         134.2 MB   disk0s1
   2:       Microsoft Basic Data EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS system                  511.1 GB   disk0s3
   4:                 Apple_Boot Recovery HD             650.1 MB   disk0s5

$ sudo gpt show /dev/disk0
       start        size  index  contents
           0           1         PMBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34      262144      1  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
      262178        2014
      264192      409600      2  GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
      673792   998271624      3  GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
   998945416     1269760      4  GPT part - 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
  1000215176           7
  1000215183          32         Sec GPT table
  1000215215           1         Sec GPT header

Hmm, turns out I now have two EFI partitions.  Apparently Disk Utility decided to change the partition type of my ext4 partition without consulting me.  What a jerk.

EDIT: just noticed this related question.  Not exactly the same, since that person is not trying to do full-disk encryption.

I decided to streamline the partitioning scheme as much as possible.  I deleted my leading, unused partition, but this still didn't make it go.

Somehow the partition type of the EFI partition had gotten changed, so I decided to fix that.  There doesn't seem to be any obvious way to do this from within OSX, so I rebooted off of a live Ubuntu boot image on a USB drive.  I used gdisk to set the type of the EFI partition to EF, and confirmed that this had also correctly changed its GUID to the correct one for that partition type.

For some reason, under linux the names of the EFI and Recovery partitions had disappeared, so I set them back to the names shown above.  I also confirmed that there was a FAT32 filesystem on the EFI partition.  Apparently the EFI filesystem is technically a different one from FAT32 but I left it as it was.

And it worked!  When I booted back to OSX, I ran Verify on the disk in Disk Utility, which recommended that I run Repair due to some "corruption" in the Recovery Partition, or perhaps just with its header.  I ran Repair, which reported success, and was then able to initiate full-disk FileVault encryption.


Is it possible to freely move the Picture in Picture window around the screen? Is it possible to freely move the Picture in Picture window? By default, it just snaps to the nearest corner. How can I move the window to any place I like?

It is possible. Just hold down the Command ⌘ button and drag the Picture in Picture window anywhere you desire.


apply a terminal conversion command to each file in a folder How do you apply this terminal command ffmpeg -i $f -ac 2 -codec:a libmp3lame -b:a 48k -ar 24000 -write_xing 0 $f_converted; to every file in a directory? ($f is the filename and $f_converted is the converted name)

Why AppleScript or Automator when this can be done in just Terminal? Are all the files in the same folder? What type of file is been converted, its extension, e.g .mp4?

If all the files are in the same folder and only the target files, then in Terminal, use to following commands:

cd /path/to/target_files
for f in *.*; do echo ffmpeg -i "$f" -ac 2 -codec:a libmp3lame -b:a 48k -ar 24000 -write_xing 0 "${f%.*}"_converted"${f##*.}"; done

Note: The for in do command has an intentional echo command so as to run one time to see what the output of the formed command line will look like in order to see if it looks proper. Run it a second time without the echo command to do the actual processing. If the target file type is e.g. .mp4, you can change *.* to *.mp4 or *.[mM][pP]4, where the latter handles both .mp4 and .MP4.

If you are using e.g. Automator with some Finder actions to get the target files to then run this in a Run Shell Script action, then set Pass input: to as arguments and use the following for the command:

for f in "$@"
do
    ffmpeg -i "$f" -ac 2 -codec:a libmp3lame -b:a 48k -ar 24000 -write_xing 0 "${f%.*}"_converted"${f##*.}"
done

"${f%.*}" expands to just the filename portion, without the file extension.
"${f##*.}" expands to just the extension portion, without the filename portion.


How to forcefully open a blocked Java Applet? I downloaded from Internet (topcoder.com) a Java applet. When I try to open it, it says "Application blocked for security reasons" because "The certificate has expired".

I really want to launch it... So, is there a way to open and use it?

I tried to go to the Java settings and add the link to the applet to the white list, but it does not work.

Just to be clear, the reason you are getting this error isn't because of a problem with Java on your Mac. The problem is with a certificate that has been used to sign one or more of the JAR files that make up the TopCoder Java application.

The certificate expired on March 25th this year.

If you still want to run the application, even though the certificate has expired, then you need to add it to the Exception Site List within Java Control Panel.

You may want to update Java on your Mac first though. You can get the latest download from Oracle here, Apple don't supply their own Java runtime anymore.

Launch Java Control Panel from System Preferences
Select the Security tab
Click on "Edit Site List..."
Click on "Add"
Enter "http://www.topcoder.com" in the Location field
Click OK
Click Apply

Now when you try to open the JNLP file you'll get a different message. Just check the "I accept the risk and want to run this application" and click Run.

At which point the application should successfully download and run.


automating "Reset Advertising Identifier" is it possible? I want to use osascript or some other way to automate "Reset Advertising Identifier" is it possible?

Example #1 - via Googling

Googling I found this Reddit thread titled: I want to write auto reset script for Advertising Identifier.

The script from one of the replies in that thread is below.

NOTE: I did not test this, am merely sharing it as something that may help steer you in the right direction to ultimately getting a workable solution for you problem.

  FYI, I created a small script for this. It's not perfect, and doesn't
  reliably run in the background, but in case it helps anyone:

-- TODO: make this run reliably in the background...
set isRunning to false
if application "System Preferences" is running then set isRunning to true

tell application "System Preferences"
  activate
  reveal anchor "Privacy" of pane "com.apple.preference.security"
end tell

tell application "System Events" to tell process "System Preferences"
  delay 0.3
  click button "Reset Advertising Identifier" of group 1 of tab group 1 of window "Security & Privacy"
  delay 0.2
  click button "Reset identifier" of sheet 1 of window "Security & Privacy"
end tell

if isRunning is false then
  quit application "System Preferences"
end if

Script appears to be AppleScript.

Example #2 - I made using Automator

This is the first script I've ever done using Automator (be kind). I used the record button and clicked through the steps to construct a Workflow.

Automator Workflow

Once I made he workflow I copy/pasted it into ScriptEditor.

Automator with steps

Copy/Paste from Automator → ScriptEditor

In ScriptEditor I could click the play button to run the script to debug it and see that it was working correctly.

ScriptEditor Play Button

One I had it working reasonably well, I put it into a Bash shell script so that I could run it standalone from a terminal.

And here's the finished Bash script with the osascript embedded within:

$ cat reset_advertisement_id.sh
#!/bin/bash

osascript <<HERE
-- Click the “Apple” menu.
delay 4.598414
set timeoutSeconds to 2.0
set uiScript to "click menu bar item \"Apple\" of menu bar 1 of application process \"Finder\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)

-- System Preferences…
delay 1.185682
set timeoutSeconds to 2.0
set uiScript to "click menu item 4 of menu 1 of menu bar item \"Apple\" of menu bar 1 of application process \"Finder\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)

-- Click the “View” menu.
delay 4.124994
set timeoutSeconds to 2.0
set uiScript to "click menu bar item \"View\" of menu bar 1 of application process \"System Preferences\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)

-- Security & Privacy
delay 2.306638
set timeoutSeconds to 2.0
set uiScript to "click menu item \"Security & Privacy\" of menu 1 of menu bar item \"View\" of menu bar 1 of application process \"System Preferences\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)

-- Click the “Privacy” tab.
delay 4.31466
set timeoutSeconds to 2.0
set uiScript to "click radio button \"Privacy\" of tab group 1 of window \"Security & Privacy\" of application process \"System Preferences\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)

-- Click the text “Advertising”
delay 1.997132
set timeoutSeconds to 2.0
set uiScript to "click static text 1 of UI Element 1 of row 12 of table 1 of scroll area 1 of tab group 1 of window \"Security & Privacy\" of application process \"System Preferences\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)

-- Click the “Reset Advertising Identifier” button.
delay 1.234389
set timeoutSeconds to 2.0
set uiScript to "click UI Element \"Reset Advertising Identifier\" of group 1 of tab group 1 of window \"Security & Privacy\" of application process \"System Preferences\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)

-- Click the “Reset identifier” button.
delay 1.2831
set timeoutSeconds to 2.0
set uiScript to "click UI Element \"Reset identifier\" of sheet 1 of window \"Security & Privacy\" of application process \"System Preferences\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)

-- Click the “<fill in title>” button.
delay 1.436771
set timeoutSeconds to 2.0
set uiScript to "click UI Element 6 of window \"Security & Privacy\" of application process \"System Preferences\""
my doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)

on doWithTimeout(uiScript, timeoutSeconds)
    set endDate to (current date) + timeoutSeconds
    repeat
        try
            run script "tell application \"System Events\"
" & uiScript & "
end tell"
            exit repeat
        on error errorMessage
            if ((current date) > endDate) then
                error "Can not " & uiScript
            end if
        end try
    end repeat
end doWithTimeout
HERE

# REFS
# - https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/MacAutomationScriptingGuide/AutomatetheUserInterface.html
# - https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/40944/a-programmatic-method-for-disabling-all-sharing-services
# - https://github.com/herrbischoff/awesome-macos-command-line
# - https://www.macobserver.com/tips/quick-tip/reset-mac-advertising-identifier/
# - https://scriptingosx.com/2018/08/user-interaction-from-bash-scripts/
# - https://www.macworld.com/article/1157370/applescriptsystempreferences.html

To run this:

$ ./reset_advertisement_id.sh

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript_Editor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript


What do I need to update a late 2012, 27" iMac to SSD? I know I need this thermal sensor from OWC.

I want a 2TB SSD disk. My question is: will any SSD disk fit inside a late 2012 iMac?

Do I need any special frame to make it fit?

I will be replacing the internal HD.

Not "any" SSD: SSDs come in a wide range of shapes and connectors. But any SATA 2.5" drive (in the same old form factor as Hard Drives) should work.

