How to allow users to reset passwords in Time Capsule accounts? I have a Time Capsule that I share with others in the office. I control the base station and create accounts for others to backup their machines with Time Machine i.e., using

Airport Utility > Time Capsule > Disks> Secure Shared Disks — with accounts

I create accounts and a password for them (or they're free to enter it on my machine), but I also keep getting requests for password resets or changing passwords, which makes it a pain — people need to come to my machine to do it.

Is there a way to allow users to change their passwords whenever they choose from the convenience of their machine?

I'm using the Time Capsule with Mountain Lion (as are most others, and some with Lion).

No - this is a big admin bottleneck if you aren't going to set up a machine to re-share the disk or just share files and back up to the disk so you can have more of a server based permissions and account management toolset.


Mountain Lion spaces erratic behavior I have been noticed unique behavior between virtual desktops on my Macbook. For example, Mail is in Space 1, my browser in Space 2, and Autocad in Space 3. Seemingly at random intervals, it will change Space 2 and Space 3, so I end up with, basically Space 1, 3, 2 (but they are labeled space 1, 2, 3).
Is this a feature, or something that can be fixed?
I'm not sure if it is related to the question, but I have also noticed that sometimes when I do the four finger swipe to change spaces, it jumps two spaces.

You can uncheck "Automatically rearrange spaces based on most recent use" on the "Mission Control" tab in system preferences. This will leave the desktops in the expected order.


Apple Mail - block incoming mail at certain hours The question kind of speaks for itself. I want to find a handy way to block new mail from coming in, to avoid distractions.

I was thinking of creating a cronjob that enables and disables firewall rules on my MacBook a few times a day, but maybe there are other ways?

I could also block the traffic on the router, but the idea is that while mail is blocked on the computer, I don't want to block it on mobile devices.

What do you think would be the best solution?

Even better would be if we could send and out of office or other gentile reminder that we only answer mail 2 times a day during 12-13h and 16-17h for example.

But this is not so important, more like an experiment.

Update: I want to find a solution that can be applied company wide. So all desktops cannot receive new email during certain hours.

Just put your machine in do not disturb mode when you want to get some work done: http://osxdaily.com/2012/08/10/turn-off-notification-center-in-os-x-temporarily/


How to properly install Java in OS X When I look at System Preferences > Java > Update, I see

  Your system has the recommended version of Java.
  Java 7 Update 79

From Terminal, java -version:

  java version "1.7.0_71"
  Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_71-b14)
  Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 24.71-b01, mixed mode)

From Terminal, export:

  JAVA_HOME="/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_71.jdk/Contents/Home"

In addition to that, I also have the Java from Apple/Oracle installed as well (when first prompted to install when opening a Java-based app when there's no Java yet installed)

Questions:

Is Java 7 Update 79 == jdk1.7.0._71.jdk? Or are these separate?
When running some thing with Java, there is always the following:

  objc[63077]: Class JavaLaunchHelper is implemented in both
  /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_71.jdk/Contents/Home/jre/bin/java
  and
  /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.7.0_71.jdk/Contents/Home/jre/lib/libinstrument.dylib.
  One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.

I'd be more than willing starting from scratch had I understood the steps to do that properly (remove, re-install). If it matters, am running OS X 10.10.

System Preferences shows the Java used for web applets and java -version the one found by /usr/bin/java

To get the latter install the JDK not the JRE


MacBook Pro works fine but does not make the startup sound Today I noticed while trying to use the keyboard shortcut to enter single user mode that Mid-2012 MacBook Pro 13 Inch did not make the startup sound when turned on. After rebooting normally it still did not make the sound. The volume was turned up all the way and the internal speakers work fine. Nothing is plugged into the headphone jack. How do I turn it back on?

You can try resetting the chime back it it's defualt settings; this is done in NVRAM.

Using Terminal issue the command sudo nvram -d SystemAudioVolume

You will be asked for your password; enter it.   Reboot.  You should hear the chime.


Can I install OS X Snow Leopard on 2006 mac mini? So..I bought my first macbook pro few days ago, but found I don't need a laptop. I figured out that I can buy used mac mini + windows laptop for my developer environment.

is it possible to install snow leopard on a 2006 mac mini?

Yes it is. See here.

As long as it is an Intel Mac Mini (with a minumum of 1gb ram) you'll be fine.

If its a Power PC Mac Mini then you'll only be able to install Leopard (not Snow Leopard)


Anything involving touchpad drag no longer works (highlight text, move files, resize windows, etc.) I have a Macbook Pro from 2013, was on Yosemite then updated to El Capitan yesterday to see if it would fix things, which it didn't. Basically what the title says: I can't do anything that requires clicking and dragging, while everything else works perfectly. The odd thing is that it seems to be dependent on where I'm starting from on the screen – picking up a file on the far right of my desktop works most of the time, but it always cuts out after a second or less. It never works on the left half of the screen, and very rarely in the middle.

The same problem exists in guest and safe mode. I've tried deleting the com.apple.finder.plist file in library/preferences but that didn't do anything. I suspect a visit to the genius bar is in order, but just wanted to double check here first.

EDIT: it works with a graphics tablet, just not the touchpad.

Try restarting Finder service by the following commands:

launchctl stop com.apple.Finder
launchctl start com.apple.Finder

This should fix the drag issues.


MacBook Air display went haywire Literally out of nowhere my laptop screen went crazy. I was using it while sitting at my dining room table and stopped for probably 10 mins to look at something on my phone. When I looked back, it was like this.

MacBook Air 13"
Bought new 3 months ago (August 2015)
Running OS X 10.10.2 (haven't upgraded to El Capitan because of negative reviews).
Has not been dropped, no water damage.

Apple Care tried to help over the phone by having me reset a few things (video card, etc) but nothing worked. I have an appointment at the Genius Bar for thursday so I'm wondering if anyone here might have any ideas in the meantime.

It started out like this:

and got progressively worse:

There appears to be 6 vertical panels on the screen, 4 of them have the crazy colors/stripes, and the other 2 are normal. The text and mouse cursor are reversed when they're "behind" the panels.

I was able to login, see parts of my desktop, & open some items. Other than the crazy sections it seems to be working.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Four days feels like a lifetime to wait for tech support.

Press the power button to turn on your computer.

Press and hold the D key before the gray startup screen appears.
It takes a minute or so for AHT to start up and inspect your hardware configuration.
While this is taking place, an icon appears on the screen.
When the process is complete, select US language and click the right arrow.

You can also use the up and down arrows to select a language and then press the Return key.

The AHT console appears. You can choose which sort of test or tests to perform:

To perform all of the basic tests, click the Test button or press the T key or the Return key.
To perform a more thorough diagnostic test, select the "Perform extended testing" checkbox under the Test button before you click the Test button.
Note: Your test results will appear in the window in the bottom-right of the console.
To exit AHT, click Restart or Shut Down at the bottom of the window.

Dropping the Mac also bends the graphics card out of place.


How does FileVault generate the key? How does FileVault generate a recovery key? From my user password? Does FileVault use the same key to decrypt disk on startup as recovery key? Are they identical?

I probably know the answers to this questions, but I want to be sure.

How does filevault 2 work?

The general principle used by FileVault is the same as for any encryption scheme which allows more than one password to access the data (such as LUKS, which is commonly used in Linux environments). To summarise:

A key called the MEK (media encryption key) is used to encrypt and decrypt the data.
A key called the KEK (key encryption key) is used to generate a ciphertext version of the MEK, which we'll call X. The value of X is stored alongside the data, e.g. in a filesystem header.
A series of passwords (such as your user password and a recovery password), e.g P₁ and P₂, are passed to a standardised key derivation function to generate corresponding encryption keys that are used to generate ciphertext versions of the KEK. Let's say that the ciphertext version of the KEK generated using P₁ is C₁, and likewise, P₂ yields C₂. The values C₁ and C₂ are stored alongside X.

Now, if you know one of the passwords, you can provide it to decrypt the data. For example, if you know P₂, you can decrypt C₂ to find out the KEK. Once you know the KEK, you can decrypt X to find out the MEK. Once you know the MEK, you can decrypt the data.

This scheme allows easy addition, removal, and alteration of passwords used to access the data, since this simply requires altering the set of stored Cᵢ values. No re-encrypting of the data itself is necessary, since the MEK being used doesn't change.

In LUKS, these places to store a Cᵢ value are called "keyslots", and LUKS provides eight such keyslots.

In APFS, all such Cᵢ values are stored together in a data block called a "keybag" — in principle, the size of this keybag is unbounded, but in current practice, it's typically large enough for 7 keys. When you set up authorised users and passwords in FileVault preferences, one of these slots is used to store a Cᵢ which can be decrypted using the recovery password that is displayed to you.


How to enable Normal Scrolling on MacBookPro 10.8.3? Small or incremental scrolling on my MBP OSX 10.8.3 using an external mouse is extremely slow to a crawl. How do I configure my mouse to a Normal Scroll mode where every scroll is the same and creates fast scrolls in the window?

Try increasing the scroll speed in System Preferences > Mouse > Scrolling Speed:


what version of AppleConfigurator 2 is compatible with AppleTV 3rd gen? I have a 3rd generation AppleTV and am trying to configure it with AppleConfigurator2.  My version of AppleConfigurator2 (2.7.1) is unable to detect the device.  What version of AppleConfigurator2 is able to manage a third generation AppleTV?

I found this page with the following bullet list on it, titled: Apple Configurator 2 makes iPad and iPhone deploys even easier for SMBs.

  Requirements for running Configurator 2.0

  System requirements

  OS X El Capitan (10.11+) or later
  iTunes 12.3 or later

  Device requirements

  Apple TV (2nd Generation or later)
  iPhone
  iPad
  iPod Touch

  iOS requirements

  iOS 7 or later

The disconcerting part with much of what you'll find about 2nd and 3rd Gen AppleTV devices is that the official pages maintained by Apple all seem to redirect you now to a GiveBack page to trade in your device.

NOTE: One of the more useful pages was the actual Mac store landing page for AppleConfigurator2. On that page is a "Version History" link which details the various releases.

If you look in the Apple forums and search for 3rd Gen AppleTV you'll find others who have this version of the device and are struggling to get it to work as well.

