How to share Single Mac OS X Application for remote desktop Scenario: I have a Mac mini which is always on always connected to internet. I want to share Single application (let's say XCode).

By sharing means remotely use it via remote desktop on Windows. It should be shared in such a way that Mac user uses something else and Remotely somebody else is using XCode.

Question: Is it possible? If yes, then how?

thanks

For this you need to use "Screen Sharing".

Open "System Preferences" and select "Sharing". Now click the lock at bottom left to allow changes. You will be asked for your password.

Now click on "Screen Sharing". On the right you can now click on "Computer Settings..." Select "VNC Viewers may control screen with password and enter a password in the box. Click on "OK" and quit from "System Preferences".

You will now be able to use a VNC client on  your PC to control the Mac. This will not allow two people to use the computer at the same time.


Camera Roll Duplicates Why do I have 2 of every picture side-by-side in my Photo Library? I don't edit or rename pictures at all. All I do is take pictures.  Then sync phone to my Mac with iTunes. But Photo Library on iPhone shows 2 of everything without a trash can to remove them. What is going on?

Chances are, you are importing these pictures into iPhoto. After that, under the photos tab, when you have your iPhone plugged in, is a checkbox to sync photos from iPhoto. This likely is checked. If these two things are correct, it will then transfer back onto your device, all the pictures that were/are on your phone. This is the only time I have seen pictures that I can't delete (that don't have the "trash can").

If this is the problem, it could be easily remedied by simply disabling the sync checkbox under the Photos tab for your device.


Is there any way to schedule software update? I have software updates set to check weekly, but it seems to happen at random times during the day. I'd really like to have it run at a specific day and time - say 4:30 on Friday - so that I can just let it run on my way out the door, rather than having to let the computer restart in the middle of a workday. Is it possible to schedule the software update that granularly? Obviously it can't be done via system prefs, but maybe there's a hidden setting somewhere (or a utility I can download) that I'm not aware of as a Mac newb.

If you goto the Software Update preferences, you can set it to daily, monthly or weekly. Obviously, this a very basic update scheduler. If you want to update weekly at this time just goto preferences and select weekly, now.

You can also do it using an Apple script + softwareupdater as described here.


Can I run non server OS 10.6.8 using VMware? Two part question really:

1) can it be done at all (standard version NOT server)?

2) if it can be done can I import an existing standard 10.6.8 system from an external disk with VMWare or do I have to clean install and use OSX's native Migration Assistant?

My plan is to upgrade my MBP (mid 2010 with i7 processor) to Mavericks and run my old 10.6.8 system virtually. I can buy VMWare Fusion 7 (the latest version).

No.  The End User License Agreement for 10.6 does not allow for virtualization unless you have purchased the Server version.  VMware Fusion (as well as VMware ESXi and VMware Workstation) honors the EULA and does not allow virtualization if the OS X EULA does not allow it.


Can I turn off swap and/or memory compression on macOS 10.12, Sierra? Is there a way with macOS 10.12, Sierra, to safely turn off compressed memory? And is there a way to turn off safely swap?

This was possible on macOS 10.9 and macOS 10.10. Although it sometimes crashed on macOS 10.10.

On macOS 10.11, disabling compressed memory and swap caused a reproducable issue,  click shutdown and OS X freezes.

Since then I didn't dare to experiment with it in macOS 10.12. But I'm still annoyed that the system wants to use compressed memory for no valid reason (at these fast SSDs I may not mind the swap that much though).

Regarding, vm_compressor_mode (vm.compressor_mode) values for enabled compressed memory in OS X. Value 1 for vm.compressor_mode will this work on macOS 10.12 or crash like on macOS 10.11?

Regardless of whether you use some version of "official" settings to turn off swap, it is never really safe to do so.

Quick refresher about "swap". Swap space is memory contents stored on disk. In order to run more programs than physical memory allows, the operating system can "swap out" some memory, meaning write the contents of memory to disk, freeing up physical memory for use by other programs. When a program needs to access memory that has been swapped out, the OS "swaps in" the memory, meaning it reads the data from the disk back into physical memory. If memory is still full, that means the OS has to swap out some other memory before swapping in the requested memory. This whole scheme only works if there are big chunks of memory not being used for big chunks of time, but that can be the case on Mac, where your word processor can take a break while you are reading your web browser.

With swap, the system can use as much "virtual memory" as you have available disk space, and performance will degrade gradually as a higher percentage of memory is on disk. Without swap, the system can abruptly run out of memory, and because swap has been available for decades, the systems really do not handle running out of memory well. Your system and applications can get into all kinds of weird and unhealthy states because running out of memory is just not something people plan for anymore, or more importantly, test for. So even if the OS and apps are supposed to handle out-of-memory conditions, you will very likely run into bugs. If you are going to turn off compressed memory, then it is even more likely you will need swap. You can read first-hand accounts of system freezes due to running out of memory and not having swap in Yosemite.

Swap is known (by the OS) to be slow, so the software in the OS and affected app software like media players know how to keep critical data in memory and out of swap. If you find the system is using swap and you don't like it, then quit some applications (or close some browser tabs) until you get your "memory used" well below your "physical memory" and then the swap will gradually be emptied back into real memory, because it has to be read into real memory for a program to use it, and the OS will not swap out that memory back out if there is plenty of free physical memory available. (It used to be that swap space, once allocated, was never released from disk, but that is no longer the case, and even when it was the case, it was still true that the allocated swap space would be "free" or unused memory once all the in-use memory would fit in real physical memory.) This is what you would have to do without swap, anyway.

So the answer is (a) no, there's no way turn off swap and (b) if there were a way, doing it would lead your system to freeze and/or crash, and so is not worth it.

As for turning off memory compression, or as you put it "Value 1 for vm.compressor_mode will this work on macOS 10.12 or crash like on macOS 10.11", the answer is much simpler: you cannot turn off memory compression. Starting with macOS 10.12 Sierra, if you try to turn off compression by setting vm.compressor_mode to 1, the kernel treats it as though you set vm.compressor_mode to 4 and turns memory compression on anyway. (See vm_pageout.c). So it won't crash, like with macOS 10.11, but it won't "work" to turn off compression, either. (AFAIK, the "freezer" modes are for iOS, to support fast resume when app switching. They require the kernel to be compiled with CONFIG_EMBEDDED which the desktop OS is not.)


Prevent friend's iOS devices from interfering with Bluetooth I recently created an account for a friend to log into my Mac (macOS 10.14). In that account, they enabled iCloud and other typical options.

Since then, that person's iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) will periodically connect to the Mac using Bluetooth. It will appear in the Bluetooth menu in the Menu Bar. It will be bold, indicating it's connected.

When the device is connected, especially if the device is not close by but is for example in another room, it interferes with the Bluetooth devices I'm actively using, a mouse, keyboard, and Air Pods. Interference with the airpods is particularly annoying because it will garble the audio and sometimes cause the air pods to drop off. I suspect it may also be causing unnecessary battery drain on the devices.

Because the unauthorized device is connected, I can use the Bluetooth menu to Disconnect the device, at which point the interference stops, but then the device reconnects again, sometimes right away, sometimes minutes later.

The issue doesn't happen reliably. I can't recreate it. It seems the right confluence of factors needs to be happening for the device to connect and interfere with the communication. Because the issue only started after the update to Mojave and the enrollment of my friend's account, I suspect one of those factors is key, most likely the latter.

I've worked with Apple Support on this issue and we've first confirmed a few things:

the device is not present in the bluetooth devices (nor vice versa)
the device is not listed in the wifi settings
the device is not present in iTunes

We've also started a couple of troubleshooting steps:

Paired then unpaired the device
Run NVRAM reset

I've also confirmed:

Neither of the devices are listed in the /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist except for in the DeviceCache section.

Interestingly, both devices appear by name many times in the DeviceCache, all with different Bluetooth addresses (93 times and 170 times).

I'm going to continue investigating, but if anyone has a clue how to proceed with troubleshooting this issue - how to prevent those devices from interfering with basic usage on the mac, I'm open to suggestions.

Follow up: Pairing and unpairing and NVRAM reset had no impact. It continues and pair silently.

Edit: My next troubleshooting step is to delete the Bluetooth preferences file (/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist) and reboot. Doing so did unpair all devices, but did not correct the issue.

Edit: I did some other troubleshooting steps with Apple. They had me log in to the friend's account and delete the devices from Bluetooth. I forget exactly what we did, but it did not solve the issue.

I've since deleted the friend's account and rebooted the machine, but that also hasn't remedied the issue.

This is happening with my new (2017) MacBook Air + wife's iPhone 8. She had a local account on the Air, signed into iCloud.

Signing her out of iCloud on the Air did not fix anything.

We removed the Air from her iCloud account via her phone, and all seems well now.

This was very annoying because my AirPods would start to have a "stadium" stereo effect every time her phone paired to the laptop.


Game sharing with different Id and passwords we already have an id and password with around 5 devices on it, we have just gotten another device but with a different Id and password. My question is can I/how do I get the games that are on the other devices onto the new device.


How much power does a mac mini uses? I would like to know how much power would a mac Mini consume per month/year if:

always powered,  but under very low load web server
OS, probably Ubuntu
two drives: one SSD and one HD.
model Early 2010, Core duo 2

I know that the manufacturer specification says it would consume between 11W-85W.

How can I convert this to Amps?

If the idle power consumption was 11 W and the maximum was 85 W, the average might be something like 15 W if it's under very low load.

That would be about 500 MJ per year (15*86400*365).

If you paid 0.15 USD per kilowatt hour for electricity and the Mac mini was on all the time, it would cost about 20 USD per year (0.15*0.015*24*365).

15 W is about 65 mA with 230 V (European) voltage and 125 mA with 120 V (North American) voltage.


Difference between variable and pipe to shell in applescript In answering this question I wrote this script:

global presenterNotes
tell application "Keynote"
    activate
    open (choose file)
    tell front document
        set presenterNotes to presenter notes of every slide as text
            set the clipboard to presenterNotes
        do shell script "pbpaste > ~/keynote-notes.txt"
    end tell
    quit application "Keynote" end tell

My question is: in the instance above when I replace the "shell script" statement with the statement below why does this statement work:

tell application "TextEdit"
        activate
        make new document
        set text of front document to presenterNotes
        quit application "TextEdit"
    end tell

Example 1: but this one does not:

tell application "TextEdit"
        activate
        make new document with data presenterNotes as text

Example 2: nor does:

make new document with presenterNotes

I know there are other ways to make it work like copy to clipboard and then issue a command+c.

