Where are Photos projects stored on the drive? I've asked Apple Developer Support, regular Apple Support, and high-level Apple Support. They all said to ask on the Apple Developer Support Forums. I figured I'd ask here as well because I have much better experience on SE.
I am a senior software engineer working on a Photos Extension. I have multiple machines on which I want to test my code. Photos requires that its Extensions operate through Projects. For instance, one might right-click an album and create a new Book or Calendar. Our Photos Extension properly uses the Photos and PhotosUI APIs to manipulate these projects, and Photos takes care of serializing our changes.
I am developing Motif for multiple versions of macOS (High Sierra, Mojave, and Catalina). To do so, I have multiple Macs, each with a different OS installed on it.
One of the things that I want to fix is a problem that we see when upgrading from Mojave to Catalina. One way I could do this is to install macOS Mojave on one of the Macs, create a project, and then update that Mac to Catalina. This, however, is very time-consuming. Instead, I would like to create a project in Photos on a Mac running macOS Mojave, export that project (say, to a thumb drive), and import it into Photos on a Mac running macOS Catalina.
Since there is no UI for exporting a project, I want to know where these projects are stored in the filesystem. I intend to then copy those project files (say, via a thumb drive) between Macs in order to perform these tests. Could you please help me achieve this?

Here is the official answer from Apple (specifically, Jack, a senior advisor with Apple Developer Program Support):


Are there any differences between iPhone 7/7plus sold in different countries? is there any quality difference between an iPhone bought in Dubai and an iPhone bought in USA? to be  precise, my question is about the quality of the gadget itself (hardware), because some of my friends claim that if you buy an iphone 7/7plus in USA, the quality of the gadget (resolution, camera, durability of the gadget) is way better than the one you buy in Dubai or any other country rather than USA. I HOPE this time i am more specific.
i am looking for your answers.

respect

No such quality difference has been disclosed by Apple, nor do I know of anyone outside Apple discussing such a quality difference.


How to boot OSX into desktop from single mode? Is there any possibility to boot graphical mode once I'm in single mode (CMD+S on boot time) logged as root?

Related:

http://www.mactalk.com.au/11/90219-boot-into-desktop-single-user-mode.html
http://www.westwind.com/reference/os-x/commandline/single-user.html
https://www.securemac.com/macosxsingleuser.php

The exit command will continue the startup process where it left off, leaving you in the normal graphical environment. But note that you will not be logged in as root, it'll take you to the normal login screen. If you want to log in as root in GUI mode, you'll need to set a root password (which you can do in single-user mode with the command passwd root).


How is the battery level calculated in the magic mouse? I wonder how the battery level in the magic mouse is calculated.

This question about battery problems raised another one, I would like to know how the electronics in the magic mouse work and evaluate the remaining energy left as it seems quite inaccurate with some of my batteries.

If you don't know how the magic mouse does its calculation maybe you know how other electronic devices calculate the level?

I am no electrician and I have no skills in e- engineering. But maybe this image from iFixit might give a clue to a someone with the right knowledge (click the image for the original high-res version):

High res pictures available here if you need more details.

Generally the amount of energy left in a cell is related to its voltage at a given current draw, and the chemistry.  For instance, AA Alkaline cells are about 1.62V new, and drop to 0.9V near the end of their life as they are depleted.  Rechargeable cells often output 1.29V fully charged and will discharge to 0.9V.

Further, the voltage drops more with larger current draws, and this drop increases for cells that are near the end of their life.  So if you turn off the mouse and test the voltage, then turn the mouse on and test for voltage, the second test will have a lower voltage.  If that difference is small, the cell is near the beginning of its life.  If the difference is large, the cell is near the end of its life.

There are ways to determine the battery chemistry with some level of confidence by performing a few tests, but generally there's no reason to.  The majority of users merely need to have a little advance notice that their favorite iDevice is about to cease functioning so they can prepare.

So most such devices simply wait for the battery to drop below a specified voltage, before alerting the user.  Since most batteries can be considered dead at 0.9 volts, and few batteries go lower than 1.2 volts when new, the simplest solution is to alert the user to a low battery condition at 1.0 or 1.1 volts.

When a user expects a battery bar that gives a relative measurement (3 boxes for full, 0 boxes for nearly dead) then it will generally show full until it gets below 1.2 volts.

So an alkaline battery will often show full until very close to the end of its life, then appear to die quickly.  A rechargeable battery will show 3/4 full for most of its life, then die rapidly (due to the discharge curve being more flat than an alkaline, and being closer to the 1.0v cutoff).

The batteries you will have the most problem with are "heavy duty" which is code for "cheap, non-alkaline" batteries.  They have their uses, but not in electronic devices.  If you use the cheapest of the cheap AA batteries from the drugstore, or the "40 batteries for $6.99" pack from woot, amazon, or [insert favorite membership club here] then you're very likely getting non-alkaline, "heavy duty" batteries.  These cells have a very different, and much faster, discharge curve when used in most electronics, and you will see flakiness long before the battery is actually dead, and perhaps even before the mouse itself recognizes it's dead.  The issue is that they can't supply the sudden bursts of power the radio in the mouse requires, so some transmissions are lost.  When it's not transmitting, the voltage appears to be fine, but the difference between no load and an RF load causes the battery voltage to drop significantly simply because it wasn't designed to support those power draws.

This is why almost all electronic devices insist on "name brand alkaline" batteries.  Rechargeable batteries work well for this type of use as well.

This article, "Does the battery fuel gauge lie?" is relevant to this discussion, though it mostly focuses on larger rechargeable batteries used in the iPad and similar devices.  It discuses how smart battery electronics monitor and manage the charge and discharge of batteries in advanced electronic devices.


Automatically Inhibit sleep while transferring files over the network? I was transferring some files over the network and my macbook pro just fell asleep. I had the "Wake for network traffic" in Preferences>Energy checked. I am using High Sierra. It doesn't sound like Apple not to prevent sleeping while you are conducting an operation. This a bug or a feature?

You can install 3rd part app Caffeine. you can turn it on to prevent your mac from sleeping. Other popular apps are Anti Sleep and Amphetamine. I'm pretty sure all 3 are free. Amphetamine is also available from the App Store. I personally use Caffeine and it works well. It adds a coffee cup icon to menu bar so you can easily turn it on or off.

Caffeine may actually come with newer system upgrades so check your Applications folder.


Sudo rm -rf or Trashcan: Which is better for SSD health? Users can sudo rm -rf a file or they can move it to the trash and empty the trashcan. I want to know whether one option has benefits over the other with regard to the "health" of an internal solid state drive on a Macbook pro laptop.

Both options (as well as any other user-level way of deleting files) will have the same result at the end: the directory entry of the file will be removed and any disk blocks used by the file will be marked as free (details depend on file system used). So there is no difference at all on device level.


App Store asks me Apple ID password with an incorrect email I have an iPhone 4S from about 2 years. Till now the App Store never asked me a password different from the one I've set when create the Apple account. Today, for no apparent reason, it asked me a different email while I was trying to update my apps. I don't know this email and I think that I've never typed it, neither set it as my default email. If I go to iTunes it shows clearly that my Apple ID has the correct email, I also tried to verify it and the password is correct. But the App Store keeps asking the password for that different account, and there I can't change it. How do I "say to the App Store" that I want to sign it with a different email?

Edit

I recognized that I haven't problems updating other apps, just one: whatsapp. I imported this app from another computer, may this be the problem?

First make sure that ALL the apps are downloaded/purchased from your account. If not, only your apps will update.

If you want to change account go to settings->iTunes & App Store->Apple ID->Sign out->and enter your other account.


Quit if idle for X time, problem when saved script as app I got a small script that quit app when the computer is idle for X amount of time. It works fine but if I save it as an app and start it, I can't quit it. Result is I have to force quit my script app to restart my computer. Can I fix this? Is it the repeat loop that not the way to do it?

Thanks

    # Action lorsque que l'ordinateur est sans activité pendant un certain temps
#
set cmd to "echo $((`ioreg -w 0 -c IOHIDSystem | sed -e '/HIDIdleTime/ !{ d' -e 't' -e '}' -e 's/.* = //g' -e 'q'` / 1000000000))"

#
# Définir ici le nombre de seconde en idle avant d'exécuter l'action
#
set maxIdleAllowed to 90

#
# Conbien de fois vérifier le idle en seconde
#
set checkInterval to 5

#
# On loop indéfiniment
#
repeat
    set secsIdle to 0

    try
        set answer to (do shell script cmd)
        set secsIdle to (answer as number)
    on error
        # May want to do something fancy here...
        exit repeat
    end try

    log secsIdle

    if secsIdle > maxIdleAllowed then
        # Changer le nom de l'application TextEdit pour votre application
        tell application "FileMaker Pro" to quit
    end if

    delay checkInterval
end repeat

I think this is what you're looking for: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/38530412/exit-infinite-loop-by-quitting-application#38531544

More info from Apple: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/AppleScript/Conceptual/AppleScriptLangGuide/conceptual/ASLR_about_handlers.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40000983-CH206-SW7

And another reference: https://scriptingosx.com/tag/idle/

Basically, instead of your repeat, you want to do an on idle, instead of the repeat


Using FaceTime without the video I have a first generation MacBook Air that heats up a lot when playing videos, and almost grinds to a halt after a few minutes of playback.

Is there a way I could turn off the video during FaceTime calls so that the audio could continue smoothly?

Yes — if you simply minimize the FaceTime window (⌘ Command+M) or hide FaceTime (⌘ Command+H), video will pause while audio still functions as usual.

(Similarly, on iOS, pressing the home button will pause video and allow you to use other applications while audio still works.)


2 External monitors on 21,5 iMac Late 2009? So I wonder if I can use 2 external monitors on my Late 2009 21,5 iMac?
I currently use 1 external monitor and it works great but I now want to sell it and use 2 external monitors but there is only one thunderbolt display output.

Is there a thunderbolt display adapter that has 2 HDMI's or 2 VGA outputs that would work for my device? Please, send links if you find one that works.

The late 2009 iMac uses Mini DisplayPort and not Thunderbolt, although they appear similar and share the same connector. The mDP technology included on the 2009 iMac does not support multiple displays.