For example - Purchasing used appletv

  The 3rd gen has long been discontinued, and hasn't received an update
  since 2016. It doesn't run apps, just preset content sent via server,
  and providers have started to drop support. You also wouldn't have
  access to things like iCloud Photo library, Apple Music, and airplay
  2.

  I would suggest to go for the 4th gen (now rebranded as Apple TV HD)

My advice would be to use this device for what it is, but if you want to do anything more with it, it's probably time to upgrade to a newer device.

References

tvOS


Very large (out of core) image viewer for Mac? (Yes, I've seen this question, but what that poster considered  "truly massive" is pretty ordinary now.)

Can anyone suggest an image viewer on the Mac, OSS or commercial, that is capable of displaying TIFF images in the multi-gigabyte range? Ideally something capable of out-of-core viewing, i.e., for images beyond the limits of physical RAM.

I've tried Preview.app (not so much...), ImageMagick (hangs), Adobe Photoshop (worked great on a 25 GB, 8-bit grayscale tiff, 180k x 280k res, on a 16 GB RAM machine, but has a hard resolution limit at 300k in either resolution), and Graphic Converter (did well on a 1.5 GB image, but crashed on an 8 GB one [Edit: developer fixed this immediately upon my reporting it], but cannot open the 25 GB image).

I'm familiar with the old VLIV on Windows. Anything modern like this for Mac? It doesn't need to be a GUI app, and I have minimal requirements other than that it can actually display the images correctly.

I am also looking for the answer to this.

I tried Xee, as recommended on the linked post, but it could not open the 2.43 GB ~1.8 billion pixel image from NASA's Curiosity rover (88797 x 22958 pixels TIFF image)

I have also tried Phiewer and ApolloOne, but they did not work for me either.

XNViewMP worked for me, but opened the file slowly, and basically freezes when I try to interact with the picture.


Unexpected behaviour when using 'Center' option for the desktop wallpaper in Mountain Lion In Mountain Lion (10.8.2) the 'Center' option does not scale and centre wallpapers correctly.
The preview is correct, but the wallpaper is the same as 'Fit to Screen'.
All other options work as expected.

Desktop with 'Center':

Desktop with 'Fit to Screen':

The screen resolution is 1024x768 and the image size is 3200x2000.

Shouldn't the 'Center' option display the centre of the image at 100% zoom? Is there any way to change this behaviour?

I think they're working as expected. Center puts the image at the middle of your screen, without changing the aspect ratio (an image larger than your screen will be downscaled, but a smaller one won't be upscaled). Because your screen is a 4:3 ratio, and the wallpaper is 16:10, you get blue bars filling the rest of the space. Similarly, Fit to Screen scales the image proportionately so that width matches that of your screen, but it does not change the aspect ratio, which is why you still have blue bars.

If you want the image to take up all of your screen without any blue bars, try the Fill Screen or Stretch to Fill Screen options. Fill Screen scales the image proportionately so that it fills the entire screen, and Stretch to Fill Screen scales the image to fill the screen, but changes the aspect ratio so the entire image is on-screen (i.e. you don't lose any of the image boundaries).


how to recover data for a specific app, I just had a new ihone. I did my restore function and the only app that did not get back my data is killshot bravo.  does anyone know why.  I lost everything I had, guns money and gold in that game :((

According to this article, it sounds as game progress is only saved when you sign in using a Facebook or Google account.   If you aren't signing in to the game that way, it will not save / backup your progress.

Also, according to this article, the company offers no guarantee that game progress would be saved.   Sounds pretty shady to me.


Mavericks update changes sshd_config? I normally use private key authentication to SSH into my mac via an iOS client. I recently upgraded to Mavericks, and started noticing the client prompting for a password rather than trying the private key first. My old /etc/sshd_config had disabled password authentication ("PasswordAuthentication no, ChallengeResponseAuthentication no"), but it looks like the upgrade process to Mavericks reset these two values to yes.

Is anybody else seeing this change? Is there any documentation on this? It seems like a significant security issue to reenable SSH password authentication by default.

I had the same problem and found the answer here: Mavericks update broke ssh key-based authentication

Basically, you can't use authorized_keys2 anymore (an old default). Rename the file to "authorized_keys" and it should work again (it did so for me).

mv ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys


Airport slows down when anybody uses VPN through it I have a MBP with OSX 10.7.3, from which I use a VPN connection (Cisco IPSec) to login on my company network. That in itself is not a problem.

I also have an Airport Extreme (version 7.6.1) as the backbone of my home network using ADSL to my ISP. That in itself is not a problem, either.

But the combination of the two is a major problem for everybody in the house. Especially those that play online games...

Whenever I connect to the company network, I can see the ping latency go from 20 ms to 600 ms for the ADSL leg. And is not just from my machine, but for every machine in the house. Which should mean the problem is in the Airport.

I have of cause been looking at all the usual sites, but cannot find anything similar reported before...

Without the VPN connection:

traceroute to dr.dk (195.137.194.128), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1  10.0.1.1  3.293 ms  0.784 ms  0.693 ms
2  nn.nn.nn.nn  19.489 ms  18.837 ms  23.681 ms
3  ...

With the VPN connection:

traceroute to dr.dk (195.137.194.128), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
1  10.0.1.1  2.515 ms  0.553 ms  2.898 ms
2  nn.nn.nn.nn  688.489 ms  650.996 ms  690.190 ms
3  ...

So the question is: Does anybody know what is going on here? Do you know of any solution? E.g. should I downgrade the Airport software?

It's more than likely the bandwidth used by your VPN rather than the Airport itself.

My work VPN connection with a corporate laptop used to use a lot of bandwidth, I'd notice other stuff slowing down considerably. Maintaining links to the domain servers, a VOIP client, and all of the other things installed on there used a lot of resources.

When I stopped using a corporate laptop and connected my personal laptop through a web based SSL VPN with terminal services instead, things improved a lot as it was only basically screen sharing rather than uploading and downloading actual files and data.

Unless you can set-up a proxy and monitor the usage of each device, you're not really going to find out how much bandwidth each device is using, but it's unlikely to be the VPN itself, or the Airport at fault, just the bandwidth used by what's being transferred over the VPN.


When I check for update in macOS, are the software from other sources checked for updates as well? So far as my experience goes, some software are available directly from  Mac App Store, others are installed from other source e.g. gimp for Mac.

When I check for updates in Mac, does it check for updates for the second category as well?

If the answer is no, how do I know whether a new version for gimp has been released?

The Mac App Store will only check for updates for system applications or those installed from the Mac App Store.

Though I have not used Gimp in particular, most apps distributed outside of the Mac App Store will have an option in the menu bar under either the app name or help menus. That option will usually be titled something along the lines of Check for Updates.

You can download the latest version of Gimp here: Gimp - Downloads.


"ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED" on localhost after (I think) upgrading Apache via homebrew I maintain a local web development environment on my Mac via Homebrew, set up in roughly the way described here:

https://echo.co/blog/os-x-1010-yosemite-local-development-environment-apache-php-and-mysql-homebrew

Everything was working fine, but now whenever I try to load a page from my local server I get an "ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED" error. The other day I upgraded everything that Homebrew was managing, and I think the problem started after that: but I can't be sure.

How can I go about fixing this?

Okay, I ended up running

$ sudo apachectl configtest

which returned

httpd: Syntax error on line 488 of /usr/local/etc/apache2/2.2/httpd.conf: Cannot load /usr/local/Cellar/php56/5.6.14/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so into server: dlopen(/usr/local/Cellar/php56/5.6.14/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so, 10): image not found

When I edited httpd.conf, it turned out that it was trying to load two different version of libphp5.so: a new version that had been freshly installed (I think) by Homebrew, and an old version that Homebrew had (I think) deleted once it installed the new version.

For some reason, when Apache tried to load the old version of libphp5.so and found it wasn't there, this prevented Apache running at all. As soon as I deleted the line that tried to load the missing libphp5.so and restarted Apache everything worked fine.


Sales at iTunesConnect I'm just wondering how this comes:

So there are 3 units sold, but apparently just one of them was paid. Do you know why?
The screenshot was taken when having Transaction type activated.

Check the following break-downs to see exact transactions. How much is your app price?

As you can see only one paid version was sold. The other two were free.


How to turn an MBA on when the power button is not functioning? My MBA power button is not functioning (on or off). I would like to know how to turn it on, in case the MBA is accidentally shut down. I have seen the technician do something inside but it's not open knowledge. Can anyone share their technical experience pls. I am confident I can, given specific steps. Thanks!

Since you think it is a permanet damage the best option is to replace the keyboard.

If you are not sure it is a permanent damage and before you replace the keyboard consider this:

There is a tiny spring loaded contact under the key cap.

Sometimes (rarely) a food or dirt get stuck in there.

1- Use a air can and blow around it, hoping to blow out the dirt.

or

2- Use a Alcohol (with Computer in OFF mode) soak it, wait for 10-20 minutes.
Use Hair blower and warm it up to evaporate the alcohol (not to hot)

or

3- Buy new and replace the keyboard, it is not a walk in the park but doable. It might cost you aprox $60 for keyboard, and you will need a special screwdriver. Estimated TTC about 2 hours.


Compiling c++ using ssh on ipad2? I've noticed there are several ssh apps on the apple store, I am trying to access my schools unix machine from this ssh connection and use this to write code and compile c++ code on my unix drive. Is this possible to do from from ipad?

SSH is simply a protocol used to connect to a remote computer. It doesn't really restrict what you can or cannot do once you're logged in to that computer. And iOS doesn't really have any restrictions on typical SSH usage (except that you can't set up a tunnel for other apps).

So if you can do what you need to using SSH from your computer to your school's computer, then you should be able to do the same on the iPad with an SSH app.

There are several iOS SSH clients around, my favourite is Prompt; iSSH is pretty popular as well.


Lost all my contacts on iMac when I upgraded software All the contacts are on my iPhone but when I go the iMac all it says is no cards.  Preferences has the contacts checked and view groups show all the names but no data for the card?

It sounds like your iCloud is not configured on your Mac. Go into system prefs and make sure you are signed in to your iCloud account, and make sure it's the same iCloud account that your phone is signed in to.