I would like to understand why the global variable is not being transferred to the textEdit document, in particular in Example 1 above, as applescript does not throw an error.

There is a hidden error that is generated when you run your "working" script... You have to bump the shell script part of the code into its own tell current application block as shown in the second example below...

This version works for me with creating a TextEdit document:

global presenterNotes
tell application "Keynote"
    activate
    -- open (choose file)
    tell front document
        set presenterNotes to presenter notes of every slide as text
        set the clipboard to presenterNotes
    end tell
    tell application "TextEdit"
        activate
        make new document with properties {name:"KeynoteNotes.txt"}
        set text of front document to presenterNotes
    end tell
end tell

The shell pbpaste version with proper blocking to avoid error -10004:

global presenterNotes
tell application "Keynote"
    activate
    -- open (choose file)
    tell front document
        set presenterNotes to presenter notes of every slide as text
        set the clipboard to presenterNotes
    end tell
    tell current application
        do shell script "pbpaste > ~/keynote-notes1.txt"
    end tell
end tell


Camtasia, Screenflow, or "Other?" I want to start recording professional quality screencasts on my Mac and I've narrowed it down to two apps (that I know of): Camtasia Studio and Screenflow. I considered Camstudio, but since I will be doing this professionally and frequently, I would much rather pay a premium for a well-designed and fully-featured app. Which brings me to my question:

  Is there a clear winner between
  Camtasia and Screenflow, or perhaps a
  third, better app, that I haven't
  listed?

As an additional and partly related question:

For post-production video / audio editing, an example of the editing I would be doing is: adding small tweaks and transitions, adding basic graphics like captions/dialog boxes, and possibly doing video inside a video (a scaled down video of me talking, synced with and placed somewhere on top of the screencast video). This brings me to my second question:

  Will either of the screencast apps be
  able to handle these post-production
  edits, or will I have to invest in
  additional software that specializes
  in video/audio editing like
  Soundbooth or Final Cut?

Both Camtasia Studio and Screenflow are full-featued screencasting solutions. Both allow you to capture, edit, and distribute screencasts. In the US at least, they cost the same (though Camtasia has a $99 "introductory price," I would be surprised if they raise it to the $149 "list price" as long as Screenflow is priced at $99).

Both programs have extensive editing capabilities, and will handle the kind of edit tasks you describe.

One (minor, in my opinion) difference is that Camtasia allows you to capture part of the screen, while Screenflow always captures the whole screen. But it's easy to crop to part of the screen in Screenflow during the post-recording edit.

It boils down to which program's interface and workflow you prefer. Both have free trial versions; I suggest you download both and produce a sample video in each. Then buy the one that feels right for your working style.


connecting with samba: privileges issues windows server I am trying using samba to connect to a folder I own on a windows server.  I connect by typing:

smb://the_windows_server/home/my_folder

Which works for every server where I either connect directly to my folder (i.e. smb://the_windows_server/my_folder) or when I have read privileges on all the directories in the chain to my folder.  In the present instance

smb://the_windows_server/home/my_folder

I do not have read privileges for the_windows_server/home/. The upshot is that OSX mounts the_windows_server/home, which has a nice 'not accessible' icon, and I stuck outside the folder I own and I want access to.

I am on OS X 10.8.4, samba provided by the OS.  I know I could do something to the windows server, but I do not manage it and I know it will be a painful and drawn out process to sort out if I try the 'ask the IT guys to fix the windows server' approach.  I would like to explore possible solutions on my OS X side of the equation.

If I understand your question correctly you are able to mount the folder via samba, but you can't read the upper folder within the share.

To access the folder you have access to you can go directly to the folder using the 'Go to Folder' option in Finder: Click 'Go' in the menu bar and choose 'Go to Folder':

Or hit Command + Shift + G.

I assume your samba share is mounted as /Volumes/home/my_folder, so enter this path in the text box that shows up and hit enter. Finder should open a new window showing your folder within the share.

If your share is mounted on a different path you could check the folder /Volumes for its name, using the same method as described above.


Can't launch Finder window from terminal on Mojave open isn't behaving as expected on Mojave. Running

open /Library/

gives

LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -600 for the file /Library.

This happens regardless of the opening location. I'm totally lost here. Any hints?

Edit:

It is working now after letting my laptop go to sleep for a while, for whatever reason. If you run into this issue, I guess just try a reboot.

Not able to reproduce the error as I have access to Catalina's and High Sierra's macs but not Mojave. But you may want to try if updating permissions for your Terminal.app and iTerm.app resolved the issue:

System Preferences> Security&Privacy> Privacy> add both apps to "Accessibility" and "Automation" lists
Deleting & re-adding them could also help (it worked for me a few weeks back, re-enabling osascript assistive access to the system UI for my terminal scripts that had suddenly stopped working).

Nota & Disclaimer: control panel headings above are Catalina's - High Sierra has only "Accessibility" - Mojave's should be close enough though -- Obviously changing any such Security settings is done at your own risks etc... -- while I did not have to do it in my case, logoff/logon could help ensure the permissions are properly applied.


El Capitan download for Mac Pro - App store "system is too new" I have a Mac Pro 3,1, which came without a hard drive.
Now I want to install macOS El Capitan on a new SSD in this machine.
I started creating a USB-Stick with El Capitan on it.

I used this link: https://itunes.apple.com/app/os-x-el-capitan/id1147835434?mt=12 which leads me to the App Store.
But if I click on download, it says that it can't install macOS on my hard drive because the system is too new.
The system I used to do this is my Mac mini 5,1 with Sierra.

How can I create, with this Mac mini, a USB Stick with El Capitan setup for my old Mac Pro?

You'll struggle... the 3,1 won't boot from USB.
People say you can but I've had one since new & no amount of cajoling has ever made it do so.

If you have El Capitan in your purchase history on the Mini, then that's where you will be able to download it. The version linked in the App Store can only be run on machines that cannot run Sierra.

If you have a clean external USB drive, you could get the installer onto it the same way as you would have onto a USB stick. If you then drop the drive in the 3,1 it will boot from that.
Alternatively, once you have the right installer, you can run it to the external from the Mini & then swap it into the 3,1.


How can I submit my app if I didn't enrolled for the Apple Developer Program? I made this app and I would like to put it in the App Store and I searched the Internet for how to do that but they all require you the account that you used to enrol for the Apple Developer Program and unfortunately I don't have one(I learned Swift by Youtube).
What can I do?
NOTE : I don't care if I have to pay any money.

The only way for you to distribute your app via the iOS App Store is to have it submitted by someone (or an organisation) that is enrolled with the Apple Developer Program. That someone doesn't necessarily have to be you, but based on your question that seems to be the best option.

You can refer to the Enrollment page to get started, or skip straight to the Start your enrollment page.

If you're getting the Sorry, you can’t enroll at this time message, you should also get a description below that as to why you can't enroll. If you don't, or the message doesn't make sense to you, then you can contact Apple Developer Program Support via this form.


Unpacking a tarball via terminal like the Finder If I have a .tar or .tgz or .tbz on my desktop, and I double click on it, I get the folder that was compressed, neatly decompressed right next to the archive file. Just like you'd expect.

When I try to decompress a tarred item via the tar command, the output I get has the whole full path of the original compressed file.

So for example, if I make a .tbz out of a folder on my desktop called "foo", and then I decompress it via tar -xf foo.tbz ~/Desktop/foo, what I get is:
/Users/[user]/Desktop/foo/Users/[user]/desktop/foo/bar.txt

Is there some magic flag in tar that I'm not seeing? I've googled up 'how-to' after 'how-to' that give you a simple tar command to extract a file, but all the directions I see give me my undesired result with long, unnecessary, super-nested result directors.

The option you are looking for is --strip-components (from man tar):

  --strip-components count

  (x mode only) Remove the specified number of leading path elements.
  Pathnames with fewer elements will be silently skipped.

But it is not 100% equivalent to the way the Finder works: you still need to know the directory depth to strip.

Fortunately, it can be calculated with this command:

while read; do echo -n "$REPLY" | wc -c; done < <(tar tvf <tar archive name> | egrep -v '^d' | sed 's:[^/]::g') | sort -n | uniq | head -n 1

Since you have to replace <tar archive name> with the name of your tar archive, it is not as convenient as simply double clicking it in the Finder, but it can be useful in Bash scripts.

If the tar archive contains several files in different paths, the command above calculates the maximum common directory depth:

tar archive contents          =>      extracted files using --strip-components

dir1/dir2/file1               =>      file1
dir1/dir2/dir3/file2          =>      dir3/file2
dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/file3     =>      dir3/dir4/file3

For example, if you create a tar file like this:

mkdir -p a/b/c/d/e/f
touch a/b/c/d/e/f/myfile1
touch a/b/c/d/e/myfile2
tar cvf file.tar a

so that:

tar tf file.tar
a/
a/b/
a/b/c/
a/b/c/d/
a/b/c/d/e/
a/b/c/d/e/f/
a/b/c/d/e/myfile1
a/b/c/d/e/f/myfile2

you can extract all files (with the shortest directory depth) as follows:

Calculate maximum common directory depth:

while read; do echo -n "$REPLY" | wc -c; done < <(tar tvf file.tar | egrep -v '^d' | sed 's:[^/]::g') | sort -n | uniq | head -n 1

Command returns 5.
Run tar passing the result of the previous command to --strip-components:

tar xvf file.tar --strip-components 5
x f/
x myfile1
x f/myfile2

Instead of running two commands, if your shell is bash or zsh, you can use $() to pass the result directly to --strip-components:

tar xvf file.tar --strip-components $(while read; do echo -n "$REPLY" | wc -c; done < <(tar tvf file.tar | egrep -v '^d' | sed 's:[^/]::g') | sort -n | uniq | head -n 1)
x f/
x myfile1
x f/myfile2

This command also properly deals with the case of a tar archive without a directory hierarchy:

touch myfile3
tar cvf file2.tar myfile3
tar xvf file2.tar --strip-components $(while read; do echo -n "$REPLY" | wc -c; done < <(tar tvf file2.tar | egrep -v '^d' | sed 's:[^/]::g') | sort -n | uniq | head -n 1)
x myfile3


Mac Pro APPLE RAID volume questions My Mac Pro 4.1 (circa 2009) has a MacPro Raid Card and the software shows two storage volumes - one 1TB SAS disk and one 2 TB SAS RAID volume.
The removal of the Parallels volume leaves me with the following showing in Disk Utility:

APPLE RAID Card Media: 1 TB SAS Internal Physical Drive
____Macintosh HD 999.14 GB SAS Internal Physical Volume OS X Extended
APPLE RAID Card Media: 1.96 TB SAS Internal Physical Drive
____Untitled 1.96 TB SAS Internal Physical Volume OS X Extended

Some final context, I have repurposed this MacPro (formerly an R&D server) as a desktop.  My most demanding application is Mathematica used for analytics of financial data.

