How can I change print quality and print profile settings when using Airprint? I just got a new wireless printer and I love that it lets me print from any device on my wireless network, even my iPhone. There is, however, one feature that appears to be missing.

When I print from my computer, I can select different print quality settings: "Draft, Normal, Photo, Black & White". I don't seem to be able to do this from my iPhone when using Airprint. I can only click "print", choose my printer, and the item gets printed at whatever settings Apple deems best at that moment.

But what if I want to lower the print quality to save on ink? Or print a photo in black and white? Is there any way to change those settings?

According to Apple, AirPrint on iPhone is simplified application.

It only lets you choose the printer and the number of copies, but not print quality etc.. in other words it use the current Printer defaults.

So what can you do?

Log in to the printer's set up page IP address that you need to know it first, but it is something like (192.168. xxx) and change it there.  However, this solution will affect all following documents until you change it again.


How can I reduce the display resolution in Windows (Boot Camp) on a Retina 5k iMac? tl;dr How can I add additional valid display resolutions to the Retina 5k iMac under Windows 8.1?

So I just picked up a new Retina iMac, immediately threw Boot Camp and Windows 8.1 on it, and started pulling my Steam games over.

All is well except for the fact that the display refuses to switch from it's not-really-native-but-windows-thinks-it's-native resolution of 3840 x 2160. Apparently that's a theoretical max for Windows (or at least AMD drivers) at the moment.

However, since I want to play games in fullscreen (not windowed) modes, I really need to be able to decrease the resolution. How can I do that?

I was able to solve this myself by realizing: (a) Windows 8.1 upgrade had changed my display adapter to a Windows Basic Display Adapter, (b) AMD's web site doesn't apparently host installers that work for the Retina iMac (yet?), and (c) the Boot Camp package that Boot Camp Assistant adds to your Windows installer contains a version of AMD Catalyst that will work and will replace the errant driver:

The installer is in <WININSTALL>:\Bootcamp\Drivers\ATI\ATIGraphics\Setup.exe
Run install
Verify in Device Manager that the Display adapter is AMD... M29{0,5}X

Finally, I was able to update resolution:


Chrome CPU consumption alert script Sometimes a website on Chrome sneaks on me, and starts consuming >100% CPU continuously.
I only notice that when the fan is running full speed.

Then I use the Chrome Task manager to find the culprit and shut it down.
I do not want to investigate why some websites do that, just shut them down.

Question:

Is there a script or something, that would alert me if:
Chrome reports CPU usage >50% for a Tab for longer than a minute. (not for seconds, since most do that while loading)

Using the existing Chrome Task manager that already monitors CPU usage by Tab, would be nice, if I can just get an alert from it.

MacBook Air
OSX Sierra
Chrome Version 58.0.3029.110 (64-bit)

Example with one website acting up !

You should modify this script to your needs or check if it already solves them as-is

https://github.com/andyyoung/Process-Monitor-for-Chrome


Hide/Fix Macbook Pro Retina Screen Scratch I noticed that I have a small scratch on my Macbook Pro Retina's screen.  When this has happened on my desktop LCDs I've used some Vaseline to hide it.  While I know that doesn't actually fix it I am looking for a technique to make this scratch less noticeable.

Possible methods depending on the scratch depth.

1- Fill it - for deep scratches.

Fill it with toothpaste! or professional glass filler.

  Believe it or not, toothpaste can be used to patch some screen
  scratches. Actual toothpaste, not gel or paste-mouthwash hybrids, must
  be used. Users should gently massage the paste into the scratch with
  their fingers using a circular motion. If done properly, the paste
  should adhere to the scratch and polish it away. Then, use a soft
  cloth to remove excess paste from the screen. Finally, use glass
  cleaner or a special screen cleaner to remove any additional residue.

  Petroleum jelly can also be applied in a similar manner, although it
  may need to be reapplied if a user happens to rub his or her screen
  and removes it from the scratch. While toothpaste is an abrasive that
  pares down a scratch, petroleum jelly fills the scratch because it
  closely matches the optical density of the LCD display.

2- Polish- for shallow scratches

Get the glass polish in any computer or similar store.

Pro..works well on shallow scratches

Con.. you will create a larger portion on your screen with lower transparency due to polishing.


Transfer pictures via iCloud to new Mac I had my Mac stolen last week. I now have a new one and would like all the photos I had backed up on iCloud on my new Mac. How do I do this?

If the photos were in Photo Stream, then you can go to System Preferences → iCloud, log in and check the box for Photos. Then, open iPhoto/Aperture and let it download the photos.

If the photos were added to iCloud by a specific app, go to System Preferences → iCloud, log in and check the box for Documents & Data, then open the app that you used to back up the photos.

If the photos were manually backed up to the Mobile Documents folder, go to System Preferences → iCloud, log in and check the box for Documents & Data, then wait for your files to sync.


Show Hidden Files OS X 10.7 Lion Possible Duplicate:
  How to show hidden files and folders in finder?

How do I show the hidden files in OS X 10.7 Lion?

Open Terminal.app (Applications > Utilities) and type the following commands:

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
killall Finder

To undo re-open Terminal.app and run

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles FALSE
killall Finder


Preview is Not Remembering Window Sizes and Positions on Startup (after Update to High Sierra) Since I updated to High Sierra the Preview app no longer remembers the sizes and positions of its open windows. Instead it just opens all windows on the same desktop with standardised size and position when the computer starts up.

How do I fix this?

(Side note: After updating the Preview app also didn't remember the last viewed page of PDF-files, but I was able to fix this by deleting the ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview folder. However, the window size and position issue persists.)

Preview does remember the position of windows containing images (JPG, PNG, etc) but for some reason does not restore the position of PDF windows. I suspect this is a bug.

The saved state for Preview is located at: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Preview.savedState

Meanwhile, you can use an app like Stay to remember and automatically reset the position of any window. It’s a bit heavy handed for this use case but it would let you carry on until the bug is fixed.

You might also look at window managers such as Tiles or Rectangle that allow easy manipulation of windows.


What is the default function for a play/pause media key? I have a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.  It has a button labelled play/pause.  When I have no keyboard drivers installed, the way the button behaves is by toggling playing and pausing in whatever most recent application that supports the behaviour.  For example, if my browser is the currently focussed app, but the previously focussed app is iTunes, then the button will play and pause the sound in iTunes.  If the previous app was Spotify, the button will trigger in Spotify.  The same goes for VLC.

This behaviour of remembering which app to toggle is great and I want to continue using it.  I'm now using USB Overdrive to remap the rest of the Microsoft media keys.  I am purposely not using the Microsoft keyboard driver because it conflicts with Karabiner which I also use and is compatible with USB Overdrive.

The problem is that in USB Overdrive the default is to set the play/pause button to call iTunes' play command.  This breaks the behaviour I described above.

What is the name of the default Mac play function that remembers which app to toggle?  Is there a way to run this function from Applescript or Bash?  USB Overdrive allows programming a key to launch an application.  I believe that the best solution would be to call this function from a script wrapped in a Mac application and link that to USB Overdrive.

It appears that there is a Gist on GitHub using USB Overdrive and a Windows Keyboard that addresses how to map the media keys the way you want to. Configure media keys on a non-Apple keyboard to control Spotify via AppleScript and USB Overdrive on OSX.

If you scroll down to ludalex addition to the Gist, they have added an Applescript that can identify either iTunes or Spotify and assign the Play/Pause key press to the correct app.


How to mount remote shares that have the same name, and easily differentiate them in the Finder? We have three Linux development servers which are available through SMB/CIFS, and I mount them on my Mac (using an Automator script in my Login Items).

The problem is that the SMB shares are username based, so all three shares show up as the same name in the Finder. If one looks carefully in the Volumes folder, then of course they are given different names, but those names are arbitrary, based on the order of successful mounting, I suppose. And anyway, the different names don't show up in the Finder.

I would like to be able to easily know which one is which - even a colored label would be nice, but I can't seem to be able to edit tags or labels directly on volumes.

Right now I can do one of these two things:

Open each of the "username" volumes, look at the list of folders inside, realize that these are not the projects I'm looking for, move on to the next folder.
Open the server through the "Shared" section in the Finder sidebar. But this attempts to re-connect to the server for some reason. So there is a delay before the volume opens.

So, what can I do to be able to tell which volume came from which server?

Although tags cannot be edited directly from the finder for volumes, comments can.

Therefore, I went into Side bar → Devices → Machine Name (which is where I can see all the volumes. In fact, it shows the /Volumes folder), and did the following:

I added the name of the particular server as a comment to each of the volumes.
In the finder view options, I added the comment column so that it shows when the folder is in list view, and checked the "always open in list view" option.

Therefore, now, whenever I open the volumes list I can see the comment and know exactly which share I want to open.

Previous to discovering this, I discovered that although volume tags cannot be edited from the finder, they can be changed through command line.

Create a dummy folder or use some existing folder in your own home folder. Change its tag to whatever you want the volume to have.
Get info on the volume you want to change, to see its current name. That is, if the share name is your username userX, and you have more than one such share mounted, one will be named userX, the next userX-1, userX-2 and so on. You can find out the name by getting info on the volume and looking at the "Name and extension" box.
Run the following commands from terminal to copy the tags from you dummy folder:

xattr -wx com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags "$(xattr -px com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags /Users/userX/dummyFolder )" /Volumes/userX-N
xattr -wx com.apple.FinderInfo "$(xattr -px com.apple.FinderInfo /Users/userX/dummyFolder )" /Volumes/userX-N

Replace /Users/userX/dummyFolder with the full path of your dummy folder (you can drag it to the terminal window for that), and /Volumes/userX-N with the name of the volume that you verified above.

I learned this method from this answer.

Nevertheless I prefer the first method I mentioned, now that I discovered it, because:

It displays actual textual information rather than a color I have to remember the meaning of (though of course I could go for a text tag rather than a color tag).
It requires no command-line access, only simple finder operations.
It doesn't change anything in the volume that isn't supposed to be changed.

Note: Both solutions require that you do not remove the .DS_store file on the server.