Xcode 7.2 support 3D Touch in Simulator? I've been out of the country for a while and trying to get caught up with everything. I didn't see it anywhere thought I'd ask here before I went to the dev forums. When I left the simulator didn't support hot keys or any way to test a 3D Touch short press and long press. Is this now supported or do you still need a capable device?

Right now Apple haven't done the 3D touch for the iPhone Simulator yet, but on the Apple Watch Simulator it is fine. If you want to test for the 3D touch feature of your app, you need a capable iPhone to do it. Right now if you go to the Hardware menu, then there are a force touch pressure menu. It is disabled. That is the 3D touch feature that Apple might implement.


How to implement SSO on Mac and IPAD We have a web application that uses SSO to authenticate users. On Windows everything works well. Now the question is how to make it work on OSX and IPAD? Is this possible in principle. I don't have much experience with OSX. Any help would be useful.

There's a tutorial on how to setup Kerberos for OS X here: http://computing.help.inf.ed.ac.uk/kerberos-mac-os-x. After that Safari should automatically work with the SSO, Firefox & Chrome may need further settings configured.

For iOS devices I'm unsure, it appears that to do it it requires either the device is in an Enterprise group, or that you build it with the iOS Configurator application but it's not entirely clear on how it should be done.


Recreate old aliases in bulk to reduce their file size, keeping their name and creation date I noticed that in recent versions of macOS, aliases I create are smaller than they used to be. I have a folder full of old aliases whose sizes range from 50 KB to 6 MB, but new aliases seem to be always less than 1 KB.

I want to recreate all my large, old aliases to save disk space. I know I can update an individual alias by finding the file the alias points to, deleting the alias, and option-command-dragging the original to where the alias was. However, this loses the Date Created of the alias, and more steps are needed to preserve the name of the alias if it is different from the original file. Also, this would take too long to do for my hundreds of aliases. How can I shrink my aliases in bulk while preserving the name and Date Created?

There is another, very similar question Recreate an alias with the same name and timestamp programmatically. The difference is that that question requires an answer that doesn’t change the Date Modified of the alias. I am fine with the Date Modified being updated, as long as the Date Created is unchanged.

On macOS 10.14 Mojave, inspecting any individual legacy alias with Get Info (⌘I) causes it to be regenerated with a smaller size.

To use Get Info to regenerate aliases in bulk, first show a list of the aliases to update in Finder in List View. To find all your aliases, press ⌥⌘Space to open a new search in Finder, click ‘+’ to add an criterion, and set the criterion to “Kind” is “Other”, typing in “Alias”.

In this list of aliases in Finder, select the top result, then press ⌥⌘I to Show Inspector. The selected alias will be regenerated – you will see its size go down. Now hold down the ↓ arrow key to select each alias one at a time. Each of them will be regenerated, getting an updated Date Modified but keeping its Date Created.

You have to inspect each alias one at a time because inspecting multiple aliases will only update the first one.


Can Lion OSX Search in App's Contents How can I configure Lion to search for files in the Contents of an .app?

Easy Solution
For a free GUI solution, you could use EasyFind. To search inside applications, you just need to check "Package Contents" in the sidebar.

For a quicker search, you can limit the search to just the Applications folder by using the menu under the search field (on the far right).

Command Line - Find
In Terminal, you can use the find command:

find /Applications/foo.app -type f -name "bar"

Replace foo.app with the name of your app, and replace "bar" with the name of the file you want to search for.

If you want to search all apps in /Applications, leave out the /foo.app part of the command.

If you want to include folders, remove -type f, if you want to search only for folders, change -type f to -type d. You can also use the * wildcard in your filename to get partially matching results.


Swipe to Archive instead of Delete in Mail.app on El Capitan OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) introduces the ability to swipe left on conversations in Mail.app in order to send them to trash:

However, judging from the available settings, it does not seem to be possible to make the swipe action "Archive" instead of "Trash", as it works on iOS.

Is there any way to change the action from "Trash" to "Archive"?

Open Mail > Preferences > Viewing and change "Swipe Left To" from Trash to Archive (5th line down).

For macOS Sierra, its a little different.


To Install Latin Modern Math font in OS X I want to have the codes of the project GUST in my OS X.
Franck indicates here that the definite way is to download those fonts from there and install.
However, I would like to find some packaged version because this is so standard tool.
The fonts were removed from MacTeX 2015, while they were in MacTeX 2013.
I could not find the fonts in homebrew.

Test code

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{polyglossia} % also loads package fontspec
\usepackage{unicode-math} % if you also need maths
\setmathfont{Latin Modern Math}
\begin{document}
$\not\to$
\end{document}

giving font-not-found error.
Disabling the line \setmathfont{Latin Modern Math} gives the bad arrow which I do not want to have:

Installing fonts manually

I downloaded the fonts here from the GUST project.
I added the fonts to my system by opening fontbook and adding there the fonts directly.
However, there is no Latin Modern Math in the package:

How can you install Modern Latin Math font in OS X?

I've also noticed The Latin Modern fonts are not installed to OS X with the MacTeX2015 distibution.

The LM fonts (also the math font) are installed in the tex distribution under:
/usr/local/texlive/2015/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype/public/lm
and /usr/local/texlive/2015/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype/public/lm-math

To use these font's throughout OS X there is no need to reinstall them, you can link these fonts to your Fonts in OS X as follows:

ln -s /usr/local/texlive/2015/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype/public/lm/ '/Library/Fonts/Latin Modern'
ln -s /usr/local/texlive/2015/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype/public/lm-math/ '/Library/Fonts/Latin Modern Math'

Note: This was inspired by the comments on this question.


Remapping keys to match Windows I'm completely new to the Mac and I have a whole lot of problems with the shortcuts etc.

Is it possible to remap the keys to match my windows expirience? For example I'd like to have CTRL+C, CTRL+V as Copy & Paste.

What I recommend for you is remapping the keys so that pressing the Control button on your keyboard tells you computer that you're pressing command. That way, you can use the button you're used to automatically without having to set up each shortcut you want. Here's how:

Go to System Preferences (in your Applications folder) and click Keyboard. Go to the Keyboard tab and click the Modifier Keys... button.

Select your keyboard from the Select keyboard... menu.
To give yourself a Windows-like experience, do the following:
In the first menu, Leave Caps Lock alone.
Set the second menu to Command so that the line reads like this: Control (^) Key: ⌘ Command
Change the third menu to Option.
Change the fourth menu to Control.

With this setup, pressing the Control button will make the computer think you've pressed Command. So, any shortcut that says command-v will work when you press control-v. The option key behaves like the alt key. The command button works as the control key usually does on a Mac. You can use it for things such as right-clicking.

Hope this works for you!


I enabled FileVault, now my desktop background reverts to stock at each reboot? I'm on a Mid 2012 MBP with Mountain Lion. I recently enabled FileVault on my boot SSD drive as well as encrypted my other hard drive I put into the optical bay. So far, so good.

However, each time I boot my desktop background reverts back to the default "galaxy" background that shipped with my MBP. Both my boot and secondary drive have their passwords stored in the keychain, so after logging in OSX should be able to see my background image.

I've tried placing the image on my primary and secondary drive but neither made a difference.

Is there some sort of trick I'm missing to get my own custom background image to stick after a reboot? I've even tried changing to a different default background image that ships with Mountain Lion, but even that reverted back to the default galaxy image.

Any Ideas?

This almost always has to do with corruption in the ~/Library since I've seen this come and go well before FileVault 2 came out.

Have you tried making a second user account and testing if the problem persists for a new user account?

If not, you'll need to poke into the ~/Library/Preferences folder, sort by date and see which files get updated when you change the desktop background and drag those preference files to the trash. (don't erase trash just yet in case you drag too many or the wrong preferences to trash).

Reboot and test - still not deleting the files. Once you think you've isolated the files (or file) where desktop pictures is stored, make a note of the file and empty the trash and the time.

That way if something else messes up, you can restore that file or resume the process of clearing selective preference files.


Processing videos through iMovie increases file size by 70x This is just a curiosity of mine. I screen recorded ~5hrs of video using Quicktime, split up into roughly 10-20 minute segments. The folder which I saved them to is 4.73 GB big.

However when I string those videos together using iMovie, add about 5 titles, and attempt to export a file at best quality, it estimates 332 GB!

The next step down is a lot better, but still nearly 10x bigger at 45.4 GB.

Even low quality is still more than 3x bigger than the original files

Where is all this extra data coming from?

EDIT: Even weirder, my screen recordings have no audio data, and I haven't added any in, so why is it still big when exporting audio only?

You have inadvertently wandered into the murky realm of video codecs.

The screen recording you made with Quicktime was initially saved using the extremely efficient H.264 compression algorithm.

H.264 is a codec optimised for distribution of video. It is designed to store video using the least possible amount of data at the cost of using a lot of CPU time to encode or decode.

If you have ~5hrs of video in 4.73GB of data, that must be encoded at ~2.1Mbit per second. This is extremely efficient compression! (for comparison, standard definition DVDs rarely pack more than 4hrs of video onto 7GB of space).
This efficiency is due to h.264 and that, unlike regular video footage, in screen recordings not much is typically changing between frames.

iMovie is optimised for working with video, not screen recordings, so the output options are tuned with that in mind.

ProRes, is a close-to-uncompressed algorithm that is optimised for editing video (computationally light to decompress and scrub through at the cost of lots of disk space).
High, will be a H.264 compression at approx 20Mbit/sec, this is a reasonable data rate for compressing HD video with good quality.

The audio option. AIFF is an uncompressed audio format. Thus it will use the same amount of data regardless of the content; even if your screen recording has no sound, it's still going to save 5hrs * 44.1 thousand zeros.