As per request from comments:

More info:
System Information/Hardware/RAID/Mac Pro RAID Card/Drives lists: Bays 1 through 4, each showing an Hitachi model HDE721010SLA330 1TB HD with a different serial number.  So 4 1TB HDs.
System Information/Hardware/RAID/Mac Pro RAID Card/RAID Sets: RS1 (1TB) & RS2 (1.96 TB) Status on both reporting as Viable (Good)

Should the machine have both of the above APPLE RAID Card Media volumes?
Why aren't they the same size and how do I tell if I have RAID for protection or for speed?

Basically, can someone explain what the above information means and provide suggestions to set this up properly?

The hardware RAID card is very different than the software raid so you'll want to dig into two specific tools:

System Profiler - RAID section under Hardware
RAID Utility

These two items will report the actual hardware states such as health, mirroring, degraded mode, etc... The RAID card hides the actual hardware from diskutil and Disk Utility so they are of less use than if you were doing a fusion drive or software RAID.

As to the proper setup - that really depends on which tradeoff you wish to make. Speed comes at the cost of reliability. Redundancy (or mirroring) can provide a speed up for reads but a slight slow down for writes. You'll also want to check the battery status and replace that as well as make sure you have backups of the data since RAID is not a backup but just a way to optimize for one aspect of storage over another.

Once you have a handle on the actual hardware and how the RAID card is using the drives, perhaps ask a follow on question on your options for changing things and/or a basic question asking what RAID 1 or 0 or 5 are if that's of concern.


Screen Forced Away from Dashboard I have this issue on my Macbook Air that happens often if I select a gadget on the dashboard. I get forced away from the dashboard to the Desktop. I noticed if I previously selected one gadget and I select a different gadget it will do this. For example:

I use the dictionary gadget
Move away from dashboard to do something else
Then go to the dashboard again to use a calculator
Forced away from dashboard

Is this a software problem or is it normal? If it is normal, can I stop this from happening in "system preferences"?

Version 10.7.5

I have updated my software on my Mac and this problem has stopped. Thank you all for helping me with this issue.


Why Wi-Fi is getting turned-on automatically in iOS 11 I am using iOS 11 in iPhone 5S but its wi-fi is getting turned-on automatically, is there any way to stop it.

Source:

Beginning in iOS 11, the system will automatically try and reconnect to known devices using Bluetooth and Wi-Fi at 5am every morning (local time) if they have only been toggled off using the Control Center.

You 'fix' this behaviour by turning both radios off inside of `Settings' (depending on your device locale and language, "Wi-Fi" might also be named "WLAN" as in the pictures below):

Open Settings -> Wi-Fi.
Switch the Wi-Fi radio button to off.


MacPorts 2.0.3 uninstalling package gives error "this entry does not own the given file" I'm hitting an error while trying to uninstall some packages in my MacPorts 2.0.3 installation, and I can't figure out what's causing them or how to resolve them.  Googling around lead to nothing addressing this case, so I'm hoping that fellow users here will have an answer.

Here is an example of the command and the error (where this is all done in a sudo'ed shell, so the problem is unrelated to root permissions):

port uninstall sleuthkit
--->  Deactivating sleuthkit @3.2.3_0+universal
Error: Target org.macports.deactivate returned: this entry does not own the given file
Log for sleuthkit is at: /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_registry_portfiles_sleuthkit_3.2.3_0+universal/sleuthkit/main.log
Warning: Failed to execute portfile from registry for sleuthkit @3.2.3_0+universal
--->  Deactivating sleuthkit @3.2.3_0+universal
Error: Target org.macports.uninstall returned: this entry does not own the given file
Warning: Failed to execute portfile from registry for sleuthkit @3.2.3_0+universal
--->  Deactivating sleuthkit @3.2.3_0+universal
Error: Target org.macports.deactivate returned: this entry does not own the given file
Log for sleuthkit is at: /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_registry_portfiles_sleuthkit_3.2.3_0+universal/sleuthkit/main.log
Warning: Failed to execute portfile from registry for sleuthkit @3.2.3_0+universal
--->  Deactivating sleuthkit @3.2.3_0+universal
Error: port uninstall failed: this entry does not own the given file

Looking in the file /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_registry_portfiles_sleuthkit_3.2.3_0+universal/sleuthkit/main.log reveals nothing particularly useful to me:

version:1
:debug:main Executing org.macports.main (sleuthkit)
:debug:deactivate deactivate phase started at Tue Jan 31 19:18:24 EST 2012
:debug:deactivate Executing org.macports.deactivate (sleuthkit)
:msg:deactivate --->  Deactivating sleuthkit @3.2.3_0+universal
:error:deactivate Target org.macports.deactivate returned: this entry does not own the given file
:debug:deactivate Backtrace: this entry does not own the given file
    while executing
"$port deactivate $imagefiles"
    invoked from within
"registry::write {
            $port deactivate $imagefiles
            foreach file $files {
                _deactivate_file $file
            }
    ..."
    (procedure "_deactivate_contents" line 37)
    invoked from within
"_deactivate_contents $requested [$requested files] $force"
    (procedure "portimage::deactivate" line 54)
    invoked from within
"registry_deactivate $subport $version $revision $portvariants [array get user_options]"
    (procedure "portdeactivate::deactivate_main" line 3)
    invoked from within
"$procedure $targetname"
:info:deactivate Warning: the following items did not execute (for sleuthkit): org.macports.deactivate
:notice:deactivate Log for sleuthkit is at: /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_registry_portfiles_sleuthkit_3.2.3_0+univ\
ersal/sleuthkit/main.log

Does anyone know what is behind these errors?  More importantly, how can I fix my installation so that this doesn't happen anymore?

Re install the required package then restart the computer and then run the uninstall.

Get into an elevated shell by using sudo -su firstly each time.


App Store repeatedly asking me to update I have run into a frustrating problem with my App Store. I recently installed slightly older versions of Pages, Numbers, Keynote, and Xcode and App Store prompted me to update them to newer versions. I complied and the apps finally got updated albeit it took me an abnormally long time despite being on a high-speed broadband connection.

However, next time I tried running one of these applications, they seemed to have reverted back to their older versions and App Store automatically started updating them again. I let it complete – ALL OVER AGAIN, hoping it to be the last time I was having to do this. But the same problem again! Why are apps falling back to older versions after being updated through App Store? Is there any workaround?

Yes! Absolutely.

Please note, I have merely copied verbatim my answer from here and added a clip from here

These instructions are for use in /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app

Just open Terminal.app, and follow along!

Happy Administrating!

The App Store is simply not suitable for administration. Barely a quasi-package manager, it is not nearly as useful or reliable as real package managers like pkgsrc, FreeBSD ports, aptitude, RPM, macports or even softwareupdate. In my experience, it is unpredictable and a beard for commercial developers to hock their wares. So there is really only one rational and responsible way, as a competent administrator, to work with App Store:

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

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

 sudo mkdir /System/Library/LaunchAgents\ \(disabled\)/

 sudo mv /System/Library/LaunchAgents/com.apple.store* /System/Library/LaunchAgents\ \(disabled\)/

And just put it out of your mind, it won't trouble you any longer. ;-)

softwareupdate

In order to update your Apple Software, you can use softwareupdate.

 man softwareupdate           # softwareupdate man page

 softwareupdate -h            # softwareupdate help

 softwareupdate -l            # list available updates

 sudo softwareupdare -i -r    # use this install all recommended updates

MacPorts

If you're looking for a mature package management solution, for OS X I recommend MacPorts. MacPorts requires an appropriate version of xcode; xcode_5.1.1.dmg is the most recent version for Mavericks.

Get to know  MacPorts

Install MacPorts

 curl -Ok https://distfiles.macports.org/MacPorts/MacPorts-2.2.1.tar.bz2

 tar xf MacPorts-2.2.1.tar.bz2

 cd MacPorts-2.2.1

 ./configure

 make

 sudo make install     # *not war!*

 cd ..

 rm -rf Macports-*

 sudo /opt/local/bin/port -v selfupdate

add MacPorts to your $PATH:

 export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH

If for whatever reason you need to remove MacPorts

to completely uninstall MacPorts

 sudo port -dfp uninstall --follow-dependencies installed

 sudo port -dfp uninstall all

 sudo rm -rf /opt/local

 sudo rm -rf /Library/Tcl/macports*

Apple Remote Desktop

And/or use ARD instead, though not a package manager, it manages packages, installations, updates, and upgrades, it will do what you want, save you time, and will not let you down:

For Apple Remote Desktop 3, for 10.9:

Check out the admin guide first to convince yourself that this is the way to go:

curl -Ok http://images.apple.com/ca/fr/remotedesktop/pdf/ARD3_AdminGuide.pdf

    open ARD3_AdminGuide.pdf

Then install:

curl -Ok http://supportdownload.apple.com/download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/Mac_OS_X/downloads/031-2845.20140313.rerft/RemoteDesktopAdmin372.dmg

hdiutil attach -quiet -noverify -nobrowse -noautoopen RemoteDesktopAdmin372.dmg

sudo installer -pkg /Volumes/Apple\ Remote\ Desktop\ 3.7.2\ Admin\ Update/RemoteDesktopAdmin372.pkg -target /

but that might throw a funny error if not running 10.9, or if no previous version of ARD is installed, and if it does, try:

pkgutil --expand /Volumes/Apple\ Remote\ Desktop\ 3.7.2\ Admin\ Update/RemoteDesktopAdmin372.pkg ARDexpanded/

or to equal effect (either/or here, don't need to use both pkgutil and xar... I'm just being thorough):

mkdir ARDexpanded

cd ARDexpanded

xar -xf /Volumes/Apple\ Remote\ Desktop\ 3.7.2\ Admin\ Update/RemoteDesktopAdmin372.pkg

And we no longer need the disk image attached, so eject it:

hdiutil detach -quiet /Volumes/Apple\ Remote\ Desktop\ 3.7.2\ Admin\ Update/

And now what you'll see if you

cd ARDexpanded/RemoteDesktopAdmin372.pkg/

ls

is

    Bom         PackageInfo Payload     Scripts

What's in the Payload file, which is a cpio archive compressed with gzip, is what you're after. So with a few piped commands we can get to the app bundle:

cat Payload | gzip -d - | cpio -id

ls

returns:

    Applications Bom          Library      PackageInfo  Payload      Scripts

And you're nearly done.

cp -R Applications/Remote\ Desktop.app /Applications/

Now you have installed Apple Remote Desktop Admin 3.7.2

So all that's left to do is purchase your license:

open http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/product/D6020Z/A/apple-remote-desktop-3-volume-licenses-20-seats-price-is-per-seat

Launch /Applications/Remote\ Desktop.app and serialize. And get some work done.

