How can I slow down scroll on mac more than the system preferences let me I've gone into system preferences and made scroll as slow as it allows me to, but it's still way too fast.

I'm using a logitech mouse, but logitech's software doesn't seem to work.  What I'm wondering is whether there's some way to set the scroll speed to slower than the bottom of the slider, perhaps using terminal or something.

https://www.smoothscroll.net/mac/ seems to work pretty well.  I'd be interested to hear if anyone has other suggestions though.


Where can I find a good checkbox app? I have recently started a job as a project manager. Equipped with an I pad I am currently going to site and taking photos of issues then manually writing out emails to associated colleagues. I was wondering if there is an app I can install with a check box system so I can easily yes/no each point and also add photos and write notes if need be. An app in which I could customise to suit questions eq Scaffholding around chimney sufficient... Yes/ no then being able to email report off to who ever I want would be great.

Any suggestions?

Punchlist is the app to get. It's been around a while, the development is constant, rapid and ongiong. The price is very reasonable.


How can I insert an image(jpg/tiff) to an existing GIF in Preview? I dragged an image(tried both jpg and tiff) to a GIF file and Preview just opens up two documents in one window, instead of adding the image to the first document (GIF). I have Preview 10.0.

Preview is not an image editor.  It's a viewer.

To create images, you need something that allows you to do this.  You can get paid applications to do this and there are FOSS (Free Open Source) tools available.  Some of the more popular ones are:

Adobe Illustrator (Commercial illustration software)
Adobe Photoshop (Commerical photo editing software)
GIMP (Open Source Alternative to Photoshop)
Pinta (Like the award winning Paint.NET for Windows)
Tux Paint (Award winning paint program for kids)

There are many, many more available on the App store and online.

And if actual photo editing software isn't your cup of tea, Word Processing programs like Microsoft Word has rudimentary image editing built in.


Replacing text with shortened date and time -- functions

-- replace characters
on replace_chars(this_text, search_string, replacement_string)
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the search_string
    set the item_list to every text item of this_text
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the replacement_string
    set this_text to the item_list as string
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
    return this_text
end replace_chars

-- split text

on splitText(theText, theDelimiter)
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to theDelimiter
    set theTextItems to every text item of theText
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
    return theTextItems
end splitText

-- Actions

-- Action 1: Replace the word TIME with the Date and Time.

set shortDate to weekday & ", " & month & " " & days & " at "
set shortTime to hours & ":" & minutes

set pasteboard to the clipboard

set datePrint to shortDate & " at " & shortTime

set finalProduct to replace_chars(pasteboard, "TIME", datePrint)

set the clipboard to finalProduct

This copies nothing to the clipboard. Whereas if you swap out the following

set shortDate to date string of (current date)
set shortTime to time string of (current date)

I get returned "Thursday, May 24, 2018 at 1:42:47 PM"

My end objective is to replace the word "TIME" with the "Date without the year" & " at " & "Time without the seconds"

I'd also like to find some way to keep the AM or PM aspect of of the time but it might just be easier to find some way to trim off that last section.

Any input on this at all would be great. If theres anyone who has a notion as to why the first set of code doesn't work but the second set does I'd love to hear it.

It should be like this:

set curr to current date
set dateprint to curr's weekday & ", " & curr's month & " " & curr's day & ¬
" at " & curr's hours & ":" & curr's minutes as string

Or to meet your actual goal:

tell date string of (current date)
set ds to text 1 thru -7
end tell
tell time string of (current date)
set ts to text 1 thru -7 & text -3 thru -1
end tell
set dateprint to ds & " at " & ts as string

Since AppleScript is not case sensitive your script will also replace "time" or "Time" ... so you will need the considering statement:

considering case
set theTime to "TIME"
set finalProduct to replace_chars(pasteboard, theTime, datePrint)
end considering


Macbook air screen is too bright even on the lowest setting Is there a tweak, hack, or piece of software that can adjust the brightness of the MacBook Air's screen below the settings that MacOS X allows by default?

In low light the lowest brightness setting is too bright for me (and the setting after that is black so that doesn't work at all). :-)

I use and recommend Shades (free), which can darken the screen beyond the built-in brightness control.  If you really want to get it darker, use the built-in shortcut Cmd+Opt+Ctrl+8 to invert the screen colors (same command reverses the effect).

Nocturne (free) allows you to tweak some of the inversion settings.


Are there compatibility problems with buying iPhone 4 overseas? I have found unlocked iPhones 4 from USA and malaysia to be so much more cheaper than Australia, are there any compatibility problems associated with this?
I heard if you buy an iPhone in US or other countries and take it back to Australia, itunes will only accept credit cards from the country of manufacture when purchasing apps i.e.  if bought in US, must use US credit card. Is this true?

As long as the iPhone is unlocked and to connected to any network, you can use it in any country.

You will need to check that if you are buying in the USA and you are getting an iPhone 4 you will need to buy a GSM phone as all Australian networks use GSM after Telstra shut off CDMA, if you are buying an iPhone 4S you need't worry as these combine both networks for maximum coverage.

You may find it useful that some iPhones in some countries are always sold unlocked such as France and Belgium where it is against the law to sell subsidies handsets on contracts.


Macbook Pro Hard drive speed I have an early 2011 Macbook Pro with a Toshiba MK7559GSXP 750GB 5400rpm hard drive (that has about 48GB free) and running El Capitan.  Recently I had the feeling that things were running slowly (and I probably have been ignoring it up until now), so I downloaded and ran Blacmagicdesign's Disk Speed Test 2.2.2

This speed test gave me a read and write speed of about 50 MB/s which my gut feeling is saying is not very good.

I also ran the Disk Utility's First Aid and the drive passed all the tests applied by that utility.  So:

Is this an unreasonable read/write speed?
Would it be due to the hard drive being less than 10% full?
Something else that I am missing?

After the storm

I just replaced the hard drive with a Samsung 850 EVO 1TB SSD.  The boot time halved, Apps open almost immediately, the Disk Speed Test pegs at 480 MB/s and the Negotiated link speed is 6 GB/s.

Thats all good, but the weirdest things is how quiet it sounds now!

The first thing you want to do is reference the drive specs to see what it is rated in terms of data transfer speed.

According to C/Net, it has an external data transfer rate of 300MBs (it's a SATA drive, so this is expected)

So, if you are getting a drive speed rating of 50MB/s, things are definitely slow.  5400 RPM is also quite slow to begin with.

Your best option is to upgrade your drive to an SSD.  I have written a post that addresses this very topic.  Have a look here: My Mac is getting really slow, what should I do?


Sharing users between Mountain Lion and Snow Leopard -- will this break user preferences? I have ML and SL installed as dual boot OSes and want to share a user's home directory (on an external drive).  I wonder, however, if I rather should use different users for each OS as ML might write content to the user preferences which SL might confuse.

I strongly suspect that sharing a single home directory across different OS Xs will cause you problems. For example, after upgrading from Lion to Mountain Lion both Calendar.app and Mail.app had to upgrade my local data (i.e. calendars and mail boxes respectively). My hunch would be that the upgraded data would no longer be accessible from the older OSs.


AFP: one user cannot access folder We have a simple filesharing setup, where iMac users connect via AFP.  This morning, one user could no longer access the base folder, despite no settings be changed.

There are standard POSIX and ACL permissions applied to the folder, and another user who is in the exact same groups as this one user can access the folder with no trouble.

Server is 10.6.8 (recently upgraded from 10.5; but, in the interim there had been no troubles of note).  Using the filesharing pane of the Server admin tool, I verified that the "ok" user has complete Read access in the effective access viewer; while the "bad" user only has a subset of permissions (see attached image).

I also logged in directly to the server, and via su confirmed that an error occurs when trying to access that particular directory.  (no error when sud as the "ok" user.

Posix permissions are set r-xr-x--- where the group is an inherited group of the user's main group.  (Same situation for both users).  ACL permissions are set to allow an admin full control, and deny writes to everyone else.

Any ideas?  Deleting the "deny writes" ACL might change things; but, even if it works, I'd like to understand -why-. this didn't work

Newly added info

Checking the membership via dsmemberutil checkmembership -U USERNAME -G GROUP yields user is not a member of the group when it is run on the main OpenDirectory master.  On clients, the same command yields user is a member of the group.

While still not understanding the reason this occurred, I was able to make the problem go away by explicitly adding the user to the inherited group in Workgroup Manager, verifying it with dsmemberutil, reconnecting to the AFP share, disconnecting, and then removing the explicit group assignment.  After all that, dsmemberutil still shows that the user is in the group.


How can I delete photos from my iPhone but keep them in iCloud? I have seen this question on here a few times, but never with a clear answer.

I am using a iPhone 6s with iOS 10.3.3. When I take a picture I want it to be uploaded to my iCloud Photo Library; however I also want to be able to delete that photo from my iPhone while keeping it in iCloud (to free up space for other data).

Is there a way to delete photos from my iPhone’s local storage but not from iCloud Photo Library?

Apple’s solution is to manage your storage for you. Under Settings → Photos & Camera, select to Optimize iPhone Storage.

As long as you have enough local storage, photos will remain on your device. When your iPhone needs the space, high-resolution versions of your photos will be removed from your iPhone; all that is kept then is thumbnails, until you decide to view the photo again.

At that point a device-optimized version of the photo is downloaded from iCloud. A full-resolution version won’t be downloaded until you decide to edit or share the photo.

iCloud Photo Library is a photo-sync service, rather than a backup service, which is why deleting a photo anywhere deletes it everywhere. What you see on your device is what you see in iCloud is what you see on all your devices connected to the service.