Possible to save screen resolution settings and quickly switch between them? I have different screen resolutions I need for various situations, for example:

Mac Retina while mobile: 1680x1050
Mac Retina + Thunderbolt: default (equal scaling on both monitors)
(optional) Mac Retina 1680x1050 + Thunderbolt: default (equal scaling on both monitors)

I'm not 100% sure this is what you're after, but it's possible to check the "Show displays in menu bar" option in System Preferences -> Displays. This adds a menubar item which allows you to quickly switch between recently used resolutions

Alternatively, maybe something like Display Maestro or SwitchResX would help? These both seem to have the ability to display and switch between recently used resolutions.


Say name of a caller on iPhone Is there an app, or any other way, to make my iPhone 4 to say the name of the caller while ringing, just the same way we are used to on Nokia phones? Preferable without jailbreak or sophisticated scripting trickery...and preferably a text to speech solution.

By default, no.

But it wouldn't be that hard to record the name (or perhaps using the voices in VoiceOver Utility to speak them), turn that into a ringtone, and then apply it to the specific contacts you have via the Address Book as a custom ringtone.

It's a bit of legwork, but it's a clean way of doing it and won't require any outside software or hacking of the device.


Use Mac OS X dictation on a file? In Mountain Lion, Mac OS X can use its dictation/voice recognition to turn your speaking into text.

Suppose I have an audio file of my voice speaking. Is there a way to use this dictation ability to turn that audio file into a text file?

I suppose the brute force solution would be to plug headphones into the audio port and hold them up to the microphone. Is there a more software-based solution more analogous to Unix pipes?

You can install Soundflower. It's a great utility that creates virtual input and output devices. So you could route QuickTime player, for example, as the input for the dictation.
http://cycling74.com/soundflower-landing-page/


Unable to modify files directly even after changing permission Background:

I have added an additional SSD to my iMac and made it the startup disk. The old 1TB hard disk is still attached and is now the secondary hard drive.

The new drive is formatted to APFS. Old drive is still 'Mac OS extended (journaled)'

Goal:

I want to fix the permission of my files on secondary hard drive such that I can easily manipulate my old files

What I have done:

I used Cmd+I to bring up the Info dialog box, and give antkong (Me) the read & write permission. Then I used 'apply to the enclosed items...' option to apply the new permission to subfolder and files.

It seems to work for me because the stop badges (minus in a red circle) on subfolders are gone.

Problem:

I tried to delete some files in one of the subfolder. I still get prompted for the sudo password

I expect that I can manipulate files as if I am the owner.

Why this happens? How can I fix this issue?

The simplest method would be to check "Ignore ownership on this volume"

Get Info on the drive itself rather than an individual folder.
You should see the checkbox at the bottom, available once you unlock the admin padlock.


Macbook Pro keeps shutting down even when magsafe is plugged I have MacBook Pro Retina Mid 2014 with Catalina installed. Initially my Mac is randomly shut down and later it shutdown every time I logged on to the Mac. It will display the desktop for a few seconds then shut down.

The Mac keeps shutting down in the Safe mode and also Recovery mode. But when I run Apple Diagnostic it says that there no errors found.

When I look in the log from advice in comments, I get "shutdown cause -128"

Do you think my logic board is broken or this is related to something else?

This could be a Hardware issue.

But you have these options that can help:

1) Reset your Mac's NVRAM or PRAM.

2) If you continuing experiences issues, try to reset the SMC of your Mac.

I hope that works.


Apple Music: Are recommendations based on local play counts? It seems that play counts are totally disfunctional in the latest versions of iTunes (versions 12.5.3 currently).  I know that there have been sync problems all the time, but since I joined Apple Music it won't even increase the count for songs played from the local library in the local iTunes.  Most of the songs in my library are stuck at zero plays although I listen to them often.

Everything else in Apple Music seems to be working all right.  In particular, the "For You" Section does show my latest plays under "Recent plays", just the numbers in the library remain zero forever.  I wonder if it is relevant, or if maybe Apple Music keeps playcounts separate from the local ones.

Unfortunately the solution provided does not work for all of us. Every day I play music from iCloud Music Library on my iPhone, and every day only the first track I listen to has the play count increased by 1.


Mac Preview Force Touch not working properly Since I bought my Mac, I always use Force touch in Preview in order to get definitions about words, translations and so on, but now, I've noticed that this is not working.

Force touch itself is working fine (the trackpad reacts to my finger pressure), but the 'Look up' section that I normally used, is not appearing (it is only shown if I select one word, and with secondary click, select Look up).

This is working fine in Safari, for instance, but not in Preview.

It isn't fault of the pdf, I mean, it is not a scanned pdf where you cannot select nothing, but a generated pdf with selectable text.

I tried to figure out what is going on, and I tried to navigate thought Preferences and all menus, but I am not able to find where it could be enabled/disabled.

Anyone knows what could I do?

Thanks

Apple support said that it was a changed after the update. It will sill working on other applications like pages, notes...


AppleScript : next/Previous tab in safari I'm trying to change the focus on safari for the next tab (and the previous tab)

I wrote this which is not working :

tell application "Safari Technology Preview"
    tell window 1
        set myTabNumber to current tab
        set current tab to (myTabNumber - 1)
    end tell
end tell

How can I handle this?

Update :

Thought this would be better but nope... :

    tell application "Safari Technology Preview"
    tell window 1

        set myTab to (index of current tab)

        set goodtab to (myTab + 1)

        set current tab to tab goodtab
    end tell
end tell

This is what you want:

tell application "Safari"
    tell window 1
        set currentTab to (get index of current tab)
        set current tab to tab (currentTab  - 1)
    end tell
end tell

You need to be specific, otherwise you end up with type-conversion issues.


How to disable special character selection popup when a key is held down There was a fix that worked with Lion in this question

defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool false

but that no longer seems to work in Mavericks.

Has anyone figured out how to turn off the special character insertion popup that appears when you hold a key down in Mavericks?

That command still works in Mojave, High Sierra and Mavericks — don't forget to reboot or logout/login after running the command.


Time Capsule on Public Network I have an Apple Airport Time Capsule 3 TB that I want to connect to the ethernet network (not wi-fi) at my university so that several of my Macs can use it to backup to via Time Machine.

I am currently directly connected to the time capsule via an ethernet cable. So far I have disabled wi-fi and enabled bridge mode since the device will only be used over ethernet and will be obtaining an IP Address over the network via our university DHCP server, just as any normal PC would do.

Every device first needs to be registered with our IT department which simply involves sending them the device MAC Address, hostname, and owner. So, my questions are:

How do I obtain the Time Capsule MAC Address? I do not see it listed
in AirPort Utility while connected to the capsule via an ethernet
cable.
How do I configure the capsule so that only specific Macs can use it
    to backup to? There needs to be some type of authentication.
Should I connect the capsule to the network via its WAN port or its
    LAN port?

Thanks

To answer your first question, you hold control and option together and then double click on the Time Capsule in Airport Utility. On the summary page you will see a bunch of stuff, but under where it says "Version: XXXXX" you will see that it shows MAC addresses for all of the interfaces

Secondly, the TC by default restricts backups to only computers that have the password which can be set under the disk tab

I don't really understand your third question, but if it means what I think it does, you should connect over the LAN port because while using the internet jack does work, I found it causes instability within the network.


Search across networked drives that are only sometimes connected I've got networked drives at work and networked drives at home. What's a way to set up search so that it automatically applies searches to each drive when connected without having to rebuild the index each time I switch?

I've tried Spotlight, Quicksilver, and Launchbar, and don't see where any of them handle this well. (I use sidekick to change all my other settings, so something that integrates with that could work.)

One thing that would work would be Launchbar or Quicksilver with Roo Switch. But that means maintaining three separate catalogs -- one for home, one for work, and one for everywhere else (i.e. not connected to either set of networked drives). Lame.

EasyFind is the answer.

Does a search without indexing anything, in real time. Slower than Spotlight, but comforting to us Windows folks, who like to see exactly what the thing's doing. (And in practice it's actually very fast when searching for a filename.)


How to obtain Disk Image of OS X Beta? We use JAMF's Casper Suite to deploy our Macs, and would like to be able to push out the OS X Developer Beta to some machines to do some testing before the public release.

I have downloaded the Beta from the Developer site however it gives me a 'OS X El Capitan Developer Beta Access Utility' when I need a DMG.

After running the file, it takes me to the updates page of the App Store and allows me to download the update.

Is it possible to get the full disk image from somewhere?

I'm afraid a DMG isn't downloadable.

I think it may be possible by the following steps: (haven't tried it myself yet)

Create a new disk image through Disk Utility at a size large enough to fit a system (about 40G should be good, you can shrink it later)
Mount the disk image
Using the installer downloaded from the App Store, install El Capitan Beta on the mounted disk image
Eject and export the disk image.


How does the Mac OS X Lion beta work? Apparently you download it from the Mac App Store, but I don't understand how that would work, because it's not an app.

Can a developer who has installed it explain the process to me?

I did it. (Apple Developer).

I have a second computer that I use for all beta testing, running OS X 10.6.  I used the app store on that computer to download the Lion Beta Installer.  It downloads and installs just like any other app.  You then run the Lion Beta Installer app and it reboots and installs Lion as if it came off a CD.  After another reboot, you are running Lion, with all your apps and settings working just fine.

Hope this does not defy the NDA.


How do I start taskgated again? I killed taskgated from the Activity Monitor and since then it is not been running. How do I start the process taskgated again?

You can either reboot, or run

sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.taskgated.plist


Inconsolata font does not work in Terminal I'd like to use Inconsolata as the closest free approximation of the Consolas font for editing and programming on my Mac. After downloading Inconsolata's OpenType file I changed TextWrangler's preferences so that Inconsolata becomes the font for the editor window.

This worked just fine and the text is now properly rendered using Inconsolata. I take that as a proof that the font is properly recognized by the OS in general.

Then, I tried to tweak Terminal's preferences to also use Inconsolata. To my surprise, the Terminal window shrank to this:

For a test, I tried to increase the font size to 288 in order to check whether the text is simply rendered really small and therefore seemingly creating a blank window. Unfortunately, to no success.