The tear-down instructions are found in iFixit. It is marked as "difficult". If it looks risky, you may want to just use an external SSD, connected by Thunderbolt, which should be sufficiently fast.


Storage Management on Catalina displays nonexisting apps. How to fix? My daughter's MPB running Catalina displays the following in Storage Management:

As you can see, there are two apps shown that come from Steam. But these apps have been deleted in the Finder. The storage is not used anywhere in her Application Support Steam folder (storage used there is 10GB, because of the Subnautica app only). Show in Finder does nothing and Delete... does nothing as well.
We would like to get Storage Management to give the correct info so we actually know if that is still in use storage or that it is just another display bug. We tried several things, including turning off TimeMachine and removing all local snapshots, running Repair from Disk Utility, reindex Spotlight, etc., but nothing so far has helped.
FileVault2 is active on the system.
This question is like this question from Sep 2019 (which did not get an answer so far) but with some more info on what we tried and with a fully up to date Catalina as per today. I can do technical things if people have suggestions, that might answer both questions. In both cases these were Steam apps, so there is a potential Steam on macOS issue here.

From the Steam Knowledge base on Uninstalling from macOS:

Just dragging the Steam program to the Trash will not fully uninstall Steam. The additional steps below are required.

Open Applications and drag Steam to the Trash.

click Go in the menu bar, hold down the option key until you see the Library folder, and open that folder from the drop-down.

Navigate to Library/Application Support/Steam

Delete Steam data from your computer with one of the following options:

If you don't want to lose any game data: delete all files and folders in /Steam EXCEPT FOR the /SteamApps folder (this contains your game downloads and any local save files.)

If you're removing all Steam data from your computer: delete the entire Steam folder.

Empty the Trash by selecting Finder -> Empty Trash

Reindex your Hard Drive
If Storage Management (like Steam) is just a front end to all of the system services and it just may not be updated.  If it is still showing that the Application is there, it may be required to re-index your drive.  In Terminal, issue the following command:
% sudo mdutil -E /


Any way to know what causes allocation of wired memory? Activity Monitor lets me see how much memory is allocated as "wired", but I can't find a way to break the allocation down by applications or other memory consumers.

Is there a tool out there that lets me get this information?

I found a webpage which has this definition for wired memory:

  Wired memory is used by the OS and is pretty much untouchable. Another
  application can't "borrow" wired memory

If you want to know more about how applications and frameworks are using memory on your system, try /usr/bin/allmemory. You must run it as root; sudo /usr/bin/allmemory is one way to accomplish that. When you run it, it will perform analysis for several seconds before showing output.

Here is a short example of the output:

                           Process Name [ PID]  Architecture    PrivateRes/NoSpec   Copied    Dirty    Swapped   Shared/NoSpec
                           ===================  ============    ================= ========= ========= =========  =============

                             WebProcess [ 317]:    64-bit        74126  /   73588      2102     48868       403  32777 / 30757
                                  Xcode [ 368]:    64-bit        55780  /   55711     25228     45570       595  43660 / 41720
                                 Safari [ 315]:    64-bit        25087  /   25087      2251     17647        52  35197 / 33513

See the allmemory man page (with the command man allmemory) for more details; here's an explanation of some of the columns:

PrivateRes: the number of pages resident in physical memory, not shared with other processes

Copied/Dirty: the number of resident pages that were copied or are dirty (non-exclusive)

Swapped: the number of pages that were in memory but have been swapped to disk.

Shared: the number of shared pages


Empty iCloud Drive folder in Yosemite? In OS X Yosemite, my "iCloud Drive" folder is always empty.

My Macbook is running Yosemite, and my iPhone and iPad are running iOS8. I have gone through the iCloud Drive migration process and it does work on my iOS devices - along with iCloud.com.

I tried turning iCloud Drive off and on, but that doesn't fix it. Nor does completely signing out of iCloud and signing back in. (With reboots in between every step)

Short of a re-install, is there anything else I might be able to try to get my iCloud Drive in working order?

Thanks.

Do you run firewall software?  If you do, check if you're blocking calls from
the nsurlsessiond to the amazonaws.com domain.


I have to reboot mac to restart bluetooth every morning I'd like some help understanding why I have to restart my Mac every morning when I get to work in order for the bluetooth to start working again.  It is a work provided machine, running Yosemite and it has a couple things which I cannot remove as well, like Symantec this and that.  Once I reboot though, I am good all day long and never have a problem with bluetooth.  It is only when I come in to work in the morning, and it is EVERY morning, without fail.

In contrast, my home MacBook, never has this problem.  The difference in machines are that my home machine is several years older (2011 ish), is running El Capitán, and does not run any Symantec anything.  Does anyone have any ideas why I might be having this problem?

If you could narrow down when the bluetooth fails - that might help us help you. Apple will give you instructions on how to enable bluetooth diagnostics if you reach out to their support organization.

You might start with generating a diagnostic report each morning when the failure is present. Option click on bluetooth in the menu bar bluetooth icon - and the report will be generated on your desktop.

You might also schedule a shut down and restart each morning if you just with to sidestep the unpleasantness of waiting for the restart. That option is in energy saver in system preferences.


Does the late 2013 Retina Macbook Pro Support PCI-E SSDs? I'd like to upgrade my late 2013 retina Macbook Pro with a M.2 PCI-E SSD. Is this possible? Do I need an adapter?

As you can see in the image below from ifixit, the 2013 Retina Macbook Pro does have a kind of M.2 PCI-E SSD. (It is the black rectangle the person is holding.)

However Apple uses proprietary firmware on those SSDs, so only SPECIFICALLY Mac compatible drives will work such as these these and these.

This Ifixit guide shows you how to install a new drive, and links to a page that lets you purchase a compatible drive.


Is there any time limit in the List view of the iPhone Calendar app? Is there any time limit in the List view of the iPhone Calendar app, beyond which we cannot make any entries? Can this limit be changed to something else than the 2 years set by by Apple?

There is no limit in the Calendar itself – you can 'zoom out' by repeatedly tapping the Back button until you're in a screen where each year takes up about a single page. Scroll down to e.g. 2027, and you can create an event in the distant future without problems:

The List view does seem to have a built-in limit of two years, which can't be extended by settings.


Showing ios app store comments from different country I would like to see the comments from other countries (ie. us) while leaving my appstore set to my country (Hungary) for updates. Unfortunately, there are few comments written here for apps, most of the time there are none, which isn't too helpful.

Is there any way to do this? I have only a hungarian credit card. I can show comments by switching to US, but I cannot update apps until I switch back. Switching only for buying would be acceptable if there is no alternative.

Thanks!

Edit: from my ipad, without using my computer

Not sure if there is a "main" webpage to browse from directly, but if you do search for the name of an app and then "itunes.apple.com" or "Mac App Store" you will get to visit the app's page in your browser.

Take Reeder for example:

Mac
iPhone/iPod
iPad

You can change the country by using the country flag on the bottom right of the page, or directly on the URL if you know the country code.


Why are DNS server addresses lost after reboot? I applied OpenDNS server addresses to Network Preference > Advanced > DNS.

These were applied first under user account, then believing I needed to apply as Admin. Yet upon reboot they're replaced with 127.0.0.54

Why don't OpenDNS server addresses continue to apply after reboot?

As an alternative to the answer in the comments attached to the question (which you have already stated is your solution), I can only offer to others that do not use DNSCrypt that find similarly described symptoms. What fixed the problem for me, which was exactly as you described: after adding DNS servers and closing and reopening System Preferences and the Advanced section of the Network Control Panel, the DNS server list would not retain its data, took me time and effort to discover. PEBKAC: I was closing System Preferences without clicking the Apply button, which you will only see once leaving the Advanced section of that Control Panel. Hope this helps!


How can I reset the PRAM if Recovery Mode keeps overriding the PRAM command? Lion uses the ⌘ + R to boot into recovery mode. Resetting the PRAM in anything less than 10.7 was ⌘ + ⌥ + P + R.

Recovery mode now seems to override the PRAM command. Does anyone know if there is a new way to reset the PRAM now that Lion is installed?

Nate , PRAM reset is not working because you turn on Password Firmware Protection.
Turn it off and P+R+Option+Command will work.


Connecting to Ubuntu 16.04 LDAPv3 server from macOS clients I've been working on an Ubuntu 16.04 server that has LDAPv3 active via OpenLDAP, my client machines are all macOS from El Capitan upto High Sierra.

On the server I have the samba schema implemented, along with the apple schema implemented:

serveradmin@Magic:~$ sudo ldapsearch -Q -LLL -Y EXTERNAL -H ldapi:/// -b cn=schema,cn=config dn
dn: cn=schema,cn=config
dn: cn={0}core,cn=schema,cn=config
dn: cn={1}cosine,cn=schema,cn=config
dn: cn={2}nis,cn=schema,cn=config
dn: cn={3}inetorgperson,cn=schema,cn=config
dn: cn={4}ppolicy,cn=schema,cn=config
dn: cn={5}samba,cn=schema,cn=config
dn: cn={6}apple,cn=schema,cn=config
serveradmin@Magic:~$

On my client machine I am able to connect to the LDAPv3 server from the Directory Utility by changing the connection type to RFC2307 and editing the base to be ou=People,dc=salty,dc=domain,dc=com. I can see my users in the Directory Editor:

I can connect to my file share over smb://<IP>. However, when I try to log in as one of my users it will not allow me to log in. The log files show something like the following:

<DATE> <TIME> CDT - AID 0x000..26 93.7657.7246, Node: /LDAPv3/10.0.1.57, Module ldap __odnode_copy_record_block_invoke: 4101: No predicates provided

or

<DATE> <TIME> CDT - AID 0x000..1042 394.3858, Node: /LDAPv3/10.0.1.57, Module: ldap - failed to retrieve password for credential

No matter what I do it seems like I keep getting the same error message. What is causing this problem, and how can I fix it?