Can't access apache-powered website at localhost I was trying to enable php, mysql, apache on my macbook pro running yosemite. I followed this guide  but it doesn't run. What's wrong in setting up a local web server on OS X
Please help.....I get an error saying http://localhost/ is not available

Abhimanyus-MacBook-Pro:~ abhimanyuaryan$ cat /etc/hosts
##
# Host Database
#
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
# when the system is booting.  Do not change this entry.
##
127.0.0.1       localhost
255.255.255.255 broadcasthost
#::1            localhost

Abhimanyus-MacBook-Pro:~ abhimanyuaryan$ ls -lad /Library/WebServer/Documents /Library/WebServer/Documents/index*
drwxr-xr-x  8 root  wheel  272 Feb 18 13:29 /Library/WebServer/Documents
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   49 Feb 18 13:29 /Library/WebServer/Documents/index.html
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   67 Jan  6 14:08 /Library/WebServer/Documents/index.html.en

Abhimanyus-MacBook-Pro:~ abhimanyuaryan$ ps aux| grep http
abhimanyuaryan  26010   0.0  0.0  2432772    664 s000  S+   10:21PM   0:00.00 grep http

I had errors in my "private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf " file. To fix that I replaced the old file with a new file. To check if you have errors in httpd.conf file, write the following commands in terminal:

sudo apachectl start

to start apache server

sudo apachectl configtest

to run test if the file's syntax is alright. If get a return command saying syntax OK. Then file httpd.conf file is alright.

In my case sudo apachectl configtest output:

Abhimanyus-MacBook-Pro:apache2 abhimanyuaryan$ sudo apachectl configtest
AH00558: httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using Abhimanyus-MacBook-Pro.local. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
Syntax OK

Otherwise replace the old file with a new file that I provided above.

sudo mv ~/Downloads/httpd.conf  /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf

i.e. sudo mv [target] [destination]. You can change the target location of you file. If the new file has not been downloaded to Download folder of Home Directory(~).

Once you are done that now follow the instruction written here by etresoft.

. Thanks.


Install Windows 10 or 8.1 on MacBook 4,1 I need some help getting Windows up and running on my Early 2008 Macbook.

It does have a weird set up, but I think it's possible. All I have is a 16gb SanDisk USB drive. So, here goes.

I was trying to use bootcamp to install Windows but I partitioned the disk wrong and deleted my partition for OS X. I tried all the shortcuts, but nothing worked.

I finally used Startup Disk Creator on a Dell laptop running Ubuntu and got Ubuntu 17.10 running on it using the SanDisk. All is well, but I don't necessarily like Ubuntu, and I didn't really like OS X that much.

I want to use the Sandisk and get either Windows 10 or Windows 8.1 running. You have to remember that while the computer is 64-bit, it has a 32-bit EFI.

Here are my specs: MacBook, 4GB Ram, 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, 160GB HDD, Ubuntu 17.10 LTS

I hope you guys can help me do this. Also, please don't hate or say "Upgrade" because, simply put, I can't as of now.

I don't have personal experience with this but here's my best guess at the process

Get a 32-bit Windows 10 .iso. You can download straight from MS.
Use unetbootin or similar to create a bootable installer. Format for FAT32 under MBR (Master Boot Record)
You should now be able to boot to the Windows installer and install from there.

It should be mentioned that while macOS and Ubuntu are free software, Windows is not and you'll have to figure out a license.


permission denied mkdir /Volumes I'm getting a permission denied when attempting to create or mount at /Volumes on my mac. I'm an admin and I can do both of those things with sudo, but I don't understand why I have to use sudo on this mac but not on other macs in my office.

/Volumes
> mkdir foo
mkdir: foo: Permission denied

My thoughts are to use chown/chmod but I'm hesitant to do so without asking first.

/Volumes
> ll
total 8
drwxr-xr-x@  4 root      admin   136B Apr 22 13:40 .
drwxr-xr-x  33 root      wheel   1.2K Mar 30 22:23 ..
drwxr-xr-x@ 11 medialab  staff   442B Apr 14 15:34 06b_SD_Video_BK
lrwxr-xr-x   1 root      admin     1B Apr 18 10:48 Macintosh_HD -> /

We mount LTO tapes to this machine and can currently only do so by using sudo. This was not always the case and I don't know why sudo is suddenly being required.

How do I go about changing the permissions on /Volumes?

There are access control restrictions on that directory. You can inspect those from the command line:

ls -lOe /

(That's a capital letter O and not a zero 0) I would suggest mounting your volume to another directory - either /tmp or $TMPDIR rather than messing with the restrictions that are designed to prevent what you have - an actual directory with actual files in /Volumes.

Without knowing your script and workflow, it's hard to guess/advise other than not changing things that Apple will change back next time you patch the system.

Your vendor of the LTO tapes should have software to handle mounting the volume in a manner that uses Apple's disk arbitration framework so you don't have to manage the mounts in a script.

You could add a user to have explicit write access in that directory if you're certain that's what will help:

sudo chmod +a "User 1:allow:add_subdirectory" /Volumes


How to delete email messages from Spotlight search on iPhone? I have a iPhone 4S running iOS 6. Spotlight seems to find deleted e-mails on iPhone, how can I delete e-mails permanently from Spotlight results?

Could this potentially be a bug in iOS 6? I am thinking it sounds like a bug.

i have just hopefully cured my problem - delete all the stuff you want gone, go backup your device, then go to delete all data and settings on your fone and choose restore from back up - then your device should be as it was but without the old deleted data saved


Where are Photo Stream pictures stored on my Mac? I am trying to locate the pictures from my photo stream to back up on my computer and I cant find them. Any help is greatly appreciated

Photo Stream pictures are stored in

~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub

locally.


Where can I get a Thunderbolt hub or splitter? Apple has just announced the new MacBook Airs, Mac mini, and Thunderbolt display. One of the features of the Thunderbolt display that caught my eye was its ability to daisy-chain two displays together from one Thunderbolt port (on a MacBook Pro).

I already have two 24" monitors and I don't feel like paying for two £900 displays. I worked out that all I need is a Thunderbolt hub/splitter so that I can plug the two cables that emerge into mini DisplayPort-to-DVI adapters.

Does anyone know of any Thunderbolt hubs or splitters? Or does anyone know of an alternative method?

I think that this question has already been asked:

Does Thunderbolt support chaining multiple monitors to a MacBook Pro?

To sum it up, it is too early for a splitter or hub for a Thunderbolt port. But you can daisy chain.

And this sums it up as well: http://www.the-cable-store.com/contents/en-us/d44_lightpeak_hubs.html


can't read SD card on 2016 MacBook running Sierra I have had my MacBook just a few months so I'm very much a newbie with it and the OS.

My mac has only one port that's the charging port I bought the USB adapter but when I put a thumb drive in, it doesn't show up anywhere.

I've scanned the internet for answers but haven't any luck. I have all the finder options checked. So now I don't know what else to do.

First test the thumb drive with another computer. There's a possibility that either the drive or the adapter is broken.

Open System Report and check if anything shows up on the USB bus when you plug them in.

It is also supposed to just show up in Finder when you plugin the drive.


To remove email address of sent messages from Mail I have tried to find how to remove the email addresses to which you have sent emails in Mail.
They are not in Contacts -application.
Not in Settings.

I type masi.mathiasen... and I all the time get the contact which I removed from Contacts, just because I sent there one message before.
Then, when he has got new email address it is annoying because I am writing his name there first and get the old one as autocomplete.

How can you remove an old email-address which Mail -application uses in OSX, which is not found in Contacts?

In Mail, click on the Window menu then Previous Recipients.

To locate people not in your address book, click on the empty column header all the way to the left (to the left of Name). The ones that are in your address book have an icon in that column.

Select the recipient you want to delete and click Remove from List in the lower-left corner.

Screenshots are available on this University of Wisconsin page.


Why I can still access Internet after I set the the HTTP proxy to a unknow address? Why I set the HTTP proxy to a nono-proxy IP address, I can still access the Internet?
I follow this tutorial, at the time 2:08, you see there should be can not access the Internet.
but I set to a non-proxy address 9.9.9.9:12345.
but I can still access the Internet, why?

The fallback behavior when the proxy server is unreachable depends on which browser you're using.
For example Chrome caches information about proxy servers, so that if it detects the proxy server is unavailable - it remembers that for up to 5 minutes - and bypasses it during that time.
Some browsers will fallback to a direct connection to the web site host when the proxy server is unavailable, others only do so if you have included direct connection in the proxy list or otherwise configured the browser to do so. How to do that exactly depends on the specific browser you're using.
The linked video shows using Chrome in 2015. In older versions of Chrome, it would always fall back to a direct connection to the web site host if all proxy servers are unavailable. That behavior was changed, and it is not how modern Chrome versions work by default.


iPod Touch 4G Video and Music capacity This must be my undeveloped mind, but browsing through Apple's iPod Touch website, I could not find the capacity (in time) for video and audio recordings on the 8GB and 32GB models (not in Features neither in Tech Specs).

I am debating which one to keep after buying the two at a discounted price. Have not opened it yet, so I can return one of them.

So, can someone point me to the place of this top-secret information?

UPDATE: To clarify the question - I am interested in the HD video recorded with the built-in camera. The intention is to replace the old P&S camera with this device. Thought that, if not Apple, maybe current users comment on that. A rough estimate is enough. Don't need a detailed to-the-last-byte calculation.

Time is based more on the size of the files versus a limit on the device. As in, You can only put (less than, due to OS and formatting, etc) 8 or 32GB (On a 8GB, usually you have a little over 6GB to play with, on 32 I think more like 29GB or so).

The 'time' capacity was just done using an average file size and the capacity. The same would be for 'songs' or 'videos' it can hold, like how iPod Classics were 20000 songs in your pocket.

Some quick notes found from a random site while searching:

(For Audio)

  Well first of all with addressing
  overheads , indexing etc actual
  storage space is more like 7.95Gb 15Gb
  and 29Gb respectively .Generally
  speaking , the number of songs which
  can be stored on your device depends
  on the filesize of each song.No two
  songs are the same size usually , a
  number of factors can affect this. The
  two main factors affecting the size of
  an audio file arequality( Bitrate and
  bitdepth) and time ( how long the song
  is). Therefore to predict the  number
  of songs your 8,32 or 16Gb Ipod Touch
  can hold , a few assumptions will be
  made based on the average user's mp3
  listening practice. Here we will
  assume each song is Cd quality
  (44.1KHz sample rate) 128Kbps bitrate
  and  4 minutes long i.e 3.75Mb per
  song.   An 8Gb can hold about 2,120
  mp3's songs A 16Gb drive could store
  about 4,240 mp3's On a 32Gb drive you
  could store about 8,480 mp3's

(For Video)

  Typically you can get a DVD movie at
  700mb when you download it. This gives
  On an 8Gb drive you could store about
  10 movies On a 16Gb drive you could
  store about 21 movies On a 32Gb drive
  you could store about 44movies You can
  compress the movie down to a much
  smaller filesize and it will still
  look good on the small screen ,
  allowing you to cram many more movies
  in there. Apple claims the Ipod Touch
  can hold up to 10 hours , 20 hours or
  40 hours of video with the right
  factors.Their claim is based on H.264
  1.5-Mbps video at 640-by-480 resolution combined with 128-Kbps
  audio.