In short, no. You will only be able to actually drive one monitor from the iMac, barring using a splitter. Such devices do exist but may not be able to provide you with a full dual-desktop experience (such as mirroring only, lower resolution, maximum display size limits, etc).

Source on Specs


Numbers 3 - How to apply custom chart style Using Numbers 3.0 with Mavericks.

I am creating a bunch of scatter plots in numbers. I want to remove the big bubbly data point symbols and simply display the data as connected points.

Setting this up is no problem for one chart. I'd like to apply this style to every chart I make for the remainder of my project.

When I select the chart, I see a bunch of different chart icons in the 'chart styles' section of the formatting bar. I can apparently add the style of my current chart to this group for future use by clicking on a blank square with a plus button next to it. When I click the plus button, a new icon shows up in that little box.

Apple describes this process here.

I assume that, if I create another chart, I should be able to just click on that last custom chart style I had 'saved' and the series formatting would automatically change. But alas, it doesn't.

Is there something I'm missing? Does the "chart style" only allow changing the colors of the different series on a  graph, as opposed to accounting for changed data point styling?

It appears that the Data Symbols series preference is not a part of the styles. Why can't you select all of the charts when you are finished with them (by Command clicking or Command + Shift dragging) and then changing the data point styling of all of them at one time?


Why does my Macbook Air automatically shut down when i connect my iPhone to it? It doesn't happen every time. The last time I connected my iPhone to my MacBook Air was last week, and everything was fine.

Sometimes my MacBook Air shuts down when I connect my iPhone to it. What should I do about this?

The Macbook Air tries to supply a full charging current to the iPhone, but when the Air is running on battery and doesn't have a full charge, it loads the battery down enough for the Air to go into low power mode.

When you connect you iPhone, make sure you have a full battery on the Air, or are plugged in.  This will also happen less frequently if the iPhone battery is full, but the main issue is making sure the Air has enough power to give a full amp to the iPhone without shutting down.

This doesn't affect the larger notebooks as noticeably due to their larger battery packs, but as they age and when they have low charge you would see the same issue from them.


How can I boot back to Mojave from Boot Camp 6 with password-locked boot manager? The situation is as follows:

I have a MacBook Air 13" (early 2015), which was corporate but the employer allowed me to buy it when I was changing jobs. I have installed Windows 10 from an official ISO, using Boot Camp Assistant. Everything went smooth, but now I can't boot back to macOS.

Windows Boot Camp helper can't find the macOS boot partition (AFAIK Boot Camp 6.0 doesn't support APFS). Booting into Boot Manager won't work because there is a password in place (didn't even bother touching it for years, didn't know it was there). I've tried installing Boot Manager 6.1 (which is told to have APFS support) using brigadier, but brigadier downloads 6.0 no matter what I try to do.

I have no means of contacting my previous employer and I have no proof of buying this Mac.

Is there anything I can do to boot back to macOS and/or fix the boot order?

I did some research online, and the only ways I found to bypass the firmware password include booting to the recovery partition (which you already tried and it didn’t work) or some trick involving removing and reinstalling the RAM (not an option on your hardware). So here are my suggestions to resolve the issue:

• You said you have no solid proof of ownership. Can you change that?  Assuming the people you bought it from are honest, they hopefully will be willing to send you an official document showing that you purchased the machine and then take that to Apple to have them remove the password. That would probably be the easiest way. Even if they aren’t willing to provide you with the documentation, you might still be able to get help from Apple, but I wouldn’t count on it.

• If you’re in an area where it’s possible to purchase insurance on mail/shipments, consider asking your old IT admin if he’s willing to remove the password if you ship it to him. Again, assuming these are honest folk, it stands to reason that they would be willing to oblige you. I would strongly suggest offering to reimburse all return costs  (and maybe a little extra for their time) to minimize the impact on their end.

• In an absolute worst-case scenario, you can continue to use your machine with Windows, and the APFS container will stay exactly as it is.  You will need to purchase another MacBook if you want to run macOS again, but assuming you get the same model you can get a screwdriver that allows you to open the machine and physically move the old SSD into the new machine and regain access to everything*. Or you can purchase software that allows you to mount the APFS container on Windows so you can recover your files if you don’t have a backup. As a starting point, check out the free trial of Paragon APFS for Windows.

*If you’ve already activated Windows, you’ll need to migrate your product key to the new hardware.


Set file created/modified timestamp to the earlier of the 2 for a ton of files? I searched for an answer to this for a while, but couldn't find one. I have a lot of wav files (thousands of them) in a sound library that somehow got either the modification or creation date updated very recently, even though I haven't touched them in any way for years.
Is there some way I could use Automator to make an application that I could drag & drop these files to (or a text file containing all of their paths & filenames) that would do the following?:

Check the timestamp data associated with the file
(date/time: modified, and created)
Check to see which timestamp is the earlier of the two
If the created timestamp is earlier than the modified one, change the modified timestamp to the created, or vice versa.

I know how to get the date modified or created in terminal, and how to loop through the files received as input. But I'm not sure how to compare the timestamps in a script to determine which is earlier, or how specifically to format the script/app that would do this automatically for each file.
I got the following script from another thread. But this will just set the date modified to the date created without checking to see which one is earlier.
for f in *.wav; do
   olddate=$(stat -f %SB -t %Y%m%d%H%M "$f")
   touch -m -t $olddate "$f"
done

And in case it makes a difference, I'm on a MacBook Pro running macOS Sierra 10.12.6.
Lastly, if this would be more appropriate for a different network (stackoverflow or superuser maybe), please LMK and I'll ask there instead.
Thank you in advance for the help!

The example shell script code, show below, uses GetFileInfo and SetFile from Command Line Tools for Xcode, which the latter is needed to change the creation date, as touch can only change the access and modification times.
If you do not have Xcode installed, then just install the Command Line Tools for Xcode...
In Terminal: xcode-select --install
After installing Command Line Tools for Xcode, then in Automator you can create a workflow or Service/Quick Action with the appropriate actions to pass the target files to a Run Shell Script action with settings Shell: [/bin/bash] and Pass input: [as arguments] using the following example shell script code:
for f in "$@"; do

    [ -f "$f" ] || continue

    c="$(GetFileInfo -d "$f")"
    m="$(GetFileInfo -m "$f")"

    ec="$(date -j -f "%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S" "$c" +%s)"
    em="$(date -j -f "%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S" "$m" +%s)"

    if [ "$ec" -lt "$em" ]; then
        SetFile -m "$c" "$f"
    fi

    if [ "$em" -lt "$ec" ]; then
        SetFile -d "$m" "$f"
    fi

done

How the shell script works:

for f in "$@"; do -- For each file do something.
[ -f "$f" ] || continue -- If it's not a file, then go to the next item passed.
c="$(GetFileInfo -d "$f")" -- Gets the creation date of the file.
m="$(GetFileInfo -m "$f")" -- Gets the modification date of the file.
ec="$(date -j -f "%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S" "$c" +%s)" -- Converts the creation date to the number seconds since Epoch.
em="$(date -j -f "%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S" "$m" +%s)" -- Converts the modification date to the number seconds since Epoch.
if [ "$ec" -lt "$em" ]; then -- If the Epoch creation date seconds is less than the Epoch modification date seconds, then:

SetFile -m "$c" "$f" -- Sets the modification date of the file to the creation date of the file.

if [ "$em" -lt "$ec" ]; then -- If the Epoch modification date seconds is less than the Epoch creation date seconds, then:

SetFile -d "$m" "$f" -- Sets the creation date of the file to the modification date of the file.

Notes:
Epoch (00:00:00 UTC, January 1, 1970; see time(3).

Example Automator workflow:
Just add the parent folder containing the .wav files to the Get Specified Finder Items action and the rest of the actions.
Note that this is just an example, the main part is the Run Shell Script action, so however you want to pass the target files to it is your choice.


Is there any way to access some apps before I put in my password? I have a 4 digit passcode for my iphone, but there are some apps that I might use frequently that don't really need to be protected.  Is there a way to access those apps without entering my passcode every time?  An example of such an app would be the calculator or calendar apps, or even the Pandora app.

Any ideas?

No, although there are/were tweaks available on jailbroken devices that enabled locking specific apps with a(n unrelated) passcode.


Login directly to terminal instead of GUI First: I'm obviously not talking about logging in and then automatically launching Terminal.app.

In older versions of Mac OS X, you used to be able to type >console in the username field on the login screen and go directly into a command line terminal session.

I haven't done it in years until the other day. However, now, when I try it, my computer just locks up. I can't cancel, and it never sends me to a terminal session.

Is it even possible to do this anymore? If not, does anybody know when it was removed? It seems odd that typing >console would cause the machine to lock up if it wasn't recognizing it in some way.

If you find >console not working, newer OS have disabled it by default.

A quick command line modification of the preference will re-enable it:

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow.plist "DisableConsoleAccess" NO


What kinds of things should I do to maintain the performance of my iMac? I've recently switched from PC to Mac. So far, so good!

With my PC, I had a variety of tasks I'd regularly perform to keep my PC running well:

Run CCleaner to clean up all the cruft (temporary files, hidden caches, etc.) that browsers leave behind
Run CCleaner to clean the registry
Run AdAware to clean up tracking cookies, etc.
Run MalwareBytes malicious software removal tool
Run Microsoft's malicious software removal tool to backstop malwarebytes (hoping that at least one of them would find the hard-to-catch stuff)
Run MacAfee's virus scanner (This software never did anything but give me headaches. But it's popularity made me uncomfortable just deleting it)
Run a disk defragmenter

There's probably a few more I'm forgetting too.

Obviously, PCs are high-maintenance. Maybe my list was overkill - I tend to do that, but since I use a computer to make a living, I want it to perform as well and reliably as it can.

So, now I use a new iMac. While I'm hoping the list is shorter than the PC list, is there anything I should do to keep it performing optimally?

Set up Time Machine the first time you start you Mac,
Set up Software Update so that your system is always up to date.
A shutdown once in a while should clean most of little garbage but you will have to perform it anyway with some software updates.

and

Never log in with administrative privileges unless you have a serious reason to do so.