I tried to switch the fixed-spaced font in Mail and as the result, a mail window that previously displayed a message just went blank. I tried TeXShop and was able to successfully changing the editor font to Inconsolata.

It seems as if the change works well in some apps and fails entirely in other apps. Does anybody have an idea why this is the case?

How can I use Inconsolata in the Terminal (and Mail) under MacOS X 10.6.7?

Try to clear and rebuild your font cache with the following:

sudo atsutil databases -remove
sudo atsutil server -shutdown
sudo atsutil server -ping

The above is "my standard answer" to font problems.

After your reply, I tried to download the font too. Installed it and in the Terminal.app got the same result as you. So +1 to the question - I'm interested too.

So,

removed the otf version (does not work)
I downloaded the ttf version from the Google Fonts Directory
removed my cache as above
installed the ttf version
and works.

after it, for the test:

removed the ttf version
cleaned the cache
installed the otf version
does not work

so again for ttf - and have a working version in my Terminal.app

Haven't any idea why the otf version does not work. ;(


How to fix delayed typing on certain websites? When I am in Safari, typing an email or another form that has typing the resulting speed of text entry is mind numbingly slow!

I don't know what terms to search to identify the problem.

Why would it only be in an email?

Without a list of sites that work and a list of sites that don't - here are some tips.

Open Activity Monitor and look at CPU and choose View menu -> All Processes (and then sort by CPU use descending). Watch this for apps that are slowing things down.
Open text edit and type there. - make note of what process are using CPU when you type and how fast it responds.
Open your webmail (or a slow forum) and repeat.
If there are programs taking CPU when you see the slowness, quit them.
If you have quit everything but Safari, restart the Mac and repeat the fast/slow.

Over time you will begin to see if the slowness is CPU - which is things you can control on the computer or if it's not the CPU that's waiting. In that case, it's the web site or network.

The pragmatic solution is to type in a local word processor and then copy/paste into the slow web application if you find the web application interface slowing you down.


Finder windows just show screen artefacts On our Macbook Air (Mid-2011 11", OS X 10.9.5 Mavericks), starting a few days ago, every time we open Finder windows, the right side just shows screen artifacts/cheese. File Open dialogs in MS Word work fine - it is just the Finder windows with the problem.

Can someone help?

I have tried rebooting, and Verify Disk in Disk Utility. Neither helped. Maybe I should upgrade to El Capitan? But why would this start happening all of a sudden?

I found the solution here: https://www.maketecheasier.com/fix-google-drive-crashing-finder-in-mavericks/

A number of users who have upgraded their precious Macs to Apple’s newest OS, namely OS X Mavericks have found that when they log into their systems, the Finder windows no longer run stably. Instead, it quits and relaunches repeatedly. This problem has also been mentioned again and again on Apple Support forum threads, including here and here. When this problem occurs, all Finder windows and desktop items disappear, and then after a little while, reappear.
. . . . . . . . . . .
This specific problem appears to be related somehow to Google’s desktop client (current version 1.12, released on September 25) for accessing its Google Drive service. Whenever Google Drive synchronises, the folders that you have set up to sync should be showing a small sychronization icon next to them. It appears that the way Google Drive adds these sync icons to folders is the issue that is crashing Finder windows in Mavericks.

The fix/workaround is:

Click the Google Drive menu and choose Preferences.
Uncheck the option to “Show file sync status icons and right click menu” in the Preferences window.

I did that, and no more screen artifacts/freezing.


What's the meaning/use of ?mt=8 and ?mt=12 in iTunes Preview and Mac App Store Preview URLs? Examples

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wuala/id417749289?mt=8&ls=1
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/wuala/id417749289?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/visualdiffer/id412386481?mt=12&ls=1
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/visualdiffer/id412386481?mt=12

Friendlier URLs

I dislike the effect of ls=1 (launch App Store.app or iTunes.app) so I never share URLs in that format – I habitually remove that part of the URL.

I also habitually remove parts such as ?mt=8 and ?mt=12 – they seem superfluous. So for example:

http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/wuala/id417749289
http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/visualdiffer/id412386481

Questions

Does either ?mt=8 or ?mt=12 add value to the end user?

If not to the end user, how do those things add value?

MT stands for media type.  You can find known values in the answer to similar question.

Because there’s usually an ID in URL, it may seem odd, but according to another answer to that same question, the mt query parameter helps the operating system to launch the right store in the right app.  For example on iOS, you may see sometimes that links open the iTunes app first and then the iBookstore in the iBooks app.  Other times, the iBookstore is opened right away.  That is why mt should be part of iTunes and why you should probably use iTunes Link Maker.


help removing installmac malware In a moment of stupidity I installed a program on my OS X 10.8.5 that was suppose to turn my Iphone into a remote for my powerbook.  I was gifted with this hijacker app SearchInstallmac

I've read a lot about it, removed all the files I can find. The list of files I have deleted are found here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5091234?start=30&tstart=0

and  here

http://www.thesafemac.com/arg-genieo/

My Chrome Browser is still trying to re-direct to the malware site.  I have cookies blocked and so it can't redirect but I'd love to remove it completely.

I'm I missing something or a file that still needs to be deleted?  Do I need to reinstall Chrome?

I would head straight to sophos where they provide free virus and malware scanning software as well as removal tools.

http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition.aspx

Their product is quite well vetted and used by enterprise and many organizational IT departments. Worst case, you could reboot your Mac into recovery mode and install a fresh OS onto a USB drive and then install the cleaning software there, but from what you've listed a decent tool might clean things up with little muss or fuss.


Haswell 15" MBP, Win7 x64, no trackpad or keyboard I've seen quite a few threads about this around the interwebs, but no solutions.

I'm migrating from a 2012 15" rMBP to a new (as of yesterday) 15" rMBP, and am having issues with Win7 x64.

I used Winclone to image the Windows partition om the old machine, transferred it to the new one, repartitioned everything, and restored the Winclone image. That seemed to work fine; all the files are where they should be. After recreating a VM in Parallels, I can boot the partition successfully.

However, I can't boot directly into the Bootcamp partition. At the login screen, the keyboard and trackpad are nonfunctional. I connected an external USB keyboard, which didn't help.

So, I used Bootcamp Assistant to create a Win7 installer USB stick, and booted off of that. Same thing: When it gets to the first GUI screen, input devices are nonfunctional.

Suggestions?

I need the 750 GPU for several reasons, and would hate to have to return this thing.

After playing with this for a 8-10 hours, I found a solution:

You have to have Bootcamp Assistant create the USB key, and download the latest drivers (first and second checkboxes) to the key. There's apparently some startup information created that will let the keyboard and trackpad work with the installer.

Once that's done, boot into the Win7 installer. It still probably won't install. However, at some point you'll be presented with an option for "Load drivers," which appears in a few different places during the install.

When you get the opportunity,

Browse (on your installation media) to $WinPEDDriver$\IntelxHCISetup\Drivers\xHCI\Win7\x64\
Uncheck the box that says "hide drivers for unsupported hardware." (Yes, really.)
Select everything it finds.
Hit next. Wait for the drivers to load.
Exit out of the installer, closing everything until you get back to the "Install or Repair" screen (first thing you typically see when the Win7 installer boots. DO NOT REBOOT
Remove your USB key.
Wait for a moment.
Re-attach the USB key.

Proceed through the "Install Windows" wizard, select your target partition (probably have to reformat it as NTFS, depending on how you created it), and proceed as normal.

There appears to be an issue with the way that UEFI handles USB 3, so this may not be an issue with a USB 2 key.


Sudden sounds in Mountain Lion I run Mountain Lion on my macbook pro, and experience an unusual effect: sometimes system sounds happen, without any visible reason.
Does anybody know, why it could be?
Or, if it is possible, how to monitor the audiu subsystem to find out what application and when plays sounds.

There are a couple of things you can do figure out what's going on. First, see if it happens within other users. When it happens, see what Applications you're running, through Terminal or Activity Monitor, and check the Console, which logs all system's messages, and see if any of the running Application is sending any warning or having any issue.

All of these Apps can be found under Applications / Utilities.


Is there a way to view list of TV shows downloaded to iPhone (iOS 6)? I have downloaded several TV shows that I purchased via AppleTV onto my iPhone (iOS 6).  However, I cannot find them on the phone using the iTunes app.  All I can get to via the "Purchased" button is the entire cloud of purchased shows. It is impossible to tell from this cloud list which shows are actually on my phone without clicking on each individual show.  I am going to be traveling without connectivity and just want to access the shows on my phone now.  I know the hack for accomplishing this with music / iTunes Match (going to Settings -> Music and switching off "See All Music").  Is there something similar I can do for TV shows - a way where I can simply view a list of what TV shows are currently on my phone?

The quickest way to see what is on the iPhone without seeing the items still in the cloud is to put the iPhone into Airline mode and then look at your TV shows.

As the phone cannot connect to iCloud it can only show what is actually available on the phone.


Removed Facetime - how to recover? So I got this weird situation probably because of my own stupidity. But here goes: I am on Lion (10.7.3) and decided to install FaceTime from the App Store. When trying to install the App Store app says that I need to move current FaceTime.app to trash. When trying to do so the OS says that I cannot remove FaceTime app since it's required by OS. Being confused I open the terminal and go all sudo rm -fr on FaceTime.app. Getting back to App Store I try to install the FaceTime again, but this time I get message saying that MAS version of FaceTime is too old for my OS.

So basically my question boils down to - how do I get my FaceTime app back?

Getting the FaceTime.app file from your backup or another machine with the same OS version should work.


Display playlist by album instead of by song on iPhone I have an iPhone 5S. I want to see my playlist by albums instead of by songs. When I add an album of songs to the playlist, it shows all the songs. I can do it on iTunes on the computer but it doesn't seem to allow you to show playlist by album instead of by song.

Unfortunately you can't do this on your iPhone, but on a mac when you select the playlist you can go to the top right corner and change it from songs to albums for them to be sorted by album.


iOS 9 Automatic Downloading If iOS 9 automatically downloads (I know it doesn't automatically install, but it does automatically download) on an iPhone with iOS 8, and I delete the update file from the Settings app, will iOS 9 redownload automatically?