For 10.6 Snow Leopard, you'll need a slightly earlier version of ARD:

curl -Ok http://images.apple.com/ca/fr/remotedesktop/pdf/ARD3_AdminGuide.pdf

curl -Ok http://supportdownload.apple.com/download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/Mac_OS_X/downloads/041-6789.20120917.xD6TR/RemoteDesktopAdmin353.dmg

hdiutil attach -quiet -noverify -nobrowse -noautoopen RemoteDesktopAdmin353.dmg

sudo installer -pkg /Volumes/Apple\ Remote\ Desktop\ 3.5.3\ Admin\ Update/RemoteDesktopAdmin353.pkg -target /

and if it throws back at you this:

    installer: Cannot install on volume / because it is disabled.
    installer: This update could not find Remote Desktop on this volume.

then try:

pkgutil --expand /Volumes/Apple\ Remote\ Desktop\ 3.5.3\ Admin\ Update/RemoteDesktopAdmin353.pkg ARD353

hdiutil detach -quiet /Volumes/Apple\ Remote\ Desktop\ 3.5.3\ Admin\ Update

drill down to the Payload:

    cd ARD353/RemoteDesktopAdmin353.pkg/

    ls

returns:

    Bom         PackageInfo Payload     Scripts

So run:

cat Payload | gzip -d - | cpio -id

ls

returns:

Applications Bom          Library      PackageInfo  Payload      Scripts

And you're nearly done:

cp -R Applications/Remote\ Desktop.app /Applications/

purchase your license:

open http://store.apple.com/us_smb_78313/product/D6020Z/A/apple-remote-desktop-3-volume-licenses-20-seats-price-is-per-seat

Launch /Applications/Remote\ Desktop.app and serialize. And get something done.


Can second hand SIM locked iPhone 4S be activated with a different carrier? I have my first experience with an iPhone, so really need some guidance and advice. I have got a second hand iPhone 4S - OS 5.1.1. I was told that it is SIM locked to a certain network.

When I switched it on it had Apple's Terms & Conditions on the screen which I had to accept or decline to proceed. After restart it asks me to insert a "valid sim card".

Questions:

I am wondering if this is standard to get T&C on the screen after restore or this phone never been activated?
If this iPhone has never been activated - can it be activated with a different carrier's SIM card to what it was supposed to be locked to?
If I try to activate it with a SIM card from a different carrier - what is the chance that it stops working and becomes a "brick"?

1 Question: I am wondering if this is standard to get T&C on the
  screen after restore or this phone never been activated?

Yes it is standard to get the T&C after restore.

  2 Question: If this iPhone has never been activated - can it be
  activated with a different carrier's SIM card to what it was supposed
  to be locked to?

Activation is irrelevant.  You'll either need to jail break the phone and unlock it, or ask the carrier the phone was intended for to unlock it.

  3 Question: If I try to activate it with a SIM card from a different
  carrier - what is the chance that it stops working and becomes a
  "brick"?

No, inserting a SIM card from another carrier won't "brick" it.  It just won't work in the phone.

Something to consider, the iPhone 4S uses a smaller sim card than standard phones do.  When upgrading to a 4S from a 3GS I had to sand my SIM card down to fit (I like to use prepaid service so I'm not under a contract).


Lightning-3.5mm adapter causes device to act as if remote button is continuously pressed Since late last year (I forget exactly when), I've had a bizarre issue with my Lightning-3.5mm adapter (A1749, from Apple). When I plug it into my device (iPhone XS), and plug in a set of bog-standard wired EarPods w/ remote+mic, the device acts like I'm pressing the main button on the remote. It opens Siri, won't accept volume changes from the remote, and won't transmit audio from the microphone. I can listen to audio on the EarPods, but that's it - no volume control, no mic input.
I see the same behavior using the adapter on my iPad (6th generation) - immediate Siri prompt upon plugging in the 3.5mm side of the adapter. I can plug in the EarPods to the iPad's native 3.5mm jack and get the proper behavior. I've verified all of this with multiple pairs of EarPods.
This started happening on both my iPad and iPhone at roughly the same time, late last year (but I don't recall if it correlated with a specific iOS update). It feels like a software issue, but I have a hard time believing Apple would ship code that debilitates the adapter for this long.
The inside of the 3.5mm side of the adapter is clean, no conductive junk that I can see. I'm working on getting another adapter to test with. In the meantime, any thoughts?

This is likely a defective adapter.
Trying it with different peripherals and devices kind of nails it down. Just probably a short in the wiring or internal circuitry that can't be seen. I would toss it and replace it.


Boot from USB in macbook pro mid 2012 I have removed everything from my macbook pro. Now, how can choose USB as a startup disk? I tried using option    "SHIFT" keys also cmd+R. Nothing is working. How can I solve it? I am using Mid 2012 Macbook Pro and that usb is Ubuntu installer. [Btw, I am not interested to install Ubuntu in mac.]

The 'option' key at startup will give you the option of selecting another startup disk. The problem may be that your USB stick is not considered a valid startup option.


iPod 5 charger isn't working! What do I do? I have A ipod 5. Every time I go to charge it with a dynex or apple charger it doesn't charge. The bar stays red for over an hour. I'm thinking that I have a short in my charger. I don't know what to do. Please help?

Without knowing if your charge is dead, try using a USB cable connected to your Mac, to charge it that way.

  To charge iPod, connect it directly to a computer's USB port (not a
  keyboard) and make sure standby, hibernation, or sleep mode is turned
  off. Important: iPod will stop charging if the computer it's connected
  to enters standby, hibernation, or sleep mode.

If you have a volt meter then check the pins of the cable coming out of the charger.


Best way of sharing files over network with linux I have an iMac running Mac OS 10.7.3 which is connected to wifi network, there is also a linux laptop connected to the same network. I want to share a folder with this laptop, I cannot use ftp since it was removed from system preferences. I don't want to share everything, so remote login is not option, unless there are settings to restrict it, so what is the best way of sharing this folder?

Simply use the File Sharing option in the System Preferences.

It will give you the option to share using AFP or SMB, both of which are supported in Linux.

You didn't specify which Linux distribution you are using specifically, but most graphical distributions such as Ubuntu have SMB support out of the box (just go to Places->Network and find your share). AFP support can be obtained by installing afpfs-ng.


Is there a way to use TouchID for iTunes and App store only? I previously asked this question for iOS 7.  I am on iOS 8 now and in the Settings for Touch ID, there is a specific toggle for Use Touch ID for iTunes & App Store.

I turn it on - it tells me that I need to create a passcode (in case Touch ID isn't available).  After that, it makes me enter the passcode to unlock the phone.

Is there a way to use Touch ID exclusively for the iTunes and App Store and also not having a passcode on the device?

Sorry for my image being Dutch, but you can disable the unlock functionality easily after setting it up correctly.

No, you need to have a password in case Touch ID doesn't work. There's no way (at least without jailbreak) to get this 'fixed'.


How to 'upgrade' to Windows 10, on Virtual Machine I have Windows 7 on a virtual machine on my 2015 MBP. I want to try it on boot camp and upgrade to Windows 10, but Bootcamp won't allow anything below Windows 8. So it's not possible to 'upgrade'? Do I need to buy a new licence for Windows 10?

Look, boot camp did allow Windows 7. It is just that it only allows 64bit.

Here is how to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 10: Use Windows 10 on your Mac with Boot Camp.

Also, Virtual machine is like a computer!! Just follow the following guidelines: Upgrade to Windows 10.


How to stop instagram app remembering / auto-filling in username at login screen, when not yet logged in Steps to reproduce problem:

Log out of instagram app
Close the app
click on it to open it and log back in
Log-in screen is displayed, with the user name filled in (not yet logged in (i.e. still logged out)) and password field beneath blank

How do you clear all Instagram app settings and what it remembers after you have logged out? So that it doesn't remember (i.e. forgets) your user name so that it doesn't pre-fill in this field at the login screen?

There are options to clear data in the Settings screen, but these are too blanket and coarse in that they clear everything - I only want to clear one thing.

Problem seen on Sep 2010 (4th generation) iPod touch 32Gb. IOS Version 6.1.5 (10B500)

Latest version of Instagram app, as of date 2014 05 18.

Navigate to Instagram app → Profile → Settings → scroll down to Privacy & Security → Saved Login Info → Turn it off.


Apple Mail message highlighting Apparently my Google-fu is off today or nobody used this feature other than me.  Apple mail had a feature that would highlight messages from the same sender with the same or similar subject lines which made it very easy to round up emails from my network monitoring system.  After upgrading to El Capitan this feature has gone away.  I am wondering if anyone knows of a fix to get it back or was it an error in previous versions that just got fixed.  My mail settings are the same as they have been.  I have included a screen shot below.

Apparently there was an option to "Include related messages" that I was simply overlooking.  Sorry for the bother.


How can I edit the keyboard shortcuts in notes As the title says, how can I edit the shortcuts in the notes app?

Right now Font Bigger is obtained by pressing together cmd and = I would like to use cmd and + instead. Is there a way to change this setting?

Go to System Preferences → Keyboard → App Shortcuts.
Click the + to add a new shortcut.
Choose Notes.app, enter ‘Bigger’ as the Menu Title, then set the Keyboard Shortcut ‘⇧⌘=’.
Click Add. The new shortcut will be available for use and will show in the Notes menus as appropriate, under Format → Font → Bigger.


Does anyone know what this menu bar app is? Does anyone know what this menu bar app is?

The logo is the AirPlay logo, but I have seen it used by a number of programs. It's either the resolution settings for your outbound AirPlay (morriring), or I think (more likely) the window size of incoming AirDisplay connections through AirParrot or AirDisplay or similar AP server apps.


File path error in Applescript/TextExpander I use the following code to open my dropbox folder quickly using textexpander.

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    set f to POSIX file "/Users/MrT/Dropbox"
    open f
end tell

Which works, but then I want to go deeper in my folders using this code. It does not work.
It looks like Textexapnder does not recognize spaces in file paths.