In Terminal I cannot type lowercase e If I open a Terminal window and I type the letter "e" (without quotes of course) it beeps and will not type the letter.  Every other letter works just fine in Terminal. Uppercase E works too.  Just the lowercase e doesn't.

In every other app on my computer lowercase e works without issue, so it's not a keyboard issue.

This started sometime in the last week.  I use Terminal a lot in my job and never has this been an issue.  I have rebooted (did not fix).  I have reset terminal (did not fix).

Since I do not know the exact date when this started, I am not sure if I made any changes or installed software.  I am trying to remove anything I have installed recently.

FYI I have tried to use the 3rd party iTerm2 and it does the same thing.

ALSO - if I paste in something with a lower e, it does same thing - will not take it.  It has to be some terminal bash config issue I would think.

In fact, I copied the following sense and then I pasted it in Terminal. What appears?  sns and you can hear two beeps.

Also - in case it is unclear - this happens with the built-in keyboard on the MBP as well as an external keyboard.  Based on that and the pasting issue, I do not think this is a physical keyboard issue in any way.

Specs: 2015 MacBook Pro, fully up to date OS X

Let's debug it.

Change shells and try again. (Credit to @Kent) In terminal:

$(which zsh)

Comment out all lines in .bash_profile, .bashrc, etc. and open a new terminal tab/window. If this resolves the issue, something being loaded into the shell environment is consuming the letter e for reasons that science may never be able to explain.
Try cating a file that contains the letter e to see if it will even display: (Credit to @techraf)

Open a text editor (not terminal)
Enter some text with a few es and save file (foo.txt?)
In terminal, cat the file:

cd /path/to/folder; cat foo.txt

If es render then the terminal can handle it, if not, then this is super weird.

Try applescript. (Credit to @ALX)

Open Applescript editor
Create Applescript file with these contents:

delay 10
tell application "System Events" to keystroke "e"

Execute the script file and then quickly navigate to the terminal window. In a few seconds it will virtually press the e key and hopefully show up in your terminal. This would indicate that there could be an input/device driver issue (though I am clueless as to what that might be)

I'm not going to lie, I am absolutely fascinated by this issue and cannot wait to learn what the cause is. It's not hardware because it works in other applications, which means it's software and I cannot imagine who would swallow the letter e with code.


Use rsync to automatically copy a file to another folder I found this command to copy the content of source to a destination folder.

rsync -r source/* destination

What I would really like is to have this command run automatically each time a file is added to my source folder.

Is this possible?

You could use, Automator and Folder actions to watch the folder and run the script.

When launching Automator and choosing New, one of the options given is to make a 'Folder Action'. At the top of the screen after selecting Folder Action you are given the option to choose a folder to 'watch'.

What I think you would want to do in your case is to then select 'Utilities' on the leftmost column, and then drag 'Run Shell Script' from the second column into the workflow window.

Here is where you would write whatever script you would like to run when changes are made to the folder. In this case your rsync script.


'Unable to verify account name or password.' when connecting Office 365 account on MacOS Mojave I am struggling with the same issue raised here - "Unable to verify account name or password" on outlook.com Exchange server (browser works). It started after I updated MacOS to Mojave this week. For me everything worked fine (even after upgrading the OS) until the first restart. At that point Mail started complaining it could not verify my credentials.

Here's what I've tried so far:

Confirmed my credentials still work with my @hotmail.com/Office 365 account.
Created a new user on my MacBook Pro and tried to connect to the account as an Exchange account.
Reset my keychain.
Reinstalled Mojave.
Changed my Office 365 password.
Tried every esoteric solution reported on the internet that I could find.

I was able to connect Mail to my hotmail account by adding it in as an IMAP account. However, this only works for Mail and not for the calendar and contacts.

Any help in trying to find a solution would be greatly appreciated.

I've had this same problem for months on Sierra.  Posted my solution re: needing to generate an "app password" here: "Unable to verify account name or password" on outlook.com Exchange server (browser works)


Windows shares keep dropping from OS X I have a Windows Server 2012 machine providing shares for multiple workstations.

I have 2 Mac users that connect to this server and use the shared folders. They report that this share keeps dropping. Everytime they report it, I check from my Windows workstation and the shares appear to be online -- there seems to be no issue.

Is there anything I can do to make the mounted share consistent and not disappear? The issue is only on the Macs.

Both are running OS X v10.9.3

I have similar problems with users on my network using Mavericks, where no such issue existed with Mountain Lion. Most users can live with it, and they simply re-mount the disk. Apparently, the SMB implementation on Mavericks is different than it was in prior OS releases. What I have found is that if I connect to drives using cifs://servername rather than smb://servername, this pretty much mitigates the issue. This has been true for NAS, MFDs with Windows shares, and Windows servers alike.


get link to iCloud file from finder without having to go to iCloud website? Is it possible to get a remote link to a file via finder? I want to be able to share my screenshots really quickly which are now saved to an iCloud folder. Thanks, D.

I don't believe this is possible as of Yosemite 10.10.5. The sharing menu would be a sensible place for this, but it doesn't have an option to send or copy a link to the file, choosing Mail or Messages will attach the full file:

Personally I use Dragshare to quickly get a remote link to a file, or if you save your files to Dropbox you can just alt-click and choose Share Dropbox Link.


What is the difference between 'Application' and 'Process' in OS X? As I increasingly dabble with AppleScript and OS X tweaking in general, I arrive at this question:

What is the difference between these two words in terms of OS X's inner operations - e.g. do some processes operate 'within' applications (or vica versa), or two processes operate as part of one 'application' in terms of what the user interacts with GUI-wise (or, vica versa)?

Also - I come originally from a Microsoft Windows background. Do 'application' and 'process' have any relationship to 'service' in OS X, (given 'service' and 'program' are different things in Windows), and is there indeed a third category in OS X called 'service' as well?

The standard way of approaching these terms is to say that an "application" is a specific, static program on storage. It's some piece of code stored on a hard drive, a CD-ROM or elsewhere.

A "process" on the other hand is a specific instance of a running program. I.e. it is registered by the operating system as executing or being able to execute whenever the operating system feels like it.

If you take for example Calculator.app, it is a single application.
However you can have multiple Calculator processes if you start the program multiple times.

As chananelb wrote, it is also possible to have processes which are not "just" ordinary applications that have been started up. That could be for example kernel processes, or simply ordinary processes spawning up subprocesses to do specific tasks.

Regarding services, I chananelb's answer leads you in the wrong direction. His answer tells you about what is called a "Service" in Mac OS X... but you asked about what is called a "Service" in Windows.

The counterpart to a Windows Service is a Daemon on Mac OS X (and other Unix-derived systems).

Daemons are normally categorized by running in the "background", i.e. without direct user interaction through a graphical or non-graphical user interface. The distinction is a bit blurry though, as a Daemon might for example have a web interface for user interaction.

Daemons on Mac OS X are controlled by the launchd program, which is responsible for for example starting up daemons on boot, and letting the user start and stop daemons at request.


Why are my files all now within Volumes? Today I noticed that in the bottom bar of finder, where it shows my file path, it's showing all my files as being within MacintoshHD/System/Volumes/MacintoshHD:

I have this strange file structure in MacintoshHD:

I've also just noticed that I have a folder named "Desktop" on my Desktop:

I can't seem to open this folder, and it doesn't show up in the Terminal.

I have 10.15.1 on iMac 2017 4K.

Update

After a restart this no longer happens

macOS Catalina has a new feature to further isolate the OS from data. In the APFS container it is installed within, an APFS volume for the OS is created alongside an APFS volume for your data. The former is mounted read-only at the root of the filesystem, and the latter is mounted within /System/Volumes.

Directories containing writable data are linked from the read-only volume to the data volume, to form one apparent disk. The individual disks still appear separately if you open the mount point.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2019/103/

A Desktop folder on the desktop is a bug. The other screenshots show expected behaviour.


Moving imported photos to external drive I've been importing my DSLR photos using the standard Photos.app. Now I'm running out of HDD space. What's the best way to move my RAW photos to an external storage device?

I was looking for an intuitive "grandma could do it" GUI solution, but I ended up doing:

find / -iregex '^.*\.cr2$' -exec zip cr2.zip {} \; -delete 2>/dev/null

Then used the GUI to click & drag the .zip archive to the external USB HDD, mounted at /Volumes/disk2/.

Looks like all the images imported directly from the DSLR are stored in ~/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/Masters/. So in hindsight; to target the specific directory, instead of searching the entire filesystem, I would input the relevant path:

find ~/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/Masters/ -iregex '^.*\.cr2$' -exec zip cr2.zip {} \; -delete 2>/dev/null

Or even better, eliminate the need to click and drag by including the destination path as well:

find ~/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/Masters/\
-iregex '^.*\.cr2$'\
-exec zip /Volumes/disk2/cr2.zip {} \;\
-delete 2>/dev/null

Or simply mv rather than zip:

find ~/Pictures/Photos\ Library.photoslibrary/Masters/\
-iregex '^.*\.cr2$'\
-exec mv {} \; /Volumes/disk2/ 2>/dev/null


How can I iterate through a folder and move/copy every Nth item I want to make a time lapse from a folder of images, but there are too many and the time lapse progresses to slowly.  How do I select, for example, every 10th item, and either copy or move the items into a separate folder?

The quickest way is to use bash and awk syntax in your Terminal.app

for file in `find /SOURCE/DIR -type f | awk 'NR %10 == 0'`; do echo mv $file /DEST/DIR ; done

for statement introduces the bash loop, to iterate through a set of data where file is the variable.

find parses the /SOURCE/DIR for that which is specified.

| acts as a pipe, passing stout from find back to stdin

awk interprets stdin and prints only lines meeting the conditions specified by 'NR %10 == 0’

NR is an awk built-in variable that specifies the record/line number to be evaluated.
% is a numerical operator telling awk that the following character(s) must be treated as such.
== is relational operator for must be equal to..
0 is the binary expression for TRUE

So, that’s all fancy for  "find every 10th file that exists in this directory and output it;

do introduces the action to perform on the output.
echo is used to double check the command, the results of which will be printed to stout. If all looks well, remove it and perform the action (mv, cp)
mv is a built in bash command to take one file and move(or rename it).
cp is another built in bash command to mv one file from one dir. to another while preserving the original. You can directly substitute cp for mv if you wish to preserve the contents of the original directory.
$file references the file variable that has now been defined.