Yes it will download automatically if you don't disable it manually.

To turn off automatic download you need to go to your settings then to the App Store and iTunes Store settings and turn it off :


getting "out of memory" error when trying to load specific websites (am not out of RAM) UPDATE: Rich's solution (with the checkmark) solved my problem! I also posted an answer with a workaround that may help if Rich's solution doesn't work for you. The answer that received the bounty was the best at the time, but it doesn't have an actual solution (though it helped with troubleshooting).

I'm having a problem where my computer (Macbook Pro, 8GB RAM, OS 10.8) will not to attempt to load certain websites. Nothing fixes it except for rebooting. This occurs when nothing else is obviously wrong with my computer or internet connection, and when other sites load without problems.

When this occurs, here are the errors I get:

Chrome: Error 13 (net::ERR_OUT_OF_MEMORY)
Safari: "The error is: 'The operation couldn't be completed. Cannot allocate memory.'  (NSPOSIXErrorDomain:12)"
Firefox: No response after entering the URL and pressing return (no error message, no throbber to indicate that it's loading or trying to contact the site).
ping:

PING google.com (74.125.224.135): 56 data bytes
ping: sendto: Cannot allocate memory
ping: sendto: Cannot allocate memory
Request timeout for icmp_seq 0
ping: sendto: Cannot allocate memory
Request timeout for icmp_seq 1

(after which I canceled out)

The first time I noticed this, it occurred for one or two sites I tried to visit. I was still able to use facebook and google. Later in the day, the error extended to facebook and google as well. After rebooting, those sites became accessible again, but later on I became unable to access other sites (stackexchange.com, surveygizmo.com).

Some other notes:

I can confirm that this happens on multiple wireless networks and VPNs.
At the moment this was happening I had 2 GB of RAM "inactive" and 500 MB "free" out of 8 GB total, so I'm not actually out of memory. Other websites and applications are responding snappily and there's no sign of excessive swapping.
The response from ping seems to suggest that the problem doesn't affect DNS (though the IP address could have been cached somewhere).

I've only found one other reference to this problem, in this Apple support thread. No solution was found except for rebooting.

NOTE: This is not a problem with running out of RAM

Activity Monitor shows plenty of free / inactive memory. There's not an excessive amount of paging going on. Other websites load without problems. There may be some other kind of memory allocation error going on, but I can't imagine any way that a plain old RAM shortage would disable certain specific websites, with no other impact on performance.

I wasn't able to get my network back by disabling and re-enabling TCP/IP or the Wi-Fi. It seems in my case the computer had gone to sleep with a Juniper VPN connection and when it woke back up the connection had timed out and the routes weren't cleaned up. For me, I had two computers, one working and one not, and so was able to identify the problem after running netstat -rn.

On the computer that wasn't working, I had a destination of 192.168.43.1 with a gateway of link#5. On the computer that WAS working, the gateway for that destination was the mac address of the wireless router, so I removed that route with:

sudo route delete -host 192.168.43.1

After this, I could ping my wireless router and also get back to the internet.

Some people claimed that going to Settings → Network → Wi-Fi → Advanced → Proxies and turning on Auto Proxy Discovery worked for them. I was not able to verify this as my connection was fixed by deleting the 'dead' route.


Can’t disable Siri in iOS 12.2 How do I completely disable Siri in iOS 12.2? In previous versions of iOS, there was a simple setting you could toggle that would completely remove Siri from your system. This setting seems to have gone missing in the latest version.

I thought I had disabled it by toggling off all the individual settings on the Siri settings page, but these annoying “Siri Suggestions” keep popping up every time I type something into Safari.

Help me to nuke the AI please.

Make sure you have turned off Siri & Suggestions under Settings → Siri & Search → Safari.

Additionally, go to Settings → Safari and toggle off Safari Suggestions to disable Siri Knowledge from appearing in Safari.

Alternatively, you can also choose to browse in Private mode to disable all kinds of Siri suggestions.


Can I get (something like) an Apple wireless keyboard with numeric keypad? That would be perfect; their current wireless keyboard is too laptop-like. I like having wide arrow keys, the delete/end/page up/page down/home keys.

Otherwise, can someone recommend a similar option?

Agree with Loïc that this question should be rephrased, but if you're looking for a possible solution without being subject to Apple's whims, there are many third-party bluetooth keypads available...

LMP Bluetooth Keypad -- meant to attach to an Apple wireless keyboard, but has mixed reviews
Microsoft Bluetooth Keypad -- blasphemy, I know, but it has good reviews
Logitech Wireless Keypad -- non-Bluetooth alternative that uses Logitech's mini USB receiver


Install Xcode on OS X 10.8.4 I'm a Windows user and don't know anything about Macs. Now I have to create a web app for iPhone (it just opens a website inside an app).

I tried installing Xcode 5, but it's not compatible with OS X 10.8.4. I think I have to download Xcode 4, but I can't find it anywhere?

How do I install Xcode on OS X 10.8.4?

(I can't update this OS X because the Mac is not mine.)

Old Xcode versions can be downloaded from developer.apple.com, free registration is required for this. To install (and distribute) your own applications, you'll need to register as an iOS developer. This costs $99/year but can easily be done later.

Having said that, you may not even need to develop an app for what you have in mind. In Mobile Safari you can save any web site/URL as an application icon on your home screen. When tapped on, this will open the web site as an application.


Boot Camp says "Windows 10 is not supported" on Windows 7 DVD This has been posted on Apple Discussions earlier today, but I couldn't get any answers, so I have decided to also post it here

I have an iMac 27" mid 2011 running Sierra, and I have troubles installing Windows 7 via Boot Camp. I have downloaded the latest drivers onto my flash drive, loaded up the official licensed DVD of Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, but when I click "Proceed" after choosing "Install Windows 7 or Windows 8", the Boot Camp Assistant tells me "Windows 10 is not supported. Please use a DVD or USB with Windows 7 or Windows 8", as if my DVD has Windows 10 on it.

I didn't alter the DVD (how could I, it's DVD-R). I've also had Windows 7 previously installed, then updated to 8, 8.1 and 10 via online updates, but after that I have totally wiped out the whole partition and joined it back to Macintosh HD, before trying to perform a fresh install.

Is there a way to fix this and install Windows 7 from this drive?

P. S. I've tried creating a bootable USB with Rufus on another Windows machine, but the Boot Camp Assistant didn't recognize it

After performing a restart (which I have also tried before) the Boot Camp Assistant worked as expected.


Search for folders that contain filetypes For example, how do you search for all folders that contain ".mp3" files (on OS X)?

I don't think it's possible using Finder, but you can easily find these folders via Terminal

find . -name '*.mp3' | sed 's|/[^/]*$||' | sort -u

Some explanations:

find lists all files (and their paths) ending in mp3 in the current folder and everything "beneath" it
sed strips away the last part of each line produced by find which does not contain a / (which practically results in the file name getting removed)
The result so far is a list of folders containing mp3 files. If a folder contains more than one such file, it will be listed several times so we use sort -u (unique) to remove duplicates while sorting.


How can I automatically trigger a bash script before my Mac goes to sleep? I am aware of the options suggested in Possible to run scripts on sleep and wake?.

I am ideally looking for a native option that doesn’t require installing a third-party app or binary.

The closest I found is SleepWatcher but it requires installing a third-party binary using brew install sleepwatcher.

Thanks!

Limited Time

There is no built-in way to run a script before sleep on macOS. You must use a third party tool to trigger your bash script.

The time available for your script, after the pending sleep notification but before the sleep, is deliberately limited by macOS. See Fleeting Sleep Trigger for an overview of the problem.


Can I write an Automator/AppleScript script to download all the iTunes app updates? This is related to How can I tell iTunes to always download free updates

I would like to write a script to tell iTunes to download all the free app updates available, and have that script run regularly using iCal. Is this possible?

At the moment this feature is currently not available or easy to implement. There has been mention that the next version of iOS and iTunes may include this feature. But its all speculative until it is actually released.


Can I playback Voice Memos recordings using a different app? I often record meetings that can run 2 hours long. When I play them back, it is very hard to drag that tiny little slider to navigate to the point at which I left off. Often, I will tap the wrong thing and the Voice Memo returns to the beginning point. Both of these scenarios are very frustrating. It would be nice to play recordings back on an app that will Pause and stick even if you close the app. And it would be great to be able to have a more precise slider to navigate within a long recording.

Have you tried sending the recording using the export button as an email attachment - goes as an m4a file so should be easy to play on quite a few apps.

Export button icon:


My AirPort Extreme Base Station will not power on. No lights appear. I have tried all the recommended resets. I have ensured that the electrical outlet is working properly. I have tried both of various factory resets (soft, hard). No lights. Nothing. Time to hit the Apple Store?

Yes. Unless you can test connectivity of the LAN ports to see that it's powering up, but it's not much use if it doesn't boot or let you hook up an ethernet cable and re-configure it.


Can I move System/User folders to separate disks? Here's the deal: I have a Macbook Pro 6,2 – I think late 2010 model. I have two mismatched drives with the same speeds. A 750GB Momentus XT, that SSD HDD hybrid, and the Seagate Momentus 500GB. Both are 7200 RPM. I replaced the optical drive a while back with a HDD.

I want to install the most opportune parts of the operating system to a separate applications folder, therefore prioritizing on the outer edges of the disk – specifically files that will be run more often therefore they can be accessed quicker.

However in addition, because they are mismatched in terms of GB per disk, I have a setup that I would like to use that further optimizes it.

Basically the first disk is separated into 3 partitions (values approximate):

System: 50 GB
User: 200 GB
RAID: 500 GB

Using Mac OS X' built-in software RAID, the RAID partition will be RAIDed with the second disk being the 500GB disk. Therefore it appears as three disks: a system disk, a user disk, and a RAID disk.

However, I would like to separate the applications as well by partition – specifically by priority. System ones of course get high priority, granted I would like to move specific applications out of the Applications folder (honestly a lot of them like Photo Booth and FaceTime aren't really that helpful), however for the intent of this question I would like to know if the system can recognize and move the system folder as a whole to a separate drive, leaving just the system on the system partition.