As you can see, its not really an exact science of capacity of time. Same goes for CDR and DVDR's - the times are just estimations due to usual encoding and such.

I think Apple dropped this type of information from its advertising/tech specs because especially with the newer devices (which may need more space for OS) it would look like the storage capacity went down (as in, used to be x number of songs at y GB's, now x minus some number of songs at the same y GB's). The only one I see it on anymore is the iPod Classic, and if you have one with that large of a drive, you probably aren't counting much anymore either.

In your case I would probably keep the larger one (unless you need the money), because its never to bad to have extra space.

Update:
Do to the updated question (wondering about HD video recording), according to this site, one hour of HD video is about 4.73GB. So with the 8GB you would get maybe less than an hour and a half, and with the 32GB about 4 hours.

Another site has even more information on calculations.


How do you find a developer of an app that hasn't been updated? I purchased a scripture app for $15 several years ago.  It is the best I have ever used.
When my iPhone screen went black I had to replace my phone. The app did not reload.  I assume it is because the developer has not updated it.
I want to contact the developer and get it updated or purchase it.  There is no trace of it on my phone.  How do I find the contact information for the developer?  This app looks likes gold plates with a black background.

Open your App Store purchase list and find the app on that list. From there you can find the developer information and try to download it again (or see why it disappeared).


Archive folder not appearing in IMAP account on Mail.app I have a standard IMAP account configured in Mail.app (on Mountain Lion).

That account contains a folder called Archive, which does not appear on the list of folders on the left.

However, it does appear when I hit command+i, in the "Quota Limits" tab.

Is there anything I can do to make this folder appear?

I figured it out.  I pressed the "archive" button (command+option+a) on a message, it moved the message to that folder and then the folder appeared on the left.


Missing Print Options in Office and PowerPoint 2011 For about a year now I have not been able to print handouts in Microsoft PowerPoint 2011 (14.3.9). The option is simply not in the print dialog box. I finally discovered that this is due to using a case-sensitive file system. What I see is the following:

I can use the Layout options to accomplish a similar effect, but I can't print handouts with notes, etc. It turns out that this problem affects all of Office (Word and Excel as well).

What I should see is

Other than reformatting my hard drive as case-insensitive and restoring from my Time Machine backup, is there any way to correct this behavior?

EDIT: Please note that in the first dialog, Apple's default "Copies" and "Pages" options are displayed above the pop-up menu. In Microsoft's print dialog extension (second image above) Word, Excel, and PowerPoint present their own "Copies" and "Slides" and "Print What" (etc.) options under the "Copies & Pages" pop-up. There simply is no "Copies & Pages" option when running on a case sensitive file system, so there is no way to print handouts, speaker notes, etc. Case sensitivity apparently causes the Office print dialog extension to fail to load.

I've used otool to dig through the dynamic libraries and frameworks involved, looking for a possible case mis-match, but so far have come up empty.

EDIT 2: There simply is no "Copies & Pages" option in the popup dialog on a case-sensitive file system, I've attached a third image that shows the options available to me:

It is simply not there. As stated in the previous edit, they are above the pop-up menu. In fact, PowerPoint ignores the settings there, since it is expecting the options from the custom plugin Office provide. So I can ONLY print a single copy of a full document, unless I jump into Preview first.

I just solved this on my own machine. Very frustrating.

The issue is that the missing section of the print dialog is a "Print Dialog Extension" (PDE). This is loaded from the individual Office apps' plugin directories. The issue is that Office is coded to look for a "PlugIns" directory whereas the directory is actually named "Plugins".

I suggest using a symbolic link to fix this. Presuming you have a default installation of Office then open Terminal, and execute:

cd "/Applications/Microsoft Office 2011/Microsoft PowerPoint.app/Contents/"
ln -s Plugins PlugIns

Relaunch Powerpoint and bask in the delicious print dialog extensions. BTW, you will need to do something similar for the other Office apps.

NOTE: I advise against simply renaming the Plugins directory to PlugIns. It might break something else.


iPhone 6s camera replacement I dropped my iPhone and shattered the external lens. The internal one was scratched, too.

I got the parts online and followed the iFixit guide to open up my iPhone and replace the camera. Now when I to the Camera app I only capture the top pixels.  The photos come out like the image below.  Do you think I got a defective camera unit or am I missing something?

Here's what I would do, in order:

Restart the iPhone
Open the iPhone up, disconnect the camera, and reconnect it
Clean the contacts on the logic board with isopropyl alcohol (with the battery disconnected, of course)
Return the camera and get a new one from a different source

Also, I don't know from where you ordered the camera, but if you have to return it and get a new one, don't just buy the cheapest thing you see. Try to find a seller from your country that cares enough to post real photos of the camera instead of those stock photos and buy one from them.

If the next one still doesn't work, you could try one more from another seller, but if it still doesn't work, then it's the almost certainly the iPhone at fault and about the only thing to do would be get another one if you want the camera fixed.


Safari 9 Top Sites shortcut key gone missing or changed? Until version 9, pressing option+command+1 would bring up Top Sites. That does not work in version 9.

I see menu bar Bookmarks > Show Top Sites with no shortcut key listed next to it. That is worrisome.

However, in Preferences > Tabs I see an option named "Use ⌘-1 thru ⌘-9 to switch tabs". When I uncheck that, I get the old behavior of loading my top 9 favorite bookmarks instead of jumping to a tab. Because of this, I hold out hope there is an undocumented shortcut key for jumping to Top Sites.

Why not just add one yourself?

Open System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → App Shortcuts and click add.
Select Safari, enter ‘Show Top Sites’ for the menu title and enter a keyboard shortcut.

This adds the shortcut to the menu option:


0% GPU Usage on iMac 2019 with Radeon Pro 560x, help! Ever since I bought my iMac, the GPU has always been at 0% usage. Till now, I thought it was a software bug since Macs aren't great with GPUs, but when I found out about Intel Power Gadget - which also said 0% - I became worried. I'm using an iMac 2019 21.5 inch with a Core i5, 8gb ram, and a Radeon Pro 560x, running on the latest. I've never had any real issues with graphics performance but fixing this might speed things up.

Activity monitor says 0% usage across all programs, filtered by GPU top usage. Not sure what GPU time means, however.

IPG says the same, with a requested graphics at 1.1ghz but with an actual GPU clock at 0.
What should I do? Thanks in advance!

It may well be a software bug that Activity Monitor and other tools don't report any GPU usage. Alternatively, exactly what GPU% is measuring may be not what we think. Obviously, the GPU is doing something. You may get additional information in Activity Monitor > Window > GPU History.
My 2014 MBP with an integrated graphics unit also reports 0% GPU on every process. I can just get WindowServer to report 5% by scrolling a window like mad for several seconds.
From the spec, your 2019 has only the discrete Radeon GPU (since it doesn't need to fall back to a lower-power integrated unit like a laptop). So it has to be using the GPU if you're seeing stuff on the screen.
If you're not seeing any actual problems with the display, or performance issues with 'heavy' graphics tasks, then I'd say there's nothing to worry about.
Bear in mind that a lot of common tasks are actually trivial for modern hardware these days.
"Looking at data on what the OS is doing always leads to worry about whether it's the right numbers." ;-)


Chrome Page Monitor equivalent for ipad Is there an equivalent to Page Monitor or an app for iOS? Using ipad 4

I presume you are referring to Page Monitor, the Chrome extension that monitors sites for changes.

You can do this with Punchr. This will monitor parts of web pages and send you a push notification when the page changes.


Is using the Magic Mouse 2 & original Magic Mouse on the same Mac unsupported in High Sierra? I recently upgraded my mid 2011 Mac mini to macOS High Sierra. I purchased the Magic Mouse 2 about a year ago, but really loathe the charging port on the bottom (unbelievably stupid design, but I digress). As such, I kept my old (original) Magic Mouse handy for when I needed to charge the Magic Mouse 2. I never had problems with this use case in OS X El Capitan.

However, today when I tried to use the old Magic Mouse, macOS absolutely freaked out and neither of the Bluetooth mice could connect. I had to use a generic Logitech USB mouse to "forget" both of them (old and new), then I could reconnect the Magic Mouse 2 after it charged.

So my question: is the original Magic Mouse unsupported in macOS High Sierra? (edit: it definitely is supported, not the issue). Or perhaps I simply can no longer use the Magic Mouse and Magic Mouse 2 interchangeably?

Update 1: Forgetting and re-pairing both of the the mice was a temporary fix. Nothing else worked, including rebooting.

Update 2: Issue has returned. I again had to fight macOS tooth-and-nail to get the Magic Mouse 2 paired after using the Magic Mouse!

Update 3: One thing I forgot to mention: when the Magic Mouse 2 has lost pairing (after using the Magic Mouse) and I plug it in and switch it on, the "Mouse" section of System Preferences goes absolutely berserk, rapidly alternating between the normal screen and the "looking for bluetooth mouse" screen.

I cannot find any Apple documentation stating that the original Magic Mouse is unsupported in newer OS versions.

Your problem is more likely to be just one of Bluetooth connectivity. Apple provides a troubleshooting document that describes the Magic Mouse and Magic Mouse 2 together. Other remedies for problems can be found here.

The Magic Mouse is not one of Apple's strongest designs, and you may prefer a third-party mouse, or the Magic Trackpad, which I find much better. (You can leave it plugged in while using it, for starters!)


How do I switch between desktops and full screen apps when accessing a remote machine via Screen Sharing? When I'm accessing a remote machine with multiple desktops or full screen applications running, via OS X Lion's built-in screen sharing, how do I change desktops/full screen apps on the remote machine?

The usually Ctrl-(#, left arrow, right arrow) modifier keys change the desktop/full screen app on my local machine only.

I've tried reducing my local machine to one desktop as well as running screen sharing in full screen mode and no luck. I'm not able to change the desktop or full screen app on the remote machine.