So, that’s all fancy for tell me what happens when I…(echo) “move (or, copy) all the files specified by the previous parameters to this other directory;”

done

That’s all fancy for telling bash to terminate the loop since you’re done :)


MacBook slow on boot since booting from external disk My MacBook Pro 2017 was lightning fast at startup, then I installed macOS High Sierra on an external disk and tried to boot my mac from that disk. Everything fine.

Now whenever I boot my Mac normally (without even having the disk connected) it gets stuck at the grey screen before the Apple logo for a lot of time, like 5–6 seconds, something that never happened before.

It looks like it is spending time deciding which disk to boot, even though there is only the Macintosh HD. Is there a way to fix this?

I found the issue, on General > Startup Disk it automatically selected the external drive. Switched back to Machintosh HD and it worked.


New address book entries on iPhone does not sync to iCloud I have an iPhone (iOS 5.1). I added a new telephone number to a new address book entry yesterday and today I find that neither the iCloud Web interface nor my address book on my desktop (OS X 10.7.3) know anything of the new entry.

I was used to automatic syncing via the Internet from MobileMe. Does it not work like that with iCloud?

(Calendar syncing appears to work. Both calendar and address book are switched on on both the iPhone and the iCloud control panel on my desktop.)

In your Macintosh Address Book, go to Preferences/Accounts and make sure that iCloud is listed there and enabled.

After doing that go back into Address Book and Click on the red bookmark so you're looking at the front page. It should say "iCloud" at the top of the list of folder/groups you may have there. If it says "On My Mac" then see if you can choose "iCloud."

The design of switching between "on my mac" and "iCloud" is confusing for us "old" mobileme users and my guess is it will change in time.


Getting Automator to work with aliases vs. symbolic links on SMB shares I would like to get automator to mount a volume in a shared SMB server and get all subfolders symlinked within my Documents folder.

I thought I could do that easily by creating Finder's so called aliases but it turned out they are not symbolic links and some applications like Picasa fail to explore these subfolders.

How can I get Automator to create symbolic links instead of aliases for my folders?

1) The easy answer is that aliases are symbolic links, but ONLY for the Finder. Other applications don't generally use them as such, whereas symlinks act as aliases for the Finder as well but also act as symlinks for any Application. Aliases are actually MUCH better than symlinks for Finder-type uses as then don't break, and you can do things like, for example make an alias to a file inside of a disk image -- if the disk image isn't mounted when you click the alias, FInder will mount the disk image, then open that file.

2) Here is a video that shows you how to create symlinks with automator.

2a) There are also a number of Automator addons that you can use that are made for creating symlinks/


Merge several folders, but keep only the newest file when conflicts are encountered I've hit a bit of a wall with my backups. I have three backups, each is different, some contain newer files than other backups. I want to merge these three folders into one, but when a conflict arises, keep the newest version.

I've tried Path Finder with two test folders. One folder had Two sub-directories, and in each sub-directory there were two files. Each file had been modified at different times. I then worked out what the resulting merged file tree should look like, and then ran an actual test, which did not work...

You can see it overwrote the newer file (/One/Sub 1/File 1) with the older one (/Two/Sub 1/File 1), even though I selected "Keep Newer (modification date)" for files with the Path Finder merge. But, for some weird reason, it kept the newer file in the "Sub 2" folder.

This is obviously not right. And before I go ahead and write my own program to do this properly, I'd like to know if there are any existing, reliable programs to do this for me?

There is about 4TB of data, several million files, at stake here.

Just use rsync:

rsync -au .../src/ .../dest/
rsync -auiP .../src/ .../dest/ #if you need some visual output

and delete /src afterwards

with:

-a, --archive               archive mode; same as -rlptgoD
-u, --update                skip files that are newer on the receiver
-i, --itemize-changes       output a change-summary for all updates
-P                          same as --partial --progress
                            --progress show progress during transfer
                            --partial keep partially transferred files

Please check man rsync for -rlptgoD


Can an app in iOS 8 access Location Services even when it is not running? I have the Kohl's app installed on my iPhone running iOS 8.1.  I notice that whenever I enable Location Access for that specific app, it starts pinging my location immediately, based on the location services icon in the status bar, and the purple location services icon next to the app in the settings.  This takes place even though the app is not running, and I have Background App Refresh turned off for that app, although it shouldn't matter as it is not even running in the background.

Is this expected behavior?  If so, is there a way to only enable location access only when I'm running the app?

The app itself must support the "While Using the App" option. If it doesn't, then as you have discovered, your only options are "Always" or "Never".

Presumably you would only want to allow this app to access your Location for geofencing-type reminders (e.g., offers). If so, you have to pick "Always" and you are at the mercy of the app to some extent with regard to how often it gets your Location, and how it is used. iOS 8 apps, even when terminated and even with Background App Refresh off, can still have certain Location service events delivered to them by iOS :

significant location change service
region monitoring service
visit service

The only other option is to deny Location to the app using "Never".

Apple's Core Location Manager reference is here: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/CoreLocation/Reference/CLLocationManager_Class/index.html


How to download pkg files from iTunes? I need to download a pkg(ipa) file from the Apple Store (using iTunes, i guess iPhone apps are only in iTunes not in the Store App).

How can you download the pkg file(ipa)? (Alternatively, if I downloaded it with iTunes, it says downloaded, where can I find it on the hard drive?)

I was running find / on the entire filesystem but still cant find it.

Downloaded iOS applications are stored in your iTunes library. To find the physical location on disk

go to the Apps section in iTunes, right-click on the app and select "Reveal in Finder"
use the Goto command in Finder to open ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Mobile\ Applications/


How does iMessage sync messages across devices? If iMessage uses end-to-end encryption, how do the messages get synchronized across Apple devices?

It is the same mechanism where the messages get delivered in the first place. The server(s) maintain a database of registered devices and issue a message to the each device.

Of note, each device receives a unique message - the encryption is one to one from the push servers to each device and not a broadcast of the same raw message to multiple devices. Once decrypted, the content is the same, but each instance of the “same message” has different keys and different payload data while encrypted.


How do you copy a meeting in Outlook 2016 on Mac How do I copy a meeting in Outlook 2016 on Mac?   On PC you just use Copy/Paste.  On Mac, all the Edit commands are disabled when you select a meeting in the Outlook calendar.

I spend time setting up a meeting with participants, location, attachments, categories, etc etc etc and I want to create a copy of it or a variation of it without starting from scratch.  Is this just one of those "on our to do list" features of Outlook on Mac?

I have Outlook for Mac [16.29]

I am able to [alt/option]+[click]+drag an appointment.
The result is a copy of the appointment in a new location / timeslot...! Yay!

I must admit, I never tried this before - it could work in older versions.


Yosemite: can't get apps on Mac App Store I upgraded from Mac OS Mavericks 10.9.5 to Mac OS Yosemite 10.10.1 and have issues with Mac App Store.

If I search for an item, I get results, but if I click a result, I get a blank page, whatever the app's page I want to see.

As you can see, the classic app background doesn't even appear.

I do not experience this issue on a fresh install of Yosemite in another mac, so I did bought my app on the other mac and used the search results's menu to install it on the right one, but that's quite tricky.

I tried to reboot, to reset the PRAM and other stuffs I seen over the internet, but didn't found any good answer.

FYI:

Try resetting the Mac App Store.

Enable the debug menu and restart the Mac App Store.

defaults write com.apple.appstore ShowDebugMenu -bool true

Choose the Reset Application option and restart the Mac App Store.


default application to open folders with Back in the days I used to run Path Finder for a while, but then removed it from the system and went back to regular finder. Now when entering i.e. open Desktop/ in the terminal, it opens up Finder showing the Desktop directory.

Today I mounted a drive that holds backups, including a copy of an old Path Finder.app which obviously had been detected by the system immediately, because when running open Desktop/ it then tried to use this copy of Path Finder to open up the folder. When the drive was unmounted, it just went back to using Finder.

I assume, this is some fallback, and deep in the system there is still a setting to open folders in Path Finder. When opening the cmd+i window on a folder in Finder, there is no such thing as "open with…" like it is for a file.

So I am wondering, where I can unset Path Finder completely?

This might be useful:

mcnesium@mcobst:~$ rgrep "Path Finder.app" Library/
Binary file Library/Application Support/com.apple.sharedfilelist/com.apple.LSSharedFileList.RecentApplications.sfl matches
Binary file Library/Application Support/Dock/F1ABBC0A-23A3-4B6A-BAC7-849CDA1F021A.db matches
Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Mnemonics.plist:            <string>/Applications/Path Finder.app</string>
Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Mnemonics.plist:        <key>/Applications/Path Finder.app</key>
Binary file Library/Caches/com.apple.nsservicescache.plist matches
Binary file Library/Preferences/com.apple.ServicesMenu.Services.plist matches
Binary file Library/Preferences/loginwindow.plist matches

To resolve the issue expressed in the OP, I'd follow the directions as shown by the developer of Path Finder using information in How do I completely uninstall Path Finder?, which is quoted below, for your convenience.

Also note that if for some reason you what to keep that backed up copy of Path Finder, first I'd archive it to a zip file, then delete it per the directions below.

Quoted from the link above:

  Before removing the Path Finder application, make sure to reset all
  preferences that tell the system to use Path Finder by default. After
  that, make sure to relaunch all running applications, logout or reboot
  so applications can re-read the default settings.

  From Path Finder's preferences window, make the follow changes:

  Path Finder 6 & 7 preferences:

  In the Finder tab, disable these options:

  Hide Finder's desktop
  Quit Finder when Path Finder launches
  Enable Finder's "Remove from Dock" menu option

  In the General tab, disable these options:

  Launch Path Finder at login
  Set as the default file browser

  Path Finder 5 preferences:

  In the General tab, disable these options:

  Launch Path Finder automatically after log in
  Quit the Finder automatically at launch
  Hide Finder's desktop

  In the Reveal tab, disable "Set Path Finder as the default file viewer"

  To remove all traces of Path Finder, delete the following files and
  folders (some of these may not be on your system).