Ideally, I'd like:

User preferences and Library on the system partition.
The user applications on the user drive for general things like Photoshop, Aperture, or Lightroom.
System applications on the User Drive
A special applications folder on the System Partition for high priority ones like Final Cut Pro, or Autodesk Smoke, things that will be accessed alot or use alot of reading and writing.
The User files and folders – you know, Documents, Pictures, etc. – on the RAID drive, along with a specific applications folder there as well for less used not as high priority applications such as optimization applications or smaller things like disk space programs etc. Text editor, or Espresso things like that, that don't need the speedier read and write.

Therefore, in theory, the applications and system files used most often will be prioritized at the disk edges and therefore perform better, and if all goes well, it'd make Launchpad work nicely with all of this.

I know most people's answer would be to buy an SSD which I'd really love to do, however it's not in the budget and since it is a MacBook Pro, space is limited. I'm trying to maximize storage with performance as well.

Haven't tried all of the things you are asking, but I have succeeded in moving /users to another partition.  Mount it as /Volumes/Users, and make sure there is symbolic link from /Users to /Volumes/Users.

There is a bit of a dance:  Login as root.  Sudo doesn't work for this.
mv /Users /UsersOld
mount newdisk /Users
copy /UsersOld/* /Users
for each user:
   chown -R his directory.

You may be chasing down ACL issues for a while.

You may be able to do the copy with tar.
e.g. cd /UsersOld; tar -cf - . | tar -C /Users -xvf -

This will do the right thing for permissions, but I don't recall if it does the right thing for resource forks and ACLs.

You may need to mount it at a different point, creating an appropriate fstab file with an entry for it.

I would suggest that you enable root as a login account so you can have a GUI to snurfle around when things go pear shaped.

As to the efficacy of what you are doing:  It won't make much difference.  The read/write performance of having stuff at the edge vs spread out isn't much.  You're talking at best 20% or so, and more likely far less.

If you have not done so, max out the ram your laptop can hold.  This does far more for increasing performance than any other upgrade you can do, especially if you are using data pigs like photoshop.


How can I browse Cydia repos without an iOS device? My understanding is that Cydia is a mechanism for accessing third-party software repos on iOS. (The equivalent of Homebrew for macOS.)

However, I am having trouble locating the "default" Cydia repos, and browsing them to see what software is available. How can I do this without an iOS device?

For example, is there an equivalent of the https://f-droid.org (a similar tool + website for Android)?

Cydia is really a GUI front end for apt, the homebrew equivalent on iOS and many other Linux systems, so a Cydia repo is really an apt repo.

You can use CyDownload to view and download the packages(.debs) on your computer.

Some popular repos:

BigBoss(http://apt.thebigboss.org/repofiles/cydia/)
Packix(https://repo.packix.com/)
Chariz(https://cydia.hbang.ws)
Coolstar/Electra(https://electrarepo64.coolstar.org/) (for iOS >= 11)
Saurik/Cydia(http://apt.saurik.com/) (for iOS <= 10)


How to remove Preview.app on-screen navigation toolbar? When I open a picture in fullscreen, it has an overlay like this:

Is there a way to permanently disable it?

You are going into 'Slide show' not full screen.

This maybe because you are using the wrong shortcut keys.

For Slide show:

cmd+shift+f

For full screen:

cmd+crtl+f


How do I switch the font back to previous in El Capitan? The font changed in El Capitan and, consequently, in some of my programs, the font is off of the screen or cut off. How do I change the font back to the previous font, before El Capitan?

Examples:

Eclipse Project Properties Dialog

Eclipse Find Dialog

Firefox Context Menu

You can try installing a third party application called TinkerTool.

TinkerTool is an application that gives you access to additional preference settings Apple has built into OS X. This allows to activate hidden features in the operating system and in some of the applications delivered with the system. You can download the product free of charge.

You will find the new available options in System Preferences and thus you can change the font in the Font tab as in the figure below:


Unusable 2.5" external HDD. Partition failed with the error -69760: Unable to write to the last block of the device. Exfat only? Repairable? Update 1: Somehow, after unconnecting and re-connecting, the original disk (disk1) has now returned to original state, with the readme file as well! I still have another disk which is not working. When connected to my MBP I get the message, "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." "[Initialize | Ignore | Eject]".

Update 2: @Allan's question: Like how long from when you bought the drives and were working to when they stopped? Answer: They were removed from the packaging on the day they arrived. These are brand new. They both worked out of the box. Issues started after attempting to partition and attempting to restore via Image.

Update 3: The disk currently does not work on Mac or Windows. Next steps from here?

TL;DR:

I ordered two external hard disks and tried them on the first day they arrived. They appeared to work as a normal external hard drive when I first connected them to my MBP (Retina mid-2015, Yosemite 10.10.3). However, after trying to partition/restore via Disk Utility, they become both unusable. NB. One of them returned to original state — please see Update 1, 2 and 3 above. So please also see my attempts at a solution in my answer to this question as advised by @bmike

If these types of 2.5" external hard disks are actually not compatible with Macs or Time-Machine backups:

A) What can I do to return the disk back to its original usable/exfat state?

 B) In their original Exfat state, to what extent will they be usable?

C) Why are they limited to Exfat format?

D) How, without the seller telling me, can I know these are limited to Exfat format only? e.g. Are certain cheap 2.5" external HDDs from China always limited to Exfat?

Quick Intro:
I first tried to partition one of them. This made it unusable. After attempting to restore the first one by copying/cloning an image from the second one, the second became unusable. Then somehow the first disk randomly became usable again and was back to its original state (it even contained the original readme file).

Context:

I want to do a Time Machine backup to an external hard disk so I bought two 2.5” 2TB external hard disks.

The hard disks (both identical) were described as compatible with macOS, both on packaging and on the online description. I connected one of them for the first time and all looked normal. The only exception is that I found a readme file, which mentioned this drive can only be formatted to Exfat.

So my conclusion is that the drive is officially in NTFS format, while the readme file says it's Exfat only and the online description and packaging say's it's compatible with Macs. I contacted the seller, who replying saying that it doesn’t work with PS4 and is compatible with Windows, Mac, Xbox and Linux.

So after attempting to partition 1.1GB for Time Machine, Disk Utility gave me the message “Unable to write to last block of device”. In an attempt to salvage the first disk, I wanted to basically copy/clone the second external drive in its original format and burn it onto the first one that no longer shows a volume. I plugged in the second disk and tried to use the ‘Restore’ function via the Restore tab and clicked on the ‘Image…’ button. I then got a message saying:

"Unable to create “JMicron Generic Media1.dmg.” (Input/output error)."

The first screen shot is what the hard drive first looked like when connected to my MBP. The second shows what it's like after it became unusable. Below that are screen shots in chronological order, whilst attempting @Allan's suggestion.

As per @bmike's suggestion. I'm putting my attempts at solutions in this answer to avoid repeatedly bumping the comments section and to clean up the original question.

As per @Allan's advice I formatted the drive to Exfat on Windows, although the "format did not complete successfully". On Disk Utility I now can see a greyed-out volume named Disk1s1. However, I still get the message, "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." "[Initialize | Ignore | Eject]", when connecting to my MBP. Moreover, the 'First Aid' option in Disk Utility is greyed out.

Now, diskutil list command result gives a volume type of DOS_FAT_16. Compare this with the previous results that shows the original (working) and previous (unusable) states.

The disk currently does not work on Mac or Windows.
Next steps from here?

--

Currently the disk is unusable but with greyed-out disk1s1 in disk utility. /dev/disk1 gives:

   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk1
   1:                 DOS_FAT_16                         2.0 TB     disk1s1

sudo gpt -r -v show disk1 gives:

gpt show: disk1: mediasize=2000398934016; sectorsize=512; blocks=3907029168
gpt show: unable to open device 'disk1': Input/output error

sudo diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk1 gives:

Unable to verify this whole disk: A GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning scheme is required (-69773)

diskutil info /dev/disk1 gives the following:

   Device Identifier:        disk1
   Device Node:              /dev/disk1
   Part of Whole:            disk1
   Device / Media Name:      JMicron Generic Media

   Volume Name:              Not applicable (no file system)

   Mounted:                  Not applicable (no file system)

   File System:              None

   Content (IOContent):      FDisk_partition_scheme [PREVIOUSLY THIS WAS "NONE"]
   OS Can Be Installed:      No
   Media Type:               Generic
   Protocol:                 USB
   SMART Status:             Not Supported

   Total Size:               2.0 TB (2000398934016 Bytes) (exactly 3907029168 512-Byte-Units)
   Volume Free Space:        Not applicable (no file system)
   Device Block Size:        512 Bytes

   Read-Only Media:          No
   Read-Only Volume:         Not applicable (no file system)
   Ejectable:                Yes

   Whole:                    Yes
   Internal:                 No
   OS 9 Drivers:             No
   Low Level Format:         Not supported

Previously the results were:

Nonexistent, unknown, or damaged partition map scheme
If you are sure this disk contains a (damaged) APM, MBR, or GPT partition
scheme, you might be able to repair it with "diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk1"

diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk1

Nonexistent, unknown, or damaged partition map scheme
If you are sure this disk contains a (damaged) APM, MBR, or GPT partition map,
you can hereby try to repair it enough to be recognized as a map; another
"diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk1" might then be necessary for further repairs
Proceed? (y/N) y
Error repairing map: POSIX reports: Input/output error (5)

diskutil partitionDisk disk2 1 GPT JHFS+ "Untitled" 100%

Started partitioning on disk2
Unmounting disk
Error: -69760: Unable to write to the last block of the device

Here's what I've had a look at (but not sure if it applies to my case):

http://www.macissues.com/2014/04/05/how-to-fix-deep-formatting-problems-with-os-x-drives/ (I attempted cat /dev/random > /dev/disk1 once only, but got a stdout: Input/output error response)

https://ipfs-sec.stackexchange.cloudflare-ipfs.com/apple/A/question/125965.html (I tried diskutil eraseVolume exfat exfat2tb /dev/disk1 but got the following:

Started erase on disk1
Unmounting disk
Erasing
newfs_exfat:
wipefs_wipe: Input/output error
Volume name      : exfat2tb
Partition offset : 0 sectors (0 bytes)
Volume size      : 3907029168 sectors (2000398934016 bytes)
Bytes per sector : 512
Bytes per cluster: 131072
FAT offset       : 2048 sectors (1048576 bytes)
# FAT sectors    : 120832
Number of FATs   : 1
Cluster offset   : 122880 sectors (62914560 bytes)
# Clusters       : 15261352
Volume Serial #  : 5ec6682e
Bitmap start     : 2
Bitmap file size : 1907669
Upcase start     : 17
Upcase file size : 5836
Root start       : 18
Mounting disk
Could not mount disk1 with name (null) after erase
Error: -69832: File system formatter failed

Previously (unusable disk):

       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:                                                   *2.0 TB     disk1

Originally (working disk):

       #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
       0:     FDisk_partition_scheme                        *2.0 TB     disk1
       1:               Windows_NTFS                         2.0 TB     disk1s1


MacBook Pro Intermittent internet connection Some of you may know about some weird issue with some MacBook Pros (MBP) not working properly with a router (SuperHub) supplied by Virgin (a UK ISP).