How can I have a key pressed at a specific time? I want to press a certain key (e.g. 'p') in a certain time (e.g. at 00:00), how can I accomplish this? I'm aware of Can a Mac be programmed to simulate pressing a key at a certain rate via software? but this doesn't include a timer of any kind.
P.S. I'm running at macOS 10.13 High Seirra

at + cliclick
You can use cliclick to execute your key presses and at (ships with macos) to schedule the execution of the command.
echo 'cliclick kp:"volume-up"' | at 09:00

If you want to schedule an event like to occur at some regular interval (e.g. some time every day, on Mondays, the first of each month, every ten minutes) you can use crontab. Open up the crontab list of jobs with crontab -e in a terminal. Then put in an entry like:
0 0 * * * cliclick kp:"volume-up"

Here are the man pages for at and cron if you want to see more details about how to get the behavior you want.
but first!
If you can run other at jobs but using cliclick with one is causing problems, just write a shell script with the command in it and run that with at. e.g:
echo 'zsh ~/clicktest.sh' | at 13:00

I also had problems just getting at to work at first. Apple seems to have made it pretty difficult to use at. You have to run the following command as root to enable the atrun program (which processes at jobs):
launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist

(To run it as root use sudo su to switch to root and then switch back with exit)
... just in case
Just to be safe I altered the file from the launchctl command - /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist - changing the entry "Disabled" to false.
Since this is a read-only volume you need to have SIP turned off and then use mount -uw / to make it writable. Then you have to change the permissions on the file to make it writable. e.g.
chmod 777 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist

Then change the permissions back to their previous state or the OS will complain when it goes to load the plist again:
chmod 644 /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.atrun.plist

I don't think you need to do all this I just did it because I was worried it might not launch atrun automatically on boot unless I changed the plist.


Home folder name changed but terminal prompt is still showing last name I changed the name of my home folder in 2 ways. First I change it using the instructions from the official Apple website:

sudo mv /Users/old_name /Users/new_name

and then I also changed it going to System Preferences > Users & Groups > Advanced Options.

My problem is that the prompt on the terminal is still showing me the last name I had

name-mbp:~ old-home-folder-name$

why?

Is it possible to make changes have effect also on the terminal?

What the terminal prompt is showing you is not the home folder name, but the user name.

The folder is displayed after the machine name, in the ~ highlighted below:

name-mbp:~ old-home-folder-name$
Folder   ^ ^ User name

You can type the command pwd ("print working directory") to see which folder it is currently in. Or you can type the command echo $HOME to show you what Terminal thinks your home directory is.


Why does Reminders seem to be syncing with the network, even though I have reminders turned off in iCloud settings? I started using Reminders.app as soon as I got iOS 5.0, and for me it mostly works very well. As soon as I got an iCloud account, of course I turned reminder syncing on there as well.

However I soon found that reminder syncing is still quite buggy at this stage. In particular, it doesn't seem to handle moving to-do items from list to list very well. I often got duplicate items and had other problems. (Note: This is not the topic of my question.)

So I finally decided to live without reminder syncing, and just use Reminders.app on my iPhone only. I turned off reminder syncing in iCloud. This did solve the problem with duplicate items, and I'm mostly happy with it.

But... I noticed that Reminders.app still seems to be accessing the network, even though I haven't configured reminders to sync with anything. (I am basing this observation on the little spinner in the status bar at the top of the iPhone screen.)

And whenever it does this, some of the old problems come back -- mostly sluggishness and jerky scrolling, etc.

I have verified that when I put the iPhone into airplane mode, the problem doesn't happen.

Does anyone know why Reminders.app would still try to access the network when iCloud syncing is turned off? What is it trying to do? Any way to turn it off completely?

Settings > Locations Services > Reminders > Off

If this is on, it'll be periodically checking your location, having nothing to do with iCloud.


My iPhone X was stolen. Will my iCloud be logged out if the person resets the iPhone using my phone's password? The person who steal the iPhone knows the phone password. If they manage to reset the iPhone using my phone password, will my iCloud be logged out? Will it reset my Face ID?

I also forgot to turn on my Find My iPhone.

Did you have two factor enabled? Does the thief have access to your recovery email?

Regardless there are things to do right away regardless so don't hesitate!

Refer to the Apple Support article:

If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is lost or stolen

  If Find My iPhone isn't enabled on your missing device

  If you didn't turn on Find My iPhone before your device was lost or stolen, you can't use it to locate your device. But you can use these steps to help protect your data:

  Change your Apple ID password. By changing your Apple ID password, you can prevent anyone from accessing your iCloud data or using other services (such as iMessage or iTunes) from your missing device.
  Change the passwords for other internet accounts on your device. This can include email accounts, Facebook, or Twitter.
  Report your lost or stolen device to local law enforcement. Law enforcement might request the serial number of your device. Find your device serial number.
  Report your lost or stolen device to your wireless carrier. Your carrier can disable the account, preventing phone calls, texts, and data use.

  Find My iPhone is the only way that you can track or locate a lost or missing device. If Find My iPhone isn't enabled on your device before it goes missing, there's no other Apple service that can find, track, or flag your device for you.


VLC for iPad and iPhone is available, but how to install? VLC for iPad and iPhone is available, but how to install it?  (it is not an App Store app)

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-ios.html

VLC was available on the iTunes App Store for some time, and the process for installing it was like any other.

However, a developer, who has contributed to VLC development in the past (IIRC) got in contact with Apple and asked VLC to be removed due to License Incompatibility.

VLC is licensed GPLv2, which states among many other things, that the source must be available, and I believe there are other provisions surrounding VLC with regard to Apple's per-device DRM.

Thus, Apple de-listed VLC from the App Store, and you cannot buy it anymore. Note that those who purchased it before will likely have it forever. (I still do, I still use it!)

There are two ways to install it/run it today:

(1) If you have a paid Apple Developer account, you may take the source, import it into XCode, codesign it, build/deploy it onto your own device. (Or for that matter, get someone with a Developer Account to do it for you.)

(2) Since VLC ships a raw .app file, it can be installed if your iPhone/iPad/iPod is jailbroken. I believe raw .app files can be installed via Installous? (Anyone is free to correct me on this, as I don't use Jailbroken devices anymore.)

Update: VLC for iOS was subsequently relicensed and re-released on the App Store. It can be downloaded by visiting this link.


WhatsApp haven't restored all the media files I upgraded from iPhone SE to iPhone XS and restored the WhatsApp backup from iPhone SE to the new iPhone XS.

However, while some media files were imported, not all of them were imported correctly. They are blank.

Example:

How can I fix this? I'm using the latest version of iOS and WhatsApp on both phones.

I solved this by importing all the old iPhone data to the new iPhone.

This seems to be a better solution than manually moving WhatsApp.


How do you remove MariaDB and NGINX from Mac via terminal? How do you remove MariaDB and NGINX from Mac via terminal?

I am just trying to run Apache2 on localhost:8080 but I get the NGINX welcome page.

Trying stopping the process - nginx -s stop should shut the server down. To restart it,  run which nginx to tell you where it's running from. Then run the main executable.

Instead of going for the nuclear option of removing it straight away, stop the server. Once you know where it's starting from, you can navigate there and look at the config files to see what port it's on etc. Or you could just nuke it using rm -rf on the nginx paths.


Find images of a specific size and move them to trash from terminal Im sorting images in a kinda large image library, and thumbnails from old iPhoto-library is still in there. And I'm in need of removing them to improve speed of sorting the images.

I have found this answer here for linux, but how about macOS? Is there a way of searching a folder, recursively, and determine if the image *.jpg, *.png, *.bmp, *.jpeg have the W360 and H270?

Running Sierra 10.12.4

Here is an example bash script that can achieve the goal natively, no need to install anything.

#!/bin/bash

targetDir="$HOME/Pictures"

find "$targetDir" -iname '*.jpg' -o -iname '*.png' -o -iname '*.bmp' -o -iname '*.jpeg' 2>/dev/null | \
while read -r filename; do
    hw="$(sips -g pixelHeight -g pixelWidth "$filename" 2>/dev/null)"
    h="$(awk '/pixelHeight/{print $2}'<<<"$hw")"
    w="$(awk '/pixelWidth/{print $2}'<<<"$hw")"
    if [[ $h -eq 270 ]] && [[ $w -eq 360 ]]; then
        echo rm "$filename"
    fi
done

All you need to do is set the targetDir variable to the starting point of where you want the find command to look. The default is the Pictures folder within your Home folder.

Note: In the example script the echo command needs to be removed from in front of rm "$filename" in order for the files to actually be deleted and is there so you can first test the output of the script as to what files will be deleted. You can of course choose to remove it without testing and just go for it, if you're confident that you want to delete any .jpg, .png, .bmp or .jpeg file with dimensions of 270 pixel height by 360 pixel width within the targetDir.

Also note that depending on the total file count of the target file extensions, the running of this script can take some amount of time to complete. On my system it found ~1000 files to delete out of 27500 files in my Pictures folder and took at least 5 to 10 minutes to complete.

That said, I ran this script, as it's written, and the only files other then the test file I created with the target dimensions, all other files found where in one specific location within my iPhoto Library bundle in the Thumbnails folder. So, wouldn't it just be easier to go into the bundle and delete the contents in Finder? That is, if it's really just those Thumbnails you want to get rid of!

If you don't know how to use the script, do the following in Terminal:

touch delete270x360images
open delete270x360images

Copy and paste the script code from above into the opened delete270x360images document, modify as needed/wanted and then save and close.

In Terminal, make it executable:

chmod u+x delete270x360images

Now to use it in Terminal, type the following and then press enter.

./delete270x360images

Wait for it to complete.


Auto Unlock not working on MBP Early 2013 - iOS 10 - watchOS 3.0 - macOS Sierra GM For some reason, I cannot get "Auto Unlock" to work.

Currently running macOS Sierra GM on a MBP Retina Early 2013, watchOS 3.0 and iOS 10 GM.

I've already disabled Two-Step verification and enabled Two-Factor verification for my Apple ID. All devices appear registered on iCloud devices.

Any ideas of what could be the reason?

As mentioned in other answers, the auto unlock feature is officially supported only on Macs that were introduced after mid 2013, and include both Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11ac. As an owner of a 2012 retina MacBookPro, I was disappointed to find that the feature did't work.

However, it is pretty easy to replace the older Airport chip with a newer one that is used on mid 2013 models (model number of the chip: BCM94360CSAX, can be found on eBay etc for around $10 or so). After replacing the chip, the option for auto unlock appears on the preferences and you should be good to go (for me, required also nvram reset and logout from iCloud). Obviously the operation voids warranty, and some have reported it to cause issues on OS X recovery install over wifi. Still, it seems to be currently the only option for enabling the feature, and as an added bonus you get also the better transfer speeds of an 802.11ac chip.


