Sequential numbering for pseudo-"Rows" tl;dr: Formula to number rows that doesn't break when some "rows" are made of multiple, merged spreadsheet rows.

Scenario: I am making a check-list (of things to look at when apartment-hunting) in Numbers 3 that involves some "nesting" by merging cells. It's more efficient to show than explain, so here's a little dummy:

  ||  A  |   B    |    C   |    D   |   E
-----------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------
1 ||  #  |      Item       |  Apt1  |  Apt2
-----------------------------------------------
2 ||  1  |   Sink works    |  [√]   |  [√]
-----------------------------------------------
3 ||     |        |  Heat  |  [√]   |  [√]
----     -        -----------------------------
4 ||  2  |  Has   |  A/C   |  [√]   |  [√]
----     -        -----------------------------
5 ||     |        |  Gas   |  [√]   |  [√]
-----------------------------------------------
6 ||  3  |   Door locks    |  [√]   |  [√]

Problem: Normal ways of putting in a row number break because of the way Numbers handles merged cells. For example, A6=SUM(A5,1) would return 1, because Numbers thinks A5 and A4 are empty (whereas A3 contains 2).

Using way more math than should be needed, there is a formula that works. In the dummy spreadsheet above, you would put this in A3 and then copy it into all subsequent rows in bulk, just as you'd expect:

1 + ((    SQRT(8*SUM(  OFFSET($A$2,0,0,SUM(ROW(),-2),1)  )+1)    - 1) ÷ 2)


How can I add missing avatar/profile pictures in Messages? In the new Messages application introduced with Mountain Lion, I cannot see my own avatar.

This is happening even though my Messages.app email is linked with my contact in Contacts.app.

No Avatar appears when I text in Messages:

But I do have an avatar in Contacts:

You can set your own avatar, one that is even different from the one in your address book with the following menu selection:

Messages → Change my Picture...


Cannot install JDK 13.01 on Catalina I tried to install the x64 version of jdk (from https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk13-downloads-5672538.html), however, Apple refused to install it saying that the software needs to be updated.

Since this is the latest version of JDK, what should I do in order to install java without waiting for the next update from Oracle?

Open "System Preference".
Go to "Security & Privacy" then "General" tab
Click on the lock icon then enter the password.
There will be a button "Always Allow" to allow "jdk-13.0.1". Click on it.


How can i aggregate two pairs of headphones/microphones into one audio stream using Audio MIDI Setup? I am trying to use the Audio MIDI Setup program to aggregate two USB Sennheiser PC8 stereo headsets so I can use both simultaneously on Skype calls and GarageBand recordings. So far I am only able to use one at a time by deselecting the other USB device under the newly created aggregate device. How can I get both two work at the same time!?

Thanks!

Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.2
13in Macbook Air Mid-2012
Sennheiser USB PC8 Headsets (http://en-de.sennheiser.com/usb-pc-headset-stereo-pc-8-usb)

Not sure it's going to work using an Aggregate Device - each output must have its own channel that way.

Look at a Multi-Output Device instead - then channels can share one output.

You of course, don't need to use the same 'device' for both input & output, so you can set up a different one for input - though I'm still not certain you will be able to listen to [record] both mics at the same time, the same considerations may apply.

I can't test on USB headphones as I don't have any, but using this setup I can play iTunes over internal speakers and my dedicated sound card at the same time
sounds horrible, of course;)


launchd error "Could not find and/or execute program specified by service" I am trying to get a script to run from launchd at regular intervals. The service loads but does not run the script.

The script itself is a very simple test script as follows:

echo "Hello World!" >> /Users/rhiannon/Library/Application\ Support/Script\ Testing/test.txt

The script is saved as /Users/rhiannon/Library/Application\ Support/Script\ Testing/test-launchd.sh (with permissions rwxr-xr-x) and happily runs from the command line.

I have a plist file as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>uk.co.myco.timedshelltests</string>
        <key>Program</key>
        <string>/Users/rhiannon/Library/Application\ Support/Script\ Testing/test-launchd.sh</string>
        <key>StartInterval</key>
        <integer>60</integer>
    </dict>
</plist>

The plist file is saved as /Users/rhiannon/Library/LaunchAgents/uk.co.myco.timedshelltests.plist with permissions rw-r--r--.

I load the service using

launchctl load uk.co.myco.timedshelltests.plist

With logging set with sudo launchctl log level debug, I see the following error in the system log:

com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (uk.co.myco.timedshelltests[13505]): Could not find and/or execute program specified by service: 2: No such file or directory: /Users/rhiannon/Library/Application\ Support/Script\ Testing/test-launchd.sh
com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (uk.co.myco.timedshelltests[13505]): Service setup event to handle failure and will not launch until it fires.
com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (uk.co.myco.timedshelltests[13505]): Service exited with abnormal code: 78

I'm pretty certain the permissions are correct, and I know the path is correct. What else could be wrong?

Launchd does not perform word splitting. Remove the escape characters \ from the following line-

<string>/Users/rhiannon/Library/Application\ Support/Script\ Testing/test-launchd.sh</string>


Apple Mid 2012 VGA vs Apple retina late 2013 VGA onboard I'm trying to buy a new mac book. I have two choices: one is Apple Macbook Pro retina mid 2012 with NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 1024 MB. And another is new macbook late retina 2013 using VGA onboard.

I have googled but found no answer for comparison between those graphics. Does NVIDIA Graphics card is really stronger than core i5 VGA onboard (gen 4) ?

@: sub question: about SSD, I see some benchmark, and see that SSD on 2013 is faster than SSD on 2012. Does this true ?

Thanks :)

I found out here that the difference is very minor in gaming performances.

Not to mention that the NVIDIA is a add on device while the Intel is integrated,resulting in more power consumption and graphics mode switching--that you might not want.


Is it possible to sync an iPad via iPhone without a computer My wife currently owns an iPod nano and is planning on upgrading her phone to an iPhone 6 when she is eligible to upgrade (currently she has an Android phone.

She rarely, if ever, uses a computer at home anymore as almost everything she needs to do can be done via her phone or tablet.  The only thing she really uses it for anymore is iTunes.

Since she would have access to iTunes via the iPhone once she upgrades, it is possible to sync new music purchases to the nano via the iPhone instead of pulling out a computer?

There is no designated option to sync music between an iPod Nano and an iPhone.

Neither the iPod Nano nor the iPod Shuffle have WIFI capabilities, so they can not use iTunes in the Clooud. Id est you have to sync you iPod with iTunes on a computer.


Using the same Apple ID on private and business iPhone I have a private and now a company iPhone. I like to have two phones to seperate business and private.

I need to install an app from the Apple Store on my business iPhone, so I need an Apple ID on this phone. Obviously, I already have a private one.

Currently, I do not sync any data with iCloud (but Google, which will not be configured on my business device), so I wonder if there is any disadvantage of using my private Apple ID on my business phone?

My company allows the use of a private Apple ID. In particular what I want to know, if I use my Apple ID will my company be able to influence or monitor anything on my private phone (iPhone search, etc).

There are two separate questions here but hopefully they won’t get mixed if I’m careful about wording things:

Your company can install MDM profiles and unless they do, you only expose what addresses and traffic you send when you connect to their network or VPN or install their apps. Apple protects you since there are no hidden backdoors and if you have a company MDM - you will see it in the profile portion of the settings app and it has to list what it does.
You can choose to use a private AppleID in the App Store and that won’t let the business see what you do in the store other than seeing the side effects.

With MDM - they can see all apps installed - so if you installed a sports betting or game - they would see that IF they have MDM or if they see that app talking to the servers that run that app.
They can send apps to your phone on iOS 11 without needing you to be signed in, so it’s up to them if you should use an AppleID or just use MDM to push the “work apps”
Work can erase the device but not get data from it with MDM in general. Unless they get your passcode or you back up to their servers, Apple ensures data is secure with your password so unless they have surveillance or a key logger on a computer and capture your password - your password and account is yours and it’s your choice to use it on a work device or not.

So - If you really want to keep work from personal - sign up for and maintain a work AppleID so you don’t mix the streams. For many people, using a personal AppleID for just the App Store is super low risk and you can manage to not auto install apps and control what app history you wish to share with work. Without MDM, they can’t modify settings, wipe the device, lock the device, unlock the device. With MDM they can do those things, but you will see they can do it and ask about their policies so you can make a good choice.

I wouldn’t mix normal AppleID like messages or Photos or iCloud or GameCenter with work and pleasure - this answer just is about apps and access to app data. That second item could leak more data like contacts or conversations you would rather be yours.


Lost notes on MacBook I have 3 different Apple products: iPad, iPhone and MacBook. I had written separate notes on all three. Somehow, the MacBook's notes ended up getting on my iPhone too. I didn't want excessive notes on my phone, so I deleted them. This then deleted the notes off of my computer as well.

I tried erasing the content from my iPhone and restoring back to the night before this happened - which didn't make a difference. The notes from my computer are still not there. I don't understand how the notes I originally wrote on my computer got permanently deleted through my phone, and I don't know how or if it is possible to recover them. Any ideas?

It sounds like the Notes were being saved on iCloud on both devices.  When you deleted them from your phone, you were really deleting them from iCloud.

If you use "Time Machine" to backup your macbook, you can go back to the day before you deleted the notes on your phone and then sync your phone with iTunes to put the notes back on.

Then, on your iPhone, go into the iCloud settings and turn off Notes.  This will save your iPhone notes locally and keep them separate from the macbook.


Change mac menu bar color Is there a way to change the color or appearance of the mac menu bar from the standard gray?

Unfortunately, there's no setting to change the color of the menu bar itself.

LeoColorBar

As penguinrob suggests, you could set the menubar to translucent, and influence its color by changing the color of the part of the wallpaper underneath the menubar. LeoColorBar, pictured below, basically automates that for you.

Despite the fact that it hasn't been updated in a while, it's worked perfectly for me in Lion.