In all my attempts to resolve this, I finally got a little mini-like router/AP. Turned the SuperHub into a modem and used this mini-like device as a router. Then I was able to narrow down something I can't get my head past.

The puzzle:

2 computers (an iMac and a MacBook Pro) connected to the same network - wirelessly. Only the 2 systems on the network.

How is it that one of them constantly looses connection to the internet and the other doesn't?

How did I figure this out?

I opened 2 terminal window on both machines. One window constantly pings the router and another window pings google.

On the MBP, the connection to the router hardly drops. but the connection to google drops constantly. Stays down for almost a minute sometimes - if not more.

On the other hand, none of the connection on the iMac drops at all - hardly.

How is this possible? What could be the cause?

I had a very similar question to this which I answered.  I believe the OP ended getting a "version 2 Superhub" from Virgin which solved his particular issues.

Check this out:

Wifi Keeps Dropping Macbook Pro 13in Retina Early 2015

You also want to check how crowded your Wi-Fi is.  When you view all the wi-fi networks in your area, how many show up?  The more networks, the more traffic, and the more issues you are going to run into.


Help with kernel boot message I recently turned on my iMac (White intel) to find it wouldn't boot.

Running the boot in verbose mode I get the following message:

Does anyone know what this means? Is it a hard disk error?

The message is coming from EFI (the firmware boot loader) telling you that the kernel (/mach_kernel) cannot be booted. This message is usually output if the kernel file was not found, or if it prematurely exited and got back to EFI. It could be, for example, because you rm'ed the /mach_kernel file.

There actually is a way to fix this without reinstalling the system: If you can boot from a bootable disk with rEFIt and drop into an EFI shell, you might be able to copy over a good kernel (assuming you have one in the disk). Honestly, unless you prepare for these contingencies (i.e. have an alternate EFI boot), you are better off reinstalling/recovering (in Lion).

Another idea which springs to mind - if you can attach a hard drive which has OS X on it, press ALT when the system loads (before the nasty message) - this gets you the option to boot from the secondary drive. Then, you can copy over /mach_kernel.


Setting a different picture for each Messages account I have recently retired Adium in favor of Apple's own Messages app, because it makes my life easier in some ways (especially ever since getting an iPhone). However, there is one feature that Adium had which Messages apparently does not - the ability to set a different user icon on each account.

I like having some of my accounts have a different picture for various reasons (for example, having a more professional icon on my work account and a more fun one on my personal account); is there any way to get this functionality back, without having to use both Adium and Messages?

I've researched it a bit and tinkered with the messages application myself because I too use multiple accounts and thought a different picture would actually be great for my uses.

However to my disappointment, this isn't a possibility. You can only change your account picture as a one-for-everything picture in Messages -> Change My Picture... which is a shame really.


Account username and password don't match on mac users & group on Mac I had to format my Mac and make a new user, the guy who formatted it for me made the acc called "USER" and I changed it to my name from users & groups.
It gave me a message that some changes will happen and I agreed anyway but now I have an admin acc that requests a username and password that won't mach any of what I used since the format, and it won't mach the login information (I have no problem logging in), I have an admin acc only and it won't give me authorization, and I can't copy to my partition drive it require authorization that I don't have and a username not changed.

You need an admin user to manage this Mac, so why not create that first:

New MacBook had user accounts already; I deleted admin and can't get back in

I like my answer on that post (go figure) and then you can use the new admin credentials to fix your current user short name and home folder.

Lots of other good advice and answers here as well:

I don't have administrator account on my mac


Blocked websites on macOS host but not on Win7 virtual machine In China there in the Great Firewall which blocks i.e. youtube. Fortunately in my university in China someway they provide access to youtube, so students can use youtube by means of campus wifi. I noticed on macOS I have to keep IPv6 configured to Automativally so it works (I can access youtube) most of the times.

Sometimes (very frequently) even with that configuration I cannot open youtube. I also noticed my Windows friends has much less of this problem, in Windows youtube works almost always.

Then I tried to run Windows 7 on a parallels virtual machine on macOS and bingo. Chrome in the vm loads youtube nicely.

On macOS host I tried Safari/Chrome/Firefox and none of them loads youtube.

How can this be explained?

I'll mention that I need to login to the wifi via captive portal, not sure if that matters.

The firewall might be blocking dynamically, and if so, it could decide on a large number of factors that are hard to guess or summarize.

For example, firewalls can tell what platform you are using, as well aspects of the network configuration.

What you describe could be summarized as: based on the assumption that Windows is blocked less from YouTube than macOS, your computer is not being blocked for its location on the network, but usually because it is running macOS (in this specific environment). If that same network device was running Windows (or more specifically a Windows-based browser), YouTube works, in this specific case.


How can I reset the Safari bookmarks in iCloud? iCloud has duplicated my bookmarks and bookmark folders many times. Now I cleaned all the bookmarks on my Mac but iCloud keeps syncing the old data and the deleted bookmarks reappear. On the icloud.com website, I found no way to reset the bookmarks. The iCloud pref pane doesn't offer any help either. Did I miss something?

According to this detailed Apple Support Forum post the trick is to use Lion 10.7.2 and Safari 5.1.1 to force a flush of the Data.

Simplified steps:

Turn off bookmark sync on all devices except the Mac
Backup current bookmarks on Mac
Correct bookmarks on Safari on the Mac
Move the new bookmarks out of you Safari Library folder
Delete all bookmarks and wait for iCloud to update.
Move the new bookmarks folder back and wait for iCloud to update
Delete all bookmarks on iOS devices and re-enable sync.

It's laborious, but I am fairly certain Apple will release better tools for this process. Considering there normal rollout, they are probably handling these issues in phases. They introduced Photo Stream reset mid way in the Beta, so I am sure they will bring the rest through over time.


Automator workflow triggered by another app? Is it possible to trigger an Automator workflow/application when a specific action occurs in another application? I want to trigger the Automator script to play a particular track in iTunes when my Pomodoro work timer finishes.

If not possible can anyone recommend any other solutions? (please treat with kid gloves as am not a developer)

thnkx

You would probably need an API for the pomodoro app that you're using. The only other way this could be created is by looking for any change instantiated on your native os when the timer is done. Then create an apple script which watches for the identified trigger and plays the sound bite you want when this trigger to call on the custom apple script.


How to move bookmarks *with icons* from Firefox to Safari I dumped my old Dell for a new MacBook Pro. Firefox looks gawdawful on my retina display, so I'm trying Safari. I had 20+ bookmarks in FF's Bookmarks Toolbar. Each had it's own icon, either grabbed from the target domain or from a picture I had saved... so I was able to give each one a one or two character name, so I easily could see them and select the ones I wanted. Upon the import, Safari ditched the icons.

Is there any way to move bookmarks with icons from FFx to Safari?
Is there any way to even show icons on the Safari toolbar?

Safari doesn't show icons for bookmarks in the toolbar itself, only in the bookmark menus.

The icons aren't stored with the bookmarks, Safari has a separate cache for all the favicons of sites that have been visited (I believe this is the case for Firefox and Chrome as well, but I'm not 100% sure). If you look in the bookmarks viewer or menu, open a site that doesn't have an icon, then check back in the bookmarks viewer, you'll see that Safari has added the icon to that bookmark entry (assuming the site has a favicon set in the first place). So while you may not see icons at first for bookmarks you import, they'll fill in eventually as you visit the sites.


Best way to back up old CD-ROMS? I'm trying to backup all of my old backup CDs from over 10 years ago to simple DMG files on my harddrive - since CD's die (already have one that won't read) and they take up a ton of physical space!

I've picked DMG files since they're 1) simple/easy and 2) compressed. Certainly open to other suggestions however.

After creating a few of the images, I've noticed that not all of the content from one of the CDs is in the image that Disk Utility is producing - only one of the folders is present when there should be 4. I can't figure it out, but my best guess is that it was a multisession/track CD. But the CD doesn't appear as unique in DiskUtility or in the Finder.

Any ideas what could be the cause? Or is there a better way to do what I'm trying to do?

Personally I'd forget the dmg format, buy a decent sized usb drive and retrieve as much as you can by just dragging and dropping from any CDs you can mount. Time enough when you have retrieved all your data to wonder about how to compress it. Even if a CD is full it can only store 700mb so it would take a load of CDs to fill a terabyte drive. Then, when you have all your data saved, make another copy and store that offsite somewhere as a backup.


Will an NFC payment terminal activate Apple Pay on an Apple Watch just like it does with an iPhone? With an iPhone 6 or later, you can bring the sleeping phone near an NFC payment terminal, and the phone will wake automatically to the Wallet, prompting a Touch ID authentication for the default Apple Pay card. Alternatively, the home button can be double-clicked while the phone is asleep to go straight to the Wallet in order to choose an Apple Pay card to use.

With an Apple Watch, the side button can be double-clicked to bring up available Apple Pay cards; the Watch is then brought near an NFC terminal to authenticate the transaction.