Dunno if this helps...

in order to get it to work with Mac OSX client you need to add these 2 lines in your smb.conf file (/etc/samba/smb.conf):
ea support = yes
vfs objects = catia fruit streams_xattr

src: enter link description here


Censor bleep keyboard shortcut I want the censor beep that you hear on TV to play continuously as a system sound when I hold down F12 on my MacBook.

I make screen recordings for YouTube videos. Because I have brothers and sisters that use profanity and I want to keep those moments out of my videos without further editing after I record them.

Is there a way to do this (assuming I am able to press the key fast enough of course)?

Pretty much no matter how loud you play it, the profanity will be audible to some extent. Plus, it's hard to predict when it's coming (which is why networks need to use 10-second delays when broadcasting live stuff). It's best to edit this in iMovie by detatching the audio and using the Split command before the offending word, then trimming the audio clip until the swear is out of your video. Then, drag your censor sound effect to the end of the first of your separated audio clips and trim that bleep to the start of the rest of your audio.

With this in mind, if the exact thing you requested in your question is what you want, you'll need to make a Service in Automator. First, open Automator, then create a Service in the next dialog. Find the Run Shell Script command and drag it into the drag-and-drop area. Copy-paste the text below into the text input area, replacing completePathOfFile with the path of your file:

Afplay completePathOfFile

Save this file and pick a memorable name.

Now go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services > Scroll to General. After finding the service you saved earlier, click the Add Shortcut button and type the F12 key. Hope this helps.


Does Photo Stream update later if computer is offline? I shoot with a DSLR on the road and import the photos on my laptop MBP to edit them.  Sometimes, the laptop is not in a wifi zone when I import the photos (physically from SD card), and they do not get to My Photo Stream, even after I take the MBP to a wifi zone later.

Is it because the photos are only considered "new" if the MBP is connected to a wifi zone WHILE the photos are imported?  The Photo Stream description in Aperture prefs seems to indicate that "Send all new photos to My Photo Stream."

Second question:  If I import 400 photos from a shoot and the MBP goes to sleep after a few minutes of keyboard inactivity, does the photo stream continue to update, or is the uploading activity put on hold until I wake up the computer again.  Related: Does iPhoto or Aperture have to be running for My Photo Stream to continue uploading imported photos?

1) In my experience, I've found that simply quitting either Aperture or iPhoto and re-opening is the easiest solution to a stall in the syncing process. I've experienced similar issues before. As to to the "why?" - that being "why does Photostream stall when switching networks," I can't provide an answer. But the failsafe solution is to quit and re-open the application.

2) Again (in my experience - Apple's documentation on this is sparse), I've found that photo stream only actively syncs when the machine is 1) awake or 2) sleeping, but not 'hibernating.' Unlike iOS devices, it seems as though Photostream is more stubborn in regards to OSX devices regarding the active and continuous syncing of data.

3) Yes. Either iPhoto or Aperture need to be open.


Charging my US iPad in Israel I brought my iPad charging wire to Israel along with the necessary plug adapter.  I have not been able to charge my iPad. I also tried to charge it off of my wife's MacBook.  No go.  I called the front desk and they said it was a common problem and had me bring my iPad to them for charging.  All of my other electronic devices (SONY camera, Olympus digital dictation device, BlackBerry) are taking the charge as did my wife's MacBook.  Any idea what i need to do differently or wire that I need to buy?

Israel has 220v/50Hz power that's standard throughout most of the world, so if there are problems with using an iPad charger to charge, it would most likely be due to substandard local power and not some problem with your equipment.

Even in high power mode, charging from a MacBook Pro is not a good option to charge an iPad unless it's in AirPlane mode with the screen off or powered down entirely so that all the charge can go to the battery.


El Capitan Outgoing Mail server problems Just upgraded to El Capitan on my Mac mini. Mail has a problem though I have multiple mail accounts set-up

The outgoing SMTP smtp server for all accounts is NONE
If I assign one from the drop list it tries to apply that selection to ALL accounts
The "Edit SMTP server list" option in the drop down box is now missing

I've deleted all the accounts (closed mail, restarted, re-opened mail) and added back 2 of them but all these issues still exist.

Can't see anyone that has my issue although a lot seem to have the outgoing mail server issues.

My Macbook Pro (older) upgrade did not have these problems (although a small issue with one account easily fixed) the "edit SMTP server List" options appears as it always did and different outgoing servers can be assigned to different mail accounts.

Not sure what else to do??????

It seems that the solution is to delete all accounts (hoping you have no pop accounts) and recreate them, but not in Mail; go to System Preferences>Internet Acccounts to delete and recreate the accounts. When you recreate one, you have the choice to choose email account only (scroll down to Add another count (not sure of the english, I translate from french) and clic on it.
Of course, work with Mail closed.
The account you create there are created in Mail.When you finish to recreate all your accounts, reopen mail, et voilà!


Internet through a NAS and Time Capsule I have tried to use my Time Capsule as external storage and backup but finally realized it's not working very well. It is very slow.

So, I think I'm gonna buy a Synology NAS as most people recommended. Maybe a 215J.

Today, I have my modem connected to my TC acting as a fast router. That works well I think.

My question is, how do I connect my internet for best effect if I get a NAS? Modem > TC > NAS? Or how does it work?

Additional comments are welcomed!

The NAS won't have any routing ability so it's pretty sure that it won't be directly connected to the modem.
Your schema is what I recommend. I have exactly the same architecture with a modem, an Airport Express and a Synology DS215j.

Modem ---------------- TimeCapsule (as router) ------------------ NAS
       WAN Interface               |              LAN Interface
                                   | LAN / Wi-Fi
                             Other devices

You may need to configure your TimeCapsule to make some Port Forwarding if you want to access to your NAS from outside of your network (I highly discourage that because of network security issues).

That all for me.


How to shut down an iPad stuck on the Apple logo? Having an iPad stuck on the Apple logo, I cannot find a way to shut it down.

When holding down both the top "Power" button and the "Home" buttons, the iPad goes to black screen, but starts again even if I released the buttons when the screen went black.

So, the iPad always comes back to the state showing the back Apple logo on a white screen.

Edit 1:

Thank you for both answers until now.

Holding only the power button down doesn't work in with this buggy iPad.
Holding both the power and the home buttons down reboots the iPad; even if I release one or both buttons a fraction of a second after screen turns black, the screen always turns on in the next seconds

Disconnect the iPad from the power supply if it's charging. Hold the power button and the home button at the same time until the screen gets black (takes about 3-5 seconds). Then release immediately. iPad should be turned off. If it's turning is back on again then either you were too slow releasing the buttons or something else is causing iPad to reboot.

In this case, the easiest way is to let it run out of battery.

Other options:
If you would like to fix the error, then connect iPad to iTunes and hold the power button and the home button until you see the iTunes logo. Then follow the instructions on iTunes.


Terminal name changed to 'Name@dhcp-xx-x' I have no idea what dhcp means, so I don't know why instead of just showing 'Name ~' as the beginning of each terminal line, it started showing 'Name@dhcp-xx-x' as the format of my username. Is this a virus or did I just accidentally change this? How do I undo it?

It is not a virus, nor did you actually change it yourself.

The prompt by default begins with the hostname of your computer. The host name is found by doing a so called "reverse lookup" in DNS of the IP address of your computer.

Every time you connect to a network, you'll get an IP address. The provider of that IP usually determines what the reverse lookup will say. Usually it is your internet provider.

Your ISP has thus chosen "dhcp-xx-x" as the hostname. It probably has some internal meaning to them.

DHCP is the name of a protocol used on networks to automatically deliver IP-addresses (and other configurations) to computers. Seeing this in your hostname typically means that your ISP used DHCP to deliver the IP and accompanying configuration to your computer.


Can't add Google account to iOS 13. Default browser not supporting cookies? When I try to add my Google account (via “Settings” -> “Passwords and Accounts” -> “Add Account”), a browser window pops up and reads

"You've reached this page because we have detected that cookies are disabled in your browser. The page you attempted to load cannot display properly if cookies are disabled."

Unfortunately, I have no control over the browser that iOS opens to access the google login screen - much less its cookie behavior. My safari configuration allows cookies.

Here is a screen shot of the error: https://imgur.com/a/C8SPQe5

My expected behavior would be that when I click "Google," I'm brought to a valid log in page. What should I be looking at to resolve this?

It turns out this wasn't an issue with my cookies settings directly, but with the "Block Pop Ups" setting in Safari. After turning off pop-up blocking, I am able to reach the login page.


Why can't I press "return" to see all pages in Preview on Mountain Lion? On OS X 10.7, I could press the Return key while in preview to see hundreds of little thumbnails of the pages in a pdf document. I can't show you a screenshot now, since I'm not running Lion, because in Mountain Lion, this feature seems to be missing. I used this feature for navigating through long books. For example, if I read a few chapters on another computer, I can remember the page number (or general location), then I can press Return on my Mac, and scroll through the book to select the correct page. I'm guessing there's an easier way to do this now, or that at least Apple gives us the option of turning the thumbnails feature back on. If not, I will be seriously pissed.

Anyone know about this? Can I activate the little thumbnails some other way, or is there a better way to do it (and I really don't want to use the sidebar, it kind of sucks).

Thanks for your help.

Update: The accepted answer is great, but with Apple's latest update, you can now just press Return to see the thumbnails of the pages, and press Return again to go back to "Continuous Scroll" mode. So if that's not working, you probably just need to update OS X.

Try Opt-Cmd-5 to get the same effect in Mountain Lion.