A black menu bar

Alternatively, there are applications like Nocturne that you can use to set your menu bar to dark gray.

MenuBarFilter is another application based on Nocturne that turns your menu bar black.

The latter two applications, however, didn't work very well for me in Lion (especially in full-screen mode), so your best bet would be to stick with LeoColorBar.


How to limit the bandwidth on a per-application (or per-process) basis in OS X Yosemite? Whenever I use Homebrew or Apple Store to download a large application, it sucks all my available bandwidth and I am then unable to browse the web.

How can limit the bandwidth per-application or per-process in OS X Yosemite (command line preferred, but GUI apps accepted)?

I've played a bit with IceFloor application, which suggested I use ALF firewall, but I don't know how to set it up.

The feature you want is confusingly called Quality of Service or "QoS" for short.

These days it is usually configured for an entire network, or subnet, using the management interface on a smart switch (which costs a little more than an Ethernet hub with the same number of ports, but not much more--here is a representative model from Cisco for under $100).

The closest equivalent that runs on OS X directly is ThrottleD from IntraArts:

  Throttled Pro [gives you] weighted network queues (WF2Q+) that guarantee bandwidth for all your essential network services like web browsing, email, and online gaming. In addition, it provides ACK packet priority which speeds up downloads when you are sending out a lot of data. This combination assures that you get the most out of your internet service.

The GUI version is $20, while the CLI version is donationware.


Mounting Sparse Bundle on NFS Share Background
I have a Seagate BlackArmor NAS220 running Debian. I would like to use the NAS as a target for Time Machine backups from my Mac (2020 Mac mini M1). I have used disk utility to create a 500 GB sparse bundle disk image (HFS+J). I can mount the sparse bundle on my computer no problem when it is stored locally. I then copy the sparse bundle to my NAS.
Problem
When I try to mount the sparse bundle on my Mac while it is stored on the NAS (by double-clicking on it) I get the following error:

When I double click on it again I get this error:

Attempting to mount via the Terminal using,
sudo hdiutil attach -verbose /path-to-network-share/MacminiTM.sparsebundle/
results in,
Mac-mini:Time Machine Backups christopher$ sudo hdiutil attach -verbose /path-to-network-share/MacminiTM.sparsebundle/
Initializing…
CBSDBackingStore::newProbe directory, not a valid image file.
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  0, score    -1000, CBSDBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  1, score     1000, CBundleBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  2, score    -1000, CRAMBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  3, score    -1000, CDevBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  4, score    -1000, CCURLBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  5, score    -1000, CVectoredBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  0, score      100, CBSDBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  1, score    -1000, CBundleBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  2, score    -1000, CRAMBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  3, score    -1000, CDevBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  4, score    -1000, CCURLBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  5, score    -1000, CVectoredBackingStore
CBSDBackingStore::newProbe directory, not a valid image file.
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  0, score    -1000, CBSDBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  1, score     1000, CBundleBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  2, score    -1000, CRAMBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  3, score    -1000, CDevBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  4, score    -1000, CCURLBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  5, score    -1000, CVectoredBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  0, score      100, CBSDBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  1, score    -1000, CBundleBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  2, score    -1000, CRAMBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  3, score    -1000, CDevBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  4, score    -1000, CCURLBackingStore
DIBackingStoreInstantiatorProbe: interface  5, score    -1000, CVectoredBackingStore
Attaching…
Error 5 (Input/output error).
Finishing…
DIHLDiskImageAttach() returned 5
hdiutil: attach failed - Input/output error

I can't figure out why the sparse bundle mounts fine when it's stored on my Mac locally, but not when on the network share.

I was able to get this to work by creating an SMB (instead of NFS) share for use with Time Machine backups. That way it was pretty straight forward to copy the sparse bundle and then mount it.


Mac OS X, 10.12.2, Command Line how to add Search Domains I do this all the time with the GUI and it does what I am looking for. No Problem.

System Preferences > Network > Select the LAN or Wi-Fi > Advanced > DNS > Search Domains and in that particular box field, I add all the search domains that I want. e.g. office, hq, ad.gwn, etc.

Question, how can I achieve the same process via command line with Terminal?

So far this is what I did:

Step #1 I run both these command line to get an overview of what I have:

networksetup -listallnetworkservices
networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder

and this is what I got:

List item
Apple USB Ethernet Adapter
Thinkpad USB LAN
Wi-Fi
Bluetooth PAN
Thunderbolt Bridge
(1) Apple USB Ethernet Adapter
(Hardware Port: Apple USB Ethernet Adapter, Device: en4)
(2) Thinkpad USB LAN
(Hardware Port: Thinkpad USB LAN, Device: en5)
(3) Wi-Fi
(Hardware Port: Wi-Fi, Device: en0)
(4) Bluetooth PAN
(Hardware Port: Bluetooth PAN, Device: en3)
(5) Thunderbolt Bridge
(Hardware Port: Thunderbolt Bridge, Device: bridge0)

Step #2 I tried to add my search domains (hq, office, ad.gwn) but I received the following error message:
 - sudo networksetup -setsearchdomains en4 hq office ad.gwn
 - en4 is not a recognized network service
 - Error: The parameters were not valid

I am connected only with Ethernet cable. No WiFi.  I tried en4 and en5 same issue.

First list all network services to get an overview:

networksetup -listallnetworkservices

Output example:

An asterisk (*) denotes that a network service is disabled.
en0
en1

I renamed my two network services from "Ethernet" to en0 and "Ethernet Adapter (1)" to en1. You have to use your actual network service names of course! If the network service name contains spaces you have to use quotes (e.g. "Apple USB Ethernet Adapter") in the commands below.

To set search domains for a network service use:

sudo networksetup -setsearchdomains networkservice domain1 [domain2] [...]

Example:

sudo networksetup -setsearchdomains en0 example.home example.net example

Check with networksetup -getsearchdomains en0:

example.home
example.net
example

If you want to add search domains to already existing domains use:

SEARCHDOMAIN=$(networksetup -getsearchdomains en0)
sudo networksetup -setsearchdomains en0 $SEARCHDOMAIN domain1 domain2 ...


Photos from iPad to iCloud? I shoot a photo in iPad. I want it will be available in iCloud. How can I do it? I cannot see the PhotoStream in iCloud.

I can see all Pages, Numbers etc documents but not photos, I find this very confusing.

You cannot view your Photo Stream pictures directly on iCloud.com. In order to do this you need to create a new Photo Stream from you iPad, iPhone or Mac (using iPhoto or Aperture).

Here's a guide for doing so. In order to make it public on iCloud.com, make sure you flip the "Public Website" switch.


OS X 10.9.x failed login attempts previous days I have found some answers on here but need to check something. Is there a way to check the failed login attempts form previous days?

I have tried:

var/log/secure.log

but that only gives me results for the current day and I need them for the past 4 days ideally.

Have also used

cat /private/var/log/system.log | grep "Failed to authenticate"

And again only todays results.

Thanks in advance!

As the logs is rotating, you could find the info you need on previos files. After some predefined size, the logs files are moved and compressed. See example image.

So, you have to look after files that suits your dates requirements and uncompress it using gunzip filename.gz command.

Then you can grep your pattern on those files.


External drive HD WD 3T My Passport with Mavericks suddenly unmounts I've a problem with my external hard drive, a Western Digital 3TB, with my Mac running OS X 10.9, Mavericks.

When my hard drive is linked to my MacBook Air and, I work with it, the drive suddenly unmounts from my Mac. This happens with tasks such as viewing photos, moving files, and opening files.

I tried to exclude my hard drive from Spotlight search but the problem persists.

I've scary because I might loose all my work and files.

This is a WD problem, as stated below:

  If you own a Wester Digital external hard drive, you might want to think twice before plugging it into your OS X Mavericks computer, or better yet if you haven’t upgraded, perhaps you might want to hold off on doing so for the moment. Western Digital has recently issued a statement warning customers about potential data loss on their hard drives should they attempt to connect a Western Digital external HDD to a Mac computer running OS X Mavericks. As it stands there are multiple forums threads across the internet where many Western Digital users have complained of data loss.

Source : ubergizmo

In addition, the HDD I brought back, as stated in my comment was a Western Digital disk as well.


I am Unable to Uninstall an Applications like Node or Atom in OS X I just bought a Macbook Pro and I'm new to OSX. I can't uninstall applications like Node, Atom, etc. They are not shown in my Application folder  nor in the Launcher.  How can i delete them?'

Below is screenshot of my Applications folder.  However, if I search for Atom using Spotlight,  I can access it from there.

Have you tried emptying your trash? Spotlight can find and open (IIRC) applications that remain in trash.

If after your trash is emptied and you still see Atom or Node, try, in Terminal:

sudo find / -iname 'thing'

in which you should substitute thing with your search query.

EDIT: in Spotlight, when you hold Command, does it show a path at the bottom of the spotlight window?

EDIT 2: As per @Lizzan's comment, do check your Downloads, Documents, and any other user-related folders.


How to backup an iPhone, and restore it, with no side effects? I need to restore my iPhone in order for my phone's carrier unlock to go through. What is the best method to do this?

At the end of the restore process, I want the phone to be exactly the same as it was before the restore process (i.e. apps, app data, pictures, etc. should all be restored), without any unintended side effects (I will get to this in a moment). It's okay if minor things are different, such as having to reenter usernames and passwords, but all the apps/data must be restored.

It's my understanding that the simplest solution is to create an iCloud backup (assuming you have enough space), erase the phone, then restore from iCloud. Although I will have to wait for all the apps to be redownloaded, this will preserve everything on my phone, and not have any unintended side effects.

The problem is that I have more data on my phone than can be backed up to iCloud using the free account (5GB), so I am looking for an alternative solution.