  FreeMacSoft's free application AppCleaner is an excellent tool for
  automating this process. Just
  make sure to disable the settings listed above before using
  AppCleaner.

  /Applications/Path Finder.app
  /Library/Application Support/Path Finder/
  /Users/<username>/Library/Application Support/Path Finder/

  /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/com.cocoatech.pathfinder.plistv
  /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/com.cocoatech.PathFinder.plist.lockfile
  /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/com.cocoatech.PathFinder.LSSharedFileList.plist.lockfile

  /Users/<username>/Library/Caches/com.cocoatech.PathFinder/
  /Users/<username>/Library/Caches/QCCompositionRepository-com.cocoatech.PathFinder.cache

  /Users/<username>/Library/Contextual Menu Items/Path Finder CM.plugin
  /Users/<username>/Library/Saved Application State/com.cocoatech.PathFinder.savedState/

  /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.cocoatech.pathfinder.SMFHelper[#]
  /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.cocoatech.pathfinder.SMFHelper[#].plist

  [#] Can be a number, eg. 6, 7, etc.


Finder default window I have an issue with Finders window sizes. I know that the Finder saves the window size per directory, which REALLY drives me nuts!

I want to set one window size for the Finder. I totally lose it each time a folder opens in a narrow window and I have to adjust the size of the window, the sidebar and all columns before I can start working in my familiar environment...

Is there any way to disable the REALLY bad and ANNOYING behavior?

I know every single answer on google and StackExchange but there does not seem to be a solution.

So know I'm searching for a way to delete the folders window settings so that it might open in default size.

I used this "trick" on Mountain Lion and it worked well for me.

  Create a new folder on the Desktop (CMD+SHIFT+N), open it, select
  View-View Options (CMD+J), set the window to your desired size and
  type view (either icon or list view: I prefer the latter), select
  always open, and then click Use as Defaults button. That should retain
  your setting and every other folder you open for the first time should
  also inherit those settings.

Source (Apple Discussion)


How to set a default application to open a file in mac? In a mac (10.14.6) I want to set the default application to files of type  'err' (i.e. files like test.err or output.err) to be TextEdit.

For that I follow the description given here, and set the default application to be TextEdit.

However, when I double click on that exact same file in the finder, I see the following text box:

So what am I missing? Why does it nor work?

I don't know why the existing two methods are not working - they both should.

Alternatively try RCDefaultApp which as far as I'm aware still works in Catalina. [I can only test up to Mojave.]

I added this manually using the + button & it actually suggested TextEdit itself. I'd suggest also checking 'Override file creator' & see if that might help.


Does macOS Mojave comes with java pre-installed? I just ran which java command and got the output /usr/bin/java

I also executed java -version command and also got version information output. So I believe that there is an actual java executable and not just a placeholder kind of thing. I may have installed it at some point, but I cannot remember doing that. Or does it comes pre-installed with the macOS Mojave?

If it doesn't come pre-installed, how do I get rid of it?

Edit:
Below is the output of ls -l /usr/bin/java

lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  74 Sep 25 01:45 /usr/bin/java -> /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/Current/Commands/java

Java does not come preinstalled.

The /usr/bin/java command does come preinstalled, though - but it is not Java. Instead it is an Apple program that lets you decide between multiple installed JDKs (if any). If you haven't got a JDK installed, which is how the system is by default, it will tell you via a popup and let you click a button to be directed to a download site for the JDK.


How do I set Outlook as the default mail option in Yosemite? Mail merge is greyed out, in MS Word so I'm guessing that it needs to talk directly to Outlook instead of Apple's mail app. I read somewhere that Outlook as to be set as the default in Mail.app, but I can't find how to do that.

Is this possible to get Word's Mail Merge working on OS X?

You can set Outlook as the default mail app following these steps:

Open the “Mail” application in OS X, note that you have to open the Mail app even if you’re wanting to use another mail client like Outlook.
Pull down the “Mail” menu and choose “Preferences”.
Go to the “General” tab.
Look for “Default email reader” and click on the menu to pull down other mail app options. If the mail app you want to use is not shown in this list choose “Select” to browse the /Applications/ folder and select one manually.


Terminal sometimes scrambles initial output I switched to iTerm 2 a while ago, but would like to fix this small problem that I have with OS X's built-in Terminal.

Terminal is supposed to look like this when it first opens on my machine:

However, I am frequently met with the following output:

And more infrequently (but still reproducible enough):

My .bash_profile file consists of a bunch of aliases and one defined function for calculating battery life from the shell. I am able to reproduce the issue with no .bash_profile at all. .bashrc is empty.

What is the cause of this issue, and how can I fix it?

I would like to answer my own question, even though it is not an "answer," per se.

After testing on several different machines, I am confident that this is a bug with Terminal (and perhaps other virtual terminals on other operating systems). I have tested this on the following machines that are owned by separate users:

MacBook Pro (2012, 13-inch) running 10.9.4
MacBook Air (2012) running 10.9.3
MacBook Pro (2012, 15-inch) running 10.9.4

If someone would like to add to my list, please try running Terminal and quitting it in succession until you see the timestamp located on the same line as the initial prompt.

A friend of mine claims to have seen this on Linux as well.


Can I change the locale for a single application? Is it possible to change the locale on a per-application basis in OS X 10.8? Background: I'd like to play "Larry Reloaded" in English, but my user locale is German. The game detects this, and switches to German voices and texts. I don't want to create a new user just for the game, nor do I want to switch the locale manually when starting the game, and back again after quitting.

You can add an AppleLanguages array to the plist of an application:

defaults write -app Calculator AppleLanguages -array de

See defaults read -g AppleLanguages for the language identifiers.

Language Switcher is a GUI for doing the same thing.


Unable to sign out of iCloud, sign in to App Store, or use iMessage. High Sierra I am unable to sign in or out on iCloud or the App store. Whatever app I am using (Sys Prefs, App Store) loops endlessly. I can quit Prefs, but have to force quit the App Store. iMessage operates but all messages are marked as undelivered. Virtually all documents stored in iCloud drive do not appear in the Finder, but are available through the web (iCloud) interface. All of this works fine in my test account, so it's not a S/N issue, but switching everything to the test account is not an option.

I have deleted assorted caches and prefs. Enabled/Disabled iCloud Keychain, tried (unsuccessfully) signing out of iCloud while off line, and probably a few other things that I can't remember.

Mid-2012 15" MBP 16GB. 10.13.1

Finally was able to get this sorted. It turns out that deleting the Keychain through Keychain Access prefs is insufficient. I needed to go to ~/Library/Keychains, open the folder with the Keychain, and drag the contents to the trash (or to a folder on the Desktop). Logging out and back in solved everything.


Installing iOS on VMware Workstation I have a Windows PC and VMware Workstation. I am trying to figure out a way to install iOS on it.

Is there is way to install iOS on VMware Workstation?

No.  See relevant Stackoverflow discussion.

In short, you need to virtualize the ARM cpu, not an x86 model. Additionally, you'd need to virtualize the swipes and taps and whatnot, which would be quite the tall order.

Here's one project that's attempting to virtualize iOS on the QEMU platform: IEMU.


How to open .packproj files? I am unable to run an installer with .packproj extension. I am unable to find anything via Web search.

Can these files be handled natively by macOS? How do I install a package with this extension?

.packproj-files were files used by developers in the process of application development for OS X 10.2. They contain xml-strings – try editing the file in TextEdit or TextWrangler, you should see an XML-structure, or see this example.

It can't really be run alone, it's used to tell packaging applications how to pack the application into a real application.

To put it short, it can be used with the application Iceberg:

  (.packproj): Creates a project file for use with Iceberg. This allows you to use Iceberg to edit package options before creating the actual package.

Do note that this is ancient code, and may not work (supposed to work from OS X 10.2 and up).


Create a Database Environment Mac OS/SQL Developer Hi I am very new to all of this.
I am trying to prototype an function on my local machine. I am using SQLDeveloper and trying to understand what I would need to do to create a database locally. I'm probably using the wrong language so I will try to be more specific. I don't have access to a server where I can build this database and I would need to do it locally - how would I set up my SQLDeveloper to use part of my hard drive space a server where I can build the database?

The easiest thing to do is use Homebrew to install MySQL on your Mac and use that your database.

First install Homebrew:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)"

With Homebrew installed, you can use it to MySQL. First you'll need git installed:

brew install git

Because we want to make sure we've got all the latest Homebrew recipes next:

brew update

Installing MySQL is now as simple as:

brew install mysql

When that completes you'll have the MySQL database on your system and you can develop against it. All you need to do is start it with:

mysql.server start

If you'd like MySQL to autostart when you start your Mac do:

mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
ln -sfv /usr/local/opt/mysql/*.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist

You can connect to your MySQL instance using address localhost: 3306.


Excessive CPU usage from sysmond Does anyone know what the sysmond application does on OS X? Lately it has been taking about 25-30% cpu constantly for no apparent reason.

Things I've tried so far:

Reboot
SMC reset
PRAM reset
Starting up in safe mode (sysmond also sucks up resources there)
Filesystem check (except for the regular incorrect directory count, no errors or whatever)

For the time being I've just disabled the sysmond plist but I guess it's not completely useless so I'm wondering what it's supposed to do and whether disabling is harmful ;)

What sysmond does on OS X

Watching the CPU usage of sysmond through Activity Monitor is pointless! It turns out that sysmond process is what Activity Monitor uses to get it's readings.

So if sysmond is using lots of CPU, just kill activity monitor for it to stop.

Warning

Increasing the update interval for Activity Monitor dramatically increases the CPU load, that's why I initially never noticed it and see it a lot more right now.


AirPlay Quality Issues from iPad I have a 1st gen iPad 32GB + WiFi and AppleTV 2nd gen.

I'm having issues playing back streaming content from my iPad to my AppleTV over AirPlay.  An example of this is audio from Pandora (Internet), and another is playing back films from Movies (local). When streamed to my iPad and then to AppleTV via AirPlay, it is "choppy" by the time it gets to the AppleTV.