Photos app not uploading all photos I just updated to the new Photos app on OS X and let it go through the process of importing my iPhoto library and uploading to iCloud.  But it looks like about half of the library won't upload.  It seemed to claim that it worked, but looking at iCloud.com shows that only about half of them are there.  The iPhoto events were successfully converted to albums, but many of them are empty.

I went into the Photos settings and un-ckecked and re-checked the iCloud option, and saw this:

So I highlighted the whole library (command-A) and selected the "Consolidate" option.  It took a while of course, but seemed to do the trick.  It then went about re-uploading to iCloud.

After allowing that to finish, it appears that the problem persists.  And performing the same steps in the settings results in the same message above.

The Photos Library in Finder is about the same size as the iPhoto Library, so I suspect it has all of the files.  When I "Show Package Contents" all of the files appear to be there.  And I definitely have enough space in iCloud.

Is there something else I can try?

Update

While "consolidating" again I was presented with this error:

Clicking "OK" brought up a file browser dialog.  I selected the home directory folder as instructed, and then was shown an error saying that it couldn't find the original file (a .jpg) in that folder.  Well, sure, the files are organized in sub-folders in the iPhoto library.  Isn't that where it would look for them?

Options 3,4 was the only ones that worked for me, but no guarantees...

Holding Opt+Cmd while opening Photos, to do a "Repair".
Selecting to keep originals on the computer, not optimize" them.
Carefully wipe what you have and start again.  This should include deleting "Events" folders in iCloud.com>Photos, before swapping libraries on the computer, to avoid orphaning them. See below...
Use "iPhoto Library Manager" to "Rebuild" the original iPhoto Library, then re-migrate.  This assumes you have backup of an "un-migrated" version, in Time Machine or elsewhere.  I had a folder with 1.6Gb of iPod thumbs in my original library.  Also, I think it may update the Last Modified" date to help the upload.  I'm not sure why it worked..

How do I delete Unlinked folders

iPhoto Library Manager


Can not boot MacBook Pro 2011 I have a MacBook 2011 running OS X 10.11.5, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD Drive. Today when I am restarting my computer, I accidentally pressed Cmd+R while booting. Now I try and restart my computer, it shows this:

Now I tried going into recovery mode then disk utility, it does not allows me to do first aid on the disk Macintosh HD. I run fsck on Terminal in Recovery Mode as well. Still it says disk is fine. Now I wondered if it is the problem with the memory stick, so I removed the memory stick and plug the, back in, same problem. Now I tried pressing option at boot, then select Macintosh, before hitting enter I pressed cmd+s. A black screen appear then and this error was displayed on the screen:

Error loading kernel cache (0xe)

Now I am wondering what is the problem now and where should I debug next?

Thanks.

EDIT:

I tried removing the disk from my computer and connect it as external, doesn't work, same error.

first, try to reset nvram and smc

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

however, to rebuild the dylib cache

sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -force

and the boot (kexts) cache

sudo kextcache -system-prelinked-kernel
sudo kextcache -system-caches
sudo kextcache -update-volume /
sudo kextcache -m /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kext.caches/Startup/Extensions.mkext /System/Library/Extensions


create file that can be mounted I am trying to create a bootable filesystem filename.fs from a directory that contains all the OS files.
My problem is that I cannot create a file that contains a filesystem. I found a explanation for doing this on ubuntu but macos does not have mkfs and newfs_* gives me the following error.
> newfs_msdos ./clonezilla-live-2.6.6-15-amd64.fs
newfs_msdos: warning: ./clonezilla-live-2.6.6-15-amd64.fs is not a character device
newfs_msdos: ./clonezilla-live-2.6.6-15-amd64.fs: Cannot get partition offset: Inappropriate ioctl for device

I may be going about this all wrong but I have not found any instructions on creating a bootable filesystem from a directory that contains all the files for my OS.

To create a mountable disk image, use hdiutil. The straightforward way just creates a DMG which can then be mounted and written to
hdiutil create -size 500m -volname CLONEZIL -fs FAT32 clonezilla.dmg

To create a DMG with the content of an existing directory use
hdiutil create -srcfolder my-clonezilla-dir -volname CLONEZIL -fs FAT32 clonezilla.dmg

To mount it afterwards either double-click the DMG file in Finder or run one of the following in Terminal
open clonezilla.dmg
hdiutil attach clonezilla.dmg

To unmount either eject in Finder or run
hdiutil detach /Volumes/CLONEZIL


Trouble browsing Windows network printers from Mac In the "Add Printer" dialog Windows section, there are no printers showing up, even though there are several in the office.

I think this might be because my Mac is not "logged onto" the Windows domain where the printers live, but I can't be certain.

What are some common debugging steps to diagnose why a Mac computer on a Windows network can't browse to a Windows printer?

Apple's knowledgebase article on troubleshooting shared Windows printers specifies that printers on a different subnet won't show up in the Windows dialog of Add Printer. This sounds to be the case for you.

Since you're able to connect to the domain via smb, you should be able to manually add the printer(s). Select the "Advanced" button at the top of the Add Printer dialog from your screenshot.

Select "Windows" from the Type dropdown menu. You can manually enter the printer's smb URL:

smb://Windows_name/printer_share_name

or possibly

smb://user:password@Windows_Computer_Name/Shared_Printer_Name

Select the appropriate driver and click "Add".

You can get the full steps on how to manually add a Windows printer from Apple's knowledgebase here.


How can I change the aqua theme in Yosemite? How can I change the aqua theme/skin to a dark one in Yosemite? I'm referring to the window title bars, scroll bars, buttons, etc (the cocoa aqua ui theme?). Everything is grayish by default, but i'd like a dark theme.

If you're still looking for a method to darken your UI in Yosemite, download Flavours 2 and choose the "Smooth Criminal" flavour.

Flavours 2 is still in Beta, but most things look great with this skin.


Slow motion camera feature on iPod? I am thinking of obtaining an iPod (any generation) for recording slow-motion videos, like the ones that can be shot on an iPhone 5s and above.

Is there an iPod that can do slo-mo, or is an iPhone the only option?

The iPod touch 6 has a camera equivalent to that in the iPhone 6.

As such it is the first (and as of August 2017, the only) iPod that can record slo-mo video, at 120 frames per second in 720p resolution.

  The iPod touch features an 8MP rear iSight camera with video which can record in 1080p at 30fps, or 120fps in slow-motion mode that records at 720p.


What's this last device in AirPort Utility's Wireless Clients list? I can match all other devices to my physical devices. But I don't know what the last one is. It doesn't even have a name, only a hardware address.

To answer your question, I don't think that there is a definitive way to tell what is on your Wi-Fi connection, at least not without additional software (if such software exists). That said, here's what I would do to rule out products that I or my family own:

The MAC address pictured looked similar to my Apple Watch, with an Apple Watch very easily overlooked on a network. Like I said in the comments, it could be an Apple Watch, to test it just put the Apple Watch in Airplane Mode

and see if that mysterious MAC address disappears. Even if that's not it, you can test every device in your house this way.


How to enable sticky keys on a Mac I've seen this option in one Ubuntu machine and I want to replicate it in my mac:

Hold a Key for 2 second to activate it.

What I have seen is this:
Hold down a Key for 2 second (Shift for example).
Then write something and the written text was as if the Shift key is pressed (and it acts like the Caps Lock pressed).
Then the key is pressed one time to deactivate it.

Is it possible to achieve this on a mac too?

This function is called sticky keys.
You can activate as follows on a Mac:

Open System Preferences.
Type in sticky in the search bar and hit enter.
Tick Enable sticky keys.

OR

Open System Preferences.
Go to Accessibility.
Go to Keyboard.
Tick Enable sticky keys.


13'' Mid-2012 Pro, can I use FireWire to VGA for a triple screen setup? I have a mid-2012 13'' Macbook Pro. I'm currently using a Thunderbolt to VGA to use a second monitor.

I'm feeling myself in need for a third monitor for my work. I was wondering if it was possible to use a Firewire to VGA adapter to plug in a third screen?

I'm worried that my Macbook can only support 2 screens, and even if it could support three, I'm not sure I can do that with the Firewire to VGA adapter.

I'm looking for advice from seasoned Apple guys.

(Both external displays would be the same, I don't have the specs here but they're old VGA monitors with relatively low resolution)

As far as I know such device simply don't exist.


How to open current folder in ForkLift from command line? I know how to open it in Finder:

open .

But, how can I open it in ForkLift?

Use following command:

open -a ForkLift .


Options to use iPad as remote photo viewing client As it says here, I can use an iPad as a remote photo vieing client if I buy the WD My Book Live NAS. But I have an old NAS already and I wonder if there are any generic iPad apps that give similar function, but without restriction on a specific NAS?

Thanks.

I use Remiew

I can view any photo I saved on my PC from iPad as it gives full control on folder navigation, i.e. I can browse all folders of my pc without any restrictions.

One restriction it that it shows images only, no other file types are shown.

It was a bit tricky to set it up at first, but it works fine for me and it's free.


Time machine backup fails on Mac OS X 10.13.5 & Airport Time Capsule 7.7.9 I am using a Retina MacBook pro laptop, model A1398 (OS X 10.13.5), backing up to an Apple 802.11AC 2TB Airport Time Capsule.  The airport utility says that the time capsule is version 7.7.9.

All the OS updates have been applied to my laptop and I have tried to update the firmware on the time capsule to resolve this problem.  When updating the time capsule, I got an error in updating the firmware (error code -16).  However now the utility indicates that the firmware is uptodate.  I restarted the Airport again just to make sure that doesn't fix this issue.

