Could Not Sign In: A server problem is blocking Apple ID sign in. Try signing in later." My father's iPhone 7s shows such message:

Could Not Sign In:  A server problem is blocking Apple ID sign in.  Try signing in later."

The passcode screen does not even come up. I have search the Apple Community but there is no answer. Anyone knows how to fix it?

I had the same problem. I found that if I set up the Touch ID and Passcode, it went through. I then could turn off these features after. Hope this helps.


Partitions uses in default Mac OS installation? I plan to install Linux on my Macbook Pro and before removing an important partition, I'd like to know what I need to keep in order to be able to do a recovery to MacOS in case I need to.

For information, here's what I currently have on my macbook :

EFI : 200Mo
Apple Core storage : 465.1Go
Apple Recovery : 619.9Mo

Here's the fdisk output : (sorry, in French)

I believe I can remove the "Apple Core Storage", but can I also remove the EFI or no?

The idea is to be able to launch a Apple Recovery in case I need it and get back my computer like it was when I bought it.

Thank you for your help.

You need to keep the EFI partition in order to be able to boot OSX. You could, however, install an alternative boot loader, such as "rEFInd".

You do not need to keep the "Apple Recovery" partition, but you should, because if you mess up the normal Mac partition so that you cannot boot from it any more, you might still be able to boot into the Recovery partition and fix the OSX system from it.

You could also copy both the EFI and Recovery partitions to a new disk, e.g. to an external disk, and then boot from it. If that works, then you'd be safer playing with the partitions on your main drive, seeing what works, and still be able to boot from the external disk, because the Mac's boot ROM will search every connected internal and external disk for an EFI partition in order to see if it can boot from it.

To test this, hold down the Option (alt) key when the Mac starts up - then you will get a list of bootable partitions.

For installing Linux, I suggest you do these steps:

Get a large enough external disk and make a backup of each of your partitions, using a block copy method, or by using OS X's Disk Utility, with the "New disk image from ..." command from the File menu. You could also try my tool "iBored" for this.
Boot OSX and open Disk Utility. Select the disk, then "Partitions". Select the large OSX partition and click the [+] button to add a new partition. Make it large enough for your Linux system. This will then make the OSX partition smaller if there's enough free space on it. Now you have a new free partition to install Linux on.
See if you can install rEFInd and see if that supports booting into Linux (it should, but I have not tried it myself).
If something goes wrong, you can always restore from your external backup.


Someone keeps sending me a link via bluetooth - how to stop them without disabling bluetooth? In my Macbook, I keep getting a popup about a website link sent from an iPhone:

I didn't even know about that feature, but anyway - the link is some random chinese website every time. Whenever I open it, the popup appears again as if there is some sort of long queue of the same link.

If I disable bluetooth, the popup stops. But as soon as I enable it back, the stream continues.

When I got to the advanced Bluetooth settings, there doesn't seem to be an option to block this kind of thing. The only device that shows up are my BeatsX.

How can I stop this, without having to turn off bluetooth?

I am using macOS High Sierra, 10.13.2.

This is Handoff, part of Continuity, where devices signed into the same primary iCloud account can ‘hand off’ currently viewed content between each other.

Handoff isn't available for anyone to share content with you — this is only for you to share content between your own devices. I would be very concerned that someone has access to my iCloud account on a supposedly unknown device. I recommend investigating this further if you are unaware of the Continuity source.

You can disable all Continuity features including Handoff in System Preferences → General → Allow Handoff between this Mac and your iCloud devices.


How to download & install Bonjour Services on a Windows 7 64 bit computer? The Bonjour Service was causing error messages in my event log (Windows 7 laptop).  I have deleted it and the Bonjour Print Service.

I now need to re-install it.  Where do I download it and how do I install it on a Windows 7 (64 bit) laptop?

You can download Bonjour for Windows from Apple's Bonjour support pages.

Bonjour for Windows is bundled with Bonjour Print Services for Windows:

  Bonjour Print Services for Windows lets you discover and configure Bonjour-enabled printers from your Windows computer using the Bonjour Printer Wizard.


How to bypass the activation screen iPhone 5s (a1530) without sim? How can i bypass the activation screen of iPhone 5s (a1530) without sim card in india.
The emergency call method is not working.

There is no way to activate it without a SIM card, but one shouldn't be that hard to get ahold of. Even borrowing one from a friend's phone for one minute or just buying a deactivated "dummy" SIM card on eBay will work fine.


Get .app from iPad to Mac I have made an app and loaded it onto my iPad. I am wondering how I can pull the .app file on my iPad onto my Mac so I can distribute it. I would usually build the app for release to get the .app file outputted, but there is some bug in Xcode that makes the stage 'compiling swift files' last forever. Thanks.

You can't just run an iOS app on macOS; they're different operating systems. You can use the iOS Simulator bundled with Xcode, but even then you can't use the same .app file, because the CPU architecture of the iPad and your Mac are different. If it's your own app, it's easiest just to build & run from Xcode; you can 'install' .app files from another source by copying them to the right folder in Finder. They will of course only run if they specifically built for the Simulator.


Open a file that I double-click with app created with Script Editor I created an Application from Script Editor with this content:

do shell script "PATH=/Library/TeX/texbin:$PATH ¬
    open -n /Applications/Xournal++.app"

and I called it /Users/enzotib/Applications/Xournal-mod.app.

It works if I double click the application, then select a file .xopp to open.

The question is: how should I modify the script, so that I can associate the file extension .xopp with the application open the file that I double-click with the application?

Edit

I changed the title, that was "Associate file type with app created from Script Editor", because I realised it was misleading.

Going off the answer you provided:

on open fileName
        do shell script "PATH=/Library/TeX/texbin:$PATH ¬
            open -n -a /Applications/Xournal++.app " & ¬
            quoted form of POSIX path of fileName
end open

a simpler solution would have been:

on open {fileName}
        tell application "Xournal++" to open (fileName as «class furl»)
end open

which will work for even non-scriptable applications that accept high level Apple events.  For those that don't, then:

on open {fileName}
        tell application id "com.apple.Finder" to open fileName ¬
                using application file "/Applications/Xournal++.app"
end open

However, overall, it's curious where you're going through the effort of passing it a file to open, only to have it open the file in some other application.  This is a bit like mounting a mirror on the wall to look at your monitor while using the computer, unless this is actually just a small extract from a larger script.


Connecting external display turns MacBook screen black For years, connecting to external monitors on my MBP 9,2 (10.10.4) worked just fine (except the occasional crash). Until yesterday, where I had three crashes in quick succession. Now when the display (miniDP-to-VGA) is connected, the computer won't boot. I unlock my boot volume, but the black bar only fills to about one third before stopping. When I disconnect the adapter, it boots but once I connect the display, the laptop screen goes black and audio also dies after a few moments. The computer is still running and can only be shut down by long-pressing the power button.

I am baffled, but also unsure on how to diagnose the problem. Console shows no unusual messages.

I booted into my second OS (elementaryOS) and it reacts to connecting the adapter, but nothing shows on the other screen except occasionally a static image.
This may point to a hardware issue. Not sure. When mirroring the display, something does show, although I cannot select an appropriate resolution, which may be the tv's problem.
I reset SMC and NVRAM, to no avail
I also fixed permissions, although I don't know how that could fix anything, and it did not
I logged out and the same thing happens when connecting the display
I logged in as another user. When plugging in the display, the computer freezes, but the screen does not go black
In Safe Mode, the screen does not turn black and the computer does not halt, but nothing shows on the display, but I can access external display settings like resolution and such.

Could be a hardware related issue (either the MBP or external display) Similar issue happened to me and it turned out to be an issue with the LVDS cable. Also used to work at the Genius Bar, and would see this a lot with certain models of MBP.

Try running a hardware test https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201257 , or if you can take it in to the Genius Bar. They have diagnostics which will help isolate it to either hardware or software.

Have you tried a different external display / display cable?


Bluetooth LE Privacy Is there a way to turn off or bypass Bluetooth Privacy on iPhone 5/6/7? I want to be able to sniff my phone's actual BT MAC address.


Mirroring iPhone 5 to MacBook Pro without Airplay Unfortunately my corporate network doesn't support AirPlay. What alternatives are there to  mirroring an iOS 7 device (iPhone 5) to a MacBook Pro running Mavericks?

Note: I don't want to output to a TV because I need to be able to share the mirrored iPhone output via Webex.

Have your Macbook run its own WiFi network, tether your phone to that network, and then you can AirPlay directly without hitting the corporate network.


Mail.app Won't Change Message Font Size macOS Sierra 10.12.6, Mail.app 10.3,

I can change the size of the message list font in Mail > Preferences > Fonts & Colors, and the change is reflected in Mail.app's message list. However, changes to the message font are not reflected by a change in the message display.

This behavior appears on two computers, a Macbook Pro 7,1 (mid-2010) and a Macbook Air 6,1 (mid-2013). Both computers' software is updated. In all other respects, both computers operate correctly.

Is there a cache or plist to clear or something else to do to allow the message font size to change?

Reviewing this thread in Apple community discussions, it seems that:

a) incoming email font/color/size is determined by what the sender specified;

b) the receiver's message list display is determined by what's set in the receiver's Mail > Preferences > Fonts & Colors > Message List Font; and

c) the receiver's reply (or new message) font/color/size is determined by sender's settings in Mail > Preferences > Fonts & Colors > Message Font

What I'm looking for — that a received message be displayed in a font larger than what's specified by the sender — is apparently not available short of Applescript or add-on app.

Sigh.


Why does BBEdit look bad with retina display? I downloaded the free trial of BBEdit editor and I tried it on a new MacBook Pro with retina display. Surprisingly the text looks pretty bad, like if it is not focused. I doubt this is normal. Is it a problem of the free trial version only, or a problem with the software? Is there any method to make it look like other applications (TeXShop, TextEdit, ...)?

Edit: as of version 10.5, BBEdit has retina support.

I believe it's because BBEdit, like some other applications (Chrome, to name one) doesn't use the standard OS X text rendering library, thus it doesn't automatically get the Retina-calibre text, rather the text gets scaled up (like non-retina images), resulting in the blurry look.

Luckily the BBEdit team is working on it, they've released a beta version with retina support.