Will have to go into system preferences, keyboard, shortcuts, and then assign a specific key to activate Mission Control. You can do this either in your host machine or in the remote one. What matters is that the shortcut for the remote machine is not used in the local machine.

You can do the same directly for the ^right and ^left shortcuts. Change them in one of the two machines and then they will work in the remote one.

For example I indicated the F10 to be mission-control on my remote computer, so whenever I press FN+10 I'll get mission control on the remote Computer


What features from a typical wireless router is Airport Extreme missing? Are there any features that Airport Extreme is missing that typical routers always have?

For example virtual servers, dmz?

Have you seen the Technical Specifications for AirPort Extreme, that should cover most of the questions. There are no virtual servers and no DMZ, but IPv6, Port Mapping, Shared Disk/Over-the-Air-Time-Machine-Backup, Shared Printers, DHCP and NAT, some features are Mac-only, of course. Wireless 802.11n with various transmit power options. That's about it. As I said, no toy, but it works 100% reliable, even for techies.


Predictive input doesn’t work on Russian language I have iPhone 7 with iOS 11.4 and my keyboard freezes at random times for second. Now it doesn’t show predictive suggestions for the Russian language.

I tried to disable all smart features of keyboard and re-enable them, remove Russian keyboard and add it back, reset keyboard dictionary, reset all content and settings, update to iOS 12 and downgrade via iTunes, restore from iTunes. Now I’m going to restore from DFU, but I’m in desperation.

This is what the problem looks like. In English the predictive bar is normal. But in Russian keyboard there are no words, just three empty spaces.

DFU restore to iOS 12, than to iOS 11.4 solves problem.

How to do DFU restore: https://help.ifixit.com/article/108-dfu-restore

If you want to install custom downloaded version of iOS (that must be signed by Apple) click "Restore" in iTunes with pressed Alt/Option key (Shift on a PC). Then window with selection of .ipsw file will be appear.


How far is my Time Machine "preparing backup" step? I want to do a Time Machine backup and it's not the first time I do it in this external hard drive, so Time Machine is doing the "preparing backup" step since a few minutes. As it's been quite long I haven't back up, I know this step will take a while.

However I have no idea how far is this step, is it 5% ? or is it nearly done and 95% ?

How to know how long remaining ?

If the CPU goes over the roof, as shown by Apple Activity Monitor (mds–stores) or MenuMeters (see below), Time Machine "Preparing backup…" takes forever when it should be done in seconds or similar, and Apple Mail and Finder Spotlight (File - Find) find nothing, chances are that Time Machine is checking the Spotlight FSEvents database to see what has changed since the last backup, and that that such database is corrupted or there is some other problem. The fix is:

Stop Time Machine backup clicking the "X" on the screen capture above.
Reboot the Mac.
If required, stop again Time Machine (if it takes forever again) and once stopped, select "Time Machine - Back Up Npw".

In my case, that worked like a charm on macOS 10.12.6 (16G2136) Sierra using internal booting SSD 2TB from Apple (Samsung) on iMac 27-inch 5K Retine (mid 2017) and external Time machine Samsung Portable SSD T5 2 TB. Time Machine takes about 15 seconds to perform each backup there!

If not fixed and Time Machine takes forever again, rebuild Spotlight index selecting "Apple - System Preferences - Spotlight - Privacy". Then drag and drop the full booting disk (or the one that is backed up) there. Then remove it to allow Spotlight to rebuild its index. Note that it may take from a few minutes to many hours, depending on the items stored in the disk and the disk speed (SSD is much faster than the mechanical rotational ones). You may want to do it overnight.

Finally, it is a good idea to install MenuMeters to easily see when the CPU goes over the roof…
MenuMeters for OS X El Capitan 10.11 (and later)
https://member.ipmu.jp/yuji.tachikawa/MenuMetersElCapitan


Send Command to Add remote users through ARD so I'm trying to create an extra admin account on all Macs on the network. There are quite a few so I'm trying to do it through Apple Remote Desktop.

Do you guys know how to do this? This is all I have so far which is obviously missing some parts and giving the error: "no tty present and no askpass program specified." Any help is appreciated.

#!/bin/bash
# This script creates a user account under Mac OS X
sudo dscl . create /Users/SecurityTest33
sudo dscl . create /Users/SecurityTest33 UserShell /bin/bash
sudo dscl . create /Users/SecurityTest33 RealName "Security Test3"
sudo dscl . create /Users/SecurityTest33 UniqueID 503
sudo dscl . create /Users/SecurityTest33 PrimaryGroupID 1000
sudo dscl . create /Users/SecurityTest33 NFSHomeDirectory /Local/Users/SecurityTest33
sudo dscl . passwd /Users/SecurityTest33 PASSWORD
sudo dscl . append /Groups/admin GroupMembership SecurityTest33
sudo cp -R /System/Library/User\ Template/English.lproj /Users/SecurityTest33
sudo chown -R SecurityTest33:staff /Users/SecurityTest33
echo "Created user" #$USERID: $USERNAME ($FULLNAME)

The error you're getting is related to the sudo command.  You're probably trying to run the script as the normal administrator.

Instead, you can run it directly as root.


How to crop 4:5 using the Photos app After the latest updates (iOS 13), I can't find a native to crop a vertical image to 4:5 — I need that to upload photos on Instagram.

What's the alternative?

If you choose the crop tool in the Photos app, and then tap the crop presets button at the top right (looks like solid rectangle in another rectangle), you get some presets: Original, Freeform, Square, 9:16, 8:10, 5:7, etc.

But you want 4:5?

Just use 8:10. 4:5 = 8:10, right?


A standard way of dealing with a system crash / freeze Is there a best-practice way of dealing with a system crash or a system freeze? I know of the "force-quit" keyboard shortcut. But what if it doesn't work?
I just bought a MacBookPro and I am switching from Linux. In Linux there is a possibility to shutdown the X window system, and log in from  a text console, or one can communicate with the kernel directly via magic SysRq-key, and for example, remount a hard disk read-only or reboot the system.

If force-quitting doesn't work you have a few options:

Sit it out and wait for the Mac to churn through whatever it is stuck on (this doesn't always work, but I've had beachballs go away over time).
Trying opening Activity Viewer and see if you can kill the process there. Same caveat as above.
Force-shutdown the Mac by holding the power button for seven seconds. This always works.

The relationship between Mac OS X and the Unix underpinnings aren't the same as they are between X window/GNOME and the kernel. It isn't nearly as open, so there is really no messing with the kernel near as I can tell in Mac OS X. I usually go the route I mentioned above and as long as I maintain the system properly and regularly I always seem to get back on my feet without any problems.


Software to balance sound levels and quality for iPhone Is there software that will balance the sound level of the songs on my iPhone so that all the songs are at the same sound level and quality?

The "Sound Check" feature will ensure all your songs play back at approximately the same volume. In iOS 5, tap Settings -> Music -> then switch Sound Check to ON.


How to fix Photos error while trying to open iPhoto library from external hard drive "Photos was unable to open the library" error 4302 Running Catalina 10.15.7 (19H524)
The iPhoto Library has been stored on an external hard drive. Tried opening it various times. Restarted the computer. Remounted the hard drive.
Any idea how to get it to open?
Found this thread googling - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250721038 - but don't understand the proposed solution.

First things first: before modifying the photoslibrary copy it to somewhere else/back it up, to ensure you are not losing the raw photo data (preferably multiple backups in different locations)!
I will explain what the mentioned thread means, however: You will not restore album structure, face detection data and edits, i.e. all metadata.

Open photos, immediately hit option and create a new library.

Locate the new photoslibrary package and right click on it. Hit show package contents and copy the originals (previously masters) folder onto your desktop.

While the new photoslibrary is opened, drag the originals folder onto the photos app icon in the dock.

Import the photos

This will not preserve any albums, face detection data and more. You will have to reorganize the pictures. This method only allows you to copy all the raw photos from your old library into the new one quickly!
However, this allows you to start off fresh and - depending on how much you've been using face recognition, edit features and albums - you may have restored the photos library quite quickly.
Note: Selecting preserve folder structure when importing the pictures at step 4 will not preserve the albums. It will preserve the folder structure of the originals folder and create for each subfolder a new album.

Other things you could try:

Run first aid (preferably multiple times in recovery mode) on the external drive to check the external HDD for malfunction
Copy the library to another location and try opening it there

Your photos app window says:

Updating library

This means you must have done some macOS update. You could try to revert to the older macOS version or install a virtual machine and try opening the library from there

Apart from that I think you are out of luck, but maybe someone has a better answer, so maybe wait and do not deleted the library in its current state.

EDIT:
I just realized it says you're opening an iPhoto library, which was Apples previous photos app before the Photos app was introduced in OS X Yosemite in 2015. On Apples forum there is a good thread about what to make sure before transition from iPhoto to Photos.
It states:

Repair the permissions, and repair the database

So if you have an old Mac with an OS X version before Yosemite was introduced, you could try to repair the database there and start again.
Further, ensure the drive is formatted correctly (HFS+ usually works well) and you're not connecting to a NAS/shared network drive.

If your iPhoto Library is not in your Pictures folder, but on an external drive, check the drive for compatibility. Photos may have problems accessing the drive, if it is on a network volume and not locally mounted.

This is again a good example why backups are vital. HDDs these days are really cheap and backing up - even external devices - is not hard, even the built-in TimeMachine app can do that. So please, anyone reading this, think about your backup solution, because its only a question of time when your first device will experience data loss.


Mac OS X 10.10.5 - How can I encrypt only my home folder without Apple FileVault How may I encrypt my home folder without using Apple FileVault? Is it possible to create an image of the user folder with DiskImage and mount that as home folder? How to make this.

PS: I can't use Apple FileVault (or at least I couldn't get it to work with a remote connection to OS X Server). I don't want to use any additional software. It has to work with onboard utilities.

I do this on my own Mac at home with scripts that run at boot and mount a Core Storage volume. I'm on 10.11.6, but the same principles should apply.

To be clear, FileVault is much simpler, but it is possible to do what you ask. I went down a rabbit hole to get an encrypted $HOME working, and so I still use it, but FileVault is superior in just about every way.

I wrote up an article detailing how I did this. I'd post the vital steps here, but it is a fairly long and involved process.