It is now 9 July.  The last successful backup was on 25 June.  When a backup is triggered, it spends about 6 minutes preparing the backup before stopping it.

tmutil status gives:

Backup session status:
{
    BackupPhase = ThinningPreBackup;
    ClientID = "com.apple.backupd";
    DateOfStateChange = "2018-07-09 09:54:26 +0000";
    DestinationID = "69F6F35A-0542-4DEF-8889-DCC09450A8B1";
    NumberOfChangedItems = 20369;
    Percent = 0;
    Running = 1;
    Stopping = 1;
}

while the backup is being prepared, then stops and reverts to:

Backup session status:
{
    ClientID = "com.apple.backupd";
    Percent = 1;
    Running = 0;
}

What additional information do I need to troubleshoot why backups start and then stop?  Is there a known fix for this issue?

I also have some issues at times when backing up my 2015 MBP to a 2G Airport Time Capsule (ATC). Here are some things to verify:

Can you find your ATC from the AirPort utility on your Mac? Are all lights green (no firmware update pending, no fault)? Note: you can't see your ATC if Wi-Fi is disabled and you're only connecting with an Ethernet cable.
Can you see your ATC in the Time Machine preferences?
Can you mount your ATC disk on your MBP? If not, then the ATC may be defective (I had this happen after a couple weeks of use - my ATC was replaced for free in an Apple store).
Did your network topology change since your last successful backup? E.g., new network name, access through different wireless network, access through wired network instead of wirelessly. I've seen Time Machine being rather picky about backing up wired or wirelessly. I believe that Time Machine sometimes gets confused you access the Time Capsule over different networks (wired, wireless, different Wi-Fi networks...).
Is there still sufficient free space on your MBP and on your ATC? Time Machine requires storage on your MBP to preserve the hourly/daily/weekly/monthly snapshots prior to syncing them to the Time Capsule. And your ATC must still have sufficient room for integrating the backup.
Did you recently switch to your MBP from another Apple computer, while porting the TC backup? This may confuse Time Machine.
Did you exchange your ATC since last successful backup? This will definitely confuse Time Machine as it sees a new device.

Some tips are also given at the following locations (including tips for checking the file system):

https://www.any-data-recovery.com/mac-data-recovery/how-to-fix-time-machine-backup-failure-and-errors.html
https://support.apple.com/HT204157
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/time-machine-troubleshooting-mh15653


System-wide config of gem operations? The answer to just about everything gem related on El Capitan -- including installing fastlane -- for me has been using this switch -n /usr/local/bin

(So sudo gem install fastlane fails but sudo gem -n /usr/local/bin install fastlane works.)

How can I apply this to all gem operations automatically?

Because El Capitan introduction to SIP (System Integrity Protection) you need to change your GEM_HOME or do similar something like sudo gem install bundler -n /usr/local/bin.


iTunes song selection goes to top after clearing search box I used to be able to type something into the iTunes search bar to filter the songs. You could click on a song, clear the search, and focus would stay on that song/album's position. I've since added a good amount of music to iTunes, and now when I clear the search box it moves to the top of the list every time.

This is really annoying. I'm pretty sure it has to do with surpassing a certain number of songs (I'm at 10,145) because it still works in smaller sized playlists (e.g. one with 3,000 songs).

I even tried regenerating my iTunes library from scratch (removing the Music/iTunes folder, relaunching, and re-importing everything) and the same behavior occurs.

Does anyone know how to get this functionality back? Is there a setting somewhere I can set? Or is this just a bug with iTunes (or maybe Cocoa?)

I had the same problem (with a similar number of songs -10742) after clearing the search box. What worked for me was clicking the curved arrow button on the right hand side of the little box, at the top of the iTunes screen, that shows the currently playing song, and its progress. This button returns the screen to the library location of the currently playing song. I'm currently running iTunes 10.5.3 on a 64-bit MacBook Pro. Hope this helps.


How to exclude certain particular files from Spotlight? I know that you can exclude entire directories or files with a particular extension from Spotlight. But can I hand-pick files not to be searchable by Spotlight, preferably with a file system flag? I am a writer and keep old copies of my drafts but they muck up Spotlight with lots of search results.

.noindex

  One of the fastest ways to hide a file or folder, from Spotlight, on
  the fly is to add the .noindex extension to the end of the filename or
  folder. The simplest way to get those files hidden is to create a
  folder, preferably named something innocuous, and add the extension to
  the end of the name. I’ll end up with a folder named “Nothing to See
  Here.noindex” or something similar.

Hide just a single file

  Select the file to be hidden. Right-click and select Get Info, or
  click Command+I. Find the Name & Extension field, and replace the
  current extension with .noindex. When prompted to confirm that I want
  to change the extension, I agree. Now my file is properly hidden from
  Spotlight search.

Finlay:

Finder won’t know what to do with my file anymore, though. Look to the drop-down labeled Open With, and select an application to handle the file. Be careful of setting a single application to handle all .noindex files, as many different file types may be hidden from Spotlight, and OS X sometimes creates .noindex files itself


Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 What is the best way to connect a device with a Thunderbolt 3 (USB Type-C) port to a computer (MacBook Pro) with a Thunderbolt 2 port?

I understand there will not be full 40 Gbps speed.

Device is a http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BL0CKIM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_D1BFxb33TZ5ZM

There isn't really many alternatives on the market. USB-C to Mini DisplayPort exists, but not many with Thunderbolt 3/2 support.

Apple makes a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 which is supposed to be bidirectional (read more in this support article). In that case you would probably need a Thunderbolt 2 male-to-male cable, but it should work in theory.


How can I repartition and format a Samsung Portable SSD T1 (model#: MU P8500B)? Currently there are two partitions on the SSD.

How can I remove the partitions? I want to have just one partition on the device.

I have searched through Samsung's website but I cannot find any related software to download (including the driver)

You don't need any additional software or drivers, not that I am aware of. You can do everything via disk utility. Please backup your data before performing this (by this I mean actually copying your files onto some other media or the cloud).

Please note: The method will vary for different macOS versions, as in the position and labeling of the icons are possibly different but the functionality should remain the same.

The steps given below are for macOS Sierra. Warning: Wall of text incoming.

Your disk utility interface should look similar to this (except the options on the top bar shouldn't be grayed out):

Next, you need to select the whole disk in the column on the left. As you can see in the image above (look at the column on the left), the volumes are stacked under the actual disks and are indented slightly to the right. You need to select the disk, and not the volumes. Your disk should be labeled "Samsung Portable SSD T1 Media" from what I can see in the given image.

Next, navigate to the bar on the top and click erase. There you should get a confirmation message, for which you should select the option "Erase". This is immediately followed by a window with a field for the name you want to give the disk, and two dropdowns - one for which format you want to use, and one for which scheme you want to use.

Here you need to make a decision. You can name the disk whatever you want, obviously. But as for the format you need to consider your use-case. Are you going to be using this disk only for Macs? Or are you also going to plug it in to Windows and Linux machines? Actually, Linux machines can also read Mac OS extended, but I digress.

If your use-case is the former, then you should just go with the default options it gives you which should be - Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and Scheme: GUID Partition Map. If not, change it to that.

If your use-case is the latter, then you should change the format to exFAT and let the scheme be GUID Partition Map.

You don't really need to change the scheme unless you plan to make the media bootable. If you do, then please tell me the details of the OS.

Finally, you can press the erase button and let the magic happen. If you get an error, then simply click on erase again and it should work. I'm not sure why this happens, and this bug seems to have increased on Sierra. I think it has something to do with USB hubs, but it's not much to be concerned about.

After the erase process has happened you should have just one partition. Now you can paste the data back in and enjoy your drive with a bigger partition!

Good luck


How to stop images in apple mail signature is being magnified I'm trying to add a logo in apple mail signature.
The image is a small PNG. When I added to the the signature in preferences, it's fine. But when I visit that signature again (or) create a mail with that signature, the image magnifies while the retina resolution is gone. How to I stop it?

It sounds like there is a DPI limitation in Mail for images in signatures.

This thread on Apple's discussion forums details what one user did to resolve the issue:

  I had 2 things too big in my image settings; the canvas size (which was 14cm long!) and the DPI (which was 300dpi) I have since changed to approx 8cm long and 100DPI and it now displays the logo in the signature without increasing the size of it to fit the size of the window.

I would recommend instead converting to 72 DPI, which is a standard; based on comments I've read elsewhere I believe it's converting higher DPI images to 72 DPI, which in turn causes the image size on-screen to increase.


Mac won't finish logging in after restart, must shut down to login completely Not sure if this is a duplicate question (I haven't been able to find a question dealing with this yet). Here's my problem:

Currently on OSX Mavericks.

I restart my machine.
It shuts down and starts back up.
I get the login screen.
I enter in my login credentials successfully.
I'm passed to the interstitial white/gray screen that you typically get when starting up.
Instead of continuing the login process, it just hangs on this screen and never logs in.

If I shut down completely and then turn my computer on, I can log in with no issues.

Any ideas how I can fix this issue?

Since I posted this question, I ran Disk Utility. I repaired some permissions. When I restarted again, it logged in properly. At this point I can't find any other issues.

I guess the moral of the story is run Disk Utility first before posting in the future.


Group iMessage mixed up ID I responded to a group iMessage, but it showed up as being a response from my wife.  She also has an iPhone, but our phone numbers, email addresses and Apple IDs are all different.  How in the world did this happen?  And how do I stop it?

In your settings under Messages, check your settings under Send & Receive. It will show you what you are receiving Messages via (phone number and email(s)). Do any of your wife's contact details show up?


Encrypt external HDD without erasing data on High Sierra? I'm running Filevault on my internal hard drive, but I realized that I never encrypted my external drive. Currently it's running Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and I'm not seeing any encrypt options anywhere (right click in Finder, disk utility, etc...). How can I encrypt this drive in place without having to erase all the data first? I could restore the data from a Time Machine backup but that sounds very tedious and time consuming. If there is a faster way I'd like to attempt that first.

Normally the option to encrypt the drive can be found by right clicking the drive's icon in finder and selecting 'Encrypt "DISKNAME"'. You will not see the encryption option if the disk is using Master Boot Record or Apple Partition Map as the partition scheme.