How to tag files (with Finder tags) using parts of a file name? I want to use parts of a file name to add specific Finder tags to a file. How can I do that, are there any scripts or applications available to automate this on OS X Mavericks? The only solution I can think of right now is Hazel, but this would be limited by the rule character of this application (choosing tags manually).

orig=/path/to/tagged-file
folder=/path/to/folder
string=*abc*
find "${folder}" -name "${string}" \
                 -exec xattr -wx com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags \
                       "$(xattr -px com.apple.metadata:_kMDItemUserTags '${orig}')" \
                       {} \;

Create a file with the tags that you wish to apply to a certain set of files that will match a search string. In the script above, this file is located at /path/to/tagged-file and is set on the first line of the script to the orig variable. Replace this with the path to the file that you've created.
On the second line of the script, change the path to the path of the containing folder that you wish to search through. This will be set to a variable called folder.
On the third line, set the string to search for in the name of the file. *abc* will match 123abc123.txt.
The fourth line and beyond is actually a single line that runs the find command to find the matching files then xattr to copy the tags from that original file to every file found.


How to hide or clear unread badges on Gmail folders in Mail.app? This isn't a new problem with OS X Mail, it persists into Mountain Lion.

The badges are quite obnoxious; I can go into that [Gmail] folder and right-click and Mark As Read. But they start piling up right away again.

Is there a way to never have a badge beside any non-Inbox folder, or have a way for Mail to automatically clean up?

Create a filter in Gmail (web settings) to automatically mark all spam emails as read.


Local hostname is already in use on this network? When I turned my computer on this morning this is the message I received:

This computer's local hostname "----Macbook-pro.local" is already in
use on this network. The name has been changed to
"------Macbook-Pro-2.local" To change the local hostname, open system
preferences and click sharing, then click "edit" and type the name in
the local hostname field.

This is very concerning to me since I can't think of any reason this should happen. I do not understand any of the answers I have read while do a search. I have not done anything complicated nor do I have a WiFi along with an Ethernet connection - only a WiFi connection.

I only have one router as well and I always connect to same network. The things I have done differently are:

I have added a printer and have also downloaded Whatsapp but have not used it yet.
I opened Skype last night and have not done that in a while so maybe that could be the reason?

This is very concerning to me since I can't think of any reason this should happen unless it has something to do with what I said above. I am not comfortable changing settings that I really do not understand. I also felt as if I have been hacked or whatever it is called when someone takes over your computer. As I said, I am not an expert by any means and this is worrisome to me.

Can anyone please help and explain it in a way that I might understand what has happened. Thanks! Kind regards!!

To analyze what might be this ghost network host, the command to use is a command line (which you have to run in Terminal or xterm):

dns-sd -G v4 ----Macbook-pro.local

If this name really exists within your accessible Wi-Fi network, then
you will get its IP address within the last column of output of this command as in this example:

DATE: ---Sat 09 Dec 2017---
 0:42:42.548  ...STARTING...
Timestamp     A/R Flags if Hostname                               Address                                      TTL
 0:42:42.856  Add     2  6 ----Macbook-pro.local                  10.0.2.23                                    120

If you just get one IP address, then this error message was probably an internal bug within the MacOS way to manage its DNS cache.

If you get two different IP addresses, then you have an uninvited host within your network and behind your firewall (i.e. directly on the Wi-Fi
part). This might be one of your neighbor. To continue on its correct
identification, you will have to use methods which are considered as direct attacks on someone's computer.

For example, you might use iStumbler to physically locate it and then have a chance to interview the owner of this new visitor of your network.


There's a folder shortcut on my dock, next to the trash. Why is there and how do I remove it? I want my dock to be purely for shortcuts to the programs I use the most. Frankly it annoys me that you can't remove the Trash from the dock, but I can live with that.

What I really want to get rid of is this folder shortcut that I have next to the Trash. I think it's called a stack? It's to the right of the dividing line that separates my application shortcuts from the trash icon. When I right-click it, there's no option to remove it from the dock.

My question is two-fold-

Why do I have this shortcut there to that specific directory?
How do I get rid of it?

I'm very new to OSX, so forgive me if I'm missing something obvious here.

Edit: Screenshot of what I see when I try to remove it:

Edit2: I'm on Mountain Lion, 10.8.1.

Edit3: I should mention that the folder in question is not on my local machine. It's a networked drive, mounted at /Volumes/Student/Home/6514944/.

Simply click on it to hold it then drag it off of the dock and release the click. It should disappear in an animated puff of smoke.


How do I share bluetooth keyboard with iPhone and iMac without re-pairing every time? This may be an impossible request, but I'm looking for some way, or some software to install, that lets me choose which device I want to type on at a particular moment.

For example: Most of the time I am typing on my iMac. But when a text message comes in, or I want to type a long password on my iPhone, I want to use my apple bluetooth keyboard to type on my iPhone for a bit, and then switch back to typing on my iMac.

While a device (iMac or iPhone) can have a number of peripherals attached it it, a peripheral can only be attached to one device at a time. So you will need to re-pair it every time.


Manually Set Location Services Location My iMac rarely has WiFi turned on since I use Ethernet, however Location Services seem to need a WiFi connection (they both connect to the same router, so I fail to see the logic there… but there we go).

Is there a way to override or set my location so that apps which use Location Services can still get a location?

It seems that you can need wifi on (but not necessarily configured) in order to get location, Core Location works using skyhook and will not function without wifi on. This is not well documented by Apple but this StackOverflow conversation covers it.

According to the above, you should be able to turn on Wifi, wait for a location fix and then turn it off.
If that doesn't work look into WhereAmI, this project allows command line access to CoreLocation and you should be able to script it and wifi to turn on once in a while, log your location and then turn wifi off.


Yosemite randomly switches audio output to displayport Ever since upgrading from Mavericks to Yosemite I'm experiencing this annoying bug, where OSX switched the default audio output to external display connected via DisplayPort. This display has no speakers nor audio port of any kind.

Is there a permanent work around for this? Can I somehow blacklist a device as audio output?

System info:

System Preferences builds a preferred list for your audio outputs and inputs based on which ones you pick over others.

To work around this you will need to manually select the audio output you would rather use once when the undesired one is available and again when it isn't. This method will work in most (but not all) cases.


How to create custom Keyboard Shortcuts? Is there any way to create custom keyboard shortcuts that do whatever you want through a third-party app or just through default OS X apps, like Automator and or AppleScript?

I want to create a shortcut that will bring up the power dialogue box, as shown in the image below.

Assuming you're on a normal Mac then the power button will bring it up. Details here.

Further details about creating shortcuts here.

You can use the info in that document to create a short-cut in any app for whatever key combo you want for the Shutdown... item.

Simplified procedure:

Open System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts tab
From the left, click App Shortcuts.
Click +
Choose 'All Applications' as the app
Choose 'Shut Down...' as the command
Put in whatever shortcut you want.


Why is Homebrew finding phantom directories? I'm running Homebrew on macOS High Sierra 10.13.6. I use a bash alias brewup to periodically check on my installation.  brewup is defined as below:

alias brewup= 'brew update; brew upgrade; brew prune; brew cleanup; brew doctor'

Recently, when running brewup, the output from the brew prune portion of the command has been:

Pruned 0 symbolic links and 2 directories from /usr/local.

Every single time I run the brewupcommand, even after restarting, hand checking /usr/local for excess directories, recreating the brewup alias, and completely reinstalling Homebrew and all my packages, I  always get the output Pruned 0 symbolic links and 2 directories from /usr/local.

The mystery deepenes even further, because when I run just brew prune, I get, as expected, no pruned results whatsoever. Something in the order of the commands contained in brewup is causing phantom excess directories to appear, over, and over, and over again.

Can someone help me exorcise these phantom directories?

Try brew prune --verbose to see which directories are removed.


How can I make the OS print dialog default to a particular preset? Simply put, this is what I want: I want to take a unique printer preset that has already been made and make the OS default to it any time that particular printer is selected to be printed to.

I know how to edit a particular printer's 'Default Settings' preset through the CUPS web UI, but this solution doesn't work for me because one of the printing options I need to change doesn't appear in this UI (for science: the printers I'm working with are Konica Minolta Bizhub C252, C353, and C364; the setting I'm looking to change is make the default color "Grayscale").

I have been able to modify the com.apple.print.custompresets.forprinter.PRINTER.plist file to get the system print dialog to pull up the preset that I want by default, but there is a problem with solving things this way: I can't edit this PLIST file properly with TextEdit (the XML gets mangled), and installing XCode on every machine isn't feasible. A solution could be to bring an editor with me on a thumb drive to each machine, but I don't know of an app I could use.

Any path to a solution to this problem, I am open to. I've tried to be as specific about my ultimate goal as possible, and I will answer any followup questions I can.

Any ideas?

There is a much easier way.

Create a Print Preset, with the settings as you want them. Select it.
Press the Print button while holding down Alt (Option).

That will force your current settings to be the default for the printer.


Late 2011 MacBook Pro (macOS 10.13.1) won't boot after update My MacBook Pro won't boot after updating the OS - it's just been saying that it's calculating the time remaining. Then, it shut down unexpectedly and when I try to boot it, it just shows the loading bar stuck at about a twentieth of the way with the Apple logo above it.

Is there anything I can do to continue using my MacBook normally without having to reinstall the OS losing all my data?

Waiting overnight did the trick - just let it finish the update.


Have OSX Launch Applicaiton on restart? This may seem like a odd question since most people would want to know how to start a program on boot. I was wondering if there is a way to have OSX launch an application when the restart button is pressed from the apple menu.

It's doable with a reboot proxy, i.e. you'd rename /sbin/reboot, e.g. sudo mv /sbin/reboot /sbin/reboot.ori, and then create a reboot symlink to the /sbin/reboot_proxy bash script that has the command(s) you what to execute before the reboot and then lastly it executes /sbin/reboot.ori.  I actually have this setup on my Mac running OS X 10.8.5 and it works well.  I'm trapping both reboot and shutdown commands. Which are what's run when clicking the Apple menu > Reboot... and or Shut Down... commands.

Note: It's best to have a second bash script to toggle the state of the original file and the proxy bash script as it has to be set back before OS X updates are done that will touch the file(s).

This is the code in my shutdown_proxy bash script that has a symbolic link for both the reboot and shutdown commands after the original were renamed with a .ori extension.  Feel free to adapt it for your use.