Set hours in week view in calendar Is there any way to set hours I want to see in Week view in Calendar?
I do not need hours marked with red ellipsis's and need only hours marked with blue rectangle.
If I try to resize window, then it compresses the whole view, i.e. everything becomes smaller and still shows hours I do not use...
How can I make Calendar to show only specified hours in Week view, which is most convenient in my daily activities - need to see the whole week at once.

Go to Calendar → Preferences → General and set Show 24 hours at a time to 12.

Additionally you can set Day starts at to automatically scroll to given time.


"Boot Camp only support 64-bit Windows 8 or later" when attempting to install Windows 10 I tried to install Windows 10 on my MacBook Pro 2015 running macOS Sierra, but I am getting a message on Boot Camp saying

  Boot Camp only supports 64-bit Windows 8 or later installation on this platform. Please use an ISO file for 64-bit Windows 8 or later installation.

I downloaded the ISO from Microsoft's website named "Win10_1703_English_x64.iso".

Version 1703, Creators, is the wrong one, use the Anniversary version with 1607 in the name is the correct version. After installing Win10, you can upgrade to 1703.


Setting up rEFIt-based tripple boot system on a Mac with a pre-existing Boot Camp installation What I have right now is an iMac running Mountain Lion with a Boot Camp partition running Windows 7. I have a vanilla Boot Camp setup with no quirky bells and whistles on the side.

What I want is to install rEFIt so I can triple boot Mountain Lion, Windows 7 and Ubuntu. I've done this several time before and am aware of the process I need to go through, including how to handle the presence of 5 partitions on a system that can only handle 4.

What I don't want to have to do is wipe out my Boot Camp partition in order to do this. It's possible, since I only have games which can be reinstalled, but I have a lot of them and that would be a huge pain, so I'd like to avoid that route if possible.

Question: Is it possible to set up a rEFIt-based triple boot system while preserving a pre-existing Boot Camp partition?

I've just decided to go ahead with it and see what happens and rEFIt successfully picks up the Windows 7 partition as desired.

Following the Lifehacker guide to triple booting, there's a section that says

  If you've already installed Windows using Boot Camp, though, that's
  fine—just ignore the Windows parts of this step


How To Recover Specific Items When MacBookPro Won't Boot So I have a mid 2012 MacBookPro running Mojave and it's fully upgraded (SSD and 16gb RAM). I accidentally ran system updates and that led to an error and now every time I try to boot it gets stuck on the white logo screen with no progress bar.
I have a 1TB external drive that has a Time Machine back up on it but the problem is I haven't backed it up in the last few months. I would really like to recover the files created in these past few months. What would be the easiest solution to recover them?
My process so far: I bought an additional 2tb external hard drive. I booted up in Internet Recovery Mode, unmounted the internal hard drive (SSD), and created a new disk image from Container disk2 (the container for the internal hard drive) to copy onto the 2tb external hard drive. I had to use this method because the regular option "Copy From Macintosh HD" was greyed out. That worked and I'm in the process of verifying it in Disk Utility to make sure there's no errors. I really want to ensure that the files that I want are going to be able to be opened though. So before I restore the old Time Machine backup (from the 1 tb drive) and open the .dmg file (from the 2 tb drive) I'm thinking I should reinstall the OS in Disk Utility onto the 2tb external hard drive. Then I boot up off that and check to see if the Disk2.dmg correctly copied and I can retrieve my files.
Does that seem like it would work? Open to other suggestions as well. Thank you!

I would recommend a different approach to avoid unforseen problems and make it more predictable:
Install macOS on the external disk and boot from it. Mount the internal disk and copy files over manually to a 3rd location - either a separate APFS volume on the external disk or a 3rd external disk. Once you've copied and verified all files, wipe and restore the backup on the internal disk.


How do I stop daghesh from moving when typing in Hebrew When typing in Hebrew on macOS 10.13, the daghesh sometimes 'jumps' from one character to another. Here is an example. Initially, the daghesh is in the correct place (שׁ):

But when I add a 'ה', it jumps into it:

Bizarrely, with some characters it doesn't jump:

Does anyone know what is going on here, and how to stop the Daghesh from jumping? It's very annoying!

Thanks,

Andy

I found that installing the following font fixed this issue – so I presume it is an issue with some of the Hebrew fonts that come installed with macOS?

Here is the font: SBL HEBREW FONT


kernel_task hundreds of % CPU yet cpu frequency is being lowered I'm trying to solve the mystery of a crazy high cpu usage on kernel_task.

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7, Yosemite 10.10.2

I saw some advice to download the Intel Power Gadget. That showed me that the my CPU is slowing way down. How do I fix this? When this happens, I can sometimes cycle the power on the MBP. But this is driving me crazy.

Apple documents this.

  Activity Monitor may show that a process named kernel_task is using a large percentage of your CPU, and during this time you may notice a lot of fan activity. This process helps manage temperature by making the CPU less available to processes that are using the CPU intensely. In other words, kernel_task responds to conditions that cause your CPU to become too hot. When the temperature decreases, kernel_task automatically reduces its activity.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203184

You might want to reset the SMC one time to be sure it's not stuck and providing incorrect temperature readings to the processor.

If the SMC or high temperatures is the root cause, you should be able to correlate the various internal temperature sensors and physical measurement of the case and exhaust air temperature with the design throttling of the kernel scheduling and the clock rate adjustments the chipset is designed to make in response to thermal measurements.

Worst case, you have a hardware issue with faulty temperature sensors or an out-of-spec CPU that generates more heat than it should for a given GHz clock rate.


Why is my RAM nearly fully used? I bought a Macbook Pro 15 inches 3 months ago. It's running on Mac OS X Snow Leopard and it has 4GB of RAM.

I consider having a fair use of this computer :
- surfing (Chrome)
- developing (Fraise)
- gaming

But after some hours of use, here is what happens :

It's in french but you can easily see that only some tens of MB (Mo) are still available, whereas the sum of all launched processes is far to reach 4GB...

So where the hell did my RAM go ?

There's more memory available there than you think. "Inactive" memory is memory that has been used, and is essentially keeping its old data so that it can be swiftly grabbed again if needs be. However, if your computer needs the memory for some new process, that memory is capable of being used - the old data is dropped out, and new data is put in.

As others have said, you also need to show all processes for a full idea of what's going on with your memory. But you're not nearly as tapped out as it first appears.


Multiple Macbook Pros with one monitor I have two MacBook Pros (one for work; one personal) that I want to connect to one monitor, one keyboard, and one mouse, and be able to switch between the two easily. Typically I'd opt to purchase a KVM switch, but it's been a while since I've needed that type of setup. My questions are:

Are KVM switches even needed anymore for MacBook Pros? Is there some sort of magic Wi-Fi / Bluetooth / Airplay device that can perform the same function?
If KVM switches (or something similar) are still used, what's a good make / model that works well with Macbooks?
Is a hardware solution even needed anymore? Is there software that can perform the same functions? (For example: Logitech Flow https://www.howtogeek.com/317962/how-to-use-logitech-flow-for-mice-and-keyboards-across-multiple-computers/)

Thank you!

Are KVM switches even needed anymore for MacBook Pros?

As special as we'd like to believe MacBook Pro computers are, they're still computers with industry standard connectivity like USB, video, etc.  What works for a PC laptop or desktop will work equally as well with a MacBook Air/Pro laptop and Mac desktop.

Do you need a KVM?  No.

Just get a quality monitor with multiple inputs and a keyboard/mouse combo with multiple connections.

You've already mentioned Logitech Flow which allows you to use a single mouse/keyboard across two different computers simultaneously (i.e. cut/copy in Windows and paste in macOS).

Though convenient, it's not the exact product you would need - it's actually something simpler:  multi-device connectivity.  The same Logitech products like the MX Series keyboard and mouse have the ability to pair up to 3 different devices.  A simple press of a button will switch connectivity from one computer to the next.

  Is there some sort of magic Wi-Fi / Bluetooth / Airplay device that can perform the same function.

If there was, you'd still need to switch it.  WiFi, Bluetooth and AirPlay aren't magic and give you features where none exist.  They just replace wires as a matter of convenience.  You don't suddenly get KVM capability because you can stream video without cables.

And...if you're looking at software, that means at least one computer must be booted at all times as it has to be the host.  If you're going to spend the money on software, you might as well get a hardware solution that's platform agnostic and much more reliable (i.e. the next version of macOS breaks it and requires an upgrade)

  Is there software that can perform the same functions?

I ran across FOSS solution for a software based KVM called Barrier. It works on macOS, Windows, FreeBSD, and Linux.  Binaries are available for both macOS and Windows.  It is also available via Homebew and available for FreeBSD as both a package and as a port per FreshPorts.

It’s actually really cool software that allows you to arrange your setup graphically so that you can “move” your mouse across the screen “barrier” and onto the next computer (i.e your Windows machine is to the left of your Mac).  It also allows you to assign a keyboard shortcut to select a different computer to control.

It’s only limitation is that it doesn’t switch the monitor as a traditional KVM would.  You still need to either have individual monitors for each computer (not a problem if using laptops) or a monitor with multiple inputs.  There’s an excellent YouTube video showing how it works with a Windows machine and a Raspberry Pi.


How can you access Apple Mail from Apple script? I want to archive old emails ( say, older then 7 days ) from my inbox  automatically with an applescript scheduled via cron.

To be honest, I am open to other Apple-friendly languages such as Swift or Coco , though the learning curve might be prohibitive for me.

Ideas, Examples, and links relevant to the topic are welcome.

To start with, you can try this Applescript:

set interval to 7
set target to (current date) - interval
set oldCount to 0
tell application "Mail"
    set box to mailbox named "INBOX" of account named "Your_mailbox_here"
    set maxMessages to count of messages in box
    repeat with index from 1 to maxMessages
        set currentMessage to message index in box
        set msgDate to date received of currentMessage
        if msgDate is greater than target then
            set oldCount to oldCount + 1
            # do something here
        end if
    end repeat
end tell

Enter the above script in Script Editor, play with it till it does what you want, then save it as a script file (.scpt). run it with osascript(1).