Is this first step always required, or can an unlocked Apple Watch simply be brought near to an NFC terminal to authenticate a payment with the default Apple Pay card, similar to the method in the first iPhone example?

You have to double-press the side button on the Apple Watch to activate NFC/ApplePay.

This is due to energy saving.


Copy documents to iOS devices via the command line I have a couple apps which I directly copy data in/out of using iTunes (iPhone->Apps->(scroll down) File Sharing. Once there you can drag/drop, but I'd really like to be able to automate this process.

Is there any way to copy new "Documents" into an App on my iPhone via the command-line without using the iTunes GUI?

I'm dreading doing it with AppleScript, but if that's the only method so be it. My device is jailbroken if that helps, but I'd much prefer to do it with standard interfaces.

If you have SSH on the device, you can use scp:

scp /path/to/file root@iphone.local:/path/to/destination


"Install Labview 2020 sp1 community " cannot be opened because apple cannot check it for malicious software I recently upgrade to the newest Macbook pro M1, from a 2018 intel model. I was trying to install this software to my new machine.
and encountered the following:
“LabVIEW 2020 SP1 Community 64-bit” can’t be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious software.
This is the newest version that I could find from here.  I could only find one thread that treat this matter but doesn't really help much in my case. So would greatly appreciate any insight from here.

Apps that are not distributed via the AppStore now require Notarization on top of being signed by a paid Apple Developer ID which means the developer must submit their application to Apple for review so that Apple can issue a notarization signature the developer can "staple" apply to the App. Otherwise you will see that warning and the App will not run by default.
To work around the problem: Open the /Applications folder with Finder.  Right-click the LabVIEW application icon and select Open.  A dialog will appear and you can allow the App to open. The App might immediately quit, try opening the App normally and this time it should work.
Send an email to the software vendor and ask them to Notarize their App for the newer macOS versions. At some point in the future, Apple may remove the ability to work around running an App that hasn't been notarized.


Simultaneous use of Airport Express and Time Capsule I know Apple likes us to think everything works by magic, but...

To use Airplay one needs Airport Express. To backup wirelessly one needs Time Capsule. There is, in particular, no way to Airplay music through Time Capsule, as one can do with Airport Express. I hope there is a better reason for this than selling these two devices. (Note also that the 4th-gen AppleTV + Time Capsule are also not a satisfactory solution for those whose HiFi lacks HDMI.)

My question is: if one has both Airport Express and Time Capsule, what are the terms of their co-existence? Does one, for instance, get to choose which of the two is the wifi router? If one chooses Time Capsule, would Airport Express be using the same band (2.4GHz? 5GHz?) for transferring the music? Is the quality of Airplay affected if one is using the bandwidth to capacity?

You just extend the network created by one of the two devices. I.e. you start with the Time Capsule, making it create the WiFi. The AirPort Express then gets configured to just extend this network. If you've setup the Time Capsule to use the 5GHz band then yes, the Express will use that too.

It's effectively just one WiFi network (or two, if you count the 2.4GHz fallback for older/mobile devices) powered by both stations. All devices connected to that network have access to both stations and they will always get connected to the base station which is nearest. Here's this setting in the AirPort Utility:

When setting up a new network with the AirPort Utility you will be asked for this, so it's really easy and happens in two clicks/taps.

Apple also has a good support article on this:
Wi-Fi base stations: Setting up and configuring an extended wireless network


How can I cold-boot a mac with FileVault enabled without physical access to the mac? If I had a Linux machine, I'd be able to enter the password for the encrypted boot disk in a serial terminal during the boot process, via another machine connected to the serial port I can SSH into.

Is there a way I can do this with macOS as well?

Or is there maybe another setup that allows me to unlock FileVault during boot remotely?

You can reboot the system without requiring password entry using the fdesetup utility:

sudo fdesetup authrestart

See man fdesetup for details.


How to fix broken partition process - lost space I've started to partition my SSD in my MacBook Air (2011). Somehow it get stucked in this process for quite a while. I decided to stop it and restart my Mac.

But now: My allocated space on my hard drive is gone (around 18 GB), but also: there is no second partition.

  What can i do to fix this?

EDIT: To make it more clear:

Starting to partition my hard drive

partition was getting shrinked by 18GB

The 2.partition was not yet there
Paritioning failed

So: No second partition, no 18GB on my first hard drive.

Get a disk utility like drive genius or disk warrior.  Don't use that drive AT ALL until you do, any screwups where the OS will write to the drive could destroy your data.  Unless I am misreading something here.
If no data is present just use disk utility to repartition one large volume, if it fails your drive is probably fubar'd.


Is it possible to upgrade the camera on an iPhone 4S? I'm a 4S holdout but would like to upgrade the camera (particularly the sensor). Is this possible to do? Is there an improved part that I can order and do the replacement myself?

If you are good enough to design custom cable from say iPhone 5/5S/6 camera sensor to logic board of iPhone 4S then provided there is drivers for that sensor in 4S iOS code it might work.

But no there is no off the shelf solution.


Please help me software brick (all data erase) my iPhone 5c in-hand My screen is broken, but I can force DFU, which I did.

In iTunes, I get "Cannot update software."

The to restore I Download 10.3.3 firmware, error 14 cannot update.

Any workaround that you can think of for erasing the data on this device?

No easy workarounds if iTunes won't restore / erase an iPhone in normal mode, let alone when you have it in DFU mode. Apple Configurator might be worth a try, but it uses the same library / underlying erase code the last time I checked. Same with Xcode.

I suppose the only workaround is to disassemble it and destroy / sanitize the data by jumping some of the pins to take control of the storage. The getting it open might be easy for most skilled people - the jumping the pins would need specific technical tools and training as would getting a controller to erase systematically the data.

Physical destruction would be the alternative to software erase
repairing the phone to functionality also would be an alternative


Show text using Large Type without relying on third-party applications Apple has this amazing feature called 'Large Type', chiefly implemented into Address Book. When you look up a contact, you can right-click the phone number and click 'Large Type', and it will display it very largely across your screen.

This function is relatively popular for many uses. Users who watched Leo Laporte on TWiT.tv on weekends will see Large Type being used to display wrap reminders to him during his radio show when his iMac is on camera.

As far as I'm aware, the only ways to invoke this are (1) the Address Book function as demonstrated above, or (2) directly via Quicksilver's Large Type plugin, or (3) Applescript invoking a function of Quicksilver or some other application that supports Large Type.

Since I've stopped using Quicksilver, and don't use LaunchBar, I'm left high and dry for putting arbitrary text into a Large Type banner.

Since it's obviously a core feature of OS X, how do we invoke it with arbitrary text under Lion?

A slight variation  on @iolsmit answer.

Do the same first action.
But when you select 'where' to save in the Banner action.
Choose other.
The Choose folder dialogue will pop up.

Now press down the keys: command + Shift +G

This will slide down will show up.

In its text field; Type or copy & paste:

 ~/Library/Caches/TemporaryItems

Then click GO. This will take you to the Users temporary folder.

Choose it as your selected folder. It will show as 'TemporaryItems'

Now add the action: 'Run Shell Script' in place of 'Open Images in Preview'

The the 'Run Shell Script'; Use its drop down menu for Pass input: as Argument

clear out in text that is already in the large text field. (i.e cat)

And type or paste this in.

/usr/bin/qlmanage -p "$@"

Save you new service.  And test

What happens is a new file is saved in your temp folder and the quick looked to display it on the screen.
Hit space to dismiss it as normal.


How do I stop the play/pause keyboard buttons from launching iTunes on Mountain Lion? The play/pause keyboard buttons always launch iTunes. I want to use a Subsonic client, Thumper. The buttons control Thumper correctly, but I want to prevent iTunes launching.

There was a hacky solution available previously, but that no longer works.

Is there a way to disable this iTunes behaviour?

I searched everywhere for a clean solution. Many solutions that worked for Lion and below no longer worked for Mountain Lion. However, this works and it took me hours to find. Enjoy!

http://gavinroy.com/posts/disabling-default-itunes-launch-behavior-with.html

From the website:

  In a search for a non-hacky way to disable direct mappings to iTunes for the play/pause/next/previous buttons in the keyboard in OSX, I stumbled across the "Remote control daemon" (rcd). As it turns out, disabling the iTunes launch behavior for these keys is as easy as unloading rcd with the following command:

launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.rcd.plist


How to open a file with automator and then open another file when the first file is closed? I have a series of spreadsheets that I work with daily.
Is there a way to use Automator to open the first spreadsheet and when I close it because I'm done with it open the next spreadsheet?

Thank you.

Here's the a screenshot of Alphaman's solution:

You can use the open command with the -W option to wait until you close the program. You can hardcode the list in an Automator Run Shell Script action where your command lines would look like the following:

open -W ~/Documents/firstSpreadSheet.numbers
open -W ~/Documents/secondSpreadSheet.numbers
open -W ~/Documents/thirdSpreadSheet.numbers

Note that you must completely exit out of Numbers (e.g., cmd-Q) for the next file to open; closing the window is not sufficient.


Are there any downsides to leaving personal hotspot perpetually on? I am primarily concerned if this will drain my battery if I leave personal hotspot on. Is it worth the mental time to turn off the hotspot in order to conserve battery?

I run iOS 6 on an iPhone 4s.

It does drain your battery; whether it's worth it for you to turn it off is up to you and how long your battery last.

Also something worth noting is that by leaving it on and walking around other people can see your hotspot and might try to connect. Even if they're unsuccessful it will drain your battery even faster. If they are successful who knows what they might do while connected.

In general though, any app on your phone that sends/receive data is going to drain your battery more than an app that doesn't.


--group-directories-first option for "ls" command I am using both Ubuntu 16.04 and OS X.

alias ll='ls -Flh --group-directories-first'

This is an alias in my bashrc, but somehow --group-directories-first option got illegal in OS X after I upgraded my bash with Homebrew. In my Ubuntu desktop, I still can use that option.

In what version of Bash, the option is unsupported? The Bash version in my OS X machine says GNU bash, Version 4.4.12(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin15.6.0)

I would like to use --group-directories-first option again. Is there any way to achieve it?