Contents of reboot_proxy

#!/bin/bash

_name="$0";
echo "Reboot Proxy Executing..."

# Place command(s) to execute before reboot directly below this comment:

_command="$_name.ori"
echo "Executing $_command $@..."

"$_command" "$@"

Let me add that from a security standpoint there are those that would argue this is a bad thing to do and I'd say to some extent that's true under the right conditions however since I'm the only one that has ever and will ever touch my Mac and I have several layers of security running beyond the built-ins, I personally have no issue using such a method.


Time Capsule / AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi Signal Regard maximizing the Time Capsule or AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi signal, just for my curiosity and knowledge, from the hardware standpoint why is not recomended to place the Time Capsule or AirPort Extreme in areas surrounded by metal surface on three or more sides?

Radio waves (your WiFi signal) are blocked/reflected by metal surfaces.

If you surround the antenna with metal surfaces on 3 sites you will get very limited reception.

Using that factor one can build a directional antenna that works in one direction and magnifies the signal.

If you have a TV dish that is how it works, it is a directional antenna that reflects the signal to a receiver mounted in the focal point.

So if you want to boost your Airport signal you would use a directional antenna. As it is right now it has a signal that is 360 degree.


What more does installing Homebrew allow me to do? Homebrew is a useful tool to install UNIX tools.

What are useful things to do with homebrew? What tools can you recommend?

HomeBrew is a package manager for mac. It facilitates the installation of different tools by installing and configuring all dependencies as well as the program itself.

You can think of it like the Mac App Store for unix apps. If you are familiar with Linux, then Homebrew is exactly like the Linux package manager. For a complete list of everything you can install go here : https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/tree/master/Library/Formula/

If you don't know what you would need it for, then you probably don't really need it.


WiFi internet sharing from iMac unreliable I want to share an internet connection that my iMac gets via Ethernet over WiFi, so that I can connect to it with other devices.

I went into System Preferences > Sharing > Internet Sharing on the iMac and turned it on for sharing Ethernet over WiFi, but I'm finding it unreliable.

Particularly, the internet connection of devices connected to the WiFi created by the iMac seem to randomly die, even though the iMac still connects to the internet just fine. Note that the WiFi created by the iMac itself is always visible, it just doesn't seem to provide access to the internet after a while, even though it should, since the iMac sharing the connection can access the internet just fine.

What could be wrong?

From my own experience Internet Sharing is not, and has never been, as reliable as it should. Connection coming back and forth is a usual behavior of the service, heavily depending on the usage of the machine which is sharing the internet connection.

Apparently, updating to 10.7.4 makes things even worse.


How can I see all apps in 'Essentials' in Mac and iTunes app stores? A quick question: While navigating the Mac and iOS appstores, I often see some apps marked with a grey rectangular box with rounded edges called 'Essentials', which appears just below the rating of the app. The selection of apps marked in this ways seems quite well thought-out to me. Is there a way to see all these 'Essential' apps in one place?

For example, 'Day One', 'Evernote' and 'WolframAlpha' are all 'Essential' apps in the iOS store.

After a bit of research (in the stores themselves, using Google, and in the Apple Developer Program resources), I'm rather sure no list of these is available from Apple themselves or from any third party.

I found the best ways to find the apps tagged as "Essentials," is to look in these places:

Both the Mac App Store and the iTunes App Store have a link on their front page called "New to the (Mac) App Store?" Most apps listed there, which are not games, have the "Essentials" badge. It's not the way to find them all though, as e.g. the WolframAlpha app you mentioned is not listed on that page in the iTunes Store. There are also some apps which don't have the badge, e.g. Shazam is tagged as "Editors' Choice," but not "Essentials" in the Mac App Store.
The iTunes App Store also has a link "App Collections." Although the page this link leads to is titled "Essentials App Collections," quite a number of the apps listed in the collections don't have the "Essentials" badge. On the other hand, you can find a lot of "Essentials" this way.

My impression is the difference between the "Essentials" tag and e.g. "Editors' Choice" is not very well defined, and just picked by a specific Apple store editor. And I noticed some of those apps may be only essential to a very specific crowd. E.g. the djay 2 app, also tagged "Essentials," is most definitely the best and most popular DJ app for the iPad out there, but it's only essential to a select group.

In the end, although there is no definitive list, going though the various collections made by Apple editors, will lead you to a lot of "Essential" apps.


this mac can't connect to icloud because of a problem with gmail Every time I boot up I get the following error message on my mac mini:

This mac can't connect to icloud because of a problem with gmail

Open iClould preferences to fix this problem.

Each time I enter my password, but it comes again next boot.

I have read that others have had this issue, and the solution was to log out of icloud, and then log back in. I didn't this and it didn't work.

What can I do?

Thanks

Go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts.

In the left pane, select the Google/GMail account.

Below the left pane, select "-" to delete the account. This won't delete the GMail account or whatever emails may be in it, but will terminate this Mac's ability to communicate with Google/GMail via the Apple Mail.app.

Sign out of iCloud. Wait a bit.

Sign back into iCloud.

Return to System Preferences > Internet Accounts. Select "Google" in the right pane, and re-enable the Google/GMail account on the Mac.


Why doesn't Apple Maps find an address that contains a suite letter? I live in a duplex, and my address is of the form <Suite Letter>-<House Number> <Street Name>. When I search for my address in the new Apple Maps app, it only seems to locate my street, dropping the pin at some arbitrary location. What's going on?

Turns out the Maps app has trouble parsing some address formats. In my case, the address on my contact card was formatted as in the question: <Suite Letter>-<House Number>, with the letter and number joined by a hyphen.

This seems to cause the Maps app to simply ignore the letter/number. Reformatting my address to remove the hyphen (<Letter> <Number> or <Number> <Letter> both work, but to be precise in my case I moved my suite letter to the second address line) resolved the issue, and I can now type Home in the search box, pick my contact info, and get the correct result.

Of course, some streets simply lack detailed geographic data so that Maps doesn't know where each address is along the street. In my case, it was a formatting issue, but in many cases it is simply a lack of detailed data on a block by block basis.


Getting all files from a web page using curl I would like to get all files from the web page below using curl:
http://www.ime.usp.br/~coelho/mac0122-2013/ep2/esqueleto/
I tried:
curl http://www.ime.usp.br/~coelho/mac0122-2013/ep2/esqueleto/
It returned a bunch of lines in the terminal, but didn't get any file.

Use wget instead.

Install it with Homebrew: brew install wget or  MacPorts: sudo port install wget

For downloading files from a directory listing, use -r (recursive), -np (don't follow links to parent directories), and -k to make links in downloaded HTML or CSS point to local files (credit @xaccrocheur).

wget -r -np -k http://www.ime.usp.br/~coelho/mac0122-2013/ep2/esqueleto/

Other useful options:

-nd (no directories): download all files to the current directory
-e robots.off: ignore robots.txt files, don't download robots.txt files
-A png,jpg: accept only files with the extensions png or jpg
-m (mirror): -r --timestamping --level inf --no-remove-listing
-nc, --no-clobber: Skip download if files exist


Set network proxy by group on Open Directory I have an OS X Server with Open Directory. I am wondering if there is a way a group can be set to use a proxy when a user from that group logs in, and to remove the proxy if a user from a different group logs in.

Edit:
What I need to do is if User A (in Group A) logs in, an HTTP and HTTPS proxy is configured. But if User B (in Group B) logs in, the HTTP and HTTPS proxy is removed. I was able to set it up as explained below, however, I can only change the proxy settings for Wi-Fi adapters, the Ethernet adapter does not have proxy settings. The global HTTP proxy option only proxies HTTP but not HTTPS protocols allowing users to view blacklisted sites on HTTPS.

Is there any way to apply proxy settings on Ethernet, or any other way to apply HTTP and HTTPS proxy settings?

Yes.

You will have to use Profile Manager and manage the settings on the Mac. Set up a default profile with the default proxy settings for the managed Mac.

You can then set the profile for any of the groups you create in Open Directory to override those settings.

A Profile Manager tutorial is a little beyond an answer here but check out:

http://www.apple.com/au/support/lionserver/profilemanager/

and

http://krypted.com/mac-security/configuring-using-profile-manager-2-in-os-x-mountain-lion-server/

For the Ethernet proxy settings you will have to use a Custom Settings payload. The Ethernet proxy settings are in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist so you will have to import them once with no proxies set then set the proxies and import them into the second profile.

You will find Custom Settings at the bottom of the settings list on the left of the Profile Manager screen.


Apple Magic Trackpad - Avoid accidental cursor movement I am in the process of switching from a 13" MacBook Pro to an iMac which has external Apple wireless keyboard and Trackpad, and I am struggling with the transition due to Trackpad.

I tried using the Trackpad by placing it physically below the keyboard (like a MacBook Pro) to make it more similar to the MacBook Pro experience, but it didn't help much due to its weight and surface which is double the size of MacBook. I also tried to use it on the right side but I still touch it and move the cursor.

I need to mention that I do have the Tap-to-Click enabled as I am used to it. I do not like making a physical press to register the click and would like to leave Tap-to-Click enabled.

Is there something I can do to avoid these very soft accidental touches that ruin my text typing? Like a tool to lower its sensitive area to the centre of the Trackpad and make it insensitive towards its edges.

I believe a third party app called Better Touch Tool could help you out. It costs around $8, but it does have a 45 day trial.

I'd say for the most part this app is for customizing gestures or just setting hotkeys and stuff like that, but it has pretty robust settings for alleviating these types of trackpad issues.

The trackpad settings can be found from the main window on the top right. Though you may have to enable advanced settings on the top left of the window before you can see the trackpad settings.

Screenshots of every single page of these trackpad settings:

I highlighted settings that may help you the most...


Cannot find Python.frameworks in OS Sierra I am trying to find Python.framework under ~/Library/Frameworks but it's not there.  I need it to create a path from a software leading to my mac's Python including its bin and lib folders.  I only see Samsung Kies in my Frameworks folder.  Does anyone know why?

Open the Terminal.app.

Start the python interpreter by typing:

python

type the following:

import sys
print(sys.path)

to quit the interpreter type:

quit()


How to know from which number a missed call came, if the caller has multiple numbers? In iOS 8.4.1, if a caller who has 6 numbers, calls you and you see a missed call. Then, clicking the "i" symbol next to the missed call showed you all the 6 numbers of the caller and the number from which he called, was indicated with blue. This helped in knowing exactly what number he called me from and I could call back on the same number.

iOS 9.0.1 call log does not indicate the number the caller called from with blue (if the caller has more than one number). So, it becomes impossible to call the person back on the same number.