By unintended side effects, I am referring to something that changes and may cause me trouble in the future. For example, if I recall correctly, when I choose to sync a phone to a particular computer, it will forever be tied with that computer, and I will not be able to sync with another one unless I erase all of the data first. I don't want this. This violates my requirement that everything be the same as it was before the restore, because now my phone is locked to a computer, a side effect I clearly didn't have before I started the restore process.

In your solution, please list any shortcomings and/or side effects that might arise.

You can use a computer for backup. It only ties for that computer in regards of music and video content. If you want to sync it to another iTunes library at a later point, the music that was synced from that computer will be deleted. This is not the case for tracks bought in iTunes if that device is activated for that account, or if you're using iTunes match.

If you use the computer, you can choose to encrypt the backup, that way the passwords (for networks and whatnot) will be backed up and restored as well.

As a side note, it doesn't seem usual to me that you need to restore the phone for the unlock to take place. It usually is enough to connect it to a computer with iTunes open.


My early 2008 MacBookPro has a different DVI and the adaptor I need is not in stock anywhere My early 2008 MacBookPro has a different DVI to later 2008 and the adaptor I need is not in stock anywhere

I am considering putting Apple TV from my Humax to enable my MacBook Pro to link wirelessly

According to my research, it is called Micro DVI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro-DVI

It looks like it can be found here.

http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=micro+dvi+to+vga+adapter&tag=googhydr-20&index=electronics&hvadid=25104013878&hvpos=1t1&hvexid=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=474849483470589268&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=b&hvdev=c&ref=pd_sl_4bxv9jd5o7_b


Software Update command (on Mac) not listing all the updates On regular basis, I check for OS and App updates using terminal and softwareupdate command

Recently, there was update of Slack app but command output didn't show the same. I was able to view update on AppStore.

Below was the output of the command.

$ softwareupdate -all
Software Update Tool

Finding available software
Software Update found the following new or updated software:
   * Command Line Tools (macOS High Sierra version 10.13) for Xcode-10.0
    Command Line Tools (macOS High Sierra version 10.13) for Xcode (10.0), 190520K [recommended]
   * Safari12.0HighSierraAuto-12.0
    Safari (12.0), 78915K [recommended]

Any reason why Slack update was not listed? Am I missing any parameter?

softwareupdate only handles updates to the OS and bundled software, not purchased (/free) apps. The distinction isn't always obvious; the clearest way I have to describe it is that if an app is tied to (/owned by) a particular Apple ID, then softwareupdate won't handle it. Safari and iTunes are examples of apps that just come with the OS, therefore aren't owned by any specific Apple ID, and therefore are handled by softwareupdate. On the other hand, Slack is an app you "purchase" (it's free, but it's still technically a purchase) under your Apple ID in the App Store, therefore softwareupdate does not handle it.

Andrew Naylor has written a CLI interface to deal with App Store purchases (including updates), available from https://github.com/mas-cli/mas.

Update: in macOS Mojave, the distinction is clear in the GUI as well as at the command line. In Mojave, the App Store interface only handles updates to "purchased" apps, while OS and bundled software updates are handled by the Software Update pane in System Preferences. So "Software Update" preferences == softwareupdate command, and "App Store" application == Andrew Naylor's mas command.


Where does Preview save a clone of a document? I have a document with a base64 name that I have hit shift command s to make a copy and then hit command s to save it.  The "*" in the title bar is gone now so it has been saved. But *where* ..  It is not in the same directory as the original file and it is not anywhere underneath my home directory.

I found out where it went to: it is from some prior "File Save" from a different application (not Preview!). It is not possible to re-specify - or even _see !_ - the directory when using the Duplicate functionality. Instead it is necessary to use the File | Rename.  That is a bug imo.


Apple Watch never checks for heart attacks One of the Apple Watch promotional material includes this image (apparently) from the health app.

How can this be interpreted? I understand that the Apple Watch may alert for irregular heart rhythms, but what does this message means.

Basically, this is really just a disclaimer that Apple Watch cannot detect heart attacks.

According to Apple:

    Things you should know

  Apple Watch cannot detect heart attacks. If you ever experience chest
  pain, pressure, tightness, or what you think is a heart attack, call
  emergency services immediately.
  Apple Watch is not constantly looking for AFib. This means Apple Watch
  cannot detect all instances of AFib, and people with AFib may not get
  a notification.
  If you’re not feeling well, you should talk to your doctor even if you
  don’t get a notification. Symptoms such as a rapid, pounding, or
  fluttering heartbeat, dizziness, or fainting, can indicate a serious
  condition.
  Do not change your medication without talking to your
  doctor.
  In some instances, the notification may indicate the presence of an
  irregular heart rhythm other than AFib.

Source: Heart rate notifications on your Apple Watch, Apple.


My 2017 iMac is unable to print! But my old Mac Mini prints just fine! Any insights? Today, something weird is happening: when I try to print (from TextEdit) from my iMac (2017, Retina 4k, running Mojave, printing to a network-connected HP 3055), it ACTS like the document printed, but nothing comes out. I tried cycling power on the printer; no joy. I tried rebooting; no joy. I tried removing and reinstalling the printer; No joy. I tried printing from other applications (Preview, OpenOffice); no joy. From the "HP LaserJet 3055..." application, I CAN'T print a test page, but I CAN reach the printer's web interface, and print a PCL font list from it.
When I copy the document that started this whole mess over to my old Mini (running Mountain Lion, I think), it prints FINE from there. But still no joy printing from my Mini.
Any insights?

HP asked Apple to disable the HP software last Friday and then re-enable it.  You can change the driver to AirPrint and know it you need to apply updates and reinstall your print drivers if that works.
See my answer here for how to manually install a fix if you don’t want to let Apple software updates fix your HP.

HP Easy Scan - "HP Scanner 3" will damage your computer
https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Installations/Essentials/hp-printer-essentials-S-5_14_8_4.pkg


How do I add youtube support to Safari 11.0? Safari 11.0 on High Sierra does not play any youtube.com videos. It displays instead:

Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available.
Click here to visit our frequently asked questions about HTML5 video.

Youtube videos work just fine on Chrome, but just avoiding advertising bombardment has been enough to become a fan of Safari (even though it's particularly slow at reading my brief start-up HTML file).

How do I add youtube support to Safari 11.0?

Go to Safari \ Preferences. Click on Extensions. If you see the extension "ClickToFlash", disable it.


How can I transfer my application to IPad I am thinking about development small applications for IPad and I'm just wondering how can I transfer my application to my IPad?

I don't have a plans to sell or to distribute my software among the other users.  All what I want is to use my app by myself.  How can I get it?

On a non jailbroken iPad you NEED to enroll iOS Dev Program, which cost 99$/Year and then use Xcode.

Cf : https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/

There may be other frameworks that work without jailbreaking and/or Xcode.


Can I use automator to select text then search spotlight for it? Basically, I have a spreadsheet of file names.  I want to select a file name and search 4 folders simultaneously for it.
I'd prefer for all the results to be listed in 1 Finder or 1 Spotlight window, but that's not necessary.
I feel like it should be something I can do with an Automator service that receives selected text but I haven't been able to figure it out.

I think the closest you are going to get is something like this.

( In a Automator Service  Document )

I am just show two folders here as an example.

The first action gathers the selected text into a variable.

Each Spotlight Action ignore the above actions output/input and uses the variable token as the search term.


How can I create a folder in the current directory in list view? I browse to a folder, then expand through a directory tree to find the file I'm looking for.  Now I want to create a folder at the current location within that tree.

"New Folder" from the menu creates the menu in the top-level directory instead of the current directory.
Right-clicking doesn't give any way to create a folder "in-place" - ie with reference to the file or directory I currently have clicked/highlighted.

Simplified example (thanks soulshined):

/Users/user/Downloads/
/Users/user/Downloads/Pictures
/Users/user/Downloads/Pictures/pic1.jpg
/Users/user/Downloads/Pictures/pic2.jpg
/Users/user/Downloads/Pictures/pic3.jpg
/Users/user/Downloads/Pictures/pic4.jpg
/Users/user/Downloads/Pictures/pic5.jpg

The finder window is opened on the /Users/user/Downloads directory, but I have used the tree-expanders to be looking at the files in .../Downloads/Pictures.

I want to add a folder under Pictures, but irrespective of how I invoke it, the new directory will always be created under Downloads.

(Obviously in this example it would be trivial to move it, but imagine the folder is a byzantine corporate shared directory tree,...)

Open the folder that you want to create a new folder in, then File > New Folder or Shift-Command-N.

OR

You have first to double-click the directory within which you want to create the new folder. Once you are inside, right-click and select "new directory".


Enter Responsive Design Mode Shortcut doesn't work In my Safari.app, Enter Responsive Design Mode Shortcut doesn't work, When i use CMD + Shift + R.
It goes, Reader mode ?
Any helps ? I want to give one more chance to Safari, instead of Chrome.
Thanks.

The shortcut in Safari for Responsive Design Mode is controlcommandR (not shift).
To activate this mode, you'll also need to make sure you have enabled the Develop menu. If you haven't, you can activate it by clicking on the Safari menu in the menu bar, then clicking Preferences, and under the Advanced tab enabling "Show Develop menu in menu bar."
Once the Develop menu is enabled, you'll see the Responsive Design Mode toggle (along with its associated keyboard shortcut) under the Develop menu in the menu bar, as pictured below:


Update to 10.14.1 on Mac Pro 5.1 results in black screen I tried to update my Mac Pro 5.1 with the delta updater to 10.14.1 from 10.14. I have a Sapphire RX 580 installed.

After some minutes I saw he load screen but after that the screen turned black. I waited for over 2 hours and restarted the computer. I put my old Radeon 5770 inside and started in recovery mode.

I restored from time machine, but the screen remains black.

Any suggestions?

I just had the same black screen issue on my 5,1 Mac Pro (also running a Sapphire RX 580). I tried putting back the original 5770, and after booting with that failed, I tried resetting the PRAM (power on and immediately hold Cmd-Opt-P-R until the machine restarts again) and that reset things and got the display working again.