Install coreutils with Homebrew and alias ll to gls -Flh --group-directories-first instead.

brew install coreutils installs GNU Coreutils, in case it is not installed.
Use alias ll='gls -Flh --group-directories-first' in .bashrc.
(If you want to use the same .bashrc file in both operating systems, see below.)

In Ubuntu, ls is provided by GNU Coreutils, which Ubuntu always has. That's why ls supports --group-directories-first in Ubuntu. Probably you had been using the GNU Coreutils version of ls on macOS before, too, which Homebrew installs as gls but which can be made usable as ls in several ways.

ls is an external command, not a Bash builtin. Using a different version or build of Bash should not affect it. I'm not sure what happened when you upgraded Bash using Homebrew. Maybe more than Bash got upgraded too; maybe you had an ls shell function or alias defined in a global configuration file that was replaced; maybe you had a symbolic link ls that had pointed to gls and was overwritten; maybe you still have something like that but your $PATH has changed. Whatever happened, GNU Coreutils ls supports --group-directories-first, and switching to it (as I believe bmike is suggesting) should fix your problem.

If for some reason you want to use the exact same .bashrc file in both systems, there are a few possible approaches. You could create a symlink, wrapper script, shell function, or (because Bash alias expansion is nonrecursive) shell alias for gls in your Ubuntu system. But I suggest instead checking which OS is being used in .bashrc. Although you will get a different ll alias defined in each system, this approach has the benefit of being self-documenting. Your .bashrc will make sense to you in a year, or a month.

if [ "$OSTYPE" == linux-gnu ]; then  # Is this the Ubuntu system?
    alias ll='ls -Flh --group-directories-first'
else
    alias ll='gls -Flh --group-directories-first'
fi

Or if you find you usually prefer to run the Coreutils ls, even if you're not using the ll alias, you can make ls an alias to gls:

if [ "$OSTYPE" != linux-gnu ]; then  # Is this the macOS system?
    alias ls=gls
fi

alias ll='ls -Flh --group-directories-first'

(Thanks go to soroushjp for catching a mistake in an earlier version of that script.)


Timer Lockout for iOS allowing multiple apps Is there a way to force the iPad to lock after X minutes but also allow my kids to use multiple apps? I know about guided access which works great at locking them to one app (e.g., for homework) but sometimes I want to give them flexible time to use whatever app or game they want.

There is a free and very simple way to limit time on iOS if you have an activation passcode.

Launch the Clock app
Set a Timer
Make sure that "Stop Playing" is set under "Sounds."

If a sound is set, naturally that plays. If "Stop Playing" is set, the device will go to the lock screen. Naturally, this will require your passcode or fingerprint!

This technique allows another user (my kids in this case) to use whatever apps they want, but only for a set amount of time until they need my passcode. You can also use guided access (linked above) to restrict them to only one app.


What is writing to Disk causing eventual Beach-ball-of-death What is running my machine down? This is iotop output...I still can't tell what is driving my system to a halt. Command+i on the SSD shows my "used space" slowly changing. It does this for about an hour...then freezes. I still have over 112 GB of free space on the drive...yet it yields me a... Beach-ball Of Death...any ideas?

If I listed what I've tried it would be two pages long.

iotop
iosnoop
kextstat
kextunload on all Virtual Box drivers

removed Virtual Box

Beach-ball-of-death

Discovered Virtual Box is not the problem

Created another user...logged in as other user...same problem...

Beach-ball-of-death

Reinstalled OSX 10.8.2 from apple website....

Beach-ball-of-death

here is a gist of the output....

https://gist.github.com/4524724

Please post the make/model/specs of your machine, and especially the brand, model and firmware revision of your SSD. I have an SSD that started throwing errors after 4,900 hours of operation. Updating the firmware resolved the issue.

You can find the SSD firmware by running the Hardware Profile (or more info in About this Mac) and selecting Serial-ATA and the your SSD in the Device Tree.

Is the problem hardware or software?

I will attempt to list here a couple of possible issues, and what we need to help resolve.

If you have a second hard drive you can boot from (HDD, USB drive, etc.), please do.

Does the problem still occur?
If it does, does it happen on the boot device or still on the non-booted SSD?
While booted from something other than the SSD, run any disk checking software you have, even if its just a Disk Utility/First Aid/Verify Disk

When did this problem start, and can you peg it to any action you did?

Wild process

Open Activity Monitor. First, click the drop list and change from My Processes to All Processes. Then click on the %CPU column header once (or twice) so the list shows the top CPU users at the top

Is there a run-away process at the top? If so, please let us know.

Consistency after reboot

How soon after a reboot does the disk usage start? Do you reboot with the following option checked?

If you do, reboot, but first uncheck the option.

Now that you're opening with a "fresh" login,

how soon after reboot does the problem start?
Is there a consistency with any programs running when this happens?

Your problem can be a lot of things, but from your initial output, I'm less inclined to think malware.


What is the difference between the different font smoothing levels on macOS? In, macOS 10.14 and 10.15 (and in older versions), you can enable font smoothing and set the font smoothing strength on the command line. See this for reference. Key commands are

defaults write -g CGFontRenderingFontSmoothingDisabled -bool FALSE
defaults -currentHost write -globalDomain AppleFontSmoothing -int 3
// the "3" here represents strong font smoothing.

You can also set this using the TinkerTool app.

Personally I prefer the strong smoothing even on my retina Mac Book Pro.
Could someone explain the technical details behind the three different levels of smoothing : light, medium, strong. I believe this works differently from freetype rendering because Mac prefers to maintain the original glyph shapes, which is a good thing!
How is this font smoothing different from colored subpixel - in TinkerTool this is the Enforce the old style font smoothing if possible (colored sub-pixels option). I noticed that if you enable this option, fonts think out a bit and become more crisp but in some apps you can see the sharp pixel edges if you look very carefully.

I'm trying to get an overall understanding of the different font smoothing approaches in macOS.

I think I've found the most reasonable explanation for how Font Smoothing works in macOS here.

Noting some of the good observations from that thread.

Sub-pixel rendering in Mojave (M) doesn't work the same way it does in High Sierra (HS). Specifically, in HS, gray base text most stays dark gray, with colored pixels get added around it when you enable sub-pixel rendering. In Mojave, much of the base text is changed from gray to other, lighter colors, thus reducing contrast. As much of Apple's menu text is gray rather than black, this effect reduces contrast throughout the OS.

In Mojave, font smoothing doesn't actually make the letters thicker (i.e., it doesn't darken more pixels). Rather, it makes the darkened pixels darker, thus giving the appearance of added thickness.

These observations should apply to macOS Catalina as well.


Can I use a PC/Mac keyboard as a Bluetooth keyboard for iPhone? I'm wondering about the feasibility of using my iMac's built-in bluetooth as a source for keyboard input to my iphone.

There are times I want to type longer messages in my iphone, i keep a bluetooth keyboard around just to have a full sized keyboard to use on the iphone. I don't use the keyboard on my iMac because I have an ergonomic keyboard there that I much prefer. What I think would be great is to use that corded ergonomic keyboard as an input to the iphone via a bluetooth device that uses the iMac.

Any thoughts on this?

There are apps in App Store: iKeyboard ($9.99), Type2Phone ($9.99), 1Keyboard ($9.99) and Typeeto ($4.99) that allow to use your Mac's keyboard as Bluetooth keyboard. The obvious requirements are Mac with Bluetooth and recent OS X.


MacBook Yosemite WiFI drops when other devices possibly interfere I am having serious WiFi issues on my MacBook Pro (retina Mid 2012 with Yosemite) where the connection continuously drops making Internet impossible to use.

I have already tried all of the options described on various blog posts, including Fix Wi-Fi Problems in OS X Yosemite.

The problem is only happening on my MacBook Pro. While everything works fine on my MacBook Air, PC Win8 and two Android phones.

The router (UPC Ubee EVW3226) is set to:

2.4 GHz
802.11 bgn
WPA2/AES
Bandwidth 20 Mhz
Channel Auto
Beacon interval 100
DTIM int. 1
Fragment Threshold 2347

…and all other settings as recommended by Apple in Recommended settings for Wi-Fi routers and access points.

These are the devices I have:

MacBook Pro                  (WiFi drops all the time when laptop PC is on)
MacBook Air                  (works perfectly)
Lenovo Laptop with Windows 8 (works perfectly)
Android Phone 1              (works perfectly)
Android Phone 2              (works perfectly)

The problem actually only seems to happen when the Laptop PC is on, which makes me lead to believe it might be an issue with interference (though it's strange that it doesn't affect the MacBook Air (which is in the same room of the MacBook Pro).

I am getting really frustrated with all this and not sure what to try anymore.
Does anyone know if there is a solution apart from switching to Ethernet?

Analyse your wireless environment

A wireless interference problem is a lighting problem. It highly depends on the position of the different sources of radiofrequencies.
The core problem with this lighting problem is that we don't see within the multi-GHz bandwidth (hopefully).

Here is still today the best tool to analyze any wireless interference problem:

iStumbler

You should install it on a portable computer without any trouble to start with. From your environmnent description, I would install it on your MacBook Air.

Use it for many hours to get used to it and to your real wireless environment. Move with it within your work space. Use it at different hours: when all your equipments are running (don't forget the remote controls and the Blutooth equipments).

Control your wireless environment

Next, you show that your router is selecting the wireless channel on an
automatic way. This feature conceived to help beginners is one of the most harmfull function I ever saw in wireless environment.
This would have been a magic function within a fixed wireless environment. But this environmnet doesn't exist in real world.

Let me give you a practical example. Your neighbours are at work.
You start your WLAN router and finding the interfering neigbouring empty, this one choose (as most of this routers) the famous channel one.
Your neighbour come back from work, and their router was already automatically tuned on channel one. When they connect to their router this channel start to interfere with yours. Unfortunatelly, your router
isn't in the phase where it will change its preferred channel.

You stay on an everyday interfering wireless network.

Your neighbour(s) too :(.

Hence choose an empty channel and fix it. I advise you to avoid the channels 802.11b: 1-14 which are much slower and not necessary within your environment.