This was one very important feature that made iOS 8 very useful. Apple has taken away a very important feature.

Seems like a bug introduced in IOS 9
To me this seems like a bug introduced in IOS 9 that should get fixed automatically in future.
For outgoing calls, it continues to highlight in blue the specific number among multiple numbers in the contact on pressing ⓘ in the recent contact list.
For missed calls, it has stopped highlighting in blue but it still continues to show the label (like iPhone, mobile etc. ) for the missed call number on the main screen having all recent calls.


Using mobile data while connected to WiFi. I've just been asked by the wife why her iPhone 5s (iOS 9.1) is not connecting to the wifi. I've just checked the router and it shows that her phone is connected and given an IP address, however it still shows 3G.

Things I've tried.

Turn her phone into airplane mode and not.
Reboot the router.
Repeat step 1.
Restart the phone.

I know the phone is connecting to wifi because when I disconnect the phone it disappears from the connected devices list and when I connect again it shows up again. It also shows up in the phones settings menu with a blue tick next to our wifi connection.

Any Ideas?

Mark

The latest ios9 has a wifi assist feature.  If the phone thinks you're on a lousy wifi connection it will failover to cellular data.   I've turned mine off.

Settings > Cellular > Wi-Fi Assist

See https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205296


iPhone 7plus Pages application - table formulas Is it possible to add a column of numbers together to get a total in the footer on the iOS Pages app on your iPhone?

I've tried to directly enter the formula: =sum(c).  However this doesn't seem to work.

Although presently formulas are not available in iOS Pages (version 3.1), if you have a copy of Pages for Mac, the document can be formatted there, share with iOS (either with iCloud, email, AirDrop, etc.) then edit on iOS as illustrated below. The formulas entered using Pages on the Mac will be retained provided one does not overwrite them with other text.

In the example below, the number 317 is changed to 17 thus updating the sum in the footer.


Sync Google Contacts in Mountain Lion I am having trouble with keeping my Contacts sync'd with my Google Apps account. In "Mail, Contacts & Calendars" there is no Contacts option:

In the contacts program, I did get it to sync by checking synchronize with Google under "On My Mac":

However, when I add a contact in Google after this it never seems to update the contacts in OS X with the new contact.

I have got small trick: uncheck "Synchronize with Google" and recheck it.

Or


iOS 10 people album: How to change the name of a person I added a name for a person in the people album, but  there was a typo. Now it says Davr instead of Dave. It bugs the heck out of me. How can I change the name?

To change the name:

Open the Person (tap Davr)
Tap their name in the top, center of the screen (Davr in bold)
Change it's value.


How do I access files downloaded through Telegram? I Googled it, but haven't found anything. Basically I've downloaded a couple of files through Telegram. I can see them in Telegram settings- storage usage. But how do I get access to them and transfer them to iCloud Drive?

Open the file, say PDF, in the chat, and use the share icon in the top right to save it to Files etc.

You could use telegram for Mac too.


Clearing data on a stolen iphone 5s when my phone has no network? My phone has recently been stolen, I immediately went to my network provider and cancelled my network on the handset, I then found out I could remotely erase all data on the handset however it says once the phone is connected to the internet? Is it possible to clear all the data (messages, pictures, videos) when the phone does not have a signal and is not connected to the internet?

No, the iPhone must have some form of internet connectivity to receive the signal to erase.

Since you have disabled the phone's mobile internet, the only way it will receive the signal is if another SIM card is put in the phone which would enable the data, or it is connected to a Wi-Fi network.


What Thunderbolt hard drives support daisychaining? I would like to daisychain a monitor through an external hard drive, using Thunderbolt. Are there any hard drives with an additional Thunderbolt port? Preferably compact and affordable. I would also be interested in an external HDD/SSD enclosure with the extra daisy-chaining port.

The drives with two thunderbolt ports are intended to work in a chain as opposed to the drives that only have one port. By necessity, these can only exist at the end of the chain.

Armed with this knowledge, you can always look at whatever models are for sale when you are considering a purchase and decide whether the added cost to have two ports outweighs the need to have a chainable device or buy a hub should one be eventually produced as a stand alone device.


How to update Dock preview to Applications folder after hiding apps with chflags I am using chflags hidden method to hide apps in /Applications folder.

It immediately hides the application in Finder, but when I click on the Applications folder in Dock (image below), I can still see the hidden applications there, until I restart the computer.

So the question is: Is it possible to also update the visibility of the application in the Dock preview to Applications folder without restaring the computer?

I tested it and doing killall Dock in Terminal.app does the job.

  This specific killall command will essentially restart Dock and therefore the Applications folder preview gets updated as well.

Alternatively you can open /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app search for Dock, select it and click the X in the top left corner of the window.


Cross-Platform alternative to expr length When running some BASH scripts I had in my Linux box I noticed that expr length gives syntax error.

Manual pages doesn't seems to include any information about the length operator. Is it missing in Mac OS X?

What other cross-platform alternative can I use?

Instead of expr length 'keyword' you can use awk. An example would look like this echo 'keyword' | awk '{ print length }'

bounty:~ napcae$ echo 'keyword' | awk '{ print length }'
7


There was an error in Security & Privacy preferences I head on to Security & Privacy on Filevault and try to encrypt my disk. When I click the Turn On Filevault I get the error.

When going through the syslog I see this:

Dec  3 00:09:48 --- last message repeated 7 times ---
Dec  3 00:09:48 MacBook-Pro com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.apple.preference.security.remoteservice[30942]): Service exited due to signal: Illegal instruction: 4 sent by exc handler[0]

I saw the same error, and I was able to solve this via a reboot--hope that helps!

I can't say for 100% certainty, but I believe I still had some pending updates that had not yet installed: I remember when I was scanning the output of syslog that I also saw some references to a class being implemented in two different files, so I thought that could have been an artefact of an update that had not yet completed. Again, I admit to being a little unsure as to the exact cause of the problem and solution, but this was what worked for me.


Where Is Darwin's ARP Cache? The Linux kernel generally tends to cache its ARP tables here:
/proc/net/arp.
Darwin & Mac OS X, however, do not seem to follow the same convention.
So where can I find the Darwin & Mac OS X equivalent of:
/proc/net/arp?

OS X doesn't cache things on /proc so there's no equivalent exposure of kernel data through the filesystem idiom.

You can call arp -a to dump the current table to the location of your choosing if that sort of DIY caching has benefits for your code or use case.


Why does spotlight search for "term" result in AquaTerm before Terminal? I have AquaTerm and Terminal both.

Whenever I do a search in the spotlight with query "term" it shows up AquaTerm before Terminal. Terminal matches better, so it should come first.

Why does spotlight search for "term" result in AquaTerm before Terminal?

For Spotlight there isn't really a difference between AquaTerm, Terminal and iTerm when searching for "term". All three names match the search term, there is no such notion as better
Spotlight "learns" your preferences over time. So if you keep searching for "term" and then always select "Terminal.app" as result it will reorder the result list over time


Where is a reasonable sed? On Yosemite.  The sed is old: does not understand \t for example. I installed coreutils and can not find any sed associated with same.

What are my options here?

You need to install gnu-sed, not just the coreutils:

brew install gnu-sed

Then, you have to add the following lines on your .bash_profile:

export PATH="/usr/local/opt/gnu-sed/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"
export MANPATH="/usr/local/opt/gnu-sed/libexec/gnuman:$MANPATH"

Then your sed version should be the latest:

$ sed --version
sed (GNU sed) 4.2.2
Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by Jay Fenlason, Tom Lord, Ken Pizzini,
and Paolo Bonzini.
GNU sed home page: <http://www.gnu.org/software/sed/>.
General help using GNU software: <http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>.
E-mail bug reports to: <bug-sed@gnu.org>.
Be sure to include the word ``sed'' somewhere in the ``Subject:'' field.


cannot locate app, locate not working I have an app (gv) where I can run it from the terminal, but when I click on it, I get errors. This makes me think there are multiple instances of it or something.  I tried which and got nothing... that seems odd. so then I tried locate, which gave me this warning:

$ which gv
$ locate gv

WARNING: The locate database (/var/db/locate.database) does not exist.
To create the database, run the following command:

  sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist

Please be aware that the database can take some time to generate; once
the database has been created, this message will no longer appear.

I ran   sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.locate.plist
but when I run locate, I still get this message. yes, I can run find, but it is taking forever. How can I get locate working? I am on OSX 10.6.8

The launchd job can be run manually so you can see the progress.

Since locate runs find for you, that will also take forever, but perhaps you can inspect the progress or error condition the understand if the locate database is not getting built if you are patient:

time sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

While that runs, you could try spotlight as it likely has indexed that binary and can report back orders of magnitude faster than the options above:

mdfind "kMDItemFSName == 'gv'"


iOS notification issue I reset my all my settings on my iPhone and it messed up my notifications.

The problem is when I tap on my notification it slides to the left and makes me tap the open button. Before I could just tap on the notification itself once and it'd open right away.

Your device must be unlocked (Face ID, Touch ID) for the notification to open immediately upon a direct touch. Otherwise, the notification will only let you slide to the left.


MacBook Pro only turns on at specific times after cleaning My MacBook Pro has been running fine for the past year. Two days ago when I tried to clean my MacBook Pro with a dry cloth, I heard a half chime sound while I was cleaning the keyboard. Since then my MacBook is not turning on during specific time.

I tried to turn it on until 2am (GMT+5) and nothing happened but when I turn it on after 3am (GMT+5) it turns on normally. When I try to turn it on in the afternoon (after returning from job) it doesn't turn on. This sounds really stupid but I have observed it for two days. I don't what has happened or what to make of it.

It charges normally no problem with that. It doesn't turn on even when battery is fully charged.

Has a schedule been set up? Check in Preferences > Energy Saver. Look at the bottom right under Schedule. You didn't do the cleaning with the power on? Did you hit a shortcut key combo? Here is a shortcut discussion with some common ones to check.: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236


Why gaming with mouse feels so weird? I recently bought a macbook pro retina 2012 and later tried some fps game, e.g. Team Fortress 2. I plugged an usb mouse and noticed my it's movement is kinda weird or like unresponsive or something. It seems like my mouse movement has some kind of inertia, smoothing, acceleration or something, but it doesn't feel comfortable when gaming. Sometimes even a touchpad seems easier to play with. What am I experiencing and how can I make it like in windows?