It might have worked without swapping back to the older card first, I unfortunately didn’t try that, and I admit I hope not to find out. Thankfully it still was better than your OS reinstall, I was afraid it was headed that way.


Why does Force Quit Applications freeze? When an app freezes on my app, I will press Command ⌘+Option ⌥+Esc ⎋ to open the Force Quit window.

However, this will often take minutes, and clicking on the Force Quit button freezes the Force Quit window and makes the beach ball appear. The window confirming the force quit only shows once the application unfreezes.

Also, if I right-click the Dock icon while the app is frozen, then the Dock will freeze, but it doesn't freeze when I just pass over the icon.

It is also possible to move the application's windows.

So how is it possible for some tasks not to be frozen, while the most important task (the Force Quit window) freezes at any interaction? And what do you do when the Force Quit window itself freezes?

The Force Quit window usually freezes when the system is paging heavily. (Same with the Dock.) Your computer could probably do with more RAM.

You can move windows around when they're frozen because OS X's window manager isn't frozen, and it controls basic window functions like minimize and move.


Can a lightning cable plug get short circuited by a metal surface? I have a couple of lightning connectors on a flat surface, ready to plug into an iPhone or iPad for charging. At the same time, a Macbook or iPad is sometimes placed near that surface.

Can the body of the Macbook or iPad actually short circuit the lightning connector? (since their 4 pins are exposed), and have potential fire hazard at the adapter if it is the official Apple adapter or the popular Anker brand?

I do not think that that can happen: when you look carefully at the lightning connector you will see that the metal body of your mac will touch the upperside of the lightning connector which is one band only and not one of the contacts that are on the sides.


MacBook Pro clicking wont work! I have a 2011 13" MacBook Pro. It has had no problems up until now. Suddenly, clicking won't work! I thought that it was the touchpad that wasn't working right, but then I connected a mouse and the problem still persists! Sometimes it doesn't want to click, and other times it won't stop clicking. I have gone online and tried everything that people have recommended but nothing works!

To restore some functionality, go to System Preferences > Trackpad, and tick the box next to "Tap to click".

It's possible this is a software or driver issue. However:

If the trackpad does not depress with a "click-clack" noise when you push the lower left or right corner, it's possible you have a hardware issue: Something is preventing it from moving internally. On a 2011 MacBook Pro this can be caused by:

• Battery swelling
• Improperly adjusted Trackpad screw (movement over time can cause the screw to rotate)
• Trackpad hardware failure

To diagnose the cause, inspect the bottom case of your MacBook Pro. Is the case swollen under the trackpad, either visibly or by touch? If so, your battery should be replaced immediately.

If the trackpad doesn't depress when pushed, it's most likely a stuck trackpad (screw adjustment) or a trackpad hardware failure.

Repairing Disk Permissions can sometimes solve input issues.

Go to Applications > Utilities > launch Disk Utility. From the First Aid tab, select your Hard Drive in the left field, then click the Verify Disk Permissions button. If you find errors, you will need to restart to repair them.

Restart while holding down CMD + R, select Disk Utilities from the menu (if you aren't there already), select your Hard Drive from the left hand field, and then click Repair Disk Permissions.

You can also try resetting the System Management Controller (SMC), by using the procedure here:

(From Link Below):
• Portable Macs with non-removable batteries: Make sure the Mac is plugged in to AC power. On the built-in keyboard, press and hold the Shift, Option, and Control keys on the left side and press the power button. Release all the keys at once, and then turn the Mac on normally.

• Portable Macs with removable batteries: Disconnect the AC power cord and remove the battery. Press the power button, hold it for 5 seconds, and then let go. Put the battery back in, reconnect the power cord, and turn the Mac on normally.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2881177/how-to-reset-your-macs-nvram-pram-and-smc.html


How to create a desktop icon for downloaded iOS apps ("Find My Friends")? I've installed the Apple created "Find My Friends" app. It works great. But the only place I can launch it from is the App Store application. Every other app I've installed automatically creates a desktop icon.

How can I create a desktop icon for apps that are installed, but don't have desktop icons yet? Namely, Find My Friends?

Find My Friends on macos is not an application, per se, it is a part of the operating system and as such you access it through the Notification Center. You do, however, have to add it to the Notification Center.

Tap the notification center icon in the Mac's menu bar (top right corner) then click "Today" and then "Edit" down at the bottom. you can then add "Find My Friends." OSXDaily has a run through with screen shots.

So you can't install an icon for Find My friends.


how dangerous is it to give zsh full disk access? I have a shell script that runs a few (Duplicacy) backup commands. It works fine when I manually run the script from terminal (cd to the directory where it is and then ./backup.sh).
To make it run automatically I created a launch agent (a .plist file). When it runs now, I get only "operation not permitted" errors whenever Duplicacy attempts to open a preference file or any other file to do its backups. The permission of the script is 755, and it's owned by the same user as the the files Duplicacy tried to open.
Quite a bit of research suggests that I should open Security & Privacy in Preferences and allow zsh to have full disk access. I tried this and it solved the problem.
Is this overkill and dangerous for this issue? Is it ok for zsh to have full disk access?

There’s no inherent danger per se with respect to ZSH; it’s only a shell.
What is “dangerous” is what you run in the shell.   Most users don’t use the shell so securing it gives a nice level of extra security so when they inadvertently download nefarious apps from the Internet, they will have the protection that the shell doesn’t have full disk access.
Is it overkill?  In my opinion, no.  If you run scripts like this backup script, you’re going to want access to more than just one or two directories (which you can do, by the way); you’ll want access to the whole disk.


How to swap Ctrl and Function key? I'm trying to swap Ctrl and Fn on Catalina without downloading a new app. As suggested in multiple articles, I tried going to System Preferences > Keyboard > keyboard > Modifier Keys.. in hopes to simply swap the function of two keys. However, Fn is missing from the list of modifier keys. Am I missing something here? Do I need to do something else to make Fn key show up there?
EDIT: I'm using Macbook Pro with touch bar.

From Apple documentation (Change the behaviour of the modifier keys on Mac)

On macOS 10.13 and later, you can also change the behaviour of the
Function key on keyboards that have an Fn key – except keyboards with
a Touch Bar.


Applications and preferences on USB drive Is it possible to have applications, plugins and preferences installed on portable media such as USB drive?

I have two identical computers, one at work and one at home, and I'd like to have the exact same setup on both. Example on applications I use:

Firefox (with extensions)
Sublime Text
Linux programs in Terminal
uTorrent
Alfred

Applications (i.e. .app bundles) can be stored anywhere, including external media. Preferences is more complicated, although the simple solution is probably to symlink the preference files and container to the external media.


Why is my phone not making space after I delete multiple long videos? I have the iPhone 6, running iOS 9.1, I had lots of videos (many were multiple minutes long) that took up too much space, I started with (according to my settings app) about 400 megabytes free, after posting the videos to youtube and deleting the videos from my phone, it says I still have about 400 megabytes free. Whats the deal? I've synced my phone to my computer and the iTunes program says I have 1.6 gigs free. Is my phone just displaying incorrectly?

iOS is keeping you safe by saving all deleted videos and photos in a special album called Recently Deleted. The media files in there gets deleted after 30 days.

In order to free up the "imaginary space" that you think you got after deleting, empty out this album and you should see an increase of free space.


Hidden files saved by Mac OS X into USB drive I inserted some USB device (I don't quite know which partition type it was) into my Mac OS X Yosemite, copied one file from this device into my Mac, and saved one txt file from TextEdit into this device, I then unplugged the device. During this process, which information about my Mac was stored on the USB (for instance, name of the author of the txt file or other metadata, info about my hardware), and where (for instance, in the form of hidden files or logs)?

In the normal course of events, I would not expect any information about your Mac to be transferred to a USB drive.
TextEdit can be configured to contain the Author's name in metadata for Rich Text files (.rtf), but not Text files (.txt). See TextEdit's Preferences dialog, or File > Show Properties.
The Finder might save a .DS_Store file to the drive, which would contain data about the folders on the disk.e.g. custom icons, position in windows, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.DS_Store
No logs or info about your Mac or your username should be copied.


How would I restore Spotlight search to my menu bar? (10.7) For some inexplicable reason, I decided to delete (not hide) Spotlight from my Mac via a terminal command. I downloaded the 10.7.2 update, hoping it would fix this by redownloading Spotlight, but it did not.

This is what happens when you give an idiot access to the terminal.

For reference, I this is my menubar right now:

I tried this method to be sure I simply didn't hide the Spotlight icon.

Spotlight is still in the system preferences.

I am just interested in fixing this. I should note that I didn't reinstall the OS.

Thanks for the help.

I would imagine that inverting your commands would do the trick. Try:

sudo mdutil -a -i on
sudo chmod 755 /System/Library/CoreServices/Search.bundle/Contents/MacOS/Search
sudo killall SystemUIServer


Mac storage is full but iCloud is not, what to do? I have got a MacBook pro with 500GB of total storage and an iCloud subscription for 2TB.

iCloud is synched with my MacBook, this means that any file in my desktop and documents will be stored automatically in iCloud.

With time, however, the MacBook storage is getting full and now I have got only ~2GB left (in the Mac) but >1.70TB available on iCloud.

How should I deal with this?
I desire to keep iCloud on all my Mac devices...MacBook Pro included but how can I avoid to save files in both MacBook storage AND iCloud? I would like to save them only on iCloud.

I still cannot get around this.
Any suggestion?

Thanks

As long as you're running High Sierra, you can have your Mac take care of this automatically. Go into the iCloud Drive system preferences and check the box for "Optimize Mac Storage". Your Mac will then remove local copies of old files when more storage space is needed, while keeping them on iCloud Drive.