Look at Applescript Resources and the Applescript Language Guide for more useful info. Also look at the scripting dictionary of Mail.app using the "Open Dictionary..." command in Script Editor to see what sort of things you can script in mail.


Move iTunes media files to a different location I'm organising my iTunes media in two folder myself /Volumes/Data/Music and /Volumes/Data/OtherMusic. My 2nd hard-drive port (yes, the port, not the HDD itself) died so I copied all music to Volumes/System/Users/Me/Music/Music and Volumes/System/Users/Me/Music/OtherMusic

How do I change all tracks in the library to be connected to the new location WITHOUT

consolidating all files
loosing playlists
changing the folder structure

if I have to tinker with bash and RegEx that is fine too.

Step 1: Install iTunes

Step 2: Move any new content

Step 3: Copy the iTunes backup from your old computer

Step 4 (optional): Add back new content


Can I unplug my Mac mini from power once it's in hibernate mode? Suppose I want to work on my Mac mini here, reach a certain point in my work, then put it in hibernate mode and unplug the power.

From what I understand the hibernate mode will save the status of the Mac into the disk, and will unpower all devices. So, from what I understand, I can now unplug the Mac mini and no damage will occur.

In principle I can take my Mac mini into my messenger bag, drive 2 hours to home, and once at home attach it to a power plug with its cord and power it back on. At that stage the Mac will take some time to restore from disk, but I will have got the same status of my Mac as when I switched it off.

Please note this is not the same as "reopen current windows", because certain programs have a more complex status than just having an open window and its position. For one example (and there are several) you can think to Terminal.app. If you have multiple tabs open each history of commands is preserved separately until you quit the Terminal.app, once you quit only one tab history is saved to file and persist to your next reboot (btw, I am aware there "fixes" to this behaviour, but they do not apply to my actual case, I just need to carry an example).

Do you see any flaws in my story? Is it really possible to unplug the Mac mini once it has gone into hibernate mode?

You shouldn't unplug your Mac unless it's shut off; however you can do it using hibernate mode. The closest to hibernate is in this answer, How can I manually put a Macbook Pro to hibernate without going to sleep mode first?, it outlines how to enable hibernate on your Mac, which it actually copies the memory to the disk, and if you loose power, it restores the memory. It's made for MacBooks, but will work fine for any Mac.

The Reopen Windows feature should work, but I don't like using at, as it can significantly slow down startup (and login) speed.


iPad Safari missing bookmarks, favourites and reading list My iPad Safari bookmarks, favourites & reading list have disappeared. It won't let me bookmark or favourite any sites either. I've tried a hard restart, switching off iCloud & deleting cookies but to no avail. Is there a way to solve this?

Check your Restrictions.

If that doesn't work, back up your iPad and use iBackupBot to delete the Safari folder in app data.

after you delete Safari folder, Reset All Content And Settings(wipe)then activate and restore your iPad.

or just type safari in settings and clear history and website data,
after that, you can sync you data from iCloud.


How do I make the user's 'library' folder within a Time Machine backup available to 3rd party apps? As many users know, the Library folder located within a User's Home directory is hidden in recent versions of macOS. And, to make this visible, the user can hold down the Option key while accessing the Go menu from within the Finder.

In terms of Time Machine backups, the same Library folder is also hidden from view. Users can make these visible within the Finder by making 'hidden' files visible and navigating around their Time Machine backups.

However, what I am looking for is a way to make this same folder (i.e. the user's home 'library') on Time Machine backups visible to 3rd party applications.

By way of example, let's say I wanted to use data recovery software to import an old iOS iTunes backup located within a Time Machine backup, how would I do this?

Making the folder visible within the Finder does not help, although I could then manually copy it from the TM backup drive onto another disk and import it from there, but I'm looking for a more convenient/elegant solution if one exists?

As the latest backup is always going to be in the same place, then it's going to be the same path as ~/Library, plus the TM path.

Regular path is ~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync
or longhand Volumes/[boot drive]/Users/[user name]/Library/Application Support/MobileSync
so in Time Machine it will be
Volumes/[TM drive]/Backups.backupdb/[mac name]/Latest/[boot drive]/Users/[user name]/Library/Application Support/MobileSync

Your larger problem may be that the folders in there have special permissions rwx------ & you cannot get any further than Library using Go to Folder... from the Go menu.


Bluetooth corruption on 2013 Macbook Pro I have an Early 2013 Macbook Pro. OS Version is 10.9. I'm using a trackpad connected to the bluetooth.  All of the sudden, and at random times, my trackpad will lose its connection and will not reconnect.  When this happens, I pull up the Bluetooth preferences and I see:

<< do not localize >...
Name not available

Bluetooth will not turn off at all. Nothing can connect to bluetooth once this happens.  I have to do a hard reboot of my laptop to get bluetooth working again. This tends to work for a few hours, sometimes an entire day, but at random, bluetooth seems to go corrupt again.

Anyone else having a problem similar to this? Any hints on fixing it?  Also, is there some way I can force a reset of just bluetooth? Maybe by the command line?

I found some workaround that will at least spare you a reboot when problem arrives. It may be found here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/23705326#23705326

Shortly, type in terminal:

sudo kextunload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport
sudo kextload -b com.apple.iokit.BroadcomBluetoothHostControllerUSBTransport

After doing this your devices should reconnect. I have the same OS Version (10.9) and Early 2013 Macbook Pro and it works with my problems with bluetooth keyboard.


Whats the equivalent of the unix tree command on OSX Whats the equivalent of the unix tree command on OSX (10.8.5)

You can install tree via Homebrew:

Follow the instructions for the basic installation
Run brew install tree to install the tool


How to remap F4 to Dashboard or Notifications on a MacBook Pro in Yosemite? I had this working fine in Tiger thru Mavericks, but it broke in Yosemite. Pressing F4 now launches Launchpad, and only fnF4 triggers Dashboard.

Launchpad is useless compared to Spotlight or even the Dock. I'd much rather have the F4 key triggering Dashboard again, or even Notifications (which is really starting to come along).

I have:

System Prefs / Mission Control / Keyboard and Mouse Shortcuts / Show Dashboard set to F4.
Syst Prefs / Keyboard / Keyboard / Use all F-keys as standard function keys unticked.
Syst Prefs / Keyboard / Shortcuts / Launchpad & Dock / Show Launchpad unticked.
Syst Prefs / Keyboard / Shortcuts / Mission Control / Show Dashboard set to F4.

Ideas? Hopeless? Thanks!

2014 13" Retina MacBook Pro
Mac OS X v10.1 Yosemite (14B25)

Do you have any exclamation points in triangles indicating the key is also mapped to a different function? From what you’ve described as your settings, it should be working…


How do I increase "ulimit -u" (max user processes)? I can change all of the usual ulimits via (for instance) ulimit -n 8192 and launchctl limit maxfiles 8192 8192. Somehow, this doesn't seem to work for -u, the maximum number of user processes:

~$ sudo launchctl limit maxproc 8192 8192
~$ sudo launchctl limit maxproc
    maxproc     2048           2048
-- in a new terminal:
~$ ulimit -u
1064

I do get a "failed to fork" every once in a while, and it's quite annoying having to kill a bunch of processes when "kill" can't start :) (i.e. I usually resort to just rebooting the machine).

What's the correct way to change the maximum number of user processes?

http://blog.ghostinthemachines.com/2010/01/19/mac-os-x-fork-resource-temporarily-unavailable/ talks about this issue in great detail.

When you do sudo launchctl limit maxproc, you're viewing or changing the system-wide launchd limits.

When you do launchctl limit maxproc, you're viewing or changing the launchd limits for your user.

One thing to keep in mind is this:

  The root user can increase the hard limits of the system-wide launchd,
  without a reboot.  However, you cannot change a user’s launchd hard
  limits without a reboot (even if trying to do so as the root user).

Basically, the hard limit (the right hand column) that is displayed when you initially do launchctl limit maxproc will be the limit that you can set using ulimit -u without rebooting.  Logging out and back in will not work.  Even if you change whats displayed by launchctl limit maxproc, the initial hard limit remains.  See this answer for a bit more info on the relationship between ulimit and launchctl limit.
To raise that limit, you have to

edit/create /etc/sysctl.conf to raise the maximum processes supported by the kernel

kern.maxproc=2500
kern.maxprocperuid=2500

edit/create /etc/launchd.conf to raise the hard limits of the system-wide launchd at boot time

limit maxproc 2500 2500

reboot

Also note that 2500 seems to be the maximum limit that kern.maxproc can be set to.  I'll ask a question about this as soon as I reboot and have enough free processes to open another Chrome tab.


Do OS X Lion's Versions and Resume features store the cached data for encrypted .sparsebundle images in a secure way? I store sensitive information on my laptop in encrypted .sparsebundle images which are made with apps like Disk Utility, Knox and Espionage. The question is, if I upgrade to Lion, when I'm working on a file located in one of these mounted disk images and Lion is saving older versions of the file, are these older versions stored within the encrypted image (as they should be) or somewhere else? If the versions are stored somewhere else, are they encrypted or not?

I've done some testing, and can offer a (hopefully) authoritative answer.

Short answer: the versions are stored on the same disk (or disk image) as the actual file, so versions shouldn't leak information outside of your encrypted image.  But there might be another leak, see below.

Long answer: Versions creates an invisible folder at the top of each volume, named ".DocumentRevisions-V100" with an internal structure like this:

.DocumentRevisions-V100
    .cs
        ChunkStorage    (this is presumably used to store chunks of large files that didn't entirely change between versions)
    AllUIDs             (this is only created on disks that have permissions ignored)
    ChunkTemp
    db-v1
        db.sqlite      (this is the primary index of document IDs, etc)
    PerUID             (this is only created on disks that have ownership respected)
        501            (documents created/owned by user #501)
        502            (etc...)
    staging            (???)

For info on the sqlite index and the background daemon that mediates access to it, read John Siracusa's excellent review at ars technica.