OS X has a bit of mouse input lag and acceleration.

You can fix this by installing SmoothMouse. It works great for me in CS:GO. You can enable and disable it separately for the mouse and trackpad from the preference pane.


VirtualBox No Internet Win7 Host, OS X Guest I have set up Mac OS X 10.9 in a Virtual Machine and I'm struggling to get any internet connection. In my network settings (Mac), it says I'm connected but nothing works. Safari doesn't load any page, AppStore doesn't load anything (all greyed out).

In VirtualBox, the only settings that showed any connection at all within the VM was Bridged Adapter with an Adapter Type of Intel PRO/1000 MT Server.

What can I do to get a connection going within the VM?

In Virtual box try changing the connection mode to NAT instead of Bridge.

If NAT works than there is some issue with DHCP Server or Router that assigns the IP address to your network.


Kill process as root: Operation not permitted I'm trying to kill a process by a user other than myself on macOS High Sierra, but still getting an error even with sudo:

$ sudo kill 108
kill: 108: Operation not permitted

The PID does exist:

$ ps ux -p 108
USER        PID  %CPU %MEM      VSZ    RSS   TT  STAT STARTED      TIME COMMAND
_sentinel   108   3.6  1.5  5364180 245992   ??  Rs   23May19 149:15.88 /Library/Sentinel/sentinel-agent.bundle/Contents/MacOS/sentineld

How can I diagnose why sudo kill is failing? Is it because of System Integrity Protection? If so, how do I disable the relevant attributes on the process so that sudo kill succeeds?

I'm not looking to disable SIP globally, since the process in question belongs to SentinelOne (not a core macOS pre-installed application).

As far as I know this is not due to SIP as such, but rather to the fact that SentinelOne includes guards against this in particular. It works by adding a kernel extension to the system, which means it can change ordinary workings of signal delivery.

You could say that the best way to kill this process is simply never to run it at all - i.e. uninstall the program.


Preference Panes can't be opened, says it doesn't work on PowerPC I can't open my network preferences anymore. It says that Network Preferences don't work on a PowerPC-based Mac, whereas it's actually an Intel. (2.0 ghz core 2 duo, 10.6.7) I've tried the following:

repair disk permissions
reset PRAM
Trash network .plists
copied Network.prefpane from other Mac and replaced it

And nothing of these changed a thing. Ethernet still works. I can't find anything online either about it. Anyone has an idea?

EDIT: now I can open hardly any of the preference panes. Only Bluetooth, MobileMe, Parental Control and Universal Access still work.

System Preferences may be running in Rosetta (the PowerPC-on-Intel emulation environment). Do a Get Info on the System Preferences app (in the Applications folder) and check two things.

The "Kind" should say Application (Universal).
There may be a checkbox saying something like "Open using Rosetta". Make sure this is unchecked.


How to unmask the SIP credentials in the Zoiper VoIP application? Is it possible to unmask the SIP credentials stored in the Preferences of the Zoiper VoIP application ? I couldn't find any password unmask application for that and I can't find the password in my Keychain.

From zoiper.com:

  Use the password recovery option to reset your password. You will receive your new password by email.
  Once changed the password becomes applicable for all your certificates.
  This password is to be used for activation and reset of your Zoiper certificates. It is not part of your VoIP account credentials.


iMac retrieve old linux partition after dual boot removal On my iMac I installed a dual boot with Linux Mint.
However, I realized that the videos were freezing some times, so I deleted the Linux partition.
Now, the Mac is working normally, but instead of having a partition of 1 TB, I just have a 800GB's total space on my Hard Disk.

How can I do to retrieve the 200GB of space that were on the Linux partition I deleted?

Below is the output from diskutil list.

/dev/disk0
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *1.0 TB     disk0
   1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk0s1
   2:                  Apple_HFS Macintosh HD            800.0 GB   disk0s2
   3:                  Apple_HFS Recovery HD             650.0 MB   disk0s3
   4: FFFFFFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFF-FFFFFFFFFFFF               1.0 MB     disk0s4

Generally, the commands below should work.

sudo diskutil erasevolume free none disk0s4
sudo diskutil resizevolume disk0s2 R


Philips #00 screwdriver for MacBook Pro 2013 NZ does not fit I need to remove the back plane of an early 2013 MacBook Pro, sold in New Zealand.

According to questions on here:
What screwdriver size is needed for MacBook Pro mid 2012 back cover?
Screwdriver for 13-inch MacBook Pro

I need a Philips #00 screwdriver, which I bought as part of this set:

https://www.mitre10.co.nz/shop/fuller-mini-ratchet-screwdriver-set-12-piece-black-and-yellow/p/125687?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI6r23zfPW2wIVlY2PCh0H7QxNEAQYCCABEgKXaPD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

However, the screwdriver doesn't fit. Specifically it seems the blades of it are actually to thick to get into the screws.

Is this something I can specify as part of the screwdriver to look for? Or is size #00 possibly different in different parts of the world?

I've seen occasional mismatches in sets for $20 in the US and certainly some really bad $10 sets in the US. Not knowing the relative prices I don't know if that's expensive for New Zealand. My gold standard is a wiha tool.

https://www.kctoolco.com/wiha-26100-00-x-40mm-precision-phillips-screwdriver/ for $5 US

I would get a good tool for the ones you'll use a lot like #00 and if you can afford it - a nice set. Another gold standard seller for me in the US is DigiKey Electronics: Here's their #00 Phillips selection

Hopefully this lets you evaluate if you got a dud blade or just a low quality set in general. If it's really not able to fit - contact your seller to get advice if you can.


Dealing with a dying hard drive I have a MacBook Pro with a dying hard drive. It was working poorly for the last month or so and the last 4 times I turned it on it booted correctly once, issued a boot sector not found twice and a kernel panic the remaining time.

I have backups but I'd rather try to get the information from that hard drive (it's more up to date). My original plan was to just plug it in and let macosx migrate the account, but I don't think that's such a good idea as the hard drive is so flaky.

My current plan is to copy everything to a directory using rsync so I can re-issue the command as many times as needed until everything is copied succesfully.

Does anybody have any advice?

I also have some questions:

Once I have everything in an alternate directory, how do I restore the configuration of a running macosx? Should I do it with a sparate account.
My current installation is using  FileVault. Should I try opening and then rsyncing or should I try rsyncing the big bundle file?

Use the drive as little as possible.  Plug it into an enclosure or simply boot the machine in TDM mode and connect it to another machine.

Pull over only the files you need (to minimize the time you spend accessing the drive).

You may want to do something like, just your ~/Desktop, ~/Documents, ~/Pictures, ~/Library/Mail, and ~/Library/Mail Downloads.

Do either:
a) the biggest folders last, again, so that if the drive suddenly dies on you, you got as much stuff off it as possible, or;
b) the most important folders first, such as any pictures you don't have backed up.


Is there an escape sequence that will change the background color in Terminal? All of the approaches that I have seen for changing the background color in Terminal use applescript; is there an escape sequence? All of the hints that I've seen, like this one, use AppleScript. I want to put it in my .base_profile and in the 'ssh' command so that when I hop from system to system the color changes properly. (I sometimes have to hop multiple systems in due to connectivity issues)

I have this in my bash_profile:

# Change the terminal theme when SSH to remote
function tabc() {
    NAME=$1; if [ -z "$NAME" ]; then NAME="Default"; fi
    osascript -e "tell application \"Terminal\" to set current settings of front window to settings set \"$NAME\""
}

# Change the terminal color when remote
function ssh {
  tabc "Hiltmon-Remote"
  /usr/bin/ssh "$@"
  tabc "Hiltmon"
}

It uses Applescript (which you don't want) to change the terminal profile.  Replace the Hiltmon and Hiltmon-Remote with your own color scheme names. When you use the ssh command, the macro changes the shell theme, then runs ssh. When you exit the remote session, it changes it back. Very cool!

I tried using the shell color escape sequences like \[\e[36m\] and \[\e[0m\] but the remote session can and does reset them. This works great for me.


iTunes 11: Where are my podcasts? Ok, unless I'm missing something, I can't see my podcasts anymore? The only place they appear is in a new "Podcasts" playlist, which isn't much use to me for keeping track of episodes and subscriptions.

Am I just being blind? :-/

You may need to recheck the Podcasts checkbox in the menu iTunes | Preferences... | General tab.  OSX Daily suggests that it may be unchecked by default. Once checked, podcasts should appear under Library rather than as a playlist.


Multi user network share and resource forks I have a scenario where multiple clients access the same NFS share, where they work with inDesign, Photoshop and such. They have problems with files and dirs going read-only (not in Terminal, though), and I have found the reason to be locks/extended attributes/resource forks. Over samba, it seem to work fine for them all, although they're not happy with the speed we've managed to squeeze out of the samba setup.

How do you manage scenarios like this? What are my options? Would a OS X NFS server not have the clients suffering from the same problem?

Linux 2.6 NFS, tried mounting with "nonamedattr", "noacl" etc. Server forces uid and gid. Clients are OS X 10.6.

Edit:

Adobe.com states exactly the same problems (locks, long delays/pausing, intermittent by nature) as we're experiencing.

http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/networks-removable-media-photoshop-cs5.html

I've never used NFS for real file shares, but a friend recommended NFSManager for enabling NFS options on your Mac clients.

You could also try building netatalk to enable a native AFP share on the Linux server, which would certainly make your CS users much happier.  Adobe doesn't officially support opening and saving files over any network sharing protocols, although my users seem to have no problem when using Bridge to open directly off an OS X Server afp volume.


Whole word search in less? How can I do a whole word search in less? Per this post on a unix/linux forum you can use regex 'whole word' markers \<word\> but that doesn't seem to work for me on macOS 10.13.4 (17E202) in iTerm2 on less version 487 (found by less --version).

Running less --version gives

less 487 (POSIX regular expressions)

so you need to use POSIX regexps in less. To learn more about them you can read through re_format(7) to find

There are two special cases= of bracket expressions: the bracket expressions `[[:<:]]'
and `[[:>:]]' match the null string at the beginning and end of a word respectively.