Simple deletion of files using text file list won't work I have to delete files specified by remove.txt
which looks like this:

    img_8138.dng.jpg
    img_8140.dng.jpg
    img_8141.dng.jpg
    img_8143.dng.jpg

I've tried several suggestions from the web:

while read file; do rm "$file"; done < remove.txt

xargs -rd '\n' --arg-file=remove.txt rm -i --

rm $(cat /Volumes/space1/remove.txt)

xargs rm <remove.txt etc

The files are in the current directory some of which
are to be deleted (remove.txt). Deletion works if I use rm
on the current directory. But using the list I get the
error below every time.

rm: cannot remove ‘img_8147.dng.jpg’: No such file or directory

Any ideas what's going wrong?

That error is expected. There is no full path leading to the directory containing the files within remove.txt. Thus, when you run rm $(cat /Volumes/space1/remove.txt) outside of the directory these files reside in, you get that error.

Simply run:

cd /Volumes/space1; rm `cat remove.txt`

Or modify the remove.txt file to include the full path.


A modern and faster alternative to Disk Inventory X Disk Inventory X was kind of nice, but it is painfully slow.

Are there any modern and faster alternatives?

I only care about the disk space, and not about the file type stats and about the graph which Disk Inventory X displays.

Starting with macOS Sierra, macOS comes with an built in app from Apple called Storage Management, which is a part of the System Information app. In different tabs it shows you the largest apps installed, as well as a folder viewer with their sizes listed. A special tab shows the largest files over all of your folders, which I find very practical.
To launch Storage Management open Spotlight Search by hitting ⌘ Command  Space, type "Storage Management" and hit ⏎ Return.
Pros:

Free,
Fast,
Provided by Apple, so it knows what it's doing.

You can find more information here.


Profile manager pending on some devices I have this problem that most of the options in the system preferences are greyed out, even when I log in as an admin.
But I need to log in to my iCloud account to get some software to run on these machines. So I changed the restrictions payload and tried to push it.
But for some reasons only 4 of the 12 Macs will update the settings.

All Macs are turned on and connected to the local network and the internet.

I tried to figure out if any settings on the machines 1-4 are different from 5-12. The IP is manually inserted with the same DNS server address. They are all running on 10.10.5 and even the caching seems to work. The protocol on the server does not give me back any error message.
I can not even remove the device from profile manager.

What could it be? Port problem? Certificate?

I don't know what to search for. Any suggestions how to get into system preferences? Terminal works if I log in as admin.

As an admin you may be able to bypass the managed preference settings. Log out and then back in while holding the Option key. If allowed you'll see a dialog allowing you to disable managed preferences.

As far as the clients not receiving the profiles check the system.log file for errors. Look for entries from mdmclient. On the server, check the Profile Manager logs in Server.app or in /Library/Logs/ProfileManager/ probably starting with the profilemanager.log file.

Is this a user-level profile or a device-level profile? I think user user-level profiles are only installed when the user logs in.

If all else fails you can try removing all profiles:

sudo profiles -D


Selling my mac mini which has Lion installed.. Can I transfer the Lion purchase to the buyer of mac? I purchased Lion from the App Store, installed it, etc.  Now that I'm selling my Mac Mini, I'd like to keep Lion on there since: 1) I have no need for the purchase anymore since any new mac buys will have it preinstalled, and 2) it'll make my mac mini for sale that much more desirable of a buy.

What I've done so far is boot into Recovery Console (maybe I have the name wrong? -- Cmd+R mode during booting), and I've done the Secure Formatting of the hard disk, and when I go to reinstall Lion, it wants me to put my Apple ID in to download Lion.

Unfortunately, I didn't save the dmg file when I downloaded Lion, and I have been unable to find it on the computer (i.e. to create an installer disk as I've read about online). I don't even know if this bypasses the need for an Apple ID.

Any suggestions is appreciated.

There are two types of Lion licenses.

licenses tied to one mac (hardware linked license)
licenses tied to one Apple ID (person linked license)

The former transfers, the latter does not.

You can of course hold option when clicking Purchased in the App Store to download another copy of your Lion installer (or download Lion again onto your mac using recovery). The installer would not have asked for your Apple ID if it determined that mac deserved lion due to a hardware linked lion. You could of course install lion the first time on your soon to be sold mac, but the person buying the mac would be "without a paddle" if you hadn't prepared them that they might need to pay to reinstall their OS if their mac ever crashes or gets a new hard drive.


Make VIPs folder on OS X Mail the same as on iOS? The VIPs folder on iOS and OS X seems to have very different behavior.

On iOS it shows only messages from VIPs that are also in the inbox.  On OS X it shows messages from all VIPs in every mailbox.

Is there any way to get the VIP folder in OS X to act like the one in iOS?

It’s obscure:

expand the VIP mailbox so the mailbox list on the left shows all your VIPs — each one has a separate mailbox
go up to the View menu, select Sort By (!), and down the bottom you can choose Inbox Only or All Mailboxes

Notes:

despite appearing to be specific to each VIP, the setting seems to affect all of them at once
you seem to have to click off a VIP for the setting to show

Mail 8.2


Can I change compression settings on built-in archive utility? I have a bunch of files I want to compress to stick in my dropbox account (as a single archive file.) When I select all the files in Finder and right click, I get the choice to "compress", which does create an archive.zip file. But the file isn't any smaller than all of the individual files put together.

Is there any way to change the compression settings on the archive utility?

If you launch Archive Utility directly from /System/Library/CoreServices/, you can create gzip-compressed .cpgz archives, which can have a higher compression rate than zip compression. However if you're compressing already compressed files (like most music and video files), you likely won't get much space savings, if any.

If you want to try however, open up Archive Utility, open the preferences, then change the Use archive format: setting to compressed archive, and create a new archive from the file menu (⌘K). This setting only affects archives created when you open the Archive Utility app. Ones created with the Compress option in the Finder's context menu will still be zip archives.


Can Numbers ’09 import an Excel XML file? Can Numbers ’09 (part of the iWork suite) import XML files? Specifically, the format created by Excel when exporting as "XML Spreadsheet 2003."

I can't just use Excel's native format because the files are generated for our clients by a web app.

If Numbers can't handle these files, are there any other plaintext formats that could be used? I could use csv, but I would prefer to store formatting within the exported file itself.

Numbers ’09 supports Excel native format (.xls) but it can’t convert from an Excel XML Spreadsheet. In fact, if you rename it as “xls” and try to open it (trying to fool Numbers), you’ll probably see all the XML but not the actual spreadsheet. Which is more scary than Psychosis II back in the 80s.

Your only bet is some CVS or TEXT format, which excel can even export with Macintosh format for line endings and carrier return (if I’m not mistaken).

The big drawback is that all format and binary stuff is automagically lost in translation (certain pun intended). ;)

You’ll get the data, but not the format.

Another alternative is trying to automate the Excel XML to Excel Native format, even if your webapp outputs a XML, you could try to “transform them” before anything else.

For that, I haven’t investigated but you can start with a google query like this. There seem to be some Windows solutions, maybe something you can use/try.


Reorder items in Reminders app Can't find a way to reorder tasks in Reminders. Am I missing something or it really is not possible?

Update: Apple added this feature to iOS 6.

Currently, there is no method to change the order of reminders. Neither priority nor due date of a reminder has an influence on the position in the list.


Remove partition and restore the space without erasing Time ago I split  the hard drive (500gb) in two partitions (250 each), now I don't need them anymore, so I have first erased successfully one partition and now I have still the second one (Mac HD 2)

See the image attached

What I need now is to reapply the 250 gb I have gained from deleting to the Mac HD2, how is it possible? I am in the situation that I don't want erase it but I need the 250 gb left there.

Disk utility can't resize the last partition on a drive.
One way would be to use GParted to move the partition and then resize it.

Boot the Mac with a Ubuntu Live CD.
Run GParted and move the second partition to the beginning of the free space;
Reboot to Mac OS X.
Verify and repair the external disk with Disk Utility. It found a minor error on the volume header of the second partition.
Resize the second partition to the end of free space.

In your case it's a bit easier, since you're only occupying half of the drive.

Create a new partition in the empty space
Clone the second partition to the first one
Delete the 2nd partition
Resize the 1st partition


One click force delete unsaved images in Preview I have made many screenshots and pasted into Preview and do not want to walk through the "Save" dialog for each one

Yes I could click on Delete (or tab five times as I end up doing instead) but I am a keyboardist and after doing this many dozens of times I'd rather use a quick keyboard shortcut . Is there any such animal?

Cmd + Q brings up this prompt for me:

Then click: Delete and Quit


Using separate Bluetooth keyboard and mouse simultaneously with my iPad With the recent announcement of the Magic Keyboard for iPad I've been looking to see what I can improvise during the current COVID-19 supplies crunch. I already have a Bluetooth keyboard that I use with my iPad. My iPad is running iPadOS 13.4.

Would I be able to purchase a generic Bluetooth mouse from a retailer and use that simultaneously with the generic Bluetooth keyboard in interacting with my iPad?

Would I be able to purchase a generic Bluetooth mouse from a retailer and use that simultaneously with the generic Bluetooth keyboard in interacting with my iPad?

Yes. It's possible to simultaneously pair a Bluetooth keyboard and a Bluetooth mouse with an iPad running iPadOS 13.4 or later. The screenshot shows an Apple Magic Keyboard and Apple Magic Mouse 2 paired and used simultaneously.

Before you invent into a generic Bluetooth keyboard and a mouse, make sure they are compatible with iPad and you'd be fine.


Automator action to upload a file/folder Is there an Automator action that can upload a file/folder?

Specifically, I want to upload a folder automatically at a set date/time. I know I can create a "Calendar Alarm" action that'll trigger based on a calendar event – but I don't actually see an action that can upload to a server.

You can combine Automator's Run Shell Script step with the command line tool curl.

curl can upload files using the -F flag followed by a file path. See ariejan de vroom's uploading files with Curl for an example.

Your shell script can be passed a list of files from earlier Automator steps:

for f in "$@"
do
    curl -i -F "$f" http://example.org/upload
done


Using Touch ID with Amazon App According to the update in the App Store, the Amazon app now supports login via Touch ID. Has anyone figured out how to use it?