The document versions themselves are stored in subdirectories in either AllUIDs or PerUID/youruserid.  Under that, each versioned document gets its own subdirectory, numbered starting at 1.  Under that is a single folder named "com.apple.documentVersions", and under that, each revision is stored as a separate document (unless it's broken into chunks -- I haven't experimented with large documents) named with a UUID and type extension.  For example, if I (user #501) edit a rtf document on my boot volume and save several revisions, they might be stored as:

/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/1/com.apple.documentVersions/0787B7C3-DE11-4065-9FD9-61870212011D.rtf
/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/1/com.apple.documentVersions/D533CF36-0D49-4910-B0EB-C92395C05726.rtf

If I then opened another rtf file and saved a version of it, it might be named:

/.DocumentRevisions-V100/PerUID/501/2/com.apple.documentVersions/74A6EF6E-A22A-4196-B560-40ABDBF46DF4.rtf

If I saved it on my SecretDocs image (mounted with ownership ignored), versions would be stored like:

/Volumes/SecretDocs/.DocumentRevisions-V100/AllUIDs/1/com.apple.documentVersions/2ED4DAFD-9BCF-4158-BFDB-F9EEC631E44A.rtf

BTW, permissions on the version files seem to be cloned from the original files.  Permissions on the enclosing folders tend to allow execute only (i.e. you can't see the filenames, but if you know the file's name you can access it).  For example PerUID/501 is set to allow execute only for user 501, no access for anyone else. The db-v1 folder only allows root access.  Without investigating in detail, it seems to be pretty locked-down.

Now, about that other leak I threatened you with: Lion apps tend to save their state when you quit, so if you have a confidential document open when you quit, some of its information (like I think a screenshot) may get stored in ~/Library/Saved Application State/someappid.savedState.  As long as you close before saving I think you're safe here.


Is storing an iMac sideways safe? I have some old devices in storage on their sides. They are otherwise completely normal - well ventilated, etc, etc. except that they could only fit when they are on their sides. After being reminded of them by a certain comment, I wondered if they were OK.

So: Is is safe to store an iMac on its side, assuming every other aspect of its storage is normal and safe?

Yes, it won't hurt the iMac. In fact they can even be used sideways, as long as you don't block any vents. Hard drive bearings are said to last longest when they are either upright or flat, but apart from the convection-cooled Mac Cube I don't know of any Mac that depends on orientation for cooling or anything else.

If you are putting them away for any length of time, get some silica gel packets or a "Thirsty Hippo" or local equivalent to ensure humidity does not speed corrosion or otherwise damage your machines. Wrap them tightly in plastic to prevent critters crawling in, there is nothing worse than finding something living in your old computer. Dead bodies or other debris may be corrosive or conductive. If your iMac is the CRT kind consider cutting a panel out of plywood to protect the glass screen. CRTs are hard to smash but easy to scratch or chip.

If you are putting away anything really precious (iMac signed by the Steves?) best practice is sealing the computer in an environment of dry nitrogen gas - it's a serious measure but not actually that hard to do since airtight bags are easy to find and nitrogen is becoming common in auto tire shops. Removing oxygen prevents oxidisation (rust) and will also make it impossible for creatures to colonise your Mac since they cannot live without oxygen.

In the last decade the ROHS directive has seen the use of lead-free solder increase. One big problem with this is the growth of "whiskers" from the solder and other circuit elements that can bridge what should be gaps between circuit paths. While the exact cause of whiskers and the right way to prevent their growth post-manufacturing is still unknown there are minority suggestions that vacuum or nitrogen environments help - but from my reading, a temperature-controlled or even cycling environment is more likely to be effective. When the exact facts are known the right way to store computers long-term will probably change. But it's sad to think that there is a risk to our machines even if they are well cared-for. Modern Apple machines, since about 2006, conform to the ROHS directive so this applies to them. Older machines may well be manufactured using lead solder and so tin whiskers would not be an issue. I could not find a definitive answer.


Edit from-address in Mail.app? I use subaddressing a lot when I send e-mails. Currently I use Thunderbird with some plugins for this purpose but it is slow and I would prefer to use Mail.app.

Is there a way in Mail.app to edit the from address when composing a new mail?

Not the answer you're looking for, but there's no way to use subaddressing from Apple Mail in the way you're after.

iCloud itself does support the overall functionality via email aliases, but this is limited to three email aliases per account (unless you previously moved across from MobileMe with five email aliases). More information about this is available at Create an email alias in iCloud Mail, although this is rather limited compared to what you're really after and only relates to iCloud mail.

Unfortunately, I'm also not aware of any plugin that add this functionality, but hopefully someone will develop one in future as the demand for this seems to be increasing, especially as a way to help users tag email addresses based on the services they're subscribing/signing up to.

You also won't get any joy from MS Outlook as it still doesn't support this (although, similar to Apple, Microsoft does support it via its Outlook.com service).

There may be other solutions, but I'm not personally aware of any (except for gmail which does support this).

In the meantime you could provide feedback to Apple about Mail.


Why can't I save pdf files from Safari? I know that this is a fairly common problem, but I've never had it before: if a pdf is displayed in a Safari window, clicking the download icon in the overlay in the bottom middle of the window doesn't do anything. I know that a common cause is the presence of an AdobePDFviewer plugin, but it isn't installed and Preview is my default app for reading PDFs. I know that I can do a "Save As," but I'd like to regain this functionality.

I've tried various other remedies, to no avail.

The problem appeared to be that Safari didn't support downloading the PDF from the popup provided by the website (in my case 1Password with its Emergency Kit PDF). Instead I had to use CMD + S or use the File menu in the Menu Bar to save the PDF.

1Password informed me "That is expected behavior — Safari doesn't fully support downloading the PDF from the popup we provide." One is supposed to press command-S or "File > Save As" when I reached out to them.


Macbook disk space show as used photos library space that is stored in an external SD I have moved my photo library into an external SD card and now that library is configured as the system photo library.

The problem is that my Macbook shows that the hard drive is still using an amount of space (22,2GB) used by photos:

How could I solve that?

This is a bug and I can reproduce that on macOS 10.12 and macOS 10.13 and I have filed both feedback and a radar (developer bug with Apple) to remedy it.

My thought is that the process that reads the space occupied by photos libraries isn't smart enough to detect that the iCloud or system library isn't on the boot volume.

Until Apple fixes their code you could not store the photos off the disk or understand that the summary calculations are wrong. One might assume that if enough people report the same bug, it might get more weight when the list of   bugs to fix gets reviewed - but I can't speak for how Apple in specific decides which engineers work on what tasks.

For me the 109 GB of green "photos" exists on the volume Data and not on fast - despite what the visual shows.


How do I do Time Machine backups for multiple computers? I have 4 Macs that need TimeMachine backups; they all run Snow Leopard, and it's unlikely that they will be upgraded to Lion/Mountain Lion anytime soon.

Currently, they are all backed up to a bunch of drives set up in a RAID array, but it causes me a fair amount of pain every time a drive fails (which happens somewhat frequently).

Is there an easier way to do this? I'd prefer not to use a Time Capsule, since we need to have a NAS anyway, and I'd prefer to only have one set of technology to maintain.

You question is a bit unclear. How do you back them up to the NAS currently?

Time Machine can backup to network drives On supported NAS machines so you need to check with your NAS vendor for the particulars. The other option would be to have one of your Macs host all the Time Machine backups.


Is it possible to rename default directories in the users home folder? Can default folders such as Documents, Downloads, Music, etc be renamed to something else? Like how on a Linux system you could edit user-dirs.dirs?

The capitalisation of these direction bugs me as it interferes with my naming convention of everything being lowercase.

Basically you can't. If you mainly work with Terminal you can just set symlinks to make the folders also reachable via the names you are used to (ln -s ~/Documents ~/doc etc). This also works for Finder of course, your home directory may just look a bit cluttered then.


Reconciling Chrome Shortcuts in Parallels On OS X, a new Chrome tab can be opened by pressing Cmd+T, but on Windows you press Ctrl+T. This works fine if you map Cmd to Ctrl in Parallels, but becomes problematic when cycling between tabs.

In Windows Ctrl+Tab advances to the next tab, but in OS X Cmd+Tab switches between applications. As a result I am constantly context-switching for Chrome between OS X and Windows in Parallels. Furthermore, I have to move a finger to the Ctrl key to cycle between tabs on OS X.

Is there a recommended way to reconcile these differences so that I can preferably cycle between tabs with Cmd+Tab without ruining other key combinations?

The best I've found is to go into Parallels Preferences and add the key-binds I use:

Cmd-Shift-R Full Refresh
Cmd-R Simple Refresh
Cmd-Shift-I Open Dev Tools
Cmd-O While Dev Tools are open, search for a file

Maybe others will have additional shortcuts that they use.


How do I use dictation paste with applescript? I am trying to make dictation code snippets/templates with applescript because I want to add multi language functionality and toggle between languages to change syntax.

What's the programmatic way of using the built in dictation's paste feature?

Also, is there any command for cursor placement after paste?

Thanks!

If dictation is enabled and running on your system,  the command you would say to paste something from your clipboard is “Paste That”.

If dictation is enabled and running on your system, you can say the command “Show Commands” … which should open a window showing all of your dictation commands

  Also, is there any command for cursor placement after paste?

Look at the "Navigation" section of the image below for cursor placement commands

Once this window was open you can then say something like. “How Do I Paste”.  This should narrow down the results to all of the dictation commands with the word “Paste”


How smart is iTunes or iPhone's shuffle function? Is iTunes shuffle function is just a programming language random() function or it's smarter than that? Does it use play count, skip count and other parameters to play better songs first?

This has been a point for discussion for a very long time!

Here's a great article looking at this exact issue - How Much Does iTunes Like My Five-Star Songs? Bear in mind this is from 2005 but I see very similar behaviour to what is described here.

The standout image for me is this one:

It shows pretty clearly that shuffle does use rating in determining which song to play. I find it strange that mid-rated songs are much more likely to be played than high-rated songs.

AskDifferent user Ian C. did some interesting experiments last year and found that the appearing non-randomness of shuffle is probably due to the algorithm re-using the seed rather than being completely random.

The meaning of this is that shuffle is not truly random, only pseudorandom. As this Random Seed article (Wikipedia) explains, having the seed used in a pseudorandom process will allow you to recreate the same "random" results. True randomness is actually very, very hard to get. (While working on a mobile phone at Siemens years ago a doctor of mathematics had to be brought in to write the random function - the ordinary programmers weren't considered qualified, and the C library function considered inadequate.)