So to search for word you need to enter [[:<:]]word[[:>:]] on the search prompt (which probably isn't very useful in most situations).

PS: This also applies to the version of less installed via Homebrew. You might have more luck by compiling it yourself and specifying an alternative regexp library (or by modifying the source accordingly).


How can I disable sound for incoming calls but NOT for notifications? I don't know why but a lot of spammers have my phone number and I'm getting called every day. I can't block their phone numbers because they use a new one every day. However, I use my phone with Slack and PagerDuty for work and I want to be able to hear notification sounds from those. How can I disable all sound for incoming calls (ideally, allowing certain known contacts to get through) while allowing certain apps as well?

One way would be to get a silent ringtone and set it as the default, then set another ringtone with actual sound for the contacts you want to hear calling. There are plenty of silent ringtones available to buy in the iTunes Tones store, but it would also be a simple one to create yourself.


Tried to use bash arrays but for some reason this fails? Im trying to make a script that should be executed with crontab, but I'm having difficulties to declare an array an fetch the key and value from that array. (Running MacOS 10.12.6)

This is what i'v got so far:

#!/bin/bash

declare -A listofnames

listofnames[one]="one test"
listofnames[two]="two test"

for val in "${listofnames[@]}"; do
    echo $val
done

And this throws me an error: declare: usage: declare [-afFirtx] [-p] [name[=value] ...] and the output it two test.

Expected output:

$ ./test.sh
one test
two test

It's not required that you declare your array upfront, but if you do, you need to use the lower case "a"; not the capital.

declare -a listofnames

Secondly, you need to use numerical indicies when referencing an array element

listofnames[one] <----- incorrect
listofnames[1]   <----- correct

So, for your two elements, it should look like this:

listofnames[1]="one test"
listofnames[2]="two test"

Or you assign all values at once, taking care of the first element having index 0

listofnames=("", "one test", "two test)


iPhone application compatibility Does the Nike iPhone Sport Kit will work on a 2nd generation iPhone that has the 3.0 update applied? In the Q&A on the website, some say it will, but others say it only works on a 3GS iPhone.

The Nike iPhone Sport Kit only works on the iPhone 3GS and later.

It won't work on the first iPhone or on the iPhone 3G.


How to downgrade iOS to previous version? I really need to downgrade from iOS 9 to iOS 8 on my iPad Mini. Is it possible at all?

Unfortunately, the firmware signing window has since closed for iOS 8.4.1 (as well as all earlier iOS builds for your device), so it should not be possible.

Source: https://ipsw.me/8.4.1


Are there pin differences on the audio jack between a 2015 and a 2017 MacBook Pro? I have a pair of these headphones:

They work fine for audio input and output on my Android phone (LG G5) and my 2015 MacBook Pro (tested with Quicktime recorder).

But when I plug them in to my 2017 MacBook Pro and record audio the sound is barely detectable, even when turned all the way up (on input and output). They are fine for audio output though.

Did Apple change something between the two MacBook Pro models? Is it more likely that my MacBook Pro has a defective connector?

Here are the audio settings on my 2017 MacBook Pro:

Answering instead of deleting question:

I took this to the company help desk and they determined that my macbook 2017 probably has a defective ground on the headphone jack.


What are good travel game apps for iPad to entertain a 2-3 year old My wife is to face a 2h flight with our very active daughter and would like to prepare some distractions.

Specifically we are looking for very simple, entertaining games a toddler can handle. We already have "Memory" and she really enjoys it.

It should be as colorful as it can get and interactive where swiping and touching a thing is the most sophisticated gesture she can handle. Doesn't really have to have a goal, just do stuff.

This is an iPhone app, but will work on iPad, It is a game made for toddlers.

http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/bubbles


Auto complete on iMac- edit list of replacements I once mis-typed my email address into the message part of an e-mail.  Now, whenever I type my correct email into the message part, it automatically corrects to the wrong version.  Is there anyway to edit the auto complete list to correct this?

You can add a shortcut that replaces a misspelling, so when you type your email address it will autocorrect to the same address (if that makes sense).

Click System Preferences > Keyboard > Text, and click the (+) button to add a new shortcut. Type your email address in the "replace" column and the same email address in the "with" column.

This will ensure you type your correct email address but then it will stay, and not autocorrect.


How to turn off multilingual typing without deleting dictionaries or keyboards in iOS 10? This wasn't a problem in iOS 9 or earlier. However, now iOS 10 has added a new feature such that one doesn't have to switch keyboards to type in another language, which causes trouble: now I have both English and French dictionaries and both keyboards, and for example, when I type "critique" in the English keyboard, a word existing in both dictionaries, iOS will then prompt the French suggestions (de, le, la etc.), even though I never mean to switch to French -- I just want to normally type "critique" as an English word, but of course iOS can't detect my intention.

Anyway, now I want things to go back to what they were in iOS 9 or earlier. And I have to keep both the dictionaries and the keyboards. Is it possible?

Leave feedback with Apple or they will never fix this. All they need is a way to turn it on and off.

One good way is to use the Apple Support iOS app and check if you’ve missed an easy step. If not and this is truly by design, they should get you a feedback link where you can request this change in functionality.

Apple Support by Apple


Where are Messages now stored when you enable iCloud sync? There is a new cloud messages option for iCloud users. After Updating to macOS 10.13.5 and iOS 11.4 and checked all the boxes to get Message to sync across all devices and computers.

When you do so, you are alerted that your Keep Messages setting on your phone/pad has been changed to Forever.

Anyone know where those Messages can be found/accessed???

You scroll above the top of the message history. A spinning wheel will show while messages are downloaded from iCloud. You can repeat this to show more messages. There is not a separate view for Messages in iCloud — it's integrated with the Messages app here.


8 GB on MacBook Pro (13", 2.26 ghz) The Apple specs say the 13" MacBook Pro supports up to 8GB of RAM. I have a 2.26GHz 13" one, and would really want to use this.

Has anyone tried this before? What is the maximum memory recommended, to be "safe"?

I have a 2.4-GHz 13-inch MacBook Pro, which is virtually the same as your model. It has 8GB of RAM. No problems thus far.


How do I exclude video podcasts from my podcast smart playlist I created a Smart Playlist to sync to my iPod Touch so I can listen to my podcasts one after the other while I'm on a long drive.

I can't figure out how to leave Video Podcasts off that list, though.  Is there a way?

Adding Kind contains 'audio'should do the trick. At least it's what I'm doing and it works.
Kind contains 'video' will give you the video Podcasts.


Problem installing Devel::REPL using cpanm I tried following the instructions for installing CPAN modules at this link:

http://www.cpan.org/modules/INSTALL.html

However, when I try to install Devel::REPL, it fails.

Here is the log:

[user@machine] cpanm Devel::REPL
--> Working on Devel::REPL
Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/E/ET/ETHER/Devel-REPL-1.003025.tar.gz ... OK
==> Found dependencies: Module::Build::Tiny
--> Working on Module::Build::Tiny
Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/L/LE/LEONT/Module-Build-Tiny-0.036.tar.gz ... OK
==> Found dependencies: TAP::Harness::Env, ExtUtils::Helpers, ExtUtils::InstallPaths, ExtUtils::Config
--> Working on TAP::Harness::Env
Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/L/LE/LEONT/Test-Harness-3.30.tar.gz ... OK
Configuring Test-Harness-3.30 ... OK
Building and testing Test-Harness-3.30 ... OK
Successfully installed Test-Harness-3.30
--> Working on ExtUtils::Helpers
Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/L/LE/LEONT/ExtUtils-Helpers-0.022.tar.gz ... OK
Configuring ExtUtils-Helpers-0.022 ... OK
Building and testing ExtUtils-Helpers-0.022 ... OK
Successfully installed ExtUtils-Helpers-0.022
--> Working on ExtUtils::InstallPaths
Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/L/LE/LEONT/ExtUtils-InstallPaths-0.010.tar.gz ... OK
Configuring ExtUtils-InstallPaths-0.010 ... OK
==> Found dependencies: ExtUtils::Config
--> Working on ExtUtils::Config
Fetching http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/L/LE/LEONT/ExtUtils-Config-0.007.tar.gz ... OK
Configuring ExtUtils-Config-0.007 ... OK
Building and testing ExtUtils-Config-0.007 ... OK
Successfully installed ExtUtils-Config-0.007
! Installing the dependencies failed: Module 'ExtUtils::Config' is not installed
! Bailing out the installation for ExtUtils-InstallPaths-0.010.
! Installing the dependencies failed: Module 'TAP::Harness::Env' is not installed, Module 'ExtUtils::Helpers' is not installed, Module 'ExtUtils::InstallPaths' is not installed, Module 'ExtUtils::Config' is not installed
! Bailing out the installation for Module-Build-Tiny-0.036.
! Installing the dependencies failed: Module 'Module::Build::Tiny' is not installed
! Bailing out the installation for Devel-REPL-1.003025.
3 distributions installed

Output of sw_vers:

ProductName:    Mac OS X
ProductVersion: 10.9.5
BuildVersion:   13F1066

perlbrew

You will find installing a local copy of perl, separate from the one bundled with Mac OS X, will make your module installation easier.

Use perlbrew to install and manage a specific version of perl. This isolates your perl from OS X updates and changes which have caused multiple problems in the past:

curl -L http://install.perlbrew.pl | bash
perlbrew install perl-5.16.0
perlbrew switch perl-5.16.0

cpan minus

On your isolated copy, install cpan minus to reduce the memory cost of installing modules:

curl -L http://cpanmin.us | perl - App::cpanminus

Re-install Devel::REPL

With this done, try re-installing Devel::REPL using cpanm:

cpanm Devel::REPL

...or cpan:

perl -MCPAN -e 'install Devel::REPL'

You should find modules install with less problems and are no longer affected by system updates or changes in Apple's decisions towards perl on OS X.


MacBook Air Kensington Lock Alternative The MacBook Air has no Kensington lock slot. What other options are available for  protecting it from theft?

Here's one USB option. Haven't tested it personally, though, but seems better than some of the alternatives involving plastic shells and such.

http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-F5L013-Laptop-Security-Alarm/dp/B000RPVHDC


Run app as admin in Mountain Lion I have an app which has to be run as an admin on Mountain Lion. This app is NOT installed on the system. The user Does NOT want to open the terminal and run sudo /xyzlocation/Myapp.