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    set f to POSIX file "/Users/MrT/Dropbox/School/Hardvard/6-Fall Session 2013"
    open f
end tell

I might be totally off track, but give this a try:

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    set f to "Users/MrT/Dropbox/School/Hardvard/6-Fall Session 2013"
    set a to POSIX file f
    open a
end tell

If that fails to work, change it to the following:

tell application "Finder"
    activate
    set f to "Macintosh HD:Users:MrT:Dropbox:School:Hardvard:6-Fall Session 2013"
    set a to POSIX file f
    open a
end tell


MacBook does not mount, does not boot, does not read drive When i press alt on my MacBook during startup, it only shows a disk that i used to have Windows installed (which is now empty). I erased that disk when i was last logged in on OS X. Then i tried to delete this partition and make the disk again as it was when i bought it 128GB.

There was an error. I thought that restart would be a good idea and that's what i did. Then what I wrote on first line happened. I just want some important files back; or reinstall OS X but keep old files.

Here are some photos I took. Recovery HD and Windows disks are empty, but I don't care about them.

Here is the result of sudo gpt -r show /dev/disk0:

The GUID partition table is a mess.

Just to explain all partitions:

i = 1 EFI partition
i = 2 main OS X volume (wrong partition type)
i = 3 Recovery HD (wrong partition type)
i = 4 Windows partition (wrong partition type)
i = 5,7 Linux partitions
i = 6  Linux Swap partition

I would do the following after booting to Internet Recovery HD:

First you have to unmount disk0 and get the gpt table:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt -r show /dev/disk0

Open Utilities->Terminal and remove the two Linux partitions (5,7) and the Linux Swap partition (6) with:

gpt remove -i 7 /dev/disk0
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 6 /dev/disk0
diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 5 /dev/disk0

Remove the Windows partition (marked as an Apple HFS+ partition)

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 4 /dev/disk0

Remove and properly re-add the Recovery HD:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 3 /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 176870968 -i 3 -s 1269536 -t 426F6F74-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

Remove and properly re-add the OS X partition:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 176461328 -t 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

the type of the partition may also be 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC (CoreStorage). With on-board tool it's impossible to determine the correct partition type.
Verify disk0 and disk0s2:

diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk0
diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk0s2

If you get errors you may consider replacing the default partition type of disk0s2 by a CoreStorage volume:

diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0
gpt remove -i 2 /dev/disk0
gpt add -b 409640 -i 2 -s 176461328 -t 53746F72-6167-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC /dev/disk0

Enter diskutil cs list. If you get No CoreStorage logical volume groups found as result repeat step 5 and continue with the diskutil verifyDisk... and diskutil repairDisk... steps below. If the diskutil cs list reveals a CoreStorage Volume Group check if it is encrypted: Logical Volume Family -> Encryption: locked. Unlock the volume with: diskutil cs unlockVolume lvUUID with lvUUID: the UUID of the Logical Volume and entering your passphrase.

Verify disk0 and disk0s2 again:

diskutil verifyDisk /dev/disk0
diskutil verifyVolume /dev/disk0s2

If you still get errors try to repair disk0 and disk0s2:

diskutil repairDisk /dev/disk0
diskutil repairVolume /dev/disk0s2

Quit Terminal by entering exit and try to reboot to your main OS X volume

If you get an error saying disk0 Resource busy... you have to unmount disk0 again with diskutil umountDisk /dev/disk0.


MacBook Pro's battery charging only to 27% I have a 2017 15" MacBook Pro.

A while ago I posted question related to issues with battery here:

MacBook 15" (2017) - Battery Charging Problem

What's funny is that that problem solved itself eventually (The next day it charged as expected). Two weeks later I kinda got into the same problem, but now it charges only to 27%.

Interestingly, I don't have any performance problems if I am on battery and the battery usage is normal.

If someone has experienced similar problems, I am curious to know if they have done something to fix it. I have tried resetting the SMC multiple times but to no avail.

According to this Apple Support page:

  Occasionally, the battery might not show a full charge (100%) in
  macOS, even after the power adapter has been connected for an extended
  period of time. The battery might appear to stop charging between 93
  percent and 99 percent. This behavior is normal and will help to
  prolong the overall life of the battery.

But 27% is quite low.

Additionally, you can try checking the battery cycle count. The average for your Mac is 1000.

From this article:

  Follow these steps to access information about your Mac notebook
  battery, including its cycle count:

  Hold the Option key and click the Apple menu. Choose System
  Information.

  Under the Hardware section of the System Information window, select Power. The current cycle count is listed under the Battery Information section.


iPadOS 14.2 - Unable to find Apple Pencil double tap settings I have an Apple Pencil 2 paired with an iPad running iPadOS 14.2. I was able to configure the double tap action in the settings somehow, but I don't know how to do it anymore.
Is this setting hidden?
It's not in the Accessibilities -> Apple Pencil or Apple Pencil in the Settings app.
Under Apple Pencil, I can only see Only draw with Apple Pencil, Scribble, and Try Scribble.

Just turn on Bluetooth. I mean fully, not that power saving thing..
If you are in the Settings app maybe you have to restart Settings (close from the recent apps also).
This should work.


External Display Resolution I am running OS X El Capitan on a 15" Retina display MBP and I recently hooked up an external monitor (Samsung SyncMasterP2370HD) via an HDMI cable. The font is weirdly pixelated at any resolution available except 1600x1200 which I got by doing the force RGB work around. Unfortunately at that resolution everything is stretched wide. While I can handle the ugly font right now with 1080p and some underscan (I switched the profile back from the forced RGB to the default), I was hoping there was a work around which allowed me to pick whatever resolution my heart desires (I know the option + click "Scaled" trick, the ones I'm looking for aren't available).

So is there a terminal command I can use to change the resolution on my external? If not, is there something else I can do? I'd like to at least try to see what the display looks like at say 1680x1050.

Thanks

ENDS UP - the answer is to change the name of the HDMI input through the display's menu (the samsung menu from the external) to PC or DVI PC.

Answer from here: https://superuser.com/questions/146841/why-does-text-look-so-horrible-on-my-hd-monitor. Apparently I was searching on the wrong stackexchange.


Hot Corners Yosemite don't work any more My Macbook Pro (late 2013) running OS X 10.10.4 Yosemite, doesn't respond to Hot Corners any more.
Also, if one application is set to full screen, the Finder keeps stuck / doesn't follow if I change (CMD-Tab) the focus to a different application in a different Desktop (Space). I already tried

loggin out and in the user account
restarting the Finder, OS X
repairing rights while starting up from another partition
changing hot corners settings, mission control settings
deleting the ./Library/Preferences/com.apple.dock.plist
resetting the RMC, PRAM
I can get back to the main screen / first Desktop with CMD-1 but going back to the full screen application only works with a 4-finger horizontal swipe.
I noticed Hot Corners work fine with a test accounts, so it must be something with this account.

I've been at this for hours and running out of ideas. Any thoughts?
Update 151203
Recently, I updated to OS X 10.11.1 El Capitan, but this didn't change things.
Update 160214
Did some tests again and noticed the screensaver can be set as a hot corner function, but other functions can not. Also, (with or without fn) Function keys don't work (only in this user account).
In the System Preferences / Keyboard / Shortcuts I used the [Restore Defaults] button. This made the Dashboard function available via Function keys again, but not via Hot corners.
App Expose also only works via the keyboard and gestures
Show Desktop and Mission Control don't work at all.
Update 210113
Wow, it's been a while! Since I've updated to Mojave everything works fine. By the I love how this 7+ year old retina MBP 15' still feels as responsive as when I bought it.

I had tried this last year but then it didn't work. I tried it again and now it did work:

Start terminal and execute the following commands:

defaults write com.apple.dock mcx-expose-disabled -bool FALSE (this
enables mission control)
killall Dock (kill and automatically restart the Dock, this is
necessary to get it done)

There is an article about hot corners missing dashboard and mission control.


Upgrade Cost From Previous MacOS Version to Sierra This is going to be a very simple and straight forward question. I do not have experience of using any MacBook. I'm a software engineer by profession and I'm considering to purchase a MacBook to get started with iOS development. I got some quotations from a local Apple Authorized Reseller and they are saying that they have 2 MacBooks that fall in my budget. Budget can be increased though. One is Apple MacBook Pro Retina 13.3" (MF839ZA/A). It has "Mac OS X Yosemite" on it. If I purchase this MacBook then can I upgrade the OS X to "Sierra"?

What will be the software upgrade costs from the following OS X versions to Sierra:

Mavericks to Sierra
Yosemite to Sierra
El Capitan to Sierra

What are the minimum hardware requirements or MacBook version requirements for me to install Sierra on it?

I need Sierra for XCode 8.0+.

Apple last charged for upgrades at 10.8 Mountain Lion. Major upgrades have been free of charge since then. The system requirements are publicly listed.

https://www.apple.com/macos/how-to-upgrade/

  Mac computers introduced in late 2009 or later can be upgraded to macOS Sierra.

You can also rely on Apple providing you a clean copy of the OS that shipped with the hardware via support download if it's Lion or later.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204319


I backed up my Android device and I want to restore it on my iphone 5! Can anybody please help me?!
I want to restore a non apple device back up to my iphone 5 and I can't so please anybody's help would be great! I have a Samsung galaxy S7 edge and I got a iPhone 6s.

Backing up Contents of Android Phone to Compter

On your Android phone, go to your Contacts. Tap the menu button and tap Import/Export. Tap Export to Storage, select the contact data you want to transfer ("Phone") and select OK.

Connect your Android to your PC (USB) and put your phone in Disk Drive mode. Your phone will appear as a drive (or two drives if you have an SD card) in My Computer or on your Mac desktop.

Create a new folder on your desktop. Look through the files on your Android device and drag and drop the content you want to transfer to your iPhone (photos, music, and videos).

Finally, search for a VCF file on your Android phone and save that file too (Don't put it in the folder necessarily; just keep it on your desktop). This is where all your contacts are.

Drag and drop that folder to your iPhone data folder. You're now ready to transfer the saved data to your iPhone.

Photos and Videos to iPhone

Connect iPhone to computer and open iTunes. Click on the iPhone on the top right corner (assuming iTunes 11.0 here), then go to the Photos tab in the main window. Check Sync photos In the drop-down menu, click Choose Folder and navigate to the Android data folder on your desktop. Your photos will appear in your iPhone's Photos app.
You can do the same for videos; just click Videos instead and choose that same folder.