When attempting the same thing from my iPhone 4S, I have no issues.

What gives?

Restart both devices and try if AirPlay streaming is fluid again.

If that should not work you can try restoring one or both devices as described in this answer by bmike


External hard drive slows down computer and makes processes freeze I have a very odd issue with my external USB3 hard drive. Sometimes, I can use it with no problems, but sometimes it slows down the entire computer and freezes processes.

For example, spotlight might stop working, and if I kill it through the Terminal, no new spotlight process launches. And for example the dock might freeze, not responding to anything and just showing a beach ball when I put my mouse on it. Same thing with Finder.

Some things still work but the more I use the computer with the hard drive in, the more processes freeze, for example if I quit Safari I can't open it again. However, if I just unplug the cable suddenly every single process starts responding/working again instantly, with no problems.

I have tried to repair my hard drive through Disk Utility, but it finds no problems.

This is a common issue with mechanical HDDs (non-SSD).

macOS sends a command to the external device (your HDD) but the device responds slowly. Some HDDs need to spin up in order to respond to the OS's request. Until the device is able to respond the OS may freeze.

To improve your system's performance try these steps:

prevent HDD sleep. Spinning the HDD down may save some energy but it slows down your system as well.
Disable Spotlight for the external drive. System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy > "+". Select your external HDD and press "Choose".


Can apps purchased from one Apple ID be shared between multiple iTunes libraries? We have a number of iDevices in the family, and each user has their own Apple ID. Also, each person has their own computer to sync apps and other content.

If I purchase an app for my iPod, Can I share it with my wife and son, each of whom have their own IDs?

If so, how do I share purchased apps, if each person has their own computer or iTunes library?

Unfortunately the only way to share apps is to use the same Apple ID for purchases on every device.

You can use different IDs for iCloud, but you need to sign into the App Store with the same ID.

If you're signed in to the App Store with the correct ID you can download previously purchased apps for free, each person haven their own computer and iTunes library doesn't matter.


Screeching Metallic Sound when plugging in USB-C Charging Cable I have a MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2017, Two Thunderbolt 3 ports), it happened twice this week now. I have a dongle with HDMI attached while plugging in my charging cable. My sound was muted.

The noise is uncomfortable and it gave me goosebumps. It's like two pieces of thin metallic plates were scratching each other at high speed. The screech was horrible. I'm not sure if the sound came from the speakers or the machine.

I found someone who've experienced this too.
-> Loud noise charging Macbook Pro USB-C

I had this same thing happen to me around July 2018 on a MBP 2017 15", this happened when I connected an AmazonBasics AV adaptor, I only own a couple of dongles, that one and the usb c to ethernet one from Amazon too, it has never happened again.

After it happened, I noticed that when using the internal speakers as soon (could be a few seconds) the audio reached a certain level, high sounds would be lost and audio would sound muffled.

It's on service now, they are replacing the top cover which houses the keyboard, battery, speakers and other components.


How to stop Finder deleting "Favorites" bar shortcuts that don't open instantly I work in folders on a shared drive on a mostly-Windows office network. I keep these in the "favourites" bar in Finder for easy access. Most of my working days start like this:

I open Finder, and click on the shortcut for the folder I need
Two things happen simultaneously:

My Mac connects with the drive then opens the folder. So far, so good.
Finder sees that there was a moment's delay before the folder opened, while the network connection completed, and automatically deletes the shortcut

So I then need to go to the containing folder, and re-create the shortcut

Is there any way to stop Finder doing this?

I'm aware of workarounds like using a shortcut on my desktop, or manually connecting to the drive first, etc etc. I'm looking for a solution where I don't need to remember to stop myself doing something natural and intuitive like clicking on a favourites shortcut every morning.

Thinking about it, I'd also quite like to stop it auto-deleting any favourites links, even if they never work and are genuinely broken links: if a folder link breaks, I'll want to be able to look at the old file path to help me work out where a colleague might have moved it to. So solutions that turns off all auto-deletion of shortcuts is also welcome.

To add a little more info, once connected the shared drive appears in the "Shared" section of the Finder sidebar. "Get info" on it gives its "Kind" as "PC", and no further info.

It looks like Finder is set up such that if you click on a favourite, and Finder doesn't get back either "success" or some sort of specific known "connecting" message of a type that network Macs send to other Macs, it immediately deletes the shortcut. I'd like to have it not auto-delete shortcuts.

This seems to be a somewhat prevalent issue, without a clear fix yet. Here's a link to one of the Apple Support threads that I think is a similar problem: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5556541?start=45&tstart=0


external hard drive found only by disk utility, cannot eject or mount I'm using a Seagate GoFlex that seems to have encountered some trouble.
The drive does not appear on the desktop or Finder. I've double checked that Finder > Preferences allows for it to appear in both places.

I can see the drive in Disk Utility and have successfully done 'Verify Disk' and 'Repair Disk' however it's worth noting that both 'Verify Disk Permissions' and 'Repair Disk Permissions' are greyed out.

The "Mount" option at the top of Disk Utility is greyed out, however "Eject" is not though when selected I receive that it "could not be unmounted."

I don't quite know what to do next in order to successfully access the Time Machine backups and other files I have stored.

The hard drive randomly started working again after an hour or so left alone.


FileVault 2 Encrypted drive was reformatted by thief then returned. Is the original encrypted data salvageable? I had a Macbook Air Yosemite which was FileVault 2 encrypted.  The laptop was stolen from me.  The thief was able to reinstall OS X and some apps (was bringing it to market for sale).  The laptop was then recovered and returned to me.

I still have the recovery key and password used to encrypt the original partition.  Are the original encrypted files still recoverable?  I understand there are several file-recovery software solutions for non encrypted drives.  Are there any solutions available for this situation?

I'm afraid there are not many options given an ordinary, "home user" budget.

Theoretically you could send the drive in to a recovery service such as IBAS to get them to recover the original data on the drive. If this is even remotely possible depends on what kind of physical medium you had (i.e. is it SSD or spinning-platter hard drive). If they can recover everything, you can use the standard Apple tools to access the encrypted drive with your password or recovery key.

If you can't recover the full data set, you would have to inspect the data manually and probably create new tools for decrypting blocks of data using your recovery key. This will require specialized knowledge and skills, considerable amount of time - and with no guarantee of success. It is out of range for ordinary, home user purposes. FileVault 2 uses AES-XTS encryption - if you haven't got the recovery key and/or volume master key it is going to very hard (next to impossible) to decrypt.


right shift key goes to desktop I have an imac running OS 10.8.2 with a bluetooth keyboard.  I have had it for about 8 weeks.  When I hit the right shift key, all the open windows run off the screen and I am looking at the desktop.  When I hit it again, the windows come back.  I have taken the batteries out of the keyboard and restored the keyboard shortcut defaults.   I don't have a trackpad and nothing seems stuck.  Suggestions?


Adding Bookmarks for multiple tabs in Safari with a keyboard shortcut In Safari, there is the Add Bookmarks for These N Tabs… function. Unfortunately, you cannot create a Keyboard shortcut for that because those need to match the name of the menu item.

You can use this Applescript; it creates a shell script containing the links for all the tabs in the current Safari window:

-- Set the default folder to Home -> bookmarks
set bookmarkFolder to "/bookmarks"
set username to do shell script "whoami"
set defaultFolder to POSIX file ("/Users/" & username & bookmarkFolder)

-- Initialize the text ot the script.
set cmd to "#!/bin/bash" & linefeed & linefeed

-- Add commands to open all the tabs.
tell application "Safari"
    set n to count of tabs in front window
    repeat with i from 1 to n
        set cmd to cmd & "open -g " & URL of tab i of front window & linefeed
    end repeat
end tell

-- Open/create a file and save the script.

tell me
    activate
    set scriptAlias to choose file name default name "tabset" default location (defaultFolder as alias)
end tell
set scriptPath to quoted form of POSIX path of scriptAlias
set scriptFile to open for access scriptAlias with write permission
set eof scriptFile to 0
write cmd to scriptFile starting at eof
close access scriptFile

-- Change the file attributes to make it double-clickable.
do shell script "chmod 777 " & scriptPath
do shell script "xattr -wx com.apple.FinderInfo '00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00' " & scriptPath

The original version is by Dr. Drang.

I have changed two things:

the script allows for whitespace in the file name
the default folder is ~/bookmarks

To run it, you can either use a launcher (like Quicksilver or Butler) or wrap it in a System Service with Automator:

create the service

add a Run Applescript item
select Service receives no input in Safari
paste the Applescript

create a shortcut in System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Services

⌘⌥D does not work if you use it to toggle the visibility of the Dock


is it possible on a mac to quicky see the desktop along with the last active window? Many times, I feel the need to keep the current window open while having access to the desktop.

A good scenario to picture where this could be handy is this:

Say, you are on a web page and you want to drag a picture to desktop. If you are seeing a piece of the desktop at that moment, then no problems, just drag the pic to that spot but, many times, it turns out that the entire desktop is covered by underlying other windows. Sure, there is a hot-corner trick you can apply that will get you the desktop, but that action will also take down the current window, the one you wanted to drag the picture from.

As far as I know, there is no way around this problem.
So I end up minimizing the underlying windows to get a piece of the desktop to drag picture onto.

But I'll ask it anyway...
Is there a way that would do what I'd like to do?

Simplest is in the Dock -

Hold  Alt ⌥  & Right Click > Hide Others

Alternatively & probably better than my original answer [I don't know if this is system-wide, but it does appear in all the apps I checked, Apple & 3rd party]
 Cmd ⌘   Opt ⌥   H  is the key command to Hide Others


How do I turn my optibay hard drive into a slave storage? I have a new SSD and my old hard drive installed in my optibay. My old hard drive currently has a Mac OS system on it, and I want to just wipe it so I can use it for storing my videos, and pictures. How can I do this?

Can you boot into the laptop from the SSD OS while both drives are in your laptop?

If so, just open disk utility, select your old HDD drive, and select the erase tab.

From there you can reformat your hard drive.