The idea is the user will click on the App. The App launches and then the App opens terminal where the user can key in the password.The App will then continue running. The user is the admin on the system.

Also not sure if it makes a difference but XQuartz or X11 is not present on the user's machine.

What if you wrote a script with the sudo that they could double-click? You could also modify the sudoers file to not need the password.

AppleScript could do this too, including a standard OSX popup for the password.


Terminal command to enable write to remote NFTS drive Can the drivename be "Seagate Backup Plus Drive" in the Terminal command ... label= drivename none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse or will the spaces create errors in Terminal?

If you use quotes in the command the spaces shouldn't create errors. Using

... label="Seagate Backup Plus Drive" none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse

should interpret the name as Seagate Backup Plus Drive and

... label=Seagate Backup Plus Drive none ntfs rw,auto,nobrowse

will interpret the name as Seagate.

The better solution is to rename the volume to one word without spaces or use an escape sequence like in this answer.


Reinstallation mac os x el capitan Is it possible to reinstall mac os x el capitan to a macbook pro (2009) using a bootable usb made in windows? The internal disk is already erased and empty.

I'm assuming you have a copy of the El Capitan DMG, see here if you don't. I also assume that your flash drive is empty - if it's not, back up any files before you start as this will wipe everything from the drive.

Insert your flash drive in to your computer and run Command Prompt as administrator.
Type diskpart and hit Enter.
Type list disk and hit Enter.
Locate your flash drive in the list and identify what number it is, then type select disk X (replace X with the number of your flash drive). Hit Enter to execute the command.
Type clean and hit Enter.
Type convert GPT and hit Enter.
Type create partition primary and hit Enter.

Your flash drive is now clean and has a GPT format ready for use with a macOS disk image. Now you need to download and install TransMac (and use the trial).

Once TransMac is installed, follow these instructions:

Run TransMac as administrator.
Right-click your USB drive in the left pane and click Restore with Disk Image. Click Yes on the dialog box that opens.
Browse for your El Capitan DMG file and then click OK to write the image.
Now, wait - this process could take a long time.

Once the disk image is written and TransMac has completed the process, eject the disk and plug it in to your Mac.

To run the installer on your Mac, plug it in and hold down the Option key while you turn it on. Click the disk when prompted and run through the installer.


Why do Application Shortcuts in System Preferences disappear? I have a longstanding issue with Application Shortcuts (ie. in System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Application Shortcuts). I can set up a new shortcut to a menu item of a specific application, eg. VoodooPad, and it shows up as expected, like so:

This works correctly in the application.

But every such shortcut I have ever set up later disappears -- I'm not sure exactly when, but at some point the prefs pane reverts to the defaults (ie. just one entry for 'Show Help Menu', and the newly-added shortcut no longer works.

Anyone have any idea why?

it sounds like someone has deleted your shortcuts or hit a restore defaults button.

I recommend that you

setup time machine to save your preferences each hour. then you can use it to restore your preferences. that should help you identify the problem.
setup a shortcut that you will use daily (maybe ⌥, to pull up system preferences)

hope that helps
regards


Does GarageBand iOS 1.2 support AirPlay? Does GarageBand iOS 1.2 support AirPlay? I see reports from Google searches that AirPlay was added to an earlier version but had lag-related performance issues. With 1.2, I see no way to select audio output. If I already have a Jambox connected, GarageBand will use it, but so far I can't get it to use AirPlay.

It's a Treasure Hunt!

On the iPad:

Click the wrench icon to open the Settings dialog. One of the settings is AirPlay - Bluetooth. Set that to On, and the usual audio output selector will appear in the toolbar.

On the iPhone:

Click the gear icon to open an untitled two-sheet settings dialog. Select the Song sheet. The AirPlay - Bluetooth selector is there.


CoreStorageFamily::unlockVEKs() failed to unwrap the vek, status = e00002bc I have a filevault2 disk with two partition. One is the boot partition, the other contains data, both are encrypted.

Today, after installing the latest 10.8 update (10.8.4 I guess), the computer reboots, asks for the user password at EFI (filevault2) and starts in verbose mode as usual.

Unfortunately, the boots hangs with a line:

  CoreStorageFamily::unlockVEKs() failed to unwrap the vek, status = e00002bc

I can boot in single user mode and execute fsck_cs. The drive appears undamaged (so says fsck_cs) but again, the error message about the-said VEKs is printed on the screen. The second partition, the one that contains the data is the one causing the issue.

What can I do to get back my precious data ?

EDIT: It appears both volumes can be mounted as external disk from an other MAC computer. So, what's with the VEK preventing the system to boot ?

I noticed fsck_hfs running when i get this error.

So i suspect that the volume needed to be fsck'd, and because this sometimes can take longer than the time the authentication is supposed to take, an error got signalled by the authentication dialog, leading to the e00002bc error in the system log.

A look at /var/log/fsck_hfs.log will tell you if this is what happened in your case.

On my 4T external disk the fsck took about 5 hours.


High CPU usage by a process called PTPCamera On my Macbook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012) is a process, called PTPCamera, using a lot of CPU-Time . I already have killed this process but it spawned immediately again.

85% of CPU usage eats my Battery so I would be happy if anyone could help 😊

I found out that the process is a "Picture Transfer Process for a Camera" in Short PTPCamera it will be launched by iPhoto.app and also with the newer Photo.app. But still does not explain the high CPU usage without a Phone connected.

So what is this process for and how can I control its behaviour? Anyone else has this problem and how did you solve this?

So we found the Solution:

Connect your iPhone/Camera and reopen Photos.app or iPhoto
Close iPhoto or Photos.app
Disconnect your iPhone/Camera
Open Photos/iPhoto again

now the PTPCamera Process should be terminated gracefully and won't spawn again in a busy waiting loop.

You do not have to do this steps all the time, only necessary to terminate the process graceful and kick it out of the busy waiting state. How to come in this state, we (AppleDev and I) do not know.


servermgrd certificate in Yosemite server chain of trust I am setting up a file server in Yosemite and am trying to remove vulnerabilities so my organization's IT dept will approve. I acquired a trusted SSL certificate and installed it with all of the intermediates to complete the chain of trust.

The IT dept's vulnerability scan showed that port 311 was using a self-signed certificate.  I then used keychain to switch the servermgrd identity to use the correct certificate as explained in How do I get com.apple.servermgrd to use a non-self-signed SSL certificate?.

Now the vulnerability scan no longer shows the self-signed certificate being used for port 311 - good - but it still reports the certificate as being untrusted. The trust chain is intact for server domain, but not the servermgrd.  Also, the servermgrd certificate in keychain still shows the wrong private key, even though the servermgrd identity is using the correct cert.

Anyone know how to address this?  Could this require different intermediate certs than the server itself? Should the servermgrd certificate that is using the wrong private key be replaced?

servermgrd looks up the certificate it uses for port 311 via an identity preference named "com.apple.servermgrd". By default, the preference points to the self-signed "com.apple.servermgrd" identity cert. After you change the preference you can remove the old self-signed cert without causing any harm. But you must make sure that the access control list (ACL) on the private key of the certificate that you want servermgrd to use allows servermgrd access.

If servermgrd cannot access the private key, it will delete the preference and create a new self-signed identity and set a new preference to point to the newly created identity cert.


How do I report fraud or App Store rule violations outside of a refund context? I'm not a developer, and I already used the "reportaproblem" link which doesn't help. It specifically hides any purchases made before the last 90 days.

I already read How to report App Store rule violations? and that didn't help one bit.

In particular, I want to report an app for an App Store rules violation and it appears that Apple blocked off all standard support routes to save money or something. In this case, the rules violation happened in an update years after purchase (so reportaproblem doesn't apply).

Fraud should be easy - engage a lawyer and/or your local small claims court. If the fraud is contract based, monetary remedy Is likely from small claims court in your jurisdiction at little expense to you in time or legal fees.

For wanting to police Apple and/or developers on what you find to be in violation of Apple policies but not actual laws, I stand by my answer to the question you linked.

Unless you have a developer relation and another developer is infringing on your work, you (the consumer) can only really ask Apple for a refund or just delete the app and send them general feedback when the report site has an explicit 90 time limit documented.

If you feel you have an exceptionally serious issue, why not engage store support chat to validate how Apple would want to hear about the specifics?

https://support.apple.com/contact


Where does macos store 'Others' keyboard layouts? How to delete them? Where does macos store 'Other' keyboard layouts if they are not in /Library/Keyboard Layouts or ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts?

Try the procedure mentioned at the end of this thread in the Ukelele list:


Can I create a boot disk for 10.6 or 10.7 on a PC (to be used on a Mac?) I have a Macbook Pro that had a hard drive failure, I've replaced the hard drive but I don't have a boot disk of any kind.  I could just order a Snow Leopard DVD, but I have to wait a few days for this.  So I'm wondering if it would be possible to download either Snow Leopard or Lion to a DVD from a PC that I have access to, that I could then use as a boot disk on the Mac.  Is this possible?

Is it humanly possible, if you received an ISO from some source, that you could create a burnable disc from a PC? Yes, no reason why not.
That being said, if you have upgraded the firmware on a recent-enough MacBook Pro, and have a fast enough connection to pull down a OS install disc, you could use internet recovery:

Apple's Knowledge Base Article for Internet Recovery-Capable Macs

I believe this won't work if you hadn't run this updater on your Mac after already upgrading to Lion, but it would pull down a recovery partition of less than a GB first, from which you could at least browse the web with the 'get help online' Safari Kiosk mode, or go on to do a full reinstall.

Beyond the 10.6 disc, there is also a USB drive for Lion that can be purchased as well, of course. Good luck


2011 iMac with Dead internal HDD. Possible to boot from an external disk? My iMac HDD just gave up after making a loud clicking noise for several weeks. Since the internal HDD is dead, I want to use another disk, preferably an SSD. I do not want to go to a store at any point and so I looked into taking the iMac apart and replacing the HDD myself. Seems like a hassle that I would like to avoid if I can simply plug in an SDD into one of these three:

USB 3.0 port
Firewire port
Thunderbolt port

My question is that assuming I do NOT want to exceed $150, which one of these gives me the best speed such that I would not miss having an internal drive? Can a drive connected to one of these ports be enough to not need an internal drive at least speed-wise?