The application keeps you logged in to your account once you log in unless you log out, but if you do anything that would require a password entry like managing your wish list, a Touch ID prompt comes up giving you the option to use your fingerprint instead of typing in your password


How to transfer files from CD/DVD onto iPad Pro? I need to access files from CDs and DVDs on my iPad Pro to print them. I use digital crafting files and can download them from Internet without issue, but on discs I own, I cannot work out how to transfer from the discs to the iPad.

There’s no native way read a digital disc on an iPad, and I don’t think a 3rd party manufacturer makes such a solution.
You will need to extract these files from the discs on a computer, macOS or Windows, then upload them to whatever cloud service you’re using to make them available on the Internet to your iPad. If you don’t have a cloud service, iCloud is one option, as nohillside mentions above, but there are others such as Dropbox or Google Drive. Dropbox and Drive have iOS apps to handle file transfers. I use all three cloud services on my iOS and macOS devices.
Disclaimer: I am not an employee of Apple, Dropbox nor Google.


Iphone 8 App Store Not Working No Fixes Have Helped So I recently got off android and bought the Iphone 8 with IOS 11.0.2 running. Everything was good until about a day after I bought it. I noticed I couldn't download apps anymore. I would sign into my apple id then the app store would tell me its all good then it just gave me the spinning circle and never downloads. I have tried restoring twice and once with a new apple id and still same problem. I have tried going to the At&t store to get it fixed yet still nothing they even gave me a replacement phone. Even with that phone its the same issues. I can download apps for about a day then it just shuts off again. Anyone know anything that could fix this? Or am I just going to have to wait until IOS 11.0.4 comes out. FYI this issues is on both 11.0.2 and 11.0.3 I did try updating it. Any help at all would be very appreciated. Thanks

I had the same issue with my new iPhone 8 Plus. I came from an iPhone 7 and never had that issue, although it seems relates to the Apple ID.

What i did to temporaly work around it was to shut down the phone and turn it on again. Now i was able to download and update apps again.

Also you can try to reset your keychain.

Settings > [Your name]  > iCloud > Keychain

Also, try updating to iOS 11.0.3
At the time i had the issue i was with iOS 11.0.1


automount: Another automount is running I'm trying to reload NFS mounts on my machine. What has worked in the past is:

sudo dscl .
delete Mounts/
exit
sudo autmount -vc

But now I get the error:

automount: Another automount is running

Doing a

sudo ps -ax | grep automount

shows there's only one process (besides the grep command itself) that contains "automount":

admin% sudo ps -ax | grep -i automount
59770 ??         0:00.01 /usr/sbin/automount
60201 ttys018    0:00.00 grep -i automount

I've tried killing it and rerunning sudo automount -vc and sudo automount -vcu, but no luck.

Has anyone else encountered this error message, or have any ideas on how to fix it?

I'm running Mac OS X 10.10.1 (Yosemite) on my local machine. If it's useful at all, the remote file server is running Mac OS X 10.7.5.

I see a process autofsd, which is performing the auto mount, but I run Mac OS X 10.12.6 so maybe that is different.

When I run automount it updates the mounts (from the auto_master file)


Simulate user login using command-line utilities Sometimes, I need to create a login session (create windowserver instance, run login items / launchagents) of an admin user, because a lot of software cannot be run under root (but can be run as another user using sudo -u <admin user> <path to app executable> (which requires a windowserver instance of that user or else it will hang every few seconds)), and I don't want to spend a minute logging into another user, waiting for everything to load, and then log back to root. How would I simulate a real user login in command-line?

To quickly switch between accounts/logins, enable and use Fast User Switching. First login will (of course) take a while as usual, but afterwards switching is very quick. And unless you run big CPU-hogging applications in several accounts at once the additional resource needs are minimal.


Error related to plist complex key name I am trying to determine how to resolve an error related to a complex key name in a property list file. The plist file contents are as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>19781A58-AAF7-4D5A-AZB2-8D82F2A3ZA97@example.com</key>
    <dict>
        <key>due</key>
        <date>2018-02-27T05:00:00Z</date>
        <key>start</key>
        <date>2018-02-26T15:08:52Z</date>
    </dict>
</dict>
</plist>

The file was created using plutil and the key/value pair as shown above was accepted/created without an issue. However, if I attempt to remove the key/value (plutil -remove "19781A58-AAF7-4D5A-AZB2-8D82F2A3ZA97@example.com" example.plist), I receive the following error:

example.plist: Could not modify plist, error: No value to remove at key path 19781A58-AAF7-4D5A-AZB2-8D82F2A3ZA97@example.com

The reason I believe this has to do with the complex key name is that I can manually change the key name to “Test”, at which point the removal command works as expected.

I tried both quote-enclosing the key name and not, as well as escaping the period and at sign (@), but the same error was observed across all approaches.

The solution does involve escaping characters, but it turns out that the plist utility does not respond well to “over-escaping”. If I escape only the periods in the key name and nothing else, it works fine. Specifically, the following command resulted in a successful key deletion:

plutil -remove "19781A58-AAF7-4D5A-AZB2-8D82F2A3ZA97@example\.com" example.plist


How to make it clear that a value is being changed using keynote I am using keynote to make a presentation.

Let's say that following 3 lines. And the third line is something like

We are opening a section for kids
In June use 20% discout on all kids items
On all kids items 30 days money back guarantee

Next I want this to happen.

When I hit next then a big "X" come over slowly on "20%"
When I hit next then I want "20%" to be replaced by "40%"

How do I do that in keynote. I just purchased keynote so I am using the latest version.

Use the Inspector tool to add build-in and build-out transition to your texts and cross.

You'll have 4 build order steps :

cross fade in
cross disappear
text "20%" disappear
text "40%" appear

Play with duration and 'start build' settings to obtain desired effect.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X-5AizWIJE for a screencast ;)


Route USB mic input to System Audio output for Camtasia 2? I'm using Camtasia 2 for the Mac on El Capitan (10.11.3). I need to use two microphones so the audio will record to separate audio tracks. Camtasia 2 has one input audio source that does recognize the digital audio interface, a MOTU 828 MK3.(Only for one channel, but that's OK). This is normally used to record from a USB microphone.

The other audio source you can record from into Camtasia 2 is the System Audio. The System Audio is what plays the computer's alert sounds. I'd like to use the System Audio as a second audio input source from a plug-in USB microphone. It would be the only USB mic used in this configuration.

So it appears what I need to be able to do, is route the USB mic's output to be part be added or replacing the System Audio. This way, the USB mic can be recorded to the System Audio track, thus giving me a second microphone to be used.

How can this be accomplished? Is there some set-up using Audio Midi and Soundflower that can do this? Or is there some other sound utility which can do this?

It looks like I need something which will route the USB mic audio to be played out the System Audio so that Camtasia 2 will record it.

The goal is, so the net result is that MOTU 828 MK3's output gets recorded to the USB Mic audio, and the USB mic actually plugged into the USB on the Mac will be recorded into the System Audio.

Rogue Amoeba's Loopback will allow you to route virtually any input/output to/from any Mac application. It is easier to use than Soundflower, and you can create multiple routings (which Soundflower does not) -- but it is a paid (and supported) app (unlike Soundflower).


iPhone 4S won't power off I powered off my iPhone (sample instructions). I see the progress wheel for a few seconds after holding down the power button and sliding the 'slide to power off' and then I see the silver Apple logo as if it powered on immediately.

Is this a reset and not a power off? Did this before going to sleep and woke up with a dead battery.

I've struggled with low battery life and did the full replacment of operating system. If I have to go through that again, I'll get a new phone.

Version: 6.1.2

This indicates a hardware problem with your phone. Contact AppleCare, or make a Genius Bar reservation at your local Apple Store


Screen recording with Quicktime only puts 360p quality video on YouTube I used QuickTime's screen recorder to record a 23 minute video of a section of my Macbook screen and it uploaded my video to 360p as the highest selectable quality on YouTube. How can I change the quality it uses?

Although QuickTime does give you the option in File > Export to export as 720p, it was just a matter of waiting another 20 minutes for the video to be upgraded to 720p.


MacBook detects a 4GB DIMM as a 1GB DIMM? I upgraded the memory on my MacBook (unibody, Core 2 Duo 2GHz).

I followed the instructions here and bought a single 4GB DDR3-1066MHz SODIMM.

After installing it, the MacBook only detects 1GB:

BANK 0/DIMM1:

Size:   1 GB
Type:   DDR3
Speed:  1067 MHz
Status: OK
Manufacturer:   0x80AD
Part Number:    0x484D54313132533641465236432D47372020
Serial Number:  0x102E0000

Did I interpret the specs wrong? Should I have gone with 2+2 instead?

This points in that direction: "two SO-DIMM slots support up to 4GB".

Anyone got any experience?

You have a late 2008 MacBook Unibody (aluminum) aka MacBook5,1?

Your second link is pointing to an article about a different model.

According to Apple your computer supports up to 4GB ram (total), but people are running successfully up to 8GB.

Reputable RAM vendor such as OWC offers 8GB kit for your MacBook, however you should upgrade your EFI (quote from OWC):

  How to you ensure your MacBook/MacBook Pro can address 8GB of RAM

  Check the Boot ROM Version in your System Profiler at this link:
  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1237

  MacBook Pros with a Model ID of MacBookPro5,1 should have a Boot ROM Version of MBP51.007E.B05.

  MacBooks with a Model ID of MacBook5,1 should have a Boot ROM version of MB51.007D.B03

  Machines with other Model IDs are not affected and don't need an update.
  If your Boot ROM version does not match the numbers above, download the appropriate
  For MacBook Pros (MacBookPro5,1)
  MacBook Pro EFI Firmware Update 1.8 (Apple.com Download)
  For MacBooks (MacBook5,1)
  MacBook EFI Firmware Update 1.4 (Apple.com Download)
  Once you have ensured that the Boot ROM is the correct version,
  make sure your Operating System is updated to Mac OS X v10.6.6.
  You must be running Snow Leopard to address 8GB on these systems.