Can I upgrade from Mountain Lion To Mavericks without the app store? I don't want to create an App Store account because I don't like the idea of tying my computer with it.

Can I still upgrade from Mountain Lion to Mavericks for free from the Apple servers without an App Store account ?

In short: No, at least not yet.

What's wrong with creating an Apple ID? Your computer won't be tied with it as you can simply signout.
Even after installing Mavericks you have to set up an Apple ID, or skip the part afterwards.

You don't have to keep it connected.

Sidenote: You create an account here, but an Apple ID is one step too far?


How can I install boot camp off a Windows 7 USB flash drive? I'm trying to follow the directions on how to create a Windows 7 installation USB flash drive. I was able to create the drive and when I insert it into a Windows computer, it shows the installer correctly.

The problem is that when I get to the "Start Windows Installation" step in boot camp, it asks to insert the Windows disk. I inserted the USB drive, and it appears on the desktop, however, when I click Start Installation, I get the following error message:

  The installer disc could not be found.
  Insert your Windows installer disc and wait a few seconds for the disc to be recognized.

I'm having the exact same problem. I tried holding the option key when rebooting to see if I could boot from the USB key but I could not find a way to do this, so I installed rEFIt (then rebooted twice!) and THEN plugged in the USB key and the next time I rebooted it did show up as an option to boot from the USB key.

I tried that and the windows installer loaded and it found the new bootcamp FAT32 partition. It said I couldn't install to the bootcamp partition because it requires NTFS.

This SuperUser post suggests "simply format the partition using the Windows installer's built-in utility (in other words, as part of the installation process)" so I did that continued with the install and everything works fine!


Dual monitor DELL P2415Q MacBook Pro 13" early 2015 Does anyone know if I can connect two 4k monitors running at 60Hz to my MBP 13" early 2015, 3.1 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1867 MHz DDR3, Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB). Specifically, I am interested in the DELL P2415Q.

My understanding is that I can connect 2 monitors with res 3840 x 2160 via the two thunderbolt ports, but only one can run at 60Hz, the other must run at 30Hz.

Any help is appreciated!

Thanks!

You can run one external display at 3840x2160@60Hz, or two external displays at 2560x1440@60Hz. There are two thunderbolt connectors, but only one thunderbolt controller, which only has the bandwidth of a single DP1.2 port. If you connect two UHD (3840x2160) displays, I'd expect both of them to run at 30Hz.

Contrary to my expectation, I have two UHD monitors running at              3840x2160@60 Hz connected to a Mid 2014 15" Retina MacBook Pro (MacBookPro11,3). Both external displays are Samsung U28D590 with DP1.2 enabled. There are two separate ways of displaying the resolution and refresh rate (the monitor's own report, and System Preferences), and for both monitors, 3840x2160@60 Hz is reported by both methods. To see all of the details in System Preferences, hold Alt (Option) while changing Default for display to Scaled, then select Show low resolution modes. With my displays, it doesn't allow me to change Refresh Rate, but it displays as 60 Hz on both displays.

On a separate note, I recently discovered that the Apple Store claims that a 27" Retina iMac can drive two external UHD displays at 60 Hz, or a single 5120x2880 display with dual inputs. When I first saw that I wondered whether the newest Retina iMac has a second Thunderbolt controller, but today's test on my Mid 2014 MacBook Pro suggests another possibility, a software improvement that somehow makes better use of the available bandwidth. I'm not convinced today's experiment would have had the same outcome a year ago, but I'm not quite tempted to install an older release and repeat the test (this MacBook Pro is running MacOS X 10.11.4 (15E65)). If anything, I'm more tempted to buy a Dell UP2715K to see if anything I already have can drive that.

I have neither a DELL P2415Q nor a 13" MacBook Pro to test, but based on today's experiment I'd say there's a good chance your Mac can drive two P2415Q displays at 3840x2160@60 Hz. Failing that, the second display can probably do 30 Hz with the HDMI port.


Dragging objects with MacBook Pro touch area To drag a window on a Windows laptop I could put my mouse in the title bar area of the window, double tap and hold the second tap down (instead of letting off).  As long as I hold this down I can drag the window wherever I want and let off of the touch pad to release the 'hold' of whatever the mouse is over.

I recently purchased a new MacBook Pro and tried to do the same thing.  It goes as planned, but after dragging the window and letting off of the trackpad the item I was dragging is still 'locked/held'. If I go to use the touch pad again, it keeps dragging the window until I tap it again. This is very annoying!

Here's how the process goes:

Mac:

Tap twice and hold the second tap
Drag the object selected anywhere you want
Remove finger from the touch pad
Tap the touch pad again (to release the object)

It should go like this (Windows):

Tap twice and hold the second tap
Drag the object selected anywhere you want
Remove finger from the touch pad (DONE!)

Step #4 kills me on the mac because I have used Windows machines for the last 15 years.  I just can't conform to the Mac drag!

How can I resolve this?

On my MacBook Pro 15", Mid 2012, there is a new option for dragging with three fingers in Mountain Lion. You place the pointer on the window title and use three fingers to move it around. As soon as you let go of the track pad it releases the window. To make the window stick to your pointer you tab twice with three fingers and tap again to release it.

Important is that activating three finger swipe gestures for Expose change to four finger swipes.


External USB hub for 4 external hard drives I have a macbook pro.  And like all macs, there is never enough ports.  I've been searching and searching to find a USB hub that power 3 external USB hard drives.

Any advice?

Make sure the hub you buy powers each port to 500mAh. Most name brand hubs do this so you'll have to go to lengths to find a cheap / lesser specification hub that doesn't come with a plug in power supply to not be able to power three devices.

In general, shopping for items that Apple has chosen to sell through online store is a great way to identify which vendors make quality products. The best of the best items get placement in the retail stores. Since that space is very limited only the most useful and cool accessories make the cut.


X29 Proximity Temperature sensor What is the X29 Proximity (temperature) Sensor measuring? I'm on a 2013 MacBook Pro with Retina.

The X29 Proximity Temperature sensor is used to monitor the heat that the CPU is producing, likely at different locations inside the computer, hence the word proximity.


Where can I get Python VTE bindings for the Mac OS X? I'm trying to comiple Guake top-down terminal (guake.org) in Mac OS X. I've met a bunch of dependency issues while ./configure phase, but now I'm completely stuck with the following dependency issue:

checking for the python-vte package... no
configure: error: cannot import Python module "vte".
    Please check if you have python-vte installed. The error was:
    No module named vte

I've installed python, pygtk and vte via Homebrew but can't find anything related to python-vte, pip doesn't give me any suitable candidates. I've spent a lot of time while have been googling how to resolve this dependency and didn't find any references of python VTE bindings sources but saw many prebuilt packages for other OSes (http://packages.debian.org/ru/sid/python-vte).

Did anybody meet this issue before or just knows how to resolve it?
Thanks.

PS: Sorry for my intermediate English..

Macport has it. You may install MacPort and do a

sudo port install vte

NB: Installing vte trough MacPort install a new python in /opt/local/ and vte gets installed in /opt/local/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages/gtk-2.0


save skim annotated pdf as pdf with annotations I have skim version 1.4.16, and I can't find a way to save a pdf with skim notes as a pdf with annotations that preview 8.0 can read. I can export as a "pdf bundle", but preview 8.0 doesn't want to open such a file. I expect there are many other pdf readers, both in osX land and other OS's, that won't understand the bundle.

Have I missed something?

Skim doesn't save notes and highlights within the PDF file itself. That's why they don't show up in other viewers (much like 'bookmarks' in Preview).

It's possible to export a copy with notes and highlights embedded: File > Export… then choose file format "PDF" and mark the option "With embedded notes". They will show up in Preview and Acrobat. However, Skim can't edit the notes of the exported copy anymore. Apparently, Preview and Acrobat can, though.

Skim FAQ at https://sourceforge.net/p/skim-app/wiki/FAQ/

(based on Skim version 1.4.18, OS X 10.7.5, Acrobat Pro XI)


Once I disconnect from the mains, can I leave the charger cable in the Mac? I use my MacBook Pro on battery as much as possible, recharging when needed and once a month running it down to recalibrate etc.

However, when the battery is charged to 100% I unplug the charger from the electricity supply and the MacBook from the charger, but I wonder is the latter precaution necessary?

Is there any power exchange between MacBook and charger when the latter is unplugged?

It's not too important but would save me some scrambling around under my desk.

Yes, it's fine to leave it plugged in.
The charger is simply disconnected and there is no closed circuit.


Using truetone with external monitor in clamshell mode I have MBP 2019 that I want to use in clamshell mode with an external display.
But I'd like to be able to use true tone.

Now, I am aware that it needs sensors in the Macbook.

I've been thinking more in line of:

Open macbook pro, let true tone adjust color.
Run some terminal command to 'freeze' the settings.
Close the lid.

Does anyone know how to achieve this?

Well I couldn't find a terminal command line, but what I did was,

Turn off True Tone altogether.
set a custom nightshift mode that matches the warmth of the display with true-tone for 24 hours.


limitations of .aspx web pages rendered in OS X Safari Specifically,

The goal is to understand the degree of compatibility of Safari with .aspx services.  Is there a comprehensive list of .aspx functionality that fails in Safari? OR

Is there a method \ line of thought to evaluate an .aspx page to determine any functional limits from a Safari perspective?

Although one can simply try the pages in Safari, I am reluctant to try it with this government website:

https://ritx-fl-sut.bswa.net/

State of Florida Department of Revenue website for reporting sales tax. The website allows me to login with Safari, but indicates:

  This website is optimized for use on a PC using Microsoft Internet
  Explorer. If you are using any other web browsers, this site may not
  appear or function as designed. We do not officially support the
  Macintosh platform.

ASPX is a Server Side Choice

ASPX is a server side technology. The web pages created by ASPX are not inherently limited on Safari browsers.

This is the same for other server side technologies such as Java, php, and perl.

Developer's Responsibility

The developer of the .aspx created page is responsible for producing content that conforms to widely accepted web standards. These standards include HTML5 and those published by the World Wide Web Consortium.

Web developers can refer to resources such as QuirksMode for a guide to what features are supported by which browsers.