This is because High Sierra encryption actually converts the Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to Apple File System (APFS), and this cannot be done on a Master Boot Record or Apple Partition Map partitioned drive.

You can check the disk partition type in Disk Utility.


Can an iPhone 7 be made to function as a NFC Tag? From what I’ve read, I know the iPhone 7 can work as a NFC reader, but I want it to be a NFC Tag. I have a NFC reader (an ID-12 RFID reader) for my house that controls a door. I’d like to be able to put my iPhone up to it and have the NFC reader on my door read my iPhone's Tag and open.

Can an iPhone 7 be made to function an a NFC tag for a regular external NFC/RFID reader?

The iPhone is perfectly capable of this, but this is a privilege Apple keeps to themselves.

If you're jailbroken, you can install NFCWriter X and do pretty much everything you've asked for. I haven't personally checked, but I would strongly assume this is the exact same way Apple Pay works as well. So the iPhone is certainly capable of this.

The problem is that apps are not capable of this, because Apple denies them the availability of such an API. The CoreNFC framework only allows reading, and the story has gone so far as that organizations have sought fully third-party access to the iPhone's NFC chip on a legal basis. They were dismissed however, with Apple Pay keeping its uniquely privileged status.


Macbook Pro unresponsive while opening applications I have had an 240gb Corsair SSD in my 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 Macbook Pro (OSX 10.6.8) for about 8 months. The computer has 8gb RAM. It has been great for most of that time, but in the last month or so, I have experienced the following problem:

Whenever I open an application, the computer becomes unresponsive for about 5 seconds. I can move the mouse but clicking has no effect, and the keyboard does not work. The screen continues to behave normally (it shows the application opening screen, background applications and iTunes will continue working, etc), I just can't click or type anything.

What can I do to get to the bottom of this? Nothing immediately jumps out when I look at Activity Monitor.

There are 50gb of free space on the SSD, and RAM is maxed out at 8GB. The computer is otherwise fine, though seems to freeze a lot when using Chrome (I hear this is not uncommon).

Update: I had the same problem on a clone of my hard drive running on a standard HD (non-SSD), so the SSD is irrelevant.

The issue turned out to be with a background program, Typinator 5.3. The problem only occurred while Typinator was active. Upgrading to Typinator 5.4 seems to have fixed the problem.


Keynote does not save a presentation I face a serious problem that keeps me from working. I had been making a presentation in Keynote on iPad (8th-gen) for about 4 hours and everything was ok.  Suddenly, Keynote stopped saving my presentation, and I can no longer share it and add new things. I have enough storage on iCloud and in the iPad storage. Also, I checked the Wi-Fi connection which is ok. I'm running the latest version of Keynote. iPadOS is 14.0.1
I don't know how to fix it. Help me, please.

What you are experiencing appears to be a basic but unlikely problem. It is possible that the Keynote app you are using is corrupted. Pls try deleting and reinstalling it.


Join-merge-consolidate many audio book CDs into one or a few albums in iTunes 12 / PC? You have an audio book consisting of multiple CDs. In addition to joining the tracks on each CD, you want to merge the CDs. If it's a small book of only a few CDs, then you might want to merge all CDs into one CD. If it's a big book, then you might want to merge (for example) the first 10 CDs into "Part 1"; the next 10 CDs into "Part 2"; and so on.

How do you do it in iTunes 12 on a PC?

High-Level Steps to Merge Multiple Audio Book CDs

Read the "Meta Data Tips" below (it could save you some time).
Load CD 1.
Sort the tracks into the right order. [ Click Options > Get Track Names ]
Join the tracks. [ Click Edit > Select All and then Options > Join CD Tracks ]
Fill in the initial meta data (Author, Title, Spoken & Audio, etc.). [ Click CD Info ]
Import the CD [ Import CD > AAC Encoder + Spoken Podcast + Use Error Correction ].
Wait for import to finish.
Go to View Music and find the imported CD (to assure yourself it is there).
Repeat Steps 1-7 until all CDs have been imported.
Change each CD from "Music" to "Audiobook" and set the playback and shuffle properties.
[ Right-click > Get Info > Options > media kind = Audiobook ]

[ Check-in Remember playback position and Skip when shuffling ] + [Click OK].

Notes:
(a) The CD will disappear from your Music library and reappear in your Audiobooks.
(b) Don't be alarmed if iTunes moves all or a subset of your books at once instead of one-at-a-time. Sometimes it happens; sometimes not. I haven't figured out why. I am, however, grateful when multiples are (correctly) moved all at once.

Find the CDs in your Audio Books. [ View > Audiobooks ]
For each CD that you want to include in a particular merge, retitle (rename) that CD so that it has exactly the same title as all other CDs in that merge.

[Right-click > Get Info > change the Title ].

Example: My book has 5 CDs (Superbook Disc 1, Superbook Disc 2, etc. I want them all in one merge. So I change all Titles to Superbook-5CDs. As I change each title, that CD is merged with the other CDs of the same title.

To see what you've merged at any time, just click on the new CD title. You should see an expanded list of the CDs contained in that merge.

Meta Data Tips

You can get to meta data fields by clicking on the "CD Info" icon or by right-clicking and selecting "Get Info." And there may be other ways. Do it one way and you might see a subset of the fields available to you via the other way.
When asked "Are you sure want to edit multiple items?" then, yes, of course you do!
Be sure the Disc N of N data is correct.
While working with your first CD, take notes (or a screenshot) of your Author, Composer, etc. meta data so that you can repeat it exactly for each subsequent CD.
Keep your meta data simple. Be sure to fill in the fields that will help you when searching and sorting in iTunes. And to fill in those fields exactly alike.

You need to be careful about your meta data entries because iTunes is very picky about matching and sorting. Any differences (spelling, spacing, capitalization, punctuation) will likely cause you difficulty in subsequent steps.

For example, mis-matched meta data could cause your imported (and as yet non-merged) CDs to be scattered instead of appearing next to / near each other in different viewing modes.

Credits

I pulled the above together over several years (from iTunes 8 until now with iTunes 12). For those of you with older versions of iTunes, here are the sites where I found helpful information:

www.aldoblog.com (as of 2/24/15 his Audiobook postings are returning 404 errors, though they were working last week. Maybe the site owner is updating the content?)
http://oakroadsystems.com/genl/itunsrip.htm
http://criticalcreig.org/2013/06/how-to-import-cd-audiobooks-into-itunes-11/
http://www.mcelhearn.com/
(And yes, even on ehow) http://www.ehow.com/how_5885990_merge-audiobook-discs-itunes.html


What does 2>&1 | tee mean? I read the answer by @grg to question “brew formula” installation logs:

  brew install <formula> 2>&1 | tee install.log

So where exactly is this install.log file going to end up, and what exactly the 2>&1 | tee part of the command mean?

The tee command prints the piped stdout to the file path given as well as displaying it in the terminal. This is commonly used for recording the output of commands to file which would otherwise only be ephemerally printed to the terminal.

Without tee and using simple redirection of brew install > install.log would prevent stdout being printed to the terminal as well as the file, requiring the file to be accessed to view the messages.
2>&1 redirects stderr to stdout alongside the existing stdout, meaning that the error messages are redirected as normal output.

Without this, tee would only print stdout without the error messages to the install log.

install.log is relative to the current directory.


Export single SMS from iPhone and import on another iPhone Is there a possibility to sync the messages between two iPhones? Currently, I'm switching from one phone to another, but one device has got a new SMS.

How can I export the single SMS and import it on the other phone? Is the only option through making a complete new backup with iTunes (time consuming and I don't need all data)?

I also tried to enable iCloud backup, but it fails every time ...

If both of your iPhones are jailbroken, you can

Login into your old iPhone via SSH
Download /var/mobile/Library/SMS/sms.db file from your iPhone
Open the file with sqlite3 command in your computer or any SQLite client.
Get the last message based on timestamps with SELECT SQL command.
Then login into your new iPhone and open /var/mobile/Library/SMS/sms.db file with sqlite3 command, and do the reverse action.
That means: insert the new message with INSERT command

This might work.


How to make Chrome open a new window for external Links As some people might know, the default behavior for external links of Google Chrome is quite bad. I'm using Spaces, and opening a link in some application outside of Google Chrome while being on a different Space than the last used window of Chrome results in Chrome switching to the last focused window.

This behavior is just bad.

I want to change this behavior. On Windows, this is possible: How can you configure Chrome to open new browser instances in new windows rather than in a tab?

Sadly, I don't think this is possible on OS X Snow Leopard.

I'm already using a tool called RCDefaultApps. This is a system-control panel where I can specify default applications for different protocols. It just lacks the feature to specify additional command line arguments for the default application.

Can anyone help me there? Every hacks (aside from creating a custom Chromium build) are acceptable.

You can try using the AppleScript found on this page.

I just tried it out and it perfectly works fine in Chrome 12.0.742.122.

It's extremely easy to set up:

download the Bundle archive
double click it to unpack it
double click on OpenUrlInNewChromeWindow
open Safari and set the new "Browser" as the default browser in the Preferences.


Distinguish apps in OSX task switcher I use Google Chrome for two things:

manually browsing the web
automatically control websites via Selenium

So the Chrome App now runs in two windows and I have no way to distinguish them in the task switcher:

Is there a trick to exchange logos or show some text to easier identify the windows?

Make sure you have two separate Google Chrome binaries (i.e. two .app's). Then use Finder and right-click and select Get Info for one of those binaries. The original app icon is displayed in the top left corner of the window. Drag any other icon file on top of it, and the icon of the program will change.

You'll probably have to restart Chrome in order for this to show up in the app switcher.