Once you upgrade your EFI, you should be fine.


How much free space does fsck need to rebuild the catalog file? I am in single-user mode, running fsck -fy.

It attempts to rebuild the catalog file and exits with a status of -34, complaining of a disk full error.

How much free space does the disk need to have for fsck to do its work?  Right now it has over 150 GB free, which is about 25% of the disk.

To rebuild the catalog you need continuous space. Obviously, you do not have enough.


How to close all windows of Mac OS X Finder? Having 30 or 40 windows of different folders open, is there any way to close all of them at once? I tried to relunch Finder, and I was happy for a second having no open window anymore, but it reopened all the folder windows again :-)

Yes, you can use the shortcut ⌥ option + ⌘ command + W.


Custom icons disappeared from folders in Home directory I reinstalled macOS couple days back, I found that I couldn't have a capitalized user/home folder anymore (Gio became gio). I'm used to having it with a capital.

Looked around online for a bit finding a way to change it using the root user. I reboot everything is all working well - permission are correct (as far as I noticed).

After updating the username, I notice that the Desktop, Downloads, Documents, Home, Pictures, Music etc. folders in the Home directory doesn't have their custom sidebar and folder icons anymore.

Does anybody know how I can fix this?

A possible reason for this behaviour can be that the Home folder isn't set correctly for the user.

Launch System Preferences app and open Users & Groups pane. Click on the lock icon towards the bottom and enter admin password. Now right click on your user and select Advanced Options... from the context menu. In the pane presented verify if the Home directory is set correctly. You can click on the Choose... button to easily browse to and select the Home directory.

It is recommended to restart the system after making the changes to restore the sanity.


System logs backup with Time Machine It seems that Time Machine does not backup system.log in /private/var/log.

Mac OS X 10.9.5/Six core Intel Xeon

Can I force that file to be backed up?

By default the contents of the /private/var/log directory is excluded from Time Machine backups.  This can be changed to include the contents however because this is a system file it is probably more prudent to backup the excluded files you would like to have backed up by copying the files to a location that is included in Time Machine backups.  That said however, I disagree with cppl's statement "Given that changing core files is always a bad idea" because when done properly and with the knowledge and understanding of what one is doing it's just not an issue!

If you really want to include /private/var/log directory in your Time Machine backups then here is what you can do. To make this easier and more safe I'd recommend using this tested script.  It first backs up the bundle and plist and only removes /private/var/log if it in its default location within the .plist file. Note: This script must be run using sudo or as root.

In a Terminal:

touch modtm
open modtm

In the opened modtm document:

Copy and paste the code shown below into the document and save it, then close it.

Back in the the Terminal, make the script executable:

chmod u+x modtm

Now with the script ready to execute, in the Terminal:

sudo ./modtm

Enter your password, which will not show as you type it, and then press Enter.

If defaults were in play then /private/var/log should have been safely removed, by virtue of first backing up, from the StdExclusions.plist file.

Code:

#!/bin/bash

set -ex

    # Make sure script was run using 'sudo' or by 'root'.

if [[ $(id -u) != 0 ]]; then
   echo "This script must be run as root." 1>&2
   exit 1
 else
        # Set variables.

    b="/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle"
    f="/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd.bundle/Contents/Resources/StdExclusions.plist"
    e="/private/var/log"

        # Backup, by copy, both the bundle and plist.

    [[ ! -d ${b%%.*}.ORI.${b##*.} ]] && cp -aR "$b" "${b%%.*}.ORI.${b##*.}"
    [[ ! -f $f.ORI ]] && cp -a "$f" "$f.ORI"

        # Get the value of the first element of the 'FileContentsExcluded' array.

    v="$(/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print :FileContentsExcluded:0" "$f")"

    if [[ $v == $e ]]; then
            # Target value matched, delete it from .plist file.
        /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Delete :FileContentsExcluded:0"  "$f"
        echo "$e removed from $f"
    else
        echo "$e not found where expected!"
        exit 1
    fi
    exit 0
fi

Image showing syntactical highlighting:

Note: This script cannot be run in OS X 10.11 unless SIP is temporarily disabled.


Ball and Stick molecule modelling program for Mac OS Does anyone know any good programs for making ball and stick molecular models on the Mac? I'm looking for something to produce high quality 3D models with nice lighting, like this on

from wikipedia.

Try Avogadro. It's open source, and cross platform.


Apple logic board part number replacement issue I'd like to replace my MBP unibody early 2011 logic board that's broken, so I don't know which is the right choice because two Apple part number seems to be available. The first one is 6616080 and the second one is 6615850 and I'd like to know the difference before. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks

Those are interchangable parts.

Over at CmdMacParts, it lists those two part numbers for the same board:


Stop iPhone from sending iMessages to OS X I recently got an iMac and I set up that my photos and music from my iMac get downloaded to my iPhone.

But now my messages on my iPhone are getting sent to my iMac. I went on my iPhone and clicked Settings > Messages > Send and Recieve but it doesn't show an email that is set up to my Mac. I also can't find preferences for messages on my Mac. How do I stop iMessages from my Phone going to my Mac?

Go to Messages on your Mac, open Preferences (in the menu bar, it's Messages > Preferences), click on Accounts, click on your Apple ID in the list of messaging accounts, and uncheck "Enable this account."


Are these temperatures normal? I have a 13-inch, Mid 2012 Macbook Pro that constantly overheats. Normally, the only app I will be using will be Google Chrome and I will still experience these temperatures. But occasionally I use Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom and my Mac gets even hotter. Here are the temperatures according to iStat.

Should I be worried? Should I get a new fan?

Yes. The processors are designed to run at 100 C which is within the margin of measuring error for the thermocouples in my experience.

The blower speed looks good and you might get a little extra work done if you can put it in a cooler room or get more airflow overall under the body of external case and lower the top case / battery temps a bit.

MacBook Pro Early 2015 13" temperature
Is it normal for a 15 inch rMBP to get extremely hot during use?

The CPU and other temps will still be high throttle work to keep things at max temp and even in a 50 F degree room you would expect everything but the palm rest and battery to be warm for CPU intensive workloads.

Fan Speed and Temperature on MBP Retina 13 2013

I might have someone that knows how to use delicate screwdrivers to check for lint or dust in the case, but absent other signs you have what looks to be normal sensor readings.


Solving: Unable to add server. The plugin encountered an error processing request. (10001) How do I join an Active Directory domain when I get the 10001 error? What is the real cause of the failure?

This question is about the famous failure to join an Active Directory from OS X which seems to appeared somewhere around 10.7 or so, but which seems to still be consistent, even with 10.9 or 10.10 (beta).

Assumptions:

ABC hostname of the OS X machine
EXAMPLE.COM is the domain to be joined (not a .local domain)

Checklist (collected from various sources)

Current OS X username does is admin and does not overlap with an AD username.
OS X hostname resolves with the DNS of the domain to be joined to (ABC.EXAMPLE.COM). Test that it works from other machines too. This is a documented reason for failure to join on Linux machines, tested it myself and solving this solved the problem on Linux.
Machine is on LAN during the Join (better to disable Wireless while doing this)
AD user is allowed to add machines to the domain. In some cases this does not require the user to be an Admin (that's my case)

In progress (bring more info and a full join script with debug logging)

    8544.14278, Node: /Active Directory, Module: ActiveDirectory - Authenticate to LDAP using Kerberos credential - 0
    8544.14278, Node: /Active Directory, Module: ActiveDirectory - verified connectivity to '10.80.0.150' with socket 13
    8544.14278, Node: /Active Directory, Module: ActiveDirectory - Computer account either already exists or DC is already Read/Write
    8544.14278, Node: /Active Directory, Module: ActiveDirectory - Adding record 'cn=nibbler,OU=MAC Machines,OU=EMEA,DC=example,DC=com' in 'example.com'
    8544.14278, Node: /Active Directory, Module: ActiveDirectory - ODNodeCustomCall failed with error 'Plugin error' (10001)

Resources:

https://discussions.apple.com/message/17793818

in my case, I got this error when tried to Bind MacBook Pro to Windows Domain. I had to shorten Mac Computer name by few characters to make it work. I guess there is a limitation in Windows AD on computer names.


Gray Exclamation Point when importing raw photos I have been having difficulty with importing RAW photos from my Canon EOS 77D. I am able to see the thumbnail of all photos (which leads me to believe that perhaps photos can process my images.)

But when I click on a photo, I get the following (Please ignore the high ISO):

What can I do so that I can see/edit my photos?

I checked Apple's Digital camera RAW formats supported by iOS 10 and macOS Sierra page and at present the Canon EOS 77D is not listed in terms of RAW format support.

I expect that support for your RAW format will be included in a future iOS and macOS software update.

In the meantime I would recommend you:

provide feedback to Apple
use one of the other formats


How to fix DNS resolving issues on Mountain Lion after waking from sleep? After I installed Mountain Lion the other day I've noticed something very annoying. Almost every time I wake my iMac (27", mid-2010, CI7) from sleep: it seems that something DNS-related is broken. When I try connecting to other machines using their IP (v4 & v6) addresses I can SSH and send pings, but resolving host names isn't working very well.

Now I have not yet tried checking my DNS server logs to see if the requests are even making it there. Though I suspect that the DNS request are not making it to the DNS server since a quick reboot of the client machine or using another client machine works ok.

I've seen a couple of mentions of similar problems on other sites but no credible answers to why this problem appears, one user who was using WiFi apparently "fixed" it by toggling some random seemingly unrelated WiFi and sleep settings which just makes me suspect that this issue is some setting that got broken.