There is no hard and fast rule for this. Sometimes when a HDD fails to boot, you can boot from another attached bootable disk. Sometimes, however, the HDD fails in a way it won't permit booting from attached drives because it seems to monopolize the bus.

You don't have USB 3.0 or firewire on this, even if it is a late 2011 iMac core i7. So you'd be limited to Thunderbolt or USB 2.0, which is going to be a little slow.

I know iMacs are hard to take apart, but your best bet is to look at the instructions or video on how to install an internal SSD from Other World Computing (MacSales.com) or, iFixit.com. If you think this is possible, it's a cost effective way to really fix your iMac and make it a lot faster.

edit: I wanted to add that USB 2.0 external HDDs are cheap and slow, Thunderbolt drives are expensive, and you can now get a decent SSD to install internally within your budget.


Can I use an iPod nano 8g as a flash drive for windows, and still use it to play the music I paste in that drive? I know I can use an iPod nano as a flash drive by connecting the iPod to the computer and selecting the iTunes option "Enable disk use".
(as stated here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3091809?tstart=0)

My question is, after doing that, if I paste an mp3 song from the windows folder explorer (I mean, without using iTunes).
Will I be able to play that song on the go with the iPod?

My goal is to make an iPod nano behave just like any other mp4 player, play any song I copy from my PC without using iTunes, and also use it to take other files with me.

No.
Apple does not want you to manage your own music.
Apple specifically engineered their products to prevent you from easily dragging and dropping files for quick portable usage.
Reasoning behind this is to encourages more sales from iTunes by forcing users to only use iTunes to manage music.
To quote Apple,

When you use your iPod as a hard disk, you can't see the media iTunes
copies to your iPod in the Finder or My Computer. This is normal.
Using the Finder or My Computer, you can't copy these media files from
your iPod back to iTunes or to any other computer. The synchronization
between your iPod and your computer is one way: from iTunes to iPod.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201567
A warning: Keep your backups handy because once your music is in the iPod it's difficult or impossible to get back


Text insertion cursor very hard to see over black background The text insertion cursor is very hard to see over black background. Are there any tweaks to make it easier to see?

I use MouseCape. You can find premade "Capes" for your cursor online, or draw your own and save them as png images. It does take some tinkering around if you're a perfectionist, but I made a really beautiful one in InkScape and use it all the time now. Albeit it took me like half an hour to get the size right in MouseCape so...have patience. ;)

Here is the design I currently use:

This is a copy that I modified to work better on black backgrounds:

Here is an example of it on black:

Let me know if you'd like me to make you a custom one, like an all white version or white with a thin black outline.


How does one find the plug-in setting on Chrome for Mac to aid in stopping Chrome Helpers processes from running? I recently noticed that I had about 4 or 5 Google Chrome Helper processes running in my Mac. I have no windows opened on chrome and it seems that the Helper processes still stay there regardless. I looked at the other question Why does Google Chrome launch multiple instances of Google Chrome Helper? and this good article explaining what the issue is and how to solve it. They suggest to follow the following steps:

shut down all your Chrome windows without quitting the program.
go to “Preferences,” scroll all the way down in the menu
click on “Show advanced settings…”
The first item in the expanded advanced settings list will be “Privacy,” and click on the “Content Settings” button right under that.
(step that fails for me) About halfway down the content settings list is a “Plug-ins” entry, which will likely be set to “Run automatically.” Instead, select “Click to play.”

The instructions are clear and easy to follow but it seems that the plug-ins button doesn't exist or it was moved. Does someone know where the plugins section went to?

I don't know even if we find the new section for the plugins if it would solve the problem, but if it doesn't, can we truly get these chrome helper processes to go away?

As a side remark, I did go to the extensions section of chrome and I disabled all of my extensions, however, I still have at least 3 chrome helper windows running. Why is that? Can we get rid of them in anyway?

It seems that the main issue is that the new extension section has no clear (analogous to the article) way of preventing auto-helping to enable. This seems to be my main goal. To have the auto-helping turned off. In particular I want it to work as this sentence of the article suggests:

  Disabling Helper’s auto-helping is easy, and it won’t prevent you from using plug-ins.

Right now the extension section has no analogous section to the "Click to play" which seems to play the following important role:

  This is essentially the same thing as configuring email to load images
  only when you click a “load images” link. Any embedded Flash, Java,
  Quicktime, DivX, or Silverlight content on a webpage will appear as a
  grayed-out space until you click on it to load the player and the
  content.

Right now the only way that (very) unreliable works is disabling the extensions. Which is of course not the solution I want or the solution the article alludes to.

Is there a "Click to play" in the new chrome for mac?

The Wired article is a bit old and perhaps is no longer current. 'Extensions' are what you're looking for, and they can be found in the menu item Window > Extensions.

You can also use Window > Task Manager to look at all the tab processes and extensions:


Why does adding a Desktop suddenly gives me a new wallpaper? I'm on the Mountain Lion 10.8.5 and suddenly find that when I add a Desktop in Mission Control (by option clicking the upper right corner) the new Desktop gets the basic OSX  milkyway wallpaper instead of the wallpaper of the current Desktop.

This is what I expect when I add a new Desktop (same wallpaper):

This is what I get (different wallpaper):

This was never the case, and just now this behaviour changed. I have a second monitor attached through the MiniDisplay to VGA adapter and on that display adding a Desktop works as it should (that's where the first example is from). Only the MacBook Pro screen is showing this behaviour.

What can be causing this? How can I fix this?

By default Mission Control uses the same wallpaper as Desktop 1. I assume this is a bug with external monitors where it uses the default galaxy image instead. While not what you are looking for, you can always move the System Preferences window to that desktop/display and manually change the desktop image.


Mail App keeps hanging (not crashing) on Yosemite 10.10.3 Mail runs fine for a few hours, then hangs. I must force quit, then reopen. It runs fine for another few hours then crashes.

This is a fresh install of Yosemite, and I rebuilt the index and tried deleting things people suggest I delete in the library. It redownloaded all the messages already.

Here's the first bit of crash report, which is Greek to me:

Date/Time:       2015-06-10 19:20:29 -0700
OS Version:      10.10.3 (Build 14D136)
Architecture:    x86_64
Report Version:  21

Command:         Mail
Path:            /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail
Version:         8.2 (2098)
Build Version:   1
Project Name:    Mail
Source Version:  2098000000000000
Parent:          launchd [1]
PID:             24057

Event:           hang
Duration:        3.80s (process was unresponsive for 3984 seconds before sampling)
Steps:           39 (100ms sampling interval)

Hardware model:  MacPro3,1
Active cpus:     8

Fan speed:       586 rpm

--------------------------------------------------
Timeline format: stacks are sorted chronologically
Use -i and -heavy to re-report with count sorting
--------------------------------------------------

Heaviest stack for the main thread of the target process:
  39  start + 1 (libdyld.dylib + 13769) [0x7fff8a4c45c9]
  39  NSApplicationMain + 1832 (AppKit + 13140) [0x7fff8fadd354]
  39  -[NSApplication run] + 594 (AppKit + 551923) [0x7fff8fb60bf3]
  39  -[NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue:] + 346 (AppKit + 593768) [0x7fff8fb6af68]
  39  _DPSNextEvent + 978 (AppKit + 596411) [0x7fff8fb6b9bb]
  39  _BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInModeWithFilter + 71 (HIToolbox + 205099) [0x7fff8c4bf12b]
  39  ReceiveNextEventCommon + 431 (HIToolbox + 205546) [0x7fff8c4bf2ea]
  39  RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 235 (HIToolbox + 206191) [0x7fff8c4bf56f]
  39  CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 328 (CoreFoundation + 465912) [0x7fff88299bf8]
  39  __CFRunLoopDoObservers + 368 (CoreFoundation + 524416) [0x7fff882a8080]
  39  __CFRUNLOOP_IS_CALLING_OUT_TO_AN_OBSERVER_CALLBACK_FUNCTION__ + 23 (CoreFoundation + 524583) [0x7fff882a8127]
  39  CA::Transaction::observer_callback(__CFRunLoopObserver*, unsigned long, void*) + 71 (QuartzCore + 118553) [0x7fff860fef19]
  39  CA::Transaction::commit() + 390 (QuartzCore + 58286) [0x7fff860f03ae]
  39  CA::Context::commit_transaction(CA::Transaction*) + 242 (QuartzCore + 58898) [0x7fff860f0612]
  39  CA::Layer::layout_and_display_if_needed(CA::Transaction*) + 35 (QuartzCore + 61057) [0x7fff860f0e81]
  39  CA::Layer::display_if_needed(CA::Transaction*) + 603 (QuartzCore + 63485) [0x7fff860f17fd]
  39  -[_NSViewBackingLayer display] + 834 (AppKit + 401702) [0x7fff8fb3c126]
  39  _NSBackingLayerDisplay + 617 (AppKit + 415019) [0x7fff8fb3f52b]
  39  CA::Layer::display_() + 1546 (QuartzCore + 70716) [0x7fff860f343c]
  39  x_blame_allocations + 81 (QuartzCore + 120468) [0x7fff860ff694]
  39  ___ZN2CA5Layer8display_Ev_block_invoke + 59 (QuartzCore + 120535) [0x7fff860ff6d7]
  39  CABackingStoreUpdate_ + 127 (QuartzCore + 120668) [0x7fff860ff75c]
  39  __psynch_cvwait + 10 (libsystem_kernel.dylib + 90422) [0x7fff8293c136]
 *39  psynch_cvcontinue + 0 (pthread + 26908) [0xffffff7f80ed891c]

Process:         Mail [24057]
Path:            /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail
Architecture:    x86_64
Parent:          launchd [1]
UID:             501
Sudden Term:     Dirty
Task size:       57324 pages (+4)
CPU Time:        0.074s
Note:            Unresponsive for 3984 seconds before sampling
Note:            3 idle work queue threads omitted

I have had the same problem since updating to Yosemite. None of the advice posted on any website seems to work until I tried this and so far Mail is working fine
https://miapple.me/fixing-mac-os-x-10-10-yosemite-mail-not-responding/
give it a shot


Set the default search to current folder? The Finder's search bar is an integral part of my workflow. I am constantly using it to search the contents of files within various folders.

However, typing into this bar always searches the entire machine by default. In order to make it search just one folder, I have to click a second button.

Is there a way to change this so that it searches the current folder by default?