Here's the gist of it. You need to do the following:

Format a USB drive
Add a keyfile (max 1023 chars) to that drive
Create a core storage volume somewhere
Encrypt that core storage volume with your keyfile
Migrate files to your new encrypted home
Create a Launchd task that runs a mount script on boot
Create that mount script.

The mount script will read the keyfile from your USB drive
The mount script will attempt to unlock your core storage volume using the contents of the keyfile
The mount script must unmount the core storage volume from /Volumes
The mount script must mount the core storage volume to /Users

Unmount the USB drive so the keyfile isn't just sitting there

It took me a lot of trial and error.

There are probably ways to improve my steps like using an exported keychain rather than a plain text keyfile. You could probably also re-define the location of $HOME for your user in System Preferences, but I opted to mount the encrypted home over the normal home so that the path would be standard.

I tried changing $HOME to /Volumes/THE_ENCRYPTED_DRIVE, but I immediately noticed things like my iTunes library were messed up. All the library file references were stale and needed to be updated. That's an example of how screwing with $HOME can get messy.

Really, FileVault would be way easier if you can get it going. If FileVault is not an option, you should check out VeraCrypt, which is a fork of TrueCrypt that was recently audited and seems legit.


Connect two monitors to MacBook 4,1 All I can find on the internet is info on MacBook Pros. I have a regular MacBook, model 4,1, with a Mini DVI and a Fire Wire port. Currently I'm connecting an external monitor using a Mini DVI to HDMI converter.

Is it possible to connect two monitors to a MacBook 4,1 (Snow Leopard), using either a combo of Mini DVI and Firewire, or a splitter on either port?

According to EveryMac that machine can only support one external monitor, at 1920x1200 resolution.


How to Safely Delete an in-progress Time Machine Backup on Snow Leopard Okay, so somehow a computer I'm helping to manage has got a total of three .inprogress backups on its Time Machine drive that it doesn't seem to be able to tidy up; it's creating new backups without any issue, it just gets stuck on the finishing stage, presumably trying to get rid of the in progress files.

On Lion or later I would just use tmutil delete to get rid of this safely, however Snow Leopard doesn't have this.

I don't want to use the bypass utility with the rm command as I believe that will destroy the contents of hard-linked folders, resulting in other backups becoming incomplete if they had links to the same folder(s).

Is it safe to delete a Time Machine backup using Snow Leopard's Finder, or is there some other alternative I could try? Will tmutil's delete command run if I transfer tmutil from a Mountain Lion machine? I know it won't be able to trigger backups etc. since backupd won't support it, but can the delete command still work on Snow Leopard?

After trying various techniques the only solution I've found is to connect the Time Machine volume to a machine with a newer version of OS X and run tmutil from the command line, I believe any version from Lion onwards should have this. The command to run is as follows:

tmutil delete '/Volumes/<time_machine_volume>/Backups.backupdb/<computer_name>/<backup>'

Replacing the parts in angle brackets with the correct values or, if you have the backup visible in the Finder, simply type the tmutil delete part in the Terminal then drag the folder onto the Terminal window to enter the path automatically.

Once this has completed, you can simply eject the volume and reconnect it to the Snow Leopard machine, which should just pick up where it left off (though it may re-index the drive during the next backup). This is okay to do so long as you don't do anything else with the drive that could introduce any incompatibilities with Snow Leopard (such as backing up with the Lion onwards machine onto that drive).

I can't help but think that there should be a way to do this by taking advantage of in inodes to locate the parts of the backup that actually need to be removed (i.e - any folder or file where the inode number doesn't match the corresponding entry, if it exists, in the previous backup). I've used this before to quickly print a list of changes between two Time Machine backups, but there's still no way that I know of to delete the other (hard linked) directories.


Problem enabling journaling in order to resize partitions on an external drive (Mac) So, heres the situation:

I have a 500GB external USB hard drive that is formatted with the GUID Partition Map and has 2 partitions, both formatted as Mac OS X Extended (Journaled). one partition, TEMP (~120 GB), is barely being used and I have moved all data off it for this. However, the other partition, MAIN, is being used for backups and is about 320GB and is already mostly full.

In order to avid having to spend hours and hours creating a brand new backup after formatting the drives, I found out that you can apparently resize partitions on disks that are formatted the way I have them. Which is great, except I can't increase the size of the MAIN partition because of the following error:
The volume “MAIN” is not journaled. As a result it can not be resized. To enable journaling, cancel partitioning and use the “Enable Journaling” command under the “File” menu.

I have verified and repaired both partitions numerous times with nothing bad coming up, everything is normal, however, when I go into terminal and try and manually enable journaling like it says, i get this:

 diskutil enablejournal disk1s2
Journaling was already enabled for volume MAIN on disk1s2

 diskutil disableJournal disk1s2
An error occurred journaling the file system: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-69860)

So it thinks journaling is already enabled... bit it thinks its disabled.... and i can't turn it off and back on again to test if that works... can someone please tell me what I'm doing wrong?

EDIT: While the drive is our primary backup drive, the backup partition has been full and no backups have been completed since July so I will probably end up formatting the drive anyway, but would still be interested to know what this issue is in case anyone else has this issue.

EDIT 2: here's the diskutil list info for the drive:

/dev/disk1 (external, physical):
#:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *500.1 GB   disk1
1:                        EFI EFI                     209.7 MB   disk1s1
2:                  Apple_HFS MAIN                    380.1 GB   disk1s2
3:                  Apple_HFS TEMP                    119.5 GB   disk1s3

Note that if you do:

diskutil disableJournal disk1s2

and you get:

An error occurred journaling the file system: The underlying task reported failure on exit (-69860)

the journaling is in fact disabled. The error is bogus. Eject and remount, and you'll see journaling is now off. Does knowing this help you?


Slow WiFi/Ethernet on 2011 Macbook Pro Wifi is terribly slow (between 1Mbps and 15Mbps) on my 2011 Macbook Pro running High Sierra. On all other devices, iPad, iPhone, iMac, PC it is above 80Mbps. Ethernet is slow as well. Sometimes I hit spikes of around 50Mbps for a couple of minutes, but I don't know what triggers it.

It doesn't seem to happen if I connect to my phone's personal hotspot. Both phone and Macbook come in around 30-35Mbps, although I didn't test it for long enough to see if it's just a spike as well.

I tried everything in the last couple of days:

removing wifi network from preferred networks
renewed DHCP lease
fiddling with router settings and channels
connecting to 5Ghz and 2Ghz networks
resetting network settings by deleting network files from Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration
SMC reset
NVRAM reset
scanning for malware
reinstalling OSX
installing El Capitan from the Time Machine backup of my iMac
turning off Bluetooth

Any other ideas that might help? Or is it faulty hardware?

Seems the problem was hardware related. Something got stuck in my ventillator which made it stop.

When the laptop overheated after 10-15 minutes it underclocked all hardware, making the internet run slow.


Unable to access .dev domains Kind of annoying. I use dev.*.com's locally in order to develop, but it seems like instead of respecting each domain I've defined in my /etc/hosts, my browsers are not able to reach out to any *.dev domain.

shopify.dev’s server IP address could not be found.

Things I've tried:

Switching browsers
Incognito windows
Restarting my machine
Verifying /etc/host doesn't have a greedy rule
Switched to Google's DNS 8.8.8.8
Flushing the Mac DNS cache

scutil -dns output:

DNS configuration

resolver #1
  nameserver[0] : 8.8.8.8
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000002 (Reachable)

resolver #2
  domain   : local
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 300000

resolver #3
  domain   : 254.169.in-addr.arpa
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 300200

resolver #4
  domain   : 8.e.f.ip6.arpa
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 300400

resolver #5
  domain   : 9.e.f.ip6.arpa
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 300600

resolver #6
  domain   : a.e.f.ip6.arpa
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 300800

resolver #7
  domain   : b.e.f.ip6.arpa
  options  : mdns
  timeout  : 5
  flags    : Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000000 (Not Reachable)
  order    : 301000

resolver #8
  domain   : dev
  nameserver[0] : 127.0.0.1
  flags    : Request A records, Request AAAA records
  reach    : 0x00030002 (Reachable,Local Address,Directly Reachable Address)

DNS configuration (for scoped queries)

resolver #1
  nameserver[0] : 8.8.8.8
  if_index : 5 (en0)
  flags    : Scoped, Request A records
  reach    : 0x00000002 (Reachable)

.dev is a regular top level domain name which became available to the general public on March 1, 2019. It's not recommended to use it locally for development purposes!

Depending on your development environment a required local name resolution is usually done either by adding (managing) hosts to (with) the /etc/hosts file or with a local nameserver like macOS Server's DNS server or tools like dnsmasq.

One common setup for local domains in e.g dnsmasq is a local resolution with the /etc/resolver/ method (example: Valet (Laravel): DNS address can not be found). By adding a file with the name of the tld (e.g. dev) containing the IP of a name server (e.g. nameserver 127.0.0.1) and setting up an appropriate configuration in the dnsmasq config file, the local DNS server will be authorative for this tld. All requests to resolve *.dev domains will be directed to this name server.

Other regular domains in the Internet with the same tld (e.g shopify.dev) won't be accesible then.

You can determine the various DNS resolvers in your system with the command scutil --dns.

A result like

...
resolver #8
  domain   : dev
  nameserver[0] : 127.0.0.1
  flags    : Request A records, Request AAAA records
  reach    : 0x00030002 (Reachable,Local Address,Directly Reachable Address)
...

is an obvious indication that the regular tld dev is directed to a local DNS server.

If you don't use the .dev domain anymore locally you can simply remove the file /etc/resolver/dev (and modifying the dnsmasq.conf file is recommended).

If you still rely on some .dev* tld move over to .develop or .development (and /etc/resolver/develop or /etc/resolver/development respectively).


Where are good places to buy RAM (memory) for a Mac? What reputable stores exist for purchasing RAM for a Mac?

Macs and PCs use the same type of RAM just like they use the same type of Hard Drives, if you buy RAM directly from Apple it is definitely marked up.  I have personally had good experiences with Kingston. Other popular 3rd party suppliers are  New Egg, Tiger Direct, and Crucial.


Snow leopard server: use a NAS volume as share point I have a mounted nas volume (/Volumes/Volume_1) and i would like to create a share point on this, so that it can be accessed via FTP or whatever.