My phone was purchased the US, and don't have purchase proof. Can I get it swapped in India? I purchased my phone from US and brought it back to India. Now, its rear camera is not performing well, and there is also touch problem. I'd like to get it swapped. However, I lost my purchase proof. Can I still get it swapped without the invoice?

fbara is correct - there are too many variables for anyone here to give you a definite answer here. But here is what I can tell you.

If your iPhone is still covered by Apple's global warranty, then it will still be covered. If you purchased an Applecare plan, and it's still within the period of cover, then it will be covered. If it's out of Apple's own warranty period, it may still be covered depending on your local (India's) consumer laws.

Whether or not Apple will swap your phone will be up to them to determine. They will need to assess the faults and will then decide whether it's a repair or replacement proposition, or indeed one in which you need to pay some money.

One thing you can do is check your serial number here.

Checking your serial number will advise you if it still has a valid purchase date, what repairs and service coverage it has, and whether you're still eligible for technical support over the phone. If you're not sure where to find your Serial number, the easiest way to do it is to go to Settings > General > About and it's listed about halfway down.

Finally, it is definitely still worth you calling Apple about this - even if checking your serial number shows your coverage has ended. Apple has been known to still honour repairs and replacements for products outside warranty periods depending on individual circumstances. They may also be able to arrange a swap by putting a hold on your credit card to the value of a replacement phone and just shipping you a replacement. As long as you send the other one back within a certain period, you'll never be charged.

In summary, just call Apple. In India the toll free number is 000800 1009009 (as long as you're calling from a landline, otherwise you may be charged by your provider if calling from a mobile).


Blank process name in Activity Monitor on OS X Mavericks In my activity monitor I have noticed that there is a process appearing that has no name.
It is owned by root.

How can I find out what this process is?

Try clicking the "info" button and then running a sample on the process. For me, the process turned out to by iStatLocalDaemon.


Unable to delete standard user account I have an administration acct and a standard acct in my computer. I go to delete the standard but, after unlocking the lock, it does not allow me to select the standard, only the adm. What am I doing wrong ?

If that account is logged through fast user switching, log it out first. If that isn't the case, well, there could be many potential solutions but one that has worked in many of the cases I've seen is to create a 3rd account, an administrator, and try to delete the standard user using this 3rd account.


Installing a Windows partition on Mac HD - dual boot in short My current HD in my MBP is partitioned into 4 and all of them uses the Journaled file system of OS X. I plan to wipe out one logical drive so that I can dedicate it to a Windows OS (version 7/8). I don't want to boot Windows in a virtualized environment but rather boot up on its own so that I can make use of my MBPs hardware.

I recently tried Boot Camp Assistant but it wouldn't format a single partition because all of them have been supporting OS X's file system.

How do I approach this? Is there some sort of software that will allow me to manipulate the drives and then allow me to painlessly install Windows without the hassle I encountered while using Boot Camp Assistant.

My best bet is to backup all the files I have in my other 3 partitions and then delete them so that I can give way to installing a new partition fit for Windows. I'm still adamant on experimenting because of the dangers I might encounter, say for example I might mess up my Master Boot Record and end up in frustration.

In short, this is dual-boot question - only with the difficulty imposed by Boot Camp, so I'm just looking for other alternatives/solutions on how to approach it.

If you have a bootable copy of the recent OS you can boot from that and instead of using the installer go to the menu and select Disk Utility. That will let you delete partitions at will.

Alternatively you can boot into Recovery Mode (Command-R during boot, if I recall correctly) and that will also have Disk Utility available to you.


Xcode comment selection shortcut not working on European keyboard I have an Apple keyboard (Norwegian) with numeric keypad and I can't get the Xcode shortcut for comment selection (cmd + /) to work. I have to change to Input source = US every time I want to comment out a block.  When I change from US to Norwegian input source the Xcode -> Editor -> Structure -> comment selection shortcut disappears.

Does anyone know why changing input source from Norwegian/Swedish/German (I guess all European languages) have this effect.  What is the "European" shortcut for comment selection ?

Are Europeans not allowed by Apple to comment select..!? ;-)

Any ideas would be much appreciated !

You can fix this by going to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts, then App Shortcuts. Click the + button and select Xcode from the top drop bar. Then set the Menu Title to Comment Selection. Next select the keyboard shortcut box and press the desired keyboard combination, then click OK.

It seems that the Norwegian keyboard's encoding of the / character does not work in shortcuts, so you should use something else than the /


Where is the Next Backup Size entry on iOS 12? I briefly saw the Next Backup Size entry on my phone deep in the Settings somewhere, but not I cannot find it at all.

Where exactly is it?

Settings → Apple ID → iCloud → Manage Storage → Backups → This iPhone/iPad.

This location is documented at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204247 in the section titled Choose which apps to back up but doesn’t spell out the next size calculation.


Numbers : sum if tick-box on next column is true I have 3 column in a numbers sheet

(A) Text | (B) Currency | (C) Tickbox

At the end of (B) Currency, I have a very basic formula SUM(B)
What I'm trying to do is to have the same SUM(B) at the footer of (C) Tickbox but only add to the sum the value (in B) when there is a tick (in C)
E.g :

my understanding is the ticked box are Boolean "true" and I need to use a kind of IF statement but I'm not sure how to SUM B only if C is true
I tried the following but obviously, it's not working :
IF(C1:C13,TRUE,SUM(B2:B13))
PS I might need to do the other way (count when tick-box is not ticked, but I assume it's the same but using false instead of true)

Ok I believe I found the answer
it's seems a simple than this :
SUMIF(C, FALSE, B) (C for checkbox and B for currency)
Obviously False when I want to calculate when the tick-box are not ticked and true otherwise


I accidentally deleted my "contacts" app on my iPhone. How do I get it back? I accidentally deleted my "contacts" App on my iPhone.  How can I get the app back?

Unless you have jailbroken your phone you can't delete the Contacts app. Most probably it's either in a folder or on a screen somewhere. To find it again

press the Home button repeatedly until the search screen is shown
Type "Contacts"
Select Contacts app from search results

If you can't find it, you could always back up your phone (to save the current settings) and also take screen shots of the various screens you have set up. Then go to the settings app and Reset the home screen layout.

Worst case is you wait while you restore your backup if this doesn't return contacts to the first screen.


Excel for Mac 2011 calculation results equaling zero are formatting as a positive zero value instead of zero suppressed zero? I am having a very frustrating problem with zero values in a conditional calculation.

I have a running balance column (E) with the custom number format of #,##0.00 ; [Red]-#,##0.00 ; ;  when I use the simple calculation in the cells ie. E4 is =E3+D4, and the result is zero, the zeros are suppressed.  The problem came when I changed it to a conditional calculation to avoid any cell results in future rows.  The new formula being =if(A1>today(),,E3+D4), where A1 is every week day of the year.

The cells containing zero results prior to any values in D cells are working (not displaying zeros), but once the running balance column E was not equal to zero and then calculated back to zero, that cell and the cells after carrying a zero balance are displayed as 0.00

I have done many alterations to the format and formula to figure out why and all I can come up with is that the zero is being taken as a positive zero instead of just zero. (I formatted positives as blue and the 0.00 was blue)

When I change the formula back to straight addition (the same as in the conditional formula), the zeros are suppressed again.

Does anyone have any idea what is going in with this?

Unfortunately, without a sample spreadsheet, we need to start with a debugging exercise-- is this a formatting problem or a formula problem?  Here's one way to approach the debugging.

Set up an "indicator" or verification cell formula to verify:  is the running balance cell equal to Zero (TRUE or FALSE)? Is it greater than Zero (again, TRUE or FALSE)?    If you can verify that the value, displayed as "0.00" is in fact greater than zero -- you can trace why you have a formula leaving you with a very small value and not zero.  (You may have a very small rounding error, e.g. add 1/3 and subtract 0.33 -- balance is non-zero.)
If the cell check confirms the  cell is equal to Zero, yet is being formatted incorrectly:  tackle the in-cell formatting followed by the conditional formatting (if any).
First, check carefully your custom number-formatting string.  Reset your formatting string to a "known good" string -- the generic ones provided in the Format:Numbers box.
Finally, check conditional formatting by breaking down to one (1) condition at a time to isolate the condition which isn't working.


Moving desktop folder back to where it should be! I've had a real headscratcher... the other day I was downloading a large folder from FTP to a folder on my desktop. When I went to check the files half were missing, I soon found out it was because they were in a different "Desktop" folder. Basically at some point of downloading something moved my actual desktop folder from my /Users/Username/ folder to /Users/Username/.tsclient/

All the files on my desktop are as they should be as whenever it was moved OSX kept an eye on it and still uses it. In my user folder there is a desktop folder with the other files that were missing from that FTP download I did.

To make matter even more confusing, if I click Desktop in the left hand favourites in Finder it takes me to the /.tsclient/ folder, but any apps that pull up a finder dialog for the purposes of loading/saving point to the on that is in my user folder, where the desktop should be.

I didn't accidentally drag and drop my desktop folder into this folder (as .tsclient is hidden), I never type in an admin password for something if it pops up without exact knowledge of why it's there, and I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary so I have no clue why and how it moved. But it has, and I want to move it back!

I can't seem to delete or rename the one in my user folder, if I could I can't seem to move my desktop folder back out of that folder, it only wants to copy it. I guess I could move it using terminal but I have no idea what's going on and don't want to mess things up even more!

Does anyone have any experience of this bug or how to remedy it?

Having a bit of trouble following your description of the situation. It'd be helpful if you used actual path names instead of "The one in my user folder" type descriptions.

You have a backup right? Ok then...

The sidebar link is just a shortcut, so it doesn't really mean anything by itself.  Fix that last. Just delete it and then re-add it.

Run a disk check and permission repair if you haven't already.

If ~/Desktop doesn't exist and you're sure it was some how renamed .tsclient, use terminal to move/rename it back. I think its more likely that your ftp client uses that as a temp location and that the files there are only partially downloaded though.

If ~/Desktop does exist then just move the folder contents back where they belong not the folder itself. Then delete and re-add to the sidebar