An even easier way would be to use Chrome Canary for browsing and ordinary Chrome for Selenium (if that is acceptable for your use case).


Which animations will work on Keynote export to PowerPoint? I have a Keynote (iWork 9) presentation and need to export it as PowerPoint. When doing it using File : Export : PPT the slides work properly, but most of the animations are broken.

Is there a animations compatibility list for exporting to PowerPoint? I found an old apple support article discussing the import, but nothing about export. Ok, I can assume some animation assignments from that article, but it is also marked as no longer updated.

Does anybody has a source for a full list? Or one based upon experience?

Check this page out: https://blog.udemy.com/keynote-to-powerpoint/ Hope this helps!


What is this mystery process: "-i"? I have a mystery process visible in Activity Monitor, simply called "-i" - don't remember ever seeing this before. Its parent process is launchd, and belongs to root.

Persists between reboots;
Sometimes high CPU use.

Can't find any reference to it online anywhere either!

Macos 10.13.6

The best way to find out is to note the Process ID (PID) listed in Activity Monitor for the mysterious "-i" process.

Then open Terminal.app and execute the following command:

sudo lsof -p 1234

where 1234 should be replaced with the PID number you've found in Activity Monitor.

The lsof command will give you a list of files that are opened by the mysterious process. The first line of output will tell you the "cwd", which is the current working directory of the process. It is probably not going to tell you much.

The second line of output is usually a "txt" file descriptor that will tell you the name of the executable (i.e. the program) that is running in the program.

This should tell you which program is running as "-i".


Yosemite OS: Turning a kext off and on -- consequences? Are there consequences to turning a kext on and off repeatedly?

Also, How can I check to make sure a specific kext is already on or off?

I do not know how you turn kext on and off instead load and unload.

But, if you want to know current loaded kext's use Terminal.

kextstat > ~/Desktop/kexts.txt

This will output a text file to your Desktop of currently active kext.


Search file duplicates in OSX by hash I am looking for a way to search for a determinate file in OSX (Maverick but more generally OSX).
In particular I would like to do the following:
given a File_001 I'd like to search if in the filesystem exists a copy of this file.
Not just with the same name, I would like the comparison method to be an hashing algorithm like MD5, SHA etc..

Most of the "duplicate file finder" I have tried just search for all the duplicates in a drive/system. I would, instead, be interested in submitting one file and search for its duplicates.

Does anyone know if such a program exists? Maybe some obscure function of Spotlight?

You might also use fdupes. It doesn't have an option to search for duplicates of a specific file, but you can just grep the output for the filename:

fdupes -r1 .|grep filename

-r recurses into directories and -1 prints each group of duplicate files on a single line.

Other useful examples:

fdupes -r .  finds all duplicate files under the current directory;

fdupes -r . -dN  deletes all except the first duplicate from each group of duplicates;

fdupes -r dir1 dir2|grep dir1/|xargs rm removes duplicates in dir1.

You can install fdupes with brew install fdupes.


APFS encrypted volume, how to get actual free disk space I have a APFS volume running macOS Mojava. When I right click on the volume and click Get Info it shows:

Which in iteslf is confusing because available says 73.99 GB, but used shows all the disk is used 211 GB.

Even more confusing, when I run the unix command df -h command it outputs:

MacBook-Pro ➜ df -h
Filesystem      Size   Used  Avail Capacity iused               ifree %iused  Mounted on
/dev/disk1s1   233Gi  197Gi   34Gi    86% 2991853 9223372036851783954    0%   /

So df says I have 34 GB available.

What is the actual amount of free disk space I have? Also, how do I reclaim space and purge the disk?

Your disk has a capacity of 250.69 GB with 211.9 GB used leaving 38.8 GB.  The reported free space is 74 GB but 37.5 is purgeable. Purgeable space on a Mac is space that the Mac considers save to clean up. So while it says you have 74 GB available, 37.5 GB is currently in use but is safe to erase and clear off..


Multiple Wi-Fi APs: Use same or different SSID? I have multiple Wi-Fi access points in my house. What's the best practice, should I use the same or different SSIDs?

I currently have different SSIDs because I like to know which AP I'm logged in to. But handover takes ages. Would that work better/faster when using just a single SSID?

My clients are mostly iPhones and iPads and the APs are non-Apple (AVM Fritz!Box and Digitus).

You can have the same SSID for multiple APs, this is how our campus network is set up, but there is a caveat that's worth knowing. When moving between APs we've noticed OS X has a tendency to "stick" to the first AP it has joined even if it's in the presence of another AP offering a stronger signal. Cycling the wi-fi can help with re-association to an AP with a stronger signal, but the fact is it doesn't always switchover automatically. Unlike Windows which allows you to tune the aggressiveness with which it searches for better APs, OS X offers no easy control over its wireless behaviour.

This may seem like a non-answer but you may find you have as many issues (albeit slightly different) with a single SSID when compared to a network with multiple SSIDs.

My advice would be to try it for yourself and see how it works for you. Be prepared for some experimentation with setting wireless power levels on your APs so you can have some overlap between APs, but not so much that OS X will doggedly stick to the first one it finds.


27" iMac w/ Thunderbolt in Target Display Mode The new Thunderbolt Display offers multiple USB ports, a FireWire 800 port, and a gigabit Ethernet port to computers hooked up to it all through one Thunderbolt cable, enabling, for example, a MacBook Air to not be constrained by lack of ports while at a desk. My question is can a 27" iMac (with Thunderbolt), while in Target Display Mode, offer the same ports via thunderbolt cable?
Aka: if I get a new MacBook Air, do I get all the ports through my 27" iMac as I would through a Thunderbolt Display?

No. Devices connected to the iMac's other ports will still only be accessible by the iMac, not by the connected MacBook.

You can approximate some of the functionality you might get from this by using various software solutions to share your iMac's devices - such as sharing drives over the network, or sharing the mouse and keyboard using Synergy, etc.


Mail app missing plug-in For some reason there are some e-mails that I get where I need to scroll down a lot to see the entire message. The message is filled with "missing plug-in" errors (and they do not include the small error to fix it).

This problem occurs when I get emails with 'adds' on the side bar or on top. Also,  when I hit reply there's a long 'new lines' coming up between my response to the sender's email.

How can I fix this? It displays without any problems on my iPhone.

I was having a very similar issue, all video or jpg image files were replaced by the "Missing Plug-in" in any email received or sent. After upgrading to the latest Java, deleting the java plist file, repairing permissions, and numerous other suggested solutions from various websites, I downloaded from Apple and installed the latest OSX 10.7.5 "combo" update. Problem solved!


How to secure macOS's clipboard? Is it possible for a third party app to access macOS's clipboard content?
I am asking in relation to copy & paste sensitive data such as passwords and sensitive file content.

No security for data that is in one of the system clipboards is possible by design. This appears to be changing with 2020 features in publicly announced betas where Apple potentially will notify us each time an app copies content out of the clipboard. Some very common apps appear to be abusing the privilege and even if your password manager clears the contents quickly, this could easily be abused to steal keystrokes and passwords or other sensitive data.
The macOS clipboard is a public billboard open to all processes. Clipboard is the mechanism to let all apps read / modify shared data.
Practically you can Either restrict your set of apps installed to those you trust with the data you put in the clipboard or don't restrict sensitive content by never placing it into the clipboard so that the least trusted app only gets data you can permit it to see / log / capture / exfiltrate.
From here, the rabbit hole for developers and security minded people using macOS begins with an overview of secure text input options within programs to prevent key loggers in addition to pasteboard snoopers from grabbing secure input:

Technical Note TN2150: Using Secure Event Input Fairly
insecure keyboard entry - a blog post by Daniel Jalkut
How secure is “Secure Keyboard Entry” in Mac OS X's Terminal?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/06/tiktok-and-53-other-ios-apps-still-snoop-your-sensitive-clipboard-data/

There are some things you can do, however, to mitigate this. Freely available and trustworthy software can show you event taps, key loggers, exfiltration and just communication attempts so you can catch a program that might do things you don’t expect.

https://objective-see.com/products/reikey.html
https://objective-see.com/products/lulu.html

ReiKey and LuLu are two I would start with to secure yourself and thereby your clipboard contents.


Assemble an Array of Macs to shudown via ssh? I want to shutdown a few of my Macs remotely via an ssh script. I've got this so far:

#!/bin/bash

#Array of Mac hostnames separated by spaces
my_macs=(mac125 mac122 etc)

#Steps through each hostname and issues SSH command to that host

for n in my_macs
    do
       ssh pcpatch@$n 'sudo bash -s' < ./documents/ShutdownUPTIME.sh
done

exit 0

When I run it though, it says:

ssh: Could not resolve hostname my_macs: nodename nor servname provided, or not known

Any ideas how to solve this issue?

Looping through the elements of an array.

my_macs=( mac125 mac122 etc )

for n in "${my_macs[@]}"
do
    ssh pcpatch@"${n}" 'sudo bash -s' < ./documents/ShutdownUPTIME.sh
done


Secret to long-lasting relationship: Shut Down or Close Lid? The guy at the Apple store was like: "I just close the lid, and that works fine for me. I also shut it down every 1 (or 2) weeks, to clear the RAM".

That makes sense, but it sounds like his personal experience. Is there anything official/unwritten law on what we should do when we are done with our Macs, at night for example.

I am a person that almost accesses the laptop (MacBook pro 15'' Retina) every day. It's brand new and I wish for a long-lasting relationship with it!

On the software level his advice should be fine. The only difference could be battery life. Hibernation still consumes a tiny bit of energy and is therefore using the battery. Shutting it down completely should make your battery last a little longer which means that you're using slightly less recharge cycles. But let's be honest, the difference is near to zero - so don't worry about it. His advice should be fine.

A bigger concern should be your screen. If you clean it too often the reflective coating is going to get ruined. And if you don't use a keyboard cover you can ruined your screen/coating too.