Music to iPhone

Drag the iPhone folder from your desktop over your iPhone's name in the iTunes sidebar. All of your songs will be transferred to your iPhone. (You can also use this trick to transfer any other music from your desktop to your iPhone.) The music can be found in your iPhone's Music app.

Alternatively, if the first option didn't work for you, click File, Import Folder, and select the folder with all of your music from your Android phone. This will import all music into iTunes. After this is done (it may take awhile), go back to your iPhone by selecting it in the top right corner. Click Music, Sync All Music, then Sync Now.

Contacts to iPhone

You need to set up an e-mail account on your iPhone for this one to work. Then, back on your computer, send yourself an e-mail with the VCF file as an attachment. Open that e-mail on your iPhone and tap the attachment. A message will pop up at the top. Tap this button "Add all contacts." Your contacts will be saved to your iPhone.


kernal_task bringing MacBook Pro to a halt - fan problem? I have acquired a 2nd-hand mid-2015 MacBook Pro which I use connected to 2x cinema displays (the laptop itself has some screen damage).

When connected up for the first time I noticed it was going insanely slow (16gb 2.8ghz w/ Radeon R9 2GB) even compared to my early-2013 model with half the spec.

Checking Activity Monitor, I noticed kernal_task was using 400% of CPU (since then I have seen over 1000%). I looked up the cause and that it was overheating so opened it up and cleaned all dust out with blowers etc. to the best of my ability - no change.

I noticed using the laptop without anything plugged in seemed to be okay, so I initially thought having 2x displayport connections to screens was doing it. Since then I've discovered (like right now) I can have 2 screens plugged in and it's okay - then sometimes I add USB devices and it's okay - but when the system really starts working and needs fans - that's when things go bad.

So I installed iStat Menus and have discovered that my right fan is not operating (constantly 0rpm even when the left is 6000+ rpm).

So I'm wondering if a) this is the root cause (and not a symptom of the cause) and b) what I can do to fix.

Even though I cleaned it I did notice at the time its movement wasn't as smooth as the left - would cleaning help or would I need a replacement?

I've replaced MacBook components before so am quite confident in doing this if needed, but the fan isn't too cheap / available here so I'd like to know if I should expect further issues or what.

Thanks!

Mike

Do you also notice the MacBook getting much hotter on the right side than on the left under load? This would confirm that the right fan is not working, so it wouldn't be just the sensor.

The kernel_task issue is a recently discussed topic and it is often caused by high temperatures. Take a look at this active discussion.

I would replace any broken fans and distribute external hardware that draws power and the power supply evenly between right and left ports.


Text in place of Finder icons (MacOS Sierra) My finder looks like this:

If I click on the text 'view', 'action' etc, it shows all the options and I'm able to use it quite normally. What gives?

How do I get the icons + buttons back?

Getting the buttons back is actually really simple:

First, select View > Customize Toolbar... in the menu bar.

Now, just make sure the dropdown (the one outlined in red) has the option you want selected. The default is Icon Only.


Email alerts (dock icon and app sidebar) arent showing up in any more in 10.9 I've just switched to OSX 10.9 and one thing that I've noticed isn't working are mail alerts in the mail.app side bar and dock icon.

I've got several email accounts, all of them gmail - some gmail.com and some on their own domain using google apps for business.

The really odd thing is that it seems to work on one account, but not others. I'm still getting all my emails but the red alert in the dock icon and the number in the side bar like the images below aren't showing up, apart for one account.

What's really strange is that I still get the emails showing up as notifications in the top corner of my screen and showing up in the email folders, but I'm just not getting the alerts.

Has any one else experienced this?

Mail.app in 10.9 has had (and still have, for some) massive problems with Gmail-based accounts.

In the first couple of Developer Previews Mail.app was completely unusable for me. When the Golden Master (final release) of 10.9 came out it was better but still horrible compared to earlier versions of OS X. In my case, Mail did actually show the unread badge, it just showed a number was way off!

Try to update OS X to 10.9.1 which makes Gmail-based accounts work better. Also, there was a stand-alone Mail Update for Mavericks which fixed the badge problem for my.

You probably know but it's through the App Store or Apple menu () > Software Update.


Should a USB Switch work with late 2018 Macbook Air I have a UGREEN USB 3.0 Switch. It has 4 USB A sockets on one side and 2 on the other. Its point is to share the 4 things plugged in on one side with 2 computers. I've been using it with a 2014 Macbook Pro and a 2017 Razer Blade sharing a keyboard, mouse, and USB ethernet adaptor for the last 3 months.

Today I got a late 2018 Macbook Air. I tried connecting it to the same switch but it's not working and so I'm wondering where the issue is. It could be

Bad cables. I'm using USB C to USB A cables. I've used these cables for other things in the past. I tried 2 3 different cables. An Anker Cable, a TacMad cable, and a Elecom USB3-AC15 USB 3.1 cable. All 3 cables work fine for other USB devices
Wrong cables? Maybe there is more than one kind of USB-C to USB-A cable?
Bad Switch. The switch works but maybe something is incompatible?
This isn't supposed to work. I have no idea but maybe there is something about USB-C that makes it just not suppose to work
???

To add to that I have a VANMASS 9-in-1 USB HUB. If I plug that between the switch and the macbook air everything works. In other words

[2014 MBP]<---------USB-A-USB-A-cable--------->[USB Switch]<->[Mouse] works

[2018 MBA]<---------USB-C-USB-A-cable--------->[USB Switch]<->[Mouse] doesn't work

[2018 MBA]<->[USB Hub]<---USB-A-USB-A-cable--->[USB Switch]<->[Mouse] works

Note that this is both without and with external power to the switch. Without power the switch doesn't light up (it does with the MBP and Razer). With power it does light up and pressing the button on the switch switches the LED indicator on top of the switch but the MacBook Air still doesn't see the mouse and keyboard without the hub in between

I'd like to not need the hub. It seems like I should be able to connect the Macbook Air directly to the switch just like I was doing with the Macbook Pro

Any idea what the issue is?

In my investigations, I have found that for a switch to work successfully, it needs to be connected to a USB hub. Even the Apple USB/HDMI to USB-C adapter will do.
Also, plugging a USB switch after the KVM switch helps to deal with some devices (My USB mic) that seem to cause trouble when directly plugged into the KVM switch.
The two switches I have experimented with are the USB3.0 4 port 2 way KVM from UGreen and a similar one from Belkin. (No HDMI, only USB switching)
It is a little finicky, and I am not sure why. The same switch works flawlessly between by Thinkpad and Desktop (Windows)
Hope this helps.
This is what my ioreg -p IOUSB currently looks like:
+-o Root  <class IORegistryEntry, id 0x100000100, retain 23>
  +-o AppleUSBXHCI Root Hub Simulation@00000000  <class AppleUSBRootHubDevice, id 0x100000405, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 13>
  | +-o USB 10/100/1000 LAN@00200000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000407, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 14>
  | +-o USB3.1 Hub@00100000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x1000019d1, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 12>
  +-o AppleUSBXHCI Root Hub Simulation@01000000  <class AppleUSBRootHubDevice, id 0x100000418, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 8>
  +-o AppleUSBVHCIBCE Root Hub Simulation@80000000  <class AppleUSBRootHubDevice, id 0x100000433, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 15>
  | +-o FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)@80200000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000435, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 14>
  | +-o Apple T2 Controller@80100000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000439, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 13>
  | +-o Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad@80500000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000440, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (1 ms), retain 20>
  | +-o Headset@80400000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000446, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 11>
  | +-o Touch Bar Display@80600000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x10000044a, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 13>
  | +-o Ambient Light Sensor@80300000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x10000044e, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 11>
  | +-o Touch Bar Backlight@80700000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100000456, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 11>
  +-o AppleUSBXHCI Root Hub Simulation@14000000  <class AppleUSBRootHubDevice, id 0x10000046a, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 9>
    +-o USB2.0 Hub@14100000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x1000019be, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (0 ms), retain 14>
      +-o USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter@14120000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x1000019e2, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (3 ms), retain 12>
      +-o USB2.0 Hub@14110000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100002349, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (1 ms), retain 14>
        +-o IOUSBHostDevice@14114000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100002364, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (1 ms), retain 14>
        | +-o HHKB Professional@14114100  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100002378, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (3 ms), retain 12>
        | +-o USB Receiver@14114300  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x10000238b, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (6 ms), retain 16>
        +-o USB2.0 Hub@14111000  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x1000023ed, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (1 ms), retain 15>
          +-o Samson GoMic@14111100  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100002405, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (11 ms), retain 18>
          +-o HD Pro Webcam C920@14111200  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100002454, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (13 ms), retain 19>
          +-o Flash Drive@14111300  <class AppleUSBDevice, id 0x100002f5a, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (4 ms), retain 12>

The USB-C Digital AV Multiport (at address 0x1000019e2) was necessary for the switch to function. But it was still being finicky with my USB mic (Samson GoMic@14111100) so I added a USB2.0 Hub@14110000 (this one by Sabernet) in-line and everything is working well.


Mission Control Application Windows Not Updating I have Yosemite 10.11.3 running.

While using some Apple applications, when I hit the shortcut for Mission Control:Application Windows it shows the currently open windows and some recently closed ones at the bottom of the screen as thumbnails.

The problem I am having is the thumbnails for the recently closed documents is not updating and showing the most recent documents. I beleive it should reflect the "Recent Items" menu order.

Does anyone know how to reset this or clear these thumbnails and start over?

Note: I am not talking about resetting the Recent Items menu or the system preferences for recent items. These thumbnails only appear with certain Apple applications. It is the thumbnails I am talking about.

Here is a screen shot:

Through experimentation, I have learned this:

If you clear the recent items menu on an applications "File" menu these preview thumbnails remain along with recent items when you right-click on the applications icon in the Dock.

However, if you then "killall Dock" from the terminal both the preview thumbnails and the right-click menu in the Dock get cleared. I believe if you were to log out and back in or restart they would also be cleared.

I am speculating here, but it is possible if you clear the recent menu and wait a day there may be a cleanup script that runs and resets the preview thumbnails and the right-click icon menu.

Hopefully, this is helpful to someone else that finds this behavior irritating.


iPhone 5 broken glass replacement My friend recently broke his iPhone 5. He has broken just the front glass. Everything works very fine: LCD, touch screen, etc…

Is there any possibility to change only the front glass that costs, on eBay, 9.99$? Not whole digitizer with LCD? I've not found any video with this.