Yet, when in server admin > file sharing, I cannot see this volume.

Is there anything I can do to see my NAS volume?

PS: that's a shame, I wanted to tag my post snow-leopard-server... because I thought it made sense... but it's not possible until I earn these 150 reputations :)

Mac OS X Server does allow the resharing of AFP mounts but not SMB/CIFS mounts. You can however get around it by using a symlink (ln -s /Volumes/Volume_1 /SOME/PATH) and share /SOME/PATH. While both options allow it to work it's not recommended (permissions, resource fork handling, max file size, etc. may cause hard to debug issues).

Alternatively on the command line you can use sharing (eg. sudo sharing -a path -s shareflags)


ShellShock: Do I need to be worried about this on OS X Mavericks? The title kind of says it all… I was in the process of bringing up a rather extensive set of Mac OS X Server machines when ShellShocked hit the world. As soon as I saw the news, I hastily began configuring the PF firewall. Probably too hastily, as I managed to break several of the services I was configuring.

Now one of the Mac OS X machines that was directly exposed to the Internet is behaving very strangely. I can no longer log into the machine either through Remote Desktop or the normal login window. (I get the shaking dialog box, as if I had entered the wrong password.) Yet I can still login through SSH just fine.

I know my way around OS X pretty well, and I don't see any unusual looking processes running. So, unless there's some kind of root kit for Mac OS X Mavericks in the world, or my Mac Mini server just chose this moment to manifest some kind of hardware problem, it seems like bringing down the firewall should get me back into the machine.

Is it safe?

I would err on the side of caution and wipe any server that you see odd behavior on that was exposed to the public internet in general without a logging firewall and/or some sort of tripwire or security scan set up to compare what changed since installation.

I think one of my OS X servers was compromised for the first time ever during this bash scripting vulnerability window. The time it would take me to search for a root kit is far longer than the time it took me to make one last backup and then wipe it from an external drive and start over.

In my case, I had a new user named A Lo created as a standard user. Pretty odd and very un-subtle of someone that manages to gain control of a server with a fixed IP address.

Basically, the more sophisticated black hat that has compromised your computer - the less likely you will notice it so from a reliability standpoint - if you notice instability it's likely cause the people that have compromised your server are inept or sloppy and will cause you to eventually have to reinstall.

Just to be clear, any server that's hidden behind a router with NAT is far less vulnerable than a server running live services 24/7 with a real, static IPv4 and no firewall whatsoever. People that just run OS X should have no concerns at all unless they have other reasons to think they are compromised.


Can i use iPhoto to trim my photos? I scaned many photos to one image file. How can i cut it down to many pieces? Can iPhoto do that or is there any other free software suggestion?

In contrast to Lizzan, I suggest you do it with iPhoto. So the answer is yes, you can do it with iPhoto. The reason why I suggest it is because iPhoto never destroys your image! It keeps the original image as it is and saves your changes to a separate file. You can always restore your original image. I don't know the OS you're using but prior to (I think) Lion there is no Version feature so returning to your original image is impossible.

So here's how you do it: http://support.apple.com/kb/VI191

You could crop the region you like and then save it as a new image. Then go back to your original and take the next region...


Can I install Mac OS from another account? I have two new Mac minis, which have Sierra installed. I need to install Yosemite and El Capitan on them. However, there is no old versions of the OS in the App Store.

Can I download old OS from some old account that has these versions in the App Store and install on my machine?
If yes, is this legal?
Can I use same installer on more than one machine? Is this legal?

Yes, if one of your account do has the installer in the Purchase list, you can download them and use it on your Mac Mini. However, you can’t just install it on top of Sierra. You needs to wipe the drive or use a separate partition.

If you downloaded the installer, it’s perfectly fine to use it on multiple machines.


Create iCloud Mail account without an Apple device I have already an Apple ID through iTunes. I am a Windows user and have no Apple devices, but would like to have an iCloud.com email address.

How can I do that?

In addition to iOS devices and Macs, Apple IDs can be created on other platforms via Apple's native apps such as iTunes, Apple Music, and Apple TV+.

Create an Apple ID on your Windows PC

Open iTunes for Windows. Make sure that you have the latest version.

From the menu bar at the top of your computer screen or at the top of the iTunes window, choose Account > Sign In. Then click Create New Apple ID.

Create an Apple ID on another device
To create an Apple ID on an Apple TV, Android device, smart TV, or streaming device, you can usually follow the steps provided onscreen and enter your full name, date of birth, an email address or phone number, and a payment method. You need to create an Apple ID when you subscribe to services like Apple Music and Apple TV+, or when you download the Apple TV app.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204316


Storage settings on iOS crashes while calculating If I navigate to Settings > iPhone Storage and wait while storage usage is calculated (Text under the categories bar says "Calculating category sizes..." and the location where individual apps appear shows just the spinner) Settings crashes without completing the calculation, leaving me unable to manage the storage on my iPhone.

How do I manage storage on iOS (without resetting completely)?

Most of the iOS crashes like this are corruption from data and not reproducable. If you power down the device while it’s in airplane mode - no data connection and power up, try again.

If you can reproduce this crash, you can be sure it’s the data on the device that you can control at that point. Check a backup and/or delete any and all apps and data you don’t need. At some point, you’ll need to restore the os on the device or manage storage via USB / cable / iTunes.


Stylish Replacement for Mac I wonder if anyone is aware of any replacement for Stylish. Stylish is not on the Safari Extension Gallery since they were stealing browsing information.

There is a paid ($3 in US) application Cascadea. I’m happy with it, because it is Safari App Extension instead of the Legacy Safari Extensions (.safariextz files). It seems to only work with User CSS (*.user.css) though, so you may want to write to support team (support@cascadea.app) to confirm before you pay.


Shortcut to open/close sidebar in Notes app? In Safari, you can press  Cmd ⌘  ⇧  L  to open/close the sidebar. When pressing this shortcut in Notes however, it creates a list.

What's the shortcut in Apple's notes app to toggle the sidebar?

They don't actually call it a sidebar, they term it 'Folders'

It's in the View menu as Show or Hide Folders, with no default shortcut

You could make your own shortcut in System Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts >App Shortcuts - though you'd actually have to make two, for the different wording.
If you chose to re-use  Cmd ⌘   Shift ⇧   L  you would also have to reassign Checklist from the Format menu to something else before it will work.

Shown using a different key combo below for simplicity


Does iTunes remember what I listened to and when? iTunes has a field named "Last Played" that tells me when I last played a track; is there any way of finding out all the songs I listened to on a particular date? I'm using iTunes 11 under OS X 10.6.8.

Nope.

Unfortunately, iTunes does not save an exact history of when you played certain songs, only the order in which you heard them.
There is no way you can know which song you hear, say, 3 hours and 10 minutes ago (totally random figures).


Open a link in Safari with a keyboard shortcut In Safari, is it possible to navigate through links on the webpage by means of the keyboard?

For example, I made a search in Google and would like to open the first or second link from the web search. How could I do without using the mouse and clicking on the link?

You can go through all links and controls in Safari using ⌥ Option+⇥ Tab. However, that's not ideal for Google. On Google, you can press ⇥ Tab and an arrow will appear next to the first result. You can then press the arrow keys to go up and down through the list.

When you have selected the link you want (either through ⌥ Option+⇥ Tab or Google’s way) you can press ↩ Return to open the link in the current tab or ⌘ Command+↩ Return to open it in a new tab.


Why isn't my MacBook running 64 bit mode? Possible Duplicate:
  My mac has 64-bit EFI, but it only boots with 32-bit kernel

Why isn't my MacBook running 64 bit mode? It's a mid-2010 model, "MacBook 7,1" , with a Core-2 Duo. why would it run in 32-bit mode? Could it be because I've only got 2GB of RAM?

I don't think these machines booted into 64bit. (the new macbook pros do).

You can hold down 6 and 4 whilst rebooting for a temporary 64bit boot (if available)

If that works, you can try this in terminal and then reboot

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot 'Kernel Flags' 'arch=x86_64'

This will make the mac boot in 64bit mode by default.


How Does Time Machine Check for "Runtime Corruption" and How Do I Reset It? After working quite happily for months, Time Machine running with a NAS as a backup destination has suddenly decided that my backup is "corrupt" after failing a check for "runtime corruption" and is insisting that I must delete the entire (4 terabyte) backup and start again!

What I want to know is how Time Machine determines "runtime corruption", and can I in some way reset or disable this check?

I have already checked the disk image itself using the following commands:

hdiutil attach -nomount /Volumes/Path/To/Backup.sparsebundle
diskutil verifyDisk diskN
diskutil verifyVolume diskNs2

Substituting paths and disk numbers where appropriate, and have found no errors whatsoever. So what exactly is Time Machine checking?

I've also checked almost all of the most recent backup (using shasum, ignoring files with newer modified times) and everything is fine; I can't find any evidence that anything is corrupted in any way, certainly not any of the files I care about most.

It's laughable really, as the only processes to touch the bundle are Time Machine and related components, there has been no sign of any kind of network connectivity issue, no other errors in the logs, and every other backup for the same day was completed without issue. Which means that any "runtime corruption" is most likely the fault of Time Machine itself!

It's also even more ridiculous that the only option presented is to wipe everything, rather than perform a deep traversal to compare the contents in detail (to find anything that may indeed be corrupted and replace it, not that I believe there is any corruption at all).

I don't want to have to discard 4 terabytes of backups for some vague, unspecified "corruption" that doesn't even appear to exist, so is there some way I can remove whatever data Time Machine is using to detect its mythical "runtime corruption" (a check it doesn't even appear to do with direct attached drives) so that I can just continue backing up?

EDIT:
So I've gained some new information, which is that the Time Machine "runtime corruption" check is actually just running fsck_hfs -q, which has nothing to do with corruption whatsoever, it is merely a test of whether a disk image was unmounted "uncleanly", which is no guarantee of corruption (as I have already confirmed).

Unfortunately despite managing to clear the "inconsistent" bit (which indicates an unclean unmount) using fsck_hfs -p time machine is still refusing to use this backup, despite the runtime corruption check no longer failing. Meaning some other data must be stored somewhere.