USB Pluggable speakers for Macbook Pro 13" Late 2011? What are some good USB plugged-in/pluggable speakers for Macbook Pro 13" Late 2011?

My MacBook Pro late 2011 has its headphone jackets broken due to a stuck headphone jack, and my warranty's out. Also in the sound pane the sound output device listed is "Digital Out"

So as my headphone jack is out, and as I don't have a compatible "Digital Out" device, I'd like to know if there are any USB Pluggable speakers available which function by getting plugged into the USB port instead of being plugged into the headphone socket.

I can recommend the 'SoundSticks I' from Harman Kardon, a very good 3-way Sound System. The first Generation had an USB-Interface, the later Models had the usual Headphone Jacks. You can get it from E-Bay, usually for less than 80$.

One important thing: You cannot use them on a USB-Hub, you have to connect them directly to you machine.


How can I prevent "Open With..." from accessing external drives? Frequently, when I try to open the (10.9) Finder's "Open With..." menu, I experience a delay that appears to be due to connected FireWire drives. This delay is very long when the drives need to spin up, but is also perceptible when the drives have not spun down. For me, this delay makes no sense: I have no applications that I use stored on my external drives, and I have disabled Spotlight searches of these drives (using Spotlight's "Privacy" setting).

Is there some way to prevent the "Open With..." menu examining external drives?

Note that this is not a question about speeding up the OW menu in general (e.g., by pruning apps and file type associations), nor about keeping duplicate apps on external drives from appearing in the OW menu (I have none as my Spotlight settings noted above exclude them).

The apps that are displayed in "Open With..." are taken from the Launch Services database which keeps track of what apps can open which file types. In your case it would seem that Launch Services thinks you may have an appropriate app on your Firewire disks (even though you there aren't any - it is wanting to look).
Older versions of macOS seem to be particularly susceptible to this database becoming somewhat tangle/messy.
The solution is to rebuild the Launch Services database.  You can do that at the terminal with this command:
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -f -v -domain local -domain user -domain system
It is running the lsregister app to reset the database.  It may take sometime to complete. And you should check that the location for lsregister is correct for your version of macOS.
If using the Terminal is a challenge you can use the highly regarded Onyx to rebuild the database. It is on the Maintenance pane.  Make sure you disable all the other choices before running the rebuild task.  Note there is a different version of Onyx for each macOS version.
This has been covered before. For example: Finder "Open With" very slow.
For a more in depth discussion of Launch Services, read these:
Recent Items, Launch Services, and SharedFileLists and Launch Services database problems


How to launch web start on 10.10 OSX My wife is taking an online class and it says it needs to launch using Java Web Start.  I've changed the endings from .ed files to .jnlp files and make sure I click open other and select Java Web start.

Tech support wasn't helpful at all.

After installing Java for OS X 2014-001 it works.

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US


Finding EyeTV Activation Key from existing install? I have EyeTV Lite installed on my old computer.

I'd like to move it over to a new computer. I simply copied over the application bundle and everything under /Library/Application Support/EyeTV, but when I try to start up the application on the new computer, it launches the EyeTV Startup Assistant and asks me for the Activation Key.

I bought the EyeTV 8 years ago... I've long since lost the box, disk, manual, etc... all I have is the software installed on the one computer and the USB dongle.

If I launch the EyeTV Startup Assistant on my old computer, it shows me this for my Activation Key:

ARYGC-XXXXXXX-XXXXXXX-XXXXXXX

How could I figure out what the rest of the Activation Key is, or otherwise transfer it to my new computer? I've looked through Keychain Access... there's nothing mentioning Elgato (name of the company that wrote the software) or EyeTV...

There appears to be a SQLite database at /Library/Application Support/EyeTV/EyeTVEPG.db, but when I try opening it with Datum (app I found on the app store), it says the database file is password protected.

The above didn't work for me.

I followed this link instead: https://www.geniatech.eu/eyetv/faq/how-do-i-recover-my-lost-eyetv-activation-key/

I then downloaded the "EyeTV Reporter" application which enabled me to make a full backup and re-installation my copy of EyeTV on my new Mac (without being prompted for any serials).


Macbook Air (Oct 2010) Photoshop & Web development laptop? I currently have a 2008 MBP and am thinking of getting a new computer. I was wondering if the MBA OCT 2010 edition with max cpu (2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) and 4gb ram would work well with photoshop and some web development? The tools I use are photoshop, dreamweaver, textmate,coda, and transmit, also my MBP from 2008 is 4gb intel core 2 duo 2.4 ghz. Would the MBA be faster then my 2008 MBP?

A similar question was asked over at Programmers.SE, though it was about iOS development. Some might say that's not the same thing, but Photoshop is a robust application that allows you to install some very heavy-duty plug-ins and it has some of its own as well. The consensus could be gotten from the top two answers (mine, which has the higher vote count, and the other which was accepted):

Mine with 5 votes:

  ...leaving aside price, I would
  recommend a MacBook Pro for any
  serious development work instead. A
  MacBook Pro is more easily upgradeable
  to suit needs than an Air (if it is
  even upgradeable at all). The Air
  seems more targeted to lighter-weight
  uses.

Accepted with 4 votes:

  It's obviously not going to be the
  fastest machine but it's perfectly
  suitable.

  I'd say the 13" over the 11" because
  reasonable screen size is a big deal
  for development, and it can go up to
  4Gb RAM rather than 2Gb (absolutely go
  for the 4Gb RAM model on day one and
  if you can afford it the faster
  processor as I suspect upgrading later
  isn't something Apple will be
  pushing).

  Yes it's got limitations (basically
  the same as any laptop - essentially
  screen and power are limited next to a
  desktop) but I have the new one and
  it's entirely workable and I know
  others who use them (and used the old
  MacBook Air) day to day with no
  problems.

I, personally, still wouldn't recommend the MBA for any type of development work, web or otherwise. I've yet to do anything developing for iOS that causes me to bog down my machine the way Photoshop can and will.


Not able to generate private.key file I am developing MDM solution for that I need to create several certificates. For that I have following this document.

When I'm firing this command, I am getting this error.

openssl rsa -in key.pem -out private.key

Error:

  unable to load Private Key
  4713004652:error:09FFF06C:PEM routines:CRYPTO_internal:no start line:/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/libressl/libressl-47.11.1/libressl-2.8/crypto/pem/pem_lib.c:684:Expecting: ANY PRIVATE KEY

could any one guide me, how to resolve this issue?

Essentially the guide you're following will later instruct you to use a Python script mdm_vendor_sign.py that automates a lot of the otherwise manual steps, you would have to take to create an MDM vendor certificate signing request.

One limitation of that script is that it does not support interactively requesting the passphrase for the private key. Therefore the private key must not have a passphrase in order to be used with this tool.

Ordinarily you would recommend that you create a private key protected by a pass phrase, and then temporarily strip out the password to use the script, and then delete the stripped key again - in order to safe guard the private key.

However, you seem to have created a private key without entering a passphrase at all. Therefore you just need to skip this specific step in the guide - there's simply to passphrase to skip.

I would still recommend that you do actually use a passphrase with your private key, as this is the step protecting you from exposure if the key file is leaked to a third party.


Encrypt data before sync to dropbox? If I have FileVault on, this will encrypt all my data on my HDD. so this said, will this send to dropbox the encrypted files or the original files?

No as Dropbox is running as one of your apps and so sees the unencrypted data.

What you can do is create an encrypted disk image in your dropbox area using Disk Utility (or TrueCrypt etc). Dropbox only sees the encrypted image but you have to mount the disk yourself.

there are other cloud services e.g. SpiderOak that say they store encrypted data and don't have the key to decrypt.


Take screenshot and copy its file path to clipboard I want to have the file path of a screenshot to be available in the clipboard to paste it directly into some text. Greenshot on Windows can do this in just one keyboard shortcut simultaneously taking the screenshot and putting its file path into the clipboard. How can this be done in Mac?

You can assign a shortcut to a script like this:

f=~/Desktop/$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S).png
screencapture -i $f
osascript -e 'set the clipboard to POSIX file "'$f'"'

One way to do that is to create a service in Automator:

Then give the service a keyboard shortcut from System Preferences.

If you just want to copy the path as text, replace the last line with printf %s $f | pbcopy.


Editing track names in iTunes made difficult by invisibility of text I use iTunes 12.1 on OSX 10.10.3. This has been bugging me for a while but crops up rarely enough not to google it for some time.

The issue is that when I click twice on a track in order to edit the title, the text color changes to white on white background and I can only see the text because it is initially selected. Once I remove the selection, I see nothing at all. See the following gif:

I did not find a reference to such behaviour on google and am wondering whether this is a universal bug or related to my personal setup. Are there any system settings which could lead to this?

Looks like a bug to me. I'd report it to Apple Bug Report

Only seems to do it in Album view when the album's background colour is dark enough that the inverted colour used would be light or white. Then as you edit, you get white on white.

In My Music/Album view, you can see against the album background how/why it may choose the highlight colour [not necessarily the best choice, as the edit background is always white].

In Playlists/Album view you can't see 'why' as the background is always white but it does just the same. It also seems to take a slight swing towards white text compared to the sometimes very light but just about visible colours it chooses in My Music view.

Easiest repro is on an album with no cover image. Does it every time.

Album with purple/yellow predominance as an example…

Music/album view, yellow text

Playlist/album view, yellow becomes white


JXA JavaScript for automation How to make JXA click something What is the JXA equivalent of

--AppleScript
    tell application ("System Events")
        click at(x,y)
    end tell

Application("System Events")
  .applicationProcesses.whose({frontmost: true}).at(0)
  .click({ at: [x, y] })

click is performed on a UIElement, so we get one, then call click with that.