The iPhone 5's front glass is part of the LCD screen, not as in the iPhone 4 where you could only change the back glass (I am almost sure that the front glass in iPhone 4/4S was also separate from the screen).

Therefore, must change the whole screen.


How do I set the on-screen zoom level in OS X TextEdit? I want to set the zoom level in TextEdit to a precise value so that the on-screen display has the same size as the printout. The "Zoom in" and "Zoom out" controls are too coarse for this.

The following workaround does at least provide a fixed user-settable zoom (TextEdit 1.13, OS X 10.13.6 [High Sierra]).

Create and save a blank TextEdit doc (maybe make it Stationery via
Finder Info)
Open the doc in TextEdit (don't use "Open Recent") and
select the Option button to "ignore rich text commands". (Or, open it
in some text editor which doesn't do RTF.)
Add the command \viewscaleNNN in the header material; or,
preferably, the command string \margl1440\margr1440\vieww16140\viewh20440\viewkind1\viewscale140

This does the following: set the left margin to 1 inch (1440 units, whatever they are), the right margin similarly, the window width and height to big enough that the doc will open showing a full page (otherwise you get the middle of the page but not the edges), the "viewkind" command (use 1 as shown for Page Layout view, called "Wrap to Page" in TextEdit), and finally the viewscaleNNN command, with "NNN" here being "140" setting the zoom to 140%, which is what is needed on my particular setup; experiment to find the percentage you like. These and many more RTF commands may be found here.

Finally, save the doc and use it as stationery.


View local HTML files using web browser on iPad Using a web browser (e.g., Safari, Chrome, etc.) can I view html pages that are stored locally on the iPad? The pages should render properly and execute Javascript/CSS properly.

Since the files are always local to the app in iOS. You can't open a html with apps like Safari and Chrome to load associated assets (js/images/css).

However, You could use apps like Documents to upload the folder and open in app browser (uiwebview).

Should work if the URL to assets in the html are relative.


Using External Monitor. Want Mouse to move Up/Down, not Left/Right? I've got an external monitor and want to be able to use the monitor above the laptop.

It seems I'm supposed to use "Spaces" to support an external monitor which I have done and I've set up two spaces for this. Unfortunately it seems that I'm only able to move between spaces by moving my mouse cursor from left to right instead of from top to bottom and vice versa. Given the layout of the monitors it is really unnatural to have to move from left to right in order to access monitors that are stacked.  I can easily do this on my Dell laptop running Windows but is there a way to do it with my Mac's OS X?  Stumped.

(source: mikeschinkel.com)

Thanks in advance for the help.

-Mike

You don't need to worry about Spaces for this.  What you need to do is go into:

System Preferences --> Displays --> Arrangement

Drag the icon representing your external monitor to the top of the icon representing your macbook monitor:

You can also drag the bar representing your menubar/dock to whichever monitor you want to be your "main" display.


Is it possible to set iOS notifcations for certain apps ON / OFF depening on day / time? We use Trello (Kanban project management / collaboration app) allot at work, every one has it set up on their iPhones.

When a person is mentioned / contacted in the app they get an iOS notification / alert, this is fine during working hours, but over the weekend / late at night i guess this gets quite irritating.

Is there a way that an end user can put select app notifications 'to sleep' for certain hours of the day / days of the week ?

Not select apps, no. Do Not Disturb can block notifications globally between certain times of the day, but this cannot be applied to single apps only.


How can I set output to internal speakers after I've set the 3.5mm jack as input on 13" MacBook Pro? I have a 13" MacBook pro, which has only one 3.5mm jack. I've set it as Sound Input in the System Preferences -> Sound dialog

This way I can record directly from my piano audio output. The problem is, I'm not able to hear anything anymore. The piano has only one 3.5mm jack, and if I put anything in there, it's speakers get turned off.

I'd like to make my MacBook replay the sound it's getting on the sound input in it's built in speakers, so that I can hear what I'm actually playing.

When I try to play any sound directly (like in iTunes), it uses the speakers just fine. But it doesn't play the sound that is being recorded from the 3.5mm input.

Basically this would be the equivalent of hearing yourself speak when talking on Skype.

Have a look at the free
LineIn
Inside The Lines
LineIn is a simple application for OS X to enable the soft playthru of audio from input devices. In simpler terms, you can use LineIn to play sound coming in through a microphone or any other device plugged in to your Sound In port, just as was once available with OS 9's "Play input through output device" option.


How can I install an older version of iTunes? I need to install iTunes 12.6.5 per this article in order to be able to download iPad apps directly from iTunes (since that functionality was later removed from iTunes). So I've tried to follow the relatively simple instructions by downloading the installer package, and running it. However as soon as I try to open the "Install iTunes" app it says "This software is not supported on your system."

I'm running macOS 10.14.2 (Mojave). Do I need to somehow uninstall the existing version of iTunes first? I tried doing that by dragging it from Applications into the Trash, but that reported "iTunes can't be modified or deleted because it's required by macOS."

At the bottom of the article it says the version isn’t compatible with Mojave.

  This version of iTunes is not compatible with macOS Mojave.


MBP + external monitor : alternative to "scaled" display to have smaller apps? I am facing a lot of small annoyance with my external display (4k, 27" benq, T3 connection) like :
it wakes up with the wrong resolution, the mouse feels incredibly slow (it looks like the speed is also "scaled") and some application just struggle to display higher resolution (namely jetbrains products).
So, I moved back to the standard resolution… but everything is too big now. I've reduced the zoom in some apps, but the menus remain huge.
So, are there any solutions (apps or whatnot) to either fix the "scaled" display issues… or to keep the standard resolution, but having slightly smaller apps ?
Thanks a ton…

You don't say exactly what resolutions you're using, but if you use the native 4K resolution without scaling, then that will display everything as small as possible.
The whole point of using a 'scaled' display is to keep the clarity of the high-pixel density, while enlarging the screen objects, such as buttons, text, etc.


Not receiving verification code while trying to sign into iCloud and Apple Store Decided to reset the Macbook. Got MacOS 10.8.5 installed. Trying to update to Mojave (10.14.6) from the link here - https://support.apple.com/HT211683, as upgrading directly to latest not supported for this version.
Apple Store pops open and clicking Get asks for logging into Apple Store through iCloud account, which was skipped during upgrade time. Signing in gave this error:
"Apple ID Verification Code Required: type your password followed by the verification code shown on your other devices."
There was no code received and there was no other device. What are some options at this point?

Was able to sign into iCloud on the mac using Google Chrome, but not Safari. Was not able to click Account Settings or anything else. The difference here was that was able to use text verification code as other option for 2 factor authentication, and same with below.
Was able to sign into iCloud on Android Chrome, then going into Account Settings led to signing into Apple ID website. From there, going to list of devices, the same mac with the previous OS was listed! Decided to remove this, this was the main issue, and restart the mac. After waiting for a couple of minutes, was able to start receiving auth codes through text.
The first time you enter password and get error message asking for code to be entered. You have to wait a bit, get the code, and try signing in again with format: yourpasswordcode, no space or other character in between. Then, upgrade proceeds.


iPhone 4S - sudden drop in battery percentage I have an iPhone 4S and I just ran into a really weird issue the third time now: the battery percentage would suddenly drop 30-40-50%. One minute, it's, say, 69%, the next minute it's 25%. If I put it on a charger, it jumps back to 69% after a few minutes and charges it until 100% and then it works for a while.

It happened again today, I noticed that the camera apps were getting killed even though the battery was at 54%, and then after a minute, the battery would drop to 1% saying low battery. Then it died on me.

I also do not know how to calibrate.

I'm running iOS 8, non-jailbreaked.

I ended up replacing the battery myself. Have no issues with the new battery.


How do I Reauthorize Screen Sharing for Quicktime? At some point, I must have denied Quicktime access to screen sharing.  Now that I want to record a Screen Recording, I need to grant it permission again however, when I go to System Preferences to do this, Quicktime does not appear as one of the options to check.  Where did it go?  Is Quicktime holding a grudge because I denied it previously?  How do I Reauthorize Quicktime for Screen Sharing?

You can reset the screen recording permissions for QuickTime Player using tccutil:

tccutil reset ScreenCapture com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX

After running this command, you need to quit QuickTime Player (if it was open). Then open QuickTime Player again and choose "New Screen Recording..." from the File menu. That will cause the prompt dialog to pop up again so you can grant permission for Screen Recording.


Fastest way to preview all images in a deeply nested directory tree? I have a set of hundreds of images and each one is in its own sub-directory. What is the fastest way to preview all images at the same time?

From terminal app:

find . -iname '*.png' | xargs open


How to update OS X in single user mode? I would like to know how to update from 10.10.0 to 10.10.5 just by using single user mode.
Is this possible and if so how would you go about doing so.

Why would I do this?...

Linked to my other question I was interested if updating in single user mode would make it faster and more secure.

Hope the question makes sense

Single user mode can be easily accessed by holding command + S

Single user mode disables many of the system demons and processes needed to run an update.

Instead of that, I use the createistallmedia tool to make a bootable installer on a USB drive and I boot to that OS  that is exceptionally limited and controlled by Apple and exists only to run the installer.

The downside of this method is that you need apple to release an installer based on 10.10.5  and it's also a bit of chicken and egg problem if you start asking which operating system do you trust to create the installer in the first place.

See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201260 for details on which build corresponds to which numbered release.


How to enable hibernation on M1 Mac I am trying to enable Windows-like hibernation (powering off the device) on an M1 Mac mini. Current power mode configuration of any Mac can be displayed with pmset -g command, and this command's output does not include a hibernatemode entry. I try to enable hibernation with sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 25 where 25 indicates power-off hibernation. Unfortunately this doesn't power the device off because the power light is still on when I put the device to sleep. Curiously enough, running pmset -g again still does not include a hibernatemode entry.
Is hibernation removed in new M1 Macs or macOS Big Sur? If not, what is the correct way to enable it?

Hibernation on Mac m1 just released yesterday. Just update your mac to MacOS Big Sur 11.3 to enable hibernation.
You can see the change log here:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT211896


Target Display Mode between two MacBook Pro I have TDM working with my iMac.  I am currently have two MacBook Pro (2012 and 2103) and was wondering if they support this?  I have not been able to get it to work.  Has anyone else gotten this to work?

I am currently running 10.10.2 on both computers.

Only some of the non-5k display iMacs have target display mode. No MacBooks have (yet) had that capability as part of their hardware.

You'll need to do screen sharing or some other software solution if you need it.