I'd love to find a reliable workaround/solution to this problem but I've double-checked all settings in the power management and network preference panes and it all looks fine. I have also tried re-saving the settings after making some changes and then reverting to the original settings just to see if that fixed it for me as well, no such luck. How to fix DNS resolving after wake from sleep?

Edit: I am only using wired networking myself and wifi is completely turned off. Both IPv4 and IPv6 settings have been made manually.

The network is a plain old 192.168.1.0/24 subnet with all machines connected to a fairly cheap managed gigE switch, 100/100 Mbps FTTH connection that goes to a FreeBSD box which acts as the gateway, dhcp (isc-dhcp for 192.168.1.1-72) and DNS (bind) server. IPv6 connectivity is through a Sixxs tunnel. Pretty standard setup that hasn't caused any problems in the past.

I've had this exact same experience, though not every time. Sometimes it means sites that I have visited recently are unavailable but other sites I haven't visited in ages load just fine.

Usually flushing the DNS cache resolves it.

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder


Font of calendar in Preference pane of macOS What font is used in the calendar of macOS Date & Time preference pane?  Like the left box of this image, where it says Nov 2018 and Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa and 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 ....

You can also use font identifiers for this, in case they have this in their database.

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/visual-design/typography/

This suggests SF pro for macOS in recent versions.

  Since its introduction, San Francisco has gradually replaced most of
  Apple's other typefaces on their software and hardware products and
  for overall branding[13] and has replaced Helvetica Neue and Lucida
  Grande as the system typeface of macOS and iOS since OS X El Capitan
  and iOS 9.[14][3][15] Apple uses it on its website and for its product
  wordmarks, where it replaced Myriad Pro. It is also used on the
  keyboard of the 2015 MacBook and on the 2016 MacBook Pro, replacing
  VAG Rounded.[16] It is also used as Apple's corporate typeface.[17]

  Apple restricts the usage of the typeface by others. It is licensed to
  registered third-party developers only for the design and development
  of applications for Apple's platforms.[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_(sans-serif_typeface)#Usage


Need a download of Mojave Can someone tell me where to get MacOS Mojave?  I have a Mac which I have upgraded to Catalina, and I need to downgrade to run some legacy apps.

Thanks.

Use this link to download macOS Mojave from App Store:

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/macos-mojave/id1398502828?mt=12


How can I set a default contact for a phone number on iPhone? In my contact list, I have a number of contacts that share the same work phone number (synchronized from exchange server), because they are work colleagues. For instance:

James (Employee #1)
George (Employee #2)
Sarah (Employee #3)

the work name

I keep the home phone number for each contact so that when I want to speak to one of them, I can choose the contact and then where to try to reach them. I keep a separate contact for the work so that I can call there when I don't want to talk to anybody specific.

When anybody calls from the work  phone, I want the phone to display the work contact, not anybody in particular. Is there any way to specify that a phone number has a default contact?

Thanks!

Try this:

Open contacts
Find the record for you. If you don't have a record for yourself, create one.
Enter the work phone the employees will be calling from into one of your number phone slots.

Now, when the phone rings, it will say something like "Work or 3 others."


Are DNS and other services needed? I inherited a Mac OS X 10.8 server that is now only used as a file server.
Within the Server Apps settings it has File Sharing, Contacts, DNS, Mail, and Software Update services on.  We have enterprise DNS servers which I configured in the general network adapter settings.

Why would I continue to have DNS service "on" if I can rely on enterprise DNS servers to supply DNS routing for this server?  Also, do I need to keep running the Mail service for any reason (e.g. maybe so it can send server notifications, etc)?  And would this be the only reason to run the Contacts service?

None of the services (except File Sharing of course) is required. The only thing you have to add are proper DNS server settings in System Preferences > Network > interface > DNS and the Mac OS X server's host name in your enterprise's DNS database.

For server notifications you can use any valid email account (e.g. your admin or a special notification/monitoring account) in your enterprise.


How best should I delete this user I'm new to OSX and tried to create a user from the terminal which I no longer need and which I named incorrectly.

I see I can delete the user in System Preferences > Users & Groups but do I need to delete them from the terminal instead as this is where I created them?  If I delete them from the terminal what commands should I use?

Below are the commands I used to create the user:

sudo dscl . -create /Users/www-data UserShell /bin/bash
sudo dscl . -create /Users/www-data RealName "Lucius Q. User"
sudo dscl . -create /Users/www-data UniqueID "1010"
sudo dscl . -create /Users/www-data PrimaryGroupID 80
sudo dscl . -create /Users/www-data NFSHomeDirectory /Users/www-data

Have you tried sudo dscl . -delete /Users/www-data ? You might also want to delete /Users/www-data with rm -rf /Users/www-data.


Keep MacBook Pro awake in a clamshell mode + HDMI switcher setup I'm running a setup with the latest Retina MacBook Pro, a Windows desktop and a single external monitor.

Both machines are outputting display to a HDMI switcher, which connects to the monitor. I can switch between the sources with a button on the switcher.

The problem is that everytime I switch to the Windows machine, the Mac goes to sleep since it's in clamshell mode and it has no display connected. The VPN connection I use for work on the Mac keeps disconnecting because the machine goes to sleep.

I've tried fiddling with the power saving settings and other third party programs (including Caffeine and NoSleep) that are supposed to keep the machine awake, but none worked so far.

I am running Mavericks 10.9.5 on the latest MacBook Pro model (SSD).

Any ideas on how to always keep the machine awake, even when I switch the display to the Windows desktop?

You can use caffeinate from the terminal.app.

Just open the terminal.app and type caffeinate

Without arguments it just stays awake until you ctr+C at the terminal. There are more arguments you can use in order to prevent different system components from sleeping.


Macbook Pro (2010, OSX Sierra) has started prompting me to enter password for DHCP again and again and again All of a sudden my mac has started prompting me to enter my password with the dialog: "Network Configuration needs to update DHCP setting. Type your password to allow this."

I've just recently installed MakeMKV on my laptop... could my Mac have caught something nasty?

As a side note: Is there a way I can find out which process is creating the pop-up window?

You've got a trojan!
Look at the Directory ~/Library/VideoFrameworks
The Trojan collected your keychain and browser-data there.

The program itself resides in ~/Library/RenderFiles

You can stop it with
launchctl stop fr.handbrake.activity_agent

Did you install handbrake as well or just makemkv?

I would recommend to make a clean install of osx or install your time-machine backup from before the installation of the program.

Update: I cannot comment here, so I try to edit my answer with additional information:

The trojan collects at least the following data:

Keychain files (saved passwords in OSX)
Personal data from every browser on your system including saved passwords
Screenshots

So you really should check which passwords you saved in the keychain and the browser and change them immediately on another computer. You can find the data that it collected in the directory described above in several zip-files.

Do you remember where you downloaded handbrake? Did you use the update function?


Update zsh on macOS Mojave On my MacBook Pro with macOS Mojave, my version of zsh is 5.3.

zsh --version

  zsh 5.3 (x86_64-apple-darwin18.0)

That version is a few years out-of-date, according to this. That page shows version 5.7.1 being current.

➥ Is there some way to update to the current version of zsh?

Not exactly. You can't (although that can be overridden) and should not update anything in /bin as that is controlled and updated by Apple.

However you can install zsh from elsewhere and put it in another place and use that path to start it from Terminal.

One way is to download the source from here and compile it.

However it is probably easier to install from a package manager like Macports or Homebrew both of which  will have compiled up the binary.


Green button fill screen (as opposed to fullscreen) and coloured folders like 10.8 in El Capitan In El Capitan is it possible to have coloured files in finder like 10.8 and be able to click the green button on a window to get it to fit to screen (rather than fullscreen) like you could in 10.9 ?

No
Yes. Press the option key when pressing the green button.


How to backup Mac to external hard drive in recovery mode? "No mountable file systems"? I upgraded my mac to High Sierra without backing up my data. Then my Mac wouldn’t login, it gives me a black screen then it restarts.

So I decided to reinstall the software, but first I need to back up my data. I’ve been trying since last night. I put Mac in recovery mode, then I created a “compressed” disc image to put it on an external hard drive. I wanted to make sure I can open it before I reinstall and in the process lose all the data. I put it on a friend's Mac, and it keeps saying “no mountable file systems” and the dmg won’t open. The dmg file has a size of 500 GB.

Is there any other way to backup my data, given that I can't login into my Mac after the High Sierra install?

I am assuming you are looking to back up data rather than the entire drive, as your OS image is probably faulty.

That being the case, you may be able to start up in Target Disk Mode, and then you can browse the files and copy them to another disk as if the HDD in the Mac was just an external drive. There are a couple caveats to this though:

Make sure your Mac is compatible - Given that you are updating to Sierra it is likely that it is.
You will need another Mac to connect the dead one to.
You need a USB-C, Thunderbolt 3, Firewire or Thunderbolt 2 Cable

Connect the computers up, and when starting the broken machine, immediately press and hold 'T'.

All being well it will appear as a disk on the other Mac. You should be able to offload your data from here.

Here is some more info, including compatibility lists: Apple Support


I accidentally caused one of my encrypted drives to start converting into a decrypted drive. How can I stop it? One of my external hard drives used for Time Machine backups has an encrypted HFS+ volume. While in the process of trying to re-associate the backup with my system, I accidentally told it to start decrypting the drive.

I don't want it to be decrypted! However I can't find any way of telling my system to stop! After searching around, I've found that you can use diskutil to stop a drive that's in the process of being converted to encrypted, but found no mention of any way to do halt a decryption conversion.

Help! What can I do? It's going to take forever to decrypt this massive drive, and I don't want it to even do that!

edit: This question is different from this one in that I am not using FileVault to encrypt this drive. It is an external drive with no macOS system on it used for Time Machine backups -- FileVault isn't involved.

Even though it is an external drive, the encryption system being used is still FileVault.

There's currently no method to cancel a decryption of the drive. You'll have to wait until the drive is fully decrypted, and then re-encrypt it.