Webmasters' Stack Exchange

For help with specific web technologies and choices, please ask on the specialised Webmasters Stack Exchange.


How can I sync PDF files (and more) with my Mac and iPad? I know the iPad has the Book Shelf thing:

I know I can add PDF files to it - but:

Is it possible to sync that with my Mac so I can also read them on the Mac?
Is it possible to have them keep the same place (page / bookmark) synced?
Would I / can I use iTunes on the mac to pick up reading where I left off on the iPad?

If it isn't possible with the the native software, are there any apps that do this?

Also, is it somehow possible to add other reading materials (like webpages) to the bookshelf for reading later? I know that you could do something similar with Evernote but it seems odd to dump your PDF files in evernote as attachments to notes rather than having them as part of a library of some sort. Also not sure that Evernote can remember / sync your place in attached PDF files.

The PDF files you add to the bookshelf are copied back to iTunes on your Mac and the can be accessed there and opened in Preview. Unfortunately, I don't believe your location data is synchronized.

Archiving of web pages can be done using the Reading List function in Safari or using a service like Instapaper.


LG Ultrafine 5K always keeps my Mac charging, is this bad? The LG Ultrafine 5k Monitor is great for Apple computers. But the thing is that it will always keep your Mac charging, whether you want it or not. Is this bad for the battery life?

It’s not actually charging.

Your Mac uses the power from the charger for its power needs without going through the battery. If that power is not enough then it takes some more power from the battery. If not all power from the charger is needed and the battery is not full only then will the battery be charged.


What does the new command on the f4-key do? I used to have a dashboard icon, which opened the dashboard when clicked on my keyboard.

But now there is another image, which does nothing when clicked.

What is it supposed to do?

How to I fix it?

How do I alternative assign it to dashboard again?

Image:

Also what does the key with an upward arrow and a line do?

And what does the one with a crossed box do?

Image 2:

Caret and Line is Enter, and the crossed box is clear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Keyboard


Is password to make purchase from App store on iPad and iPhone encrypted? Is it safe to purchase apps when connected to an unsecured Wifi network (like Starbucks)? Can your password be seen?

According to Apple, "The iTunes Store and Mac App Store uses Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption on all functions that require personal information."

So passwords are sent encrypted, not in cleartext. If the NSA is packet sniffing at your local Starbucks, chances are they know how to get your password (but if they're looking for your App store password, you've got bigger problems), but it should be reasonably safe.


is there a way to disable a drive bay from the command line? Regarding a previous question I asked a while ago:
Macpro 5,1 mid 2010 cannot boot to Mojave from Mountain Lion?
I am wondering, is there any sort of default writes or other software solution which would allow me to completely disable a drive bay? If I have both the Mojave and Mountain Lion drives loaded into the drive bays, the computer will always choose to boot Mountain Lion, and the only way I can get Mojave to boot is to physically pull out the Mountain Lion drive.  I am just trying to come up with a way to be able to boot to Mojave from Mountain Lion since it cannot see the volume (due to it being APFS)...  Is there anything I can do?  The last thing I want to have to do is solder wires to the mother board and connect them to a switch so I can disable a drive--- I would much rather find a way to do this with software.

Create a small JHFS+ formatted partition. Install the rEFInd Boot Manager to this partition. Configure rEFInd to silently boot Mojave. If configured properly, rEFInd will appear in the Startup Disk pane of System Preferences of Mountain Lion. You then can select rEFInd from Mountain Lion. When rEFInd boots, the software will silently instruct the firmware to boot Mojave.
A simpler alternative may be to rename the System/Library/CoreServices/boot.efi  file in the Mountain Lion startup volume. The may prevent Mountain Lion from booting, which may result in Mojave booting.


Should I have my MBP "take breaks" while working hard, or are its fans sufficient? I want to transform some data by doing (from Terminal) a Python command that runs on a single core only and doing something I expect to be CPU bound once data is pulled from disk and is accessible at memory speed, not SSD speed. I'll be a bit surprised if the calculation isn't enough to get the fans engaged and keep them engaged until the end is reached.

Are there corrective ways to guard computer integrity while it's doing calculations? Is it recommended practice, for instance, to do n seconds of work, and then sleep m seconds, and repeat the cycle.

Any "big picture" comments about intensive calculations and how to keep a computer safe would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Your processor automatically throttles itself when it gets too hot, OS X automatically sets the fan speeds appropriate, and in the off-chance your computer gets too hot, it will automatically shut off.

You don't need to worry about a modern computer getting "over-worked".


Remove Default Apps with Configurator 2 I've been tasked with creating profiles and blueprints with Configurator 2 for deployment on company owned iPhones.

However, I'm hung up on one problem. I was told to remove some of the default apps, including mail. I figured out how to disable them, but not remove the app entirely using a Configurator profile.

Is there a way to do this? All I'm finding on it are articles from 2016 that do exactly what I did but with vastly different results.

Here you get options to disable iTunes Store, News, Podcast, etc but at the bottom of this window is where you can name specific apps to restrict.

If you change “Allow All Apps” to “Do Not Allow Some Apps” you can then tap the + button to add apps you don’t require.

Just search for the specific app and select choose.

Once you have added the apps you wish to restrict just close this window and you will be prompted to save the profile.


How to get Cascading Folder Browser in Dock or Menu? Windows offers a cascading folder browser on the menu. It enables very quick drilldown to a buried subfolder.

How can the be done on a Mac, from the menubar or dock?

This is vaguely similar to the Mac column-browser, but it's not a finder window, it's a menu or dock widget.

You can use the Stacks feature on the Dock to accomplish what you're asking.

You can drag and drop the Macintosh HD (or any other folder) onto the right side of the Dock, to the right of the separator line, to create a Dock item. Then right-click it, to bring up its context menu, and select List under View content as. This will give you a cascading menu of the drive.

For more information on Stacks, have a look at: Mac Basics: Stacks are your shortcut in the Dock


Apply automator action to original instead of copy I'm trying to make a simple action to scale down an image by 50% but keeping an original copy of the file in the same directory.
I easily made an action similar to what I want that produces two files: one original one with the original name, and another scaled with the copy suffix.
The problem is that I want to have the scaled img with the original file name, and the original img with a "copy" suffix.

This is what my action looks like right now:

Ok, I find out a way to do it with variables.
Basically I set a new variable before the duplicate, duplicate the file, get the previously set variable, and then scale the image.


Why does sed -i create random files with “q” commands? I’m aware that BSD sed behaves differently from GNU sed with regards to the -i option. However, the usual way of using sed -i '' on macOS ceases to work when using a q command, and I’m wondering whether this is a bug or whether I’m overlooking something in the documentation. In either case, I’d like to know how to restore the expected behaviour for the following simple command:

printf foo\\nbar > test
sed -i '' /foo/q test

Expected output:

$ ls -a
.    ..   test
$ cat test
foo

Actual output:

$ ls -a
.            .!79633!test ..           test
$ cat test
foo
bar
$ cat .\!79633\!test
foo

In other words: the original file is untouched. The result is instead written to a new, hidden file. The numeric value in the filename changes with every execution and looks like a process ID (it’s in the right range, too). Using q without an address gives equivalent behaviour.

I’ve found confirmation in the commit history: it’s a bug, which was fixed in r338375 in August 2018.


iPhone Calendar.App and TimeZones Is there a way to make the iPhone's Calendar App support timezones with appointments, or is there an alternative App that has multiple timezone support? I have a friend with an iPhone 4 (4.2.1) who travels around quite a bit and always struggles to book appointments with people when he's outside of his home country, the U.S.

The conversation might go something like this:

  [The scene is a New Zealand Beach on a Sunny January 5th]

  "Let's met for lunch a 2pm, sushi, my shout"

  "Sweet, so, 2pm new zealand time is 12pm yesterday american time, so I'll put it in my iCal at 12pm yesterday"

He needs iCal to be smart enough to adjust to the timezone of the country he is in. His iPhone does figure out local time from his telco and adjust that when he enters a new country.

Both iCal on Mac OS and Calendar on iOS have timezone support where you can tell it what timezone to use to show your calendar.  It didn't seem clear which you were asking about, so here's how to enable and use it on both.

On iCal on Mac OS, it is located at:

"iCal" menu -> "Preferences..." -> "Advanced" tab -> "Turn on timezone support"

Once enabled there, your iCal window will have a menu on the right top that allows you to select the timezone to use.

On Calendar on iOS, it is in the system preferences at:

"Mail, Contacts, Calendars" -> "Time Zone Support" all the way at the bottom

You can turn it on there and select the timezone in the selection below the toggle.


How do I filter videos by size to identify the largest in Photos app on OSX? I need to find the largest video files, because my videos takes a lot of space

but I dont know how to do this:

It seems to not to be there any option for filtering by size

As you surmised and @jstarek noted in their comment, the Photos app does not have a simple feature to sort by size. So there’s no easy way to answer your question, but here’s what I would do in your case.
The images are kept in a database with an underlying file structure that uses program generated unique names for the files. But, with a bit of work, it is possible to see the files in Finder, sort by size and correlate them to the photos app to delete them. The images are contained in a “package”  file usually named “Photos Library.photoslibrary” in your Pictures folder. To find it, open the Photos app and check under Photos->Preferences for the Library location and click “Show in Finder”. Now control-click on the file and select “Show Package Contents” from the pop-up menu. The package is really just a folder with subfolders as usual. Open the “originals” folder and you will see a list of subfolders with names like 0, 1, 2, etc. - these contain the image files. Set finder to view by columns, open one of the numbered subfolders and click the Size column heading to sort by file size. The files all have unique IDs for names, but you can still double-click these files to open them with their default viewer and play the video.

The Photos app keeps a thumbnail image for each of these with a link to the file in its database. Now you have two choices: go back to the Photos app and browse for the video that you found and delete it, or keep the Photos app closed and simply move the file to the trash. The first way is more work, but safe since you won’t be temporarily corrupting the library. If you do the latter, the Photos app will still have the thumbnail image, but the link to the original file will be broken when you select the thumbnail. You can then delete the thumbnail from Photos.
So, it’s a bit of work and might be a little scary, but maybe you’ll find it useful.