I've now discovered a complete solution by (carefully) following these steps:

Turn off Time Machine's automatic backups in the Time Machine preference pane (to prevent any conflicts).
First mount the network volume to which Time Machine is backing up, how to do this will depend upon your system, there should be a disk image in there named after your computer (e.g- for a system named "Haravikk's Mac Mini" you'll find "Haravikk's Mac Mini.sparsebundle"
Attach the image using the following command: hdiutil attach -nomount /path/to/image (you can fill in the path by dragging onto a terminal window from the finder, just make sure there's a space after -nomount).
Take a note of the device numbers returned, one of these will be your backup volume, usually the last one in the form of diskNs2 where N is the disk number, and the s2 should be the partition.
Run the following command, taking note to add r to the start of the device number to connect to the "raw" (unbuffered) device: fsck_hfs -p /dev/rdiskNs2
Wait for the check to finish; if it finds any errors it should attempt to fix them then run again automatically, wait for the process to finish. If it reports there were errors that could not be fixed then you should consider discarding the backups as recommended, or else run the command again with -f instead of -p (though this is not recommended).
At this point you should really check that your latest backup isn't corrupt; you can do this visually by mounting the image (diskutil mount diskNs2 substituting as appropriate) and examining in the Finder. A more detailed comparison is recommended however but beyond the scope of this answer.
Detach the disk image with the following command (substituting disk ID): hdiutil detach diskN (if you mounted the image above, "eject" it first).
In the Finder open the the folder with your backup disk image, right-click it and choose "Show Contents". Inside you'll find a file called com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist, open it. If you have Xcode installed it will open in this, otherwise you should be able to open it in TextEdit; when editing in TextEdit you'll need to have some familiarity with XML and plist files, though they're pretty straightforward.
Find the VerificationState key and change its value to 1 (it will probably be set to 2 if you're experiencing the same issue as me).
Find the RecoveryBackupDeclinedDate key and delete it, if you're using TextEdit make sure you also delete its <date> value.
Save your changes, unmount the network volume and re-enable Time Machine's automatic backups.
Either wait for the next backup, or run one immediately; if your network destination isn't your only backup device you can trigger a backup to it in the Time Machine preference pane by right-clicking on the destination's icon and choosing "Back up to  now".

Details

It seems that Time Machine's "runtime corruption" check is a call to a fsck_hfs -q, which checks whether a volume was unmounted uncleanly. If this fails, the volume will have an "inconsistent" bit set against it that can only be cleared by successfully repairing it using fsck_hfs -p or similar.

However, in addition to this Time Machine stores a "corrupt" status in its com.apple.TimeMachine.MachineID.plist within the disk image bundle. I'm kicking myself for not finding this sooner since it's right there just inside it. I'm not sure if Time Machine performs an additional checks, there is a key related to some kind of extended check, but I'm not sure exactly what this entails.

Correcting both restores the image to "normal" status, allowing Time Machine to run without issue.

NOTE: While in my case the "runtime corruption" check was definitely mistaken, it is important that you check whether there is any actual corruption to ensure this is the case. It's a bit beyond the scope of this answer to cover that as well, but if anyone would like to recommend tools or guides for doing so please comment!

Extra

I ended up finding these solutions myself despite trying to get help from Apple engineers; they just wasted my time trying to find ways to blame me for the fault, rather than telling me what I needed to know, and they've gone and closed my bug report despite my having shown them exactly how I verified no corruption had occurred!

Very, very disappointed with Apple's handling of a report that their flagship backup tool may be deleting users' backups unnecessarily. I'm now seriously considering ditching Time Machine entirely next time I upgrade my storage, as I'm no longer confident I can trust it, or the engineers who work on it, and may go for the overkill option of something based on ZFS send.


iOS 9.3.1 / OS X 10.11.14: Laptop doesn't show up in Airdrop locations on phone In the past when I was sitting near my laptop (from early 2015) with the Photos app open on my iPhone (from fall 2014), when I would tap share a picture, my laptop would show up in AirDrop.  Now it is not showing up anymore!

From my laptop when I click on AirDrop from the Finder, my phone
appears, and I am able to share files from my laptop to the phone.
I have confirmed that Bluetooth and Wifi are enabled for both
devices.
From Settings>Bluetooth on the phone, I saw my laptop listed, but when I tried to connect, it failed.  I deleted it from the list of My Devices and tried to re-pair my laptop and computer using the Bluetooth File Exchange app on my laptop.  Even after seemingly going through the process correctly, it showed the laptop in the list of My Devices again, but as "Not Connected," and when I clicked on the info icon to see more, it said, "[Laptop name] is not supported."  But how could this be?!  I have the latest OS versions on both!
And now when I try to send from my laptop to the phone, which was working when I started debugging this, it says that "[Phone name] does not have the necessary services."  Again -- why?!  (However, when I share through the Finder from laptop => phone, it does work, although it's the reverse direction I need to get working again.)
I had the laptop under the setting "Allow me to be discovered by: Contact Only," but I switched it to "Everyone" -- no luck.

This is maddening.  Help!

There are number of methods to get it working so try them out one by one what works for you.

Try creating new user in mac and test airdrop with
  -icloud signed out
  -icloud signed in
Reset PRAM ans SMC
Try switching on/off bluetooth/wifi on both the devices.
Network reset in iPhone.
Test the same machines in different wifi at different location sometimes it is an issue of wifi router also. // This has happened with me.
Check firewall in mac and disable it temporarily.
Try without connecting to any network on both the devices i.e. forget wifi on both devices but enable wifi/bluetooth on both.
Try it in Safe mode.
If you have another mac available then try to airdrop with mac to mac.

Happy airdrop debugging :P


How can I change my iCloud account on my iPhone? My wife had to get a new iPhone and they put my iCloud account on her phone.  I am trying to change it but when i go into Settings > iCloud, the email address is grayed out so I can't see how to change it.

How can I change the iCloud account on my wife's phone so she gets her contacts, etc and not mine?

Under Settings / iCloud you'll see a big red button labeled as Delete Account. Contrary to what it appears, it won't actually delete the account, nor your Apple ID, it will only delete the iCloud's content from your device.

So, to change the device's iCloud account just delete the current one and then log in appropriately.


How can I use a different navigation app from within Maps? When using the built in maps navigation, I'm sure I once was able to choose which mapping tool to use (Google Maps or CoPilot) but now for the life of me I can't work out how I did it.

I'd like to find a place using the normal mapping application and then choose which navigation application to use to get me there.

I've seen this question How to invoke navigation on Google maps using Siri?, but I would like a non voice activated solution if there is one.

You cannot change the underlying routing service with the default maps app for driving instructions, but what you can do is choose 3rd party applications for certain routing routing options, namely cycle routes, public transport options etc that are not provided by default within the app directly (since the switch to Apple's own mapping service).

Following the steps from this knowledge base article, the workflow seems to be

  Transit

  Maps in iOS allows you to choose your own third-party app from the App
  Store to provide transit information. To choose a transit option, tap
  . You can choose from the list of installed third-party transit apps,
  or you will be directed to download one from the App Store.

This is a little misleading, as you actually need to select the Public Transport icon first, then try to route it first before it offers you a choice of what to use to route with.  At this point it will offer you a list that shows currently installed options as well as choices from the App Store:

You could also click on a dropped pin and choose Public Transport Directions underneath the directions to/from here text to get to the same screen.

Once you select from one of your installed apps (or go to the App Store, download one, then repeat the process when you have one installed), it should then switch to that app for routing.  Note that it will switch to the 3rd party app and route using either Public Transport or whatever option the app provides (for example Co-Rider does;t offer Public Transport, only Cycle Routes, but it's still accessed in the same way).

By default driving and walking directions will always be provided in app using Apples own systems. If you want 3rd party driving directions then you will need to do a crafty workaround; choose Public Transport then your 3rd party app that also supports driving instructions (for example Google Maps and Waze in my screenshot - the types of routing options available are listed against each app), then switch back to driving options once you have the 3rd party app open with the start & destination set.  To use Google Maps as your example, it will open happily showing your transit options, and a single tap in the top left icon to switch to driving gets your end result via the back door.


iOS Photos app: Inappropriate photo on People & Places section under Albums Someone took an inappropriate selfie with my iPhone X. For some reason it shows up as thumbnail under the People & Places section on the Albums tab. I find the thumbnail picture very annoying.

I have deleted the picture itself, but the thumbnail still persists.

How can I remove it?

Assuming this is coming from "people" and not "places"
In Photos, tap on the "People" and scroll until you find that person. (It may be aonther picture than the annoying one) Tap on the person and then tap the "..." in the top right corner. Then select Remove from People Album.

If that is too drastic, "Unfavorite This Person" might work if they are showing up because they have been favorited."

Finally, if neither of those works, (or you don't want to do them), you can open Photos on your mac (assuming you have one) and see if the image still exists there to be deleted.


Is it safe to delete the 32-bit Intel code from apps using a tool like Monolingual? Using the application Monolingual, is it safe to remove the Intel architecture on a Late 2010 MacBook Air and just leave the Intel 64-Bit architecture?

Yes, but...

You may develop problems updating certain apps as removing parts of the app using Monolingual can render the code signing of the application incorrect.

From Switcher's Blog

  OS X 10.5 Leopard brings a new Code Signing security feature that helps verify the integrity of an application. Applications are signed by their creators before being distributed using their private key, and then can be verified on the customer's machine using the companies public key.

That's for third party apps. I really wouldn't tempt fate by doing this to system files.


Will my A1522 iPhone 6 Plus work in New Zealand? I know this looks like a very simple and even dumb question, as it would be very easy to check the bands in the website, but it looks that there is something wrong in the specs:

Under Ultrafast LTE, Apple says that the A1522 model doesn't work in New Zealand:

In the iPhone 6 Plus - Technical Specifications, Apple says that the supported bands of the model are "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 29". In the Wikipedia page (and other ones), is said that the LTE bands used in New Zealand are 3, 7, 28.

So will my A1522 iPhone 6 Plus work in New Zealand?

After arriving on New Zealand and being using Spark carrier for six months, I can say with confidence that the iPhone 6 Plus A1522 works, in both 3G and 4G networks.


Installation of Yosemite is interrupted by a white screen at ⅓ of progress bar The loading of the installation from a Yosemite USB installer drive is interrupted by a blank screen about ⅓ into the progress bar. The same USB drive works on another (older) MacBook Pro.