LG UltraFine 5K Display connected to a MacBook Pro mid 2015 - Webcam/Mic/Speaker not working I have an LG UltraFine 5K Display connected to a MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015).
I am using a Thunderbolt 2 -> 3 adaptor to connect to the monitor (and the display works just fine).
The issue is that my Mac doesn't seem to recognise the webcam/mic/speakers that are built into the monitor.
Does the Monitor support webcam/mic/speakers from a thunderbolt 2 <-> 3 adaptor? If so any suggestions as to what might be the problem here?

Does the Monitor support webcam/mic/speakers from a thunderbolt 2 <-> 3 adaptor?

No.  According to the specifications, it's a Thunderbolt 3 monitor that provides connectivity.  You need a Thunderbolt 3 port.  The adapter only allows you to convert Thunderbolt 3 to 2 or 1 but it doesn't give you any more bandwidth than what you have on your existing MacBook.
You have enough bandwidth to drive the display, but not enough to drive all the peripheral devices connected to it.


What is the purpose of Mark as a Company on Mac Contacts? The Contacts app on Mac allows users to specify if a card is a person or a company. Does this affect any practical usages, other than an implicit type which cannot be used as a filter or key in Smart Groups? Thanks!

Two reasons:

Firstly, it's so the contact displays the company name when you receive a call instead of a personal name.

Secondly, it also sorts it in alphabetical order into your contacts by company name and not by a personal name. This is especially useful as contacts are sorted alphabetically by surname and not by first name, ie. Tim Cook is listed under "C" in your contacts but if you were to have "Apple Computer" you would want this sorted in the A's and not the C's.


Changing the user when turning in my Macbook Pro On my macbook pro 2010 (running Yosemite 10.10.5) I have two users. My normal Admin account and a Guest account. Whenever my computer is turned off, it automatically logs into the guest account when I turn it back on. Can I change that so it logs into my normal Admin account whenever I turn on the computer.

I'm on High Sierra, so the wording might be a little different, but I don't recall this changing position recently:

System Preferences > Users & Groups > Login Options (bottom of the list of users) > Automatic Login (set to your user)


How to upload photos taken from iPhone to iCloud Photo Library? I want to upload photos I take in iPhone to iCloud Photo Library automatically. I set iCloud Photo Library to on in iPhone's Photos & Camera Settings.

However, although all photos I capture using a simultaneous hold on Home button and Power button are uploaded automatically to the iCloud Photo Library, photos I take manually using Camera app are NOT uploaded.

Also, the videos I take using the same Camera app are uploaded automatically.

Why are photos not uploaded properly? What am I missing here?

Set "Upload to My Photo Stream" on in Photos and Camera Settings


How to split a video exported from iMovie into multiple shorter videos I have several movies that have been exported from iMovie in the mp4 format. I would like to split each of these movies into five segments, ideally without messing with the video quality/compression settings. Is there an easy piece of software that I could use to do this easialy?

By the way, I know I can copy clips into other projects in iMovie and create individual segments that way, but due to complicated timings and the large number of times I need to do this, I would really rather have some piece of software that could do this with less fussiness. Does anyone have any suggestions?

QuickTime Player Version 10.5 has a trim feature (command+T) that allows for this exact functionality.


Eliminating duplicate middle clicks I'm using Microsoft mouse software with either a trackball or the Explorer 3 mouse. Sometimes, when I middle-click, instead of the new tab opening on button-up, it happens on button-down and button-up. Sometimes it happens twice on button-up. This means if I middle-click a link in chrome, I might get from 1-3 tabs opened. I can't figure out how to eliminate this behavior.

I am using a Microsoft IntelliMouse Explorer 3.0 on a 2014 MBP 15" running Yosemite 10.10.4. I'm running the intellipoint 8.2 drivers, and "mouse wheel click" is set to "Handled by Mac OS". At one point I was using USB overdrive, but I uninstalled it. Removing/inserting the mouse doesn't seem to help. The behavior is inconsistent - it seems to come and go in bursts.

@Tetsujin's comment was correct - this mouse was actually defective. It took a while to find one, but I compared to another identical model and didn't have the same problems.


How to backup with Time Machine in Single User Mode? Is there any way to enable Time Machine / tmutil and perform a backup from inside the Single User Mode?

I have a Late '11 Radeongate-affected MBP that won't boot beyond the gray boot screen anymore, and I'm about a week's worth of data from my latest backup.

Problem resolved:

(You will need another mac with a Thunderbolt port to make this work. We'll call the problematic one A and the other one B)

Connect a Thunderbolt cable between the old machine (A) to another one (B).
Start A in target mode (Press T on boot).
You'll now see A's drive as an external drive on B's desktop. Go to 'Startup Disk' in 'System Preferences'. Pick A's drive as your boot disk.
Reboot. If everything's working, you should see A's Finder etc. on B's display.
Connect Time Machine to B. Start it. Click 'Options...' and exclude B's drive from the backup.
Run another time machine backup on the HD.

I eventually went out and got a new MBP (which I was planning to do anyway) and migrated directly from the time machine latest backup.


How do I copy multiple files to macOS's clipboard programmatically? I ultimately want to have a bash function to-clipboard which gets file paths and copies the files to the clipboard. Using other scripting languages as helpers is okay. I currently have this for copying a single file:

file-to-clipboard() {
    osascript \
        -e 'on run args' \
        -e 'set the clipboard to POSIX file (first item of args)' \
        -e end \
        "$@"
}

There is this Applescript that supposedly can copy multiple files, but I don't like it at all:

set f to {(POSIX file "/path/to/a/folder/a.png"), (POSIX file "/path/to/another/folder/b.png")}
tell application "Finder"
    try -- to delete any old temp folder
        delete folder "AS_mailCopy" of (path to temporary items)
    end try
    set tmp to make new folder at (path to temporary items) with properties {name:"AS_mailCopy"}
    duplicate f to tmp
    select files of tmp
    activate
    tell application "System Events" to keystroke "c" using command down
    delete tmp
end tell

Related question:

Copying files to the clipboard using applescript

You can use the AppleScript below to create a bash function that will let you add multiple file objects to the clipboard by supplying their file paths as command-line arguments.  It returns true upon success and false upon failure.

You won't be able to paste the items inside the terminal, but if you navigate to a location in Finder, you can paste the items there.  I hope this is along the lines of what you were after.

use framework "Appkit"
use Finder : application "Finder"

property this : a reference to current application
property NSFileManager : a reference to NSFileManager of this
property NSImage : a reference to NSImage of this
property NSMutableArray : a reference to NSMutableArray of this
property NSPasteboard : a reference to NSPasteboard of this
property NSString : a reference to NSString of this
property NSURL : a reference to NSURL of this

property pb : missing value

on run input
    if input's class = script then set input to ¬
        Finder's selection as alias list

    init()
    clearClipboard()
    addToClipboard(input)
end run

to init()
    set pb to NSPasteboard's generalPasteboard()
end init

to clearClipboard()
    if pb = missing value then init()
    pb's clearContents()
end clearClipboard

to addToClipboard(fs)
    local fs

    set fURLs to NSMutableArray's array()
    set FileManager to NSFileManager's defaultManager()

    repeat with f in fs
        if f's class = alias then set f to f's POSIX path
        set fp to (NSString's stringWithString:f)'s ¬
            stringByStandardizingPath()
        if (FileManager's fileExistsAtPath:fp) then ¬
            (fURLs's addObject:(NSURL's fileURLWithPath:fp))
    end repeat

    if pb = missing value then init()
    pb's writeObjects:fURLs
end addToClipboard

I'd advise saving this script as an .applescript or .scpt file somewhere on your machine using Script Editor.  Then, in your terminal, create your bash function:

pbadd() {
    osascript "/Path/To/Saved AppleScript.scpt" "$@"
}

Then, to use:

pbadd ~/Pictures/*.jpg
pbadd ~/Documents/Some\ file.pdf ~/Music/A\ Random\ Song.mp3


No longer an option to upload to iCloud with iTunes Match and iTunes 12.2.2? I've been trying out the new Apple Music service and saw some odd behaviors, so decided I should update my iTunes to 12.2.2 (I think I was on 12.0 or 12.1 previously).  Since the update, there is no longer any way that I can see, to add a track (one that I added to the library manually, for example) to the iCloud library.

Where did this feature go?  We used to be able to just right click the track and Add to iCloud Music Library, but no longer.  Also almost all of my tracks no longer have any indication of an iCloud Status, and of those that do - many are inexplicably not present in my local library and indicate that they need to be downloaded.

What gives here?  I haven't been able to find anything on these specific issues in my searches.  Is there some known problem here or am I just not understanding how iCloud music works now?  In fact I can't even find any evidence of iTunes Match existing any longer in iTunes.  No menu items, no preferences, etc.

To be clear, this has nothing at all to do with iOS and is concerned strictly with iTunes on OS X (Mavericks in my case).

EDIT:  To add to this, I just noticed that only a few of my tracks still have the "Add to iCloud Music Library" option - specifically those tracks which are marked as duplicates.  Not a single other track in my entire library of 15,421 tracks, has that option anymore despite being an iTunes Match subscriber.  Can anyone shed some light on this?

EDIT 2:

OK, after a bit more investigation I think it may just be that the way iTunes handles iCloud music has changed with the introduction of Apple Music.  According to this apple KB article, it sounds like your entire library is now automatically uploaded and matched.  But what still confuses me is that there is absolutely no possible way Apple could have matched all of my music - because some of it is original work created by myself that exists nowhere else.  And those tracks - and many others - are also still missing the Add to iCloud Music Library option.  Are they added anyway but there is simply no longer any indication in iTunes of this fact?  If I attempt to delete one of these tracks, I'm given the option to Remove Download, so presumably they are indeed already in the cloud (and were before I upgraded iTunes, so that is in fact what I expect).  Maybe the real question here is:  Why does iTunes no longer display an indicator for tracks that have been uploaded to the cloud?

I have just experienced the same thing and found that it looks like iTunes Match might have just been renamed and the settings moved.

Note for future readers, I am using iTunes version 12.2.2.25 (64 bit) on Windows 10.

Make sure you are logged in to the iTunes Store and also make sure your computer is authorized (see the Store menu item), and then try going to File > Library > Update iCloud Music Library. After selecting that menu item, look in the top right corner (where you would normally see anything downloading) and you should see this:

After waiting for this to finish, my entire iTunes Match library appeared back! (This took about 10 minutes or so).

Also, to answer your question about the display indicator, as far as I can tell this behaves exactly as iTunes Match did for me previously. I can see which songs are downloaded, and I can choose to download those that haven't by clicking the cloud symbol.