The MacBook (8,2 which should be early 2011 but on the back it says 2010) is equipped with a blank SSD drive.

The following boot options had some effect:

alt (boot select) allows me to select the USB drive.
cmd-alt-P-R (NVRAM reset) had some effect (screen is brighter now), but did not solve the problem.
alt-R (internet recovery) loaded all-right, went into the phase where there is the Apple logo and the spinning lines below, and then went blank.
alt-D (internet HW test) is executing, but does not find anything but the disconnected battery (battery is dead).

following boot options do not have an effect:

cmd-V (verbose)
cmd-L (log)
D (hardware test) - no surprise since nothing is installed on the SSD

Any clues as to how I can get the machine working?

I had the same problem. I had to format the ssd in another Mac before I could move on.


How can I properly remove Linux and resize the partition if it's showing FFFFFFFFFFFF-FFFFF-FFFFF without turning off my Macbook? Having deleted both linux partitions from my device using

sudo diskutil eraseVolume free none disk0s4

and

sudo diskutil eraseVolume free none disk0s3
In an attempt to then have both partitions rejoin the larger one i used

sudo diskutil apfs resizeContainer disk0s2 0

but it was unsuccessful to my chagrin.

I checked my with diskutil list

and now I have a shady FFFF-FFFF-FFFF partition instead of the normal disk0s2.

How can I revert the partition to its normal state and resize the partition without turning off my macbook and messing up the entire thing.

This is on macOS catalina 10.15.2

I have also an image of sudo fdisk /dev/disk0

Any help would be greatly appreciated besides saying just use a time machine.

gpt -r show /dev/disk0

EDIT

After implementing David Anderson's solution the end result was this

Which seems to have restored the partition to it's normal state.

Both of David Anderson's solutions work

MacBook-Pro ~ % sudo gpt -f remove -i 2 disk0
Password:
disk0s2 removed
MacBook-Pro ~ % sudo gpt -f add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 1796865488 -t apfs disk0
disk0s2 added

Download and install gdisk.

After downloading, you can remove the quarantine by entering the following command.

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/gdisk-1.0.4.pkg

Enter the commands given below.

sudo gdisk /dev/disk0
t
2
af0a
w
y

You can also use the gpt command, but gdisk has the advantage of being atomic. In other words, no changes are made to the GPT until you enter the y command.

If you want to try using the gpt command without first booting to macOS Recovery, then here are the commands. I warn you this might cause the computer to hang.

sudo -f gpt remove -i 2 disk0
sudo -f gpt add -i 2 -b 409640 -s 1796865488 -t apfs disk0


Is there a way to hide malicious google results in Mac? When I googled, some links were marked by Google as malicious that can harm my computer. Since I don't want to mis-click any of those, I would like to know whether there are any configs that just simply hide those links? Or stop Google from returning those links in the first place?

Thanks!

The Safari web browser has extensions you can load that will warn you about dangerous websites. The one I use is called URL Advisor. Another one is SafeSurf. If you go to "Safari Extensions" under the Safari menu item you can get a list of available extensions.

I don't know for sure about Google Chrome or Firefox but if extensions exist for Safari I feel confident they exist for other browsers as well.


What happend to my MATLAB icon on OS X? For some reason the icon for MATLAB (R2015b) no longer shows the familiar orange matlab surface icon, but rather reverts to the generic black box with exec under OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks). Any ideas how to get the correct icon back?

The generic icon shows with Command-Tab and in the Dock, but the correct icon is shown in Finder.

When I first installed MATLAB the first run (or few?) used the correct icon, but has since switched to the generic icon.

Any idea how to to get the nice MATLAB icon back?

Go to info.plist, change LSUIElement value back to 0. This will fix the dock icon. This might introduce some other issues however (I don't use matlab too extensively), so if you experience any visual glitches it might be due to modifying the plist, not matlab itself.

I don't have other machines to verify, but I believe the "issue" you describe is not specific to your machine but is true for all matlab installations on osx, due to Matlab's weird startup sequence.

The reason why the first launch displays the icon is that the first launch actually launches an activator program, not matlab itself.

Moreover, even after tampering with the lsuielement to restore the dock icon, the alt-tab icon will still be the generic black-rectangle script icon (again due to the way matlab is packaged and launches)


How can I shut down an unlisted php-fpm? I have two installations of php on my machine.
One came with apache and is a 5.3 version, and I'm trying to use a 5.4 version with nginx.
I'd like to work on project using nginx, but I can't figure out how to turn off apache's pfp-fpm service: it doesn't show up when I use the sudo launchctl list command. However, I can see it in the process list, and it claims its parent process is launchd.

When I open the nginx project main page, and call phpinfo() on it, the php version displayed is 5.3, this is why I think I failed to launch the correct service. What can I try?

You can just let the apache version alone and set up nginx to proxy to the php-fpm process you want via socket or just another different port. Keep in mind that the default port for php-fpm is 9000 in the case it has the original setup which is using the port and not the socket.


Fullscreen Flash video only shows 1/4 of video When I maximize some Flash (version 15.0.0.xxx) videos to fullscreen, only the top left quarter of the screen is showing video, the rest is completely black.

I've tried this on OSX 10.9 and 10.10, 2014 Macbook Pro, 3 browsers (Safari, Chrome, and Firefox) with no plugins, no additional screen, and hardware acceleration set to enabled and disabled.

Here's a workaround I've found: right click on the 1/4-screen video and look for the Stretching is <type> item in the options list. Click on that and the video will fill the screen. Keep repeating to get back to the 'Stretching is none' setting.

What can I do to debug this?

I've found it. After looking a little further, I was able to find something I missed some time ago.

  In the URL bar enter chrome://plugins/
  Locate the Flash plug-in, you should see multiple versions listed
  Click Disable for the plug-in with the location /opt/google/chrome/PepperFlash/libpepflashplayer.so
  You should still have one enabled in another location, like /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libflashplayer.so
  Restart Chrome (quit and open again)

Source: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=135353#c25

This fixed it for me!


How to fix Users & Groups / Other Users? I don't know how, but suddenly there are a lot of "Sharing Only" under Other Users. On my other mac, there are no such thing.

Directory Utility screenshots.

Updating macOS High Sierra to version 10.13.2 (17C88) fixed the issue.


Which songs in my iTunes library are DRM protected? Is there an easy way to obtain a list of all songs in my iTunes library that are protected by DRM?

Create a smart playlist and use "kind contains protected" as the first rule.


Bluetooth not available: Mojave 10.14.2 I have a MacBook Pro Retina (2015). After updating to OS Mojave, Bluetooth has stopped working. I get an error message that "No Bluetooth Hardware Found".

I have already tried to do the following:

Go to the /Library/Preferences and delete the com.apple.Bluetooth.plist file
Successfully resetting SMC. (pressing Shift+ctrl+alt + power button)
Removing the Bluetooth icon from the menu bar
Successfully resetting NVRAM.

None of the above solutions has worked for me.

It may be necessary for the Bluetooth demon to be stopped when deleting the file. Here's what worked for me (some of this may be unnecessary or redundant):

Turn off bluetooth, e.g. from the toolbar icon.
Run this command (you'll probably be prompted for your password):

sudo pkill bluetoothd \
    && sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist \
    && sudo pkill bluetoothd

Go to the Bluetooth System Preferences pane and click the "Show bluetooth in menu bar" checkbox twice (to remove and then re-show it).
In the Bluetooth System Preferences pane, delete the device you want to connect to.
Turn on bluetooth.
Turn that device on and in pairing mode.
Pair with it.

It was not necessary for me to do anything with the SMC or NVRAM, or restart the machine.


How to find photos not in any album in iOS photo app? On iOS devices removing photo from album does not remove it from camera roll, and it's inconvienent to switch to camera roll to find and delete the photo, soon there will be unwanted photos not in any album still taking up place, on iPhoto Mac these photos can be found by creating a smart album, but no obvious way to do this on iOS devices, any ideas?
Thanks!

The best solution is to use the system as the developers intended, despite the inconvenience.

For Albums created on the iOS device using the Photos app (I believe the same applies for Events created in iPhoto on iOS):

Deleting a picture from an album removes it only from the album.
Deleting a picture from the Camera Roll deletes the photo from the device—but it may still be part of your Photo Stream.
Deleting a photo from Photo Stream removes it from the stream, but will not remove the photo from devices on which it has been included in Albums or Events. ᔥApple — iCloud: How to delete photos from your Photo Stream

There is no magic incantation that will reveal photos you've deleted from albums.


How do I use ipfw to allow LAN access but deny Internet access? How can I use ipfw (or another tool, if one is available) to allow unlimited access between computers on my LAN, but not allow access to the Internet?

(The IPs on my local LAN are 192.168.0.xxx)

Has been a while since I've used ipfw but running the following commands on all relevant computers should do the trick:

 sudo ipfw -f flush
 sudo ipfw add allow tcp from me to 192.168.0.0/24
 sudo ipfw add allow ip from me to 192.168.0.0/24
 sudo ipfw add deny tcp from me to any
 sudo ipfw add deny ip from me to any

To disable just run sudo ipfw flush again


How can I get Image Capture autorun turned off when inserting media? OS X Yosemite 10.2.2, 2015 Every time I insert an SD card or a drive via USB, dang Image Capture pushes its way to the front of my screen.  This is just since the Yosemite update--I can no longer find an option to only launch this with certain SD Cards, etc.  There's no eject button in the bottom left corner.  I can't find any preferences or other features that would allow me to turn autorun off.  It's not listed in my autorun programs in System Prefs.

Here's a screenshot of the guilty app:

Appreciate any tips!

Plug in your device to your Mac. When Image Capture is open it should display the device that's plugged in. Select the device, then you’ll see, below the sidebar, an option allowing you to choose what happens when you connect the device.

Click the menu that says Image Capture; you have several options, such as Image Capture, Preview, or, perhaps, other apps. But you can also choose No Application. Select that, and you’re good to go. In Image Capture, you can adjust this setting individually for each device.

If you don’t see the menu below the sidebar, click the little widget at the bottom-left of the window; that will display the menu.

Note: if you’ve turned on Photos in the Cloud in your iOS device settings, you won’t see this option, since your iOS device no longer lets you add photos to iPhoto when it’s connected. And you can’t delete photos from the device using Image Capture either.